In news that has probably shocked and surprised most of the digital media population in the Middle East, Emirates airline made its stunning debut this morning on Twitter.
As of 8:06am on Wednesday 26 March 2014, Emirates joined almost every other airline in the world by posting their first first tweet. By about 6pm the same day, they managed to racked up just under 33,000 followers.
Whilst Emirates has come very late to the party, they have (to their credit), been using Google+ extensively for many years (perhaps due to the SEO benefits?). Considering how many major brands still don’t use Google+ (or don’t use Google+ properly), this is a laudable effort from my favourite airline.
I’m sure there’s a good reason why Emirates had until recently failed to capitalise on arguably one of the most innovative developments this century, especially considering at one point that Google SERPs displayed tweets (and this allegedly helped content get indexed) but we’ll leave the speculation for now. Better late than never seems to be a common theme on twitter in relation to Emirates finally activating their account.
I personally joined Twitter in early 2009 after putting it off for a while. Emirates has sort of missed out on a lot over the years and could have easily had their own ‘Oreo Superbowl’ moment given how popular the airline and its home city Dubai is. Nevertheless, they’re here now and that’s what matters!
Oh and they should probably update their website footer to include a link to Twitter:
For comparison, here’s the first tweets (and timestamps) of some other popular airlines – note the difference in what each says in their first tweet:
Etihad Airways first tweet
Singapore Airlines first tweet
Qantas Airways first tweet
British Airways first tweet
Follow Emirates on twitter: @emirates
