Geo-targeting, crowd sourcing and Twitter: a case study
Via the trendwatchers at Springwise comes this cool example of how people are using Twitter:
“DJs, promoters, label reps and ‘professional party people’ from the Netherlands have persuaded Dutch airline KLM to add an extra flight to its roster.
“In a new twist on crowd-buying, the initiators of Fly2Miami made a bet with KLM on Twitter to organize a non-stop flight from Amsterdam to Miami.
“If Fly2Miami could get 351 seats reserved before December 6th, KLM would add a flight to its schedule on 21 March 2011, specifically for people attending the Ultra Music Festival and related parties.
“The initiative was prompted by a Dutch filmmaker tweeting about the lack of a direct flight from Amsterdam to Miami, a query that the airline’s Twitter team rapidly responded to with a wager.
“Exceeding everyone’s expectations, the flight was fully booked within five hours.
“‘We can rightly call it a first — the first time KLM will deploy an aircraft following a request on Twitter’, said Martijn van der Zee, vice president of e-commerce at KLM. ‘Social media are becoming more and more important to KLM to offer information and service to our customers.’”
These creative, dynamic crowd sourcing efforts are the way of the future.
Everybody wins, from end users to suppliers, and it all happens quickly, with minimal effort and friction.
As we’ve noted before, Twitter is a great crowd sourcing tool for ticket sales, and urgent, time-limited, locale-based projects/businesses.
This is expecially true if you use the geo-targeting features of a Twitter application client like MarketMeSuite, that makes it super easy to find people on Twitter based on where they are, their interests and other factors.
MarketMeSuite is great for running geo-targeted marketing, promotion and lobbying campaigns.
