The now famous/ infamous Clare Werbeloff was initially thought to be another social media stunt.
Either way, the very interesting fact is that it has made many people think definitely about social media and traditional media in general. Did this even change your views?
Twitter is truly hitting the mainstream now, and for many of us there is a love hate relationship with the network. Some pick it up and ‘get it’ instantly, whilst others are seemingly frustrated with the method of networking and communication.
Rohit Bhargava wrote an excellent post at the end of last year describing what he called The 5 Stages Of Twitter Acceptance.
To help you through these steps and to manage the huge amounts of information that you need to process, there are some excellent tools or twitter ‘clients’ to help you follow, unfollow and manage your twitter experience. Below are a list of some of the ones I have found useful.
Twitter Clients:
Twitteriffic (also available for the iphone)
Tweetie (for Mac and iPhone)
I have been receiving Virgin Blue’s newsletter for some time now, and use them almost every time I need to fly to Melbourne to visit family. Recently the frequency of their newsletter was on the rise, and coinciding with their push relating to QANTAS’s change to their frequent flyer points system. It was at this point that I felt that I wanted to unsubscribe from their newsletter, simply because I didn’t need the updates, not that I wanted to discontinue my relationship with them in any way.
My first thinking was to simply scroll to the bottom of the most recent email and click the unsubscribe link. Much to my surprise, there was no such link to be found. Although they had taken the time to include about 4 paragraphs of terms and conditions relating to the offers within the newsletter, they had not included one of the most standard (not to mention required by law) features of a newsletter.
Instead there was simply an ‘Update Details’ link at the bottom of the email. This link took me to the Virgin Blue site and requested me to login with my Velocity number and password- neither of which I dad on hand nor should need to unsubscribe.
Feeling a little annoyed, I placed a post on twitter about the oversight, and gave it an @ reply to Sir Richard Branson. You can see the post below:
Next is where things TOTALLY turned around and forced me to not only praise Virgin Blue but prompted me to write this post.
The following day, just shy of 24 hours after my original post (23 hours an 47 minutes) I received the following tweet from Virgin Blue:
It is great to see brands monitoring what is said about them online through different social media, and very pleasing that they are taking the time to reply to individual post such as the one I sent. This is in stark contrast to the way that Jetstar seem to be using Twitter, as illustrated in Tiphereth Gloria’s Digital Tip blog post today Jetstar’s 5 cent Fail Sail.
This is something that all of us have know for some time, but until recently very few companies have been doing.
Have a read of the blog post over at the Vovici blog called Closing the Feedback Loop: Sharing Results with Online Community Members & Respondents.
Interesting article on Life Hacker today about how fast Firefox is being taken up in Europe They are quoting a Reuters story saying that Firefox has just edged past IE 7.
It will be interesting to watch the numbers with the eventual release of IE8.
Over the last few years, online has been producing some of the best April Fools day pranks. The stand out performer in many cases has been Google, with the launch of often crazy product/ service offering.
This year has again seen some great ones from the likes of Mumbrella and News.com.au.
For a few more from this year, check out the Mumbrella article.
Not content enough with being incredibly busy and sleep deprived with the birth of our second child, I have decided to try my hand at contracting/ consulting through my own business. This is something that I have never done before and due to current circumstances (having my position made redundant at my previous job), I have decided to take on a new challenge.
My aim is to help clients realise the potential of online research and online communities, and how they can greatly benefit a business. Not only a market research organisation, but any organisation that is willing to research themselves, their clients and customers and their industry.
The barriers to entry are much lower than in recent years, and thus these types of insights are more attainable than ever. Companies just need a little bit of a helping hand to realise the potential of this medium.
In addition to this, I am going to be working to help organisations gain further insights from their existing databases, through custom panels and online communities. There is a vast untapped wealth for may companies in existing databases that needs to be explored sooner rather than later.
I came across this story in my RSS feed this morning on the Bits blog in the New York Times. The story is detailing the ongoing feud between H.P. and Cisco as the latter makes a concerted push in the server market.
Many people observing this, myself included, have been asking- what the hell took Cisco so long?
They have been a small (but incredibly vital) part of the process for many years, but have always taken a back seat to partners such as HP and IBM that have sold a server solution ‘incorporating’ Cisco networking components.
Is this simply a case of sour grapes on the part of H.P.? Let’s face it, the business world has been built on situations like this and it just goes to show that you need to watch your back.
My Linkedin Profile
