It does however, do exactly what it sets out to do: explain social media in plain English.
It also makes me think of ice cream which is never a bad thing.
As all you Gmail users probably are aware, this morning Google launched a new leap into the Social Media space. They call it Google Buzz, and it works very similarly to Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” sharing functionality:
You are able to share thoughts, links, photos, videos, RSS feeds etc. What sets it apart from Facebook, aside from one obvious thing, is that you are able to pull in content from your social networks or utilities such as Picasa, flickr, Google Reader and Twitter. This is a great functionality that facebook is lacking, and will probably do so due to equal lack of collaboration partners. All this is done straight through your Gmail account and is shared to your Gmail contacts. You are able to follow peoples’ Buzz feeds, or bring in random content from all your contacts.
Of course this has taken Twitter by storm (around 3,189 tweets over the last 6 minutes on ‘Google Buzz”) , and is the second highest ranking topic at the moment. However, even though it holds high share of buzz, it is not really received well:
According to me the biggest difference between Buzz and Facebook is also why I don’t think it will revolutionise the Social Media world: Gmail is not the forum where you want to share thoughts, party pictures or funny videos to everyone. My contacts in Gmail differ quite a lot from my friends in Facebook. Even Twitter gets around this problem due to a level of anonymity within the micro blog. As I have used my Gmail account for professional correspondence, I run the risk of sharing my content to unintended recipients.
Even though it could be considered a nice effort by Google to try to break into even another space, I don’t think they will succeed. I use my Gmail account for sending emails, for which it is great, but that’s what I will continue to do, nothing more. I’m not saying that Google hasn’t succeeded before in branching out, but this time they are moving in the wrong direction.
But an even more important question, what happened to Google Wave? I haven’t heard anything about it over the last months. This email system that was going to revolutionise the email world, did it flop?
Being Friday and the end of a somewhat busy week I was delighted to come across this video. I feel that such machines should exist in every work place.
Coca Cola invites college students in the U.S to experience the happiness factory via “the happiness machine”. When visiting their vending machine they get a little more than expected.
So far it has racked up 1,223,441 views on YouTube. The only distribution sources for the video were a tweet from the Coke Twitter account and their Facebook fan page. Interactive YouTube feature have been used to great effect as the video finishes with a call to action “Share the Happiness” alongside the question “Where will the happiness strike next?”.
YouTube has recently asked their customers what they are missing from their favourite video host. The result was a large outcry for something that goes well in line with Twitter’s genius: Simplicity. Most YouTube users want to watch videos with minimum hustle. However, there is one smaller group of people, that is very important for YouTube’s revenue stream, that wants the complete opposite: the uploaders. The latter user group wishes to enhance communication with the audience and asks further ways to increase audience volume, and both would need further added features to the interface.
So, who did YouTube listen to? Today it was announced that the video site will be launching a new version of the site, quite similar to Facebook Lite. It is not officially made yet when YouTube Feather will go live but, we the Beta version is ready for testing now. It will provide viewers with the benefit of watching video with the minimum latency possible. The downside? It achieves minimum latency through limiting many of the features available to the user lowering the amount of bytes that needs downloading by the browser. This will definitely make it more difficult to feature sponsored content, but could however contribute to an enriched brand experience for the viewer.
I had a un-expected surprise last week to find that I had a new follower on twitter. That follower was non other than the TV show I’m a Celebrity. So naturally I accepted. Although once an avid fan of the show but not so much now (as I found a job and am no longer a student with time on my hands) I was keen to see what interesting things they had to tweet me. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by their twitter presence.
They appear to be a TV show using Twitter to offer genuine fan engagement. The official I’m A Celebrity…Twitter feed encourages fans to @reply for the chance to be used on the spin off show I’m A Celebrity…NOW on ITV2. It’s nice to see that I’m a celeb know their audience’s behavior in that that they will be online at the same time as watching the show and are rewarding them for this.
For all those avid fans of seeing the current z list celebs eating kangaroo anus and having to be covered in cockroaches you can show support for them using Twibbon.
I have to say there is only so many times you can see someone eat a wiggity grub without feeling the need to vomit.
The Mashable Open Web awards are currently live and kicking. It’s an opportunity for social media campaigns, apps, agencies, non profits and individuals (across all platforms) to get a nice little ego boost. I say ego boost, as there is no prize attached beyond Kudos. However, ‘social media agency 2009’ does have a nice ring to it.
For Mashable however, it’s the perfect marketing tool. Entrants are encouraged to vote in any of the 50 categories once per day (or twice if you cheekily log in through Facebook and Twitter). By casting your vote, you automatically and compulsorily post to your social network of choice. With no option to turn this functionality off 64,004 link-laden tweets and Facebook posts promoting Mashable have so far been generated – creating one heck of a good viral campaign for next-to-no expenditure (albeit quite spammy).
I’m sure it helps that Mashable is massive (1.6m twitter followers and 349k UU’s in October) so it began with an excellent communications platform to get the ball rolling.
Votes are being cast at a rate of around 5-10 per minute, with some 100k+ Facebook fan pages battling it out fiercely and imploring their fans to cast their vote.
Not being one to miss a trend, Jam are hoping you’ll take a moment to:
There always seems to be a celebrity tweeting about a brand they’re unhappy with – two weeks ago it was Rob Brydon with O2, and since then, Perez Hilton has been informing more than 13.5 million people about how T-Mobile and Danger and Microsoft have all failed.
But what’ s a company to do in a situation like this?
1. @reply to any celebrities talking about it (but only if they’re not overly angry)
You can generally tell what overly angry is based on word choice. The two examples above put Perez Hilton on the list of people to ignore. Chances are, if you respond to Perez Hilton and tell him you’re working on it and you’re very sorry, it will add more fuel to the fire.
2. @reply to all the customers with questions.
Be proactive about it; it’s okay to respond even if they haven’t tweeted directly at you. If you don’t know the answer, try to find it, and if you can’t, be honest.
3. Issue statements and updates as often as possible.
You might have nothing to say, but that’s okay. Just assure everyone that you’re still working on it.
4. If you can’t solve the problem right away, start giving away free stuff.
Free merchandise, gift certificates, contract releases, upgrades. Plan it out. If this problem persists longer, how big should the giveaways be? Pay attention to what your customers are saying and if they think it’s enough.
5. Make sure that when the problem is resolved, they are happier than before the problem started.
This might mean a free upgrade or extra services for extended period of time. Make people who ditched the brand think twice about it. Solve a problem well, and your customers will be more loyal to your brand and less likely to jump ship.
T-Mobile is doing rather well in this situation by using all of the above tools so far, but we’ll have to see if in a month’s time Perez Hilton is wishing he had been more patient.
I’ve always been a big fan of O2, they succeeded in turning Britain’s most famous white elephant into a trendy live music arena, they were the first to get the iPhone exclusivity contract and all in all, I have been a happy customer of theirs over the years, but when it comes to their social media, I think they are missing a trick.
So, ok, they do have some presence on Twitter (@O2) but it doesn’t have a clear purpose, one minute it’s advertising the PalmPre, the next it’s talking about its entrepreneur awards, now it’s moved onto customer service with a few @replies appearing on their page.
They obviously know it is important to be involved in social media, but they do not seem to have a clear purpose or strategy for their engagement with consumers on Twitter. If they did, they might have noticed that a certain star of Gavin and Stacey has been tweeting about O2’s 3G coverage (or rather, the lack of it) and responded to him in the public domain to resolve his issues.
So far, Rob Brydon has tweeted at least 5 times in the last 2 weeks about the coverage:
Rob Brydon currently has 75,169 followers, and counting. According to TwitterCounter.com his followers grow by an average of 153 per day, meaning that by the time Orange/Vodafone start selling the iPhone “later this year” (which I am taking to mean December), Rob Brydon will have an audience of approximately 85,821 followers who will hear about his troubles with O2 3G coverage. He has already had many @comments about his problems from his followers, including, rather cheekily:
Ok, not everyone will see his tweets, but as an influential and respected celebrity, his opinion is bound to start impacting his followers’ behaviour.
Word of web + word of mouth = consequences.
Will it stop people getting an iPhone? No. Will it encourage consumers to view other networks more favourably? I would say so, yes.
My advice to O2: get your customer services team onto @RobBrydon immediately! Ensure your response is in the public forum as an @reply. Now is your chance to make an impact.
CNN technology posted an article two days ago stating that Vivox, a US based company that provides an online integrated voice service for gaming and social virtual worlds, is going to launch its services on facebook. Vivox, who currently have over 15 million users, will probably be able to expect a massive user growth, and facebook users will be able to experience their favourite social network in a completely new way.
But Twitter is not late to follow its main rival. Yesterday the web based phone service JAJAH released news about their new service. Through typing “@call @username” Twitter will prompt both phones to start ringing on a secure line, through Twitter. They are also true to the Twitter brand through keeping the conversations to a 2 minute maximum.
I can’t help to think about some problems that this will bring. Both Facebook and Twitter are currently being flooded with information, and to a large extent spam. This opens up for another way for us to get targeted by all the litter out there. Are we going to get this spam through our phones now?
Also, some people have hundreds, others thousands of friends and followers, that actually post or write them messages every day. Imagine that coming as phone calls instead.
from teaberryltd.com
So now that we are actually going back to talking to each other again, will this mean that in a not too distant future we are also going to start meeting each other in person?
It doesn’t seem so long ago that I posted a blog about tweeting being banned in the world of sport. In fact, it wasn’t long ago at all. It was two weeks ago.
Now, two weeks later, yet another sport organisation, the National Football League (American - a trend?), decides tweeting and other social networking will not be allowed before, during or after American football games. This policy applies to players, coaches, league officials and the media attending games. Really? The media too?
Policies like this (while their intent is easily understood) are very difficult, if not impossible, to enforce and generally make people upset.
Social media is taking over – it’s unstoppable! Learn a lesson from these sport organisations and try to use tweeting and social networking to your brand’s advantage rather than fighting against it.
You can generally tell what overly angry is based on word choice. The two examples above put Perez Hilton on the list of people to ignore. Chances are, if you respond to Perez Hilton and tell him you’re working on it and you’re very sorry, it will add more fuel to the fire.
Be proactive about it; it’s okay to respond even if they haven’t tweeted directly at you. If you don’t know the answer, try to find it, and if you can’t, be honest.
