AUTHORS

Disruptomatic
Angela Natividad
Angela Natividad is a freelance copywriter, journalist and strategist based in Paris. She co-founded AdVerveBlog.com, a blog and podcast about ads and design, and writes MarketingProfs' “Get to the Point!: Social Media” newsletters. She likes people and animals, but not as much as books.
Tweet her @luckthelady.
James Martin
James Martin is the community manager of music & TV tradeshows midem & MIPTV/MIPCOM. He edits their respective industry news & trends blogs (blog.midem.com & mipblog.com) and also covers video games and technology for French cultural weekly A Nous Paris
Tweet him at @jamesmart_in
Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge is a freelance journalist based in the UK. He writes about digital music for Music Ally, and about apps and mobile for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Appside, as well as his own Apps Playground site.
Tweet him @stuartdredge

Zombie ‘Walkers’ Attack Twitter Users!

Our Follow list is crawling with walkers. And you thought the internet was safe!

French network NT1, which has just licensed Walking Dead for syndication in France, is running a guerrilla operation that gives people the thrill of being zombie-stalked … from Twitter.

A news article on their Walking Dead subsite alerts users to a “zombie virus” that’s contaminated NT1 employees. To avoid contamination, you’re advised:

  • NOT to Tweet the #walkingdeadNT1 hashtag
  • NOT to comment on #walkingdeadNT1 posts on Facebook
  • NOT to comment on the site.

The article went live yesterday. Since then, hundreds of people have tweeted the hashtag:

When you tweet it, a huge array of zombies starts following you on Twitter and will sometimes even @ you to go, “AAAAAAAH!”

No bites yet, but do you really want to risk it…?

Nice work by social TV agency Darewin. Noting that Twitter has taken to deleting the zombie accounts mere hours after they’ve been created, founder Wale Oyekanmi just laughed. “They follow you, you look at the accounts, and maybe some are dead,” he told us. “It’s coherent with the strategy.” In an ideal world, zombies don’t live long anyway. 

checkthis: super simple social shouting OK so there’s tumblr (right here), and there are clever module-based online flyer offerings like webdoc. But we’ve rarely seen as simple and effective “digital posters for social media” (their own words) as checkthis. If you’ve got something to say, you can chuck in text, photo, video (this playlist example’s particularly smart) and even polls and the like (cf. our own checkthis what I just made, pictured above), then share it on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest etc.  Crucially, when you do so on Facebook inparticular, your checkthis is shared as a  proper piece of content (like a YouTube video, for eg.), as opposed to — god forbid — just a link!  Yes, it is very similar to webdoc: but hats off to checkthis’ superior usability & overall quickness. Try our poll & you’ll see! Plus we’ll be eternally grateful :)

checkthis: super simple social shouting

OK so there’s tumblr (right here), and there are clever module-based online flyer offerings like webdoc. But we’ve rarely seen as simple and effective “digital posters for social media” (their own words) as checkthis.

If you’ve got something to say, you can chuck in text, photo, video (this playlist example’s particularly smart) and even polls and the like (cf. our own checkthis what I just made, pictured above), then share it on Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest etc. 

Crucially, when you do so on Facebook inparticular, your checkthis is shared as a  proper piece of content (like a YouTube video, for eg.), as opposed to — god forbid — just a link! 

Yes, it is very similar to webdoc: but hats off to checkthis’ superior usability & overall quickness.

Try our poll & you’ll see! Plus we’ll be eternally grateful :)

And Here It Is: Twitter-Based Retail.

Pay-by-Tweet is now a reality, at least for Special K buyers in the UK. The cereal brand has opened The Tweet Shop, in part to punt its move into the chips market. This also represents its first foray into retail in England.

Instead of whipping out a wallet, customers are encouraged to pay for the new Special K Cracker Crisps by Tweeting a message about its low-calorie snacking merits.

The shopgirls all sport red dresses, charged with checking every Tweet before handing the crisps over.

From Special K’s Sarah Case:

The value of positive endorsements on social media sites is beyond compare so we’re excited to be the first company to literally use social currency instead of financial currency to launch this new product in our bespoke Special K shop.

This is big news for Special K and we are hoping the brand’s move into crisps and the high street will create a major buzz on and offline.

Find the Tweet Shop on Meard Street in Soho. It’ll be open from the 25th to the 28th and, in addition to its ménagerie of chips, is equipped with a “community noticeboard” for capturing social media reactions.

Photos + story via CreativeBoom. Tip via So Particular.

New iPhone app TweetDAQ gamifies Twitter. To which the only response of most right-thinking people is “NO! NO! PLEASE MAKE THIS MADNESS STOP!” The idea: “TweetDAQ studies your Twitter activity and rewards you for reaching set criteria each week. The app creates a competitive element to Twitter for novices and addicts alike. You will be scored on a number of things (your sphere of influence, number of retweets, number of new followers amongst other key criteria)…” And it ties into Apple’s Game Center for high-score tables and suchlike. The perfect new craze for Kloutbores.

New iPhone app TweetDAQ gamifies Twitter. To which the only response of most right-thinking people is “NO! NO! PLEASE MAKE THIS MADNESS STOP!”

The idea: “TweetDAQ studies your Twitter activity and rewards you for reaching set criteria each week. The app creates a competitive element to Twitter for novices and addicts alike. You will be scored on a number of things (your sphere of influence, number of retweets, number of new followers amongst other key criteria)…”

And it ties into Apple’s Game Center for high-score tables and suchlike. The perfect new craze for Kloutbores.

Can tweets really predict a movie’s opening weekend at the box office? That’s what the Financial Times is suggesting, although the lead quotes saying so come from a company that… “analyses tweets, blog posts and other social network data to provide box-office forecasts for Hollywood studios”. So they would say that. Even so, Fizziology claims to have a good record, predicting a $140m opening weekend for the last Twilight movie based on Twitter buzz, and only being $1.5m wide of the mark. Using tweets to draw conclusions about what the wider public may or may not do is fraught with risks, though. Twitter isn’t purely for liberal early-adopting geeks any more, but neither is it a service that’s completely mainstream. Caution is advised.

Can tweets really predict a movie’s opening weekend at the box office? That’s what the Financial Times is suggesting, although the lead quotes saying so come from a company that… “analyses tweets, blog posts and other social network data to provide box-office forecasts for Hollywood studios”. So they would say that.

Even so, Fizziology claims to have a good record, predicting a $140m opening weekend for the last Twilight movie based on Twitter buzz, and only being $1.5m wide of the mark.

Using tweets to draw conclusions about what the wider public may or may not do is fraught with risks, though. Twitter isn’t purely for liberal early-adopting geeks any more, but neither is it a service that’s completely mainstream. Caution is advised.

“Does Twitter menace the presidential election?” Such was the leading question of free French daily Direct Matin today. Some strange legal loophole (France is riddled with them) means national press can’t reveal the results until 8pm, whereas they are available mid-afternoon. As this ridiculous law doesn’t apply outside France, papers in countries like Switzerland plan to publish the results of the first round of voting April 22 at 4.30pm; and some in France have threatened to do so too… Thereby risking a fine of up to €75,000! The thinking is that if there’s a difference between results announced at 4pm and 8pm, candidates can contest the vote and ultimately get the whole thing redone. So why the Twitter bashing? Well, it seems obvious that plenty of people will tweet early results as soon as possible via Swiss and other sites, in a mad rush for RTs and follows. This would’ve been pointless at the last election: no one was on Twitter in France in 2007. So now let’s blame it for whatever we can. Funnier still: Jean-Luc Morandini, star presenter on Direct 8, is threatening to reveal the results early this year. In 2007, he made the same threat, only to bottle out in the end. Cerise sur le gâteau: both Direct Matin and Direct 8 are owned by Vincent Bolloré, the media mogul on whose yacht Sarkozy had his infamous first post-election free holiday. Could this article as such be a thinly-veiled “don’t tweet” order? Hmmm…

“Does Twitter menace the presidential election?” Such was the leading question of free French daily Direct Matin today. Some strange legal loophole (France is riddled with them) means national press can’t reveal the results until 8pm, whereas they are available mid-afternoon. As this ridiculous law doesn’t apply outside France, papers in countries like Switzerland plan to publish the results of the first round of voting April 22 at 4.30pm; and some in France have threatened to do so too… Thereby risking a fine of up to €75,000!

The thinking is that if there’s a difference between results announced at 4pm and 8pm, candidates can contest the vote and ultimately get the whole thing redone.

So why the Twitter bashing? Well, it seems obvious that plenty of people will tweet early results as soon as possible via Swiss and other sites, in a mad rush for RTs and follows. This would’ve been pointless at the last election: no one was on Twitter in France in 2007.

So now let’s blame it for whatever we can. Funnier still: Jean-Luc Morandini, star presenter on Direct 8, is threatening to reveal the results early this year. In 2007, he made the same threat, only to bottle out in the end. Cerise sur le gâteau: both Direct Matin and Direct 8 are owned by Vincent Bolloré, the media mogul on whose yacht Sarkozy had his infamous first post-election free holiday.

Could this article as such be a thinly-veiled “don’t tweet” order? Hmmm…

Think Twitter’s just an endless stream of raw data? You’re not looking hard enough. Smart Car in Argentina’s produced a flip book out of its Tweets. Tired of flip books yet? No? We didn’t think so. Visit @smartArg, hold down your “J” key, and GOOOOOO! Sometimes the best kind of entertainment is the kind that sneaks up on you. 

Think Twitter’s just an endless stream of raw data? You’re not looking hard enough. Smart Car in Argentina’s produced a flip book out of its Tweets.

Tired of flip books yet? No? We didn’t think so. Visit @smartArg, hold down your “J” key, and GOOOOOO!

Sometimes the best kind of entertainment is the kind that sneaks up on you.