How Well Do You Know Your Twitter Followers? http://bit.ly/9kDkGH
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“The Shack” will earn some much-needed cool points this June when the store stocks shelves with the latest version of the iPhone. Radio Shack made the announcement Tuesday via its corporate Twitter account, promising more details to follow. Considering Radio Shack’s account only has about 3,200 followers, it could be your best bet on iPhone 4 launch day to avoid lines.
Full story at Gizmodo.
Total iPhone coverage.
5 Incredibly Effective Branded Facebook Pages http://bit.ly/bCtmLw
Much has been said about Twitter’s ability to build brands, spread messages and create interaction. But Facebook’s business pages have been around much longer, are a lot more flexible and are part of a much larger platform too. Coca Cola’s tweets, made up of slightly creepy greetings to followers and public Coke drinkers, for example, are read by fewer than 30,000 people. The company’s Facebook page, which is filled with videos, active discussions, ad campaigns and all sorts of other goodies, has been liked by more than 5.7 million people.
Creating that kind of following though takes more than a well-known brand and about ten spoonfuls of sugar in every can. It also takes a smart use of the functions available to marketers looking to build their market with Facebook. Here are five brands that are getting it right:
Electronic Arts
One of the most valuable strengths of social media marketing is that companies aren’t just broadcasting their messages to their market. They’re letting their market talk about them among themselves. That’s something that EA Sports 2010 World Cup Edition uses to the full. The company, which is known for its computer sports simulations, was expected to bring out its new management game on consoles. Instead, it chose to use Facebook as a platform, providing a way for the site’s users to face off against each other.
Users can buy “packs” of players for about $1.50-$3 each but the revenue is unlikely to be the main reason that EA have opted for Facebook instead of Nintendo. Console games are more likely sell for around $50 each and points earned during the game can be used to pay for more team members. Rather than looking at cash for this simple game, the company is using Facebook’s horizontal networking — and its $300m purchase of app developer Playfish — to keep people talking about the company and maintain its awareness during the soccer World Cup.
The Facebook page for its main product is pretty effective too.
Dunkin Donuts
Electronic Arts’ new game is powered by a smart app, something that requires plenty of time and money to create. But businesses don’t need to go to that expense to create an effective Facebook presence. Dunkin Donuts doesn’t offer anything on its Facebook page that isn’t available to any other business wanting to make use of social media. Its wall though contains plenty of posts by keen fans, the admin staff have bothered to fill in the details on the info page — something not done by every business (we’re looking at you, Benetton) — and its events widget lists all sorts of local happenings that might interest customers.
Where Dunkin Donuts really excels though is in the steps it takes to reach out to its fans. Users are offered a “perk” for enrolling in the company’s app. Maurice, a talking coffee bean, offers a measure of fun. And most importantly, submitting a picture to the page’s wall puts users in the running to be chosen as a “fan of the week.” It’s a simple way to make customers feel that the Facebook page is about them, and not about the company.
Bushells Tea
A challenge for companies considering using social media to push their brands is the site’s demographic. Facebook started at a college and it still looks like a poor choice for firms looking to target markets whose members are middle-aged or older.
When Australian marketing firm Soap Creative was hired by multinational company Unilever to promote its local tea brand Bushells however, it chose to focus much of its digital strategy on Facebook. Without spending a dime on promotions, the page has quickly built up a following almost 20,000 at a rate of almost 1,000 new fans every month.
The company attempts to get around the reluctance of older Facebook users to engage actively on the site by promoting its presence as part of the conversation that comes with a cup of tea. According to Ross Raeburn, one of the people responsible for the campaign, Soap Creative has seen the self-moderation, community ownership and brand participation that they’ve come to expect from Facebook. The wall is active, the company is learning information about its customers missed by annual focus groups, and Bushells has succeeded in deepening the sense of brand loyalty held by its customers.
CM Photographics
Not all the most effective commercial pages on Facebook are pushing big brands or run by professional marketers. Chris Meyer is a professional photographer who advises other photographers about the benefits of Facebook marketing. The site itself has used him as a case study for the rewards its ads can bring after a $600 spend generated over $40,000 in bookings. But it’s not just his paid ads that are bringing results. His studio’s business page also has a surprisingly large following and an interactive wall filled with comments from customers and friends.
There are no secret tricks here. Chris Meyer doesn’t use an interactive app or even post videos. He just makes regular posts that are upbeat, human and which engage with his followers. It’s a strategy that might not work for companies so large that they struggle to present a human face, but for very small businesses, Chris Meyer’s friendly contact is a good model to follow.
Amnesty International
And finally, it’s also possible to make good use of Facebook’s pages without attempting to earn a dime. Amnesty International uses its Causes tab to publicize its fundraising efforts, the results of its recruiting, the level of its “karma” — a way of thanking supporters — and to list the causes it supports. Its YouTube plug-in makes sharing videos with friends as simple as sending an invitation and a Twitter feed helps to add instant news. Mostly though the page shows how Facebook can sometimes work as a broadcast system and the first step in a viral campaign. Amnesty adds the clips and offers its opinions on human rights issues, and its followers then share them with friends.
If there is a problem with Amnesty’s use of Facebook though, it’s the address. Facebook.com/amnestyinternational leads to the Belgian branch of the organization, a page which isn’t publicly available and which has posted little content. If you want to make the most of Facebook, it does pay to be open — and get your name right.
Facebook’s business pages then can be hugely valuable but the way they’re used does depend on the type of product or service you’re offering, the demographic of your market and the kinds of tools best used to engage and interact with them. There’s no one strategy that can bring results; only a number of tools, and a willingness to press some virtual flesh.
Trst.me (from Infochimps) relies on calculating user reputation instead of just seeing how many followers they have as a deciding factor. The first thing I noticed about how they compile the information is that they have been compiling Twitter information since 2008 using the API. This gives them a good base to begin measurement.
You enter a username into the single box on the page to have it compute a score ranking of 1-10. Our president of the US holds the highest rating at 9.9, which is .2 higher than CNN. But Ellen Degeneres and Shaq are not far behind. Scary isn’t it?
They also give a good comparison of their service and other Twitter user ranking services and how they differ.
Don’t worry, you won’t rank as high as you hope.
The Twitter Effect: Mashable vs TechCrunch vs BoingBoing. http://r2.ly/3xde
In May 2009, @Mashable, @TechCrunch and @BoingBoing were about equal as three of the biggest blogs on the planet. Each had about 1.85-1.90 million unique visitors in that month.
Fast-forward just a year later, and everything has changed. BoingBoing has dropped almost a million visitors, TechCrunch has gone nowhere, and Mashable has gained a million.
Why? Twitter.
@Mashable has over two million followers. Twitter started to really take off early in 2009, and Mashable totally capitalised. Twitter has easily become their primary focus point – they write a ton of Twitter content, and share heavily on the network. (As a comparison, Mashable has ‘just’ 207 thousand fans on Facebook – a tenth of the network size.)
@TechCrunch has a little under 1.4 million followers, but they don’t push anywhere near as hard as Mashable does on Twitter. That said, it’s enough to keep them in the game. (54,210 Facebook fans.)
@BoingBoing has just 43,219 followers. And doesn’t push hard at all. Indeed, BoingBoing isn’t even on Facebook. Which suggests to me that they either don’t really get the value of social media, or don’t think that they need it. For example – they don’t even use a retweet button on their blog.
After all, let’s face it – BoingBoing and Mashable aren’t all that different. Both are heavy recyclers of external content (although Mashable does write a lot more original material – TechCrunch is almost all original material and opinion). The main difference is Mashable is very much more attuned to the modern social media audience, both in content and presentation. Indeed, they made dramatic, intentional adjustments to capitalise on that audience shift.
BoingBoing did nothing. And until they realise that, and want to change, their numbers are probably only going to get worse. They’re still thinking old-school – Digg, Reddit, Delicious and Stumbleupon. And while you can still get some traffic spikes from those sources, it’s very much on the wane, and doesn’t begin to compare to the Terminator-like, never-ending, cannot-be-stopped onslaught of Twitter.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I know this is Compete, and yes, I now that this mostly represents US traffic. But unless you can prove to me that the relationship between these numbers is dramatically different around the world – and can show me where you get those numbers – it’s largely a moot point.)
Plunging into social media for the first time can be a bit daunting for individuals or businesses. There is a learning curve when it comes to becoming more social online, and it can take a while to learn what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few of the best Do’s and Don’ts that can save you time and help grow your social media authority more quickly.
You’ll want to start small and try a couple services out at a time. Oftentimes newbies sign up for every social network under the sun and try to grow each of them. Guess how long they last? Building profiles for multiple social sites is hard work, so it’s best to start by only tackling a couple at first.
Once you find the right ones for you or your brand, then start to narrow your focus on those. Eventually you may want to scale your social media strategy to include more services, but you have to crawl before you can walk.
Start small, and then grow to other social networks as your confidence grows. Success breeds success.
Put a widget up on your site for your social networks. The best place to find followers is your own blog or site. Also, it’s much easier to get your readers and friends to vote or retweet your content than strangers. Adding a widget next to your content can help.
Facebook has a widget generator you can use, and the Tweetmeme badge is easy to add to your site as well.
Start testing which social media profiles have the most impact, then drop the rest. For example, if your site does really well with Facebook shares but hardly ever gets voted on Digg, then drop the Digg vote button.
Oftentimes you’ll see sites littered with tons of widgets and buttons. Having a gazillion widgets at the end of each article only creates noise and annoys the reader. Figure out which buttons are getting clicked, and drop the buttons that don’t convert. Ideally you’ll only have two or three widgets on each page.
You can tell which buttons are effective by using Google Analytics and goals to see who’s clicking what. You can also use A/B to see which types of buttons are getting more clicks.
Sounds like common sense, right? Unfortunately, lots of companies that are just starting out with social media think the best way to “promote” their brand is to publish coupons, offers, news, and anything else related to their business.
Rule of thumb: if it’s something you personally wouldn’t like to receive, avoid it.
Your social media goal is to be helpful first. People follow and respect brands that are helpful, not self-promoting shills. Give first, then ask.
Try posting useful links to industry articles, answer questions, and engage. The followers, engagement, and ultimately sales will come if you’re helpful first.
Don’t believe all the spammy ebooks out there that sell you the notion that you can attract thousands of followers in a matter of days. Sure, you could do that and it’s not hard. But the types of followers who are going to be following you are mostly bots. Or they’re just following you in hopes that you’ll follow them back. Ultimately, they aren’t followers who would engage with you.
You want social media followers that are going to listen and interact with you, and 10 of those followers is worth more than a thousand bots.
It takes a while to organically build up a great social profile. Focus on building great content and being helpful, and the followers will come.
Everyone has a different strategy when it comes to social media, and sometimes it’s best to take a look at people who are real social media experts. Lee Odden is a good example of someone using Twitter and Facebook to help people, which in turn grows his social media influence.
There are plenty of fantastic examples of people who truly understand how to interact and build powerful social media profiles the right way. Check out sites like WeFollow to find influential Twitter users within your niche.
When people think of social media, they typically think of Twitter or Facebook. But there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands?) of social media networks and sites that you can use to help promote your brand. Jut because a network isn’t huge doesn’t mean it’s not going to impact your social media strategy. Oftentimes targeted niche social sites can bring more targeted traffic to your site than larger sites.
If you’re smart, you can use smaller social networks to help promote your site on other bigger social networks. For example, I’ve written posts on web development that have made it to the front page of Dzone, a social media site for web development. Once the article made it to the front page of Dzone, the attention brought a lot of saves on Delicious, and subsequently made it to the Delicious front page. The delicious front page brought even more traffic, and those Delicious users voted the story up to the Digg front page. So, by simply submitting my site on a smaller niche news site with a great headline, I managed to make it to the coveted homepages of both Digg and Delicious.
Niche social news sites can be very powerful, and oftentimes much easier to become influential in than the larger sites. Here’s a list of social news sites organized by category.
The ideal follower on Twitter is one that has similar interests within your niche. You can find like-minded people to follow on Twitter through these directories and odds are many will follow you back.
Once you’ve started following these people, start interacting with them. Participate in discussions, and retweet things they say that would be helpful to your community.
Not only will this method help build your follower counts, it also gives you more influence within your niche. You’ll find great friends that will help you promote your content and site too. Always remember to give first and ask later.
Social media beginners often try to quickly establish themselves as “experts” within their field, but they have nothing to back it up. (For example, search for “social media experts” on Twitter. You’ll find many with only a handful of followers. Shouldn’t an “expert” have more?)
As with anything in life, nobody likes a know-it-all. Be humble. Ask questions. Teach, but don’t preach. Let others do the hyping for you. And they will if you’re helpful and humble.
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RT @RoseLynch: @robindindayal I made this for the open house: http://schmap.it/q5iPcV?a (a handy 'schmap' for sharing with followers)
[Direct Link]Your business has a core, a goal, a challenge and a deliverable. There is probably one thing that would transform your project, one success that changes things, one hurdle that's tougher than the others. What's difficult, what would respond to overwhelming attention? That's the core.
Getting from here to there involves making sales, delivering on promises, overcoming the Dip and shipping.
Along the way, there are supporting tasks you can engage in, things you can do to make the goal easier to achieve.
A popular blog might gain attention and then trust and ultimately help you sell more widgets.
A lot of followers online might give you permission to tell a story that gets you better employees.
A vibrant party at SXSW can create buzz that gives your salespeople entree to important meetings.
These aren't trivial activities. In fact, they're part of what marketing means today. But...
But if they give you and your team an outlet to avoid the difficult work of achieving your goal ("I can't go to that sales call, I'm busy uploading pictures of last night's party to the blog and then tweeting out the url") then you're not building, you're hiding. Rich calls this playing with turtles. The thing is, the turtles are alive, and they're going to demand a lot from you.
There's a huge downside here: once your side activity gets going, it will lead to crises (we have an urgent email we have to answer), to feelings of abandonment (hey, you haven't been on the forum lately!), to irresistible offers to have the CEO speak or get people involved. There will always be a feeling of sunk cost, of opportunities missed and of things on the verge because these are human movements, not paid ads.
Two choices: 1. find a way to make your goal completely aligned with the tactics you use to achieve it. What's good for your blog is good for your business. or 2. Now that these approaches are working, and working incredibly well, it's time to come up with boundaries so the tail doesn't end up wagging the dog.
Just used http://bit.ly/know-your-followers to see when my followers are online
[Direct Link]Know Your Followers
- berkayJust used http://bit.ly/know-your-followers to see when my followers are online
- berkay
In an interesting nugget of Friday afternoon news, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has posted an article featuring a preview of the upcoming fourth version of the social news site Digg. Founder Kevin Rose has published a glorious 1080p video to YouTube aimed at explaining the new features to publishers. Among the most interesting features is the inclusion of social network contacts into the Digg ecosystem, as well as the ability for publishers to auto-publish stories to Digg via an RSS feed.
Sponsor
Just like when joining most Web services these days, users will be asked to search their Facebook and Twitter accounts (among others) to follow friends and contacts via Digg. The Digg homepage will then default to a page consisting entirely of stories dugg by the users they choose to follow. When browsing articles either on the social "My News" section, or on the more traditional "Top News" tab, users will be able to see which stories their friends have dugg, as well as view their friends' comments directly in-line with the story.
Rose says these new features play into the hands of publishers because the viral aspect of sharing stories with friends will help stories achieve higher digg counts. If one person diggs a story, it shows up on the homepages of their followers, and if they digg it, the process continues. To make the process of getting articles online even simpler, publishers can now claim their RSS feeds and automatically publish their content on Digg without having to visit the site.
These changes and additions may be just what the doctor ordered for Digg which has had to continually delay these updates. Personally the preview looks pretty slick, and may actually bring me back to using Digg on a more regular basis. Check our Rose's video below and let us know what you think in the comments.
Discuss
Already moonlighting on Chatroulette, the beloved Travelocity Roaming Gnome has decided to participate in the location-sharing movement as well, and will be updating followers about his exotic whereabouts on Foursquare.
The move rounds out the Gnome’s social media portfolio — which, in addition to Chatroulette, includes a very active presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Fans can look for the gnome to check in at various locations across London over the course of the weekend, says Travelocity representative Joel Frey.
Frey also tells us that the Gnome’s foray into Foursquare was timed with Virgin Atlantic’s first seasonal flight from Chicago to London yesterday. In fact, Gnome lovers can check out photos from the glamorous first-class trip on his Facebook Page.
Which brings us to the bigger picture. Location-sharing isn’t exactly an activity that can be completed behind a desk. I asked Frey whether or not the Gnome would be open to meeting up with fans during his worldly treks, to which he replied, “We’d love to run into Fousquare friends and will also being do a tweetup on Tuesday evening.”
“To have an icon like the Gnome at our disposal to engage with travelers on all of these new communication channels is an amazing opportunity and we’d be foolish not to play,” Frey concluded.
We tend to agree and find social media to be the perfect vehicle for the Gnome to spread the Travelocity message. Bon voyage!
[img credits: Travelocity]
Tags: foursquare, MARKETING, roaming gnome, travelocity
Google Buzz may have stumbled out of the gate with some features that users really didn’t like (such as auto-following all your email contacts whether you wanted it to or not), but to its credit it fixed those issues quickly and has been on a roll ever since, adding an average of a feature every week since it launched in February. The latest, which was made available today, is a “reshare” button similar to the one that blogging tools like Tumblr have. It’s also a little like the “retweet” function in Twitter, although Buzz has taken its sharing feature in a somewhat different direction, based on feedback from beta testers.
Google Buzz product manager Todd Jackson said in an interview that the ability to reshare someone else’s post has been one of the top user requests since launch, but has also been “probably the most debated feature on the Buzz team of any feature I can recall us doing,” because of all the various usability questions. Resharing may not seem like that complicated an idea, but it is. For example, there was the question of whether to “fork” the conversation when someone reshared something or not — in other words, whether to create a separate, new conversation starting with the item that was being reshared, or whether to connect it to the existing conversation that started with the original posting.
Twitter caused a minor storm of criticism among users when it made a similar decision about retweeting, an informally developed practice that involves the use of the letters RT before a tweet and then, in many cases, adding an additional comment to the original item. When it came up with its own retweet function, Twitter chose to not allow any comments to be added, and also showed the original tweet, along with the original poster’s avatar, to the followers of the person retweeting it, even if they didn’t also follow that person.
That led to complaints from users about tweets from random strangers suddenly appearing in their stream, something Jackson said he wanted to avoid. As a result, Buzz makes the reshared item a new item on its own, and only shows it to those who follow the re-sharer (although Jackson said that some users have asked for the alternate option, and Buzz may allow that in the future). The Buzz reshare function also allows users to add their own comments, and makes it clear that they are resharing it, with a link to the original Buzz user’s post. The original author sees a list of who reshared his or her item, something Jackson says he hopes will also act as a “discovery mechanism” for new users of the service to find other people worth following.
Jackson also said that the feature most users complained about the most when Buzz launched — the auto-following of email contacts — was an attempt to make it easier for new users to find people worth following, which he said is an issue that any new social network has. It turned out to be a bad idea, however, particularly for people who had contacts in their email address book they didn’t want to follow, or make public. The Google Buzz product manager admitted that this was a mistake, but says the intention was to make the service easier. “I wish we had gotten it right from the initial launch,” he said. “It was clearly the wrong idea. But we worked really hard to fix it.”
The number of active users of the site is growing rapidly, Jackson said, although he wouldn’t provide any figures (Google defines an active user as anyone who checks in more than once a week). He also said the number of users who check their Buzz more than 10 times a day is growing, a group he referred to as “hyper-active.” It’s this group that the Buzz team looks at most closely, he said, because they’re power users and the ones most likely to evangelize the service. Google also assumes that their behavior is going to become more mainstream over time.
Buzz also now has a group of several thousand volunteer beta testers who get access to new features before they’re rolled out across the service. Among the features that have been added since launch are a Buzz API (launched last week), Buzz sharing buttons, improved comment collapsing, a Buzz layer in Google Maps and the ability to get Buzz items in your inbox. And Jackson says he plans to stick to the schedule of at least one new feature a week.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why New Net Companies Must Shoulder More Responsibility
Yfrog is the the second-most popular way for Twitter users to upload and photos after TwitPic. (It's ahead of TweetPhoto.) We estimate the company has annual revenues hovering around $10 million.
How? Don't brand advertisers usually avoid random-seeming user-generated content?
They do, but Yfrog gets around this problem because it makes most of its money selling ads against photos uploaded by it's most popular users – typically celebrities along the lines of teen idol Joe Jonas, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ryan Seacrest.
Yfrog boss Jack Levine explains:
"If you look at the hundred users on Twitter that have most followers, they have a lot of followers. And usually they are very very famous. They could be sports superstars, movie stars, whatever. If a person like this posts a picture and a lot of their fans come to look at it, those fans are in a very specific demographic. Nike may want to advertise next to Tiger Woods. People who have special interests come in masses to our sites. It's not the same as a bunch of noise."
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Huh, seems like a very delicate revenue stream.
- felix"Reshare" in Google Buzz http://j.mp/9PEJR1
Reshare Your Favorites on Google Buzz is a post from Chris Pirillo
Our brains are already programmed to hit that Retweet button on Twitter. Now, Google is making it simple for us to do the same thing from within Buzz. The new Reshare button will be rolling out to all users during the next several days. It works much the same as the RT feature does, so users will feel comfortable using it immediately. There’s nothing to configure or install. Just click Reshare any time you come across a post you want your followers to see as well.
Choose whether you want to share a post with all of your followers or just with those you select. This feature only works with public posts, and will not work for those that are private. You’ll find the new button down between “Like” and “Email” at the bottom of your Buzz items. Click to share it out and start new conversations within your group. Add your own comments to the item if you wish. Keep in mind, though, that you will not have the ability to edit the original Buzz item. It’s cool to note that you are no longer restricted to 140 characters, so you don’t need to hack away at a reshared item in order to make it “fit.”
One of the cooler portions of the Reshare feature is the way the items are handled after you click that button. Mashable describes it as: “Once you reshare an item, it will be posted to your own timeline with attribution to the author and a link to the original post (this is the opposite of how the retweet function works on Twitter). Once an item as been reshared, it will update to highlight each of the Buzz users who have shared it publicly and outline the chain of reshares.”
This feature has been much in demand from users, and is already being met with much approval. If you’ve used it already, what are your thoughts? Are you happy with the way they set everything up?
When you find interesting content in your social streams, it's very common for you to want to share that content to your own social graph - letting more people be exposed to what you found interesting. This need to reshare has led to Twitter's integrated Retweet functionality, and the ability to reshare items on FriendFeed and Facebook. Today, Google Buzz joins the resharing party, letting users of the nascent social network share content from any Buzz user to their own followers, while still providing attribution to the original source. The feature enhancement is said to be among the most popular user requests, and meets the team's objective of adding a new feature a week to Buzz.
No matter the social service, a common key feature is the ability to reshare something. Facebook has “Share,” Tumblr has “Reblog,” and, of course, Twitter has “Retweet,” to name a few. The feature provides a simple way for users to do something social without having to do much themselves. And today, Google Buzz is gaining its own such feature — but don’t call it “Rebuzz,” instead, it’s called simply “Reshare.”
When added to Buzz’s current arsenal of “Comment” and “Like” (and Email), Reshare completes the social circle that most of its competitors have set up. It works exactly as you’d expect: if you see a Buzz post you like that you want to share with your followers, simply go to the bottom of the post and click the Reshare button. An input area will drop down and you’ll be able to add your own comment on top of whatever Buzz you’re resharing. This will then get injected back into your followers’ Buzz streams.
The key to this may be the ability to leave your own comment on top of anything you reshare. This makes the functionality more like a Tumblr Reblog than a Twitter Retweet. The inability to leave your own comment with a Twitter Retweet has been the subject of much controversy amongst Twitter users. Previously, Retweets were an organic thing done by the community, in which you shared something simply by copying and pasting a previous tweet led by “RT @username.” Twitter, in the hope of making this process more streamlined, baked it into the service, but left out the ability to add your own commentary. As a result, some people still do it the old, manual way (or use clients that do it the old way).
A few notes about Buzz Reshares:
So, about the name. I asked Google why they chose to go with Reshare rather than the obvious “Rebuzz.” They pointed me to the picture below. Apparently, Rebuzz was being considering but was ultimately killed because it “sounds kinda lame.” That’s somewhat true, but for branding purposes, I think it may have been the right call. And I suspect people may call it this anyway. They also considered “Repost” but wanted to avoid introducing a new verb. So ultimately they went with the most literal choice.
This feature will be rolling out to all Buzz users over the course of the day.
"No matter the social service, a common key feature is the ability to reshare something. Facebook has “Share,” Tumblr has “Reblog,” and, of course, Twitter has “Retweet,” to name a few. The feature provides a simple way for users to do something social without having to do much themselves. And today, Google Buzz is gaining its own such feature — but don’t call it “Rebuzz,” instead, it’s called simply “Reshare.”"
- Kol Tregaskes
After oil started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil rig explosion almost a month ago, a Twitter account launched purporting to be BP’s public relations group, @BPGlobalPR. The account, which offers dark, satirical commentary about the spill and cleanup efforts, is run by an anonymous person (I know for a fact that he’s a “he”), who responds to all media inquiries as “Terry.” Mashable contacted “Terry” in an attempt to find out more about the man behind the Twitter stream.
We were ardently hoping that “Terry” would drop the act (if it is, in fact, an act) and tell us who he really is. Unfortunately, homeboy kept in character throughout the entire e-mail interview, which we’re pasting below.
We’re fairly certain that the real BP is not behind the account — the company said as much to CNN. In fact, it’s far more popular than the official feed; after launching last week, @BPGlobalPR has more than 55,000 followers, while @BP_America has just under 7,000. (Although someone apparently hacked into the official account today and posted a tweet from “Terry” that says, “Terry is now in charge of operation Top Kill, work will recommence after we find a XXL wetsuit. #bpcares #oilspill.” The tweet has since been removed).
Check out our interview below and let us know what you think in the comments.
“Hi Brenna! I really like being interviewed by women first of all. You know what I call men who are journalists? Pickledicks. LOL. The guys said I should be the one who does the interviews ’cause I’m the smartest, which is also why I do all the hard work. It does kinda suck, though, because the other guys have so much fun all day playing grab-ass and XBox and beer pong. Ah, well.”
Why did you start this Twitter account?: “I work for BP Global PR. The reason we do PR is very simple, it’s the best job you can have. You see, corporations screw up all the time. They are very worried that the screwups are going to cost them a lot of money. They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money. I get paid to talk and waste time and I get paid a lot. So why do we do this, because its our job and we love money!”
How did you amass so many followers in such a short amount of time? What was the tipping point for you?: “We got a lot of followers because we’re really good at our job. Also Roger Ebert tweeted our tweet about how our oil wasn’t good for dolphins and a lot of people like him for some reason. To be honest, the review he gave Transformers 2 (my fave movie of 2009) was a little out of line, but whatever.”
Who runs the account? Is it just you or a few other people?: “We’ve got a real brain trust running the account. The other guys do most of the tweeting, but I do most of the work and I also do a lot of dares every day. I guess I’m kinda the star, so that’s pretty cool. I have my own Twitter I’m starting up @BPTerry, but I got so frustrated trying to get to the page today I gave up. Turns out I accidentally typed www.twitter.corn. The guys gave me hell for that one.”
You appear to be selling “BP Cares” shirts via your Twitter account to benefit healthygulf.org. What’s the deal with that?: “I really messed up with the ‘BP Cares’ shirts. I wish we could drop it. Long story short, everyone was really mad at BP about the oil spill, so naturally we decided to make a ton of T-shirts to give to everyone to make them like us again. I got the design, put it in the T-shirt machine and I guess I spilled ink on it or something ’cause all the shirts are messed up. To make matters worse, I broke the controls and the thing wont stop making the damn shirts. No one can turn it off. Also, I signed some stupid paperwork that made it so I have to give all the money we make to www.healthygulf.org. I’ll tell ya, everyone was so pissed about this. We are literally losing thousands of dollars to them. The only reason I still have my job is cause I ate some oil on a dare.”
How much time a day do you spend tweeting/interacting with followers? What has been the most interesting interaction so far?: “I work about five hours a day at BP headquarters and am always the last one in the office. Interesting interactions? Felicia Day liked our tweets; Alyssa Milano liked our tweets, too.
I was hoping i could maybe meet Felicia or take her on a boatride through the gulf, but she hasn’t gotten back to us. Also, @Wired said some weird stuff about us, so we all decided they were pickledicks and we hate them.”
“I’ll admit I’m not that smart, but they write a magazine about computers. They use PRINT to talk about new technology. I mean, that’s some real pickledickery. I’ll bet those idiots write letters about e-mails. Also, right when we reached 50,000 followers we noticed a fake account w/ a bunch of typos and we had to call them out.”
What kind of feedback have you been getting from the public?: Everyone thinks we’re funny. To be honest, we’re all mostly confused by that. We’re just trying to think of solutions for this stuff and report the news. But I’m told that we’re doing great. Hoping for a bonus so I can invent the hoverboard.”
And, finally, who are you really? What’s your day job, where do you live and what are your goals with this Twitter account?: “This question doesn’t make sense. I’m Terry; I can’t tell you my last name because a lot of people hate us. I work for BP Global PR and my goal is to get paid and shut down this damn T-shirt machine. Thanks, Brenna. Btw, are u pretty? Hope so.”
Fake BP Public Relations Twitter Account a Viral Hit [INTERVIEW]
- Sarah PerezAd.ly
, the in-stream advertising network, has just issued a response to twitter’s third party in-stream advertising ban by saying it “supports twitter’s decision to disallow any third party tweets” and it’s “business as usual”.
In an email statement and now a blog post, Ad.ly’s new CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh says that:
Ad.ly supports Twitter’s movement today to create standards around in-stream advertising.Twitter’s changes are aimed at discouraging members of the ecosystem who do not maintain the proper balance of user experience and monetization and who are not invested in building long term value on the platform…Since inception, Ad.ly has, and still is operating under Twitter’s approved guidelines and terms of service for advertising on its platform. We look forward to continuing to create long term value for our advertisers and publishers, both of whom are key constituents in
the stream ecosystem.Ad.ly’s advertising platform enables marketers to pay influential content creators and publishers to send out targeted messages to their followers in the stream. The company employs proprietary algorithms to match advertisements to publishers based on a combination of marketer objectives, publisher content and user feedback. Ad.ly enables marketers to buy ads via its self serve platform at http://www.ad.ly, catering to local and performance advertisers, as well as via its national sales team, servicing the major digital agencies.
Essentially, it’s a flat our refusal that twitter’s decision to ban in stream advertising has any bearing whatsoever on the company as a business.
The first paragraph says twitter aims to “create standards”, which is not the case, twitter’s statement says “aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API” – which is a flat out ban.
The question it comes down to, at least from my perspective, is how hell bent twitter is about ensuring the only advertising flowing through its customers, sorry users, timelines is its own.
Ad.ly recently raised $5 million in funding, a total of $10 million including a previous $5 million round. Along with the funding, the company hired Arnie Gullov-Singh as its CEO. Talk about bad timing.
Yesterday Twitter announced that it will be against their terms of service to post advertisements using a third-party service. Initially the thought was services like SponsoredTweets would be out of business in 30 days when the new rules go into place. But alas, the new rules only apply if you aren’t posting your ads directly on the twitter.com website. As I noted last night, all the people who get fat bankrolls using this method will be able to continue but will have to run the ads manually. Frankly there really is no change if this roundabout method remains.
I’ve written in the past that I think most of the content on Twitter is advertisements but it really bears repeating with the new changes that Twitter is looking to implement. Twitter noted in their post yesterday regarding the advertising terms change, “for this reason, aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API.”
So fine, make the third party timeline ad services handle their transactions manually. Frankly it looks like the advertising companies just beat Twitter at their own game.
But more importantly, isn’t all of the content on Twitter advertisements nowadays? What percentage of content from your followers isn’t an advertisement of some sort? There’s nothing wrong with Twitter creating the world’s largest ad network – it’s just a different route than the one that the Twitter train was on originally. Everything about Twitter today screams ad network.
Here are some types of content I see posted on Twitter — are these ads?
I could easily add more bullets but I am sure you get the point. It will be interesting to read the specific wording once the Twitter API terms are revised. Will applications like Tweetdeck and Seesmic be required to make changes? I continue to suggest that building completely on Twitter is a mistake – leveraging is still acceptable.
Find more stories about: online advertising, social advertising, Twitter
RT @iA: BP Logo Gets Oily, Gruesome Redesigns Courtesy of Greenpeace Followers http://bit.ly/9OmNnS RT@fastcompany
[Direct Link]
In a surprising turn of events Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded personally to the recent privacy complaints.
Facebook has been through an intense week of criticism and debate over its privacy issues and recent move to make everyones Facebok info public unless they choose to flick them back again – something which is unfortunately not every easy to do.
In an email to tech celeb Robert Scoble, Zuckerberg says that the company will be announcing changes this week and wants to make sure that they “get this stuff right this time”.
There are two ways to see this form of personal response. One, as one commenter put it, Zuckerberg is using Scoble as a tool to essentially put himself and Facebook in a better light with early adopters and tech fanatics (most of Scoble’s readers and followers are). The other is to see this as a genuine attempt to accept there have been problems and reach out to calm fears by personally contacting someone who Zuckerberg knows many (of the right) people trust.
Full email posted below, more discussion from us to come.
Hey,
We’ve been listening to all the feedback and have been trying to distill it down to the key things we need to improve. I’d like to show an improved product rather than just talk about things we might do.
We’re going to be ready to start talking about some of the new things we’ve built this week. I want to make sure we get this stuff right this time.
I know we’ve made a bunch of mistakes, but my hope at the end of this is that the service ends up in a better place and that people understand that our intentions are in the right place and we respond to the feedback from the people we serve.
I hope we’ll get a chance to catch up in person sometime this week. Let me know if you have any thoughts for me before then.
Mark
Funniest new twitter account award goes to... --> @BPGlobalPR <-- WSJ: http://bit.ly/9M0GCe
Fake BP Twitter Account Draws Followers With Oil-Spill Satire - Digits - WSJ
- Chuck ReynoldsFunniest new twitter account award goes to... --> @BPGlobalPR http://bit.ly/9M0GCe
- Chuck ReynoldsSadly, it’s happened. Britney Spears is now the most followed account on twitter. I say sadly because, well, she barely uses the tool. Instead it’s mainly her managers or team using it purely for promotional purposes..
Call me a fool but there’s something about knowing XYZ celeb is sat there taking a few minutes of their time to message the millions of fans who in return go out and buy their records, watch their movies etc.
Ashton, now the second most followed twitter user with a mere 4,037,146 followers is still as active as ever and although he does spend a good deal of time promote his various projects, he seems to occasionally respond to friends/followers and also promotes charitable causes. Kutcher was the first Twitter user to reach 1 million followers when he decided to take on CNN for the top spot back in April 2009.
Anyhow, I’m clearly taking this a little too seriously…followers means jack right? Congratulations to Britney, her manager and her staff all the same.
For your information, other top Tweeters looking for a piece of the action include Ellen DeGeneres (4,641,976), President Obama (4,001,066), Kim Kardashian (3,653,541) and Oprah Winfrey (3,554,581). You can find the full list here.
How Well Do You Know Your Twitter Followers?
- Tac Anderson