We hear about how folks are using social media to get action from providers of services or products. I had enjoyed this video this summer with The Boy when it broke. Until this point, I had no idea what a Taylor guitar was. Now, I certainly do. At the OTF Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century event, keynote speaker Will Richardson played parts of the video. It’s a catchy tune, to be sure, but it was a great example about how United Airlines responded to the fact that someone was talking about their service online. At almost 6M views now, it certainly has been viewed enough to make a signficant impact.
Believe it or not, I had a similar experience yesterday. Now, I haven’t purchased a Taylor guitar or flown United Airlines. I’ve got one better. I have a friend, @shannoninottawa. I’m standing in the lobby at the OTF Conference waiting for yet another call for support and I’m checking out my Twitter stream and I see this message from Shannon.
I give a little smile to myself. I’ve noticed it myself and it is annoying. I just typically ignore it.
Now, this must really be bothering Shannon because shortly she posts this.
She has just upped the ante. Notice that his time, she’s mentioned the Diigo Twitter account in the message.
I didn’t want Shannon to think that her message had been blasted out to the Twitter Black Hole, so I reply to her.
Even though I love the Diigo service, there is this downside to consider. I guess where there’s an opening, someone will find some way to exploit it. I remember feeling sorry for the Diigo folks because this isn’t their doing. Some “entrepreneurs” are just pushing their service to a new level.
Then, to my surprise, I get a notice that a message with a mention to me has been received.
Hey, someone is listening. They have already addressed this to apply filters to pages. I didn’t know this. I’m guessing that Shannon didn’t either.
There are a couple of things to notice here. First of all, it’s Sunday morning as I’m creating this entry about events that happened Saturday afternoon. They happened in a relative flurry. Shannon’s origina message went out about 17 hours ago. Her second message, my reply, and a response from Diigo appeared within an hour of her original.
At the OTF Conference, we had been talking about what a great service Diigo was to bookmark things for yourself professionally. You can annotate things, create classes, socially share your resources. It’s one of the premiere resources for doing this.
We now know how serious they are about this.
A second point to notice is that Diigo cares enough to have someone monitoring the account on a Saturday afternoon. Had I not been in Toronto at the conference, I would have been watching football or cutting the grass or walking the dog or riding my bicycle or any one of a myriad of things.
Thirdly, and most importantly from my perspective, there’s a promise to do something about it. There’s a promise to create a help tip.
Now, short of running over to Shannon’s table at the coffee house or wherever she posted the original message, what more and how better could a service provider – a free provider at that – respond?
Jeff Pulver calls it “The State of Now“. I witnessed it yesterday.
You’ve got to sit back and admire and respect the customer support for Diigo. If you don’t currently have a Diigo account, you need to get one. With support like this, how can you lose?
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November 1, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Hi Doug,
I saw Shannon’s Tweet – it made me uncomfortable since my students have begun to use Diigo. It’s a great service and tool, to teach students to use a tech form of the literary tools we traditionally use (ie: sticky note and highlight important information when reading). My worry is when people exploit my student’s blogs by using the same tools for advertisement/spam.
The United Breaks Guitar video was a great example of how a company can respond to individual or public concern/problem such as the one that Shannon presented. Perhaps Diigo will implement a service like twitter where people can report spammers.
Zoe
November 1, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Hey Doug,
Great post, as always. I was really pleased to hear back from Diigo so quickly. I didn’t know about the filters either. I have my students using Diigo to research, especially in History, and the level of conversation between students has been phenomenal. I am so impressed with how they are discussing misperceptions, engaging with the text and with each other. I have the students do some research BEFORE I teach something. Then I look at their sticky note discussions and determine what they already know or have learned through their research. Then when I plan my lesson, I can skip all the stuff they have already covered and focus on the gaps or pick up on questions they have raised. It provides me with amazing formative assessment.
I am going to use your post on Monday when we continue an ongoing discussion of how we use the internet. This is a hot topic right now and my students are aware of both the negative and unfortunate uses, as well as the imperative to ensure that you are creating a positive digital footprint.
This will give us great food for thought – Thanks!
/s