My Thought for the Day 22/04/09

“Trying to work out the correct formatting construction for citing tweets in my dissertation. A First World problem or what?”
9:24 PM Apr 22nd from my Twitterfeed.

My Thought for the Day 15/04/09

“Writing Literature Review long-hand. My theory was that after 40-odd pages my writing would improve with practice. Sigh. So much for that...”
11:54 PM Apr 15th from my Twitterfeed.

My Thought for the Day 01/04/09

“Hmmm, perhaps my Twitter-referencing April Fools gag was just too clever-clever by half...”
10:52 PM Apr 1st from twitterrific

My Thought for the Day 26/03/09

“3K+ words written, now I need to get the train into college library, but it is really lashing rain. Therefore: Motivation Level = Low.”
2:25 PM Mar 26th from Power Twitter

My Thought for the Day 22/03/09

“Doing some initial online research into corporate blogging. Oh yessiree that’s one fine can of worms you have opened up there Mr Kenny...”9:31 PM Mar 22nd from Power Twitter

My Thought for the Day 19/03/09

“Attempting to construct an irrefutable wall of logic: each component self-evident, elegantly reinforced & interdependant. (Not quite there.)”11:23 PM Mar 19th from twitterrific

My Thought for the Day 13/03/09

“Social Media defined: the most efficient method yet devised to allow companies to show the world that they hire people who cannot spell.”
08:22 AM March 13, 2009, from my Twitter feed.

My Thought for the Day 25/02/09

“Arguably you could be creative without being innovative, but you can’t be innovative without being creative.”
23:08 February 25, 2009, from my Twitter feed.

My Thought for the Day 13/02/09

“Moving the icons around on my iPod so that all dissertation-related apps are on same screen. That does count as productive work, yes?”
8:59 February 13, 2009, from my Twitter feed.

My Thought for the Day 10/02/09

“Porter’s Five Forces would be way cooler if it was called something like ‘Porter Force Five!’ (I’m thinking cheesy 70’s tee-vee show here...)”10:18 PM February 10, 2009, from my Twitter feed.

Quote of the Day 12/01/09

“Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you'd like to know better.”—Ivor Tossell

Quote Of The Day 09/01

“Twitter: Writing or sharing cool stuff. Builds respect. Grants acceptance from others to self-promote = Profit!”
—Hugh MacLeod. From his Twitter feed.

My Thought For The Day 08/01

“Have not written enough this evening but the paint fumes are really starting to get to me, which is salad, banjo, monochrome thought-bubble...”
23:02 January 08, from my Twitter feed.

My Thought for the Day 03/01/09

“Jump-starting my fore-brain after Christmas break. These assignments are just not going to write themselves.”09:17 January 03 from my Twitter feed.

My Thought For The Day 15/12

“Finally, module one essay finished, typeset and proofed at 23:55. Triage of my atypical in-box backlog shall have to wait until morning.”
23:57 December 15 from my Twitter feed.

My Thought For The Day 12/12

“I just wrote a sentence containing the sublimely ugly phrase ‘a proto-coaching mindset’. I feel like some threshold has been crossed.”
8:27 December 12 from my Twitter feed.

My Thought For The Day 03/12

“Re-reading Netflix case study yet again. At this point it feels like Harvard Business School should properly be paying me for the privilege.”
22:27 December 03, 2008, from my Twitter feed.

My Thought For The Day 20/11

“With all the pretend profits I am making from this imaginary business and marketing strategy I am writing, I am a real makey-uppey millionaire.”
1:39 PM 20 November, 2008 from my Twitter feed.

Twitter/Obama

Marketing Analysis (2 of 6)

Being a active user of the Twitter micro-blogging service, I was fascinated by the Obama campaign’s use of that service throughout the recent US election. (If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, I wrote this short explanation during Module One.)

Much has been written elsewhere about the ground-breaking use of online services and Internet marketing by the Obama campaign. As a candidate he has embraced technology and also the spirit of transparency that it enables. OK so there are 300 million people in the US, only a minute fraction of whom would be using Twitter. The difference is that they are an active audience; rather than the passive audience that Obama can market to on TV. One Obama tweet (or, at least one coming from one of his social media staffers) asking people to donate to the Red Cross during this Summer’s hurricane was able to overwhelm the Red Cross website.

So who is the target market here? US citizens of voting age would be the most general definition. Focussing in from that, it is the early-adopters and the technorati, (those who actively use Twitter).
Obviously I am not a US citizen and am ineligible to vote in US elections, but that does not imply that I am disinterested. So while I may not fall into the core target market, I think that as a citizen within a globalised economy I fall somewhat within the remit of people whom the campaign may want to speak to, and more tellingly, to influence.

Scanning the Twitter-feed can be an intoxicating experience once you get used to it. The juxtapositions it facilitates are endlessly varied. The chronological sequence of posts means that a post from NASA’s Mars Phoenix lander with the current weather on Mars may be followed by a post from the actor Stephen Fry on-location shooting a documentary, followed by a friend talking about his children, followed by an Obama post, followed by a news post from RTE or from the Irish Times. It is a great leveller, in that the personal messages and the marketing messages and the news stories all receive equal emphasis.

The Obama Twitter account has gone quiet since his election, with nothing posted since the fifth  of November. Obviously, there is not a lot of time available for blogging during the presidential transition period. Which is a shame, as it would be great to have regular Twitter updates from the within White House. (I see that while twitter/whitehouse and twitter/potus are all taken twitter/uspresident seems to be still available.)

From a marketing perspective there is a exponential shift when transitioning from being campaigning to being presidential. Their marketing activity has shifted over to the Change.Gov site for the transition period. That website deserves a whole other Marketing_2.0 blog post in its own right. Vocal entrepreneur and tech commentator Jason Calacanis has argued that the new administration ought to have a presence on the top ten social networking sites, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace and such. These are now the mainstream media to the upcoming generation, the sources where they consume their information. Calacanis proposed that as part of the presidential communications office they should appoint a Social Media Secretary. The time is now.

My Thought For The Day 14/11

“Somehow I don't think my Learning Log is really the best place for the recursive joke involving fractal footnotes that I just came up with.”
13:46 November 14 from my Twitterfeed.