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Posted on

Everyones talking about it – the old man of IT?

So there is this article at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/small-business/news/article.cfm?c_id=85&objectid=10599533
Patrick Kershaw works in IT, and apparently believes that twitter is no good for marketing. Whilst im sure hes a nice person, and great at his job, i wonder if hes based his opinions on trial at all?

Whilst anyone who’s been on twitter realizes there are a couple of profiles about that tend to fit most businesses & people online.

The Talker

There are the celebrities who just post to raise profile and, according to Patrick “personalise”, and generally more often than not show fans they are just  normal people, in fact often small minded and somewhat clueless. I have to admit however, some celebs have actually proven they are better than i originally thought! More often than not they post and never reply to anyone. They may have over 1,000,000 watchers, but only watch 90 or so people themselves, proving in effect that a) they dont care much for your opinion anyway, and b) its really impossible to keep up with that many people!

Spammers

These are the people that just mass follow people, and spam their link any way they can. Often bots, but occasionally some person has it in their head and heard that twitter was good for marketing and just spams all their followers till they get blocked.

Normal People

These are your every day people, some get along, some don’t. They come to socialize and generally “hang out”

Pets

These are usually done by “Normal People” who just thought it would be funny to have a pet stream. Depending on how ‘funny’ they are is how many followers.

Legitimate Businesses

Now this is where we come down to the biggie. According to Patrick this just doesn’t make money and bring in people other than a particular market. Im confused where he gets his information here because i travelled from Cambridge to Auckland just to visit @thewinevault – and i dont even drink, I have however recommended him to many who do. I happen to know hes extremely well liked because hes NOT actively trying to spam his website and business all the time, but takes the time to talk to people as a normal person.

Ive seen @rgoodchild procure a lot of business and interesting ideas for her own businesses and her website http://www.askrachel.co.nz , ive seen a group of 20-30 people turn up at @giapo ice cream parlour on queen street because they talked regularly on twitter (and often im seeing people tweet about his ice cream!).

Then there is of course the bigger players, @vodafonenz who almost caused mutiny when they handed his twitter account over to marketing the 3g guy.   I firmly believe he fixes more problems on twitter than the customer support currently, and in 1/8th of the time. He’s the first place i go for support when i have a problem, and one of the best things vodafone ever did for company image.

Until recently i had never heard of idealog magazine ( @idealogmag & yes i dont get out much!), however having spoken to many of their employees online i even bought a copy recently.

If i ever need diet advice the first person i go to is @RealNutrition ( http://www.realnutrients.co.nz/ ) who is not only friendly, but not overly pushy about marketing.

And not to forget @THEFALLSNZ ( http://www.thefalls.co.nz/ ) who is hosting the next ‘tweetup’ and can pretty much guaruntee a party of at least 30 people or more! http://ow.ly/qaGW

@coupdemain from http://www.coupdemainmagazine.com say “we would be nothing without twitter. twitter is pretty much THE reason we had like 164,386 hits on our site last week.” (link)

So to most people on twitter, who move with the times. Patrick seems to sound somewhat like that proverbial old man down the road who lives in the dark ages, refusing to accept new technology.

Quick update note: Im a system administrator by trade, i run servers (web/mail/etc).  I dont have my own company but do web hosting for friends, and friends of friends. I’ve had more website hosting requests in the last 6 months than i can keep up with , and had to automate things as if i was a proper company. This is business purely based on twitter, my prices are nothing fancy, about the same as any other decent hosting company, and to be fair because im so busy im often slow on the update to respond to any requests. Most people see my twitter stream and realize that im actually busy not ignoring them, and dont appear to have a problem (though im trying to automate things to save the lagg!)

Posted on

When will the Mayhem stop? Cars vs Cyclists

Most of you know im an avid cyclist. I used to be 150kg and clearly very overweight. I used cycling help get me active as i lost weight, and of course started out slow.
Because i was larger 6km took me a long time to bike and was a epic journey, eventually i got better as i lost the weight.
Along the way i tried lots of cycling groups, but they all just went off and left me behind in the dust on the hills because i was larger.
Then i stumbled over a tiny group called the Pickled Pedallers in Albany.
Their motto? “We start together, we finish together”. I never got left behind, “Coach” would sit back with me (i think he liked the break to be honest!) and “Crash” would keep me amused with smart assed wise cracks.
I didnt always have the time to cycle with the group. but whenever i turned up i was welcomed.
As my cycling developed the group grew larger. When i moved to Cambridge from Auckland a year ago the one thing i missed more than anything was the cycling. I actually gave up cycling because the groups here just were not the same. Doing it alone just didnt do it for me (though i still cycle a lot too and from places).
I kept in touch via the forum and occasional visits and races.

So today i heard on twitter from @roadcycling (aka http://www.roadcycling.co.nz ) that her respects go out to the Pickled Pedallers who were involved in an accident today on the waterfront. My first though was ‘omg was anyone hurt’. As it turns out, there was. Unfortunatly the forum was down, however google reader cached the rss feed and i got this.

“Hi guys—-it is serious and it was our group. Greg Paterson is in a critical condition with head injuries, Dave also has a suspected head injury but some of us were talking to him in emergancy and he was quite lucid, cuts on ther left side of his face maybe a broken collarbone, Stev I last saw with a neck brace on and in emergancy but not sure of other injuries, Swampy has a bad cut to his left knee and Red Hot and I helped the doctor stitch him up—well we were there at the time! It is a nasty and deep cut.
Greg’s injuries are life threatening, so if you are into prayers, he needs them. I shall keep you posted.
The woman driver drove straight into the middle of the group so in some respects we are lucky there were not more of us injured.”

It even made the nzherald http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10599761 and several other places. (new update at http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10599817 )

At the moment im still stunned, and really gutted that Greg, and the other guys are now like this, because one person missed a stop sign. Something as small as that, has a guy in hospital unsure if hes even going to live, and if he does live what is his quality of life?

Whilst some of you may hate cyclists, do remember about the personal injury lawyer existence and that there are always the ones that give everyone a bad name. The PP in particular were actively working on making sure they were never aggressive to other members on the road, never stopping in odd places, and never more than 2 people wide (or 1 if there was a car coming – PP forums http://pickledpedallers.forumcircle.com/viewforum.php?f=2 ).

To follow the story check out http://www.vorb.org.nz/crash-auckland-t100615-15.html