I live in Montreal, a serious hockey town. The Montreal Canadiens were founded in 1909,and according to Wikipedia, they are “the longest continuously operating professional ice hockey team and the only existing NHL club to predate the founding of the NHL, as well as one of the oldest North American sports franchises. The franchise is one of the “Original Six” teams, a description used for teams that were part of the NHL from 1942 until the 1967 expansion.”

Right now, the Habs (short for Habitants), are playing the Philadelphia Flyers in the Eastern Conference finals. The winner of this series of  games will go on to play the Stanley Cup Championship, the pinnacle of every hockey player’s aspirations and the stuff of dreams for boys with skates, most particularly here in Montreal. To an extent, Montrealers feel like they own hockey. It’s our game. It’s part of the lifeblood and pulse of this city and a unifying force between all cultures who live here.

Much to the chagrin of my friends in Montreal, I am not a hockey fan. This is close to sacrilege. I have nothing against hockey, I’m just not big on sports in a general sense. I ignore them universally.

But, it’s impossible to ignore when Montreal is in the playoffs: after each goal, there is honking in the streets, and shouting spills out of open windows as neighbours erupt in cheers or frustration over every point won or lost. Hockey playoffs in Montreal compel you to pay attention.

Twitter Hashtags to Track the Game

And so it was a few weeks back when I found myself checking Twitter for the Habs score against the Washington Capitals. At that time, I noticed several hashtags: #habs #gohabs #gohabsgo and #habsDC. I had assumed that the final one, #habsDC had to do with the fact that the game was against Washington and was played in DC.

So why is it tonight, when Montreal was playing game 3 against Philadelphia, the #habsDC hastag was the top trending hockey tag on Twitter in Canada?

Thinking back, while the Canadiens were playing all seven games against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the #habsDC tag was ever-present. I thought perhaps people who were Tweeting the Washington game simply didn’t bother changing the hashtag. However, I find that a bit strange. I know Twitter is new to many, but, you’d think there were enough users out there who would know to change hashtags and have that be of influence.

I went on the search for services that give more information about specific hashtags and found several (thanks oneforty.com!) According to What the Hashtag?!, the tag is defined at” Montreal Canadiens fans hashtag initiated by @DenisCoderre.”

Political Sports Fan

Who is hockey fan Denis Coderre? He is a federal politician with a riding in Montreal. Prominent in national politics, he appointed the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport for three-years and helped to establish the World Anti-Doping Agency in Montreal. He also accused NHL player Shane Doan of the Phoenix Coyotes of uttering racists slurs against French-speaking referees in a game in Montreal, resulting in legal action on each side.

Denis Coderre is also one the country’s most active and engaged politician on Twitter and will live-tweet Canadiens games with enthusiasm.

Let’s think about this for a moment: a politician’s personal hockey hashtag overtakes the more generic and natural #habs to become the top trending topic in Canada on the night of a winning semi-final Canadiens playoff game. That, in a city that lives, breathes and riots over hockey.

Extraordinary.

Manipulation or Enthusiasm?

As I was pondering this achievement aloud on Twitter, Habs fan and hockey blogger Kyle Roussel of Montreal took this view of the custom hashtag: “It would mean a lot more to the #Habs twitter community if he’d use the regular one instead of usurping one for himself.” Though, he did concede that no one forced the Twitter public to use one hashtag over another, he didn’t see the connection between a politician and a hockey team.

I suspect that the general cynicism that the public has about politicians leaves some with the feeling that perhaps Denis Coderre is manipulating the association with the Habs for his own personal gain.

However, I think that most people use the #habsdc hashtag without knowing that it references the politician. Geneviève Côté believed it it to be “DC to shorten Washington in hashtag and it survived when Pitt started.” After viewing the link I had to What the Hashtag?!, she replied, “I may be wrong… he’s a very good marketer, he may have used the DC synchronicity.”

Given his past, it’s likely that Denis Coderre is simply an enthusiastic fan who enjoys using Twitter in the same way that others do when they gather around a shared event.  When asked why he chose to start his own hashtag vs. using the more universal #habs, he responded:

@AdeleMcAlear simply because I enjoy direct interaction with my 10225 followers and it became a trend. No competition just fun and passion

What do you think? Is this a case of a politician riding the wave of a popular topic for his own purposes? Are Habs fans sheep for re-using a hashtag that they may not understand? Should Denis Codere be congratulated for achieving something that most marketers dream about for their clients? Are the Habs going all the way to the Stanley Cup?

Let me know what you think in the comments.

But when grave topics with hashtags like #iranelection #neda and #iran are hijacked for make-millions-online pyramid schemes, the practice becomes immoral. And that’s where Habitat landed a few days ago.

The BBC reported that @HabitatUK was posted   “HabitatUK: #MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1,000 gift card” and other similar tweets using unrelated hash tags. The Twitter backlash was quick to comment on how HabitatUK were exploiting Iran to sell their brand and tarnishing their image. The BBC continued, “When asked whether an outside firm had been responsible for the strategy their spokesman declined to give details.” So much for transparency.

Whether the person Tweeting was an internal employee or an outsourced agent, it’s clear that they were inexperienced enough at representing a brand on Twitter that they were unaware of best practices. The push model of their Twitter account – advertising merchandise, following few, not conversational – is typical of traditional marketing practices and does not translate well to social media. It is particularly unforgiving when a brand makes a misstep in these waters.

Habitat claims that the errant communications were not approved and that they were not responsible for the hashtag hijacking tactic. In the end, if those who were overseeing the Twitter account at the management level were more involved in the social media tactics they chose to employ, they would have known and discussed what is an acceptable engagement strategy with the person doing the updates. That this incident happened at all – whether by an employee or outsourced – exposes Habitat of being yet another company jumping on the Twitter bandwagon without knowing what they are doing.

Habitat has since apologized, interestingly via the very blogger that broke the story. @HabitatUK has deleted it’s offending tweets, but the Internet is forever and they will live on in the search cache. With mainstream media the BBC, Sky News, and the Guardian all running stories, and blogs picking up on the debacle, Habitat’s bad judgment will live on. The challenge for them now is if they will overcome their ignorance and mishandling by participating more in the media that they choose to use. I hope for them that they become the poster child of best practices and not just one of the worst examples of how a brand uses Twitter.

Related articles by Zemanta

• HabitatUK apologises for Twitter hashtag issue (socialmediatoday.com)
• Habitat sorry for Iran Tweeting (news.bbc.co.uk)
• UK retailer spams Twitter, tries to hide the evidence, fails (thenextweb.com)
• Battling Spam in Iran Election Tweets (blogs.wsj.com)

Watching search.twitter.com (formerly Summize) in the minutes that followed the ABC report showed a flood of new Twitter users signing up with expectations of their customer service woes being heard. Here are some examples of first tweets, all of which used the tell-tale generic avatar of a newbie:

With expectations like those, it’s hard not to be disappointed. And if all of those concerns are not addressed, as Tracy Wilson Tracey Lee Wallace‘s were in the report, then in the eyes of those customers, the brands mentioned have failed them again.

I feel sorry for Comcast. Their ten “digital detectives” are going to be very busy keeping up with the new complaints channel. But, thankfully there is a (mostly) reliable search engine, because you can be almost certain these new Twitter users won’t know that they’ll be seen faster by using @comcastcares.

UPDATE 07/22/08: A manual search in search.twitter.com conducted 6 hours after the piece aired in the East, revealed more than 100 Tweets attributed to new users as a direct result of the ABC report. This does not account for new users who have signed up and not yet posted or have made their updates private (which, in itself presents a customer service issue for companies on Twitter who won’t see those tweets). In the search, I discovered a tweet from none other than Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter welcoming the new users. And to their credit, despite the reservations of users, Twitter did not go down as a result of the coverage.

UPDATE 07/23/08: There have been some interesting comments left on the ABC site about this story.

UPDATE 07/25/08: The New York Times ran a story today “Griping Online? Comcast Hears and Talks Back“, which also mentions Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and Zappos using Twitter for customer outreach. As of 11 a.m. the story had received 60 comments. Hat tip Funny Business.

ICANN, the international body that regulates domain naming, announced their unanimous vote to open up restrictions on top level domains (TLDs). Starting in Q2 2009, it will be possible to apply to have just about anything as a TLD.

So what does that mean for you?

• You are no longer restricted to the current 21 domain extensions like .com .net .org
• Brand names can be used as extensions. Think of .coke .nike .ebay
• You can more narrowly target geography. Imagine .london .nyc .hongkong
• Be more specific with what you offer. Appearing soon .sport .news .sex
• Extensions will not be restricted to 37 Roman characters. Watch out for .العربية .日本語 .Русский

Although cnet and others are reporting that the applications for new TLDs will cost $50,000 to $100,000, ICANN has said it will be “in the low six figure dollar amounts,” according to Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of the non-profit organization. The money raised will go to recouping the $20 million in costs for the proposals. “The costs of developing and implementing this policy will be borne by the applicants,” Twomey said.

With the cost of an application fee, it is unlikely that individuals will control new TLDs. What will prove interesting in the coming year is how the generic names will come to be acquired and who will control them. ICANN says there are already consortiums forming to seek control of city-based names. Who will own names like .sport? Well, anyone who’s got the money and resources to seek it in an application. However, according to the BBC, ICANN has said that if their arbitration process fails the extension would go the “highest bidder” in an auction, which could create unprecedented bidding wars.

Heads up if you manage a major brand. Don’t think that you have any rights to your trademarked name as a TLD. ICANN has said that trademarks are not automatically protected. However, there will be an “objection-based mechanism” to hear trademark owners’ complaints. This will open up a whole mess of trouble for some brands if other well-funded entities are able to acquire their name as a domain extension.

Some are saying this news is a non-starter, noting that recent additions to TLDs like .info .mobi and .biz have failed to catch on in mainstream usage, leaving .com to continue to dominate domain demands. VentureBeat reports that these changes may threaten the domain speculators the most if ICANN is sucessful in educating people and persuading them to use the new extensions. Speculators rely on the “type-in” traffic generated by people searching for generic terms ending in .com. This is how some domain names can be auctioned off for millions of dollars, as ReadWriteWeb reminds us how business.com fetched $350 million in that way.

With the addition of non-English characters, ICANN predicts an explosion in TLD applications from Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia. For global brands, this means yet another area of domain management that could represent millions of dollars in applications, arbitration, lawyer’s fees and potential auction bidding to secure names in strategic markets like China and India.

The question to marketers is, how much is too much to spend to protect your brand name on the Internet in other markets? At what point will the variety of naming possibilities become unmanageable for companies? It is easy to think in the short-term and be convinced that .com is the only term that carries clout. But, at this pivotal point in the evolution of the Internet, will global brands be willing to gamble their future on those three little letters?

Comparisons to Seesmic are inevitable because both services feature recorded video conversations. But there are few similarities beyond that. In fact, Phreadz has the ability to integrate desktop and mobile video, images, text, audio and links, making it more akin to Utterz. But, its easy-to-navigate way of viewing threaded conversations and a veritable bounty of other features makes Phreadz unique. I could go on about the array of features, but you may as well hear about them directly from Kosso, the sole person behind the creation of Phreadz.

I am pretty enthusiastic about Phreadz for many reasons, but one thing that is really encouraging about its long-term viability is that, unlike many new social applications, Kosso actually has a business model in place from the beginning that does not rely on advertising. Instead, Phreadz will offer custom-branded channels, in addition to the open-access public service.

From a marketing perspective, having a dedicated channel with a custom look and feel, gives you ability to open up a dialogue and build a community with people within the context of your brand. Because of Phreadz ability to weave multimedia into the conversation, participants can choose the media that suits them best, and can do it from a desktop or mobile. For example, people can record an audio question from their phone, reply with a photo to describe a technical problem, make a video and include notes and links, and it will all be threaded together in a way that allows for context and offshoots of new discussions. Channel managers will have tools to set who can start a conversation and whether posts will take replies, much like blog permissions. Participants can reply to each other, forum-style, which will build community amongst your channel’s visitors.

Think about how channels could be used by brand managers for product launches or by market researchers for focus groups. What about using it for customer support? Use a channel to promote an event and engage people to interact, not only with you, but with each other, creating a community.

Here’s the first post from my channel marketing.phreadz.com which talks about branded channels and the difference between Phreadz and YouTube’s Rolling Stones Living Legends promotion. (Note: the site is only open to testers at the moment, and so you will not be able to see my channel until Phreadz goes into the “open beetroot” a.k.a. beta phase. However, posts can be embeded for all to see.)

Do you find this type of tool useful, from a business and marketing perspective? How you would use a dedicated branded channel? I’d love to know what you think.

(Disclosure: I do not represent Phreadz as a client nor am I being paid by Phreadz or Kosso. I am not an investor. I am simply a tester, and on the basis of many positive experiences, I am now an evangelist.)

We all know it.

A band releases a stellar first album with hit singles and major sales only to return with a follow-up that doesn’t match up to first. The second album curse sees reviews that are harsher, sales that are lower and fans who are fewer. Sometimes the second album is so poorly received, the band will crash and burn, forever known as a one-hit wonder.

In sports, there are the vast majority of winners of baseball’s Rookie of the Year award who go on to have rather mediocre careers. Football sees this curse too.

And, students who face an exciting first year of university where they perform reasonably well, become discouraged in their second year by the difficulty and sheer volume of work ahead of them.

Brands have this trouble too. Just look at the success of Dove’s Evolution campaign. Ogilvy & Mather Toronto followed it with Onslaught, which from a viral perspective, didn’t perform nearly as well. Then Unilever was called to task over the mixed messages they were sending by promoting the Dove Self-Esteem Fund on one hand and the sexy girls of the Axe brand on the other.

The fear of the curse stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t want to be a one-hit wonder or mediocre. I was beginning to see the work that writing a blog on a regular schedule would take. And, after not posting for 3 weeks, I didn’t want to betray the faith of my early supporters with what appeared to be a lack of commitment to this blog.

And then, I got over myself.

Just like everyone who faces their second attempt at something new, I will make mistakes and may second-guess myself. I will have to learn new habits and be realistic about my own capabilities. And ultimately, like any successful band, athlete, student or brand I will have to learn from failures, chart a plan and keep at it. I’m in this for the long-haul.

Merlene didn’t know about my dreaded secret. A fact so dark and horrible in social media circles that I felt it was only a matter of time before I was discovered and shunned, amish-style, by the community.

The thing that kept me awake at night: I don’t didn’t have my own blog.

Sure, I’ve had a few attempts at a personal blog when I was home alone with a baby, but I quickly got bored with the “cheese sandwich” aspect of it. Professionally, I’ve participated in social media in many other ways:

>I contribute to the OneDegree blog and Media Bulleseye. I’ve guest blogged too.
>I comment on blog posts regularly (here, here, here, here, here and here, for starters).
>I am a heavy Twitter participant, starting discussions, contributing, offering support.
>I started the Twitter Punks Flickr group for like-minded rabble-rousers.
>I helped to start the wiki for SXSW Twitter buds and participate in other social media wikis and groups.
>I use Seesmic and Utterz.
>I share my bookmarks on del.icio.us and my photos on Flickr.
>Of course I’m on LinkedIn and answer questions. I’m on Facebook and was a group Chief Instigator.
>And I’ve lost count of how many different social media sites I’ve puttered with, because every week there are more to play with, like BrightKite and FriendFeed.

Despite all of those efforts, without a blog of my own, I felt like a social media fraud.

Thank you, Merlene, for unwittingly making me overcome one of my biggest self-imposed obstacles to success. Just like your Bucket List, I want to tap into the best part of myself too. So, before this year gets away from me and the shiny has rubbed off of good intentions, I’m coming clean and stepping up.

Welcome to my blog.