Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Sign up to Wubud.

We setup an account for Wubud on Twitter a few months ago to raise some awareness for the company and promised to give away a Mac Air in a prize draw as soon as the account reached 5,000 followers. Numbers increased each time we talked about Wubud but they stagnated as soon as we stopped. So, in light of this and to ensure we give away the lovely kit on this side of the next millennium, we’ve decided to solicit your opinion.

Should we change the rules so that the Air is given away when my personal Twitter account reaches 5,000 followers, or, don’t change anything and continue the competition on the basis of Wubud followers?

By changing to my personal account you no longer subscribe to a product, which I personally don’t particularly like anyway. It will also mean the Air is likely to be given away more quickly as I have just over 1,300 followers. On the down side to changing, it might annoy those who signed up to Wubud and who couldn’t care less about my personal ramblings outside of that particular product.

[Update: if the majority go with the 'change', we'll add everyone who's following Wubud into the prize draw to guarantee that their name is in at least once for their effort]

What do you think? We promise to go with the majority and the final outcome will be announced on the 21st of July 2008.

Feel free to leave your general opinion about product vs person twitter accounts.

This post was inspired by an email I received this morning about an event entitled “Managing the Consumer Clamour“.

The digital industry appears to be split into two in my opinion. The first half is made up of those who don’t talk about ‘managing the consumer’ because they understand the art of conversation - instead, they talk about how to enable a better conversation between brand and consumer. In fact, the best of them aren’t talking about it at all, they’re just doing it as it comes natural.

The other half is made up of old media - they’re still talking about ‘managing the consumer’ and trying to figure out how to control what they say.

You can’t manage the consumer clamour. What you can do, is influence it by making sure you get involved in the conversation. It’s cheaper and easier than ever, with tools readily available to help everyone become a publisher/creator - enabling them to influence the perception of a particular brand. This is normally done through personal blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, MySpace and other forms of public arenas where it’s easy to publish an opinion for everyone to see.

What should you do?

Stop talking about trying to manage what people say. It’s impossible. In fact, trying to control what people say is worse than doing nothing. Instead, talk about how to get involved by listening to what the crowd has to say and then react accordingly. Soon, you will become proactive by asking the crowd what they think upfront.

If only I was Hugh McLeod. I could capture all of this and more, in one cartoon. Here’s a post by Hugh that’s relevant though.

My mother was telling me on the phone how she found pictures of me using Google. I asked her for more detail and came across pictures I didn’t particularly like. They’re stored on someone else’s flickr page, so I was unable to do anything to stop others from finding them. The same can be said for almost every Web site - the content is controlled by the author (not necessarily the owner). As soon as someone uploads a picture of you to the Web, it automatically becomes discoverable.

However, if someone uploads of a picture to their Facebook profile and tags you in it, at least you get the option to remove the tag, rendering it impossible for people to search specifically for you. In fact, you can set your preferences to block people from searching for pictures with you in them.

Facebook gets a lot of bad press because of its lack of privacy preferences and because it makes it easier for people to display their life in a digital format for the world to see. The fact is, it has always been possible - it just hasn’t been easy for everyone.

Doesn’t this mean that Facebook is in fact, more supportive of your privacy, helping you to control what’s uploaded by others?

Feel free to connect with me on Facebook.

It took just two days for HSBC management to resolve this issue. They were extremely helpful and apologetic for the miscommunication and misunderstanding.

It’s not company policy to refuse bank account applications from social networking or mobile related companies. However, there’s a little more to it than that simple statement - look at my vblog if you wish to learn more.

Download the video to your iTunes (2:77MB; 01:42 minutes)

To be clear, I didn’t do this as a way of ranting about my situation with a particular bank. I brought attention to this subject to help ensure some change, however small, took place, so that others would benefit.

This is my first ever video post so please forgive the fact that it’s very rough around the edges. Please feel free to provide tips and feedback.

Download the video to your iTunes (4.2 MB; 02:43 minutes)

Links

• Official Web Mission Web site
• Coverage of the Web Mission on TechCrunch.com and TechCrunch.co.uk
• Some information about wubud on TechCrunch.