Posts Tagged ‘apple’
Stephen Fry becomes 2nd most followed person on Twitter
February 3rd, 2009
It’s official - British comedian/presenter Stephen Fry has become the second most followed person on Twitter. With over 106,000 followers, his only rival is Barack Obama.
In fact as I’m writing this post, Fry is Tweeting live from a talk that he’s giving at the Apple store on London’s Regent Street. He leaked news of the event last week through his Twitter account, and tonight his webmaster Andrew Sampson is Tweeting on his behalf. It’s proving a genius way of sharing soundbites from his talk in a genuinely interesting and engaging way - particularly for people like me who’d prefer to stay in the warm tonight!
I personally love the way in which Fry uses Twitter - he doesn’t spam his followers, but instead offers insightful titbits of information about his travels, filming etc, along with honest reflections on his daily life. From a PR standpoint, his tone is genuine and authentic, and as a result his use of Twitter has done much to enhance his public profile.
If you’re not following Fry already, I’d suggest you do!
Steve Jobs’ fake death hits Wikipedia in seconds
August 29th, 2008
It’s the stuff that editorial nightmares are made of - publishing someone’s obituary before they have snuffed it. Well poor old Steve jobs had his 17-page obituary published by the Bloomberg financial newswire last night, even if it was just for 30 seconds! The mistake was of course retracted, and a full account of events can be read on Gawker.
But even more astonishing is the speed at which Steve Jobs’ name was added to the Wikipedia round-up of premature obituaries. There’s no hanging around in the world of social media! The listing could almost instantly be viewed here, along with the names of other people who were mistakingly written off as dead including Pope John Paul II (who was the subject of three premature obituaries), Alfred Nobel (who later went on to create the Nobel Peace Prize), Fidel Castro (where Ronald Reagan’s had been used as a template) and Humphrey the Downing Street Cat!
The Bloomberg gaff reinforces the universality of newswires. According to sources, the mis-published obituary crossed the newswires and was picked up within the 30 seconds it was live for. Online authority is so important, and once news breaks, it is nigh on impossible to retrace your steps and cover things up. One tiny comment can mushroom into hiroshima within a matter of hours - so be warned!
October 8th, 2007
The blogosphere is a wonderful place for circulating rumours, and today news that Facebook is looking to launch an artist platform to compete with MySpace is spreading like wildfire.
According to reports, the social network is planning to integrate with iTunes enabling users to buy music through the Apple store, as well as offering special profiles and widgets for bands wishing to promote their music and tour dates within the Facebook interface.
However, according to NME.com, counter-rumours are claiming that Facebook is infact planning to launch a competitor to iTunes.
Music has always been a great differentiator for MySpace, and Facebook has a big challenge ahead if it wishes to seriously compete in this space.
However, should it prove successful at securing an exclusive album launch, along the lines of the Radiohead initiative last week, then the tables could turn more quickly than we think.
I’ll keep my ear to the ground and let you know if I hear more!
Technorati tags: facebook, myspace, music, nme, itunes, apple, radiohead