October 3, 2008 by Colin Temple, in Social Media
Last night was the English debate for the Canadian party leaders, as well as the VP candidates debate in the United States. I don’t know who decided to schedule them both at the exact same time, but it certainly kept Twitter busy. Throughout the debate viewers on both sides of the border were all posting about the election to Twitter — as were some of the candidates.
The Canadian party leaders participating in the debate.
In Canada, New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton (@jacklayton) brought pieces of the debate right into Twitter. He apparently had a team working behind the scenes to offer NDP responses to some of the things said by the other leaders (mostly Harper). During the debate, several “fact check” tweets were posted, linking to various statements on the NDP website that offered the NDP account of what really happened.
Most of the other candidates have Twitter accounts too — Prime Minister Stephen Harper (@pmharper), Green Party leader Elizabeth May (@ElizabethMay) and Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe (@gillesduceppe) are all up there. The only Canadian leader who doesn’t seem to have an active Twitter profile (at least not one that I could find) is Liberal leader Stéphane Dion. @stephanedion isn’t following anyone, and has only a “Hello Twitter!” statement from over a year ago.
I’ve followed all of the leaders, but so far only Jack Layton and Stephen Harper have followed me back. (Seeing “Stephen Harper is now following you on Twitter!” pop up in my email was amusing to me.) I’ll be disappointed if Elizabeth May doesn’t follow me, but she hasn’t posted a tweet since the debate, and it looks like she genuinely manages her own Twitter account.
I do hope that whoever becomes Prime Minister does keep using Twitter.
No Comments
August 15, 2008 by Colin Temple, in Blogging, Social Media
Last October, bloggers around the world were called to join together and raise awareness of a single topic on one day. Blog Action Day saw thousands of blogs writing about a single socially relevant topic: the Environment. I wrote on a few of my blogs, including Xbox Living, where I offered some tips on saving energy with the Xbox 360.
This year, Blog Action Day will focus on another global problem: poverty. Bloggers from around the world are called to write a post about the issue and publish it on October 15 to raise awareness of global poverty and work together to help the problem.
I’ve just registered Work, Web, Play to participate this year, and I’ll be writing on my other blogs where I can. It looks like I made it into the first 100 sites to register. Be sure to get your blog registered on blogactionday.org and join in the cause on October 15!
This year, it’d be great to see some more corporate blogs take part as well — social awareness is always a great trait to see from the corporate world. This is a great opportunity to promote your business as a socially conscious, forward-thinking organization.
No Comments
July 28, 2008 by Colin Temple, in Blogging, Marketing Strategy, Social Media
Note: This is my second and last post imported from my old blog at
colintemple.com. After this, it’ll be all-new content. (Wow, I’d better start writing!)
Everyone’s really excited about Web 2.0. Still. That in itself isn’t a problem: there’s lots to be excited about. All this Web 2.0 stuff — social media, network building, picture posting, wiki writing, Twitter tweeting and all the other things bloggers do while high on AJAX — is making the Web into a much more collaborative, open and accessible medium. That was pretty much the point of the Web from the get-go, so kudos to them for the job well done.
But, talk has been growing over the past year about the future of this utopia we’re all building together — or at least, its business future. The analysts say the tides may be turning yet again: that Web 2.0 is forming a bulge of a bubble that’s about to burst at the seams.
And they’re probably right. If you look around, it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot of noise going on. Of course, we’ve had Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Flickr and the great big blogosphere for a while now. But every day it seems I’m learning about some new Web 2.0 app and how it’s the best thing for me since sliced turkey. There are way too many social media sites out there, and I’m afraid that sitting in the middle of this with my Web Marketer and Web Developer hats on has gotten me awfully dizzy.
And while wearing those hats — yes, I wear actual hats — I’m often browsing freelancer sites looking for fun and exciting projects to work on. Without fail, there are daily postings from investors looking to build the next MySpace, Digg or i-silver-bullet. If not, they at least want a new Facebook app that will create the viral marketing their business always needed to get off the ground.
After the 2000 dot-com burst, this kind of if you build it they will come smack in the face of rationality came to a grinding halt, and the executives who didn’t smarten up were politely asked to die in a hole somewhere. Now, it seems like the coffers are opening up again to buy a piece of Web 2.0 pie.
Of course so many “Web 2.0″ companies are living off of traffic and ad revenue alone — but what about those using the Web to sell something tangible? My friends over at Sitebrand paint a brighter picture for those involved in online retail, where the Web may actually be the safer bet as the U.S. economy slows down.
Meanwhile, the clients I work with have all increased their online marketing spending over the past year or two — but every single one of them has become obsessed with their web metrics. Conversion rates, cost-per-lead and ROI are on the tops of their minds, and rightly so.
So it seems that at least some people have learned from the first dot-com burst, which is great because they’ll need to use that kind of sense again to search for new marketing tactics when the bubble bursts and Internet users worldwide simultaneously fall into comas.
I guess what I’m trying to say in all of this is “smarten up, Internet”, because if everything goes to hell again the Web won’t be any more fun and I’ll have to get a new job.
2 Comments
