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Does This Sum Your Day Up?

A New Find On Twitter

I love twitter.  Use it (some would say) too much.

From time to time one can find gems on twitter, tweets from celebs, friends asking questions, links to cool stuff etc.

Today was different, I found this in error:-

WTF??

Following 29 ‘cats’ and 3,852 updates all with a cat-like symbol starting them..

Is this some kind of underground twitter club?  Freaks me out!  Go look at @plug

Why Twitter can kill Facebook

Recently Twitter has started to go mainstream (well in the UK and US).  These past few weeks have seen Twitter mentioned on the BBC (see Declan Curry from BBC’s Working Lunch), radio and in most of the UK Newspapers, especially since Jonathan Ross started “tweeting”.

What is becoming clearer and clearer as time progresses and more interesting people join twitter is that the second it reaches non-geeks, it could kill off Facebook.

Why?

Facebook is useful for following main reasons:-

1. Finding old friends – since the demise of Friends Reunited in the UK all my old school pals are on FB.
2. Keeping up to date with what people are doing through status-updates (notice the once empty box now says “What are you doing now?”).
3. Looking at photographs of friends.
4. Emailing friends/people.
5. Live Chat.

That’s all.  Throwing stuff, the apps etc, are totally useless in reality.  Humans are interested in looking at people, seeing how they are doing (what they are doing now) and interacting.  People are far happier to talk online than in real life to long lost friends, this is a fact as I often bump into old school friends (I left school in 1991) that are also FB friends, they are generally embarrassed to talk and normally offer a simple “hi” and wander off into the bustling high street..within an hour I’d get a “great seeing you today” message on FB!

Why is Twitter Useful?

1. Right now, none of my non-early adopter friends, ex-colleagues or family are on it, however, it is great for meeting new people relevant to both work and play, I have a real mix of people that I find addictive to watch and talk with on and offline.
2. Keeping up to date with what people are doing instantly.
3. Sharing links to interesting information.
4. Finding out who is in whatever location you happen upon ie “Who fancies a coffee in Oxford Street, right now?”
5. Talking to people instantly.
6. No limits on the number of people that can follow you and you can follow as many as you want (unlike FB).
7. Direct Messages (email?).
8. Getting out emergency notices, fast, such as this on Techcrunch today.

There are similarities to Facebook and it seems FB are actually copying “What are you doing now?”.  I think the second my friends born in the 70’s and technophobe work colleagues and family are introduced to and understand twitter, I would actually stop going to Facebook, FB offers me nothing more than Twitter and I prefer the fact that Twitter has flowing conversation.  The one thing Twitter needs is personalised homepages for each user and perhaps groups for friends, family and work (as we are discussing right now), and maybe allowing photos (the one thing Facebook has over Twitter).  Partnering with Flickr could fix that instantly.

There have been rumours of Twitter talking to Facebook regarding a potential acquisition (although it has been denied).   Of my followers not using an automated service to update their status’ the average friend updates three times per week..Not really live or helpful is it.

Maybe I am wrong and the fact Facebook has 150m users and twitter only 6m users in comparison means something..

I am however,convinced that Twitter, once understood and not just with geeks and people told they *should* use it, will take over Facebook.  Maybe in two years, and the revenue will be SMS based along with businesses paying to use it internally.  I know of many offices that have put bans in place stopping staff “wasting time on Facebook” – Twitter would be seen as a useful tool by bosses.

Your thoughts dear reader?!

UPDATE: It seems I am not alone with this line of thought other people are seeing the benefits including the UK public en masse

Looking at the lighter side of life

Back in October, Ewan and I had a chat.

The chat led to us believing there is no UK website dedicated to good news, just good news.  We started The Daily Dust, a newspaper of good UK only news.

Adding to the picture a couple of people, a top SEO guy, leading football writer and a racing pundit we launched quietly.  One month after launch, we had 1 million page views.  Still in stealth mode we continued our mission of writing and linking to a couple of posts per day each. One of those posts had 250,000 unique readers.

Now we have the makings of something very special.

We are looking for more people willing or able to give up half an hour a day to help with content or simply send us links to good news.  We aren’t making any money from it, yet, when we do, will be happy to pay our writers to keep the content flowing, until then, anyone joining us can get links back to their blogs/sites and enjoy the pleasure writing good news gives!  Those on at the beginning will be able to see how we attempt to grow this in our spare time.

This project is getting legs and we hope you enjoy reading it.

Meanwhile, Fuelmyblog continues to go from strength to strength, we have more testing of products coming and this year we are going to attempt to make significant changes to the look and feel and give the site some amazing features.

2009 should be a good year, not a gloomy one but it is going to take a lot of hard work!

The Sad Side Of Recession

Just back from getting some last minute (in fact all) Christmas presents.  I always shop two or three days before the big day as there are huge savings to be made and with the Pound plummeting against the Euro we need to save all we can.

What I really found shocking was the sight of Woolworths.  This store was part of my Christmas present schedule, they always had the more hard to find gifts and offered fantastic stocking fillers.  This year, with the chain due to shut in the next few days, the scene was truly awful.  The staff seemed to be scurrying around and trying to keep what is now a jumble sale, tidy, they also all know that they face starting 2009 without a job.  How they can continue working knowing that, I will never know.

I took some pictures, I felt bad but as a blogger want to keep the gritty side of recession and what it means as a reminder on this blog.  I do this in the hope that in happier times to come, however far away that may be, we can all look back to this dark day and remember how we felt walking around a sinking ship and remember what we needed to do to survive after.  Sorry not a happy Christmas post, they can be seen on fuelmyblog’s blog.

Sadly they are also selling the shelves and staff lockers etc:

I can’t find the words, but hope the folks losing their jobs manage to find something fast.

Here’s Why You Just Lost Loads Of Followers On Twitter

So you just logged into Twitter and found you have a whole bunch of followers missing, “what did I say wrong?” you ask yourself..

Fear not!

Twitter is finally deleting all the spammers from your followers, from their blog:-

Also: we’ll be releasing a change later this afternoon that will start removing deleted and suspended users from your list of followers. As this hasn’t been cleaned up previously, you may notice your follower counts go down. This is to be expected.

Phew, you weren’t so out of order after all!

Mine took a hit of 101 just now, follow me @kevindixie

Techcrunch Stops Embargo’s – Sod It Here Is My Press Release

Reading an interesting post by Mike Arrington on Techcrunch today, basically, he is sick to death of other press, blogs and people breaking embargo’s.  I can understand this, it takes time to construct a well thought out and well researched  intellectual post, when given an embargo, the journalist or blogger is given a time to actually release the story.  Of course, this story is not so hot if someone breaks the embargo to grab the “exclusive”.

I had an experience with PR Newswire a few weeks back, who advised me to distribute a press release on a Saturday – why I have no idea, it got a shocking response, maybe linked to by 50 splogs.  Fact is, I am never using an online PR company to distribute my Press Releases again, have zero ROI on them and frankly, in the main the releases are presented on scraping sites and barely touch the journalists that would find the story newsworthy.

From now, I will post the releases on here, link them to Twitter, Friend Feed and Fuel all my friends this link on fuelmyblog and simply see what happens, I have enough Journalists and bloggers on those sites following me.  As Robert Scoble commented on that Techcrunch post “If I were in PR I’d just Twitter the news, link to a blog explaining it..”.

So here is Fuelmyblog’s latest press release with a great reference from The King of Shaves boss, Will King.

FUELMYBLOG HELPS BRANDS ENGAGE WITH SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY

Fuelmyblog.com, the global social network for bloggers, has launched a service aimed at bringing well-known brands closer to its customers and the blogging community.

Fuelmyblog allows bloggers to promote their own blogs for free by networking and recommending others on the site by rating them. It also hosts a community written blog, competitions, interviews and other benefits.

Now Fuelmyblog has launched a product review service linking well known brands with bloggers and a major social media platform.

Fuelmyblog Director Kevin Dixie said: “More and more people are turning to the Internet for product reviews with virtual trust taking over that of family and friends.”

Fuelmyblog believes that in the current economic climate, online is the most cost effective route to marketing a brand or product and practically eliminates the need for expensive campaigns.

Reaching out to bloggers is an ideal way to embrace social media, create online buzz and grow a brand online. By using Fuelmyblog, direct contact to the bloggers is available and provides a trusted source with a strong relationship.

Kevin Dixie said: “Companies working with Fuelmyblog simply select blogs to work with on a campaign, the bloggers have opted-in to receive and review products or test services.

“The products are then sent directly to the blogger with some company background to test and then write an honest review based upon their findings. The blogger is not paid for the review and simply keeps the goods. This ensures there are high levels of trust with the bloggers readers and web surfers as the reviews are based on true experience , we do not tell them to be positive.”

The King of Shaves* are running a blogger relations campaign asking Fuelmyblog’s top bloggers to test its new Azor razor.

King of Shaves CEO and founder Will King said: “As a company we are always looking at innovation in our products and how we engage with our customers. I have my own blog and immediately saw the potential of the Fuelmyblog campaign. The feedback we have had on the blogs involved has been terrific.”

*King of Shaves won the 2008 ‘Best Company’ award at the Real Business & CBI ‘Growing Business’ awards.

– Ends –

Feel free to pass this on, blog it, write about it.  We think it is great news for any brand trying to launch a new product or even reignite old products.  We are also offering restaurant and hotel reviews on blogs.  Remember, as we already have the relationships with the bloggers, you won’t pay huge PR fees or have random people leaving messages on blog posts begging to promote your products..

The BBC Really Has Lost The Plot

After all the hoohaa about Ross and Brand, now Moyles, it strikes me that the BBC has lost control.  I just clicked on the international BBC site and am convinced they have lost the plot.

I understand the BBC feel it needs to make money out of its overseas online viewers, a simple, simple solution would be to offer BBC iPlayer to those outside the UK for a small monthly subscription say £5 per month, but no, that is just far too easy.  For those that don’t know, you are unable to access iPlayer from outside the UK.

What the BBC decided to do was to put some adverts on the site.  This started off with very discrete 468×60 sized adverts showing animated National Geographic links, very soft and pleasing on the eye, that was pre-creditcrunch.

Now, they have a huge advert on the right hand side of the homepage, I don’t have a problem with adverts at all.  But I can’t understand who these adverts are targeting, how on Earth do they expect to make money from these ad’s?  I mean, who is buying Rolex watches right now??  Surely a paid advert with a rev share would be better given the traffic the BBC generates?

Take a look for yourself:-

Any thoughts?

Edwardian London – on film

I have Just seen a video of Edwardian London on this new newspaper site and thank Nick the author for bringing it to my attention.

Take a look below and see the delightful Edwardian London and those happy smiley faces 🙂