@christineptran

Seaworld doesn’t shy away from backlash

Here’s an example of a company that has embraced direct, two-way conversation to engage their customers, and hasn’t shied away when the going gets tough.

You may have heard last week that a Seaworld killer whale killed its trainer. You can find some commentary here and here. This woman was well trained and knew the risks of her job. Yet her death isn’t without controversy. Animal lovers have come to the defense of Shamu and animals everywhere. And Seaworld has responded appropriately.

The @shamu Twitter account sent out this tweet last Thursday:

Seaworld has responded via its blog, with a message from the president, a tribute to the trainer, a statement from the family, and more.

And, most importantly, Seaworld keeps its Facebook fan page open to a lively debate – only shutting it down momentarily last week because of “inappropriate photos and videos.” Comments on the page include angry vitriol, reasoned criticisms and defense, and condolences for the trainer’s family.

The truth is, many of those with the sharpest criticisms were probably never fans of Seaworld or any other animal park. Having a platform for their remarks, at Seaworld’s fan page and blog, may show that the company is listening. More likely, it helps contain some of the nasty comments that would otherwise be circulating the rest of the social web – and be searchable later.

I think animal parks can serve important educational purposes, though I’m not a big fan of small concrete pools and training animals to do tricks.

Still, Seaworld responds appropriately – really, the only way it can, once it’s embraced a two-way conversation with customers.

Southwest Airlines on the Social Media Defensive

By now, most of us have seen examples of social marketing disasters (Domino’s Pizza, Motrin Moms). The mainstream media and blogosphere love this stuff.

On Saturday, filmmaker Kevin Smith took a standby flight on Southwest Airlines, on his way back from MacWorld in SF. Essentially, Kevin got booted for not fitting into a single seat. He was rightfully upset (read the details in the links posted here) and tweeted about it. With over 1.6 million followers (as of 2 days after the incident, anyway), a small firestorm erupted between @ThatKevinSmith, Southwest Airlines, and his most ardent fans.

Here are some of Kevin’s initial tweets. There are many, many more. Read them, they’re fun.

Here’s Southwest Airlines response:

The next day, Southwest addressed the issue via its blog. Unfortunately, it took a good idea and executed badly. It offered the half-a$$ed apology:

“You’ve read about these situations before. Southwest instituted our Customer of Size policy more than 25 years ago. The policy requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling. This policy is not unique to Southwest Airlines and it is not a revenue generator.”

Customers took notice, with comments like this: “A heartfelt apology is not usually followed by justification of the action. Pathetic” and “Apparently your mother never taught you how to apologize.”

So the conversation continued on the Twittersphere and on Southwest’s blog.

Finally, Southwest offered this post the next day, expressing a bit more contrition: “The communication among our Employees was not as sharp as it should have been and, it’s apparent that Southwest could have handled this situation differently.”

Okay, so what does this all mean – how much does it really hurt Southwest?

Apologies were made within 48 hours. Kevin Smith even says he’s done talking about it. Southwest has long-standing goodwill with customers, low fares, and an unbeatable refund policy.

Really, it’ll probably just be a minor bump as far as PR crises go. Though things might be different had Southwest handled this more poorly.

The really important lesson from this is that if your company chooses to embrace social media, you’ve got to think about the kind of relationship you want with your customers (ahem, esp customers with 1.6 million followers) and what this means. In fact, even if your company doesn’t embrace social media, you should have a crises response plan if situations like this arise.

Southwest’s social strategy is mature relative to many others, yet according to its own admission:

“It is not our customary method of Customer Relations to be so public in how we work through these situations.”

Southwest may not have anticipated all the ways customer relations might look like with social media in the mix.

Bottom line:

There are going to be very public discussions about your brand amongst your customers, with and/or without you. At the very least, have a go-to response plan in place and provide the proper training to every customer-facing employee in your company.

Geolocation, Geolocation, Geolocation!

I’m loving the idea of geolocation, and can’t wait until it becomes more widely accepted. Geolocation, or location based services (LBS), is the “identification of the real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected computer, mobile device, website visitor or other” (Wikipedia).

It’s already available on our mobile apps, for example, Yelp or Google Maps. You log on, your device asks you if it can use your current location, and you’re off – to (in theory) discover new and cool things in the nearby world around you.

What’s cooler than such basic uses of geolocation, is geolocation for social networking. For instance, if you’re using a location-enabled device, tool, or service, you can opt in to notify your social network of your current location. Google Latitude offers continuous location sharing, which allows you to connect with friends who happen to be nearby. Foursquare uses a “check-in” model instead, which may be easier for new users to stomach. Twitter and WordPress are announcing geolocation tools as well. Here’s a neat article on ReadWriteWeb about how geolocation improves Twitter.  And check out Twitter 360, a new Twitter client that really takes it to the extreme by integrating augmented reality and geotagging. Turn on your iPhone camera and see arrows indicating who is Tweeting near you. It’s just a matter of time before Facebook rolls out a more prominent, though probably less invasive, role for location too.

Honestly, I can’t wait for geolocation to become more mainstream. It may be intimidating now and remain an opt-in service for the next few years. But I anticipate that geolocation will become opt-out within 5 years, meaning that most services will set geolocation on by default. It’s the next step towards making our social networks really social. Location gives us another layer of context – a very valuable one. Just think about Facebook status updates posted by local friends or Tweets from Twitterers in the area – much more relevant.

When this happens, you’ll be able to log on to Facebook and see where your friends are posting from and how they’re moving around. Right now, I’m in Southern California for a week visiting family. On my flight down, I was scratching my head trying to remember people in the area I’d want to connect with. That doesn’t even account for the people who happen to be in town on a visit, and obviously not think to let me know.

I’ve loved Facebook ever since I first joined, because it gave me a way to stay in touch with friends who live far away. I’ve been looking forward to the day when I can say, “Hey Jennifer, I’m in Seattle finally. Let’s meet up!.” But how much more compelling will Facebook be when I can see on my news feed that Jennifer posted an update from New York City, where I happen to be for a weekend conference?

It’s a great feature for friends and family, a little less so for our wider social networks. But on Facebook, geolocation integrates well – our closest friends and family are on it, we’ve created different profiles, and we’ve set privacy controls.  That’s why geolocation will be Facebook’s “killer app.”

COO Twitter On Stage at Real Time Crunch Up

This morning I dropped by Tech Crunch’s Real Time Crunch Up which is taking place all day at the Intercontinental Hotel in SF. You can still catch the afternoon sessions via this live Ustream.

In an obvious nod to Twitter as the real time leader, Dick Costolo, Twitter’s new COO, appeared first on stage for a 30-min one-on-one discussion with the inimitable Mike Arrington of TechCrunch. (Inimitable? Who else tells his staff to “Get off the stage, Eric” on stage, in front of an audience of about 300?)

Mike started by asking Dick (jokingly) “So, what’s happening?” a reference to the recent change to Twitter’s user prompt (which used to be “What are you doing?”).

Dick talked about that change, and the removal of the Suggested User List, as being first steps towards addressing the Twitter’s huge onboarding problem. He admitted that lots of new users sign up for Twitter, and then “fly into a cliff and catch on fire. If you’re brave enough you climb back on the cliff.”

The brief discussion continued around funding and monetization. Twitter’s got an astounding $155 million in the bank – and their burn rate is the least of Twitter’s worries, according to Dick. On the horizon for Twitter is monetization – through advertising, syndication, and commercial accounts for example. In Dick’s words, their advertising program will be “fascinating, non-traditional, and people will love it” (half-joking, he’s a funny guy!). He forecasted a launch of early next year. As for syndication, Twitter will continue to foster ubiquity of its Tweets, for example through recent agreements with Bing and Google. And of course, Twitter’s been talking about commercial accounts for awhile, which would include service level agreements, analytics dashboard, etc – something a lot of companies have been waiting for.

The 30-minute interview with Dick led into the second session of the day: “Filtering the Stream: Getting Rid of the Noise” which featured 11 panel speakers (!) who continued to talk about Twitter, among many other things. No wrap-up of that session – it was a bit disjointed – but I’ll post some thoughts at another time about filtering noise, once I figure out how to do that myself.

Social News Reading a la Digg and More

There was an article in CNET yesterday which made this interesting statement about popular social news site, Digg:

“As a news-sharing destination it’s been eclipsed by both Facebook and Twitter.”

Now I’m no fan of Digg (Read: it’s for boys), but I find it hard to believe that we’re getting more of our news from Facebook. And while, Facebook may be heading in that direction eventually, I also wouldn’t call Facebook a news-sharing destination just yet. Unless you count the news feed as, well, news.

Anyway, I like what Jay Adelson of Digg said in the CNET article: “I think that the sophisticated publisher understands the difference between sharing within a social network, sharing on Twitter, and sharing on Digg.”

I may not like Digg, but I can understand why its demographic keeps returning to the site. By the way, Digg has more traffic than the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. See this chart, by way of Jeremiah Owyang.

My favorite news source, Hacker News, is similar to Digg and another great example of how news is becoming an increasingly social experience. On Hacker News, I’m able to share with and read news and commentary from people I trust, in an area I’m passionate about. Repeat: News and commentary from people I trust. When I log onto the site, I expect a reasonable share of content that interests me. Similar to Digg, links are submitted and up- or downvoted. Though, what really sets Hacker News apart are the substantive comments made by the community. (FWIW, all news sites should consider adding up- or downvotes to increase the quality of comments).

Likewise, Twitter is a great source of news for me. It may just be a quick scan, but it’s a great way to see what else people are reading. Since I choose who I follow (and have organized people into topical areas), news reading through Twitter is both personalized and social.

Now, Instapaper, if only you’d make it easier to do all of this on the go!