Posts Tagged ‘mobile’
Crisis management storm brewing for O2
April 17th, 2008
O2 is not faring well in the press or public eye at the moment with its blunders over 3G speeds, and PR gaffe where it called readers of The Register “techie nerds”… and I’m about to make matters worse for them!
I’m unfortunate enough to be an O2 customer. My Blackberry is my lifeline. So when my data connection went dead yesterday morning, I phoned O2 up to see what was going on.
The customer service person I spoke to knew “exactly what was going on” before I’d described the problem, which was enough to get the alarm bells ringing.
I was then informed that O2 had moved to a new billing system over the past couple of days, and that all my tariff details had been lost. There was no record of the fact that I was a Blackberry user, had a data tariff, or the number of minutes or texts I received each month. Hence the reason for my Blackberry saying “data connection refused” for the past couple of days.
I was asked to describe my tariff so that the problem could be manually corrected! I’ve been promised that my data bolt-on will be reconnected tomorrow.
In true O2 style there was no apology, no offer of compensation for the impact this might have had on my business, and no explanation.
So in true social media style, I’m breaking the story here!
The new billing system has been implemented across O2’s entire customer base, so I’m guessing if you haven’t picked up on a problem yet, you will when your next bill arrives! I’d love to hear how O2 iPhone customers have been affected.
The final irony in the tale is that when the post arrived later today, I had a letter from O2 about the new billing system, entitled “a change for the better”!
October 9th, 2007
It’s been a busy day in the world of Google. First of all, news reached us this morning that Google shares have risen above the $600 mark for the first time. Not bad considering Google’s stock launched at $85 a share in 2004.
Then came the news that Google will be allowing websites in its ad network (AdSense) to embed videos from some YouTube content creators. This offers Google a new source of ad revenue, which will of course need to be shared with the content creators and sites that embed them.
However, the news that interested me the most broke this afternoon, when Google announced that it had acquired the Finland-based SMS and microblogging service Jaiku, competitor to the better known Twitter.
This is another telling move, proving the all-encompassing Google development arm is now focusing on mobile and social networking…and everything in between. Mike Butcher at TechCrunch has the full story.
Interestingly, Steve Rubel is giving Twitter 45 days to be sold, and he thinks Yahoo! will be the most likely suitor.
Oh and while i’m doing a Google news rundown, I should also mention that Google and IBM are partnering on a university project to provide data centres holding 1,600 computers that students will be able to use to learn cloud computing.
Or as Eric Schmidt put it: “In order to most effectively serve the long-term interests of our users, it is imperative that students are adequately equipped to harness the potential of modern computing systems and for researchers to be able to innovate ways to address emerging problems.”
Now the weather…
Technorati tags: google, jaiku, twitter, ibm, news, cloud+computing, social+networking, mobile