My Hebrew blog (not mine – I just co-author) is celebrating 3 months at a cool party tonight, Tuesday, at Tel Aviv Harbor. Consider yourselves invited!
Posts Tagged 'ישראל'
Newsgeek Party Tonight
Published June 16, 2009 Uncategorized ClosedTags: israel, newsgeek, party, בלוגים, טוויטר, ישראל, ניוז-גיק
My facebook identity
Published June 14, 2009 Uncategorized ClosedTags: email, facebook, messaging, social media, twitter, vanity url, אימייל, טוויטר, ישראל, מדיה חברתית, פייסבוק
At noon Saturday I picked my new facebook vanity url and from now on I’m facebook.com/dvirreznik. Simple and precise. According to facebook, 15min into the action, some 500,000 people registered their urls, at a staggering rate of 550 per second!
The question you need to ask is ‘what facebook has in store for us next?’ Having your own vanity url has been around for couple of years now, with LinkedIn, Flickr, SlideShare, Gmail, Twitter, Qik and many more. Being a number is so 1984, and facebook realized that. In my opinion (and others) facebook are working on something bigger, that would increase the loyalty of its friends – something like an email service.
And why the heck not? According to recent data facebook has some 200,000,000 loyal users and growing, built-in chat services, strong eco-system of developers – the only thing missing is messaging. And when you pick your vanity url you basically decide your email address: dvirreznik@facebook.com.
If you have other suggestions I’d love to hear them – drop a comment below.
The list: Israeli companies on twitter
Published June 8, 2009 Uncategorized ClosedTags: enterprise 2.0, facebook, israel, newsgeek, social media, twitter, טוויטר, ישראל, מדיה חברתית, פייסבוק
Since Ashton and CNN battled out over who’ll reach 1m followers first, Twitter has been gaining ground in Israel. And although the micro-blogging service is still no match to facebook in terms of # of users, the awareness is definitely growing, globally and locally alike.
According to twittercounter there are about 2324 Israeli twitter users, my guess is a bit higher, closer to 3,500-4,000, as opposed to over 600,000 facebook users – some even say 750,000. Twitter is still relatively un-known in Israel, and we’re waiting for it to make its leap, but already I’m seeing more and more businesses entering this space, opening accounts on twitter. The reason is simple: it’s easy to manage and update, and doesn’t require too much of your time. The question is what value (or ROI) you expect from such activities, and the answers here vary, a lot.
In an effort to make some order in all the cluter, I’ve created a list over at newsgeek, of Israeli companies on twitter: media and communication, government and retail, hi-tech and VCs, leasure and sport, food and beverages and others. The list is dynamic, and 3 hours after the initial posting I had some 15 comments (and 20-30 new followers) of new accounts that needed to be inserted into the list. My goal is to create a place where people can find the company and contact person, that would enable them to start a conversation faster, meeting the demand of the ever-changing-business-world (aka – Innovation). The only 2 rules are:
a) an updated account (less than 20 days since your last twit) and
b) full bio available for contact and details.
Although the entire post is in Hebrew, by hovering over the names you can get the feeling of ‘who’s who’ in the Israeli E2.0 arena. I’m sure the list will continue to grow (by at least 1 more) in the future.
Link:
The List: Israeli Companies on Twitter (Hebrew)
Meet my new employer – Isracard
Published June 7, 2009 Uncategorized 3 CommentsTags: career, isracard, israel, social media, ישראכרט, ישראל, מדיה חברתית, קריירה
After 40 something days of job searching (and beaching.. 😉 I’ll be starting my new job coming Monday, June 15 2009, at Isracard as Head of Social Media, part of the Marketing Division. I’m very excited as this position is a new one at Isracard, and as I’ll be doing the things I love and understand, at a large consumer company, internally and externally.
Isracard is Israel’s leading credit card company with some 2.5m card holders and over 100,000 clearing businesses via 3 products: Visa International, Mastercard International and Isracard. The company was founded in 1975 and employs some 1,300 people, HQ in Tel Aviv.
As my role is a new one, I’ll post a more elaborate entry about my responsibilities in couple of weeks, but basically my daily routine (as I see it) relates to every aspect of the company operations, split into 3 major routes:
- Customers – almost every citizen in Israel (inclusing me) holds at least one Isracard card and with 2.5m customers, I’m guessing the online conversation will be interesting…
- Clearing businesses – major aspect of any company operation is its eco-system, and in Isracard’s case those are the +100,000 businesses accepting Isracard cards, across the country.
- Employees – the human capital is any company’s strength, and with 1,300 people (300-400 of them at various call-centers) – they are the best evangelists to Isracard’s work.
So, even before I officaily started I can see some challenges and opportunities. Not sure I’ll get Obama’s grace period, but nevertheless I intend to do my best, as always. If you have any suggestions/requests/tips for my first day at the job, leave a comment or drop me an email.
And finally, I want to thank those who helped me in those 40 something days – thank you!
My Nokia E71 Story
Published May 27, 2009 Uncategorized 17 CommentsTags: cellcom, facebook, israel, orange, social media, twitter, אורנג', טוויטר, ישראל, סלקום, פייסבוק
Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been experiencing some problems with our new Nokia E71 device. It appears that the snooze option at the alarm clock is ‘unreliable when phone is switched off‘. We learned that the hard way, twice, by not waking up in time in the morning. The only thing I wanted to verify is whether the problem is model-related (all the E71’s in the world) or device-related (mine only). There’s a simple way to sort it out – by giving me a new device.
As a social media evangelist, I’ve decided to put the tools and services I know to the test, as I’ve done in the past. My cellular provider, Cellcom, received low score for not monitoring this space, failing to reply to my updates and twits. After 3 separate visits to the lab, trying to figure out what the problem is, a friend suggested I’ll ring Amos Shapira, Cellcom CEO, who in an effort to imporve customer service opened up a dedicated line for customers with a complaint. Recently they started showing some improvement, as my friend Hillel outlines.
As for me, during my 3rd visit to the lab on Tuesday, I was contacted by one of Cellcom account manager, as my number is a business account. When she heard I’m at the lab, she rang the lab manager, and 20min later I had a new Nokia E71 (that I’ve asked for from the beginning) in my hand. The next day a Cellcom rep called me back, following the voicemail I left at Amos’s phone, asking if the problem was solved with the new E71 and if there’s another device I might consider.
So, although it took 3 trips to the lab and numerous calls to the customer service, I finally got my request. I hoped Cellcom would have reached me earlier, as I was pretty annoyed during my previous visits to the lab, and my updates proved it, but hey, you can’t have it all.
BTW – the problem still happens. If you set the alarm clock and shut off your phone for several hours (like at night), the snooze won’t work. Changing sim cards hasn’t solved it, but I will try setting the alarm without any sim card (same as the lab technician did in my 2nd visit – and obviously the snooze worked fine) and let you know the result.
And here’s the proof for Nokia developers: set the clock for 07:30 and shut the phone off. Come 07:30 the alarm rang, I hit ‘snooze’ and the phone should have ranged again at 07:35. It didn’t. When I turned the phone on (manually, not the alarm) you can see the time is 08:04, but the phone thinks it’s 07:35, which means ‘snooze time’. A work around is leaving the phone on but putting it at ‘flight mode’, which shuts down all connections (cell/wifi/gps). If you hear of a possible solution, give me a heads up.
