Toyota’s Recall Antics Spread Virally
Over the past few weeks I have been watching the Toyota recall fiasco out of the corner of my eye. It began as a news story (which is different than its actual start date) and it has not gone away. Well, you know the online “you know what” has hit the fan when you can go to Comedy Central’s site and see this
Now, it appears that Toyota has really done some serious long-term damage to one of the most respected brands in the world. How? By being slow to react and being aloof enough to give enough fodder to someone like Jon Stewart to skewer them. Sure Jon’s not NBC, ABC or CBS but he’s more influential 
So what will this do to the car industry? Many other manufacturers will reap some of the benefit of Toyota getting bad press both online and off from the likes of traditional media and even Steve Wozniak. Yup, that Steve Wozniak. Jalopnik reports:
At a speech on Monday Wozniak claimed his new 2010 Toyota Prius, which isn’t under the current Toyota recall, randomly accelerated while in cruise control mode and that he could duplicate the event. After reading a similar story on Gizmodo Wozniak commented that he was having difficulty reaching the manufacturer to tackle his issue.
We called Toyota and they were clearly anxious to speak with Wozniak and so was he according to his assistant. “That’s exactly what we were hoping would happen,” she told Jalopnik. After passing on the contact info for a Toyota technical expert the company called us and asked us if we could actually send him Toyota U.S. President Jim Lentz’s personal number.
Ouch. Well, here is my totally unprofessional and unbiased thought on who could reap the greatest reward from Toyota’s mess. Hyundai. I say unbiased because I don’t own one and I get no remuneration for this opinion. I just hear really good things about their cars as of late. They have real strong word of mouth and what is the car buying public gonna do, turn to Detroit? Ha! Toyota with its feet dragging approach has left the door open for someone to knock them down several notches. I know they are off my list for future car purchases, what about yours? In this day and age if you can lay low and do some good work you can count on the top dog of your industry doing something really boneheaded at some point to create opportunity. And the mistakes of today are more deadly because of the online spread of the bad news. Where have you heard that before?
So here’s to Toyota’s taking the mantle for reputation gaffe of this short year. Can’t wait to see what the rest of 2010 holds regarding “stupid company tricks”.
Twitter Breaks Tweet Count? Or Another Attack?
I just noticed that my number of tweets just skyrocketed, according to Twitter.
Apparently, I tweeted 34,000 tweets overnight!
Here’s Google’s cache from last night:
And here’s what’s showing right now:
I’m not the only one to see this. My wife’s just jumped around 10,000 too.
Anyone else seeing this?
UPDATE: While this is annoying–I don’t want to appear as though I’m a tweeting windbag–it’s a known, low-priority bug, according to Twitter.
Google Maps To Add “Google Store Views”
I received a tip from a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” I was told that they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions. They also took [...]
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Google Partners with the NSA? The Same Agency That Tapped Our Phones Illegally?
If you’re a government conspiracy theorist, you probably shouldn’t read this post. You won’t sleep for weeks.
The National Security Agency is rumored to be working with Google in light of the cyber attacks that reportedly came from China.
Think about that for a second. Big Brother just partnered with big brother, to try and fight off communist China.
Doesn’t that make you just feel so warm and fuzzy? 
No one is publicly admitted that the NSA and Google are collaborating, but the source of the story isn’t some blogger looking for publicity, it’s The Washington Post–so there must be some smoke surrounding this alleged fire.
“The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?” said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
Erm, I think we’re there!
While it’s unlikely that Google’s going to hand over any user information, I still don’t like how close–and how quickly–Google is snuggling up with perhaps the scariest of all government agencies. This is the same agency that tapped your phones and emails without a warrant after 9/11. We’re supposed to feel confident it won’t take a poke around Google’s sensitive data?
Don’t get me wrong, Google is of the utmost importance to the USA. We can all agree on that, right? But, I still have an uneasy feeling about it working with the NSA. Especially when it’s a relationship that even Google doesn’t want to confirm publicly!
C Suite Resignation Via Twitter
When people in the industry or anywhere else for that matter look to C-level participation in social media Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, is viewed as a pioneer. He was the first Fortune 500 CEO to blog. Well, now he has broken some new ground by being the first CEO of his stature (or maybe any for that matter) to tweet his resignation. Yup, he’s given his last 140 characters on behalf of Sun Microsystems.
The New York Times Bits column says:
Jonathan Schwartz, the last chief executive of Sun Microsystems, has become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation.
Late Wednesday night, Mr. Schwartz used Twitter to publish a haiku about his exit from Oracle, which just completed its purchase of Sun last week.
“Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more,” Mr. Schwartz wrote.
Mr. Schwartz has been fond of using the Internet as a soapbox. At Sun, he became the first chief executive of a major company to put up his own blog. Mr. Schwartz also pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to put blogs on equal footing with press releases and filings when it comes to disclosing critical business matters to investors.
Considering the bad blood between Schwartz and his new boss Larry Ellison the resignation is not a surprise. Ellison last week said he expected the resignation was coming. Using Twitter as part of his resignation ‘process’ may have been a surprise, though. You have to give Schwartz credit for going out with a tweet.
Now it’ not like we are rooting for this to become a trend but I would suspect that many of you have your own favorite CEO that you would love to see craft a 140 character exit. (If you want to get creative and make a few for some of those folks feel free to leave them in the comments here). Are there any remaining social media firsts for business that you can think of?
In the end, what might be the best thing about all of this is the message of hope that we should all be focusing on that Schwartz left in an e-mail about his resignation.
As for what’s next, Mr. Schwartz said in an e-mail: “In the short run, I’m planning to spend some long overdue time with my family. Longer run, with a few million businesses and a few billion consumers on the Web, rumor has it there are some interesting opportunities to be had.”
Family time and opportunity. Now, that’s a good message and only 27 characters with spaces!
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70% of Companies Plan to Spend More on Twitter & Facebook Marketing
According to a new study by Econsultancy and ExactTarget, marketers face a conundrum when it comes to increasing their online marketing budgets in 2010.
They want to do it, but 40% of those surveyed simply don’t have the budget to spend more on marketing this year.
What to do; what to do?
I know, let us reduce our spending on print ads (41%), radio (36%), and TV (31%):
And channel those funds into Facebook and Twitter (70%), blogging (64%), and seo (64%):
Let’s hope these companies–and their agencies–can quickly figure out their ROI from social networking. Right now, only 17% of marketers say they have a good understanding of how sites such as Facebook and Twitter convert–compared to paid search ads (54%). Though those numbers stack up well against their current ROI measurement of print and radio, so maybe there’s hope. 
Yahoo Sells “Non-Core” Asset HotJobs For $225 Million
The HotJobs for sale rumor has been around for some time. Yesterday a deal with Monster was finally announced. It is being widely hailed as a smart move by Yahoo to gain cash and divest itself of another “non-core asset.” Except for payment and other terms the deal is conceptually analogous to what Yahoo is [...]
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Doing All The Small Things Right
Many small businesses ask me, ‘how can I get found more online?’ Or, ‘I have a web site but I rank so low that I never get found so I get little traffic’.
So you may expect me to answer: ”just list your business on Brownbook.net (the global wiki style directory site that I founded with @daveingram) [...]
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How To Take Keyword Research To The Next Level
There are a lot of different ways to conduct keyword research. Too often, companies will focus on words that show good demand, even if that word from an intent standpoint does not map to their products and services. Even worse, some companies will just want to rank high for a high-volume keyword, even though they’re [...]
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Introducting Your Paid Search Dashboard
Today, we’re going to go under the hood and take a quick look at a search engine platform where advertisers can upload keywords and ads to start buying paid search. For the sake of practicality, we’ll be specifically looking at just the Google interface, AdWords, as it is the most widely adopted paid search [...]
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