Category Archives: Blogging

We’ll pay to hear about ourselves

 

 


/* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;}

Earlier this week a prominent NZ blogger who’d bagged NBR’s paid subscription model announced that he’d subscribed. I only know this because he tweeted it. I mentioned this to a friend and he said, “Mike, rich folk will pay to hear about themselves”.  

Made me think.

New Zealand’s piping up!

Basically every Tweet I’m following at the moment is about the announcement of Pacific Fibre. This new venture “aims to connect Australia and New Zealand to the USA with a high capacity low latency fibre cable.” And what a Twitter friendly story we’ve got here.

It’s being backed by Kiwi heavyweights Sir Stephen Tindall, Sam Morgan, Lance Wiggs, Mark Rushworth and Rod Drury and it appears they’ve timed their announcement just right to go gangbusters across a particularly useful crowd of thought leaders.

Pacific Fibre impact

Bernard Hickey from Interest.co.nz tweeted an hour ago and it’s just exploded. He just told me that his initial tweet has been retweeted over a dozen times in the last hour. Looking at Datascope I can see his name’s all over things. Chris Keall from NBR is doing nicely too.

The story has just been picked up as the lead on NZ Herald and Stuff too.

And this news is welcomed. Pacific Fibre could be something spectacular for New Zealand. As far back as I remember New Zealand’s Archilles heel with Internet business has always been our limited pipes. The opportunity is massive. It’s going to put the crawlers up Telecom – something I’m sure appeals to Sam Morgan!

I’m a little surprised that Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor aren’t in this uber-consortium too. I’d imagine large bandwidth for their large hard drives would be a real boost for their businesses.

Interesting news. And go Twitter for sharing the love so quickly.

Good luck to all involved.

Bat, bowl, blog…the life of O’Brien

Lesson for aspiring NZ sports stars – along with practising your craft, spare some time to pay attention in English classes and when you get into a rep team, start blogging.

I’ve come up with this theory after seeing the rocket rise of NZ bowler Iain O’Brien whose single performance of substance this season has gained undue attention – mostly because he complements his cricketing fortunes with a nicely written blog detailing what’s going down within the team.

This sort of PR/personal expression is a fascinating one for a relatively high profile NZ sportsperson and the columnists love it! The angry Chris Rattue and mellow Jonathan Millmow both dedicated their columns yesterday to Mr O’Brien and praised his openness.

Alongside his bowling talents, O’Brien’s blog is giving an additional edge to the “Iain O’Brien” brand and it appears to be influencing his popularity and potential fortunes enormously.

More please, Iain.