Post mortem of “dot com bomb”, I raised almost $1,000,000 using Social Media With a staff of 2, we spent our days and nights on bulletin boards, dating sites, directories, and even ICQ (old school chat). The end result, we received investment dollars as close as Atlanta and as far away as the Netherlands. It was an experience that I will never forget, and will hopefully attempt to repeat, just not in my living room, and at a larger dollar amount.
Being a little older now, and a veteran within the social space, with over 16 years of internet media, with 6 of those years engaged in social media, I have a new vision, revenues, and an operating organization that I plan to take to the next level. Moreover, the archaic nature of yesteryear’s socialscape has greatly changed, as have the proliferation of more affluent users and ways to communicate. With that said I just completed my private placement (legal documentation to raise capital), filed my corporate taxes, and I am about to charge to the world of angel capital.
The project will perfect the art of automated social listening, consumer individualistic engagement, and social mobilization, on an unprecedented scale.
The practical applications such a technology are endless from putting butts in seats at a baseball game, generating political activism, real time polling, and even fund raising.
Considering that my corporate strategy involves the identification, create engagement, and socially mobilize consumers, targeting angel investors should be easy.. or at least I will keep telling myself that until I believe it to be true… LOL.
I will add a social funding widget to my blog, so you and I can keep track of my progress over the next 90 days. So raising a few million dollars in angel capital, doubling last years revenues, and doing it on a shoe string budget… yea, it sounds like an idea that could only come together on a Friday as I stare into the devilish eyes of Q4.
Could a Stock Buyback of 2.9 million shares be a factor in TuCow’s Slow Response?
TuCows (NYSE AMEX:TCX, TSX:TC) , out in the pasture?! With possibly 6M consumers affected my Malware spread through popular web portals, ground zero for the Malware attacks came from a known vulnerability in OpenX’s Ad server. Among the affected carriers, TuCows, Pirate Bay, ESarcasm And AfterDawn among the effected carriers. According to Web security vendor Dasient, an estimated 1.6M ads may have been served daily. According to Adreka social analytics, appearances of social reports, earmarking the malware attack may have started as early as the over the past 96 hours, and may have begun it’s proliferation as easily as midnight, 11th of September 2010.
CyberInsecure reported that the malicious code was being loaded from external domains registered to an address in Russia and was targeted the Microsoft Windows Help Center vulnerability patched earlier this year, the successful exploitation led to a variant of the Bredolab trojan being installed on the victim’s computer. This threat is known a distribution platform for rogue antivirus programs.
TuCows general manager, Andy Walker, confirmed for ParetoLogic that the incident was the result of hackers compromising the OpenX server used by the company to deliver ads. “We detected the intrusion, patched the vulnerability in OpenX and resolved the issue quickly,” the company representative noted. According to Adreka’s Social Monitoring, the OpenX vulnerability issue was known as early as May, 2010, as reported by dozens of active OpenX communities, programmers, and malware boards.
Moreover, less than 12 hours ago, my attempts to access the TuCow’s main site and affiliate pages resulted in AVG halting my systems infection. So exactly why was the largest software company in North America, out to pasture when their systems, webmasters, and millions of consumers were being affected by a massive malware attack?
Granted it a cow’s top speed, is 5.5 mph, so TuCow’s should get there in ½ the time? – LOL
As a question, NOT AS AN ACQUISITATION, could the deadline for TuCow’s slow response come in the wake of the company trying to push their existing investor base to sell 2.9 million shares back to the company in a Dutch auction, what expires on September 17th 2010? According to their own financial release, dated September 9th 2010, TuCow’s intends to commence a modified “Dutch auction” tender offer to repurchase up to 2,900,000 shares of common stock, representing approximately 5.1% of Tucows’ outstanding shares. The tender offer is expected to commence on Friday, September 17, 2010 and to expire, unless extended, at 5:00 P.M., New York City Time, on Tuesday, October 19, 2010. Tucows also announced that it has terminated its normal course issuer bid commenced in February 2010 pursuant to which Tucows has repurchased 3,409,300 shares of common stock.
As a past investment banker and now current media evangelist, you have to ask the question, unless their technology team was completely out to pasture, could long term financial gain been the catalyst for a Cow Speed Response, in relation for all other systems effected?
Socially Catering Airline Passengers and Brand Loyalty in the World of Social and Mobile Media
Missed Connection, Missed Opportunity to Positively Socially Connect with Airline Brand
Can this really be happening to you?! After you waited 45 minutes on the tarmac, just to be moved to another plane that did not have enough flight crew, which caused a you to have an overnight stay in a in a connecting city that you had no desire to stay in, without luggage, and no cell phone charger. To make matters worse, you now have to wait in line behind the other 80 people that missed their connection, with only two customer service agents that have no authority to do anything other than give you a card to call customer service (that happened to have closed 15 minutes prior to you calling). This makes you have to rearrange your other flight plans for the week, because you now have to re-schedule tomorrow’s $500,000+ client presentation (with one power bar left on my phone) which you will now have to fly to them as opposed to them meeting them at your office. This has probably put you in a very bad place… at least in mind and temperament. Ok, I could be projecting my most recent airline encounter.
Yet, I know I am not alone. With over 2 billion airline flights worldwide each year, it is estimated that 15-25% of flights are delayed, with 2.5% of airline flights canceled (Source AirlineComplaints.org & NY Daily Journal). In travel requiring multiple connections, an additional 2-6% of airline passenger flights are missed do to carrier connection delays in which the first carrier was late on arrival causing the air traveler to miss their connecting flight (U.S. Department of Transportation). Additionally, flights missed outside of the airports ability to control, 7% of consumer missed flights is self inflicted by the consumer not giving themselves enough time to arrive to the airport to handle all the eccentricities’ of travelling in a post 911 world.
For the airlines marketing brand, ironically, and to the airlines dismay, fault, in today’s socially interconnected world of Facebook, YouTube, UStream and the 250+ other social networking communities, is 90% of the time blamed on the airline (Adreka Social Analysis – Airline Industry). In 2010, within the social sphere, over 2.8 million blog entries depicting a strong dislike or bad airline experience has been reported since January of 2009 (Adreka Social Analytics). Given that the average social account averages 130 friends / syndicated connections, the net influence of an airlines brand name is potentially muddied in the eyes of 364 million future customers.
So what can the airlines do in the way of brand strategy to take the sting out of the consumer’s temperament and still maintain the bottom line?
The Reactive Airline Marketing Response
The frontline of an airlines brand defense is to know your customer! Give real time support, anywhere! Most customers just want access to quick information, to questions like where’s my gate, and is my flight on time. If a problem arises, over 90%+ of customers want to vent yell at someone. We want to feel that we are heard and understood. Given empathy and understanding is a majority of the battle. Peer to Peer (P2P) communication via teleconference is the easiest way to deploy massive, centralized, and real-time customer support over the footprint of X major airlines, servicing on average X hubs domestically, Y worldwide.
Create a positive outcome, syndicated brand strategy – Problems will always arise, you’re your organization handles crisis as it occurs will define your brand socially. Whether it be voice, video, or an online chat, record and socialized the consumers end result – they are already going to talk about it on their facebook page, beat them to the punch and turn a consumer question, or resolved issue into a marketing opportunity.
The Proactive Airline Marketing Response
Monitor and engage all social media. There are over 500K new blogs posts daily, with approximately 5% being travel related, allows ample opportunity for an airline to measure, monitor, engage and positively re-enforce brand daily.
Create Tools and Mediums to better foster proactive communication. P2P in customer service kiosks, Iphone / Ipad apps, 24/7 customer service lines, allow the customer to be engaged early, prior to their issue being turned into a negative experience and shared with prospective future customers through socialization.
Provide automated or real person follow up dependent upon the severity of the situation. Reaching out to your customers, post a rectified bad customer experience, adds an additional layer of we care.
Airlines that implement a portion of the strategy points above will have in essence an unfair competitive advantage over those that ignore the socialization of their consumers negative travel experiences. Not to mention, it any of the above airline brand strategy steps would have turned my negative experience into a positive story about an airline that had a unified brand and loyalty program. Because of my negative airline experience, I was able to create a real world case study with a simple solution that I will potentially save the airlines tens of millions of dollars in brand loyalty loss, and provide consumers everywhere with a better travel experience. I believe I just proved capitalism and karma can co-exist!
Happy travels to where ever your final destination may take you – John Cataldi – The Real Mad Man
Positive Online Popularity Grows for the King of Pop by 3000%
Singer-Songwriter, choreographer, producer, businessman and philanthropist, Michael Jackson was undoubtedly the “King of Pop”, with the height of his popularity spanning over 3 generations, and through social media, a fourth generation is now re-discovering this now resting entertainment giant.
Jackson’s mega-stardom that began from childhood was over shadowed by decades of mounting controversy that started in the 1980s. His flamboyant lifestyle, radical changes in physical appearance, allegations of sexual misconduct, questionable mental state, drug abuse, and deteriorating financial condition pushed Jackson into a self-imposed seclusion from the media.
From June 25th to July 11th 2009, upon the announcement Jackson’s death, a virtual “perfect storm” of social media may have forever changed the perception, attitude, and behavior of the masses. Within 48 hours of his death, social media proliferation through blogs, videos, friend feeds, online mainstream news, and discussion forums increased over its daily average by 3,000%, with a majority of the following from 16-26 years of age, according to John Cataldi, CEO of Adreka Advertising. On the day of his memorial service, global web traffic spiked 19% above normal usage, as reported by Akamai, with 30% of all social media postings on popular social sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Friend Feeds contained keywords, “Michael Jackson”. Through social mobilization, flash mobs take to the streets in Stockholm, 300+ strong, dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, with other cities expected to follow this viral dance party worldwide, according to Bounce.NU. To date, there are over 80 million social postings with mention of Michael Jackson, in which an estimated 20% are newly created entries in relation to Jackson’s passing.
According to Adreka’s social media analysis, the impact of social media in relation to the public perception of Michael Jackson’s life, increased in positive sentiment, with most negative aspects of past controversy showing up less than 20% in general search, and 12% in comments left in from friend feeds to forums. In parallel, upon monitoring social media’s affect on e-commerce, iTunes is reporting that 19 out of 100 top songs, and 13 out of top 100 albums download is Michael Jackson. Additionally, popular shopping engines, such as eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist, shows that Michael Jackson albums, books, and collectibles are seeing a dramatic increase, upwards of 115% due to the influential social media postings.
In the words of Michael, “While some have made deliberate attempts to hurt me, I take it in stride because I have a loving family, a strong faith and wonderful friends and fans who have, and continue, to support me.” Yet, seemly overnight, from the news of his death, an emotional outcry shown by MJ Fans and propagated by social networks, has possibly given this mega-entertainer what he could not achieve in life – absolution. Absolution from media criticism, rumors, innuendos, and financial troubles. Moreover, in his death, though tragic, has spawned a rebirth of the mega-star’s music, popularity, and reputation for generations to come.
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