Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Attentio is measuring the volcanic cloud’s buzz in social media

Simon McDermott, co-founder of Attentio, gave a presentation yesterday evening on how the social media buzz around airlines exploded during the “volcano crisis” around Europe in April 2010 during a conference organised by ZN enititled “What a volcano can do to you”.

Simon’s presentation described how this kind of event gains an increasingly important online presence and how the Attentio Brand Dashboard can capture and analyse this buzz.

“Basically social media is a place where people go to get the most current information, discuss their frustrations and find new influentials. Eurocontrol and some airlines made a “good name” for themselves by updating fresh and relevant information”, said Simon McDermott.

Other panelists were Aurelie Valvat, from Eurocontrol, with an excellent presentation about their ad-hoc social media strategy applied during the “volcano crisis”, Philip Weiss, from ZN, who gave an input on how people can organise themselves using social media and access the information that they need without waiting for the following day’s newspaper, and Gilles Gantelet, from the European Commission, who offered the public a pan-European vision of the crisis and gave details about the passenger rights and the obligations of airlines.

The conference was organised by ZN and the Web2EU group of IABC and moderated by Teresa Küchler, journalist for the national daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Check out Simon’s presentation here:

And the winner is…

I find myself once again perplexed. I really must stop this inconvenient habit of being surprised by things that don’t warrant it because, working in social media, anything can happen and if I continue to be surprised, I may very well end up in an early grave with a head stone that reads:

“Here Lies Will. RIS”

I want you to try something for me. I want you to stop reading and think about what might have been the most talked about sport in social media during the winter Olympics… Aaaaaand go!!!

Did you do it? What did you come up with? Snowboarding? Ski cross? Hockey perhaps?! Well my friends, you would be wrong. The sport that created the most buzz in social media during the winter Olympics was… (drum roll)…

3… 2… 1…

Curling!

Yes folks, in a recent study done and presented by Attentio at I-COM in Lisbon, it would seem that curling was the most talked about sport during the 2010 winter Olympics. Therein lies the source of my surprise.

Digging a little deeper, I found that I was not alone. It seems that the majority of buzz created online was by people who were actually themselves surprised to be watching it. How interesting. The people that where driving the popularity of this broom filled, kettle pushing sport are the very ones who didn’t want and hadn’t planned to be watching it in the first place.

I call this the “Big Brother Live” syndrome. The art of watching something whilst, at the same time thinking “Why am I doing this? This is valuable time I will never get back”.

What this means is that people are very often surprised as to what is popular in social media and it can give very interesting insights into what people are thinking and talking about.  This is of particular interest to companies that think they have their finger on the pulse when the truth may be that they don’t.

Oh well, while I think about this little dilemma, I’m off to watch ‘Something for the Weekend’ on BBC. Believe me, there is nothing better than listening to Tim Lovejoy for switching off the mind and slipping into a philosophically induced coma. Try it.!