MOL boss causes a ruckus on Facebook-Updated
MOL’s boss Ganesh Kumar Bangah has been roundly criticized for making a series of inflammatory remarks in a competitor’s Facebook page.
Ganesh posted three comments on the OffGamers Limited Facebook page, promoting his company and angering community members.
Ganesh was commenting on an OffGamers post promoting the sale of credits in the DoTA-like game League of Legends. He was the first to respond to the post, saying, “Buy from MOL better…” which caused other users to defend OffGamers’ service.
One commenter, Azri Azami, called Ganesh’s comments a “cheap advertisement” that were “purely and plainly shameful”.
The thread has accumulated nearly 100 comments at the time of writing.
Ben Israel, Satoo.tv co-founder and a former PR man, wrote a post summarising the incident and offering his own advice. The post got 67 mentions on Twitter. There is also a growing thread on Malaysia’s most popular forum, Lowyat.net about the incident.
MOL recently struck deals with Paypal and Facebook to offer payment services in the region and it is Friendster’s latest owner.
Update
We emailed Ganesh to ask for his response to hullabaloo. The email was forwarded to MOL’s corporate communications vice president, Halida Abu Bakar, who passed it on to MOL’s Singapore based media liaison, Nor Badron.
Nor Badron told us:
“Thanks for your email. We have no plans to provide comments on this matter. Regards,”
We also emailed OffGamers’ content management division manager, Benn De Silva, who runs the company’s Facebook page. Here are the main bits of what he said:
“We feel that the representatives from MOL (in this case being Mr. Ganesh and Mr. Alan) have their own reasons to justify their actions (which are not known to us and we do not wish to speculate further).
…
We also respect each and every market player who are in the same field with us, as every player adds value to the market and benefits the consumer. This allows every one to grow and progress, feeding the economy as we go.
Whether the actions of MOL’s representatives were right or wrong, it is not for us to judge. They are still part of the prestigious company that we come to know of and respect.”
So there you have it, the main actors have spoken. What do readers think of this whole incident?
[Image Credit: Facebook]
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