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Some interesting thoughts on Twitter and Friendfeed

December 7, 2008 By Dan Thornton Leave a Comment

Before you get back to work on Monday (or for some reading before you get down to working), there have been a few interesting and thought-provoking posts I’ve spotted:

Robert Scoble posted 10 reasons why Twitter direct messages suck, which I expected to disagree with, but he made a lot of sense in explaining why the amount of messages he receives means that he realistically has to ignore them – he can’t autorespond, file, filter, or mass delete, so it becomes unworkable.

Stowe Boyd then takes it and runs further, to outline how the problem could result in an opportunity to earn some revenue for Twitter, around improving the integration and functionality of direct messaging for those willing to pay $5 a month.

My thought is that it’s a very small group who need these features as an absolute necessity, but a larger number might be persuaded they need them. It’s certainly something I could see Twitter exploring, and I suspect that by offering it as a Freemium service, they could avoid some of the ‘sell-out’ accusations that display advertising will generate.

I’m not sure it’s enough to please the VCs and justify the valuation of Twitter – but I’m increasingly convinced that there isn’t a sole revenue stream that provides a complete solution – and it could be a mixture which becomes the answer.

The other thought piece I thought was worth repeating was Dave Winer on The Space Between Twitter and FriendFeed. Is there room for something that exists with a more graphic and visual system than Twitter, but without some of the complexity of Friendfeed which can put users off?

Obviously this wasn’t Pownce. But could it be a direction for Plurk, which already has a far more visual interface? Or one of the services I have to admit to overlooking a little in the influx of clones, copies and variations, such as Rejaw? And would it be enough to achieve the most important and challenging part of taking on Twitter – getting critical mass? Friendfeed is different enough to fulfill a slightly different function and have an identity away from microblogging, but would something in the Friendfeed/Twitter chasm be cursed by being too much of one or the other?

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Filed Under: Microblogging, twitter Tagged With: dave winer, direct messages, email integration, freemium, friendfeed, opportunity, plurk, pownce, pro accounts, rejaw, robert scoble, stowe boyd, twitter, upgrades

I’m not the only one questioning Pepsi’s Unfriendlyfeed

December 3, 2008 By Dan Thornton 6 Comments

A few days ago I wrote about the efforts by Pepsi and Coca-Cola to engage their consumers in different ways – Pepsi chose social media, whilst Coca-Cola chose a loyalty reward scheme. And yet they are both making mistakes big enough for me to post ‘How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy‘.

It’s not surprising that other people are also questioning the policy, like Todd Jordan with his post ‘Pepsi – Are you listening‘ (Found when he mentioned it on Twitter – @Tojosan). Interestingly his post appears to have been picked up by Josh Karpf from Pepsi, commenting as Josh.

It’s good that that someone at Pepsi has picked up on the post, but Josh is repeating the same things many people have already heard:

‘We’re listening, Todd–and making efforts to do just what you are saying.’

‘We need to find a better way to aggregate and share fans’ passion for the company.’

‘As for the Friendfeed room, it was never intended to live as a standalone communications platform for PepsiCo. It’s one of many “outposts” we have launched, and intend to launch going forward as part of our ongoing digital plans. We are actively taking in feedback from across the web and starting to join in on conversations outside of the room, which you may have noticed.’

‘We do need to moderate comments to some extent to make sure profanity is removed. However, we do not moderate at all based on things we do or don’t like.’

‘We are going to introduce more new voices into the room from inside and outside the company very soon. I agree that we need to be more engaged in fan-based communities beyond ones that are launched inside the company. You surely understand that this is a first step for us; and we are moving towards becoming far more open, inclusive, and “closer” to our consumers.’

All pleasant enough, and I’m sure Josh is a nice enough guy. And with people like Steve Rubel involved, you’d hope they’ve got an idea of where they can improve.

But it really doesn’t take that much effort to start making improvements right away – like opening the Friendfeed Room up to everyone. I don’t want more voices inside and outside the company. I want all voices by anyone who has anything interesting to say – and that’s what Pepsi should want too!

They can still moderate, either pre, or preferably post comment. But how on earth do they expect to get closer to a community by dictating strict topics for discussion once every few days? It’s like walking up to the community and shout “You will engage, You will engage, You will engage!” over and over and over.

Funnily enough, although the FriendFeed room is quiet, Twitter has 11 messages mentioning Pepsi in the last 20 minutes via Twitter Search. And in the whole front page there’s not a single message containing profanity.

None of page 2 or 3 either. Mainly because people are treating each other like adults!

And look Pepsi! Look at a blog search for Pepsi and Friendfeed!

Pepsi are you listening? by Todd Jordan
How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy by Me!
Why blogger outreach can fail by Virginia Nussey
Pepsi’s social media challenge by Jason Lee Miller (focusing on the lack of new suggestions generated)
Pepsi asked for my thoughts by CC Chapman

Responding in the comments of the first or second post is fine, but by the third and fourth I’d be looking to make some immediate changes. After all links 5 and 6 were posted on November 12, 2008. Mine was on November 28th, and Todd’s was today. That’s almost a month without any obvious changes.

Maybe it’s time?

Pepsi can by schnaars (CC licence)

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Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: cc chapman, coca cola, coke, friendfeed, josh karpf, moderation, monitoring, outreach, pepsi, pepsi cooler, responses, restriction, social media marketing, todd jordan, twitter, twitter search

Six Apart acquire Pownce – to kill it in 2 weeks.

December 2, 2008 By Dan Thornton 3 Comments

In a slightly bizarre move, blogging platform Six Apart (Movable Type, Typepad and Vox) has acquired Pownce for an undisclosed sum – and it’s immediately been announced Pownce will be closed on December 15th, 2008 – just two weeks away.

The news has been revealed on the offical Pownce blog ‘Goodbye Pownce, Hello Six Apart‘, written by Leah Culver:

” We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all….

*snip*

We’ll be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th. Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.

For our Pro members, we’ll be emailing you soon with more information about your Pro account.”

The post explains Mike Malone and Leah Culver will join Six Apart’s engineering team. Anthony Ha at VentureBeat has said that Digg founder Kevin Rose and Digg employee Daniel Burka who were also responsible for Digg will now be advisors to Six Apart.

The official Six Apart blog offers those who paid for a Pownce Pro account a free Typepad account for a year.

You can see some of the latest messages from users on the Pownce homepage.

You can see the responses from Twitter users on the Pownce closure.

There’s a FriendFeed room set up for PownceExiles to reconnect.

Interestingly, @nickdawson has spotted: http://postpownce.com/ – could be official or fan created. The Whois lookup isn’t particularly helpful, but it looks slightly unofficial so far.

Meanwhile, there’s a surprisingly amount of people using Pownce as normal, although there’s obviously a significant number who are either thanking the Pownce team, or expressing their anger – and it seems like users are mainly migrating to Twitter, with a few mentions of FriendFeed.

Strangely, Twitter has the mass user group and VC funding, but Pownce had direct revenue streams already in place, with paid membership upgrades and advertising.Meanwhile Jaiku, Plurk, Identi.ca etc are all continuing, as far as I’m aware, without a mass surge in users or a revenue model that has been revealed. Will any other microblogging services be under threat in the coming months?

I’ve blogged about my lack of enthusiasm for Digg several times over at TheWayoftheWeb, but I don’t think it’s necessarily about the Pownce team ‘failing’ – it’s likely that the impending financial situation, and an attractive offer may have been too tempting to turn down. But it does reinforce my opinion of Kevin Rose’s companies as lacking a bit of customer service – two weeks for people to leave Pownce and shut the door behind them isn’t particularly accomodating.

You can see part of the justification for the closure:

It may be U.S. traffic only, but it’s a pretty fair representation.

Interestingly, from a closer look at the numbers, it suggests that from the ‘big four’, Jaiku would be the next logical service for the chopping block – with Plurk leading the ‘Everything except for Twitter’ group.

My two thoughts are that perhaps the team behind Pownce weren’t seeing the growth they hoped for, and with Twitter being open about monetizing next year, it seemed a good time to exit with some money.

And that perhaps the move to greater federation (e.g. Facebook Connect etc), and aggregation (posting via clients or apps to multiple locations), the prospects of success for a relatively small microblogging platform were diminishing – especially with new services offering the chance to set up private groups (Twingr.com), and services like Drop.io simplifying file sharing.

From a personal point of view, the file sharing aspect wasn’t enough for me to devote enough time on Pownce to build a big community, but I did enjoy popping in for short visits on occasion, and I’m definitely sad to see any microblogging/microsharing service closed suddenly, and without any warning.

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Filed Under: Microblogging Tagged With: acquired, Business, closure, dead, drop.io, end, finished, friendfeed, jaiku, kevin rose, killed, leah culver, microblogging, plan, plurk, postpownce.com, pownce, pownceexiles, six apart, stopped, strategy, twingr, twitter

How Coke and Pepsi are wasting their online strategy

November 28, 2008 By Dan Thornton 5 Comments

I have to admit that as a non-coffee drinker, I’m pretty addicted to caffeinated soft drinks. To the point where I’ve just shocked myself by working out that, in conjunction with my partner, we spend about £957 per year just on Coke or Pepsi! The fact that I can happily switch between the two main brands without any hesitation probably also makes me a reasonable target for online marketing.

Pepsi:

Pepsi can by schnaars (CC licence)

Pepsi has recently launched a social media promotion to engage bloggers around a new Pepsi logo. They picked 25 top social media and marketing bloggers, sent them empty cans featuring all the previous designs, some full cans with the new design, and even a DVD of history of Pepsi. The approach had some criticism (why target the social media/marketing niche rather than the fans of Pepsi niche?), but the response was fairly favourable – see Jennifer Laycock and Chris Brogan for more. And they even started a room in FriendFeed – The Pepsi Cooler – and that’s where my problem lies.

Pretty quickly people saw the flaw in a room which only allowed contributions from 5 people, and enforced moderation for all comments. You can see some responses to Chris Brogan’s post. The fact that Edelman’s Steve Rubel was involved meant that there was a fairly quick response claiming it’s the tip of the iceberg, and the team were working quickly to approve comments.

The first problem has been that the team are all U.S based – so no approval for 12 hours if you’re in the wrong timezone. I did make the suggestion of getting a representative from other countries involved.
The second is that a topic effectively has to be discussed in the comment of something irrelevant, in the hope the 5 contributors will write about it – I wanted to chat about the fact Pepsi cans in the UK now came with QR codes on them on November 17 – but Bart, who acknowledged by comment appears to have disappeared since then.
The third is that with 5 contributors, there just isn’t the flow of content,contribution and conversation to keep any interest going. There’s now just a contribution every 3 days, which is pretty slow – and hardly anyone is commenting.

Put it like this – if I had a community of 312 members, I’d be pretty disapointed if only 5 of them posted, and only once every three days. They’ve said that ‘we need to make sure the conversation is clean, free of profanity, and does not have any personal attacks’, but if you’re using Friendfeed after targetting 25 leading social media bloggers, you’re not likely to be overun by flame wars!

It’s good that Pepsi has started trying to engage the blogosphere as part of their overall marketing strategy, and that they at least discussed and made a slight attempt to have some conversations – but it’s a akin to listening to Pepsi shouting at us through a megaphone, and then trying to chat back with a sore throat.

Coke:

Coke Machine by KB35 (CC licence)

It’s lucky Coke have also managed to make a mess of things, because it nicely balances the post! Way back in June,08, I wrote about the CokeZone loyalty scheme, which allows users to input a code found on Coke bottles to be rewarded with points, which can then be exchanged for a range of products – some of which are rather good. The problem I had, was that the site was incredibly unreliable and frustrating to use. Things may have improved slightly, but there are still bugs with entering login details, and the site moves at the same speed as evolution.

Luckily, I haven’t actually been fired for using cokezone, which happened to some Coke employees who accidentally infringed an employee limit on collecting points while they boosted and promoted the service (Shel Holtz has all the details).

But they have turned a scheme which was meant to promote loyalty into one of immense frustration.

About a week ago, I happened to be logging into the site to register some more codes when I caught sight of an offer for a Flip Mino on the homepage – with options to enter to win for 2 points, or get one for 300 points. It was something I wanted to make sure I got, so I thought I’d try to collect the extra 100 points I needed (33 1/3 2litre bottles worth!). Now it did state that there was a limited number of the Minos, but bearing in mind there’s been a message saying ‘hurry, just a few left’ on various T-shirts etc since about the time I joined in April or so, I thought there’d be a bit of time.

But there wasn’t.

Turns out it’s a special pre-Christmas promotion with a new product each week. So either all the Flips were handed out or they’ve just been deleted.

So after swearing and realising my mistake, I thought I’d check for some contact details, and maybe try a bit of pleading in case there was one left in a cupboard somewhere.

Now read the following very carefully:

In 2008, on an onlineregistered members loyalty scheme for a major global corporation, with an unreliable site, and transactions to the value of games consoles etc, the contact details for the site are by telephone or post. No email, Facebook, Twitter, GetSatisfaction or Uservoice page. Post or phone! Oh, and some FAQs – (How were people asking these Frequently Asked Questions? And where’s the one for ‘My God, is this the most unreliable site ever?)

How to fix this stuff:

The Pepsi Fix: Allow everyone to contribute and chat. Employ moderation after the event, only if it becomes legally necessary, or of a personal or offensive nature. Employ someone to do the moderation if you need to, or get volunteers around the world to spend an hour each day. And try and make sure there are some Pepsi responses more than once every 3 days. That way, you’ll find the Pepsi fans, not just the top bloggers in a category by ranking.

The Coke Fix: Ideally, remove some of the flashy yet unreliable gubbins and make the site simpler to use. Make the Ts and Cs regarding a week long competition really, really clear, because when a site takes as long to load as yours, I don’t spend any more time on the homepage than necessary. And for the love of God, put some useful contact details or customer service on there!

Two companies with whom I’ve spent significant amounts of money have both engaged with plans which should, on the face of it, been right up my street. And yet somehow, it’s resulted in me realising how much I’ve spent, and the potential health risks of overindulging, because of the quick research I did before composing this post, and because they didn’t commit and go the whole way. And there’s nothing worse than getting halfway to somewhere, stopping, and turning round again.

And do it quick, before I start loading my shopping trolley with bottled water or lemonade

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