Three Ireland should be well aware of their presence on blogs and boards at this stage. I have personally spoken about it to Rachel Channing, their Head of Communications. Whether anyone there has the vision to understand the ramifications for their business of their image in these new media formats or care is another question. Given that one of the investments in their web presence would be in search engine optimisation I would think they should care and also because, with their data orientated offerings, they are more attractive to a segment of the market that would be familiar to a large extent with the use of blogs and boards when making an informed consumer choice..

Furhtermore, whatever about Three’s attitude to these publications, they do serve as a rallying point for their customers and provide bodies such as the NCA with a gauge of the extent of the dissatisfaction customers feel with a particular product or service.

it’s really a branch of Three UK

Sure Antoin - but that doesn’t preclude them from having a blog (even if it is only a sub blog of the 3 UK blog - if there was such a blog).

I was talking about the point of weblogs and discussion boards being to talk to and listen to influencers, rather than the public at large

Fair enough, but in this case I think the real influencers could be 3 Ireland/UK! Or at least they should be.

What I think will happen is that one of the mobile operators will cotton on to blogs, start a blog monitoring strategy, start replying to a few blogs, and then start a full fledged blog of their own. This will force the hand of the others to be as open and transparent allowing comments on their site.

I was talking about the point of weblogs and discussion boards being to talk to and listen to influencers, rather than the public at large. At the same time, a lot of what is said on discussion boards is rubbish, so you have to know how to take it.

in this case, the real issue is about reaching 3 Ireland! If 3 ireland had their own blog, people would be able to tell them directly all the things which suck about their offerings.

In fact 3 Ireland obviously doesn’t even have a blog monitoring strategy and that is unforgivable - and they won’t be forgiven easily for it!

I tried out the Three service this week. Nice new Nokia 6680 is going back, unfortunately. More details at http://www.eire.com/2005/08/04/third-generation-network-first-generation-strategy-my-short-experience-with-hutchison-3g/

the ability of blogs to amplify a message is well documented at this stage and, as you say, in a country as small as Ireland, it is easier still.

3 Ireland should be at least monitoring blogs so they can participate in the conversations but even better, they should be blogging and in that way, leading the conversations!

Thanks for stopping by,

Tom

Also that, while say in a larger country like the UK or Italy it’s harder to cause a stir, ripples in the little Irish pond can soon have a noticeable effect in it as a whole… Keep on with that Blogging

2. Paying to pick up your voice mail and
3. Very expensive international call rates?