Those of you that have followed the progress of IBM’s Watson, the supercomputer that won at Jeopardy in 2011, will know that for the last year he has been in medical school, helping with the fight against cancer.
Interesting news today that UK mobile operator O2 is seeing 1 million fewer customers calling their call centres, so they are investing £50M in more digital services.
Quoting from the press release:
O2 today set out bold plans to re-define its customer service offering to better respond to growing demand from customers wanting to be served by digital means. The company expects this to accelerate with the wider availability of 4G services from this summer. Read more…
I am a big fan of Peter Shankman, I count him as a friend. He was part of the Kred leader’s program in 2012 and continues to be a great sounding board for us at Kred.
I also love his Facebook updates – you never quite know what he is going to do next.
Today’s update looked like this.
Now I know Peter flies a lot with United – he would probably be played by George Clooney in a movie about frequent fliers…er that’s already been done.
What Peter’s update shows is that United really do have a strong influencer program.
They know that not only do they have a loyal customer, they have one who is really influential in the areas where the decision about which airline to fly is made.
Amazingly, even though Peter pays a great deal of money every year to fly with United, they have actually got him to “work” for them for a day for free.
Smartly, they understand that for a frequent flyer like Peter, more flights isn’t always what he is after. Also what is the “shrareability” of a free flight?
What IS sharable though is exclusive access to behind the scenes of an airline.
What United is also doing is ensuring guaranteed coverage by a key influencer.
Well played United, well played!
Below are just some of the shots Peter has been sharing on his Facebook page about his experience.
You can’t buy publicity like this, and United haven’t had to. They just asked Peter to tag along with them for the day.
This post has been a few days in the making.
The impetus was an event I attended in London on Wednesday sponsored by Microsoft “Social Media – one tool amongst many”.
There was naturally a stellar line-up including Catriona Oldershaw, Alan Patrick, Abigail Harrison and Philip Sheldrake.
The title of the event was somewhat obscure, as the event was really about social business. Read more…
I have just finished reading a new book by Philip Sheldrake that looks at social business. I’ve been a fan of Philip’s writing since his first book, The business of Influence, and this book does not disappoint.
The book was released on Wednesday May 15th, and I was lucky enough to secure an advance review copy which I read in one sitting over the weekend.
It is fair to say that Philip’s book is like no other book on social I have read – in a good way. Read more…
Recently I have been speaking to a range of audiences about how social media technologies and practices can be used inside an organisation.
The use of social media inside an organisation is more commonly being referred to as social business.
In many of the workshops I have lead lately, one of the most common discussion points has been what about the people in our organisation that will never tweet or blog. The question is always asked, how can we enlist them using social inside the company? Read more…
IBM seems to be on a roll at the moment, and almost weekly I am seeing new marketing material from them to do with social business.
One recent report that caught my eye is titled “Patterns in achieving social business success by leading and pioneering organizations”.
You can download the report, and I have provided a brief summary below. Read more…
On Tuesday 23rd April, I attended the socialbakers Engage conference in London as the guest of their CEO Jan Rezab.
No sooner had I arrived, I met up with fellow blogger and friend Neville Hobson who was organising the composition of the afternoon expert panel on “the next stage of social media”.
Unfortunately three of the panellists had pulled out, so Neville asked me if I would be happy to join, and of course I said yes. Read more…
UPDATE 23 May 2013: Twitter has just enabled 2-step (also called 2-factor) authentication.
You can read more about it on their blog. and as per my recommendations below, I suggest you go and turn this feature on NOW!
Quick steps to enable this for your twitter account
1. Visit your account settings page.
2. Scroll down towards the bottom and select “Require a verification code when I sign in.”
3. Click on the link to “add a phone” and follow the prompts (you will need your phone with you during sign-up)
4. After you enroll in login verification, you’ll be asked to enter a six-digit code Twitter will send to your phone via SMS each time you sign in to twitter.com.
Importantly. the account you prevent from being hacked may be your own or the one you run for your company.
This post was originally written following the amazing news that the Associated Press Twitter feed was hacked in April 2013, driving a 143-point fall in the Dow Jones industrial average from a single (false) tweet.
You’ve probably never heard of Santiago Swallow, Expert on Inauthentic Identity, Author of “Self’”.
I had not heard of him either until last week when I came across an article in Quartz titled “How to become internet famous for $68” by Kevin Ashton, known for inventing the term “The Internet of Things“. Read more…
Most people who work in or around social media will have heard about the “Oreo moment” at this year’s Superbowl.
To recap, the game was plunged into darkness for a full 33 minutes due to a power failure at the stadium, and the one brand that everyone remembers from this is Oreo thanks to the tweet below
Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
I had a fascinating discussion with Helen Kennedy from Leeds University this week.
She approached me about an interview to support her research and book about social media monitoring.
During our interview, she was particularly interested on my view, and the view of the industry on the status of “public” social media posts.
In particular, she wanted to know if I felt the industry would (or could) be regulated so that consumers had the right to decide if their social media posts could be monitored or captured by social media monitoring firms.
It raises a very interesting question – how private are our public posts?
Also where do we draw the line?
Back in 2009, after a trip to Sydney (at the time my first in 3 years after having moved to London), I wrote a post looking at the Australian mobile market.
Some 4 years on from that post, I was reminded of it when I came across a very funny, and well produced Australian Comedy show called simply “The Checkout”.
It has been put together by the team behind The Chaser - a very smart group of Australian Comedians who are not afraid of telling it like it is. Read more…
News from EE that they are ramping up for even faster 4G speeds, hoping to leapfrong the competition ahead of other 4G launches later this year – the press release announcing the changes is below.
Can’t wait to feel the 4GEEEE’s soon in London. Read more…
I am starting a campaign to expose the simply lazy, and sometimes downright sneaky tricks that companies are playing to get their direct marketing material through your letterbox.
Frankly, in 2013, and the age of big data and social media, to have a clean, window faced envelope dropped through my letterbox (with a big sign on it that says “no junk mail”) addressed to “The Householder” smacks of lazy and desperate marketing. Read more…
Big data is everywhere – literally.
The other evening I watched a very interesting BBC Panorama program titled “The Age of Big Data” (note the program can only be viewed in the UK). Read more…
Hot off the press from EE
- EE is the exclusive UK launch partner for the first smartphone with an entirely new Facebook experience, called Home, on the ‘HTC First’
- The HTC First will be exclusively available this summer on EE’s superfast 4GEE service, with details on pricing and availability to be announced in due course Read more…
So impressed was I with a recent report from Altimeter group on Social Business titled
“The evolution of social business – six stages of social business transformation”
that I decided to do a multi-part blog post. The first post can be viewed at lc.tl/asb1
In this second post, I am looking at the section of the report that looks at defining a social business strategy. Read more…
I was a guest on the Tonya Hall Radio Show on Monday talking about social business. You can listen to a replay of the show below.
I first came across Tonya and her show at last year’s South by Southwest (SXSW), when she topped our Kred real-time leaderboard for the event on a daily basis. She wanted to know more about Kred and I wanted to know more about her and her daily radio show on the Bloomberg Radio Network.
Read more…
As someone who has been using a customised URL shortener for around 3 years, I take a keen interest in brands and bloggers that set up their own short domain for sharing content on social media sites. In fact you probably arrived at this post by clicking on the link lc.tl/virgin from my tweet, or a variant of this from another platform.
My original post from 2010 explained how I was using the open source YOURLS platform (Your Own URL Shortener) to power my custom, branded URL shortener at lc.tl.
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