While some lawmakers are calling for the FCC to intervene in the Cablevision/Fox pissing match over carriage fees, the FCC made some attempt last night to keep blacked-out Phillies fans informed. [More]
Price Chopper Supermarket Emails Customer's Employer, Demands Disciplinary Action For Negative Tweet
By 9.21.10
Last week, a customer at Price Chopper in upstate New York tweeted a relatively mild insult about the store: “Every time I go to @PriceChopperNY I realize why they r not @wegmans. Tonight -bare produce areas & this sign 4 ex http://yfrog.com/2tfj9sj.” In return, Price Chopper contacted the man’s employer and complained about him. [More]
General Electric Responds To Twitter Distress Call, Fixes Shattered Stove
By 9.16.10
Mike writes that his parents came home one day to discover that the pretty black decorative glass on their oven door had broken into thousands of tiny black decorative glass shards. The stove was out of warranty, but they tried to contact GE anyway. After Mike learned about the situation, he posted to Twitter about it, hoping that GE might have some kind of special social media team scouring the Internet for dissatisfied customers. They did. [More]
Coffee Shop Owner Uses Twitter To Ban Breastfeeding In His Store, Seems Surprised By Reaction
By 8.3.10
Yesterday, a coffee shop called The DoubleShot in Tulsa, OK sent out a tweet announcing that breastfeeding was now banned on the premises: “Notice: No breastfeeding at the DoubleShot. Thank you.” (The tweet has since been removed, but a tipster saved it for us.) This set off a torrent of angry reactions on Twitter, partly because everyone loves to fight about breastfeeding and partly because it’s World Breastfeeding Week. [More]
Social Media Bigwigs Reveal Advertising Tactics
By 7.25.10
Back in the day, advertising was supposed to be kinda sneaky — yeah, we knew companies were directing ads at us consumers in an effort to get us to buy stuff, but no one talked about it. Now, social media heavies like Twitter, Zynga (makers of Farmville, Mafia Wars and other time leechers) and LinkedIn are being totally open about their efforts. [More]
Old Spice's Brilliant Marketing Your Product Could Market Like
By 7.14.10
We at Consumerist mostly focus on when companies screw up, with some exceptions. We must give credit for brilliant marketing strategies when it is due, though, and yesterday’s personalized YouTube video blitz by Old Spice’s towel-wrapped spokesman, Isaiah “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” Mustafa, qualifies as brilliant. [More]
What Would You Do With A Forklift Full Of Wheat Thins?
By 7.1.10
Have you seen Nabisco’s new attempt to engage with customers through those social networking thingies that all the kids are into? They’re the latest brand to reach out through social media and find customers who are already talking about their brand, then engage with them. In completely ridiculous ways. Take, for example, the woman whose mournful Facebook post about running out of Wheat Thins led to the delivery of more Wheat Thins than one person could ever eat. [More]
FTC Makes Twitter Promise Not To Mislead Customers About Privacy
By 6.24.10
Twitter has settled a Federal Trade Commission investigation, which started after a hacker gained access to a number of Twitter accounts (including President Barack Obama’s) and sent out fake tweets from those addresses. Under the terms of the settlement, Twitter “will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it maintains and protects the security, privacy and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information.” We don’t know what happens in year 21. [More]
Consumers Have More Trust In Companies That Tweet
By 6.23.10
A new survey shows that 75% of consumers think companies that tweet or post Facebook updates are more deserving of their trust than companies that don’t. The CEO of Fleishman-Hillard, which conducted the survey with Harris Interactive, says he thinks it shows that companies need to respond to crises much more openly and quickly than in years past: “Not in a 24-hours news cycle, but in minute-to-minute monitoring.” [More]
Virgin America Out To Bribe Twitter Whores With Free Flights
By 6.22.10
If your Twitter feed starts blowing up with effusive praise for Virgin America, it may be because the airline has influenced those sets of 140 characters with free flights. [More]
BP Starts Operation "Top Kill," Watch It Live
By 5.26.10
BP has started operation “Top Kill,” and we’ve embedded here the live videostream of their latest attempt to plug the well. The maneuver involves pumping heavy drilling mud and cement into the well. While routine on surface wells, it’s never been attempted at 5,000 ft underwater. And if it goes south and the blowout preventer cracks under the pressure, it could make matters worse. Bust out the popcorn! I just saw a robot arm! [More]
Satirical BP Twitter Account Has More Followers Than Real One
By 5.25.10
A fake BP PR twitter account, BPGlobalPR, has started posted satirical tweets about the company’s response and attitude to the oil spill, and it has more followers than of the real BP Twitter accounts combined. And why not? Would you rather read, “BP Pledges $500 Million for Independent Research into Impact of Spill on Marine Environment” or “Doing our best to turn oil into oilinade. So far the stuff tastes TERRIBLE.” [More]
Loads More Data In A Tweet Than Just 140 Characters, & More To Come
By 4.23.10
A tweet. A seemingly innocuous 140-character piece of data shared over Twitter. That’s what you see as a user, but inside, there’s much more. Raffi Krikorian has cracked open a tweet to show you all the data that can be inside, like your geolocation, bio, name, etc. And last week, along with their advertising initiatives, Twitter announced that they’re adding “annotations,” which will allow developers to add just about any kind of data inside a tweet. This could spark a lot of fun innovations, but anytime you’re opening up more data, there’s always the potential for abuse. In any event, it’s cool to check out a tweet under the hood: [More]
New Twitter Friend At Sears Helps Reader Get New Dishwasher
By 4.22.10
Remember Bob? He had an extended warranty on his Kenmore dishwasher, and Sears decided that it would much rather send repairman after repairman to fix his defective dishwasher–and reimburse him to pay someone to wash his dishes. Between following Doug Moore, SVP and President of Appliances on Twitter and writing to Consumerist, Bob is getting a new dishwasher. A functioning dishwasher. [More]
Chinese Hack Government Twitter Block To Read Porn Star Tweets
By 4.21.10
As with many great technological advances, at the forefront of people’s desire for unfettered access to the Internet lies… in porn. Just ask the thousands of Chinese web users who have networked together and shared their collective ingenuity in recent weeks, all in the name of accessing the Twitter page of a Japanese porn star. [More]
White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen: Comcast Sucks
By 4.21.10
For anyone who has ever thought that they were being singled out by Comcast’s cruddy customer service, or that wealthy and famous people somehow managed to get non-cruddy service from the Kabletown folks, World Series-winning manager of the Chicago White Sox wants you to know that just isn’t so. [More]
Library Of Congress Now Home To Complete Archive Of Inane Tweets
By 4.14.10
Remember that Tweet you wrote about Tiger Woods that seemed hilarious at the time? Or that night you shared your thoughts on your cousin Bob’s lack of personal hygiene? Good news — all of the world’s most trivial 140-character-or-less Tweets will soon be housed forever in the Library of Congress. [More]
Twitter Begins Rolling Out Advertiser-Sponsored Tweets Today
By 4.13.10
One of the last bastions of ad-free Internet space is about to disappear. Twitter has confirmed that starting today, they are rolling out an official ad program they call “Promoted Tweets.” [More]
