What Happens to Social Media When The Cloud #Fails? Here's How Delta, Citi, McDonalds Responded when CoTweet was down.

Photo: http://www.clarkedailynews.com

Yesterday Amazon Web Services suffered a prolonged outage which also brought down social media websites CoTweet, Hootsuite, Quora, Foursquare among others.

For Twitter accounts with multiple users (such as large brands with a social media team), Hootsuite and CoTweet (both standard and enterprise versions) are popular choices as they allow you to respond to tweets, assign them, follow up, schedule posts on the Twitter account, and are accessible from anywhere. Or almost - except when the cloud fails.

So what was the reaction within the social media community?

Hundreds of tweets from annoyed users rippled round the world. Scheduled tweets in Hootsuite and CoTweet weren't sent (my thoughts on scheduling tweets are here).

One vendor took advantage of the situation and sponsored a tweet promoting their own product. Hmmm.

Some brands switched to using other apps or #newtwitter (such as Citi), reverting back to CoTweet when services were eventually restored.


Some brands who use CoTweet went into the cone of silence (such as McDonalds, CocaCola) and did not tweet at all during the outage.


Others such as @DeltaAssist, advised customers (via #newtwitter) that they were unable to respond to tweets due to technical difficulties. And then were silent. For 7 hours.

Delta monitors and responds to tweets 7 days per week, 24 hours a day, so a 7 hour outage would surely have been significant for them. Having a team of 9 people on their Twitter account would mean that managing their high volume of incoming tweets through another readily available tool such as Tweetdeck or #newtwitter would have been clumsy and inefficient, and likely open to delays and errors.

Luckily for brands in NZ using CoTweet or Hootsuite (and there are a number of them), the outage happened after the close of business on the Thursday before Easter weekend, so the volume of tweets at this time were reduced as people hit the road to 'get away from it all' - with everyone else.

But what if this had happened mid morning on a busy Monday? Is the cloud reliable, or should we have alternatives available as we would for locally housed services? Where was the redundancy Amazon?

Last Sunday afternoon, some Kiwis experienced issues accessing international websites or data housed internationally, which raises similar questions. What do we do when the internet access we rely on is  not there?

I'm sure this will give a number of people something to mull over during the Easter break.

  

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Are Your Twitter DMs Private? Or Not.

 

Photo: http://eclas.tumblr.com/ 

I've noticed lately that there are a number of Twitter DMs (Direct Messages) which should be private between two people, but have somehow found their way into the public timeline.

These tweets stand out a mile because they are not addressed to anyone and typically say something like "That's perfect, can't wait to see you... x" or "OMG OMG! She is such a b@#tch!" - you get the picture.

So how does this happen? Other than potentially being an issue with Twitter (which I am not aware of) its more likely to be user error, particularly when using SMS to tweet.

So.... here's a reminder that when you send an SMS to the Twitter shortcode, it will appear in your public timeline unless you use the correct commands. It's very easy to mess this up when you receive an SMS to notify you of a Twitter DM and you just SMS back to reply! Oopsie.

How to send a DM using SMS
D username + message

Direct Message: sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive. 

Example: d Support Hey support! Thanks for your help

Also if you are using SMS to send Twitter DMs, and your message is longer than 140 characters, Twitter will split it into two messages, but the second part will be in the public stream as it is not prefixed with D username!

Other command examples for using Twitter via SMS are here. they're useful to know if you are ever somewhere with poor cellphone reception and can't get your app to work.

A few other tips:

You can only send a DM to some who is following you.  On #newtwitter this is easily signified by the appearance of the Message button on a users profile.

There is a Twitter limit of 250 DMs per day, and #newtwitter only shows the 50 most recent DMs.

If someone deletes a DM they have sent you, it will be removed from your DMs on Twitter. But if you have SMS alerting set up for DMs then you will still receive the SMS when the DM is sent. Clever huh?

Lastly, if you see someone's rogue DM pop up in your stream and they follow you, send them a quick message to let them know (especially if it is potentially embarrassing or damaging for them). Thanks to @rgoodchild for this tip!
  
  

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Should Brands Be Available On Twitter Afterhours?

Over the weekend I noticed that Mercury Energy was merrily tweeting away, and this caught my attention because (a) I hadn't noticed this account before and (b) it was the weekend when everyone has brunch and reads newspapers (unless they have small children in which case they get busy with Special Agent Oso). Not just prescheduled content either - engaging with others and retweeting tweets.

Also over the weekend there was a large earthquake aftershock in Christchurch. Some brands were quickly tweeting their concern and support for the Christchurch community, despite that it occurred 'afterhours' (on Saturday evening).  The main telcos were also quick to provide infrastructure updates which are vital services particularly in a crisis situation as we saw with the February earthquake.

Photo: http://weheartit.com/entry/4766557

This raises the question, should brands be active on Twitter and in social media outside of normal business hours? Does the community expect to receive responses in the evenings, weekends and public holidays?

For some organisations, its an important part of their customer engagement. Its also increasingly becoming a point of competitive advantage.

Take for example the conversation below between Vaughn Davis and Telecom NZ (start at the bottom). Vaughn was overseas and having trouble with his email on his heritage edition iPad connected via Vodafone. Not a particularly unusual conversation for a telco and a customer - except that it was taking place at 10:15pm on a Tuesday night. 

Vodafone did not respond to Vaughn's request for help until the following day, and in the meantime the Telecom team jumped in to see what they could do to help (note there was a lot of techo g33k tweets back and forth that went on to diagnose the issue which are not shown here). Had that been a customer looking to switch telcos, this could potentially have been a strong case for customer acquisition. It was also observed by the Twitter community following both @vaughndavis and @TelecomNZ, all of whom are avid consumers of telco services and data. Hmmmmm.

Some brands will state quite clearly on their social media profiles that their accounts are only monitored during normal business hours. Which is fine - but many people don't ever go to the Twitter page of the account due to the proliferation of apps used for Twitter, so its questionable how many people will actually see this attempted disclaimer. Customers (or potential customers!) may have their tweet go unanswered til the next business day by which time they may well have forgotten what it was about. Or have ranted about it on their blog.

I've seen other brands 'sign out' each evening with a farewell tweet to signal they are going off duty. This creates a pattern of activity but if you miss the tweet then you won't know whether they are on duty or off duty until your tweet is meet with deafening silence.

But do we even need or want it - other than in times of crisis? I've observed brands posting content and/or responding to tweets/Facebook posts during evenings or over the weekends, and generally speaking the community seems to be non plussed whether it happens within an hour of posting or the next day (unless you are @vaughndavis). If it is urgent, then can't you call an 0800 number and speak to an actual human at the call centre? Maybe thats part of the attraction of social media - you'll be able to ask your question and chat with a human who is in all likelihood a decent Kiwi, all in real time. No cut offs, no hold music, no language barriers, and maybe even your mates can chip in and help you too. Unfortunately many organisations (particularly in NZ) are not yet fully resourced to be able to monitor and respond to social media requests after normal business hours, although this will change as the size of the local community grows as we have seen overseas, and social business is accepted.

We are coming up to one of the longest holiday weekends of the year (whoop!).  Over the Christmas/New Year period the drop in activity from brands was quite noticeable, so it will be interesting to see if the same happens over Easter. I also observed comments from the community that any 'marketing' or 'sales' content (no matter how cleverly disguised) was not appropriate during the holidays - its a holiday for Gods sake!

What about you - do you expect brands to be available on Twitter and Facebook after hours or during public holidays to engage with you?    
        
    

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10 Tips To Keep Yourself Safe On The Interweb

Photo: http://weheartit.com/entry/7159746

Some people live their lives very openly on social networks choosing to share all sorts of details with the world. Others take a more conservative approach and keep their private lives private. Most people are somewhere in between, but no matter where you are on the spectrum there are a few things everyone should be aware of, especially if you are a big user of social networking sites.

Here are 10 tips to make sure you are keeping yourself safe on the web:

1. Check how your profile is displayed to others who are not your Facebook friends, even if you lock down your Facebook profile. Some 3rd party applications used to upload photos or post your Facebook status make these visible to everyone and you may find your Facebook privacy settings have not been applied.

To see how your profile currently appears to one of your friends, take the following steps:

• Navigate to the Privacy Settings page.
• Select the "Customize settings" link towards the bottom of the "Sharing on Facebook" section.
• Click the "Preview My Profile" button that is located in top right side of the page.

When you have reached this preview mode, you will automatically see how your profile looks to most people on Facebook. To view how your profile looks to a specific friend, just type his or her name in the field.

2. Be notified of Facebook logins from other locations.  Facebook has a notification to alert you if your profile has been accessed from a different location (full instructions are here). Go to the Account Settings page and click on the link next to "Account Security" at the bottom of the page. If you select the option to receive notifications for logins from new devices, when you log in, you'll be asked to name and save the various devices you use to access Facebook. 

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Personal Social Media Accounts - Who Is Watching?

Last week, the idea was floated at the London Finxtra Social Media event #finxsm that some organisations may be considering hooking up the personal social media accounts of staff to their internal audit systems. As one attendee tweeted, this would be terrifying in some cases!


It does raise the very good question of who looks at your personal social media profiles. When are personal views really just personal views?

On Friday I noticed a tweet from Xero CEO @roddrury saying that his company now lists their teams' personal Twitter accounts on their website.

Having your personal Twitter account listed on the page of your employer might change how you use your account - or will it? And should it?

Can't you just have a personal account that you can use for your own stuff in your own time? It reminds me of when I was at school - girls caught after school in public but in their school uniform -  and smoking cigarettes!! - were swiftly dealt with even though it was after school hours and off school property.

So is it the same in the digital world? If you have a LinkedIn profile that lists your current employer (as most do) and is linked to your Twitter account - does that mean you are doing the equivalent hanging round the Newmarket shops in your uniform after school?

Anonymity is just not what it used to be. With a few Google searches and applying a bit of CSI stealth you'd be surprised how easy it is to work out who your employer might be. It doesn't have to be as obvious as wearing your school uniform anymore.




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Photo Editing Web App: A Review of Picnik

I've been using the Picnik web app for that past week or so for editing my photos (thanks to @KateMontgom for the tip). Been quite enjoying it, and here's why.

Firstly, its free, and there's no need to download any app. It even installs into Chrome if you want it to. Works on Windows and Mac. Whoop! All good so far. I love the easy integration with other photosharing sites and social networks (more on that later)


If you register (yes, its still free at this stage) you can upload 5 photos at a time, otherwise if you are happy with one at a time then you can continue to use without registration.

Its very simple and easy to use thanks to the friendly interface and has some good features and effects.

Different effects applied to the same photo

Here is an example of the original photo with different effects applied: Cross Process, Color Focus on B&W, Neon. And there are heaps and heaps more, all with the click of your mouse.

There are touch up features available as well, such as blemish fix, red eye, teeth whitening and my favourite .....'Insta- Thin'. Talk about Insta-Win!

You can also adjust the exposure, highlights, colour, contrast, crop, resize, sharpen, many of which have an 'auto' setting to correct your photo in one click.

Within each effect there are lots of options to allow you to change the end result, eg brush size, fade percentages etc all controlled using sliders like the ones shown below.


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Lets Keep Our World Turning

Photo: thehobergs717.blogspot.com

Today I was lucky enough to spend the morning at Auckland Hospital, helping out in their Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) which is where babies who are premature or need extra care will go after birth. Around about 2% of the population will require NICU care, and the survival rates are amazing - up to 85% for a baby born 24 weeks gestation (full term is 40 weeks)

They have around 80 - 90 babies per month admitted to NICU, some staying for many weeks. Its an amazing environment focused on providing a caring environment for the families of the babies in NICU.

It was hugely obvious that these organisations are incredibly dependent on volunteers, corporate sponsorship and fundraising/donations from the public. The very latest technology won't come from government funding alone - and if it is your baby that is in NICU, you sure as hell want the best technology and staff to give your baby the absolute best chance of survival.

Photo: www.litterdidyouknow.org

I've also been involved in other charitable organisations in the past such as being the co president of the Auckland Central Multiple Birth Club which provides support for parents of twins, triplets or more, and a volunteer at Auckland SPCA helping adopting cats and kittens one Saturday morning each month. Both those roles were rewarding in different ways, but both give you that 'feel good' feeling of knowing you've done good.

Working, kids, supermarket, family, homework, sport, housework, gym, driving,  emails, Skype, Facebook updates, sleep...... does that sound familiar to anyone? How do you find that time to give your increasingly precious time or resources to charitable organisations? The Canterbury earthquake showed the amazing community spirit that exists in NZ and it takes a huge and important event like that to uncover this and remind us how we are all living in a village and we need each other.

We make the world go round. Each and every one of us. And one day it will be your turn to need the help of one of these organisations and you'll be incredibly thankful for the volunteers who made that sacrifice and gave up some of their precious time for others.

Do your bit and help keep our world turning.    
 
        

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