The BlackBerry messenger crash that lasted for three days attracted a lot criticism on the social media. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter were replete with customer complaints and queries for resolution of the issue.

Millions of BlackBerry users worldwide were left in the dark with prolonged interruptions of their messaging service – the BBM and email capabilities. The problem spread from Europe to Latin America, Africa, Middle East, India and also to North America. The server problems had originated at Research in Motion (RIM)’s UK data center on Monday, October 10.

Research in Motion did release a statement blaming a “core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure” but said nothing further on the continued problems.

Almost everyone from high-roller business men to celebrities posted their frustrations and made “Dear BlackBerry…” a trending topic on social networking sites, especially Twitter.  In such a scenario one would naturally expect a company of RIM’s stature to react and placate the fuming consumers. This was important as most of them threatened to switch smartphones. The timing could not have been worse as Apple’s iOS5 and iPhone 4S are unveiled in the same week and both got very positive reviews from industry experts. Such developments along with the diminishing sales of BlackBerry phones in the last two months were really bad signs for the once all-mighty RIM.

However, despite the strong criticism, RIM’s Twitter page remained relatively quiet and posted barely two tweets in three days. RIM’s founder – Mike Lazaridis – has recently apologized to the BlackBerry community and posted a video message on Thursday that says, “We know we’ve let many of you down. You expect more from us. I expect more from us”.

The problem has been resolved finally but the apathy with which RIM dealt with the issue did tarnish its reputation. There is one thing that the inclusion of social media on crises management has taught businesses – honesty and speed are the keys to success. There has to be response to every bad or good news that concerns the organization. This is all the more important when the problem has such as huge magnitude. In the case of RIM, the BBM crash impacted the users in five continents.

Probably some people including the executives and managers at RIM thought that the problem was less than what the people were describing on social networking sites. But the fact is that millions of users (both corporate and personal) WERE affected. It was not as trivial as a ‘messenger service’ not working. There were users who could not access the Internet, send or receive emails and access data on their phones. It was good on part of Research in Motion to resolve the issue in 3 days but it was its responsibility to be more proactive in reacting to the posts on social media.

Blackberry failed to deal with their blackout crises because of its inability to understand the potential of social media for a business. The message that finally came from Mike Lazaridis on Twitter was expected a little earlier to say the least.

Better luck next time :-)

In August 2009 Google famously changed their algorithm and how they value current events, but different from the 2003 Florida update this change to how they value content  and display search results seamed to roll out rather peacefully and in some cases unnoticed.

I have been monitoring how this has changed the search engine and it seems that the Google Caffeine update is to putting growing prominence on real-time search within search results. Specifically on Twitter and other real-time communication tools.

This might explain a post on Search Engine Land that the Caffeine update really had not been rolled out fully and is slowly being implemented throughout Google’s data centres.

But what did this update incorporate? First and foremost it was Google keeping their competitors away, there was a lot of buzz about Twitter’s real-time search options and Microsoft had just rolled out their “decision making search engine” Bing. Real-time search was the thing and Google needed to come out with an update and that they did.

Google had some years back introduced their Google Universal search, were they mixed together various results on their organic results pages, when searching on a topic you could find various channels such as web, blog, news, shop, PPC, image and video being mixed together. What Google did with the Caffeine update was to take this even further and put more emphasis on current events and blend them with the more tradition results in a kind of a “ticker style” where things happened in a more dynamic way.

What they also did with this update was to take the emphasis slightly of inbound links (still very important) and put on good copy, other things we have noticed but I am not sure if we can directly relate to this update is the emphasis on URL’s, that is the text between the www and the .TLD/ccTLD.

According to this update two companies in the same industry, let’s say car rental, one has an URL with their brand in it such as www.alp.is has a handicap when compared with a car rental URL like www.carrentals.is.

Having car rental in the URL gives the later URL more chance of visibility, one more box ticked in how Google values that URL. My research has however shown that Google has a limit on how it values the URL so something like “verycheaprentalcarsreykjavik.is” are likely to rise a spam alert, prompting a Google rep to manually review the site for spam tactics or even worse Google just demoting the site or even removing it from it’s index.

There is a massive opportunity for marketers to look pass their traditional emphasis on their own site but also to use Twitter, blogs, online press releases and other channels that can provide an alternative option to visibility based on how Google now places emphasis on current events.

Last year Microsoft and Google told about their partnership with Facebook and recently Yahoo! and Twitter started their cooperation. This will add to Yahoo! services by allowing Yahoo members to access their personal Twitter accounts across the portal’s online properties like Yahoo! mail, Flickr etc. Yahoo! has been known for it’s stable audience and brands using Twitter should benefit from that.

Sitting here at the SMX Stockholm and just got this email:

“With an increasing number of people turning to Twitter, are you maximising the endless possibilities that it has to offer your brand? Do you know how to practically use Twitter to your advantage? Capitalise on the hype behind Twitter and gain a ‘how to’ guide on making the most out of this platform to successfully reach your target audience, whilst unlocking the cash value of tweeting.”

Yes, sir – This is what I get into my inbox. They are offering me to go to this conference, should I?

According to Compete.com May data Twitter’s growth shows signs of slowing down. This had to happen at some time and May seems to be the month were traffic to the Micro Blog site Twitter started to slow down, the traffic is up by 1% according to Compete.com. Visits to the site have been on a sharp rise over the past six to twelve months with majority of users orienting from the USA. Users are now 19.7 million unique visitors but growth in the USA may be flattening.

Yes and so? I have been following the Twitter phenomenon and I must say I have no understanding of what the cool is all about? I am sorry, I will be using it further but I have witnessed a group of people just loose them self’s in twittering. I know that it is the information age, but is there nothing that is not worth mentioning? If Facebook is a time killer, man Twitter goes far beyond that.

And now Facebook has something called Tweeter it’s a Twitter Interface that allows you to post new tweets through Facebook, automatically update your status whenever you tweet, from anywhere. Imaging that!

Okay I might be little to gloomy here but I am still not seeing the real advantage of Twitter over Facebook or for that matter MSN Messanger, but then again I am not Twittering all day in and out as some of my friends seem to be doing. Phfeffff!!!

There are not many that did predict the success of Twitter and I must ask what is next? We write only every other word in a sentence or instead
of writing we blog by choosing pictures only?

I think it’s time we step back a little