Skittles goes all in on Twitter
Skittles Vodka (with instructions on Flickr)
In a brilliant publicity move, tonight Skittles made its website home page primarily a Twitter search on “Skittles.” (They overlay a menu that lets you get to other Skittles content, including Facebook, Flickr and Wikipedia.)
Even if they take it down quickly, everyone will be talking about it for some time to come.
Like any good publicity stunt, this required rare courage.
I’ve already read several folks putting obscenities together with Skittles (some more creatively than others), or folks just adding the word to any tweet. The conversation will be as much backlash and criticism as anything else. But the point is exactly that people are talking about what Skittles did. And any publicity is good publicity, right? You just can’t buy the kind of media this will generate.
As well, we’ll all learn something in the conversations and fallout. That alone is worth the experiment. Bravo, Skittles.
Update (9:21am Monday):
Skittles is generating so much traffic to to Twitter that users are complaining of timeouts on loading pages (and TweetSuite isn’t yet updating with all the folks who’ve been kind enough to tweet a link to this blog). I’m looking forward to hearing from @abdur, Twitter’s Chief Scientist and creator of search.twitter.com, what he thinks of all this (and whether Skittles gave him a heads up).
@dalelarson on skittles.com
Update 2 (Monday afternoon):
I liked this post, inspired me to think a bit deeper and comment:
Skittles Goes Modernista! With A Distributed Experience.
So far the only comments I’ve seen out of Twitter about Skittles are:
“I am neither… there are both pro and con points” (thanks for getting back to me, Abudur!),
and Netik’s quick response to @LaughingSquid: “I don’t know what they’re thinking.”
Though one might take this status blog entry to mean that Skittles blew a fuse at Twitter’s datacenter: “We experienced a brief data center power failure this morning affecting a small number of servers. Site performance was degraded for 5 minutes.“
Competition Reduces Friction for Payments
Great news for business models that monitize by charging users: new competition in the payments space is heating up.
The iPhone AppStore capitalizes on 75 million iTunes accounts attached to credit cards to make buying cheap apps frictionless for users. I still want to extend it to paying for web and desktop apps and add flexibility for content and subscriptions.
PayPal powers payments on EBay (where the payments are larger), but doesn’t have quite the same easy single-click power and hasn’t been widely applied to the application/content space. Others, such as Google Checkout have never reached critical mass.
Yesterday, Amazon.com launched its Flexible Payments Service (previously in limited beta), touting it as “the first payments service designed from the ground up for developers.” They clearly intend it to work for e-commerce, digital goods, donations and online services, including digital music and online storage, and provide for subscriptions and recurring payments. Customers pay using the same login credentials, shipping address and payment information they already have on file with Amazon. In other words, it looks like it could compete with both of the above.
Sounds like a great foundation for the service I want to create…
A hint about good presentations, Politics as an example of transparency? and OMMA Social
The best speakers bring authenticity through personal stories.
It was easy to focus on Rich Ullman’s lunchtime talk during OMMA Social today as he creatively wove in stories and slides from his experience over the last 48 hours. (Sorry about that olive, Rich.)
He made a point about transparency making newly appointed U.S. Senator Gillibrand an example. With the news around her appointment, he’d just learned that as a congresswoman, her Sunlight Report broke ground making her the first to list her official schedule daily (who she is meeting with) and among the first to disclose all her earmark requests and post her financial disclosure reports.
Cool!
Take it one step further:
I’d love it if every member of congress had a Twitter feed updated as they went through their daily meetings and proposed, amended, or voted on budgets or legislation. Following those I vote for would be manageable and give me a much deeper awareness and sense of engagement.
[Rich was kind enough to upload his slides to Slideshare within an hour of my request. Thanks!]
[You might also be interested in live blog posts about each presentation at OMMA Social by @dberkowitz]
Best iPhone Twitter app comes down to Tweetie vs. Twittelator Pro
Tweetie screenshot main page
Gizmodo’s new comprehensive review of iPhone apps evaluated many more than I did (”ten zillion”), but matches my own experience. We both narrow it down to Tweetie vs. Twittelator Pro.
I’ve been switching back and forth between the two for the last month or two. Either is a great app with the edge for smoothness going to Tweetie (which also seems to display more tweets on the page). The edge for pure power goes to Twittelator Pro.
Twittelator Pro screenshot main page
Twittelator has a great feature I wish was included in other iPhone apps: a button to scroll down a whole page at a time. This is especially useful in catching up with a long list of tweets. This is the only app I’ve seen with this functionality, so it’s a nice innovation.
The other power feature I make use of in Twittelator is the ability to define my own saved searches.
I can’t think of anything in Tweetie that Twittelator doesn’t do (well, there are fart noises and the flashlight if you enable the Popularity Enhancer).
Despite all that, my current swing is in favor of Tweetie, though I still switch it up. Which do you prefer?
Suing over negative Yelp reviews (and a better response)
A friend of mine, Michael Blacksburg, represents defendant Christopher Norberg in a case where a chiropractor has sued over a negative review on Yelp. They’re in mediation today, trial in March if it doesn’t settle.
The case raises complex issues for everyone such as:
- where are the lines between fact and opinion
- how much should that legal distinction apply to consumer review sites?
- how should online review sites be structured to be fair to both sides?
- how should they handle negative comments?
- how should reviewer reputation and identity contribute?
- what about anonymous reviews?
The Chron has a good story (and an editorial), and I liked PC World’s review of the lawsuit and they had a lively discussion on NPR’s Forum this morning with an attorney from the EFF (who threw one hell of a great birthday party earlier this week).
How should businesses participate in the process and respond to negative comments online?
I’m in the camp that says the lawsuit does chiropractor Steven Biegel far more harm than good (no matter what the outcome). Everyone would be better off to handle these issues conversationally than legally.
I like the suggestion ‘from Sharemarketing’: Don’t sue your way out of a bad review on Yelp:
Suing is the exact wrong thing to do. Why not go onto Yelp and respond. Say something like this:
“I respect the opinion of Mr. Norberg, a client of mine from date to date. But I think his characterization of me is wrong. I’m honest and hard working, and I’ll work hard to solve the issue you have. Also, my rates are public and agreed upon before treatement. I’m not sure what specific disagreement Mr. Norberg had with me, but I wish he would have talked to me directly instead of using Yelp. Call me anytime, night or day and I’ll happily explain how my treatment works, and I’ll let you know the rates.”
UPDATE 2:36pm 9-Jan-09 Blackie texted to tell me that the case settled to the mutual satisfaction of both parties. (The issues raised, however, remain for all of us as we move forward online!) Elinor Mills at CNet provides great coverage of the settlement.
Obama’s Blackberry: “They’re going to have to pry it out of my hands”
The NYT explains about Obama’s Blackberry: “Attached to his belt for years, he has vigorously argued, [it is] an essential link to keeping him apprised of events outside his ever-tightening cocoon.”
Obama on why he’s being asked to give it up: “This is a concern, I should add, not just of Secret Service, but also lawyers.”
I still propose that Obama should not give up his Blackberry, but keep it and put it to even better use. Don’t secure it, free it!
(UPDATE 1/12/09: a couple of interesting posts on the BarackBerry over at CrunchGear geek out on the issues today.)
iPhone vs. Blackberry: Touchscreen no substitute for good user experience
A new study of user satisfaction thirty days after purchase confirms what some have been saying all along (see previous post Storm vs. iPhone: Experience not Features).
Touchscreens no substitute for good user experience.
Despite several shortcomings, the iPhone user experience is great for a variety of consumer and smartphone uses. The iPhone UX isn’t a function of the touchscreen (or any other feature) but of overall design.
On the other hand, all but the Blackberry Storm are great purpose-made devices for reading and writing email. Highly recommended if that’s your primary use for a smart phone. RIM optimized the Blackberry UX
The Storm, on the other hand, just blows.
The Tale of Despereaux: World’s First Live-Twitter Movie Review?
In the middle of a press screening for the movie The Tale of Despereaux last Saturday morning, Ken Twittered me:
I replied:
dalelarson: @kyeung808 Yes, live tweeted the press screening, but not new. Did something similar in 90s with Star Wars: Episode 1, fax and web. 11:47 AM Dec 13th from Twittelator in reply to kyeung808
In other words, while I was in the theater seeing the movie a week early, I was Twittering whatever lines I found interesting. Ken asked if that was really what I was doing. And what it meant.
I’d done the same thing with an AC/DC concert the week before. Actually, there I tried to work song titles into witty sentences. Last year, I was asked to speak on Twitter to a conference at Stanford after live-tweeting Barry Bond’s record-breaking home run (from the fence, with the Sports Illustrated photographer who captured the moment).
All my unedited Tweets of The Tale of Despereaux are after the jump, and feel free to skip to the end for the actual one-tweet review. Since I’ve done mobile marketing for films from many studios, I have to wonder: what, if anything, does this change about how we share our experiences with each other and what movie marketers may need to consider in the future? Read more
One Best Business Strategy for Facebook, Twitter, Digg or LinkedIn
Filed under: Facebook, Twitter, marketing, social media, social networking, strategy
In Twitter isn’t the point, Holly Ross of NTEN comments on a study showing that influence and word of mouth are becoming more important than ever to consumer behavior, and more of it is happening online. She goes on:
I think we’re missing the mark, though. It’s not really about Twitter. It’s not about Facebook. It’s not about whatever the next buzzword is.
It’s about friends.
It’s about building real relationships that inspire people to act on your behalf. That’s the skill we should focus on building. Whether it’s Twitter or Digg or Facebook or LinkedIn, it’s about those relationships.
We have to teach ourselves to operate that way again.
We commonly use phrases like “Facebook Strategy” or “Mobile Strategy,” but we’d never talking about building a house in terms of “Hammer Strategy.” The technologies are just tools and our language is tricking us.
When we’re wowed by case-studies showing off the power and effectiveness of these tools, we’re really being impressed the underlying strategy, a powerful one that we can all take advantage of.
It’s easy to forget that it has always been one of the best business and marketing strategies to make friends. We do that by focusing on others, on listening to them and meeting their needs. How will your business be making friends and thriving in 2009?
WSJ: Respond strategically to Web 2.0 or be left behind
Filed under: mobile marketing, social media, social networking, strategy, web 2.0
If you haven’t already, read what the Wall Street Journal has to say about: The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.
It’s short, well-written, and says again what we need to keep hearing about how companies need respond strategically to Web 2.0. It’s not just implementing promotional marketing programs there as if it were a new media channel to add to the mix.
Remember how companies were left behind in the nineties. It wasn’t because they didn’t develop a web site or an email list quickly enough, it was because they didn’t have a good response to the changing environment and competition. They needed to add offerings and/or change positioning to carve out a new niche in the new world. Mobile and social media are causing even bigger shifts.
Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.
- A New Approach: Marketing these days is more about building a two-way relationship with consumers. Web 2.0 tools are a powerful way to do that.
- The Pioneers: A growing number of companies are learning how to collaborate with consumers online on product development, service enhancement and promotion.
- The Lessons: From these early efforts, a set of marketing principles have emerged. Among them: get consumers involved in all aspects of marketing, listen to and join the online conversation about your products outside your site, and give the consumers you work with plenty of leeway to express their opinions.