01 October 2008

Posted at 19:06h in bigpond, spam, spam act, telstra, twitter by

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...

30 September 2008

Posted at 19:11h in bigpond, nasa, telstra, twitter by

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....

07 June 2008

Posted at 17:41h in plurk, twitter by

I think if you signed up for Plurk right now you'd still be considered an early adopter. Although there is a lot of buzz going around at the moment so get in fast. I quite like the concept and it seems to out do Twitter in nearly every way. The only problem is there are no banner ads. No forms of advertising what so ever. Sure in the short term that's great for me and you but how are they going to pay their costs? This becomes particularly important with their exponentially growing traffic. Like many social networks, they are going to struggle to monetise the site. And by introducing advertising now, you risk alienating your community. Where does this leave them in the long term?...

28 May 2008

Posted at 22:38h in abc, ddb, gruen transfer, julian cole, peter wagstaff, twitter by

First episode of The Gruen Transfer aired just now. Peter Wagstaff, Julian Cole and myself sat on Twitter during the show as a little experiment, adding an extra element to see their reactions. I only signed up on Twitter today but I'm already starting to see its potential. Wasn't quite what I expected but interesting. This week's challenge was to sell a whale meat campaign. DDB used the quote in the title playing against the consumption of beef. While Jack Watts Currie played on the idea of an angry prawn on a BBQ and at the end of the spot there was a flash of a website. The website actually exists, I find that very cool. Worth looking at, particularly if you're not studying marketing. I assume the ABC will podcast it....