Faker Faker

In the wonderful world of social media in NZ over the last few days, a good old fashioned witch hunt has been-a-brewing.

I'm not going to spend anytime thrashing out the details or linking to the 'stories' rather, I am going to talk about how we got to this position.

It all started last week when 'Status People' faker score percentages started popping up in the twitter feed. I'm not going to lie, I was curious too, so I looked into my account:

According to Status People I have 2% Fake (with 1,024 followers, that is approx 24 followers) 10% inactive (102 followers) and 88% good (819 followers). I kind of looked at the numbers, thought about the number of my 'followers' who I remove/block when they're blatantly spam, and thought, yeah, probably about right. At this point I forgot about it.

After not opening up my tweetdeck for most of the day yesterday, when I did in the afternoon, it was filled with Status People fake number tweets. Fair enough, I was curious too, but I did find it amusing, boasting about the few 'fake' followers they have (or not as the case may be).

So the witch hunt (this is what I have referred to it as) has spawned from someone trawling 'Social Media' people on Twitter and reporting their 'fake' percentages. Can we all just stop for a second and think about why someone might do that? They were looking for a scandal, something to take someone else down. I mean, come on! That's kind of sad.

Moving on... I started to question exactly how accurate this 'fake finder' was. I think it was @tomosborne who mentioned (to someone else) that Twitblock to find and purge spam followers. So that is what I did:

This reported that 18 of my followers were 44% or more likely to be spam. 2 of the handles listed are certainly not spam, 1 is a friend and 1 is for NZ's new Shopping Channel? So, 16 of 1,024 is 1.6%, which matches what the Status People numbers said. Sweet I thought, let's run the numbers again. Now, stupidly I didn't screen shot the time, but, post spam cull, my numbers were exactly the same:

Which says to me, this is a bit of a crock. I culled my 2%, yet it's still there.


If you actually look into the working behind these Faker Scores you would read:




"We take a sample of your follower data. Up to 500 records depending on how 'popular' you are and assess them against a number of simple spam criteria...

For those of you with 10,000 followers or less we believe our tool will provide a very accurate insight into how many inactive and fake followers you have.

If you're very 'popular' the tool will still provide good insight but may better reflect your current follower activity rather than your whole follower base."

The way I read this is, in actual fact, if you have over 500 followers, it is probably not going to be a very accurate reflection of your followers. If you have over 10k even less so. Perhaps we should be questioning the credibility of the tool rather than the people it's used against?

I understand that we only have the tools available to us, but this is certainly not a source I will be quoting. Similar to Klout, I feel as though this is just another tool that will be thrown around as and when it benefits the user.

I ask 2 things of anyone who decides to read this far:


1. Can we PLEASE question the information that is presented to us - in all aspects of our lives and; 
2. If you allow any of these 'apps' to access your twitter account, revoke the access once you're done. You will find it located under your settings. I highly recommend revoking anything you don't need.

Interestingly I have tried to run the Faker Scores just now, and now no data returns, even though I gave access again. Strange.

Naff off Localist

I've never been shy about my dislike of Yellow. And Yellow Locals is, in my opinion, a waste of time and money (yet again) which should have been spent on their website.

Anyway, this is not about Yellow, it's about Localist. Yes. NZ Post's own little directory. I have issues with Localist too - their Auckland directories (all 4 or 5 of them) are scheduled to be published TWICE a year and they wouldn't bundle the advertising across all directories; So if you are a regional advertiser rather than a local advertiser, there were no economies of scale for advertising across all 4/5 books. Granted, they may have changed this, but I wouldn't know as the rep hasn't been in since I told him I thought it was a waste of time for my client.

Anyway, that is not what got my back up. Below is what has got me miffed:

Someone asked me to log in and vote for their friend for something and when I saw I could log in with my twitter (or FB or 4square) I thought, "that's pretty rad! Makes life easy. OK, I'll sign in with Twitter!"


Ha! No I freaking won't! Apparently...


This application will be able to:

• Read Tweets from your timeline (okay, not so bad)
• See who you follow, and follow new people (I'm hoping when they say 'follow new people they mean them and not me?!?)
• Update your profile (You're going to be able to do WHAT!?)
• Post tweets for you (No. No you crazy MF. You will not be posting tweets for me.)

Before you start with 'Monica, you're such an idiot, it just means that they can post one of those "@iChild likes Localist" type tweets' I get that that is probably the case, but it's not specific. If it said, 'Post tweets for you with your permission' I'd be OK with that, but, especially with all the privacy issues going on with FB at the moment, there is no way I am opening up my communication channels any more than I already have.

You crazy Localist. This has just confirmed to me that I want nothing to with this organisation. Protect your accounts people! Remember than you can remove application permissions. Log in to Twitter, go:

Settings > Applications. You might be surprised what's lurking in there.

Hey Orcon - Is this similar to a nightmare?

Youch.

For a few days I have seen tweets coming through from @timkelleher in regards to him not having Internet or phone from Orcon. Now, knowing my reliance on the internet, I can imagine how frustrating it is to be without.

So, I don't know the full back story on this, but I imagine it is 'sign up - no internet or phone - get frustrated - take things into my own hands'.

Tim has created a website fifteen which is counting up how many days, hours, mins and seconds he has been waiting for Orcon to connect his phone and internet. It also has a tally of how long he has spent on the phone with technical support (which I image is all cell phone based since he has no landline...)

Then, like all smart Twitter users, he is utilising this medium to try to force a response, he has placed a tweet link on the bottom right corner.

And the tweets just keep coming. 

The above shows 8 tweets in 7 minutes. This must be SO frustrating for the people who run the @Orcon twitter account. Obviously they do not have the power to fix this directly, but do the have the power to elicit a response for poor Tim? You have to admit, he must be pretty pissed off to go out of his way to build this site.

I have had excellent action from the likes of @vodafoneNZ in my own experience, fixing issues and answering questions within minutes.

I think I have said it before, but Twitter continues to put power in the consumers hands. Back in my days of retail, I was often told, "a happy customer will tell, on average, 2 people about their experience, an unhappy customer, 11 people". That little line was enough for me to ensure all customers walked out of the store happy. Twitter has magnified the opportunity to express satisfaction, or lack thereof. 

Tim has 663 followers. 

Ben Gracewood tweeted, he has 4,300+ followers.

Ken Freer 1,500 followers

Ben and Ken are just 2 of what looks like over 100 people who have tweeted about this. The reason I picked out those other 2 is because they're quite vocal in the telco space and is often the reason people follow them.

This whole thing is quickly turning into something of a PR disaster. I don't have the answer on how to fix it, but personally, if I was running the Orcon account, I would put out a tweet acknowledging all of the support for Tim and reassure that they are doing everything possible to rectify this issue. From their current twitter stream, it looks like they are just ignoring it. I don't believe this to be a smart move. 


Twitter has given people a voice. They want to be heard. Ignoring them, will just make them louder.


Good luck Tim, hope you get your Internets quickly.

Social Searching

This is lovely.

I went to a presentation at MSN the other day and learnt about all the cool social search things they are rolling out in the States at the moment. One of these things is in conjunction with Facebook and even here in NZ we will soon have Facebook referrals from our friends when we search for things on Bing.

When I heard this, my concern was the amount of education required for the general public to understand that they could benefit from social searching and (basically) friend referrals IF they are logged into Facebook. Trying to explain to your average Joe Blow why their friends profiles turn up on Facebook plug-ins as per below:

For some reason they think it's magic that their faces are staring back at them. Seriously. I have had more than one conversation about this.

Either way, I think it is great and smart and a fantastic thing for Bing to implement. Being the underdog to Google, Bing has to do something to differentiate themselves and this seems like a clever way to do it.

Having so recently seen the Bing example, imagine my surprise when I was on a friends computer the other night, searching for The Chosen One and this pops up:

Social searching on Google! Due to the Microsoft/Facebook exclusive relationship (they're totally going steady), Bing has the advantage because Facebook is a BEAST, but at least Google is trying to make some headway in this area. Obviously Twitter isn't quite as big in New Zealand, but luckily for me, I embrace the Tweets, so I am hoping that this will bode well in my searching going forward.

Really interested in what other people might think about this? If you were searching for 'new cars' and the search returns a result which details that one of your friends like a certain brand, would you be more inclined to investigate further? I think it will be really handy for restaurant recommendations, but further than that, I'm not so sure.

Something with more substance

Social Medi-duh

Told you - more substance.

Please can people STOP paying money for courses on Social Media. Please. Or at least, just use it as a last resort.

Why? You may ask. Well, this is the thing about social media. It is a medium which is not only evolving everyday, it is also a medium which has no definitive structure or guidelines. There is no way to place absolute value on the work that you do in this space, but know that it is a space you should be aware of.

Recently there was a Social Media Club held at Ogilvy I think. Paul Webster from Facebook and Tom Osborne from Wag the Dog were 2 of the people who spoke. I didn't attend. Thought about it, decided I'd rather go for a run in the freezing cold.

At any rate, I did watch the tweets come through. What I severely dislike, more than anything else, is people who criticise but never attempt themselves. I did not have to be there to know that Tom was talking about the 2 degrees Facebook strategy which involved a calendar of 2 status updates per week + conversation with customers who engaged with them. Pretty quickly the tweets about how 'Facebook shouldn't be held back to restrictions and interactions should be fluid' came through.

Now, having spent some time talking to Paul from Facebook about not pissing off your fans - 2-3 status updates a week max so that you're not spamming people and they end up hiding you - I agree with the strategy. Yes, have a conversation with people that come to you, but don't broadcast too much because people will hide you and then forget about you. I don't want to point fingers, but there are certain 'Social Media Strategists/Experts/Gurus' out there who have friended me on Facebook (believe me, they're on a list) who have been guilty of spamming my news feed and I have hidden all posts from them. This is the pinnacle of what a brand wants to avoid.

If you are responsible for a brand and want to get into the Social Media space, before you spend any money take a minute to find out from friends/family why and how they use social media. Most people on Twitter are pretty strong advocates and are more than willing to teach others about it, as it helps build their community.

You don't need to dive head first into the deep end, take a week to listen to what others are saying and run some searches for keywords which pertain to your brand. If your brand comes up, certainly respond, but otherwise just check out what's going on. Once you've witnessed some of the conversations which are taking place, you'll probably feel a lot more comfortable about participating in them.

Total self promotion - but check out Twitter for Beginners Part One, Two, Three and Four if you'd like a bit of a kick start. I wrote this for the most amazing woman in the world (she knows who she is) who had a Twitter account but wasn't using it as it seemed too hard. I am please to announce that she is rocking Twitter now.

Look, at the end of the day, we all started out 1 tweet at a time, even the Social Media 'experts'.

If you want to pay someone to teach you about social media - pay me. My email address is on the right hand side. It'll cost you a coffee, or a wine. Probably a wine. If you're still at a loss and want to do it yourself, then go on a course, but give it a shot first.

Twitter for Beginners - Part Four

We're so close. Next topic, easy search columns in Tweetdeck. There is a + at the top of Tweetdeck, click that and you can add a 'lists' column (we covered lists in part two), or connect with your Facebook/Myspace/LinkedIn account, or you can search for a keyword(s). Here I have searched for RWC (as Rugby World Cup is one of those things that has rubbed me up the wrong way lately):

Which then creates a new column with ALL tweets which have RWC in them. As you can see below, there is mention to ANZ being a major sponsor and comment on the Jeremy Wells ad; using the search term you can monitor what is being said out in the Twittershere - this is particularly handy if you are running Twitter on behalf of a company - and you can find out who is talking about your brand/whatever it is you are looking for, outside of just the people you are following.If however you are looking after an international brand within NZ, use Twitter Search 'advanced search' on the Internet to do a localised search. It isn't fool proof, but will capture the bulk of NZ Tweets. Just centre your search around an NZ town. For example, what if you were McDonalds?This way you can see what people who (when they signed up to Twitter) classify themselves as being in NZ are saying about McDonalds:

Nothing is 100%, but it's better than nothing.

OK - so finally, why does anyone want to know what you had for lunch? Twitter is all about sharing. Sharing thoughts, information, recommendations and (frequently) complaints. If you've had an amazing lunch, Twitter is an easy place to recommend a cafe or restaurant. Similarly, if you have experienced bad service or food it is an easy warning/venting system - and if the restaurant/cafe is paying attention, then they can address the issue, or thank a twitterer for their compliments.

Twitter is all about listening, sharing, networking and communicating with other people - and the brilliant thing, is that it gives you access to a world of people you may never have had the opportunity to converse with previously.

If there is anything I haven't covered that you want to know about, or something that needs further clarification, please don't hesitate to comment or flick me an email. I can't promise that I will be able to answer your question, but I might be able to find someone who does on Twitter.

Now, go forth and Tweet.

Twitter for Beginners - Part Three

Sorry for the delay, but here we go... part three. At the end of part two I said that this was going to "cover tweeting photos, short URLs, Retweets, searches and I will tell you why people do want to know what you had for lunch..." so that is what I am going to do over part three, and part four.

The nice thing about Tweetdeck, I can't promise the other Twitter clients do all the same things, is that it makes Tweeting photos, shortening URLs, Retweeting and searches easy as pie.

First things first, photos. There are lots of different sites which will store your pics and publish them to twitter, I use yfrog but there is also twitpic and tweetphoto, (take your pic - ha ha ha) which allows you to take photos on via phone and upload them or upload straight from a laptop. Within Tweetdeck you can simply drag and drop the pic into the 'compose update' field and within the settings function you can choose which pic client you want to use, after that, it's all automatic.

So the above is a picture that I took today whilst walking up Queen Street, I think the window is going to look great, but I will be interested to see how many of the post it notes last the night...

So I twittered the picture, and one of the people that followed me decided that they wanted to share the picture too, so they Retweeted it (RT). In this instance they commented before they retweeted my tweet:

Twitterers have the option to comment on what they are retweeting or directly retweet it as per:The above is what I see in the web version when someone automatically RT's my tweet. In tweetdeck it looks something like:

However this will not come through in my mentions - which means to find out who has retweeted without editing, you do need to use the web version - unless someone else can shed light on this for me??

Retweeting is a nice way to share information which you find interesting with the people that follow you. Similarly, if your followers find your information interesting, they will share it. If for some reason you want people to retweet you - for example you write a blog, or are using Twitter on behalf of a company and want the information to reach further than just your followers - for the LOVE of all things good please work out how many characters 'RT +@(your)username' takes up and make sure that when you compose that tweet, anyone who wants to RT it doesn't have edit it down before they do so - you gotta make it easy for them.

In Tweetdeck, if you want to RT something - click on the forward direction arrow when you mouse over the users avatar.

If you are including a link but the URL is super dooper long, there is a way around that as well. Tweetdeck again, being the clever little client that it is, automatically shortens your URL for you (but also gives you the option to unshorten it if you want the URL specifically). However, if for some reason you are using the web to tweet and need to get that URL down, then use bit.ly or tinyurl.com to help you shorten that URL. For example, the URL to my blog post for Part Two was super long, but bit.ly shortens it right down:

LOTS of characters to not nearly as many characters. Awesome times.

OK, I think that is enough for one blog post. We're so close... there is just search to go.

Twitter for Beginners - Part Two

So, following Twitter for Beginners - Part one I'm moving onto part two...

One of the many things I like about Twitter is that we're all still learning and over the last year or so, a number of companies have proved this by doing some questionable things on Twitter. My favourite (which I had to add my 2 cents to) was Super Liquor's Twt4Turkey campaign which I think was flawed, and which they refused to apologise for, they simply kept making excuses.

Thing is, because we're all still learning, the Twitter community is quite forgiving. Put your hand up, admit the mistake and move on. For example, yesterday, writing my blog about Twitter I was corrected on one of the terms I used - so I corrected my post; I acknowledged I was wrong and moved on.

The nice thing about making mistakes, it means your learning.

So, how to interact with Twitter in a way that will make it as easy as possible to include Twitter into your life.

Don't use the web to run Twitter. Use a Twitter client. There are lots of Twitter clients that you can use: Seesmic, Chromed Bird (to run on Chrome), Brizzly, and many more no doubt, but my favourite is Tweetdeck.

So when you first download Tweetdeck and connect your account, you are going to see 3 or so columns: 'All Friends', 'Mentions' and 'Direct Messages'. All friends is your feed of all the people that you follow, mentions are when another Twitterer is talking to, similarly with direct messages.

Quick side note on using Twitter:

People can talk directly to you. An @ reply (this is when you use an @ symbol directly in front of a username without a space) is a conversation between one (or many) Twitterer/s and you. Please be aware that if you @ reply to someone, any of your followers who follow both you and the person you're talking to, will get your conversation in their Twitter feed. If you want the conversation to remain private, use a direct message.

EDIT (3/5): If you want to @ reply someone when in Tweetdeck, mouse over their avatar (the picture) and click on the curved arrow - it will automatically put the @username in the text field. Sorry - that was probably an important piece of information I left out. Similarly, for a direct message, when hovering over the avatar, click on the icon that looks like an envelope. This will have a D in front of the username.

So this is what my tweetdeck looks like:

The 2 right hand columns show the way I filter Twitter. When you start to follow a large number of people the tweets can come thick and fast, so you need a way to make sure that you see information that is relevant to you without having to read every single tweet that comes through. So you set up lists:

So I have public lists nz-digital and nz-adagency. Anyone can follow these lists. The other lists, are just for me. There is a grab a seat list (so that i can get immediate notification of grabaseat deals) friends list (for Twitterers that I know personally) then the rest of my lists are separated by topic, food & drink, fashion & magazines and music. These allow me to get a snap shot of what is happening rather than searching for information.

It all looks a little like this:

And within the settings function you can decide what kind of alerts you receive from tweetdeck as per below:

This means that when I get a 'mention', 'direct message' or someone from my 'friends' list tweets - I get a detail notification box:

For all other tweets, I get a summary:

It lets me know at a glance what is coming through and can alert me to things I might want to look at more closely.

Personally, I think that a Twitter client is the only way to absorb and utilise Twitter efficiently. People often ask "how do you have time for Twitter" but the thing is, once this is all set up, I would estimate Twitter takes up less than half an hour out of my entire day. That includes checking Twidroid on my phone on the way to work, whilst at work - which includes checking my search lists (will cover this in part three) - and once I get home. Really, honestly, not that much time.

Right, so I have covered setting up an account and how to use a Twitter client to make Twitter easier, part three I will cover off tweeting photos, short URLs, Retweets, searches and I will tell you why people do want to know what you had for lunch...

Twitter for Beginners - Part One

So I am a bit of a Twitter fiend. I love Twitter, I think it is a phenomenal tool for learning, sharing information, networking, crowd sourcing, news gathering, venting, solving problems, showing appreciation. I use Twitter for so many different purposes, that I often find it hard to explain to people the point of Twitter. I get in a bit of a jumble and tend to not explain it very well.

This way I get to edit, so here's hoping that it goes a little better. Please be aware however, you are going to have to read all parts to this to understand fully why I love Twitter and how you can utilise it best. I'm not sure if it is going to be 2 or 3 part... We'll see how much I can cover off.

So Twitter is classified as a micro-blogging tool. 140 characters to get out what you have to say. In the text message age we live in, this is actually not a hard thing - we're accustomed to abbreviating and finding new ways to express ourselves these days.

So, you set up a Twitter account. Then what? What I hear more than anything else from new twitterers is "no one wants to know what I had for lunch" but actually, they couldn't be more wrong. I promise I will explain why, later. In the meantime, let's say, no, they don't. So what is the point.

Like many things (including Facebook) Twitter is something that takes a little time to get into. At first you feel like a bit of a dick, following people, when you have no followers, and you have to hunt them out, it is all a little overwhelming. Where do you start?

Step 1: Set up your account. You don't need to use your real name in your user name, but I would highly recommend using it when setting up your account. When followed by some random username and fullname which is not recognisable, I pretty much ignore them and don't even bother looking to see what they have to say, which means no returned follow. Because of the number of spam accounts out there, anything that makes you personable (as that is what Twitter is about, having conversations with other real people) helps to build your followers which gives you people to start having conversations with.

I would also recommend that you put actual information about yourself in the bio area (don't use mine as a reference) and utilise the option of including a website if you have a blog or in fact your own site.

Next issue, who to follow? Well, here's the thing. Most people jump on Twitter because someone they know is on Twitter.

Step 2: Find the people who you know are already on Twitter:

Step 3: Once you find them, check out who they are following. If you know them there is a likelihood that they are following other people that you know, or may have heard of. Check under 'following' on the right hand side:

Step 4: If they're a pain in the arse like me who follows like 550 odd people, then see if they have utilised the 'lists' function on Twitter. I find that this is the most underestimated tool on Twitter. What a user can do is create their own list of followers and even people they do not follow and categorize them. In this instance, I have a list titled 'nz-adagency' where I have listed people I follow, and a few others as being in the agency world in NZ:

Say you are also in the agency world, this list would potentially be of interest to you, and you could either follow the list, or all the people on the list.

OK. So, hopefully after those 4 steps you can set up an account and start making your way around Twitter a little. I would suggest sending 1 tweet which does acknowledge that you're just getting started so that when people check you out it gives them hope that there will be more to come.

The next most important thing to do on Twitter as far as I'm concerned, is to download an API so that you don't have constantly log into Twitter on the web (and constantly refresh the page) it is a waste of time and you can make it work for you much better.

I am going to cover APIs and the ways you can use them to make your Twitter experience more seamless in Part Two. I promise that Part Two will be up this week. I'm aiming for tomorrow, but no guarantees.

EDIT: In case you are RSS'ing this and haven't read the comments - apparently I don't mean API, I mean a Twitter client. So, tomorrow - or today - Twitter clients. Yay!

Monica-technological-term-understanding-fail.

Yellow-freaking-chocolate

Right, well I thought it was about time I put my thoughts to this Yellow Chocolate... thing.

I haven't been much of a fan of this campaign since the beginning and you can find out in full, why here or I can give you the quick version:

• They are doing an advertising campaign, a lot of which is driving to their online product, for a product that leaves little to be desired
• Awesome ideas integrating twitter (banner ads and twitter billboards) which as far as I can tell, didn't actually work
• Bad links & a slow loading website

So that was what I thought was wrong with it back in October.

Reasons I am still not a fan of the campaign.

I understand that this is pretty niche and probably cost Yellow a lot of money, but only going with progressive for distribution? Uncool. Way too hard for me to get my hands on the product and it's not interesting for me to go out of my way to get.

The end product (Yellow online) is still shite and what is worse, is that they have a total monopoly on this market in NZ and we don't have a choice. Now, in Hazel's piece in NBR back on 12 Feb there is a quote from the marketing manager about this: "We're a print-based product that's been trying to become a digital media brand and it takes time. It's not just as simple as an IT person going in and fixing it."

THIS bugs the living daylights out of me. The internet is not a new contraption that came along last year that everyone is trying to come to terms with. The internet has been here for a while now, and there was obviously a decision at some point to take Yellow online. This may be a case of, 'we'll have an online presence because we need one' however, the end product, should have been fixed a long, long time ago. I agree, it is not a matter of an IT person going in and fixing it. It is a matter of paying one of the many, many talented people in NZ who can make this product as good as it can be and giving them a slice of your pie.

I was going to continue to rant and rave about this campaign (you know, the people that I have talked to that have tasted it have not exactly raved about it - that it was way too sweet etc. or the fact that there is way too much yellow food colouring in our food as it is, like we need anymore) but instead I am going to make a call. Its a biggie. I hope you are ready for it. I'm going to make a comparison.

Yellow and Telecom XT.

Are you ready for this?

- Both nationwide services

- Both have something of a monopoly on the market

- Both should be providing customers with the best possible service

- NEITHER are delivering to a level they should be

- Both have products which are broken

- Both spent a pretty penny (and if you think about the turnover for each company, we're talking relative comparisons here) on advertising campaigns which only appealed to a niche audience: Hammond & XT - Top Gear fans; Josh & Yellow - teenage girls (this is a quote from Ms Nathan, Yellow's marketing person, in the 11 Feb issue of The Independent) when they really could have invested in advancing their technology rather than deciding they were 'good enough'. Did they decide that they were good enough? Or did they just give up?

So there you go. I have had a number of hits to the blog with people searching 'yellow chocolate'. Now, I'm not sure if this was the kind of information that they were looking for, or if they are searching for bars on sale online. None of that here kids. Just opinions. My opinions. That's the way I roll.

For the record - this is how big the Internet is:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

Really big.

Yellow Chocolate - Sour Taste

Ok, am I the only one who has a sour taste left in my mouth having witnessed all the AMAZING things that Yellow are doing with their most recent advertising campaign?

So the TreeHouse thing didn't go down that well with me either, the whole thing was very Auckland and I felt like there was minimal advertising of the whole thing and was more of an award entry than a campaign.

So now we have Josh and his yellow chocolate. Awesome.

So I have seen a couple of television ads on this one and I get the impression that this one might be a slightly more integrated campaign than the last. So, when I read that they had created a billboard that was going to display this guys tweets, I though, CHOICE! What a completely rad idea. That's amazing!

This twitpic of the billboard was via @kenfreer and was originally put up by @hamishhaldane:

Then Stoppress wrote an article which had this image:

Then I started following Josh's tweets, and my excitement very quickly disappeared. Quite happy to be corrected on this one, but his tweets reeks of something that has been planned, semi-scripted and is being 'tweeted' by some intern or account exec. Happy to be told otherwise, but unfortunately, that is how it reads, to me anyway. The beauty of Twitter is that it is real time, immediate information/commenting/responding, and I have not yet seen this. All I have seen is a campaign start to unfold.

I got a little excited again when I saw that their banner on the Herald, thinking that they were going to have a real time Twitter updated banner - again, I think that the tweets that are being sent are average, it was more the technology that I was excited about, but alas...

They do not seem to be real time to me, these screen shots are part of a 3 roll banner, unless perhaps they are picking up the last 3 tweets then maybe that is cool, but I don't think this is what is happening AND this also kinda starts to back up my theory on the fact the tweets are scripted... Maybe? Maybe I am cynical, but its my opinion, so there.

What really irked me about about the banner ads, and the reason this gets to me is that it is not hard to do, is that I clicked on the part of the banner which says 'Follow Josh on Twitter or ..." I clicked directly on the 'Twitter' logo and what do you know, I go through to this:

That's a FAIL. I didn't want to go to your website, I wanted to go to your Twitter feed. Come on. Its a flash file, you can link things to different URLs. This is not that difficult.

The website is pretty cool though, it is nicely put together, I like the background video, very clever.

Before I go on - Ideas = amazing. Execution = not sold. I don't buy that the tweets are not scripted and the banner ads are a fail all round.

So now I am going to go on.

I am sorry Yellow, but perhaps, instead of spending a BUCKET load of money on an advertising campaign (you kinda have things covered when it comes to big fat books that have lots of phone numbers in it - market share, tick) hows about you spend some freaking money on making your website work properly? Yellow.co.nz cannot think for itself and surely you realise that the general population is not that smart, they need your site to think for them.

For example, I want to check out Savemart in Masterton as I have been told it is something of an untapped area when it comes to op-shops. So I search 'Save Mart' as in my mind, this is how I see the sign. Results displayed:

Yeah, needless to say, I was not looking for butchers. So I put the words together and ta da!

Now, this is a pretty average example, however so frequently I can't spell the name of the place I am looking for, but I know what city it is in so I try Yellow or White pages. All too often, my there will be no results for whatever I have searched for, so naturally I turn to Google and ask them, because Google loves me, even though I can't spell, and suggests that maybe I was looking for something else? "Here you go, this is what I think you want." "Thanks Google, you're the best."

What was my point? Fix your end product. I'm not trying to say that I think it would be an easy thing to do, not by any stretch of the imagination, however I do think that your advertising budget would be better spent in R&D so that when you do advertise, users don't get pissy with you.