I get it. Corporations are big, bad, and horrendously evil. They either do too much, or simply not enough. The latest example of such corporate greed and self-serving was supposedly demonstrated by Bing with its outreach on Twitter.

This tweet was responded to very negatively by much of the community, and led Bing to make the decision to simply donate $100,000 dollars.

My first question for the people that complained quite loudly about this is this:  Are your tweets so valuable that a simple RT in support of Japan and it’s many victims of the tsunami is beneath you because Bing is supposedly using the terrible situation to their advantage?

My second question is; did any of you even click through the link? If you did, then you surely know it leads directly to a page on the Microsoft domain that explained the situation in Japan, as well as providing additional information to further help the cause. By having 100,000+ people RT this in hopes of helping Bing reach the $100k goal, that would’ve been many more people who would’ve clicked through to learn more about the situation, and chose to further help by clicking through the links Microsoft provided.

Maybe it is because I am an optimistic person at heart, who believes until proven otherwise, that most things are done with good intentions. Hell, you might even call this being naive, and my parents would back you up on this. This has been a “fault” of mine for quite a long time.

But you know what the alternative for Bing was?

Doing nothing.

Thankfully, Bing chose to donate the $100k with or without the RT’s, mixed in with an apology I do not believe they needed to give.

This was simply another way to raise awareness, that is/was blown out of proportion by people who have too much time on their hands, ironically by many who are social media juggernauts who support the network effect Bing was attempting to achieve to actually help something and someone.

[Cross-posted at Winextra]