Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

Kelly Osbourne vs. Little Monsters

There are certain celebrity fan bases that you don’t want to mess with: Beliebers, Directioners, Little Monsters, etc. Kelly Osbourne has learned this the hard way since she accused Lady Gaga of being disrespectful on Fashion Police. Lady Gaga’s fans, aka Little Monsters, have been attacking her on Twitter ever since.

In an episode discussing the Grammy Awards, Osbourne said, “Being part of the music industry is walking the red carpet. You say hello to your fans and you give back to those reporters and those people who supported you. And when you go to an awards show and you don’t walk the red carpet, I find that disrespectful.”

Since the comment, Osbourne has received tremendous backlash from Lady Gaga’s fans. Little Monsters have been attacking her via Twitter, sending death threats, calling her fat and ugly, and saying they hope she kills herself or gets raped.

Osbourne is very active on Twitter and has been responding to quite a few tweets about this and once referred to Little Monsters as “bullies”. She has set the record straight that she is a huge Gaga fan and knows that not all of the Little Monsters are bullies, especially as some are defending her to fellow Gaga fans.

Chris Brown vents, “dies”, wishes RiRi a happy birthday, and releases collaboration

Whaddaya know, Chris Brown got mad and took to Twitter to vent…again. After his Grammy performance got very mixed reviews on Twitter, he went there himself to address his critics, which included Miranda Lambert and Michelle Branch.

He lashed out at them in a series of tweets which have since been deleted, ending with one saying “HATE ALL U WANT BECUZ I GOT A GRAMMY Now! That’s the ultimate F*** OFF!”

In response to his tantrum, Twitter users decided to make him “die” on Twitter. #RIPChrisBrown and other similar hashtags were trending on Wednesday.

But then yesterday, Brown surprised us all by tweeting Rihanna (aka Robyn Fenty) to wish her a happy birthday. Anything having to do with his previous relationship with her is usually a very touchy subject for Brown and has even been the subject of past Twitter tantrums. But the two recently collaborated on remixes of Brown’s ‘Turn Up the Music’ and Rihanna’s ‘Birthday Cake’. They released the remixes on Twitter yesterday:

#Linsanity everywhere

If you haven’t heard of Linsanity or Jeremy Lin, you probably haven’t spent much time on the Web recently, because it’s getting hard to not hear about him. But just in case, Jeremy Lin is an Asian-American basketball player that plays for the New York Knicks and led them to quite a winning streak (which ended last night against the New Jersey Nets).

The hype surrounding Lin, especially on social media, is astonishing. People want to see and share everything about him. A picture of the couch he used to crash on went viral and his old YouTube videos (see “How to Get Into Harvard”) and Xanga posts from when he was in high school have resurfaced. Check out this “Linfographic” for more about #Linsanity on Twitter.

Do you think the Linsanity will continue now that his winning streak is over? Do you want it to?

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Fashion Week Continues to Get Social

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

During September’s New York Fashion Week, we wrote about how social media has completely changed Fashion Week. What was once one of the most exclusive events in the industry has become accessible to the everyday person from any location. It’s Fashion Week in New York once again and this time, it coincides with Social Media Week all over the world and continues to adopt more and more social elements.

Once again, Fashion Week is partnering with YouTube to live stream over 30 runway shows on the official Fashion Week channel. And once again, Tumblr is sending a group of bloggers to cover the event. According to Mashable, Tumblr also has internal editors who will be curating posts to appear under the NYFW tag.

But companies are still finding new ways to bring Fashion Week to those outside of the tents. KCD, a fashion public relations and production company, has even launched a platform for online-only runway shows called DigitalFashionShows.com. Unfortunately for most people, access is by invite-only. But for the buyers, editors, and other fashion professionals that can’t make it to some or all of the shows, it no longer means being at a disadvantage. The platform will offer pre-taped shows (in embeddable format) along with packages of extra material such as high-resolution pictures, interviews with designers, and behind-the-scenes footage.

Diane von Furstenberg is teaming up with the mobile video iPhone app Viddy to post 15- to 30-second video clips. The DVF Facebook page will have a “DVF NYFW” tab dedicated to displaying the video clips but will also be posting some on Twitter and their Facebook wall so that mobile users have access to them as well. The clips will feature backstage interviews, model castings, hair and makeup runthroughs, and more.

Lastly, more fashion shows are incorporating a Tweetwalks, as Burberry did last September. A “Tweetwalk” consists of posting photos of each look on Twitter just before the model steps out onto the runway, so essentially the line’s Twitter audience can see the collection a little sooner than the actual runway audience. During Tommy Hilfiger’s “Twitter Model Walk” for its men’s collection, followers can even win a pair of shoes from the line by retweeting an image with the hashtag #TommysRunwayShoes or filling out a form on Facebook.

With New York Fashion Week occurring twice a year and social media making strides every day, I can’t wait to see what new innovations there will be next fall!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, February 14th, 2012

The Grammys set social TV records

According to CBS, Sunday’s Grammy Awards saw the second largest audience in the show’s history. But viewers weren’t just watching the show, they were discussing it on social media also. According to a Mashable article, the Grammys got 13 million social mentions, becoming the top entertainment event in social TV. For comparison, the  runner-up (the 2011 VMA’s) got only 3.1 million social comments. Some of the most social moments were Chris Brown’s performance, when Adele performed as well as when she won Album of the Year, Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to Whitney Houston, and Paul McCartney closing the show.

Twitter partners with satellite providers

Twitter recently announced two new partnerships, with Iridium and Thuraya, the world’s largest satellite providers, to provide even greater access to Twitter SMS. This service will come in handy at times when phone lines and the Internet are inaccessible, such as war zones and during natural disasters. Twitter is making moves to insure that the service can be accessed in as many parts of the world as possible. But since not all carriers support Twitter SMS, they also have set up “long codes”, which people can use to send tweets.

Is Oprah desperate for ratings?

While many people were tuning into The Grammy Awards on Sunday night, Oprah was tweeting to make sure viewers didn’t forget about her network, OWN.

One tweet in particular caught the attention of many, including the audience measurement company Nielsen. “Every 1 who can please turn to OWN especially if you have a Nielsen box,” she tweeted to over 9 million followers around 9 p.m. The backlash was immediate, with people questioning whether her account was hacked or if she was really “that desperate”. Nielsen tries hard to ensure that viewers in their samples are not pressured to change their viewing habits and are “looking into the incident”. Oprah apologized and, at Nielsen’s request, removed the tweet but is still responding to followers calling her out about it.

Twitter jerseys finally spread to North America

Sports teams around the world have begun promoting their Twitter presences on the field by replacing the names on players’ jerseys with their Twitter handles. But this weekend, the Philadelphia Wings (@PhillyWings) became the first reported sports team in North America to do so. The indoor lacrosse team debuted the jerseys in their game against the Buffalo Bandits on Sunday, which they won. The jerseys were auctioned off after the game, raising over $13,000 for the American Cancer Society. Team spokesman Zack Loyd told The Star that when the players were told about the idea preseason, more than half of them were already active on Twitter. He also said “We were just looking for a way to gain more regional and national exposure.” Well, mission accomplished!

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

Even though it’s Thursday, it’s time for a Twitter Tuesday! Better late than never!

Marilyn Monroe verified on Twitter

Yes, you read that right. Even though the Hollywood starlet has been dead since long before Twitter existed, there is an account for Marilyn Monroe. The account is even verified, making it the “official” voice of her estate.

The @MarilynMonroe Twitter account has around 14,000 followers, and 154 tweets at the moment. The account is managed by a company called Authentic Brands Group, who purchased the rights to all things Marilyn 18 months ago.

So far, the account tweets pictures of Marilyn and quotes by her, as well as Marilyn-related news. Examples of such news include information about NBC’s new show Smash in which characters begin working on writing a show called “Marilyn: The Musical”, Michelle Williams’ new movie “My Week with Marilyn”, and current celebrities channeling their inner-Marilyn.

ABG says they plan on developing their strategy more in the next few months to make sure they are properly representing the icon: “We’re going to be aggressive about our social media strategy, because fans want her legacy to live on.” As Elton John sang, her candle’s burned out, but her legend will continue to live on.

Do you think Twitter accounts for dead celebrities are a good way to keep their legacy going?

Toyota’s spammy Superbowl mistake

In anticipation of their Superbowl Camry Effect ad, Toyota took to Twitter to “promote” the campaign but made some missteps. Toyota set up an account, @CamryEffect, along with several similar accounts such as @CamryEffect1, @CamryEffect2, and so on.

These accounts then began replying to tweets mentioning Superbowl trends, such as #Giants, #Patriots, etc. They would reply to all of these tweets with the same message including an offer to win a Camry Effect. Users quickly began complaining.

Once Toyota realized their mistake, they made the original account private and suspended the others. They also released a statement (via TechCrunch):

“We apologize to anyone in the Twitterverse who received an unwanted @reply over the past few days. We were excited to share the message of our Camry Effect campaign in a new way and it was never our intention to displease anyone…”

LeVar Burton secures @ReadingRainbow account

LeVar Burton has launched a new company called RRKidz and will be launching the classic Reading Rainbow as an iPad reading app. To promote the upcoming app, he wanted to use Twitter, but the handle @ReadingRainbow was already snagged. The owner of the account had not tweeted in over 3 years, though.

Burton first reached out to Twitter but received no response, so he looked to Twitter users. After tweeting for help, over 700 users reacted and also reached out to Twitter. In just over 2 hours, Burton was in control of the Twitter account. In the past when other people have reached out to Twitter for similar problems, it took Twitter days to respond.

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3 Ways to Interact on Pinterest

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

A social media revolution seems to be happening all around us. But as companies are rushing to embrace social media, they frequently lose focus. Everyone says that your business needs to utilize social media more, but how many people tell you how? This post is part of a series on different ways you can use social media to interact with your customers.

Pinterest is a social network of virtual bulletin boards where users can organize images and videos from across the web into collections, called pin boards. While it’s technically still invite-only, it’s not hard to get your hands on an invitation and becomes incredibly addicting.  While some still believe it to be a place for DIY-ers and brides-to-be, brands are finally showing up and doing a lot with it.

1. Show who you are. – Show your followers who they are following and could possibly do business with sometime. There are endless ways to do this. One idea is to pin pictures of your team, as we have done. This is a great idea for businesses that may not always interact with their customers face-to-face, as it matches a face to a name and/or voice.

You can also pin pictures of your work environment, especially if it’s unique! Lastly, pin pictures and videos that convey the mood or atmosphere of your company. For example, pranks are a big part of the eZanga culture. We have created a board to pin pictures and videos of pranks we have played in the office as well as prankspiration for the future.

2. Pin what you do. – While obviously you should be pinning focused content related to your niche, don’t stop there. You are a part of an entire industry, and both you and your followers need to be informed about it. Pinterest is great for learning since so many of us are visual learners. You’ll be surprised at how much information you can learn from the infographicsthat are pinned.

You can also post pictures and videos of your own products as long as you balance out the self-promotion with other content.  Pinterest even has a price feature, where if you type a currency symbol with an amount into the pin’s description, and it will add a price “flag” to the image (click for example) as well as list it in the “Gifts” section of the site. Supplement promotional pins with pins of related products, useful tips for your product, etc.

3. Involve your followers. – As always, people need a reason to follow you, so give them one. The reason can be anything from exclusive discounts and coupons to witty comments. Different ways to involve your followers include offering discounts and holding contests, crowdsourcing boards to allow followers to contribute pins, and offering commentary on what your followers pin, either through repinning or commenting.

For more ideas and inspiration, follow eZanga on Pinterest!

Other posts in this series:

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Twitter acquires Summify

Twitter has acquired Vancouver-based startup Summify, a service that creates daily summaries of news content from your social networks, including Twitter. The service aggregates the most popular links shared among your social connections and delivers them either via iPhone app, email, or web. The service announced in a blog post that they have disabled new user registration and will stop delivering their summaries, which are my favorite emails to receive every day, in the next few weeks. Five members from Summify will be joining Twitter’s growth team in San Francisco, but how the platform will be used is still a mystery.

Users take to Twitter to discuss SOPA blackout

We’ve already written about the blackouts to oppose SOPA that took place on January 18, but Twitter was not discussed. Since the internet had a few thousand less functioning websites than usual, of course people took to Twitter to talk about it. While Facebook did not go dark, Mark Zuckerberg did want to share his opinions on the legislation, and did so in a Facebook post. But he then brought his Twitter account back from an almost 2-year coma:

There were also several Trending Topics about the movement, including #factswithoutWikipedia and “Stop SOPA and PIPA”. There were also students confused as to how they were supposed to do homework without Wikipedia, which also shows how incredibly reliant we can be on such sites. Several other sites have posted funny tweets from the blackout, such as  The Huffington Post, Laughing Squid, and Gawker.

After fumble, 49er receives death threats on Twitter

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver and punt returner Kyle Williams has been receiving death threats on Twitter after fumbling the last punt of the championship game. The fumble put the 49ers’ opponent, the New York Giants, in position for a field goal that led to a win in overtime and a trip to the Super Bowl. Tweets included harsh words such as “I doubt I will ever forgive kyle williams”, but some were much more serious, such as this one: “Kyle Williams better keep one eye open… Im gonna bust both that dudes kneecaps see if he ever plays in red and gold again.” His father, Chicago White Sox general manager Kenny Williams, told ESPN “it certainly makes you question our culture of sports.”

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

Rupert Murdoch’s Twitter debut embarrassing for many

When Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter on December 31, people wondered how long it would take for his first mistake to be made. Well, it was January 1, when he said “maybe Brits have too many holidays for broke country!”

Shortly after Murdoch tweeted this, a Twitter account with the same name as his wife, Wendi Deng, replied to the tweet telling him to delete the offending tweet. He complied and she tweeted “Explaining to @rupertmurdoch about being careful with humor on line. sometimes it comes out as rude!” She continued tweeting at Murdoch and other public figures and celebrities. She even drew media attention. Twitter gave her account the checkmark that signals verification and News International confirmed that it was her.

But it wasn’t. Late last Monday it was revealed that the tweets were not by Murdoch’s wife but rather a mysterious jokester. The individual is no longer controlling the fake Twitter account but has instead moved onto the handle @Ficticious_acct, where they describe themselves in the bio section as “self-proclaimed Twitter expert, social media guru, professional liar and generally loathsome.”

Beyonce and Jay-Z have one daughter, but two names become Trending Topics

On January 7, Beyonce gave birth to a daughter named Blue Ivy Carter. The pregnancy received huge amounts of attention and Beyonce’s rub of her belly (first announcing her pregnancy) in August even broke a record for most tweets per second. So it came as no surprise to see fans as well as plenty of celebrities congratulating the couple on their daughter’s birth. But at first, people were talking about the birth of Ivy Blue, leading it to become a Trending Topic on Twitter. Someone even set up a Twitter handle @IvyBlueCarter (although the account is now suspended).

Tebow breaks tweets per second record for sports

Speaking of tweets per second records, the record for a sporting event was broken this Sunday with Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow ‘s 80-yard touchdown pass in overtime, leading them to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Twitter later announced that there were 9,420 tweets per second, beating the previous record set by the Women’s World Cup. Now we just need to find out how many of those tweets included a picture of someone Tebowing!

Racist receipt from Papa John’s goes viral

After buying a pizza from the Hamilton Heights Papa John’s in New York City, Minhee Cho found a racial slur on her receipt. An employee had described her in the store’s computers as “lady chinky eyes.” When she got home with her pizza, she posted a photo of the receipt (seen left) on Twitter with the text:

“Hey @PapaJohns just FYI my name isn’t ‘lady chinky eyes’”.

According to CNN, the photo was viewed over 200,000 times over the weekend. Papa Johns responded quickly via Twitter, expressing shock and saying that the sixteen-year-old employee had been fired.

Alec Baldwin is back on Twitter

You may remember that last month, Alec Baldwin was thrown off of a flight for playing Words With Friends and subsequently shut down his Twitter account. Well his tweeting hiatus has ended as of Sunday, just in time for the premiere of the sixth season of 30 Rock on Thursday. Since being back, he has tweeted about his vacation, wished his daughter Ireland luck on her English follow, and frequently promoted the season premiere of 30 Rock.

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The Ultimate Year-End Wrap-Up

Thursday, December 22nd, 2011

The end of the year is a time of reflection and hope for many people. It’s a time to look back on the previous year as a whole and zoom in and out on things. This often leads to making predictions and resolutions for the year about to start.

This past year was especially important for the evolution of social media and other technologies. Many websites have taken close looks at types of events from 2011, such as social media mistakes or how people have used social media and technology, while others are making predictions for industry trends in 2012.

We, however, are making a super guide to all of these articles so you can easily find the best, worst, and most entertaining events of 2011 and get excited for 2012! If you agree with predictions or want to share your own, please leave us a comment!

 

Social Media

In 2011…

In 2012…

Technology

In 2011…

  • 2011: Tech’s Biggest Winners and Losers – Lance Ulanoff from Mashable looks at the tech events, big and small, that “gave 2011 its character.”
  • The 15 Biggest Tech Flops of 2011 – From Qwikster to the Gmail iPhone app, Business Insider looks at what just didn’t work, with the common theme of businesses trying to compete with the iPad.
  • The Biggest Web Outages of 2011 – Mashable looks at SmartBear Software’s list of the top web outages in 2011, not including outages caused by a third party.
  • iTunes Rewind – An article from MacRumors looks at Apple’s iTunes Rewind 2011 feature in the iTunes store, highlighting the best of music, movies, TV shows, books, apps and podcasts in 2011.

In 2012…

Search

Since two-thirds of the search articles combine 2011 and 2012 into one post, we will combine them into one section of our post!

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KLM Airlines “Meet & Seat” App to Unite Passengers Socially

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

Want to check out who’s going to be on your flight before you board? Well—there’s an app for that!  (coming soon) Yes that’s right, starting sometime next year KLM Royal Dutch Airlines will roll out “Meet & Seat,” the social media app that will allow you to check out your fellow passengers who have registered socially and let you put in a request to sit next to someone based on their Facebook or LinkedIn profile.

The service will be available to all who fly KLM, but both passengers will need to participate in order to guarantee the pre-emptive seating arrangement. No need to fret over the ambiguity of the mystery person who may sit next to you, now you can stalk them first!

It’s pretty ingenious if you ask me. The Meet & Seat app has the opportunity to eliminate some of the negative feedback received, putting control in the hands of passengers.

And consider all of the possibilities of new business connections or kindling romances? Speaking of romance, a survey by UK flight search company, Skyscanner discovered earlier this year that 45% of passengers admitted to flirting with other passengers during flights. Now imagine having the control to choose who you can flirt with in the air?

Do you think you would publicize your Facebook or LinkedIn profile to those you are flying with in order to sit next to someone you consider attractive or who has similar interest?

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Weekly Wrap – Twitter Tuesday

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

So much has gone on for Twitter in the past week that there was way too much for one post! So today we will be posting 2 Twitter Tuesdays! The first part, this part, will focus on Twitter in the news. The second part will take a closer look at Twitter’s new redesigns, including Twitter.com, the mobile apps, and TweetDeck. Check back later today to read it!

Library of Congress to archive tweets

Last year, the Library of Congress struck up an agreement with Twitter to archive tweets to “build a unique record of our time” and the project has gotten a lot of attention recently. Every public tweet since Jack Dorsey’s first tweet will be archived, so tweets sent from protected or private accounts will not be added. The archive will be held by the library’s repository of historical documents.

“Tweet Seats” beginning to pop up in theaters

Haven’t heard of “Tweet seats”? They are a growing trend in theaters where there are designated seats for those who would like to tweet a performance. At the movies or popular music concerts, your neighbors may not mind you having your phone out; but at an opera or play, probably not. The seats are usually reserved to one side of the theater so that the glare from cellphones does not distract the rest of the audience. Seats are sometimes only offered on certain nights.

One theater that has provided “Tweet seats”, according to a Los Angeles Times blog, is the Lyric Opera in Kansas. For the final performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “HMS Pinafore,” there were 100 seats reserved for those who wanted to browse “content sent by the theater’s artistic director about the production, the scenery and whatever was happening on stage. Audience members were also encouraged to tweet questions in real time.” Shows on Broadway, such as Godspell, also have plans to have “Tweet seats” in the future.

Alec Baldwin will do a lot for Words With Friends

Last Monday, Alec Baldwin was kicked of an American Airlines flight for an “outburst” that started over a flight attendant asking him to turn his phone off as he was playing Words With Friends while the plane was still at the gate. Baldwin then went on a Twitter tirade about the flight attendant, declaring it would be his last flight with American Airlines, and using the hashtag #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt. Since, Baldwin has shut down his Twitter account. Words With Friends fans have united to support him. Zynga’s official statement, “let Alec play” was also a trending topic on Twitter.

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