Disruptive Conversations

UPDATE: Okay, so the answer is simple... the ESME video is using Dennis' avatar....... because Dennis is the voice in the video!

Nothing wrong here... move along now... ;-)

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Why is SAP's video for their "ESME" Twitter-for-the-enterprise product using the avatar picture commonly used by Dennis Howlett?

Being a fan of microblogging, I was intrigued to see the ZDNet story about SAP's "Enterprise Social Messaging Experiment" (ESME) and, still stuck at the airport, I figured I'd watch the 6-minute video. It looks quite cool... but I was struck by another fact: why was the video using Dennis Howlett's Twitter avatar image?

Take a look yourself - here's the video:

Now notice when they are showing the "ESME" interface as they tell their story. One of the characters ("Jim?") has this picture (displayed multiple times):

Now look at Dennis Howlett's Twitter page (or see the large version of his picture):

Am I just way too tired or aren't they the identical image?

Since I use Twhirl for reading Twitter, I see Dennis' avatar all the time (since I follow him) and so that picture is one I recognize right away. For instance, here's a bunch of Dennis' posts all seen in Twhirl:

Dennis twitters quite frequently and also blogs at ZDNet... so his picture is certainly seen around.

So why is it in a video from SAP?

Was someone involved with creating the video just looking for an avatar image to use and grabbed Dennis'?

Very strange...