Blogs love a headline like this: CBS Sports Facing March Madness Backlash on Facebook. 'This App Blows." Get's readers in the door. Even if it isn't very accurate. Sure the CBS app may be flawed, but it has 439,793 daily active users among an installed base of approximately 1.2M users (as of 3/24). If all 913 of the applications' wall posts are negative reviews (and a quick scan shows that many of them are decent reviews and plenty are spam for other sites or applications), that's still only 0.07% of total installed user base that are dissatisfied enough to post negative reviews.
You'd think a blog like TechCrunch, whose posts frequently get showered with negative comments, would understand that Web 2.0 mechanisms amplify negative reviews and that actual user behavior (large installed base, lots of readers & page views) need to be considered before writing off a site/product/campaign as a failure.
The negative din is daunting for marketers considering playing in the social space. There are good lessons to be learned from this case study: don't mess with March Madness, give your users what you want, make your UI user-proof. Biggest lesson may be: expect negative feedback and plan your response ahead of time.
