hintofsarcasm
am i still ill?
July 22, 2010 at 07:21 · Filed under Technology
With Twitter rapidly losing money through lack of revenue, it must start to bring their platform back to themselves as the first part of their plan to get into the black.
As it stands the third-party application is King, in February 2009 only 31% of Twitter activity was performed through their website, Twitter.com, the other 69% was done through various third-party applications, on desktop and mobile devices, like Tweetie for iPhone, Ubertwitter for BlackBerry and Tweetdeck, for iPhone and all desktops.
In April of this year Twitter announced that they would be taking back their service – launching new features and their own mobile applications, including apps for iPhone and BlackBerry, but are these any good and have they been successful so far?
Twitstat keep a running total of the most popular Twitter clients and are currently showing that Twitter.com is still the most popular single "client", but its usage has been chopped in half to 16%, a momentus drop. Tweetdeck retains its second place and Twitter for iPhone, the official application, is all the way up there at #4 with 6% share. This does hint that the attempts by Twitter thus far to take back what is theres is working, on one platform at least, albeit one of the biggest platforms. Official apps for Android and BlackBerry do register on the list, but at lowly 23rd and 29th places.
So what next for Twitter? With their core gateway, Twitter.com, taking such a massive hit, can they continue to plod on with their plans to monetise their service? Surely the website is where they will make their biggest profits as revenues through mobile are still relatively marginal. What can they do to attract people back to the browser?
Popularity: 6% [?]
August 30, 2009 at 20:46 · Filed under Technology
Brands of the world, it seems that whoever you have employed to manage your social networking presence does not know what they are doing and you need to sort it out, now!
I am finding more and more that certain brands are monitoring keywords using Tweetdeck or similar applications to reply to tweets either with a sales pitch for their similar product or even to try to redeem themselves in a “pro-active customer service” move.
The first point that I must make is that if you’re going to take the latter stance, appoint somebody who knows the product and is familiar with twitter etiquette. I recently had my broadband company reply to a rant about their service, to which I replied to them with the issue and didn’t hear another thing for a week. I then commented on this lack of response, after-all, they contacted me, and they replied, quite snappily I might add, insisting that they had DM’ed me. Well, anyone who had been using Twitter for more than 24 hours would know that you cannot send a direct message to somebody who does not follow you. And why would I be following my ISPs customer service department? So of course, I didn’t get their DM.
When I did get a response to my technical question, their response didn’t make any sense. Apparently my ”IP address email addresschanges daily”. The question I asked them was about the LAN IP addresses that their router gives. Duh.
Another experience was with UPS who clearly monitor the use of “UPS”. Unfortunately it seems that only their US branch use Twitter so when I complained by way of a tweet to the world and they contacted me, they clearly didn’t look at my location before offering assistance, as when I replied with my issue they said they couldn’t help and to call the UK call centre (by this time I had already).
Other companies monitor for use of words that are attributed to their product, or even their competitors company names in an attempt to poach customers. This may all be fine, as long as they are offering you a comparable service or product – not something that is 3-4x the price or isn’t in any way the same.
Twitter can be a great way to get your companies names onto the computer screens of customers or potential customers, as long as it is executed properly. The rules of the real world still apply in Twitterland. It may be a new way to be in contact, but that shouldn’t change anything.
My top tips
- Your brand is not my friend. Do not pretend that it is. Don’t @ me after randomly finding me through keyword searches offering comment only to lead up to a sales pitch.
- If you’re going to offer customer service by twitter, offer to take my telephone number and call me. I’m sure that most issues cannot be sorted out in 140 characters.
- Know how Twitter works. Don’t DM me when I can’t receive it because I don’t follow you. Oh, and don’t @ when you mean to DM, that could be disastrous.
Follow me on Twitter.
Popularity: 1% [?]
March 18, 2009 at 21:50 · Filed under Personal
I quit my job today.
No, it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I have given 6 weeks notice, intend to part on good terms and I have a long term plan. I just thought that I would start out this post with a rather sensationalist line. A hook, if you will.
I’ve been working at the bank for a long time. I’m only 24 years old, though I always knew that I wanted to work in IT. I joined the bank for that reason, and I accomplished it. In that time I’ve managed to do some exciting things. Some boring things. But above all get real experience in the field. I had previously worked for NTL, providing technical support for their internet customers, this is where I first dipped my toes, professionally. Of course, I have been designing websites since 1997 and I started to learn my first programming language at the tender age of 6 (BASIC on the Commodore 64).
I leave my position on the 1st of May with no job to go to. Not at another company, at least.
In the past 9 months I have been dabbling with freelance work. After doing some unpaid work to bulk up my portfolio and some favours for friends of friends and with other contracts now in the pipeline and ready to go, I decided that I want this to be my new career goal. To become a self-employed, or freelance, web application programmer.
In the next 6 weeks I will be launching at least two separate ventures.
The first, which will be my primary business, is web design and programming under the moniker ‘Pixelfreedom‘.
I created Pixelfreedom almost 8 years ago as a base for my photography portfolio. I still think this is a good name for a creative organisation.
Under this banner I will provide services to clients to provide a solution to the technicalities of their desired websites.
In layman’s terms, this means the clever stuff that goes on the in the background. Making a website ‘interactive’, being able to sign up, log in, upload your photo, add products to your basket, checkout and pay. All of the kind of stuff that you probably take for granted when using social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. This kind of thing takes many man hours and a lot of code in the background to achieve.
Along with this, as you would probably expect, is the part where the site is made pretty and functional at the front-end, for the user. This will also be something that I will be offering as a product of my labour.
The second venture will be provided under my own name, Nathan Collins, which will run from one of my other websites, ‘nate.me.uk‘. For this I will use my considerable knowledge, expertise and experience in the field of online marketing, advertising and social networking to consult companies on their brands use of these tools.
This means advising clients on the best use of Google Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and other means of conducting ‘viral’ advertising, and running the campaigns, which can be so very effective if used in the correct way.
The next few months will be a roller-coaster ride for me. I have been in full-time employment continuously since leaving college aged 18. I have learned many skills along the way and continue to learn new things every single day of my life, which is something that I relish continuing to do, as no doubt I will, especially considering the line of work that I am in where knowledge is most definitely infinite.
Now that the biggest step has been taken I will be carrying on at this momentum. Next week I am having my business cards printed up and will be filing forms to register myself as self-employed.
I hope you all wish me luck, continue to read hintofsarcasm while I go through this big transitional period and of course recommend my services to anyone that you come across that may require them :)
Popularity: 5% [?]
February 3, 2009 at 23:29 · Filed under Anything Else?, News
As I am writing this, actor, presenter, geek, conservationist and comedian extraordinaire Stephen Fry is stuck in a lift in London’s Centre Point. How do I know this? Well, he sent me a picture of course.
That he sent this very same picture to 107,923 other people is neither here nor there.
This image was distributed by Stephen Fry using his iPhone and Twitter.
I have been following Stephen Fry using Twitter for around 4 months now, since he started in October.
By January he had 50,000 followers. Since he mentioned Twitter on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on January 23rd of this year the number of subscribers to his tweets has more than doubled, now standing at the figure quoted above and rising by literally thousands every day. It seems that Mr Fry has kicked off a tweeting craze here in the UK. People who did not know the difference between a retweet and a twat last week now have accounts and are posting their every move.
Stephen Fry being stuck in a lift for 30 minutes has, at the last count, spawned over 2,100 tweets tagged @stephenfry, #frylift or similar. Twitter brings celebrity closer than ever before and Fry is working it very well. He almost seems like a real friend of mine. He posts where he is going, what he is doing, how he is feeling, what he is eating, all in under 140 characters.
The other morning I opened up Twibble (the Twitter application I use for my Nokia N95) and immediately knew that Stephen was out for a walk because he felt that he had eaten too much cheese the previous night, further proof to the fact that Twitter is bringing us closer to our idols than we have ever been.
Other Twitterers include Jonathan Ross, John Cleese and newbie Russell Brand.
How long will it last though? I have been tweeting for over a year now and have a few followers, perhaps now will be my time too? One can only hope.
Don’t forget to follow me!
Update: Stephen and his new lift friends were released at 23:33. 35 minutes after becoming stranded and causing an internet storm.
Popularity: 1% [?]
