CoTweet Standard Being Pulled

CoTweet

Image by Gustavo Pimenta via Flickr

CoTweet Standard, which is used by a lot of companies to manage Twitter for teams, is being withdrawn on February 15th

From then on CoTweet will only be offered as a paid service under a new name “SocialEngage”

There aren’t much details about SocialEngage on the CoTweet / Exact Target site unfortunately, nor is there any information on pricing. It looks like they’re adding support for tracking Facebook, but without knowing pricing etc., it’s really hard to see if this is going to end up costing companies a lot more than they’ll gain or not.

Their Enterprise product “Cotweet Enterprise” may have been very powerful, but it also came at a very high price.

So are there any viable alternatives?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Guinness Try To Force Age Restrictions On Twitter

Guinness Ireland’s Twitter account is a bit odd.

They want to restrict their followers to people over the age of 18!

Guinness Ireland's Twitter account trying to impose age restrictions

Of course I’m not “following” their account, but I can still see all their content!

And here’s the screenshot to prove it:

Guinness Ireland's "over 18 only" twitter account

I think the word I’m looking for is “fail”

They’ve posted a “clarification” of what they’re “trying” to do:

You won’t be blocked as such.You’ll be removed from our followers & you’ll need to verify age before u can follow us again

 

Seemingly this is similar to the laughable “age restrictions” that alcohol companies put on their websites.

It’s kind of sad really that they’d even try to do this on a social media network. So you can add alcohol companies to the list of those that simply don’t “get” the web..

 

 

Fox Twitter Account Hacked?

Looks like one of the Fox News Twitter accounts may have been hacked, as it’s spewing “news” of Obama’s death ..

See screenshot below:

Foxnewpolitics twitter account

@Foxnewpolitics twitter account

If this is a prank it’s in pretty bad taste ..

So I would assume that the account has been compromised .. and since it’s July 4th in the US it may take longer than normal for people to notice ..

 

Twitter Hits New Record

Twitter has released another new statistic

It’s now doing 200 million “tweets” per day. In January 2009 they were “only” sending 2 million / day.

Here’s a nice graphic to show how that all compares with various other things:

Twitter 200 million tweet comparison

Twitter 200 million tweet comparison

There’s a full blog post about it over on the official twitter blog.

Of course they’re still not issuing big media releases about their record earnings are they? Oh wait .. they can’t! Doh!

Which Twitter Client Do You Use?

If you use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn on a regular basis then you probably don’t rely solely on the “standard” web interface. You’re more likely to be using some kind of desktop (or mobile) client.

Personally I’ve been a big fan of Tweetdeck, but the last few days it has become more unstable than usual and has become practically impossible to use.

I asked a few people what they’d recommend and got some interesting replies.

Here are a few of them:

Hootsuite

Twitter (official)

Twitterific

Seesmic (desktop and web)

Echofon

Chromedeck

 

So what do you use? And, more importantly, why?

How NOT To Deal With Negative Feedback On Twitter

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

One of the exciting and often scary aspects of Twitter and other social media networks is that your customer service interactions are completely laid bare. You can’t hide behind closed doors. Nothing is sacred.

Earlier today Jason Roe tweeted about how bad his coffee tasted.

It was a statement of opinion. It doesn’t mean that there is anything necessarily wrong with a product or a brand, but that a particular customer (Jason), had a bad experience.

No matter what you do some of your customers will not be happy. In some cases it will be your fault – you’ll screw up. In other cases it won’t be your fault.

It doesn’t matter. It will happen regardless.

So how did this exchange go down and why am I even bothering to write about it?

Have a look at the response from the coffee vendor (screenshot from Tweetdeck as the original tweet was deleted much later)

How not to deal with customer feedback

How not to deal with customer feedback

Here’s the plain text version of the exchange:

Tasted my coffee bean from badger and dodo this morning. They were over roasted! burnt to shit, crumbled when pressure applied. Smelt crap.

And their reply:

@jasonroe nasty & vindictive of you! We have a complaints & refund proceedure you can follow. 40 cafes using same coffee have no complaints!

What makes it all the more amusing (and disturbing) is that the company not only handled this particular incident badly, but also managed to lose an advocate in the process:

@BadgerAndDodo the gas thing is .. I was one of your advocates until 19:04. Well done!

The company in question have since deleted the offending tweet, but they haven’t (as of now) offered any form of apology to Jason (or anyone else)

Now, was Jason being reasonable?

Did the company completely overreact?

I’d say yes to both of those questions.

How about you?

UPDATE: Jason has posted his own version of events as well as an email that the coffee company sent him.

Twitter Usage Tip – Check Your Spelling

When you’re setting up your Twitter profile you have the option to provide information about yourself (or your company / product / service).

If you want to be taken seriously by other users make sure that you haven’t made any basic spelling mistakes!

So, for example, if you are trying to promote yourself as an expert in “development” don’t spell it as “devleopment”.

(We all know that people will make spelling mistakes and typos when “tweeting”, but that’s a different issue entirely!)

Irish Teens Digital Lifestyles

I’ve always been fascinated by statistics and surveys, so the Mulley Communications survey on Irish teenagers’ digital habits makes for some interesting reading.

You can download a copy of the report directly from their site.

Here are some of the highlights:

* 14% have a part-time job
* 28% spend their money on socialising, 27% on phone credit
* Gig tickets and music is what teens buy most online
* Most teens use their parents credit card or laser to buy online
* Phone is the most treasured item of teens
* Teens are not downloading all their music for free
* Most music recommendations come via friends
* Nearly half of teens use the online TV players from media organisations with 40% streaming TV and over ⅓ watching via playback services
* 44% of teens are on Meteor
* Nokia are the most popular phones, the iPhone is the most desired
* 74% access the Internet on their mobiles per month
* Communicating with friends: 56% via text message, 38% via Facebook, Phone call 28%, Email 27%

If you want to find out about how they conducted the survey they’ve provided a lot of detail on their blog.

Twitter Awards The Shorty Awards Return

shorty-awards-logo

Shorty awards

The 3rd annual Shorty Awards have opened for nominations in the last couple of days.

In their own words:

The Shorty Awards honor the best people and organizations on Twitter and social media. Nominations may be made through Twitter and this website, culminating in an awards ceremony that recognizes the winners in dozens of official categories, as well as thousands of crowd-sourced categories. For the first time, the Shorty Awards will also honor the industry’s best agencies and social media professionals.

TSA Spoof Twitter Account

Unless you have been avoiding the news and social networks for the last few weeks you’re probably aware of the TSA’s latest.

The TSA was setup after 9/11 to:

…strengthen the security of the nation’s transportation systems while ensuring the freedom of movement for people and commerce. Within a year, TSA assumed responsibility for security at the nation’s airports and deployed a Federal workforce to meet Congressional deadlines for screening all commercial airline passengers and baggage. In March 2003, TSA transferred from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security.


TSA employs a risk-based strategy to secure U.S. transportation systems, working closely with stakeholders in aviation, rail, transit, highway, and pipeline sectors, as well as the partners in the law enforcement and intelligence community. The agency will continuously set the standard for excellence in transportation security through its people, processes, technologies and use of intelligence to drive operations. (source)

However, they are not exactly the most popular organisation.

In the last few weeks there has been a lot of backlash with respect to how TSA are scanning passenger’s and touching them. And no – that wasn’t a typo.

So it’s not that surprising that there’s now a spoof Twitter account that is sending out gems like this:

Travel Advisory: Playing dead does not get you out of a rub-down. Neither does actually being dead

or

The confusion at the security gate is manufactured. Confused passengers are submissive passengers

I somehow doubt the TSA are amused, but if they try to remove the account the backlash will be a LOT worse.