9 replies to this topic

[AbleReach]

With a sweet little video - Active Twitter user celebrates 104th birthday

BRADFORD, England (CNN) -- Tuesday is her 104th birthday, but that hasn't stopped Britain's Ivy Bean from being an avid Twitter user and possibly the oldest person on the social networking site.
Ivy Bean has 27,000 Twitter followers and tweets from the care home where she lives in Bradford, England.

From the care home where she lives in the northern English city of Bradford, near Leeds, Bean updates her more than 27,000 Twitter followers about the ups and downs of her life -- from getting her hair done with her good friend Mabel, to eating fish and chips and watching her favorite game show, "Deal or No Deal," on TV.

Last month, she tweeted her sadness that her friend Norma had passed away overnight.

Before getting onto Twitter, Bean was already active on Facebook, where she maxed out her 5,000-friend limit in no time.

Edited by AbleReach, 09 September 2009 - 01:09 AM.

[EGOL]

Thanks for sharing that... great story!

[glyn]

Don't believe it, it's a computer imposed backdrop.

[Jem]

Hmm, I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that this Twitter's oldest user thing was a PR stunt setup by a UK newspaper.

Edit: aha, apparently it was The Geek Squad - http://www.examiner....-user-is-a-hoax

Edited by Jem, 09 September 2009 - 10:33 AM.

[Wit]

Actually, it looks more like the alleged Geek Squad member was photoshopped into that pic, Jem.

Hmmm

[AbleReach]

Hmmm... It seems uk.techcrunch agrees with Jem: The REAL story behind the 104-Year-Old who joined Twitter

Looks like the finger is getting pointed at GeekSquad. LOL. In that case, GeekSquad's PR person missed the boat, because news coverage mentions the extended care facility staff, not GeekSquad. I don't know how convinced I am that this is a black and white thing.

If you look at her facebook account, aside from the press about it, she's been there, off and on, for a couple years. Search for her on FaceBook and you'll see that she's almost a meme, with multiple fan clubs. What's the harm? It's not hate speech.

It seems to me that the point is if she's actually used an account herself, and if she's enjoying herself or not, not who she followed first, or who helped her set up an account. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's seen very elderly people be lucid, even in cases where their personal normal has slipped into dementia.

Dontcha wonder about the hubbub over who has lots of followers, or who was behind PR? Marketers can get their panties in a bunch when someone else gets the buzz.

[Grumpus]

Okay. So it's a scam.

All these people are all proud of themselves for figuring it out because she used the word "feed" in first post...

Seems to me that the biggest clue would be that CNN's story (dated yesterday) says that her 104th Birthday is "Tuesday" (I'm not sure if they mean yesterday or next Tuesday - but that's CNN for ya). The first clue for me would have been that if she is "just" turning 104 now, why is her twitter name (created at least several months ago) "IvyBean104" Wouldn't it be "103"? lol

Anyway - it looks to me more like it was a publicity stunt that lasted about a week, and then the local papers in the UK picked up on it, and since then she actually "has" started using twitter? Maybe. I dunno. I do know that it appears that the folks at CNN need to fire their fact checkers. lol

G.

[glyn]

Well, you've got to feel sorry for today's news media. They run around looking for a unique angle and PR managers just play with them. I wonder how much Twitter paid for this PR stunt.
G.

[bwelford]

Well, you've got to feel sorry for today's news media.

Seems to me it's win/win/win here. A bit of harmless fun that got folk talking. Next!

[glyn]

Tell that to those that wrote about it as news yesterday