Andrew Stevens

From ZDNet:

Internet and email were the most preferred and frequently used channels for Australians to interact with the government, according to a report on interacting with government released today, outweighing calling and face-to-face interviews.
Phone hanging off the hook

“Internet remains the most frequent channel last used to contact government with two in five (38 per cent) people doing so. This is followed by in person and telephone usage,” said the report. Participants cited convenience and the nature of their queries as the major factor in driving this decision.

After my Telstra debacle last year, I Twittered my frustration and after MONTHS of no joy with their call centre the Telstra Twitter team (bless their socks) cleared my problems up and I now no longer receive a bill for something that I had never been delivered by BigPond. So this AdNews article comes as some surprise:

Only 12% of the top 50 Australian brands are listening and responding to their customers’ comments on Twitter, according to a social media study by advertising agency BCM.

BCM analysed nearly 8,000 relevant mentions for 81 brands or organisations on Twitter throughout two weeks in Q4 2009 to monitor how brands were responding to consumers’ negative and positive commentary.

Another IBM presentation on TheServerSide.Net:

Organizations continue to spend upwards of 70% of their technology budgets in maintaining an existing inventory of applications, some of which are redundant and some of which have exceeded their useful life, and continue to consume resources without returning value.

iiNet has acquired fellow internet service provider (ISP) Netspace for $40 million.

The acquisition will give iiNet a further 70,000 customers, nudging its market share to 12.4 per cent, just shy of what iiNet chief Michael Malone has previously said that he wants to reach in preparation for the activation of the National Broadband Network.