Posts Tagged ‘Twitter’

It’s that time of year again when hundreds of thousands of children will be tracking Santa’s progress across the world courtesy of NORAD (North American Air Defence Command), a tradition that began in 1955 when calls to a misprinted telephone number in an advertisement for a Colorado store, from children invited to call Santa’s hotline, came through to Colonel Harry Shoup, NORAD’s Director of Operations.

Realising what was afoot, Colonel Shoup had his staff check the radar to see if Santa had started his journey South from the North Pole. Santa was located and a legend born, NORAD using the heat from Rudolph’s nose to track the sleigh.

For 2009, you can track Santa on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google Earth as well as visit his elf-staffed manufacturing facility at the North Pole www.noradsanta.org.

On Christmas Eve, Santa’s journey around the world will be revealed on the site. Here’s footage of the route he took last year QG55UH7B4WVA

A few weeks ago I fell off my chair at a comment one magazine editor posted on Twitter, speculating that members of a certain London club suffered from, shall we say, onanistic tendencies.

Such scope for personal expression may not last long. The LA Times has issued updated  social media content guidelines for their staff emphasising that just about anything they post online both personal and work related, reflects on the reputation and credibility of the newspaper.

“Integrity is our most important commodity: Avoid writing or posting anything that would embarrass The Times or compromise your ability to do your job,” says the first guideline.

It goes on, “Your professional life and your personal life are intertwined in the online world, just as they are offline, attempts, for instance, to distinguish your high school friends from your professional associates are fine, but in all spaces one should adhere to the principle that as an editorial employee you are responsible for maintaining The Times’ credibility.” Read the rest of this entry »

A new US study has found  that  29% of chief marketing officers have a working social media policy in place.

26% say they have one, but it’s not followed within the company while a further 31% say they are still developing a policy.

The research from peer networking group, the CMO Club, suggests companies are struggling to create social media marketing policies internally.

Budgets for social media are also scarce with nearly 85% of top marketers spending less than 10% of their budgets on social media, and non-traditional communication channels.

Pete Krainik, from the CMO Club, says online marketing is now brand critical, as push marketing gives way to pull. Read the rest of this entry »

A new survey from Weber Shandwick reveals that while 73% of Fortune 100 companies have registered an average of 5.5 Twitter accounts, three quarters are not used very often, which in Twitter terms is as good as saying, they’re not being used at all.

The Twitter accounts had a variety of purposes, newsfeed 26%, brand awareness 24%, sales 16%, thought leadership 11% and customer service 9%.

More than half are described as having ‘no personality’ meaning they are faceless corporate accounts rather than ones with human advocates and 11% were placeholder accounts designed to prevent brand jacking.

If, as WS suggest,  Twitter should be viewed as ‘an uber corporate cocktail party’ it would seem these businesses are all dressed up with literally no idea where to go. Even if they found the party, possessed of  ’no personality’ they wouldn’t be very popular anyway. Read the rest of this entry »

Three diverging news stories this morning bring the position of social media in business into focus – for a moment at least.  From California, Palo Alto Networks report that use of Twitter and Facebook in enterprise level businesses is up 250% and 192% respectively (which from Palo Alto’s firewall perspective means new security issues to be addressed.)

From social media rock star Pete Cashmore’s bedroom in Aberdeen, AKA Mashable, comes the news that Twitter and LinkedIn have struck a deal to share status updates, confirmation of the business potential of both sites, with the promise of further integration to come, not least because Twitter co-founder Biz Stone and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman are best buddies.

Thirdly, from San Diego and the Public Relations Society of America, via SDNN, Arianna Read the rest of this entry »

Embedded this at the bottom of a post on Wednesday but it really deserves separate billing, especially on a Friday. Indebted to @gsterling at Local Social Summit #lss09 for showing it to us.

Google’s new social search tool went live yesterday, enabling participants to see results from agreed social networks they belong to. The timing is interesting, shortly after Google had agreed a deal with Twitter to incorporate tweets in search, here’s a tool to mine them.

Also yesterday, eMarketer’s latest survey once again confirmed word of mouth is the number one purchase driver online, family first, friends second, social networks third.

So theoretically, if we’re looking for a hotel recommendation in say, Dijon and some friends have stayed there and tweeted about it “Having dinner in the garden at the lovely Sofitel, Dijon” – that’s the review we trust, more so than the one from Swedish  Bjorn and Benny on Trip Advisor who enjoyed playing the hotel piano (though that might have been quite a sing along). Read the rest of this entry »

In a post on his blog yesterday Stephen Fry reflected on his role in the Jan Moir Twitter storm last week and also a regretted comment  he made on Channel 4 the week before “let’s not forget which side of the border Auschwitz was on.” Fry explains “The words just formed themselves in a line in my head, as words will, and marched out of the mouth.”

It was odd to see Fry talking politics on Channel 4 in any case, especially in that shirt he was wearing and of course the opportunity to gaffe live on TV as an entertainer is multiplied many times, as Anton Du Beke and Brucey have experienced recently in that highly controversial political show, Strictly.

Writing something first before sending it anywhere at least gives you the chance to weigh up and edit what you’re expressing. My rule of thumb on Twitter is never to say anything too negative, if I can help it. Read the rest of this entry »

The fastest new trending topic on Twitter this morning has morphed the story of NASA’s live moon crash today into ‘NASA bombs the moon’.

It’s a funny demonstration of how close Twitter comes to recreating work place or pub banter as popular stories catch on and get twisted for effect.

Therein lies the real power of micro-blogging – it’s a firehose of breaking, realtime news, the first place Twitterholics go to alert their mates and the Twitter community at large, which econsultancy think will reach 18 million users by the end of 2009. Read the rest of this entry »

A low budget, Blair Witch Project style horror movie is attracting massive attention in the US due to its original online marketing strategy.

Made for just $15,000, Paranormal Activity is being promoted by video trailer, social media and a website where viewers can vote for the movie to open in their city, making it, the makers claim “The first ever major film release decided by you”.

The counter on their site was reading just under half a million votes at the time of writing. If it hits 1 million the makers say it  will open nationwide. Read the rest of this entry »