Virgin America ups its social game

Virgin America ups its social game by adding a hashtag to its newest aircraft #nerdbird. This is a smart move by Virgin America aimed squarely at their target market of customers ensuring that their name get trending in the social media world. As you can see below the term is well used for a number of years but Virgin have just claimed the hashtag space for their own.

American Airlines will put a third 'Nerd Bird' in the air on Nov. 3, providing another link between Austin and Silicon Valley. —R. Michelle Breyer, "American plans 3rd 'Nerd Bird'," Austin American-Statesman, September 16, 1995

"And with more business travelers turning to the red-eye, airlines have bulked up their overnight schedules to meet demand. The San Francisco Bay area, home of Silicon Valley, launches 28 so-called late-night 'nerd birds' every night: 20 out of San Francisco, seven from San Jose and one from Oakland, an increase of roughly 40 percent from just five years ago." —Amanda Lang, "Red Eye Flights," CNNfn, February 13, 2001

Two Social Media Infographics on Airlines and Twitter

I have always said be the Social Media evangelist in your company below are two Infographics. One from Eezeer and the other from  Simpliflying which show 'how' Airlines are using and 'what' they are using social media for.

Eezeer Airline Twitter Report also found that 88% of tweets to all airlines around customer service issues, with 5% commenting on punctuality, 2% on food and 1% on comfort and security of passengers.

AA takes on the GDS - commercial "A Whole World is Missing"

Update on Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 21:39 by Airline IT Guru

AA have decided to remove the video after a US court overturned a previous ruling which failed to block the disappearance of the airline’s fares on the online travel agency in late 2010.  Tickets from American Airlines are returning to Orbitz 

Moving from a facebook profile to a page - Facebook Page Migration Tool

I have just completed my move from a 'Facebook profile' to a 'page' it was fairly easy to do but many people don't know how to do it. Many businesses have their pages on Facebook and now it’s becoming much more important for the companies to build their social network on Facebook and make it strong. Previously many of the companies made their profiles under Facebook pages like users where they can add up to 5000 people only. It becomes hectic for them because they made another profile to keep their customers and fans engaged with them.

Facebook has recently launched a feature with the help of you can migrate from Facebook page to Facebook fan page and millions of fans can like your page and it will be easy for you to manage it as managing 5 Facebook pages at a time and daily acceptance of friend request made you annoyed well.

Below is step by step Guide to convert your Facebook Page into Facebook Fan page

Instructions

1. Start the browser you like visit the Facebook website and login to your account
2. Then you have to visit the Facebook Page Migration Tool
3. Now you can see 6 types of buttons there
   • Local Business or place
   • Artist Band or Public Figure
   • Company Organisation or Institution
   • Entertainment
   • Brand or Product
   • Cause or Community

Choose according to the type of the page you want and if you want to change it later on you can also do this by editing its info.

1. Enter all the basic information which they ask and then enter the Get Started button.
2. After that you have to reenter your Facebook Password to confirm your presence.
3. Now a security check will also appear and you have to enter those words in the box
4. After writing click on submit and your Facebook profile page is converted to Facebook Fan Page.

Google moves into the flight search space

Since the acquisition of ITA Google have started to look at more ways of sorting out travel search. They have quietly introduced the following displays on flight searches. The whole Meta Search space is still a mess but this is a clever move by Google, it also detects key locations and will sort flights from there ie"flights from manchester to manhattan". What will be next is I predict will contextuisation ie. "flights from home to jumeirah beach resort" giving you all the travel options needed. ie. Cab to Airport (local cab contacts), parking options if needed, flight options, transport from airport to hotel, list of hotels at Jumeirah beach, etc. Watch this space its going to change the way we search for travel.