Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

Lessons from the Associated Press Twitter hack
Today’s hack of the Associated Press Twitter account that sent out a fake report about the White House being attacked raises a number of issues about how business and the media industry use social media.

Attracting most of the attention is the stock market ‘flash crash’ triggered by the fake report where automated programs responded to unexpected selling on the exchanges.

This in itself is an example of a risky over reliance on technology by well paid people who should know better. There are a number of other risks that everybody, particularly business people should learn from the Associated Press hijack.

Twitter as a news channel

Without any verification, people started selling stocks based on a report spread through Twitter. This is understandable as Twitter has become the modern news ticker tape.

Also understandable is how news organisations could pick it up, most newsrooms are under resourced and journalists are under pressure to break news. This opens opportunities for misinformation to spread.

The real risk with the fake report was if it had been picked up by a mainstream media outlet or found its way onto the wire services. Fortunately this time it didn’t.

One clear lesson from this is social media postings are not a source of truth, they have to be checked and verified. This is something advocates for using social media as a disaster management tool need to keep in mind.

Think before you tweet

During the search for the Boston bombers, social media users went feral and it shows how false information can spread very fast.

For those of us using Twitter – or any other social media channel – we have to be careful about what we post and who we identify as lives can be damaged and misinformation spread.

Thinking before we tweet or post makes it harder for rumours and misinformation to spread.

Introduce strong social media policies

Almost certainly the Associated Press Twitter account was hijacked because the single person in charge of the @AP account clicked on a spam link and gave away the account’s password.

Social media sites don’t do a good job with their security which makes it difficult for businesses to monitor and control access to accounts.

While the services have to tighten their acts, companies need to be sure that they have security procedures in place and the right people maintaining their business accounts.

Hire the right people

Competing wire service Reuters discovered the importance of having the right person running their social media presence having fired its deputy social media editor for inappropriate tweets during the Boston Bombing scare.

Putting the intern or the youngest person in the office in charge of social media is a beginner’s mistake, a more serious error is to put a loose cannon in charge of the company’s online presence.

Given the potential business risks involved with social media, it’s necessary to put someone trusted and responsible in charge of what appears under the company’s name.

At the very least management has to do proper due diligence on the person they put in charge of their social media accounts.

Securing your business

Associated Press’ problem is typical of many businesses that don’t have tight security policies, the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills recently released a report finding that over 85% of British business have had some sort of security breach in the previous year.

Given the risks posed by poor computer security, managers have to take the integrity of their systems seriously.

Those who caught out by Associated Press’ hijacked Twitter stream learned important lessons about computer security, online trust and verifying information. All of us should be aware we can be caught out in the same way.

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April 24, 2013
Jetstar vs Virgin
For the budget conscious business traveller, flying economy is an important way of saving money. In Australia, often that means the choice lies between Virgin and Jetstar.

When you’re self employed, you tend to watch your pennies and choose based on what you get for your money rather than just being focused on the perks when somebody else is paying.

Generally freelancers tend to be flying at the back of plane where it’s not so much worrying about whether Krug or Bolly to entitled executives but whether you’ll get slapped a $70 surcharge for your bag.

In Australia, affordable business flying tends to be between Virgin and Jetstar with Qantas being the best example of an Australian business exploiting its domestic market position while running down international operations.

Tiger doesn’t qualify as an airline suitable for anyone who needs to be somewhere at a given time so it isn’t relevant to business travellers.

Dollars please!

Much of the difference between Jetstar and Virgin are the underlying business models.

Virgin Australia was set up as a low cost carrier to compete against Ansett and Qantas but shortly after Virgin started operations, Ansett went bust and the startup airline found itself the nation’s number two airline.

Under CEO John Borghetti, any pretense of Virgin being a low cost carrier has been dropped and now the service competes on service against Qantas.

Jetstar on the other hand remains true to its roots as Qantas’ low cost operation and it plays firmly from the Ryanair book of screwing money out passengers at every opportunity.

While Virgin isn’t shy at trying to upsell you, booking a ticket though Jetstar involves twenty minutes of declining various options and additions. By the time you finish booking a Jetstar ticket, you’ll often find the price has gone up in the meantime and you have to start again.

Another irritation with Jetstar is its codeshare arrangement with Qantas which means the airline inherits its parent’s screwy seat allocation systems which block out availability based on a passenger’s frequent flyer number.

You will obey

A big difference between Jetstar and Virgin is the customer service, Virgin’s cabin crew tend to be helpful and cheerful while Jetstar’s seem to be on a KPI which encourages frowning and stern warnings.

Jetstar’s attitude to mobile phones is instructive. Unlike Qantas and Virgin who allow passengers to use phones until the cabin doors are closed, Jetstar order customers to shut down before boarding. This is a nuisance if you’re running your own business.

Another nuisance is the airline’s attitude towards laptops where Jetstar’s crew usually insist passengers have to shut down when the plane starts descending rather than when the pilot turns the Fasten Seatbelts sign on Qantas and Virgin.

This sounds trivial but just this alone should be a deal breaker for many small business travellers.

On a one hour Brisbane – Sydney or Sydney – Melbourne flight, this effectively gives a time poor business traveller twenty minutes work time from 90 minutes on the plane.

The Seventh Circle of Hell

The seventh circle of hell in Jetstar’s Melbourne terminal

While we’re on the topic of Jetstar’s Melbourne operations, a special mention should be given to their poorly signposted gates at the airport.

Situated at the most remote part of the terminal building – almost as remote as Tiger’s abysmal tin shed – Jetstar’s gates are disorganised mess that make boarding difficult. The airline advises getting to the gate half an hour before the flight and at Melbourne that is good advice.

For those arriving in Melbourne, getting off the plane involves fighting your way through queues, lost children, Bedouins building campfires and peasants clutching chickens. If you’re really unlucky you may find yourself accidentally trying to board JQ5749 to Wagga Wagga.

What’s good about Jetstar

Decent legroom on Jetstar flights.

Despite airline’s drawbacks Jetstar has some things going for it, the main one is the airline’s modern fleet compared to Qantas or Virgin. Jetstar’s A321s have better leg room than the 737s flown by the other carriers – Qantas’ 767s are comfortable like your grandad’s armchair and almost as old.

If you’re flying longer distances such as Melbourne – Cairns or Perth – Sydney, particularly the ‘red eye’ flights heading east from Western Australia, then Jetstar is the more comfortable choice for economy fliers.

Then there’s cost – usually Jetstar is cheaper than Virgin for most flights and at busy times the cost savings may be worth the irritations – but check fares from all three airlines before booking as sometimes the Airline Gods may decide Qantas has the cheapest fares for the time you want to fly.

As a low cost carrier, Jetstar is the reality of flying’s present and a vision of travel’s future. If you have visions of glamour when catching a flight, then shell out for a business class fare.

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April 23, 2013
Crying over spilt Chinese milk
East Asian based expats have many conceits – the greatest being that they understand Asia.

For a high paid executive based in Hong Kong or Singapore sitting in a comfortable air conditioned CausewayBay or Beach Road highrise it’s easy to not to know what you don’t know.

In Bangkok though the drinkers at Bangkok’s Cheap Charlies Bar are under no illusions about the complexity of Asia as every night brings another surprise.

During the 1990s it was a regular drinking haunt of those working on the ground in South East Asia – aid workers from Cambodia, oil explorers from Vietnam. gem traders from Laos or builders in Myanmar all swapped stories about their trials and tribulations.

One of the toughest jobs was setting up a diary industry in tropical Thailand, no trivial task in an environment that isn’t kind to soft, milk producing cattle.

Through the late twentieth century the Australian government spent millions helping build the Thai industry with the intention of it helping the Aussie industry build markets and expertise.

Sometime in the late 1990s, the Australian industry decided programs like these were all too hard and not only withdrew from the Thai and Malaysian markets but also let the Chinese opportunity slip through their fingers.

Today, as Business Spectator reported last week, New Zealand’s Fonterra is not only beating the Aussies in China but also has substantial holdings in Australia as the company’s website describes;

The company has NZ$11.8 billion in total assets and revenues of NZ$13 billion and employs more than 18,000 people worldwide. In Australia, Fonterra has revenues of $1.9 billion, processes 21 per cent of all Australian milk and employs over 2,000 people. This makes Fonterra very much an Australasian company.

Fonterra’s story, both in China and Australia, illustrates how something went amiss in Australia’s business sector in the late 1990s.

The point of Australia’s deregulations and industry consolidations through the 1980s and 90s was to make local businesses and industries more competitive. Instead those Australian conglomerates have been sold to overseas interests as domestic investors find they aren’t interested in investing.

Instead Australian businesses decided that having being allowed to consolidate they could use their market power to clip the tickets of the industries they controlled rather than innovating or expanding internationally.

At the same time, Australia’s compulsory savings scheme poured billions into the local share market leaving boards under no pressure to perform better than the index.

The lazy investing philosophy forced internationally focused businesses to look for overseas investors and has created the steady flow of Australian business, farming and mining assets being sold onto overseas buyers.

In the meantime, the shock jocks and populists whip up xenophobia rather than holding Australian business community to account for its failure to seek and build new markets.

This doesn’t mean bad news for young Australians, there are opportunities for smart, innovative and hard working entrepreneurs to challenge the country’s staid duopolies.

If we choose not to challenge the comfortable duopolies, it may be the next generation of Aussie expats find more opportunities at Cheap Charlies in Bangkok than at home.

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April 22, 2013
Can Huawei come in from the cold?
Last Friday the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Broadband Committee met in Sydney, I’ll have a story on this in tomorrow’s Business Spectator.

An interesting exchange during the meeting was between the committee’s chair Rob Oakeshott and Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBNCo.

Rob Oakeshott: “You have advice that either as a department or a statutory body that says there are certain companies that should not be involved with the National Broadband Network build? If so, is that advice still in place?”

Mike Quigley: “Well chair, we work very closely with the appropriate government agencies in this area, obviously there are things we can and things we can’t say, but we have a very close working relationship with those entities and we obviously take their advice on things we should and shouldn’t do.”

“Their advice is still in place and we’re following it.”

I’m going to be in Melbourne tomorrow attending the Australian Davos Committee’s China Forum where, among other luminaries, the Prime Minister and various key people in the Australian-Chinese relationship will be talking.

The company in question is Chinese communications vendor Huawei and their banning from Australian contracts adds an interesting dimension to the discussion on trade relations between the two countries.

Australia has followed the US lead in blocking the Chinese communication hardware company from key contracts like the NBN on security grounds and it’s hard to see how this doesn’t test the patience of the PRC.

We’ll see how this issue plays out as it’s one that seems to be largely overlooked when we discuss trade ties and relationships with Chinese companies.

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April 21, 2013
Cheap coffee and the changing service sector
I noticed the queues one morning when calling into the local service station to grab a carton of milk at 5am.

There was a line of tradesmen out the door waiting to buy a $1 self serve coffee. Freshly ground with your choice of espresso, latte or cappuccino.

No messing around, no being patronised by snobby barista – just a cheap, decent quality cup of coffee.

For the last few years these machines have been popping up in convenience stores and service stations, freshly grinding beans to order and delivering a reasonable cup of coffee for a dollar or two.

Cheap coffee at the local convenience store

None of the machine made cups will beat a coffee made by a good barista, but are half or a third of the price being charged by many cafes whose product often isn’t much better (and sometimes worse) than that made by the machines.

With the rise of the service economy in the 1970s it was assumed employment would move from factories to jobs like baristas and serving in cafes, now we’re seeing automation taking over those jobs as well.

The 1970s assumption that the service industries would become the mainstay of the economy turned out to be true with over two thirds of the workforces in countries like the US, UK and Australian employed in them them by the end of the Twentieth Century.

Now industries are restructuring again and the assumptions that worked well for the last fifty years are being challenged by automation and increased outsourcing.

The idea we could build an economy based upon us all making coffee and waiting tables for each other was always problematic and so it is proving to be.

It’s worth thinking about the opportunities this presents for your business.

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April 20, 2013