Sun Admits Social Media Flop

Today’s Sun editorial is tiresome even by the paper’s usual piss-poor standards: titled “Tweet and Sour”, it demands “How do celebrity supporters of Labour, the ‘caring’ party, think 11 million people who voted Tory react to being branded heartless, prejudiced, selfish ‘scum’?” Did someone attached to the Labour Party say that? Can Rupe’s ever-helpful downmarket troops give us an example? No chance. You wish.

But there’s more: “Do they think brainless Leftie grandstanding will make those voters realise their ‘error’? It is more likely to harden their resolve NEVER to vote Labour … Many showbiz luvvies spend all their privileged lives in a cosy Left-wing bubble, never needing to challenge their facile, fashionable pro-Labour views … On social media they massage their egos first by displaying their moral superiority with Left-wing soundbites, then by seeing adoring fans witlessly agreeing with every hollow utterance”.

Bloody hell, what’s got into the Super Soaraway Currant Bun today? So what if someone has a social media following? But on drones the editorial, like a drunk propping up a bar: “Their mistake is to conclude this bubble is of any significance … that this is what ‘everyone thinks’ … It’s why the election result was so shocking to them”.

So shocking to whom, exactly? Who knows? But on drones the Sun: “Labour and their rich, famous backers [what?] discovered last Friday that more than 11 million ordinary people dare to hold the opposite view of how best to run the country. Even how best to help the poor … Equally humbling was the revelation that on sites like Twitter the left have only ever been talking to each other”. Is there a doctor in the house?

Who is the Sun ranting at? Ah, but this is not aimed at any old rotten lefties; the editorial has two purposes. One is the admission that the Sun has failed abysmally to crack social media - the SunNation Twitter feed only overtook that for this blog on the last day of the election campaign, despite all the money thrown at it - and the other is that, as a result, the paper had to throw  lot of money at the print edition to overcome its handicap.

SunNation had - and probably still has - several hacks working on it full time. Very few people pay any attention to it. The site has been left live and is posting new content - does that mean it’s a permanent fixture? We don’t know - the Sun isn’t saying. So why should anyone continue looking in? That’s not the fault of some “Left-wing” presence, it’s the Murdoch hacks’ own ineptitude. Spending money to no purpose.

And the banging on about a mythical “Left-wing bubble” is code for “we can’t hack it, so we hate it and will smear it instead”. Some well-known people support Labour, some support the Tories, some support other parties. The Sun’s blether tries to blame the paper’s inability to master a technology that is a breeze for young children on mythical “Lefties”, rather than accept they screwed up - which has stuff all to do with the election result.

The Sun is useless at Twitter. And its boss can’t control it. End of story.