Joe Cascio gave a presentation last evening about why the world needs a distributed microblogging protocol. He was originally calling this project “distributed twitter.” There was an interesting mix of long time (and/or old time) Berkman Blogger folks, some twitteratti and some real geeks (coders).
Joe got some interesting push back from the Twitteratti. They acknowledged that Twitter somewhat sucked but not enough that they would be willing to leave Twitter for a new more reliable microblogging platform if it meant leaving their twitter buddies behind.
Someone joked that the Twitteratti were exhibiting something akin to the “Stockholm Syndrome” whereby a person starts to identify with their abuser.
Now here’s an interesting business angle. Establish a service which renders a somewhat acceptable service but that screws up enough (say 5 to 7%) of the time so that customers have something to bitch about. That bitching will allow the company to build an online community to vent their collective spleens about how shitty the service has gotten. Then the company can have one or two customers ” service” people (or bots) trolling the social media networks and have them occasionally quickly jump on and solve a customer service problem. The online community will immediately jump on the story about how… “yes, the company is somewhat screwed up but they are at least cool enough to be using social media to address customer problems.” The story is then picked up by the New York Times and appears as a story in the sunday style section. The same story but slightly rewritten will then appear in the Boston Globe the following week. [[ You laugh folks but trace the "revenge of the stroller moms" stories ]]
No wait a minute. I’ve just decided that I will become the 37th self appointed/ self annointed (drum roll… trumpets blarring…) Social Media Guru. My agency, Stockholm Communications, will be giving workshops next week at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference.
I had to leave the meeting around 8:40pm and it was still going strong. I had to start working on my Guru 2.0 image rework. OMG, I just have to rework my avatar, it’s so, so… passporty. And moo cards… I need moo cards. How could I possibly speak at Enterprise 2.0 without moo cards.