Thursday, July 30, 2009

Sign Of The Social Media Apocalypse: Twitter TV Ads

I was watching cable last night (OK, I wasn't actually listening, just watching from corner of my eye while I surfed online), and low and behold a commercial actually caught my eye. It had something to do with home tech help, and looked vaguely familiar brandwise. At the end, "Twelpforce" flashed on the screeen with the URL http://twitter.com/twelpforce.

My first reaction was: is Twitter really advertising?!!! Do their VCs know about this?!! (harken back to scores of pre-revenue dot coms in '99 spending their way out of biz with stupid TV commercials) My attention quickly went back to my real focus -- my pc -- and I visited http://twitter.com/twelpforce. I realized that it was one of Best Buy's Twitter profile pages. Get it? Help + Twitter = Twelp...

Then I was truly dumbfounded: why the heck would a brand spend TV dollars to get people to go to another company's web site? (as an aside: if the click-throughs on online ads are supposedly bad, then the click-through on TV ads must be really bad...really, really bad) OK, I'm not that dense and do understand their rationale, but I have to ask again: why the heck would you send a few people to a new service brand (after you've spent millions promoting Geek Squad) whose presence resides on another company's web site???

Last note: I absolutely REFUSE to 'follow' the Twelpforce. I like good marketing; this is not good marketing.

Monday, July 20, 2009

RJ becomes...the "Guru"

This is a great Cisco ad -- really creative, engaging and totally viral. Plus, the star is really good-looking and impossibly magnetic. Trust me; I'm a guru!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

4 Things I'm Thinking

1. Life is good. I opened my eyes the other day with my waking thought being that I basically already have everything I ever wanted. While there's still a few things I'd like to have/do, those items on the wish lists are the icing and gravy things. I already have all the biggies, or have at least tasted enough of them to be content that I've experienced them to at least know what they feel like. This is a good thought to wake up to, and it gives great perspective about all the daily speed bumps.

2. Twittorati. We launched Twittorati -- where the tweetosphere meets the blogosphere -- a little over a week ago. I'm very happy with the results. The site is really interesting: it tracks the tweets of the most influential bloggers on the internet. Further, the site has received really good feedback, and early traffic levels are satisfying.

3. Public healtcare plan. I'm not sure how we're going to net out on getting a healthcare bill, but IMHO anything that doesn't include a public insurance option will be a dismal failure. Right here, right now, I am going on the record to declare that as a CEO of a small business, our company will switch to a public insurance option if one passes. I also won't hold my breath, because I've seen how special interests have and continue to keep us from doing the right thing on numerous issues.

4. Palin poll results. It's no secret how I feel about Sarah Palin, but from a purely objective marketing perspective, her resignation is a huge marketing blunder. The most recent poll shows significantly declining "is-she-qualified-to-be-president" ratings even amongst Republicans.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

How Do You Tweet? Unscientific Poll Results

So I've been thinking about a stat I read 6 weeks ago: that only 28% of Twitter users actually visit the site. I've been thinking that the percentage has probably dropped even further since then, and I wanted to validate that thinking scientifically. However, given that I lack the time or desire to do anything remotely scientific or statistically significant, I just tweeted the following question (via twitter.com ironically!):

"Unscientific poll: how do you write your tweets? how do you read tweets? On Twitter.com or on a 3rd party app? (or d. none of the above)"

With out any ado (no time for even the "further" in "further ado"), here are the results. While lacking any statistical value whatsoever, the mere fact that this "serious" research study comes from me should make it totally valid. ;-)

Seriously, here's some answers from a few of my friends. Only one uses the site exclusively, a few use a combo of 3rd party apps, and a few use 3rd party exclusively.

Neil Rosos at 8:33am July 14
Read/Write mainly through a 3rd party app (Twitterfon and twitterfox)...

Monica Gummig at 9:33am July 14
Tweet Deck -- can check FB from there as well :)

Tiana Lyn Dillon Ford at 12:10pm July 14
Twitterfon on iPhone

Richard Rocca at 12:54pm July 14
a blend - but majority in 3rd party in this orderbetwyx.com, tweetdeck and twitter.

Jeff Toland at 2:32pm July 14
Twitter.com, but I haven't tried anything else

Phillip Winn at 3:12pm July 14
Mostly Tweetie on my Mac, sometimes twitter.com on my phone.

Rosy Saadeh at 5:59pm July 14
Third party app - TweetLater.com

murliman All of the above.Haven't settled @jalichandra Unscientific poll: how do you write/read tweets? On Twitter.com or on 3rd party app? from web

DistortedAngel@jalichandra TwitterFox at work, Tweetie on Mac and iPhone. Never Twitter.com unless absolutely necessary. from TwitterFox in reply to jalichandra