A great example of a brand adding real value to an already-popular service, much like Intel's work on MySpace a year or two back. Virgin Media have created a new 'powerful stuff' youtube channel which allows you to, effectively, add a bit of magic to your own youtube videos with minimal hassle.
This week's trawl through my Delicous bookmarks. Actually this is last week's trawl but real life got in the way of posting and I beg your indulgence.
Virgin Media, the cable TV operator owned by entrepreneur Richard Branson, launched a new kind of music download subscription service today with Universal, the world's largest music company.
Read more: http://globalitnews.blogspot.com/2009/06/virgin-universal-launch-music-download.html
Tags: Universal, Virgin, Richard Branson, ISP’s, DRM, Virgin Media, Lewis Silkin, Lucian Grainge, Cliff Fluet, Jerry Resiman, IFPI, Nokia, Elton John, U2, Rolling Stones, Global Economic News,
The firm's plans to rent out part of its fibre-optic infrastructure could both appease the regulator and increase revenues
Virgin Media has drawn up secret plans to open its cable network to rival telephone and broadband companies as part of an audacious bid to boost revenue and head off possible regulatory intervention.
The move could also lower prices for consumers by providing more choice for companies that currently provide services over the BT network.
By charging rivals such as O2, Sky, Cable & Wireless and Tiscali to use its infrastructure, Virgin Media hopes to improve its financial performance and pre-empt regulatory pressure to allow competitors to use Virgin Media's fibre-optic network.
A US investment bank analyst said: "Letting rivals use its wires for a fee makes commercial sense. And it could also keep the regulator off the company's back."
Later in The Register:
Virgin Media has denied a report it has secret plans to wholesale access to its cable network to broadband and phone competitors next year.
...
"The report in this morning's edition of the Guardian does not reflect Virgin Media's position and we have no plans to develop a wholesale proposition," the spokesman said.
This time it's Daily Mail parody @Notdailymail_uk (formerly @dailymail_uk) who one day found their username had been taken without warning or opportunity for defence. The key difference here is that this account is clearly parody.
Read the full story hereHi There,
We've received a complaint from Virgin Media, UK. It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/virginmedia
is in violation of our basic Terms of Service, specifically article 4 which mentions impersonation:
- You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.
In this case "impersonation" is the issue. Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it's parody. The standard for defining parody is, "Would a reasonable person be aware that it's a joke."
To settle this issue we've changed the user name to "notvirginmedia" in the full name and username fields in order to eliminate confusion. You can change your real and user names to something else if you'd like:
- Visit Twitter.com/settings
- Edit the Full Name and Username fields
- Click "Save"
but please honor Twitterʼs Terms of Service accordingly. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.
Thanks,
Twitter Support
About a year ago, after a particularly frustrating experience with Virgin Media, I created a Twitter profile, @virginmedia, and set up a TwitterFeed, drawing from various forums and keyword based news searches. The design of the profile copied their branding (better than it currently does!) and had the sarcastic bio: 'We're Virgin Media, you're just a customer'.
So not exactly great PR for them.
It amused me that most of the stories were complaints about service or technical difficulties, but the account could easily have tweeted positive stories. The feed seemed to be a pretty reasonable reflection of their service to me.
Anyway, today I have just noticed that the page has been 'claimed' - presumably by Virgin Media itself. The page has been wiped clean: zero followers, zero following, zero updates. Zero bad Google karma.
So my question is, how pissed off should I be? I feel like this is fair game... it's not my brand to screw around with. If I fought it in court, I'd certainly be out of luck. It's not like I'd have fought for it anyway. But still, I'm a bit pissed that Twitter just gave over the keys to the account like that!
Ah well, Virgin Media Sucks, but I have no other choice!
EDIT (28 Dec 2008): I just discovered that in fact my account wasn't deleted so much as 'moved aside'. The Twitter account @notvirginmedia is the account formerly known as @virginmedia. It has all the posts up to the point where the username changed and broke the Twitterfeed. They also stripped the account of the avatar and backgroung image (copyright infringement?) and the bio line. Bastards.
See this more recent post for an update.
