[United] has seen its share price plunge by 10%, wiping $180m off the company’s value. (via BBC)
Correlation or causation? Hard to tell but the PR disaster for United keeps rolling on.
If you like the pain, then check out an article by Daniel Finkelstein of the Times which I came across via Will Sturgeon. Finkelstein has “dug out some other classic examples of social media revenge from the archives.” Funny stuff.
Number of views now stand at over 3,650,000 and counting.
Facebook’s king Mark Zuckerberg proudly announced on the Facebook blog last week that the popular web destination is continuing its global dominance by jumping from 200 million to 250 million users. That’s over 50 million users in three months.
So if you like visualisations then you’ll love the timeline they released which tracks Facebook’s staggering worldwide growth to the quarter billion milestone on a map. Can’t seem to embed it here unfortunately, but click below to check it out.
29.4 million people accessed at least one social networking site in the U.K. in May, averaging 4.6 hours per visitor during the month
Facebook.com ranked as the most popular social networking site with 23.9 million visitors, followed by Bebo.com (8.5 million visitors), Windows Live Profile(6.9 million visitors) and MySpace Sites (6.5 million visitors)
Social network penetration was highest amongst 25-34 year old Internet users, 89 percent of whom visited the category during the May
15-24 year olds followed with 86 per cent
Here again, Facebook is out in front by a wide margin which tends to support an assertion made recently by the Silicon Valley Insider: ‘Facebook members don’t visit the site; they live on it.’
Amazingly, the study claims a correlation between social media engagement and revenue growth. Working in social media marketing/PR, this is music to my ears. But I’m inclined to agree with TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld:
I really doubt that their level of social media engagement had anything to do with their revenue growth, it is just that the strongest brands are the most engaged.
I love lists, but I love case studies even more and the report contains some best practices from Starbucks, Dell, SAP and Toyota. Its definitely worth a skim.
For me, the report highlights the need to keep my finger on the pulse of what other brands are doing online – and learning from it. When I come across a decent case study online I tend to file it on my Delicious profile under a ‘casestudy’ tab for future reference.
Some notable case studies include US electronics retailer Best Buy and soft drink giant Coca Cola, by Robin Grant from We Are Social. Michael Litman from Consolidated also did a smashing job a few months ago with his Mashable post about the Compare the Meerkat campaign. Beyond that, here are a few others that caught my eye recently:
Due to the success, Carroll has released a statement on YouTube yesterday expressing gratitude, telling people to go easy on Mrs. Irlweg and for United to donate their belated offer of compensation to a charity of their choosing. He also appears to be going ahead with the promise of three songs and to expect the next one shortly.
I think the video update was a pretty smart move on Dave’s part, and he comes off as very likeable (and Canadian?). United’s compensation offer strikes me as ‘too little, too late’ though. I suppose it was good of them to make the effort, but the effort is disastrously late.
Will be interesting to see how this whole story plays out with another few more songs on the way. The second album is always the hardest…
It’s definitely worth watching, and in it Peter shares his thoughts how blogging has changed over the years and how Skype is using social media (Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) in Europe and the rest of the world to engage directly with their customers.
I missed but Travelling Geeks, but here’s what it was all about:
The mission of Traveling Geeks is to collaborate with technology innovators and influencers in various regions of the world, then share what we’ve learned through blogging, video, podcasts, social media tools and meet-ups.
More than impressed by the efforts fellow Canuck Dave Caroll who posted a video on YouTube a couple days ago singing about how some United airlines ground crew workers seriously damaged his prized Taylor guitar. The video has quickly picked up steam online, gotten mainstream press on the other side of the pond and created a bit of a headache for United Airlines.
According to the Canadian Press: “Carroll spent the past year trying to get compensation from United because he says his favourite guitar was practically destroyed by baggage handlers.” When he got nothing, he made the following video:
The song is actually pretty funny, and reminds me a bit of the ‘world’s best passenger complaint letter‘ to Virgin that made the rounds on the internet back in January.
A story in the Chicago Tribune says that Carroll “spent hours reasoning with United agents in Chicago, New York and India” over a nine-month period to pick up the $1,200 cost and it went nowhere. So he took action. In Carroll’s word (via his YouTube channel):
I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.
I wouldn’t want to be Ms. Irlweg right now.
Apparently Taylor Guitars in California has since got in touch to say they’d be happy to see if they could “repair the damaged guitar and they promised a deep discount on his next purchase.” Well done Taylor (but how about a free guitar for Dave?)
Though United has they ‘liked the video’ and wanted to use it as ‘textbook case on how to handle customer complaints in the future’, they still come off a bit battered from this. Some attempts have been made through their Twitter account to say sorry to their 15K followers but I can’t help but think the damage may well be done.
Ben Mutzabaugh on USA Today’s ‘Today in the Sky’ probably said it best: “The move shows just how quickly the Internet can help a disgruntled customer can turn the tables on a company and its effort to manage its public image.”
At the time of writing, the video has received over 500K views on YouTube. That’s an awful lot of people with the message ‘United breaks guitars’ stuck in their head.
Throughout April and May this year Text 100 conducted a survey across 21 countries and received feedback from 449 bloggers about how they like being contacted, the content they find useful, how much time they spend blogging and a variety of other topics. It was a great process to be a part of and on 25 June we released the results publicly.
This interview was conducted by FIR Asia Correspondent Michael Netzley, and in it Jeremy discusses the results and their implications for the profession. It’s definitely worth a listen.
If podcasts aren’t your thing, then you can download the decks on Scribd and Slideshare, or check it out below.
Earlier this morning I tweeted an article that I thought, at the time, might have been overstating things a bit:
No doubt the memorial service was expected to be big, but the biggest event in the history of the internet? I was a bit skeptical. But the article rightly pointed out that:
Since Jackson’s death almost two weeks ago, fans have been inundating social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace with comments, tributes and downloads, while searches for Jackson-related news have reached record levels on Google and Yahoo.
The ‘morning after’ he featured prominently on my Spotify playlist. And scrolling back over my Twitter activity the last couple weeks, I’ve made my fair share of #MJ related Tweets (here, here and here for example).
I can’t really comment on the ‘biggest event in history’ but on reflection, I think the Times might have had a point to an extent. The last couple weeks have been pretty significant and a number of services have been showing signs of Michael Jackson-related strain. So I’ve decided to go back and compile many Michael Jackson online stats as I could, to get a sense of the enormity of what’s been happening. There’s certainly been no shortage of them:
5 of the top 10 selling singles on iTunes for the week ending July 6, 2009 were by Michael Jackson (#2 Man In the Mirror, #6 Billie Jean, #7 Thriller, #8 The Way You Make Me Feel and #10 Beat It)
4 of the top 10 selling albums on iTunes for the week ending July 6, 2009 were by Michael Jackson (#1 The Essential Michael Jackson, #3 Number Ones, #6 Thriller and #9 Off the Wall)
A similar spike in traffic can be observed by graphing ‘Michael Jackson’, ‘MJ’ and just ‘Jackson’ (due to the frequent misspelling of Michael’s first name) on Twitter over the past 30 days:
Source: http://twist.flaptor.com
I could go on but you get the picture – it’s been a pretty mad couple of weeks! I think the figures above show not just a morbid fascination with Michael’s death, but also a celebration of his life to an extent.
Something tells me that Michael’s story online won’t end anytime soon.
Do comment or let me know if I’ve missed any significant stats/figures/etc.
Welcome. For some time I’ve wanted a place to jot down my thoughts on online PR and social media, but neither the format nor focus of my current blog made it a good place to do so.
So this happened.
I hope it joins the long list of successful pun-based PR blogs that can currently be found throughout the UK blogosphere.
Seems news of Dave Carroll’s YouTube hit has finally floated across the Atlantic and this morning a number of UK news outlets have been picking it up:
Welcome. For some time I’ve wanted a place to jot down my thoughts on online PR and social media, but neither the format nor focus of 
