Discussion of Online Advertising, CPA, SEO, Affiliate and Next Generation Marketing

QUICK CONTACT

ReveNews Online Revenue News & Opinions Since 1998

Why Didn’t T-Mobile Think of This?

April 25th, 2007 by Wayne Porter

Ryan Fitzgerald offered only to “listen”. The 20-year-old posted a video with his cell phone number on YouTube on Friday, and since has received more than 5,000 calls and text messages… The message: “I never met you, but I do care,” Now his T-Mobile minutes are running out.

The press noticed:

MSNBC

Hit Top of Digg

AP Press

CBS, USA Today…the list goes on and on and on.

Now when I think of a cell phone I think of family plans, big networks, pins dropping, weekend minutes, contracts, upgrades, blah blah blah. Having to pay more because I want to upgrade my technology.

Of course there is a counter point- what he did is “risky” according to this piece.

Apparently, Fitzgerald stayed awake the whole of Saturday night talking to people from Maine, Utah, Germany, Mexico, Alaska, Denmark, and a whole lot of other places.

He said that while around 70 percent of the callers wanted to simply shoot the breeze for a while, others wanted to talk about deeper things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, how hard it is to be gay, et al.

Fitzgerald recalls that a Swedish man actually called to thank him for ‘trying to make a difference’. Whereas a couple of teenage girls who said they were from London, asked him his favorite color, favorite food, and ultimately finished with a big collective mmwwah…

Fitzgerald says some callers did give him the heebie jeebies, for instance, the man from Maine who threatened to become violent if Fitzgerald did not meet him.

A criminologist at Northeastern University, Jack Levin, warned that what Fitzgerald did is ‘extremely risky’.

He said Fitzgerald may feel safe and not understand that he’s being manipulated by some sociopath, who will fabricate his characteristics in order to have a personal encounter.

Levin said there’s a good chance Fitzgerald will be fine, but why take a risk like this when there are so many other, far less dangerous ways to be altruistic, generous, and helpful to other people.

On YouTube itself, Fitzgerald’s video drew a plethora of responses, prominent among them being words like stupid and desperate.

Now others are jumping in to challenge and to defend. It seems as if video and cellphones will collide (they have, but not quite like this) despite what all the commercials tell us- people really just want to talk- apparently with strangers.

Ryan’s Original Video.

Ryan’s Recent Response.

Now I think it is key to see how it all plays out in terms of the comments, ratings, etc. (Ryan perhaps you kept a log and rated responses?)…but one small video, on young kid- a cell phone number- a wild fire in the press and a lot of interested people.

As you can scan the media coverage of the event- of which there is no shortage- see what types of contextual ads are running. Here are about 179 pieces of news to get you started.

I can’t forget T-Mobile’s response either.

At Boston.com

“T-Mobile is intrigued by Ryan Fitzgerald’s experiment,” the company said in a statement late yesterday, hours after Fitzgerald appeared live on CNN (with his cellphone, of course).

Fitzgerald, who considers himself easy to talk to, has gotten numerous offers to help with his bill, his twin brother, Sean Fitzgerald, told the Globe on Monday.

The T-Mobile statement managed to get in a pitch for its calling plan. “We find Ryan Fitzgerald’s experiment to be interesting and we are glad he was able to take advantage of the unlimited weekend and evening minutes included in his T-Mobile plan,” the company said. “We look forward to learning more about Ryan’s efforts.”

The Globe reporter goes on to urge Ryan to make the call…I think T-Mobile out to be making a call- and try using their product to listen to what Ryan’s message might be. After all he is listening…