The Social Media Blog - Methodical Madness

Mumbai Terror Attacks and Twitter

The Tweet Who Cried Wolf

The news out of Mumbai, India came quick and sudden.  No one knew what was going on at first but if you were on Twitter, the reports were flooding in.  From individuals tweeting about “the horrible thing happening” to people blogging from within the Oberoi Hotel (“Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on one floor,” reported one person from inside the hotel), Twitter was the front line reporting method for people all over the world.

It was used to get blood supplies to hospitals in need as well as transcribe lists of the wounded and dead that could be posted online.  Twitter may be the window that allowed people to put a human face to a travesty, but it also did damage and created even more confusion. 

Currently Hashtags.org, a site that allows you to follow conversations on Twitter via a preset code, shows 574 pages of tweets over the past 24 hours.  The chatter is just amazing.  Twitter once again shows how powerful it is in getting in on the ground floor of an event and providing in-depth coverage.  It also shows how dangerous it can be by perpetuating rumors.  It would be easy for someone to create a fake account and overwhelm a subject with false information.

With hundreds of people tweeting and re-tweeting, the information soon became redundant and when new information came in, it was treated as truth when it should have been questioned.  Rumor-mongering ran rampant with reports of the dead ranging between 100 to 1000.  Bombs exploding at the Marriott, when nothing happened there but at the Ramada next door. The number of armed men ranged wildly and pleas from the Indian government to quit using Twitter were believed to be true at first but later tracked to a high schooler in America.

The attacks in Mumbai are yet another test case on how Twitter and social media is being use to spread information.  You can already find scores of bloggers talking about how great Twitter has been in covering the event.  What doesn’t seem to be asked is what good is the information if none of it is correct or can be corroborated? Or should we trust the tweets that are coming out of a situation where anyone can say anything? 

Several social media evangelist have been praising Twitter as a new news source.  They are right for the most part.  It was used to great effect during the earthquakes in China and the forest fires in California but Twitter is a fairly unreliable news source and should be treated as such.  It’s an excellent way to find out what’s happening at the moment but just don’t believe everything you read. Temper the Twitter news with more factual reports and eventually we’ll be able to separate the truth from the fiction.

Photo Credit: By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

What You Talkin' About?

After the Web 2.0 Expo was over, I joined some fellow conventioneers for beers at a little beer bar in the Alexanderplatz station.  We were chatting about many things; shoes, ships, ceiling wax, cabbages and kings (the usual stuff).  While chatting with Karin Hoegh, the subject of podcasting (a series of audio or video digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet) and how it’s being used in Europe came up. 

Let me give a little history about my experience with podcasts. I did a horror sub-genre podcast for over a year and half before moving to Sweden.  We did really well and after ending, inspired others to pick up our mantle.  I have a good number of friends back in the States that podcast.  I love podcasts and if you were to pick up my iPod Shuffle, you would find nothing but podcasts on it.

I was surprised when Karin told me she felt that podcasts are under used in Europe.  In the U.S., podcasting is huge.  Everyone with too much time and a misguided opinion appear to have a podcast.  It is one of the easiest and cheapest forms of mass communication available to the average person.  All that is required is a web hosting service (Libsyn), a microphone, a computer and some kind of audio editing software (audacity is free for the PC). 

From zombie movies to social media to planting tulips, if you have an interest, there is a podcast for you.  In iTunes, the podcasting section has a program on basically anything you can imagine.  My experience in Sweden has been most people don’t listen to podcasts and fewer are creating them.  I have to wonder why not?  What better way to create a community around a brand or subject than an easily downloadable sound file that can exisit on the Internet for pretty much forever.  My defunct podcast is still out there in the ether freely available for anyone to download even though I no longer pay to have it hosted. 

So why aren’t more people podcasting in Europe?  I feel it’s a lack of knowledge about what podcasts are and how to use them.  Podcasts tend to be based upon personal interests.  If you have a hobby or interest you’re crazy about, podcasts are a great way to share your love of a subject and get other people talking as well. 

But how can businesses use podcast to promote their products without feeling like an extended commercial?  Commercial podcasts need to provide a service.  Anyone will listen to a commercial if they feel they are getting something out of it.

If you’re a travel site, talk about different places to visit and specials you have to travel there.  If you own a restaurant, talk about cooking, recipes and events in your area.  Have an auto dealership? Talk about latest models, compare and contrast them or offer repair tips.

Imagine you’re in school taking physics and you’re having a hard time memorizing the material.  What better way to learn material than on your favorite mp3 player while you’re jogging you can listen to lectures over and over?  Or you want to visit a city and they have a podcast about different shops, locations and events taking place.  Imagine how helpful it would be to have Microsoft do a weekly podcast talking about tips and tricks with their software directly with the people developing it.

The possibilities are limitless and the cost is inexpensive.  So why don’t you have a podcast?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

When moms attack

 
Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin is supposed to ease back pain. Instead, it ended up being more of a pain in the backside for J&J, after an attempt to get cute and patronising with moms backfired in the face of the healthcare giant.

The online and print campaign for Motrin, created by Taxi, New York suggested that mothers carried their babies as fashion accessories. Ooh la la, what a faux pas that was.

The campaign, which broke on the 30th of September 2008 has now been officially pulled. And it all happened over the weekend.

On Friday evening, Jessica Gottlieb an influential blogger from LA, who admits to being ‘tipped off’ about the campaign, started twittering about the campaign in a not very friendly way. Next day, Katja Presnal, a New York blogger collected tweets from upset moms, stitched together a rough video and posted it on YouTube.

The New Face of Communication

I started using Twitter a year ago and like 99% of the people that first start using it, I thought  ”What a waste of time. Who would use this?”  This isn’t another post on the top 10 apps/widgets/tricks to make Twitter work for you.  There are hundreds of blog posts about that from people that are probably far more qualified than I to talk about it. 

If you haven’t heard of Twitter, Wikipedia defines the site as ”a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.”  I know 140 characters doesn’t seem like much can be accomplished, but it makes for more precise thought as well as random tangents depending on the user.

Flood of Information

I was at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin a few weeks back. Founded by TechWeb and O’Reilly Media, it brought together individuals from all over the world to discuss social media and web 2.0 applications. It was a great experience. Stowe Boyd (the man that coined the term "social tools") really brought together everything I’ve been thinking about the last months. He described today’s social media explosion as the ”Tower of Babel” where everyone is fragmented and awash in a sea of information.

Today, you can post a blog entry, have it linked on Digg, viewed on someone’s desktop through an RSS feed and so on. You can comment on it using Twitter, Facebook and scores of other sites. Each of these provide individual areas to comment on your blog without ever going back to the original post. There can be several levels of communication about your blog post that never lead back to the original material.  

The Internet has changed, as has the way we use and perceive it. You no longer go online just to look up information, find the latest news or purchase tickets to an event. Today’s Internet is interactive and conversational. Blogging seems almost antiquated compared to the instant act/react ability of sites like Twitter or ReJaw. The ability to see and be seen is amazing.