Hyatt Concierge Twitter Feed Hacked

Bad day over the weekend for the Hyatt Concierge Twitter feed. They were hacked by some weight loss spammers. Top marks to Hyatt on spotting it quickly and dealing with it appropriately. Two screen shots below. Firstly the hack and then the response. A quick google search for the text of the tweet shows that a lot of people were hacked around the same time (April 14).

The Hack

The Response

Airlines Tweets in one list

Have created a new twitter list with most of the major airline official twitter feeds including all the skytrax winners and the top 20 global airlines.

You can follow it here

Overhead at Eyefortravel TDS – social media stole my conference

The word social media appeared nowhere in the title for Eyefortravel’s Trave Distribution Summit Asia (they have other conferences that do) but it was the number one topic from presenters on April 29 in Singapore.

In my keynote, I spoke about the rise of transactional questions on Facebook and Twitter. I highlighted a number of examples of consumers using twitter and Facebook to ask questions that are begging for advertisers to provide answers. Opening up social search as a real competitor for Google. Sharat Dhall of Tripadvisor spoke of the never ending flood of user reviews/photos and hotelier responses. Particularly of interest in his presentation was the launch of TripWow and how Tripadvisor is expanding their insatiable lust for content from text to photos. Joe Nguyen of comScore showed the numbers with a left to right sharp incline for Facebook travel stats. Starwood spoke of having 1 million mentions in social media in 2 weeks (though many of us weren’t sure the numbers were right). Brett Henry of Abacus called Foursquare and Gowalla as the future must watch emerging businesses. Morris Sim of Circos Brand Karma told a story of a 4000% ROI on a social media marketing campaign (though admitted that scaling it was extraordinarily hard). Aloke Bajpai of ixiGo spoke of the future of apps and mobile as social devices – as soon as someone launches a more advanced mechanism for app search and discover. Even speakers that started by expressing concern that the conference had become dominated by social media talk ended up talking non stop about the user forums on their site.

It turned me to thinking about whether or not it was fair to hijack the conference and talk so much on this one area of consumer interaction and marketing. On one level it is understandable given that social networking sites are generating the most traffic, buzz, funding and consumer attention. But (as I said in my keynote) we cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in excitement and forget that the number one online battle ground for transactions is still on Google/Yahoo/Baidu/Naver etc. We must get engaged in social networking and content but cannot take our eye, money and talent off the traditional search battleground. My tip for social media was to focus on data, content and customer monitoring first them look to transactions in social media in a year or two (or three). For more on my thoughts see my post ad:tech thoughts here.

Some of the hoteliers in attendance may have felt disappointed that they did not hear more about how to rank on Google, spend on banners effectively, sign up with OTAs, manage content and improve SEO performance. This is was not a conference for talking about what to do now in the places that generate traffic and business. This was a conference for thinking about what was next – where we talked about how to engage with an audience that wants to talk to you and be with you online.

Attendance was solid in terms of numbers with a majority hoteliers, then online agents then technology and service providers. I have been noticing more and more that airlines have all but stopped turning up to online specific conference, limiting themselves to airline specific ones. On the format, eyefortravel are pulling good quality speakers but it is time to do away with the 3x15+QA format. That is the format where each session has three speakers giving a 15 minute presentation each followed by panel Q&A. Conferences like this need less power point and more QA and interview formats. Moving the format away from collective presentations to interview and panels will reduce the sales pitching that continues to creep (and sometimes storm) in and increase the speed at which the conversation gets to the interesting analysis.

Finally snaps to Don Birch who was a great chair. Insightful questions and summaries.

The BOOT at adtech: three trends for any social content strategy

I was at adtech Sydney the week before last speaking at a session called “what is the impact of social content on e-commerce”. During this session I shared my thoughts on the three main trends that an online company has to be aware of in a social media strategy. Here is a post with my speaking notes cover the three critical trends to follow and understand when crafting a social media/content strategy:

Trend 1 - Trust, interest and relevance as (if not more) important than technology

Social media is word of mouth at the speed of light. Successful word of mouth marketing comes not from technology but from trust, interest and relevance. As I mentioned in my lead up interview to eyefortravel TDS next month, getting someone to talk about your brand is not driven by technology it comes from earning a customer's trust, telling them something interesting and making it available in a relevant way. Technology is the speed and connectivity tool but is not the message. The recommendation from this trend is to spend as much if not more time on the message as the mechanism. Just like TV shows in the fifties were great ways to generate word of mouth about soap because of the relevance to the audience, so too they only worked if the soap opera carried a message targeted to and of interest to the audience. The soap operas in themselves were not transactionally driven. Similarly, this is why the initial phases of social media marketing have been content related rather than transactional or deal based. In the travel arena, content and travel stories are more likely to be relevant, interesting and build trust (at this stage) than sending out poorly targeted deals.

Trend 2 - the open ended question comes online

In the nineties and early noughties the job of the online travel industry (suppliers, agents, content and search businesses) was to help customers answer closed questions. Specific questions with specific answers. The last 2 years has seen the shift online from asking closed questions to open question. From a closed question like 'how much for a 4 star hotel in sydney?" or "how much for a flight to new york?" to an open question like "where should I go next?" or "what should I do this weekend?". The first has a limited set of answers regardless of who asked. The second has an unlimited number of answers that change depending on who asks.

For online travel businesses this means using the data we collect from our members, community and purchasers to drive recommendations and trustworthy community interaction to shift form answering limited questions to limitless questions.

Trend 3 - the platforms for social media are still in beta

I am convinced we are at an intermediary step with social media. By that I mean that the platforms are not close to being finalised in form, function or usage. Status updates in Twitter, Linkedin or the new Google buzz are still non-stop streams of information. As I mentioned in my story about tracking the Mumbai attacks via twitter this constant feed of information and innuendo can be overwhelming in volume and unmanageable in determining truth from fiction. Twitter is not a final product, same for Facebook and Linkedin. In fact the social media platform space is still in beta. People were tweeting at adtech that blogs are now dead, long live Twitter. But still only a fraction of the online world uses twitter and there are more cumulative page views being attracted to long form content than micro-blogging update. There is a next stage coming, a next product or iteration of an existing product that adds a management layer, a relevancy later and an attribution/authority layer - in other words trust, relevance and interest.

The BOOT's thoughts on Twitter, Blogging and Social media

Darren Cronian of the fantastic Travel Rants Blog has been working on the Travel BlogCamp idea for a number of years now. Just recently he launched a site to house all the content and advice he is collecting. He sent me a few interview questions covering my thoughts on blogging and social media. For the full text of our exchange you will need to visit the Travel BlogCamp site (when the post is live). In the meantime I wanted to share with you the answer relating to my thoughts on Twitter. Darren asked me whether I thought Twitter was having a negative impact on blogs – especially in the area of comments. Here is what I said in return

“I have not yet figured out twitter (anyone who tells you have is lying). But a couple of trends are clear. First - Twitter is a much more powerful a means of generating buzz about a story that email forwarding. If a post I do is a hit on twitter (ie gets RTed a lot) then the traffic I receive will be much greater than any "pre-twitter" story. Second - Twitter lets me participate and share in information around an event unlike anything else. The use of hashtags for sharing information and commentary around a conference or event (whether you are there or not) has added a new dimension for interaction (and site traffic generation). Third - If you use Twitter a lot then you blog less. It gives me a means for making very short pieces of commentary and distribute information that I used to translate into a longer blog post”

More of the interview here
Want to follow me on twitter then I am here. If you just want BOOT posts only on Twitter then here.

Crowd Sourcing on Twitter - when 140 characters is not enough

Tweet question of the week

"What is the best way to advertise an online travel agent?"

I love a good crowd sourcing question. Twitter followers quickly pointed me to important infor sources to help write my recent meta-search vs OTA post. But there only so much that 140 characters can do. How can one answer the above question in 140 characters in a meaningful way? Best I could think of was

"A balance of SEO, SEM, affiliate, strong site content, member retention plans, a bit of offline brand and don't forget product focus"

But this is as useless as it is short.

Twitter crowd sourcing is not ready for open ended questions like "what is the best way". Stick to "where can I find info on" as a tweet.

I wont point to the tweeter to avoid any embarrassment but trust me that I have copied and pasted word for word.