AIRNZ FACEBOOK DEAL CRASH LANDS

We saw a deal from Airnz via facebook a couple of days ago - its was touted as a fantastic deal that would only be accessed via a FB page for on hour on june 6

so we duly, along with thousands of others clicked at 7pm and the site crashed. then as Airnz scrambled to fix the problem they gave everyone the wrong code to access the deal. By all accounts ( we never managed to access it ) the deal was not that great anyway.

Al that would have been bad but the amazing thing was how fast people went feral.

This is known in the NZ Blogger world as a SMOG - Social media own goal.

Tens of thousands of people were seriously pissed off - pissed off to create an anti Airnz facebook page (450 followers in the half hour following the close of the deal) - and two tui billboards..

Will be interesting to see what AirNZ does to clean this mess up - also shows what an ugly beast social media can be. Its a cheetah on P.

AIR NEW ZEALAND TWITTER AND THE NANA TEST

As yo know we are pretty conversant with most popular forms of social media. We have about 650 followers on Twitter.

Most are wine, journos, foodies and social media types. We can get an estimate of our reach pretty quickly using a variety of tools. Tweetreach is a good quick and dirty measure of reach - which is really just a measure of who received your tweet, not who read it or who passed it on. Although we only use the free version - the paid version had substantially more clip on services.

Anyway, since about May 11 we have been in "dialogue with Air New Zealand over a refund issue. The actual details are boring other than to say it related to a full flexi flight for 2 people that was cancelled and the check in chick recommended that a refund be sought. So we did.

It took about 20 mins on the phone to the first Airnz customer services bloke CS1 to detail what and where etc. He said that he had all the details and would pass them onto the refund team.

And he advised us to check up on them to see how things were going in a week or so.

Good oh, we said.

So a week went by and we did check. Strangely we had to repeat the process all over again re explaining the details to customers service chick CS 2. It took another 30 minutes. Then she told us she was relaying all the details to the refund team and then she would let me talk to them.

By this stage we had started to twitter our less than satisfactory experience.

Then we spoke to refund customers services chick 3 who asked us to detail everything in an email. I said that by this stage there must be a file as CS 1 and CS 2 both detailed everything so there was no need to waste even more of my time by getting me to detail it all in an email again.

She put me on hold for about 1o mins and then she came back and said yes there was a file and it would be acted on today.

I was still merrily twittering away and by this stage 3400 people had received my tweets on the subject.

I got a tweet from @flyairnz asking if there was anything they could do.

15 minutes later I got an email from the refund team saying that the refund had been put on my visa.

Now all the customer services people were lovely to deal with. Although I did feel CS3 was trying to stall the process. But the system for refunds is not customer friendly.

We love Airnz and its snazzy marketing and excellent use of social media, its wonderful flight stuff and the way its part of the kiwi psyche. We love the way they embrace technology and really try to do the best for the customer most of the time.

And as well all know its the putting right that counts. And they did.

But this does not pass our Nana test. That is - would a little old lady get a refund or would she give up because it was all to hard and the obfuscation and lack of clear process would have been too much?

Our money is on Nana giving up.

So no it doesn't pass the Nana test.

And we want to know why it would take - 4 - 6 weeks to process a refund as we were advised by CS2 today. Considering that you can only fly if you pay up front - 4-6 weeks for a refund is just insulting and usurious.

If it was good enough to sort out my refund in 2 weeks its good enough to sort it out in the same time frame for everyone else.

And it still leaves me pretty impressed that Twitter is a good way to get the attention of a social media savvy company like Air New Zealand.

ICING ON A HOT NZ CAKE.

We reckon that this is the time we really need to sell our place- New Zealand. While Tourism New Zealand does a pretty good job - its time for the rest of New Zealand to start selling our story.

Early this morning we saw a tweet from the Wine Diva, a well known Canuck wine writer and tweeter.

Daenna van Mulligen has been tweeting for the last few weeks as she travelled around NZ chronicling her experiences . If we were writing about Wine full time - she would set the benchmark for use of social media and telling the story of wine in a fun way.

And she is a shining example of how we can get the "story" of New Zealand out through the "new media," online media, social media - what ever you want to call it.

Today we retweeted her wonderful take on NZ. She was glowing in her praise for New Zealand wine and Air New Zealand but she found pineapple lumps hard to swallow...

We have about 630 solid followers on Twitter and have got to the stage where twits with large audiences are following us. We loved what Thewinediva wrote about New Zealand. So we retweeted it. Then we checked on an online tool called Tweetreach later in the morning to see just how many people saw the story. Its a quick and dirty measure of how far your tweet goes. That single tweet went close to reaching 30,000 people in the space of a couple of hours.

We know that it only measures reach and not action and yes we have less than a thousand followers but handled right a tweet like that can suddenly be "heard" by a huge international audience. We know from the #hashtag #nzwine on twitter that it has been retweeted by thousands more people. So the reach of a positive article, if you have the right followers, is exponential.

For anyone who is a bit cynical about twitters ability to spread the word this is an example of how it works. Its like icing on a hot cake.

Thanks theWineDiva- you have showed us a small part of the future.

So New Zealand - get on board - lets sell ourselves to the world- it only takes 140 letters.

WE HEAR YOU - WE SEE YOU, EGYPT

It has been fascinating to watch the affairs in Egypt as the people unite to show that they will not tolerate Presidents Mubarak and his government anymore.

Much has been made of the use of social media and how, despite government attempts to shut down the internet and mobile phones, that the world's geeks mobilised to ensure the true story was being told.

This news site here has a great round up of the part that social media played and indeed is playing in keeping the world and Egyptian people informed.

Whether social media have helped or hindered protesters in Egypt, the events of the past week there have underscored the fact that both pro- and anti-government activists throughout the Middle East are making the most of social networking tools to organize and promote their causes in real time to mass audiences.

Jon Stewart, an American comic, television commentator and activist, offered a sardonic quip that in many ways captures the transcendent power of social media in the Middle East.

"If two speeches and a social media site is all we needed to spread democracy then why did we invade Iraq? Why didn’t we just, I don’t know, ‘poke’ them," Stewart said, using the Facebook term for getting a user’s attention.

We have watched facebook and more importantly twitter play huge roles in big events such as the Queensland floods. The emergence of a twitter #hashtag (subject matter) #mythbusters from the queensland police was used to great effect. A rumour circulated on twitter on the #qldfloods feed that Brisbanes CBD was being evacuated.

The QLD police sent out a quick response to tell everyone that was not the case with the mythbuster tag. Everytime there was any misinformation the police quickly replied with the mythbuster tag and and a new element on twitter was born.

In Egypt, it was the world, who instead of smuggling guns across the border, "smuggled" phone numbers to give the Egyptians a pipeline to the world so the global village could watch on and support the efforts of the people to overthrow the despotic reigime.

In Egypt, the use of Twitter audio feeds was key to spreading the word.

We think that social media is so powerful simply because it allows people to interact. Its not like the passive reception of TV or Radio feeds. You are part of the newsmaking process. It appeals to a need to belong and on the social media networks you are never alone.

As the days go by the world can watch events unfold in Egypt from the comfort of their phones and laptops.

For the people on the ground, the fight for freedom is not over yet. But they know that the world is watching every second of the events unfold and that they are not alone.

WAITER THERE IS A TWIT IN MY RESTAURANT

We reported recently on our experience with twittering our concerns about a substandard fish pie we had in a cafe recently and the fact that the restaurant was monitoring twitter and sorted out the issue in short order.

Now the Herald is carrying a story on how Twitter is being used by restaurants. Hospitality by its very nature is a great place to capitalise on the benefits of social media. Wellingtonians are joining up Four Square in droves as it points the social butterflies to the best deals around the place.

One of best examples on the Wellington scene of social media use is St Johns. the normally laconic owner Jason is having some fun on twitter offering deals on beer and wine every time the wind gets up . His latest effort is a total pisstake of himself but already he has had 3500 people view the vid on Youtube.

Well done him.

We are really expecting that the hospitality will be huge users of social media. Its immediacy and ability to target are a marketers wet dream.

PARTWITTERLY GOOD SERVICE

We have been looking at the various ways that Twitter is starting to make in roads into our daily lives as it picks up more and more users. And today was a classic example of how it can work.

We had lunch at Cafe L'affare. Not a place we normally go simply because we have an aversion to untamed rugrats and the place is their spiritual home. So being a bit peckish we ordered up the fish pie $18 with salad. We love fish pie. We have written a lot about who has the best fish pie in Wellington so without calling for a vote on it - we think we can claim the title of Wellingtons number one fish pie expert. and Arbitrageurs pie is still the best.

So it was with much sadness that when we lifted the lid on the L'affare smoked fish pie today that it was not an affair we wanted to remember. It was solid and sticky in a wallpaper paste kinda way. It was so overcooked and dried out that the pieces of egg within were a goldy colour and could have served as the innards of a good golfball.

So we decided that this was a tweetworthy event.

So we sent out our tweet missive that the pie at Laffare was not good and commented on its wallpaper paste consistency. We put down our phone sighed and forked over the stodgy remains and looked at the lovely salad. Sadly we are not really a salady kinda chick.

Then suddenly the lovely young man about the house was at our side.

"So what are we going to do about this" he said.

Lordy, it took a second to work out that he was indeed talking about our pie.

We were surprised and delighted with the instant response.

And we hasten to add that we have sent back food if its not up to standard and were just about to do that anyway.

He then swept up the bill and told us lunch was on the house. He told us they have a search on L'Affare on twitter and thats how they picked my tweet up. He also told us that the fish pie was being taken off the menu.

So big ups to L'Affare.

They do have a reputation of being a good eatery and coffee house to protect. And they did it in style today. So we will go back.

We have been watching the exponential growth and practical use of Twitter and Foursquare and Facebook with a great deal of interest.

Used well it is definitely a fantastic marketing tool. And more and more restaurants and bars in Wellington are using it.

LOL!

RNZ EPIC FAIL

Actually the whole of the NZ media has fallen a bit short on the Christchurch earthquake.

We first realised something was up when we got a message from Cactus Kate. She lives in Hong Kong. It was about 5.30am.

So we turned on the TV ( we dont have Sky) TVNZ - nothing - TV3 - nothing. Turned on RNZ and they were still running a kids programme. The TV stations and most radio stations are now pushing out info but not RNZ. It is woeful.

RNZ did a special morning report with Mary Wilson and Kim Hill. It is like listening to Decima and Morta - their black delivery was too depressing to listen to. And Wilson does not know how to listen to people. She just knows how to ask people questions - there is a world of difference.

When people dont have power and cellphones become problematic due to the towers being knocked out - good old steam radio is where people will go to get info. So it is important that they continue to push out info.

The Herald started reporting early as did Stuff.

However it was online and especially Twitter that had the quickest most update info and first pics on the event. Soon the media was using the pics and info from Twitter.

It is an extraordinarily fast and organic way to get and spread info.

Hashtags - the search words from which info streams develop on an issue were problematic. The first to get a head of steam was EQNZ. The christchurchquake took a while to get some momentum. There are good and bad reasons for using both tags.

So instead of one key portal to info there are many.

But as we sat, fascinated how the story evolved and how it was handled we learned a little more about the power and the limitations of the online social media community in a major event.

JOURNO JONO A TWITTER TWAT

Barnsley Bill has been sifting through some tweet from some twits. And finds some off colour utterances by the Herald on Sunday Dep editor. His twee tweets have now been silenced.
Not a good look for paid scribes.
Dave at Big News has some more

Whale Oil has a great round up of Tweetgate.

We are sitting drinking wine with Lambcut in the sun. No more blogging till this evening.

SIGH - WE HAVE A FAN....

#MrTweet I recommend @bustedblonde because she's aces over eights, and you don't want to mess with that11:24 PM Feb 28th from MrTweet

why thank ya baby face