Best Buy Goes All Twitter Crazy With @Twelpforce

(from Tech Crunch)

I like the way Best Buy has embraced and really understood the potential of social media as a way of communicating with customers.

This is an interesting one: consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions via Twitter, even airing commercials not mentioning their own website but merely the URL of the profile they created on the micro-sharing service (two spots embedded below). The new service, dubbed Twelpforce, was debuted over the weekend but so far hasn’t garnered a lot of online buzz, let alone followers on Twitter (currently at around 1350). I’m sure that will change soon enough.

Fantastic or spamtastic?

If the response is friendly, personal and not clearly coming from someone interested only in trying to make a sale rather than being proactive about giving knowledgeable advice, I wouldn’t mind to be contacted by Best Buy employees on Twitter at all. Judging by the public stream of tweets, I’d say that this is exactly what they are doing, so kudos to them and Best Buy for thinking differently about online customer service.

The Sun came out! Hit the beaches!

Today the sun came out - and stayed out, like for all day! And it was warm too.

For awhile there, I thought I was in the land that summer forgot. Then pow, like an old Frankie and Annette movie I was day dreamin' of my youth spent at Parlee Beach in Shediac NB.

My uncle Archie would drive a bunch of us to Parlee in his truck (for .25$, he was an entrepreneur)and on the way there, we would sing all along with someone's transitor radio: "Bye bye love, bye, bye happiness....I think I'm gonna cry-eye, bye bye my love goodbye-eye"

I had a huge crush on Annette Funicello since I first saw her on the Micky Mouse Club. Who would have thought years later, that same club would give us Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

Annette was beautiful, kind and approachable. Her tinny voice only made her cuter and far less threatening than Ann Margaret who, while totally beautiful, was way too much of a sex kitten for this confused teenager. No, Annette was the sort of girl next door that one could imagine falling in love with and for whom white picket fences were invented.

I grew up on Lewis Street in Moncton in the fifties and sixties. The only fences we saw were the ones selling stolen hubcaps in the RCMP parking lot. And the only girls next door were named Dot'n Dash and Blondie who had the ingenuous method of soliciting Johns by jumping on their car hoods as they slowed down for the stop sign at Main Street.

Yep, those summers spent at the Capitol Theatre watching Beach Party movies then acting them out at Parlee Beach was what summer was all about.

Clam bake, anyone?

Who were we 40 years ago?

We were a people who still believed in the hope that life would get better and our leaders could be trusted to act on behalf of all of us.

2007 was a celebration of Expo ’67 and the summer of love. Sgt. Peppers was playing everywhere again. Last year, 2008, there was much chattering about of the student uprisings in Paris and the racial riots that took place throughout the United States following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

I entered 1969 as a 17 yr old whose world orbited the gravitational pull of sixties pop culture. I sat in front of the TV each Sunday hoping for a glimpse of Diana Ross on the Ed Sullivan Show; and failing that settling for any performance that wasn’t a juggling act or an opera singer. I especially liked the Broadway Musical excerpts! Duh!

The decade opened with hope as JFK gave us the dream and vision to land a man on the moon. Remember, this was before internet, and Express Vu satellites. By decade’s end, that dream was realized and tomorrow we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s lunar landing and the first utterance of the words:
"That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind"



Reeling from the horrific year before that was a non ending series of assassinations, riots and war, it was hoped that 1969 would offer a respite. It started precariously however with Nixon taking the oath of office in January and ended with an attempt to create a west coast version of Woodstock at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival. Immortalized in the film “Gimme Shelter”, this festival that was headlined and organized by the Rolling Stones effectively put an end to the “hippie” generation's ideals of "love, peace and rock 'n roll".

In between, we had the launching of the “Official Languages Act” and decriminalization of Homosexuality in Canada, the Stonewall riots and the start of the Gay Liberation movement in the US. We had the splitting up of the Beatles and Diana Ross and the Supremes (the latter being just as newsworthy for me – at the time)

I remember the buzz of Woodstock and met many, many people who had claimed to be there. I didn’t realize it then, but that was to be the last dance of the swinging sixties. The Manson murders, happening as they did the same month, cast a shadow over the love and peace generation that made it pretty well impossible for it to ever see the light again. In spite of the rise of bubblegum music and the promise of the Age of Aquarius, the sixties had effectively died when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King took their last breath the year before. After that, it was like someone came in, turned on the lights and announced that the party was over, everybody go home.

I remember, at the time feeling exhausted and being anxious for the next decade to begin - little did I know…

What the world needs now is… ?

In the sixties I felt a real connection to the folk sounds of Ian & Sylvia, Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy St. Marie, Donovan, Peter, Paul and Mary etc..

The music supported the lyrics that spoke of injustice, peace, hope for a better tomorrow and sadness for lost generations.

As a sixteen year old, I was naïve enough to believe that if everyone just listened to these wise minstrels that the world would be a better place….for you and for me. Love really was all we needed.

I believe the last great social album, though far from folk, is Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. Released in1971 all of the issues it addresses; war, ecology, poverty etc are sadly still so relevant today.

There have been many contemporary musicians who have written beautiful sad and angry songs about the state of the world, think Neil Young, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti to name a few. But I have a soft spot for those oldies; The Ballad of Sad Young Men, Blowin' in the Wind, Beautiful People, A Change is Gonna Come.

So it came as a surprise that I fell upon this version of Pete Seeger's 1961 anthem "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" by Jimmy Somerville. Now, most will know Somerville through his work with the Communards and the Bronski Beat. His first big hit Smalltown Boy was groundbreaking insomuch as it openly dealt with homophobia. The video, which played high rotation on MTV and Much Music, left no doubt why this boy was running away from his small home town.

I like Jimmy Somerville and have a great respect for his integrity. He stayed true to himself and managed to maintain a career, (Are you listening Adam Lambert?) His version of this song may not be to everyone’s taste as it is so different from what we have come to expect from him, but the interpretation and the images are heart wrenching.

Not since the sixties when Eve of Destruction loomed over the airwaves and images of burning Buddist monks flickered away on out television sets, have I felt so sad and so scared.

Have we really changed? Is there hope that we can?

Need a laugh?

Ok, so the weather sucks big time, I'm into my second week of accounting clerk training, I'm behind on my blog writing and I can't eat fish 'n chips anymore. (Well, I could, but then I would have to whine about bowels, bloating and burps.)

SO, I need a laugh and this 2005 European commercial made me LOL.

So enjoy while I go for a skim milk and cracker nightcap.