The TalkTalk Blog goes 60 seconds with Alex Buttle, Marketing Director at Top10 Broadband. Top10 is a broadband comparison site that claims to be the most popular dedicated comparison site in the UK, with over 12 million visitors a year. The award-winning website offers a range of comparison tools and customer reviews, allowing users to make quick and easy broadband buying decisions.
Q. What is your favourite money saving tip?
A. Always shop around. Procrastination is the key to a healthy bank balance.
Q. What was your first experience of the web?
A. While studying Geography at UCL in 1996. I remember being amazed by the internet back then. I researched topics for essays (using Alta Vista) and emailed my mates to arrange nights of drinking (using Eudora). They were beautiful times.
Q. What’s your biggest web annoyance?
A. It has to be spam doesn’t it?! Technical geniuses can create a device that fits in your pocket and allows you to surf the web with ease, but no one seems able to stop some idiot in a bedroom emailing 500 million innocent people about ‘V!aGrA’. Something is wrong here.
Q. What are your views on social networking?
A. It has changed the world. People are preferring to stay in and Tweet rather than meet up with their friends – we’re seeing a quantum shift in human behaviour. As a medium for communication, social networking is hugely powerful and I definitely embrace its power in keeping us all in touch with friends and colleagues. That said, I am very wary of letting it take over my life. It will only be a matter of years before people are writing a sentence in their head and it’s automatically tweeted for them. That’s a little bit scary. How does it end? With us all going bonkers I expect!
Q. What is your favourite website and why?
A. Google.co.uk. That’s a boring answer, but I think I’d be lost without it. Why? Because it’s a very good search engine and search engines do a pretty good job of making sense of the world (the ‘world’ being every website on the Internet). If I could choose another favourite website, it would be our new venture Top10.co.uk – I’m very excited about what we are working on and I think about it all the time.
Q. How long have you worked at Top 10 Broadband?
A. Since we launched http://top10.com/broadband/ in January 2007. We thought we would work on it for three months, get a toe into the broadband market and then move on to the next thing. Nearly three years later and it’s the UK’s most popular broadband comparison website and we’re still not finished. It’s been a labour of (broadband) love.
Q. If you didn’t work at Top10 Broadband, what would be your dream job?
A. I’ve always thought I’d make a good spy.
Q. What’s the best way of getting in touch with Top10 Broadband?
A. Email us. We love email (but not spam). Get in touch!
Q. Have you ever Googled yourself?
A. Yes, I think everyone has at some point. I think there’s a famous ice-skater called Alex Buttle. I imagine he does a far better ‘triple-axel’ than me.
Q. What laptop do you own and would you recommend it to your friends or family?
A. A white Apple MacBook (made prior to the contemporary ‘built-from-a-block-of-aluminium’ era). Yes, I would recommend it (even if it’s out of date).
Q. Where do you get more news content – newspapers or the web?
A. The web. Newspapers are yesterday’s news as it were when it comes to content ideas. Nothing can compete with researchable and up to-the-minute news online.
Q. Who’s got the best tech skills, you or your kids?
A. My sons are aged two and three. So probably me at this stage. However, give it five years and I’m sure they will be much better than me at using Twitter and configuring wireless networks.
Q. What was the first computer you or your family owned?
A. In 1988, my grandparents bought me a ZX Spectrum 128K with a tape drive. I can still remember the deliriously happy, wasted afternoons tape-to-taping games off friends and playing Slap Fight and Bubble Bobble.
Q. Which do you think you’d struggle most to give up, your mobile phone or the internet?
A. The internet, as otherwise I would not be able to work on Top10, use Google or attempt to write witty Facebook updates. Luckily I still own a landline telephone, so I could at least enjoy basic telecommunications. Wait a few months for me to get an iPhone and I’ll probably think differently.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |