eri on the interweb

Who owns the Twitter followers of an account when they were amassed during an employee’s tenure at a company? A case popped up in the news today on SMH (originally published in the New York Times).

Twitter user sued by ex-employer for his followers (SMH).

The details are fairly clear cut:

• Employee tweets under Twitter handle that bears both his and the company’s name
• Employee amasses 17,000 followers in 4 years
• Employee leaves company and reaches agreement with employer to keep his account as long as he posts occasionally on their behalf
• Employee changes his Twitter account name to his own name and (not sure how) keeps his followers under his new handle
• Former employer then sues (8 months have passed at this time) claiming Twitter list as customer list. They claim that they have invested significant resources to grow the list and consider it their property.

The panel at Digital Citizens: Ben Shepherd – Sound Alliance; Sam Buckingham – singer / songwriter; Gareth Stuckey – Director, Gigpiglet; Dan Rosen – ARIA Chief Executive Officer; Neil Ackland – Sound Alliance; moderated by@acatinatree. The event was held at FBI Social.

So the topic of the evening was meant to be Social media and the music industry but that’s not quite what we got.

Everyone talked about the revenue/rights quandary but there was no real talk of how they were strategising for the digital age. Except for Sam Buckingham, a singer songwriter who has leveraged social media to connect to her fan base, build a loyal following and even crowd sourced $11,000 via the Pozible platform to fund her first album.

Having worked for a company behind open source software, I know how important community conduct is, on forums and other channels. In fact it was something that Geoff, as FarCry product evangelist had to (and I’m sure still does) moderate closely. This interaction between products and users is vital in fostering closer relationships between companies and customers, feature improvements and product innovation.

So it is great to see Get Satisfaction create a campaign around this. Get Satisfaction is a service that allows customers to send feedback, bugs and feature requests to companies. They have created a campaign called the Company Customer Pact. An accord, or code of conduct if you will. As interactions between companies and customers get closer through social media it will become more and more important that people are on the same page. Check it out, and get on board.

http://www.ccpact.com/

1980 telegram from activist group "Anti war citizens"

Social media and mobile phones are the communication and organising tool of this moment. As you well know these tools have been important factors in recent events like the Arab Spring and the London Riots. So I thought it an apt time to reflect on old school comms. I found this telegram from 1980 on a cleaning bee at my parent’s house.

My parent’s took me to huge peace rallies in the 1980s. We marched under the banner of a Greek community club called the Atlas League. Now I can see how this group coordinated their efforts with other peace lobbyists. No group SMS, no twitter broadcasts, no Facebook events, but a telegram, phone calls and word of mouth that mobilised thousands to march in Sydney streets.

An interesting thing happens when the speakers at Social Media Club don’t hit their mark. The speakers were talking about engagement but they weren’t getting any. The error they made was misjudging their audience as amateurs who needed to be shown how it’s done. They should have known that this is an audience of social media marketers and consultants with years of experience under their belts.

Somehow the disappointment was energising. The speakers showcased relatively intimate projects. The conversations amongst the crowd, many of whom work for advertising and digital agencies were pointing out the difference of executing a social media campaign for a small boutique client versus a big brand. People were talking about dollars, and where budgets for this work should come from when companies don’t devote staff to voice and participate in campaigns. What the crowd had questions about, and what they wanted to hear were the lessons learned. Before a palette of wine was sold off the back of one tweet-up how many mistakes were made and what were they? Endless success stories and figures about the application of social media just didn’t ring true without the war stories.

The use of Facebook, Twitter  and Youtube in the uprising of ordinary citizens in Egypt is a fascinating example of the role the internet is playing to rally sentiment and organise individuals into a powerful force for political change. But examples of the internet inhibiting change are evident within the context of the Australian media landscape and political reform agenda, argues George Megalogenis.

First, to Egypt:

Within five days of his death, an anonymous human rights activist created a Facebook page — We Are All Khaled Said— that posted cellphone photos from the morgue of his battered and bloodied face, the video of the corrupt police officers and other YouTube videos contrasting his corpse with pictures of his bright and smiling face from happier days. By mid-June, 130,000 people joined the page to get and share updates about the case.

Dae Levine and John Johnston on stage

Lessons learned from John Johnston, Social Strategist of original Earth Hour strategy

The core of the original Earth Hour strategy was the combination of user generated content with brand assets that were licensed as open source. There was take up from people, organisations and creative agencies; the latter happy to have the opportunity to work with an open brief. The major points of Johnston’s talk were:

• Keep the message simple. User generated content is easy when people like the message.
• Encourage others to build grass roots campaigns and facilitate them creating profiles (Twitter profiles, Facebook pages) and their own material with open source assets.
• Seek partnerships with organisations that can help spread the message.
• Outreach to bloggers.
• Don’t intervene. Let conversations flow.
• Don’t stop at English. Translate collateral into other languages and outreach to regional blogging networks.

Standing room only

Bernard Salt and Rebecca Huntley were guests at the last Social Media Club earlier this month. They presented their research on how Gen x and Gen y represent themselves online. Two themes emerged in the research: superficiality and authenticity.

The research found that Gen y are not, as some might think, uncritical of their use of social media. Gen y is aware of the dangers and pitfalls of broadcasting one’s life to the network – be it inappropriate photos being viewed by the boss, or superficial relationships being had at the expense of more meaningful connections.

The research focus was on attitudes towards social media and how people build and view representation of self in this space. The view that behaviour online is nothing new was echoed by Bernard Salt.

New technology amplifies instinctive human behaviour