These two posters are currently on view on Liberty Street, Stanmore, near the railway bridge. I can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection… but what?
Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009
Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:
See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.
This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.
Continue reading “Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009”
Weekly radio spot on ABC Statewide NSW
Yesterday I joined presenter Paul Turton on ABC Radio’s Statewide for the first of a few regular chats about social networking and social media and things Internettish.
Statewide is broadcast on ABC Local Radio throughout NSW from 1600 to 1800 weekdays, except in Sydney, Newcastle, Wollongong and wherever else they have their own local drive-time program.
Yesterday we talked about the etiquette of “friending” on sites like Facebook and whether it’s OK to refuse a friend request, where you draw the line between your personal and professional life, how people spread the news of the September dust storms for themselves and Rickrolling, amongst other things.
The program isn’t streamed on the Internet, alas, but I did a cheap-arsed recording using my MacBook Pro’s built-in speaker microphone [doh!], and I’ve posted the audio below. I’ll see if I can get a proper audio split next week.
I’ll be joining Paul every Tuesday afternoon at 1615 through until 15 December.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:27 — 20.0MB)
[The radio interview is probably ©2009 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but since they don’t archive them I reckon it’s fair enough putting it here provided you just listen to it and I link back to Statewide and encourage you to listen.]
Virgin Blue’s mistake reveals countless selfish whingers
Thank you, Virgin Blue, for sending your “erroneous” email Friday night. You’ve done us a great public service. You’ve exposed a pack of greedy, selfish, shallow tools who deserve to be ridiculed publicly. Thank you.
On Friday evening, Australian airline Virgin Blue sent an email telling some Velocity Rewards members they’d been upgraded to Gold status. But as documented at mUmBRELLA, the email went not just to those entitled to the upgrade but their entire database — including people who’d opted out of email marketing.
Including me because, yes, I’m a Velocity Rewards member.
“That can’t be right,” I thought. “I haven’t flown with Virgin Blue this year.” Then I saw others saying similar things online and I figured the mistake was more widespread. I chuckled, knowing that someone had a bit of a mess to clear up.
Sure enough, three hours later a second email arrived.
Oops! Due to an error you’ve received our previous email by mistake. Please disregard the free upgrade communication as unfortunately you do not qualify for that upgrade.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Mistake. Correction. Apology. That’s the end of the story, yes? Alas no.
Suddenly a whole bunch of people are demanding their Gold status should stay even though, like, they’re not actually entitled to it. People are “upset”. They’re demanding compensation, some even saying they should be compensated with a free flight voucher.
Compensated? Compensated for fucking what, exactly?
Compensated for being too stupid to realise the email was obviously a mistake? Compensated for having a vastly over-inflated sense of entitlement? Compensated for being so much of a consumer-puppet that you validate yourself by bragging about some confected faux-status symbolised by which colour plastic card sits in your wallet and then being embarrassed because, oh sorry, you’re actually still just another cheap-arsed prole after all?
I don’t think that’s Virgin Blue’s fault.
Losers.
Now of course there’s a metric bazillion blog posts and comments banging on about how this is “epic fail” on Virgin Blue’s part and how they’d have handled it so much better and faster. I won’t link to them because it’s too depressing to realise how many instant fucking experts appear after every little glitch is made public.
However I will link to Darryl King’s excellent piece about what he calls Crowd Spanking.
Why is it that the tools of Social Media make tools out of people?
Yes, companies, people and organisations of any sort can and should be open to criticism and correction of poor behaviour. I agree totally. However I don’t agree that Crowd Spanking of everyone that does something wrong is effective nor necessary …
Add some perspective. This is not a corporation that has exposed their staff and customer to asbestos and are denying compensation. It is an upgrade people! …
Before all the Social Media Gurus come up with the 10 things that Virgin Blue could have done better blog posts think through how businesses and people at work live.
Ex-fucking-zactly.
“Epic fail” on Virgin Blue’s part? Bah! Step back a little and think about the full gamut of things which an airline can get wrong and the potential consequences. Up one end, you’ve got mistakes where hundreds of people die in a ball of flame, traumatising their loved ones. Down the other end you’ve got… gosh! A marketing email that was sent to people by mistake.
To the folks who reckon they’d have handled it better and quicker, well, are you really set up to handle such an unusual situation on a Friday night when people have gone to the pub or gone home for the weekend? Personally, I reckon identifying the problem and getting the second email out in three hours isn’t a bad effort — especially when in the meantime there’s, you know, a fucking airline to run!
Well done, Virgin Blue. Well done.
I reckon — and this is just my opinion here — but I reckon we save the Really Big Stick for mistakes which actually matter. Also, stop being such selfish, judgemental little pricks.
[Update 16 October 2009: To illustrate some points I’ll be making in the comments, here’s a screenshot of the erroneous Velocity Rewards email.]
Murdoch’s wrong about Google
I reckon Rupert Murdoch’s plan to block Google from indexing News Corporation stories is daft, and I said so in Crikey yesterday with a piece they headlined Dear Rupert, this is how the internet works. Google it.
In brief, my commentary is that people don’t really get their news in a monolith any more, neither the daily newspaper or the nightly TV bulletin. Instead, they gather it from all over in little pieces. If you want people to find your stories, those stories need to be in the indexes.
Crikey editor Jonathan Green has also pointed out the stark difference between News Corporation and Google. I reckon News needs Google more than Google needs News.
Jason Calacanis has a different theory, that News will do an exclusive deal with Microsoft’s Bing.
“Want to search the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and 3,894 other newspapers and magazines?
“Well, then don’t go to Google because they don’t have them!
“Go to Bing, home of quality content you can trust!”
Which might work if News Corporation were the only supplier of general news. Which it isn’t. And which point I make in my Crikey piece.
Media140: How I’ll be responding
Whew! Media140 Sydney was exhausting and several kinds of wonderful despite some irritation. Many thanks to Julie Posetti and Ande Gregson and Sarah Allen and everyone else.
Oh, a thousand loose ends to tie up! How will I respond?
- I’ll make only a superficial pass through everything today, ‘cos I have other commitments. Mostly that’ll be reviewing all the open tabs in my web browser and quickly reviewing my messages on Twitter and adding things to my to-do list for later.
- As I do that, I’ll link to everything I find. You can follow that on my Delicious links tagged “media140”. I’ll also post the more significant notes on my Twitter stream.
- While I’m doing that, I may post quick drive-by comments on other people’s blogs, but mostly I’ll leave them for a couple of days.
- I’ll also be compiling notes for follow-up posts. One will expand upon my own presentation, which is already getting interesting comments. Others will reflect upon other people’s presentations and the various discussions.
If you want me to expand upon any specific issues raised at the conference, please let me know in the comments.
Further process notes will be added as I go along, in the comments to this post. Or not. It’s going to be one of those days…