Over the past week the fake BP Twitter account has become quite popular – attracting over 55,000 followers in just over a week. In many of their tweets a fictional character named Terry is mentioned, who can best be described as an epic #fail.
Well, today BPGlobalPR is expanding its Twitter presence, as they have just announced that Terry has joined Twitter as bpTerry.
While this is great news for Twitter users that enjoy a laugh throughout the day, it’s just another dark cloud in BP’s public relations nightmare (it’s also a smart move for the owner of the BPGlobalPR account, in the event that BP attempts to have Twitter terminate the fake account).
While it’s hard not to take pleasure in anyone telling Michael Arrington the way it is, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz’s run-in and f-bomb dropping with Arrington earlier this week at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference undoubtedly made PR folks squeamish.
But it got me thinking. A few year’s ago, you could wrap this one into a case study for how not to fall for a reporter’s baiting. You don’t see on camera that Arrington asked Bartz if her marketing pitch about Yahoo’s strengths relative to rival Google was “BS.” After-all this is what Arrington wanted to get from Bartz. A public, unsavory reaction that could draw more attention to his interview and the conference.
He got it and more, but was it a PR #fail for Yahoo!? While there were those who quickly berated Bartz for her comments as too publicly defensive, rough, knee-jerk and unbuttoned, others were quick to back her comments as “refreshing.”
At the very least her passion for defending Yahoo! bears resemblance to the passionate way Steve Jobs defends Apple. Yes, he’s not dropping f-bombs on camera in public settings, but it is refreshing to see CEO’s so passionate about their company’s position that they respond to questions, without vetting their words through their team and consultants. And the media, traditional or otherwise, love it.
I’m not saying executives should go off their rocker like this more often (not everyone has Jobs or Bartz make-up or power), but sometimes being yourself in the right moment can come across as a positive thing in the social media age. Every company wants and needs to be reputable, believable and trustworthy in the digital age – should executives be any different??
And 20 minutes later another: “Think about it this way, the ocean is like rootbeer and oil is like ice cream. We just made America a giant rootbeer float!”
Even though the Twitter account handle account is labeled BPGlobalPR the content being posted during the past 6-7 days has been a nightmare for BP’s actual PR team. Someone (who is clearly having fun) decided to mock BP’s poor handling of the oil spill with witty one-liners such as, “Jesus walked on water and soon you can too! (Please pray for BP, we’re losing a lot of oil).”
The account has become quite popular – attracting over 25,000 followers in this short time, more than double the number of followers for BP’s official corporate Twitter account and Twitter account covering the oil spillcombine. Even more scary for BP is the amount of re-tweets this fake account is getting, which is what’s driving it’s visibility.
This situation provides other companies with an idea of how social media can be used against them during an ugly situation. Quick, honest responses can do a lot in image control and management, which BP is now learning about first hand.
Over the weekend NBC’s Ann Curry was the keynote speaker during Wheaton College’s commencement ceremony. In an effort to personalize her address, Ann began her speech by listing some famous graduates from the college. Unfortunately, most of the people she listed graduated from the Wheaton College in Illinois, not the Wheaton College in Massachusetts (where she was speaking).
As a Wheaton College alumni I took particular interest in this story, as I received real-time updates from friends on Facebook that were in attendance.
The video and transcript of Curry’s speech were quickly edited so that they didn’t provide inaccurate information, but the damage was already done. Something that could have taken a fact-checker two minutes to do turned into a laughable story reported by USA Today, Boston Globe, various blogs such as Gawker, and other news outlets. If only the video was available, Curry could have had a real YouTube gem.
To her credit, Curry admitted to her mistake, saying that she was mortified by the mishap and was only trying to connect with the students.
Image courtesy of PEW Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism
Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism released a year’s worth of data yesterday on the top news stories discussed and linked to on blogs and social media pages, and seven months’ worth on Twitter. The study, New Media, Old Media, returned some very interesting findings on the differences between what the most popular story is for mainstream news outlets versus what the top news story is on social mediums. In addition it turned out some interesting data on the difference between what headlines draw crowds on these new social mediums.
The study examined the blogosphere and social media by tracking the news linked to on millions of blogs and social media pages tracked by Icerocket and Technorati from January 19, 2009, through January 15, 2010. It also tracked the videos on YouTube’s news channel for the same period. It measured Twitter by tracking news stories linked to within tweets as monitored by Tweetmeme from June 15, 2009, through January 15, 2010.
Of the 29 weeks that PEW tracked all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube, the different mediums only shared the same top story just once. That was the week of June 15-19, when the protests that followed the Iranian elections. When you dive deeper into the differences between the social mediums you can also see that each has a certain personality associated with its user-base.
The clearest example of that was illustrated by the popularity of technology news on Twitter. More than 40 percent of stories linked to on Twitter were technology related. Meanwhile only eight percent of stories on on blogs were technology related and only one percent of stories in the mainstream press and on YouTube were technology related. These findings may have been expected in 2008, with early adopters driving Twitter’s use, but it is surprising that technology stories are so popular and prevalent today, as Twitter stretches its mainstream appeal. Comparatively only six percent of the stories linked to on Twitter were focused on politics.
Meanwhile political news and foreign events dominates the other mediums, with 29 percent of stories on blogs, 47 percent of stories on YouTube and 24 percent of the newshole at mainstream news outlets being political or foreign event focused. Stories linked to on Twitter also have much shorter shelf life’s. On Twitter, 72% of lead stories are no longer on the top linked to list after three days, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours.
There are also numbers within the research that offer a contrarian view to the idea of news items bubbling up from Twitter, to the blogs, to the mainstream press. Across the entire year studied, just one particular story or event – the controversy over emails relating to global research that came to be known as “Climate-gate” – became a major item in the blogosphere and then, a week later, gained more traction in traditional media. Twitter is even less tied to the mainstream press in terms of drawing attention to stories and distributing information from mainstream outlets. Nearly 40 percent of the links on Twitter went to web-only news sources such as Mashable and CNET.
What all this means is hard to say. It will be certainly be interesting to see how it changes over time. However, in terms of those seeking to gain attention in the Twittersphere and with technology influencers, they should takeaway:
Twitter drives the technology news-cycle. If stories linked to on Twitter were cross-referenced with Techmeme, the technology Website of record, they’d likely be very similar. Therefore if you want your news to drive the technology agenda, it better make the trending topics on Twitter.
Like the platform itself, Twitter news and attention moves in real-time, on the 1,440-minute news-cycle. You may capture attention, but it won’t be for very long.
Don’t count on the news bubbling up. While you may reach technology influencers on Twitter, this data “echoes” the thought that Twitter can be an echo-chamber of technology advocates.
For years now, start-ups and technology disruptors have been trying to change the television viewing experience. Mark Cuban was hypothesizing about the death of channels, with the introduction of Internet TV in the United States in 2005. However, other than a lot of visions and aspirations the market hasn’t really caught on. Change you see, doesn’t really apply to the television industry. After the “Golden Days” of television that saw a man walk on the moon the industry has been set in decades of stodginess with little or no change — innovation shifting to bigger and better things, with all eyes eventually falling on the Internet.
However, with the introduction of Google TV today, which joins the likes of Apple, AT&T and Microsoft in trying to champion Internet Protocol Television(IPTV), there may finally be enough momentum to trigger the Internet to TV avalanche. An avalanche that some analysts believe will lead to million global IPTV subscribers by 2013.
The innovation desperately needed in the television industry is replication of the Internet innovation in search and discovery that has occurred over the last decade. And, there’s probably no better company to replicate that than Google. With more video content and channels available than ever before before, watching and searching for video content between siloed channels, cable and satellite operators just doesn’t make sense. It’s a closed structure that would be like searching and enjoying the Internet without, well, Google.
Of course the introduction of this type of technology on pre-boxed televisions from Sony and others could also mean the holy grail of television advertising, which Google is really interested in. Advertisers have been seeking and gaining access to millions of consumers shifting to the Web to enjoy video content and technologies including personalization and speech-to-text solutions have enabled them to target these consumers with targeted advertorial better than they ever could through televisions. If “Googling” goes to the tube, these technologies and Google’s own AdWords’ system will be right behind it.
Last night’s episode of Criminal Minds was about a killer that found his victims through social networking sites. The episode specifically calls out Facebook and Twitter, but also references geo-location social networks like FourSquare. While the details of the episode are fiction, the episode brings up valid points about the information that we share online, and feels real enough to make you check your privacy settings following the show.
For the purpose of analyzing three types of social networks, I’m going to focus on Facebook, Twitter and FourSquare.
Facebook: Facebook is unique because it allows you to have a lot of flexibility with your privacy setting. While Mark Zuckerberg would urge you to keep an open profile with low privacy setting, that is not the smart move. First, make sure you’re only “friends’ with people that you know and can trust. You don’t have to accept friend requests from everyone, especially if you don’t know them or don’t like them. Then, you can limit the amount of information that is available to people. Don’t post where you are at all times, don’t give out your home address or phone number, and don’t put up pictures that share too much about yourself.
Twitter: Twitter has two privacy settings – share everything or create a protected account, meaning that you need to approve everyone that has access to your Twitter feed. If you have a standard account it means that anyone can see what you write, regardless of if they are following you or even have a Twitter account. Think about this again, ANYONE can see what you post. If you’re giving out details about your current location, announcing when you’re home alone or on vacation, anyone can see that. Twitter is much safer as a communication tool that does not offer an excess of information on your whereabouts or personal life.
FourSquare: FourSquare might be the most dangerous social network of them all since its primary goal is to broadcast where you go, and how often. Users check in to locations that they visit, ranging from the office, movies, restaurants, parks, and even their homes. While this builds an online network of people that you can get tips from, it’s really risky. Anyone can see where you are and learn about your daily and weekly patterns. It’s a lot of personal information to provide strangers with, and is a social network that I won’t go near for personal use, no matter how many discounted Frappucinos Starbucks will try and bribe me with.
Social media site Mashable recently posted an infographic with some odd Facebook statistics. While normally one might gloss over this, the graphic actually contained some pretty useful information for marketers looking to leverage Facebook to reach their target audience.
Noteworthy stats include:
• Of the 400 million people that log into their Facebook account each month, 50% of them log in daily
• 70% of Facebook users live outside the United States
• Women aged 55 and up are the fastest growing Facebook demographic in America
Lesson learned? Facebook is a daily part of the lives of people around the globe, specifically our moms. Kidding. Sort of.
In all seriousness, this data offers shining, golden opportunities for marketers to reach demographics via Facebook they may not have realized were present.
Check out the infographic below. Any other stats you find surprising?
Location-based News Use By the Wall Street Journal (Via Nieman Lab)
Twitter has been a great tool for the media since its inception. A fact that has attributed to its media darling status. However, as media organizations look for new ways to leverage social and digital technologies they’re becoming more sophisticated with their usage.
When the Wall Street Journal launched its ballyhooed New York Edition in April they also announced a partnership with Foursquare, the location-based social network. From the outside the partnership looked simple. The Journal wanted a way to get in front of early adopters in New York City and planned to offer three types of badges popular on the service — status symbols that Foursquare users earn for checking into a certain number locations. They also planned to offer bits of information on significant locations. For instance, when someone checked into the George Washington Bridge they might see from the WSJ: “Police were told to stop and search would-be subway bomber Najibullah Zazi’s car in September 2009 as he drove up to the bridge—but waved him across without finding two pounds of explosives hidden inside.”
While this was an interesting use, the Journal really took a step in social, location-based, news reporting when they broke news of the Time Square evacuation on May 7 by posting this message to folks checking into New York City locations: “Portions of Times Square have been evacuated after a report of a suspicious package.” According to the Journal, that message was posted simultaneously with additional alerts and coverage on WSJ.com.
The use of Foursquare for breaking news allowed the Journal to check-in with users who follow the media outlet on Foursquare and those who were in New York at the time would have seen the alert at the top of their Foursquare time-line. This type of targeted and localized editorial should be exciting for media organizations of all sizes. Just as marketers look for ways to improve targeting capabilities, media executives should be in the same mindset.
Meanwhile, as Facebook becomes a greater source for breaking news content and driving consumers to stories, media executives are looking at new ways to leverage the largest social network in the land. A division of Time Inc. recently began selling magazine subscriptions through its Facebook news feed, which allowed interested users to fill out their order information and pay directly through a form, without ever leaving Facebook. Meanwhile, GQ and Condé Nast, continue to leverage their Facebook page to personally engage consumers and attempt to interest them in their GQ iPad and iPhone applications, with direct links to the download pages on iTunes. Although, they’ve only sold 365 copies of their current issue to date on the iPad, they’ll be a time in the not too distant future when these more profitable subscriptions (no printing costs) surpass print subscriptions.
While this may make some folks squeamish, given Facebook’s privacy woes, they’re both examples of the progressive approaches media organizations are now taking with social media. As we’ve said before, these media organizations are becoming technology companies first and journalist organizations second. If you’re hoping they don’t disappear, it’s a change for the better.
