Is the power of social media returning the power to the people?
Thursday, July 07, 2011 11:17:00 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
I watched a couple of really interesting things unfold today which lead me to believe that this is a day I won't forget for a while -and Twitter (or more widely social media) was instrumental in both.
At 12:04:25 today (7th July) Sarah tweeted this status which linked through to her blog post about currys.co.uk which vented her frustration at the way Currys UK treated her.
This isn't the first time that a frustrated consumer has openly complained about their service from a large corporation (and it won't be the last) but where in the past most of the blog posts have fallen by the wayside, what's interesting about this particular instance is the additional clout Twitter added.
I'm almost certain that the call-center person thought "whatever" when Sarah said that she was going to show them the power of social media but I don't think they quite expected the response they got.
The Data
| Hour (GMT) | Tweets |
| 12:00 | 121 |
| 13:00 | 80 |
| 14:00 | 49 |
| 15:00 | 33 |
| 16:00 | 10 |
| 17:00 | 10 |
| 18:00 | 7 |
| 19:00 | 1 |
| 20:00 | 1 |
| 21:00 | 2 |
| Total | 314 |
We wrote a monitor for the various projects we're working on at the moment so I setup a search for the phrase "sazzy currys" which resulted in the following data:
Within the first hour alone, around 120 tweets had been sent. "120? That's a drop in the ocean for Currys" I hear you say -this is true. However to help put it into perspective, when we launched www.borninthebarn.co.uk, 35 tweets generated well over 5,500 hits (and it's still rising) so using the same ratios, that's roughly 19,000 hits and it doesn't factor in those tweeters with far more reach than my followers have (many of Sarah's friends have over 10,000 followers) so I suspect that 19,000 is conservative.
Assuming the same ratios throughout then, so far in the space of 10 hours, Sarah has reached and audience of well over 50,000 people -all who are able to empathize with her and will no doubt further communicate the message.
Ironically (or perhaps more conveniently) @CurrysOnline was only setup within the past two weeks* so this isn't a great introduction to social media -but could certainly be turned around and turned into a good thing if they played their cards right.
* Interesting side note, I did question whether that's an official account because:
- Their first tweet was on a Sunday -not necessarily what you'd expect from a company that I rather suspect only makes their marketing department work Mon-Fri 9-5
- They're not using the same logo as the website (could just be an internal branding issue granted)
- There's no mention of the account on their site from what I could see from a cursory read
The Public vs. News of the World
The second -and I think more concerning/end-of-and-era type thing that happened today was that News of the World (a UK tabloid) announced that it was printing it's last issue this Sunday.
Putting to one side the ethics of why it's getting closed down, I get the impression that social media as a whole has played a large part in the decision. In the past (as with the @Sazzy vs @CurrysOnline above), people have ranted and raved online about things but as there hasn't been a real "collective" so to speak, these haven't had that much of an impact.
Today however I've seen message after message about the News of the World (it's also been fueled by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB takeover bid) but the general temperature of the public can now be actively monitored -and sadly for these large corporates it's all out in the open.
In Closing
As the saying goes "With great power comes great responsibility" so I'm still undecided as to whether this new found voice/power is a good thing but the reality is, if the larger corporates don't sit up and start listening quickly I rather suspect that more will fall fowl soon.
CodeGarden 08 -been there, done that, got the t-shirt!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008 7:18:53 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
So things have been manic here the past week, for those of you who didn't know, I popped over to Denmark at the last minute to attend Umbraco's CodeGarden 08. It was great fun and I have to thank Niels Hartvig and Per Ploug Hansen for putting on a great couple of days.
You can check out my photos from the event on Flickr (bear with me, I'm just getting started with Flickr).
I'm sure a fair few people have blogged about the highlights (if you're interested check www.umbraco.org) but the biggy was announcing the release of Umbraco v3.14.0 which is pretty exciting news as it has a ton of feature enhancements and UI improvements. Also, you'll be pleased to hear that they're making 2008 the year of Umbraco documentation!
Another interesting points from the conference was the pending release of Umbraco.TV which will feature tutorial videos and insights from the core team on how to use Umbraco and the Umbraco store which allows you to easily distribute the packages you make :) All in all some interesting developments.
There were also a fair few English developers at the conference so discussion inevitably turned to a UK meet (I know there are a fair few designers and developers here that couldn't justify the expense) so that's something that I'm going to look into setting up. If this is something you'd be interested in, leave a comment or drop me an email and we'll see how much interest there is.
To all the rest of you -it was great to meet you, you're all a lovely bunch and I look forward to meeting you again at CodeGarden 09!
The other thing I've finally clarified (this is for you Simon!) is the Umbraco licensing rules so if you're unsure on those, check out my post on when you need to purchase an Umbraco license (the answer is always -or never, it's up to you!).
Another successful Multipack meet
Monday, March 10, 2008 12:58:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
So Saturday was another chance to meet up with all the Multipack guys in a recently restructured Multipack -same place (The Old Joint Stock in Birmingham), same time (second Saturday of the month). Personally I think it's a good move as the numbers were well up on normal with lots of lovely new Multipackers (I'm no longer the n00bie ;)) from all sorts of interesting backgrounds.
It's great that Multipack is slowly becoming more recognised; at Saturday's meet for example Underscore veteran Darren Beale trekked up from Worcester which was nice as I could finally put a face to the name. Hopefully over the next few months, with a little more self-publication and this easy to remember location/date we'll get more new members.
If you're not sure about coming along just yet, check out the website www.multipack.co.uk and get to know a few of the guys, alternatively there's a mailing list -http://groups.google.com/group/multipack and IRC channel: IRC: irc.freenode.net, 6667, #multipack so plenty of ways to join in.