The case is a digital version supporting the adage often attributed to Mark Twain that a lie will fly around the world while the truth is getting its boots on.
The company pledged 100% of donations from users would go to Haiti relief as part of a campaign involving its games -- the effort yielded a strong $1.5M -- but an online report said Zynga was keeping half the money. A Twitter-fueled wave of outrage ensued, stretching to Gawker and elsewhere, before the story was eventually corrected by the originator, a site called Social Media Today which picked up the piece from a blog in Brazil.
Haslam notes that the backlash occurred in the morning Eastern time, before Zynga's presumed office hours. "Is it reasonable to expect 24/7 monitoring and response from companies, or is everything moving too fast?" he asks.
But even more important, he notes, "Journalism on the Web is in permanent 'first draft' mode, and audiences must be cognizant of that fact - but will they be, and will they be responsible where the publishers fall down?"
Gawker corrected its piece as well and ran a lengthy statement from Zynga's marcom manager. Its stats show the story was viewed more than 41K times.
(Image: VentureBeat)