Fuck it. I'm getting an iPad.But why is it so hard to work out the pricing structure if I go with the 3G option? I Googled four different telco's, and only three had paid search results leading me to the correct place. Two of those asked me to register my interest and told me they'll get back to me at some point (never). And the one remaining is my current provider who doesn't give me reception in my own house.One of the telco's has an amazing opportunity to get a massive share of the iPad market. Too bad they're all fucking it up. That, and the fact they're all bloody expensive, is the reason I'll probably go with the WiFi only version....

Before I get into it, should probably talk quickly about the Digital Marketing & Media Summit. It was okay.Julian Cole was kind enough to hook me up with a free ticket, and I certainly would have been annoyed had I paid $990. Even then I only hung around for half a day, the student in me decided to wait until after lunch before leaving.The best thing I got from the day was a couple of ideas for blog posts.For the audience there, they may have found some sessions useful but honestly most presentations were fairly dry. The exception of course was Julian's (it's possible that was only the case because I helped him out on stage).A question asked to Julian was what were some examples of social media marketing being done well in Australia. He talked about Bigpond on Twitter, which is a great case study, but even then they started out as a disaster.Clearly Australia is lagging. But before I get too pessimistic, I wouldn't mind building a list of Australian examples and case studies. So throwing it out to you guys, what Australian brands have used social media well?...

We have a problem. Its realisation comes after Telstra Bigpond raised a legal issue over their Twitter account. They had worries about breaching the 2003 Spam Act. Currently, their legal department is trying to determine if their communications could be considered a commerical electronic message, in which case would be against the law. The Australian Government Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has this to say about the issue...

In a great initiative by Telstra, Bigpond have set themselves up on Twitter. What a great way to connect to their customers.But, like in so many cases, old practises don't work with new media. They've almost applied the same rules you would to writing your customer a letter.You'll notice that nearly every one of their responses is the same spammed message on where to send an email. Instead of directly dealing with the issue at hand, they lead the customer to another place. And the tweets aren't even unique, just copy paste jobs.You'll also notice the ® after every use of the term BigPond. Lame. And not very personal.I think it's great to see them jump on board. So so so much potential. But at the moment they're not really Twittering, just using Twitter.Hopefully their social media response team isn't just on Twitter and will respond to this blog post too.So what is a good example of a company using Twitter? Check out NASA, and even then they're only using it as a broadcast....