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Moldy tweets: Take a deep breath before responding to negativity

Everybody just calm down. A Twitter user who wrote a negative tweet about mold in her apartment is now being sued for $50,000 in damages. The takeaway?

Individuals should be careful what they say in a public forum. But companies need to take a deep breath before escalating their bad publicity to the national level.

by Meghan Keane 28 July 2009 21:12pm 8 comments

Q&A: Richard Spalding of The 7th Chamber on viral marketing

Richard Spalding is CEO and co-founder of Diffusion Media Group, which runs viral marketing agency The 7th Chamber, as well as social media marketing agency Grape Digital.

The company recently sold entertainment site Kontrabrand to Dennis Publishing for an undisclosed sum. I've been talking to Richard about the sale, and his plans for the future...

by Graham Charlton 28 July 2009 10:47am 1 comment

Social media: myth versus reality

The nature of the internet economy has given myth new importance in the digital age. One need only look at the field of SEO to see just how prominent (and destructive) myth can be.

Social media has a lot in common with SEO and one area where that's especially true is in the number of social media myths that have become entrenched. From the belief that social media ROI can't be measured to the idea that your business can thrive if you get to the right influencers, social media myths run rampant today.

by Patricio Robles 27 July 2009 12:59pm 15 comments

Twitter officially reaches out to businesses with Twitter 101

There's a general consensus that Twitter will eventually implement some business model that involves the companies using Twitter for commercial purposes. But the road to monetization has been a long one for the popular microblogging company, largely by choice.

But in a definitive sign that Twitter has corporate users on its mind, the company yesterday launched a 'special guide' for businesses called Twitter 101.

by Patricio Robles 24 July 2009 10:24am 3 comments

Be Broadband's new website not a hit with users

Broadband service provider Be Broadband has just launched a brand new version of its website, and it's not proving to be too popular with customers so far.

The company, to its credit, has admitted as much on its Twitter account: 'We get the gist of the feedback; our new website is live and you don’t like the look of it. We’ll listen and learn over the next few days.'

Here's the lovely new homepage:

Be Broadband homepage

by Graham Charlton 23 July 2009 15:16pm 8 comments

Z to A: Amazon.com gobbles up Zappos.com

Zappos.com, an internet retailer that launched in 1999, survived the .com bust and went on to become the number one online footwear seller, has been purchased by Amazon.com in a mostly-stock deal worth over $900m.

Amazon plans to run Zappos as a wholly-owned subsidiary, with its new acquisition maintaining its own branding and separate operations.

by Patricio Robles 23 July 2009 08:42am 2 comments

New job postings hint at Twitter's future plans

Love it or hate it, Twitter is hot. So much so that it received $48m in free media coverage over the past 30 days by one estimate.

But Twitter faces some major challenges and not everything is rosy in Twitterville. A flurry of job listings the company posted over the weekend hints that Twitter is looking to hire the talent it needs to keep the company from falling off the tracks.

by Patricio Robles 21 July 2009 10:57am 2 comments

Twitter fears Facebook. As it should.

TechCrunch's been airing Twitter's (not so) dirty laundry all week. Courtesy of a hacker, TechCrunch has gotten hold of 300 confidential Twitter documents, and yesterday they released notes from a set of executive meetings that laid out the company's upcoming strategy plans.

What did we learn? That Twitter is scared of Facebook. As it should be.

by Meghan Keane 17 July 2009 16:47pm 7 comments

How newspapers lost the breaking news game to a Twittering 19-year-old kid

Across much of the western world, news organisations are in a fight for their life. Between Google 'stealing' their news and bloggers 'stealing their readers', things are not well in the land of news. The next challenge to news's authority is a 19-year-old kid from the Netherlands.

by Ben LaMothe 17 July 2009 13:40pm 8 comments

Twitter hack: insight into a hot startup that may be losing its edge

When Michael Arrington of TechCrunch decided to publish confidential Twitter corporate documents obtained by a hacker, I wasn't impressed. It's a bad decision that's hard to justify ethically.

But what's done is done and instead of admonishing him for using a different brand of moral compass, I thought there'd be more value in using the opportunity, no matter how unfortunate, to make some observations about one of the internet's hottest startups.

by Patricio Robles 16 July 2009 11:31am 1 comment