British Airways launches Facebook app

British Airways is inviting users of the carrier to contribute to an online collection of itineraries through their new ‘Perfect Days’ Facebook app.

Consumers can pick a city the airline flies to and create an itinerary for a 24 hour stay there. Integration with Google Maps allows users to mark each café, museum or bar on a map; other Facebook users can therefore see the precise route and click on each attraction to read information about it.

Users may Like, Share or Comment on city guides posted by others and read tips and insider knowledge from the airline’s well-travelled staff and cabin crew. On the page for Berlin, Leon B from Sales suggests: “Instead of tourist bus tours, Berlin’s regular 100 bus covers many sights for a fraction of the cost.”

 

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The most ‘Liked’ itineraries appear as favourites on the main page of the app.

Richard Bowden, the company’s Digital Marketing Innovation Manager, said: “Perfect Days allows travellers to find new experiences and be inspired by others who are passionate about a destination and want to share their insider knowledge and travel tips.

“We look forward to receiving their feedback from this first version of the new app.”

Digital agency Being created the app for British Airways and commented: “With the Facebook platform the trick is to tap in to existing user behaviour. The Perfect Day app enables British Airways to add value and facilitate conversations that are happening between travellers.”

At the moment only a selection of the world’s major cities are featured on the app, but this number is likely to increase if the app is successful.

The airline has previously used Facebook as part of brand engagement strategies: in 2010 commuters were rewarded if they ‘checked-in’ to a British Airways promotion at Grand Central Terminal in New York City.

Another carrier with a history of a particularly interesting social media presence is KLM, whose ‘Tile and Inspire’ campaign allowed Facebook fans to place their faces on a digital representation of what would be manufactured as a real aircraft,

Earlier this week British Airways was recognised as one of the ten safest airlines in the world by the Air Transport Rating Agency (ATRA).

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Turning Twitter complaints into stock tips

WiseWindow offers a service predicting stock market trends based on customer gripes via social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Does it work?

Person typing on keyboard. Wisewindow predicts stock market trends based on social media.

Con Tanisiuk/Newscom/File

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By

Joshua M. Brown, Guest blogger /
August 30, 2011

If there’s one guaranteed way to get me to unfollow you, it’s to tweet complaints at the airport. As if we all haven’t had gruesome flying experiences, as if we haven’t already heard all the airline jokes since the era of stand-up comics in front of brick walls in the 1980′s. So many spoiled brats…First-World crybabies, surrounded by billions of people without medicine and clean water, whining about the overcooked salisbury steak at the Terminal Cafe.

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Joshua M. Brown

Joshua has been managing money for high net worth clients, charitable foundations, corporations and retirement plans for more than a decade.

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But one company thinks there might be trading opportunities in all the kvetching. Monetizing the moaning, if you will. They are offering a social media sentiment-reading data feed through Bloomberg for consumer stocks and they’re claiming alpha generation with their tool…

From InformationWeek:

WiseWindow provides a service used to predict market trends–in this case stock market trends–based on customer sentiment expressed on social media sites, blogs, and message boards, rather than its more common applications to market research. The initial data feed available through Bloomberg focuses on the airline industry, where WiseWindow’s consumer sentiment data has proven to have a high predictive value, the company said. WiseWindow will introduce additional industry-specific data feeds in the coming weeks.

According to an analysis performed by advanced analytics consulting firm Emerald Logic, factoring in WiseWindow data on top of a simple momentum trading program boosted returns by over 30% on an annualized basis for GM, Ford, and Southwest Airlines. For American Airlines, the uplift was 65% annualized. Volatility of returns was also significantly reduced.

I have some thoughts (you knew I would):

1. The AMR example is cute, but is it possible that a tremendous drop in oil prices (always a boon to airline shares) might have been the proximate cause of the rally, the positive social sentiments merely coinciding with that?

2. What happens when WiseWindow moves away from airlines and towards consumer products with shorter purchasing lead times (like fast food hamburgers or apparel)? Will there be enough time to capitalize on a string of positive tweets about the Gap’s new fall sweater lineup for stock traders?

3. False negatives could also be an issue, there are consumer brands that are universally bitched about but still in everyday use and generating loads of social media references, like for example, almost every major bank or credit card company. Can we really be sure that persistent pessimism regarding these companies has any real meaning for their share prices considering the fact that consumers have demonstrated a large amount of pain tolerance when dealing with these “products”?

Anyway, it’s definitely an interesting merging of social media and markets, I’m open-minded about its utility even if a bit skeptical.

Source:

Social Media Stock Picks Come To Bloomberg (InformationWeek)

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