James Governor at RedMonk emailed this morning to warn me of some negative chatter on Twitter about failing ThinkPads. Yikes. I went looking for the “twits” but couldn’t find them. Guess it’s time to add another channel for monitoring customer satisfaction. I threw Twitter overboard last spring — ripped it out of the sidebar of the blog. Now it appears I have yet another thing to monitor. Add that to my current infatuation with Facebook and I’m beginning to sound like a Scoble-wannabe.
But Dave, I heard a guy bitching in the men’s room at Logan Airport the other day. Does that mean we’ll need to station guys in there as well?
har-de-har-har
when its David Weinberger, its not “just a guy”. I can help you find the tweets if you want
Precisely. James — I left David a note offering assistance Thanks so much.
Ok – but let me explore Cahill’s point for a second.
Prior to the dawn of social media, people that had something to say, said it directly. They sent email, they wrote letters, they picked up the phone. They said your name, put a comma, and then made their point. You knew that you were the intended audience. A reaction or response was expected.
People also tend to mumble to themselves, say things out loud, and rhetorically. Responses aren’t necessarily expected or desired.
Now social media, through all the various ways that people can personally broadcast themselves has opened up an enormouse grey area. How many different channels do we feel compelled to eaves drop upon? What channels are reserved for idle thoughts, and which are broad communications to a general audience (any and all who find it), and lastly, when are the same channels used, but with a clear call out, as you did testing out Southwest this week?
David – it’s not perfect, but I use a Google alert, searching for a few keywords, restricted to site:twitter.com. Subscribe to that as an RSS feed (or just have it e-mail you), and you’ll see the majority of tweets that need a response. Seems to get the job done.
Rick you rule.