Then (Twitter) and now (Google+)

Twitter town hall cynicism is misplaced

Politics breeds cynicism that way email breeds spam. A lot of the cynicism directed at US President Barack Obama’s Twitter Town Hall is misplaced.

To be clear, my opinions would be identical if this had been a Republican president making history as the first President to conduct a Q&A session with citizens via Twitter.

The criticisms fell roughly into three camps:

• It was just a publicit/marketing stunt/gimmick
• It allowed the President to avoid tough questions while promoting his talking points
• It was a clueless use of the technology that failed to leverage Twitter’s strengths as a vehicle for social change

Just a publicity stunt

… Read More »

Duke Nukem escapade exposes blacklisting as a common practice that must stop

One of the more distressing aspects of the recent Duke Nukem Forever dustup had nothing to do with Jim Redner‘s ill-advised tweet threatening to blacklist those who penned what he deemed particularly savage negative reviews.

Between Redner (who lost his biggest client as a result), New Media Strategies (which was fired from the Chrysler account over a similarly misguided tweet), former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner (who resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives over tweets he should never have sent) and a Ketchum Communications exec who tweeted his distaste for the City of Memphis after landing there for a client meeting (a… Read More »

Logo Twitter accounts are fine if they meet your audience’s needs

At a recent conference, I heard a highly-respected (and respectable) PR professional argue that Twitter accounts should always—always—be a real person with a real-person avatar. Logo accounts, he said, shold be avoided.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard this argument. In Shel Israel‘s book, “Twitterville,” Department of Defense consultant Mark Drapeau is quoted (from a Mashable.com post) saying, “Twitter is about people sharing information with other people. So how do one-dimensional organizational brands fit into the mix? When you think about it, they don’t.” Drapeau concluded: “Ban them altogether.”

Drapeau told Israel that real… Read More »

FIR Interview: Laura Fitton on the business focus at OneForty.com

OneForty.com started out as a Twitter app store, the brainchild of Twitter convert Laura Fitton. The site has recently undergone a major shift in focus. While continuing to offer 3,000-plus apps—mostly for Twitter but expanding into other social apps, including Facebook apps—Fitton has refocused the site on the needs of the business community. In this FIR interview, Fitton discusses with FIR co-host Shel Holtz how OneForty.com attracted business connections from the outset, leading to the revisions to the site, and talks about specific elements of OneForty.com that will prove useful to both providers and customers of social services… Read More »

The Kenneth Cole post you haven’t read yet

I just ran a Google Blogsearch and found about 25,300 results on “kenneth cole” twitter Egypt. The world doesn’t need another post about the fashion designer who stumbled badly with a tweet that hijacked the #Cairo hashtag to promote his Spring collection.

And yet, an elephant lingers in the room.

The posts I’ve read (which, admittedly, doesn’t come close to 25,300) have fallen into a couple clear categories. Some, like Todd Defren’s great post with the provocative headline, offer advice about how to avoid such incidents. “Think before you tweet,” Todd says; “What goes online stays online.” eConsultancy wants readers to avoid… Read More »

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