So it seems that it’s actually happened - for all the talk about Caffeine and other updates - today we’re seeing some REALLY interesting and also odd results. We’ll post a full review about this later. I don’t want to start doing the obligatory ‘SEO will be changed forever!’ sky-is-falling routine. But for now, check out these screen shots. And if you want to see it for your self first, check these out: Obama Microsoft Southwest
Notice that when searching for seomoz we get two tweets right at the top which automatically update when there are any new tweets. Click here to see the above results.
Look at Microsoft below - scroll down just a bit, and you’ll see an auto updating ticker of tweets - some positive, and some negative! Click here to see for yourselves. See it?
Also interesting is that this won’t show up for brands with a space in between, but if typed together, there’s more of a chance of the real time search results (or ‘latest results’ as Google has labeled it) will show up. This is probably to due with twitter usernames.
Take a look at the following - cocacola or coca cola do not show latest results on page 1. However searching for ‘coke‘ will (even though twitter/cocacola is the official brand). So essentially it’s not about only the username - perhaps about a certain threshold of social mentions, in or out of the username.. hmmmm.
Some Other REALLY Weird Results
Am I the only other one seeing this? Really screwed up displays of adwords PPC ads? Hmm by the time I wrote this post - it seems like they’ve fixed the error - looks like those ‘latest results’ are changing lots of things rapidly 
The internet has transformed the way we receive our news. A quick browse through my Twitter account, for example, informs me that President Obama is holding talks in Beijing, Robin Van Persie’s latest injury is not as bad as was first thought, and my mate Charlie has just devoured a banana choc chip muffin. I am able to keep up-to-date with every facet of my life, in ways that were simply unimaginable 15 years ago. It’s just fantastic.
Or is it?
What about the times when I don’t want to be kept up-to-date?
I had a situation a couple of weeks ago when my beloved football team, Arsenal, were playing their local rivals, Tottenham, in a televised football match. Due to prior commitments, I was unable to watch the match live, but I definitely wasn’t prepared to miss out on the excitement of the season’s first derby match. The game was being re-shown a few hours later so I decided that I would watch it then, without knowing the score, so that I could enjoy it just as if I was watching it live.
What I hadn’t considered was just how hard it would be to not find out the score!
All televisions in the vicinity had to remain off, that was obvious. I then realised that the mere sight of an Arsenal or Tottenham fan’s name appearing on my caller ID would be enough to tell me whether we had won or lost, so my mobile phone had to be switched off too. I even contemplated making my wife turn her phone off, but on reflection of how irrational she already thinks my football obsession is, I reluctantly decided to hold off on that demand!
What about the internet? Between my work and my social media addiction, I must spend half of my life on the internet, but was there any way that I could open my laptop without finding out the score?
Of course there wasn’t! Football fans love nothing more than to gloat about their team’s successes and I quickly realised that checking my email, Facebook or Twitter could all lead to disaster. The only way that I was going to survive those few hours without any risk of being told the score, was to sit in my office at home, with the door locked and the curtains closed, with nothing more than a good book for company.
It was 3 hours of excruciating madness, but I made it, and we won the match 3-0, so it was definitely all worth it in the end!
My meticulous attention to detail in ensuring the successful completion of my period of isolation may seem over-the-top to some, but my actions were entirely vindicated by an angry exchange that I witnessed on Facebook this week.
As you may be aware, the final stage of this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event recently took place in Las Vegas. This annual event is the highlight of any poker fan’s calendar, marking the culmination of 4 months of excitement and anticipation since the initial stages of the tournament.
To ensure fair play for all competitors, poker tournaments are never broadcast live, so any fans who wanted to see the drama unfold on television, needed to wait until later that evening to view the recorded highlights show.
As such, everyone in the poker community is aware that discussing the tournament’s result before the evening broadcast is the ultimate taboo. Well, everyone, it seems, except the people at Carbon Poker, who published the result, almost immediately after it happened, on their Facebook page!
As with all Facebook Page announcements, the news was fed directly into the Live News Feeds of the page’s 4,426 followers, all of whom are naturally poker fans, but some of whom clearly hadn’t take the same painstaking steps as me, to avoid receiving an unwanted news update.
As you can see, the result was not pretty!
The page was inundated with messages from furious fans whose days had been ruined and the guys at Carbon started scrambling to try to minimise the effect of this potential public relations disaster.
Rather than deleting the post, they decided to make a 2nd “Spoiler Alert” announcement, telling people not to scroll down the page if they didn’t want to know the result but, as many commenters pointed out, this was way too little, too late.
They then offered one complainant an apology by way of a deposit into his online poker account, but this only served to anger the other users who felt that they too deserved to be compensated.
A further half an hour passed until Carbon made a 3rd and final announcement, that they would be holding a free poker tournament for all of their Facebook fans, with a prize pool of over $600, as a collective, all encompassing, apology.
Now, only time will tell whether that gesture will be enough to repair the goodwill that was dashed by Carbon’s moment of carelessness, but one thing is certain; every single one of those poker fans will think twice about turning on their computers on the day of next year’s WSOP final.
Like me, they now understand that whilst the internet is undoubtedly a wonderful thing, there is such a thing as too much information, and that, whilst “knowledge” may well be “power”, there are certain times in life when “ignorance is bliss”.
For those of you that follow our blog, you’ll have read how we moved from Editgrid to Zoho recently. Whilst the reasons for the switch are less relevant to this post, Zoho’s reaction and response is very relevant.
The day after our post we received a kind email from the Product Manager of Zoho Sheet. He was thanking us for the blog post and the positive review.
Too many companies that have a major online presence don’t feel the need to monitor their brand. The internet is a powerful tool and the speed in which a reputation can be destroyed is frightening. Blogs, Forums, conversations and consumer reviews are the way forward. How many people buy products from ebay or Amazon, but read the reviews section prior to buying?
To many companies out there are not monitoring what ‘ordinary’ people are saying about their products, so if you’re not, now is the time to start!
Learn from Zoho. These guys are obviously monitoring all comments, good and bad! Follow up on the good reviews/comments with a quick email of thanks to show customers that you value their custom. For the negative comments, make contact and deal with the reasons of discontent. The last thing any company needs is the snow ball effect. Nip it in the bud guys!!
As for your request Ramesh - i’ll swap you a case study for a link!! Lets talk.
