Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
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With over 70,000 followers, the CNN breaking news bot (@cnnbrk) is the third most popular “user” on Twitter. The bot posts stories sent through CNN’s breaking news email alerts, but, contrary to what the average Twitter user might believe, the account isn’t owned or operated by CNN. It’s actually the creation of London web developer James Cox, who built the bot simply because he wanted a way for CNN breaking news alerts to be delivered directly to his cell phone. I had an opportunity to catch up with James and ask him about the account’s creation and rampant success. I also got to the bottom of that burning question on the minds of Twitter users in the know: why is CNN allowing someone to infringe on their trademark?
Talk about the genesis of CNNBrk. Why did you decide to make it?
Back before @cnnbrk, I was looking for a way to get breaking news alerts onto a mobile device in any way possible; I wanted to feel connected even when I was out. It was sort of systemic from 9/11–knowing when to go find a TV set began to make more sense. It took me a while to find the CNN alerts. Back then it was all desktop tickers or other more convoluted streams (I even spoke to Reuters to see if access to their output was feasible). With the advent of Twitter, especially when it still delivered to my cell phone (I’m in the UK), it seemed like the easiest way to solve that problem, and so @cnnbrk was born.
Did you actively promote the account at the beginning or was its growth mostly organic?
This was the first announcement: http://twitter.com/imajes/status/1963133 - almost two years ago! I didn’t really do much else to promote it; I didn’t really have to. I have tweaked the page a bit to ensure it has decent Google rankings. The account is the 3rd or 4th listing for “CNN breaking news,” which is nice. At no point has Twitter even mentioned it in a blog post or email, so it’s been very organic.
You’ve mentioned that CNN has been in contact with you. Describe the nature of this contact. Have they given you their blessing?
We’ve had a few conversations. Blessing is a difficult word in mainstream media, but certainly the guys over at CNN have done a lot to protect and help me.
Do you think the sheer popularity of the account was what prevented CNN from forcing you to pull the plug?
The popularity has been a defining factor, certainly. I think CNN is aware of the real costs involved with seizing accounts and have done the right kinds of things so far to keep the status quo.
Your bot was at the center of controversy during the summer Olympics. When Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Olympics, many Twitter users who planned on watching a taped, prime-time version of the event complained that @cnnbrk had spoiled the surprise for them. I found it bizarre that Twitter users who opted into a breaking news service would whine about receiving breaking news. What was your reaction?
Yeah, it’s a tough one. I certainly felt for the people who were looking forward to seeing the Olympics without the result being pre-empted. But I think it’s the same as any action replay: you avoid all forms of media till the game is on. There’s a great episode of The Simpsons where Homer ends up running around Springfield avoiding the score, only to be told it by Marge just before the game is on. At the end of the day, the world doesn’t stop, so news doesn’t stop. We’re very much in a 24 hour news cycle, where a story might live or die in the space of just a few minutes–you can’t expect it to pause.
I would think that a better reaction should have been for people to realize the potential for this to happen and choose how they wanted to avoid it. It was pretty amazing to see everyone pile on after the Bolt time and records were announced, as if people hadn’t had enough warning yet!
From my perspective, I chose not to pause the updates. There’s a healthy percentage of followers who are non American, and therefore un-encumbered by NBC’s tape delay.
When did it first hit you that your account was, for lack of a better phrase, “famous on Twitter?”
I knew early on that I was trending in the top ten/top five Twitter users; a bit of insider info and solid circumstantial evidence pointed me there. With the growth of tracking apps like twittercounter.com it’s more apparent. It also makes you realize you have to be responsible with how you choose to behave with it. I’ve been more and more careful not to add any non-CNN content into the feed of late, for example.
According to TwitterCounter.com, your account grows by an average rate of 275 followers a day. Assuming that your account’s growth can keep pace with the growth of Twitter, you’ll have over 170,000 followers within a year. Do you think this is likely to happen or do you see Twitter’s growth flat-lining?
Actually, the number is a bit depressed, and I’ve not seen any new sign-ups. I think the account has been temporarily flagged, which is annoying. I do fully expect to see the account scale in the same way twitter does. I think it’s responsible for a large number of new twitter users who discover it by Googling for breaking news. But it is also the sort of low volume account that people should subscribe to almost right away. It’d be great to see it as a suggested account, a sort of “Myspace Tom” if you like.
You can follow James on Twitter at @imajes, and if you’re not already receiving breaking news updates, you can join the masses at @cnnbrk.
Posted in Out on a Limb | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 17th, 2008
We live in an information society with the internet at our fingertips though broadband, DSL and mobile phones. We also live in a society that is comprised of consumers that have the ability to publish their words, thoughts and ideas in seconds through websites, blogs, and web 2.0 resources including micro blogging platforms such as Twitter.
Understanding and realizing that our customers are more tuned in and wired in than just a year ago is vital to protecting our name brand as well as tapping into the evolving consumer base we are attempting to persuade.
Over the weekend a valuable lesson was learned by a Fortune 500 company, and will soon be adapted across all channels of business relationships.
You see on Friday November 14, 2008 several wired in mommy bloggers took offense to a video advertisement that was on the Motrin website. The ad was geared toward “Baby Wearing Moms” and was rather insensitive to say the least.
A viral ground swell of disgruntled opinion towards the advertisement was fueled on the Twitter Micro blogging network. The Tweets continued and bloggers voiced their opinions.
By Saturday Night and into Sunday AM, 100’s of blogs and 1000’s of twitter accounts were active in their dismay of the Motrin websites and it’s marketing message. A viral and virtual boycott was formed and the public perception of the Motrin Brand sank lower the President W’s approval ratings.
By Sunday night and into Monday afternoon, the Motrin website was taken off-line to attempt damage control. As of this post the site is back up with a Public Apology.
The lesson that should be learned from this account, is the your consumers have public voices, and monoritoring your Keyword and Brand Name can stop a landslide of public disgruntled behavior. If the people at Motrin had a Simple Google Alert for their Brand Name, or set up and monitored a Twitter Search for their keywords and brand name, they would have been aware of the firestorm that was headed their way. Motrin took down the ad 4 days after the incident developed into a Butter Fly Effect.
By monitoring and reacting, the Tsunami of bad publicity could have been avoided and damage control could have been set in place earlier than Day 4.
The several lessions to be learned are:
Know your market
Understand your market
Keep tabs on your Public Images via Google Alerts / Twitter Searches via Brand Name Keywords
and above all, never underestimate the power of a mommy, her keyboard, and a internet connection!
#MotrinMoms
Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 7th, 2008
The power to make or break any website or blog is the amount of traffic and ROI (return on investment) that can be generated from month to month. When your livelihood depends upon your on site internet presence, it pays to think outside of the box and explore opportunities as they present themselves. Last week I introduced you to the Apple iPhones App for getting your blog iPhone ready and a quality back link from the Apple.com site.
Since it’s Friday and a gorgeous hello “Global Warning” day here in Richmond Virginia, I thought I would take the time to show you just another cool little thing I discovered in my mad labs here at Big Oak SEO - Richmond SEO Company.
I love the power of social media and Web 2.0 style sites, and one of my favorites has been Twitter. Yes that little tool that makes you get your point across in only 140 characters. However if you know how to use those 140 characters wisely it can pay off into huge dividends.
On election day, Nov 4th I was cruising around and saw that Yahoo had jumped into the Twitter arena. More importantly the folks that run the elusive Yahoo Directory. With a quick double check I confirmed it was the good folks at Yahoo and not some cyber loser and huge practical joke.
So I had nothing to lose and put my best 140 characters together and sent a Tweet to the folks at Yahoo - Directory.
a simple tweet: @yahoo_directory So you joined twitter, Check out http://www.parentinghelpme.com
11:53 AM Nov 4th from web in reply to yahoo_directory
Well the power of twitter and a decent website got the attention of the good folks at the Yahoo Directory and guess what…
Yup Today I got into Yahoo Directory from a single tweet. I didn’t even have to use all of the 140 characters twitter allows and I made it in with less than 80 characters and 3 days. Not Bad for an Election Day Result and Global Warming hitting Richmond Virginia this Friday November 7, 2008.
PS: You can Follow this site @BigOakSEO or me @bigebiz on twitter
Posted in Blogging, Link Building | 11 Comments »
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
No Time to Twitt Mr Jones?
One of the most common complaints of Twitter is that one doesn’t have enough time to spend keeping up with their Twitter accounts. They are to busy doing more important things, such as reading our Blog or the “ranked hard, SEO comic“.
Now I can’t blame them for that, but for the rest of you Non Twitter Time Takers, a new solution is made especially for you.
@ShannonCole has come up with TwitResponse an application that allows you to “pre-record” or “pre-type” your twitter messages and have them scheduled to appear to your Twitter Followers at predetermined intervals in the future.
The program is in BETA but works extremely well. The description from their page reads
“Twitter + AutoResponder = TwitResponse!
Setup unlimited messages to be delivered to your twitter page when you want. Need a message sent 2 hours from now, no problem, setup a TwitResponse.
Having a product launch, upcoming seminar, book release… Setup a TwitResponse to automatically notify your followers.
Make sure you register to see the full effects, and then Twit me in advance, something, in the Future to @bigebiz.
Psst.. You might want to Add @ShellHarris to that list, he may not figure it out right away that your message was “pre-typed” but that’s half the fun of Twitter.com isn’t it?
Pssst…. Chris just joined in as well Catch him @BigOakChris
Posted in Social Media Optimization, Website Conversion | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
I found this funny graph at graphjam.com. I thought it was appropriate considering my latest post on twitter. Agree or disagree?
Posted in Out on a Limb, Social Media Optimization | 6 Comments »
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
I must admit that I go back and forth on how useful twitter can be. For the last few weeks I have hardly twitted and have read even less tweets than I have written. We created a comic (Jason Calacanis -SEO Has No Future) and that spurred a huge traffic spike in our site’s stas. I knew we were featured on the home page of Calacanis.com so my natural assumption was that our traffic came from Jason’s popular home page.
Looking into our stats I discovered that a small amount of traffic did come from his site, but the overwhelming amount of traffic came from twitter pages. A few seconds of research and I found that Jason Calacanis had twitted about the comic. That twit, directly and indirectly, was providing most of traffic. Amazing, twitter can be useful…if the right people are doing the twittering.
Of course it does help when a lightning rod such as Jason Calacanis (He has over 32,000 followers) is doing the twittering. Feel free to follow me on twitter; I promise not to tell you what I had for lunch.
Posted in Social Media Optimization | 13 Comments »
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
A very resourceful gentleman by the name of Andrew Baron put his Twitter account on ebay. This account has 1,400 followers who have also been put on the auction block whether they like it or not. You can see the auction on eBay. It was up to $1,550 when I took this screen shot, with 7 days to go. Amazing!
Why is he sellng his account? From his own words:
I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.
So I guess Twitter does have monetary value and you can throw your “twits” under than bus when you sell it. I would personally be a little upset if I was following him, but you have to appreciate the genius of this auction. What is your Twitter account worth?
If anyone has a twitter account they think I might like to follow please submit it in a comment. I’m still not sold on its value.
Posted in Out on a Limb, SEO Tools, Social Media Optimization | 7 Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
I’m not going to write a review of twitter, mainly because I have only started using it recently and I’m undecided about its practical uses. If you would like to see what others think of twitter you can read a review here or here. I did include two videos in this post so you can get a quick idea of what it is and how it works.
What is Twitter? Twitter is a social messaging tool for staying connected in real-time.
I do find it very cool that I have access to other SEO Experts and even cooler some of them have been kind enough to read what I’m twittering about. If you are interested in what I am doing you follow me at http://twitter.com/ShellHarris. Is anyone else twittering. Please pass along any thoughts on this social media tool.
Update: I was amazed to find the Google pulled an alert for me from a Twitter comment I made. I had made a comment about our newest SEO Comic and my alert pulls any mention of “SEO Comic”. So Google is caching my twitter page. The link are all nofollow, but we know Google follows nofollow they just don’t apply an link popularity from them.
The following videos can demonstrate the genius or madness of Twitter. I am yet undecided.
Posted in Out on a Limb, SEO Research, Social Media Optimization | 4 Comments »
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