Mar

21

Scoble uses Friendfeed to give away $5,500 to people in need

Filed Under Misc, Social Media | Comments

You may have noticed lately the growing number people on social networks who are organizing efforts to raise money for a good cause or to help recently unemployed people find jobs. One recent example was when Robert Scoble decided to give away $4,500 of his own money, which he later increased to $5,500 because of the response. The money was from a video project he did for Cisco (which he says we’ll hear more about soon) and he had no obligation to give it away but that’s what he did.

It started with this message on Friendfeed:

Although this amount of money isn’t enough to significantly change someone life, the post still led to a response of over 1,400 comments. When I saw he was giving it away on Friendfeed, I was interested to get Scoble’s thinking behind this approach so I asked him a few questions:

After you decided to give the money away, was doing it through Friendfeed your first reaction? Why didn’t you just give it to a charity?

I wanted to do something online instead of just giving money to a charity. I think it worked out wonderfully.

Do you think it would have worked if given away through Twitter?

Twitter wouldn’t be usable because I wouldn’t have been able to group replies like this. Also, I like Friendfeed a lot more and it’s more reliable and nicer for conversations.

One of the winners, Margaret, is using the money to help bring an Egyptian girl who suffers from a condition called arthrogryposis multiplex congenita (like her own son) to Philadelphia for the surgeries. The condition affects 1 in 3000 and results in multiple fixed limbs and joint contractures. The $1,750 that she will be getting from Robert Scoble is only a small chunk of the $25,000 needed to cover all the trip’s expenses, but it has certainly gotten her a lot closer. You can find out more and donate money at the Big Life, Big Spirit website or follow @bigspirit on Twitter. I asked her:

Would you have ever thought being a Friendfeed user would have helped you get closer to your fundraising goal?

I have had more luck leveraging Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed for donations and awareness than my associate has with letter writing. It really was a fluke that I saw the contest. I hadn’t been on FriendFeed in awhile and just logged in. I saw the contest and realized it was ending that day. Any chance I get to promote Dolagy and the AMC community, is worth a shot. I posted the story and honest to god, I was speechless when I saw I won. The kindness of strangers sometimes blows me away. Actually since my son was born, my life has changed so much for the positive. Thanks to FriendFeed, Twitter, etc. I have gotten contacts to help publicize our efforts, look for Luxor-based videographers to capture her living conditions now (no luck yet but still hoping) and dozens of ideas on how to continue our efforts.

I think the social media community is so much tighter and willing to help each other. You would be amazed at the number of emails, tweets and messages I have gotten from people offering to help look over content, call a friend, offer a few dollars. When I started this project back in July I never honestly knew how valuable my online community would become to me. The full story of Jude, Dolagy, Shriners and myself is truly powerful and a strong example how you can be connected to someone you never met.

The other two winners were just as deserving – a student from England who will use the money to help pay for tuition and an art studio that was damaged during a California wildfire.

Her example is solid proof that all charities should now be putting a majority of their fundraising focus on social communities instead of traditional methods. In this example, Friendfeed made it easy to create an open thread that was easy for Scoble to read through and filter later on.

Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr. Further Reading: Well Wishes $2 You & Neighbors + Neighborhoods.

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Mar

17

6 ways to provide customer support and handle feedback online

Filed Under Engagement, Social Media, Web | Comments

Gone are the days when the simple contact form or a lengthy FAQs section enough to provide the level of customer support savvy consumers now expect. And traditional feedback methods like focus groups and phone surveys don’t really make sense for primarily web-based companies.

Thankfully, there are now several online services available that help companies of any size go above and beyond to connect with their customers through social media, create self-help communities, and consult their early adopters for valuable feedback. What’s great about using the web for customer support and feedback is most of the methods mentioned below empower your own customers to help each other. In a recent post from Seth Godin, he states “Self-service customer support outperforms the traditional model because people don’t have to wait in line.” Effective online support will help get rid of those lines, therefore helping decrease operating costs and also increasing the amount of success stories that people will tell their friends about.

Here are just 6 online approaches I have seen companies taking recently, with examples of each in parentheses:

1. UserVoice (Sling Media & Twhirl)

Described as “Customer Feedback 2.0″, UserVoice is essentially an open forum that empowers users to prioritize and vote on product or service improvements they would like to see implemented first. It’s a great way to organize those requests into one location (instead of emails). UserVoice creates a new level of transparency when it comes to developments since any company using the service is now forced to constantly update their users and loyal customers on their progress. The option of embedding a tab onto any site creates a quick way for suggestions to be added to a company’s UserVoice page.

2. Get Satisfaction (Timbuk2 & Zappos)

Similar to UserVoice, Get Satisfaction offers a service that allows for embedding a widget that site visitors can quickly use to submit ideas and feedback. A major benefit of using Get Satisfaction is it creates one central location for questions, suggestions, problems, and testimonials without having to clutter a company’s own site. Employees join in to answer any concerns as soon as possible. Happy customers also love to leave praise on Get Satisfaction so it’s not always bad news when there is new activity.

3. Online Chat (Vimeo)

Online chat is instance and effective when done right but that all depends on the size of the company. Any customer would appreciate not having to deal with any case numbers or a waiting queue. If instant chat is an option, just click on the screen name link, make sure they are online (probably only during normal business hours), then start chatting to get help. Vimeo goes one step further by even putting faces behind the AIM screen names. Ironically, I found that neither Skype or AIM offer instant online help using their own chat clients.

4. Twitter (JetBlue & Comcast)

There is already a ton of discussion on how Twitter is being used by companies such as JetBlue and Comcast for customer service so I won’t get into that. Assuming someone from the company is constantly monitoring Twitter, it can be one of the quickest ways to address concerns online. The most important thing to note here is that negative feedback about a company can spread very quickly, so it’s up to the company to monitor Twitter to turn negative situations into positives.

5. Forums (Apple & Dell)

Forums have been around forever and are still a great, inexpensive way to support a community. The best benefit of an active forum is that your knowledgeable customers will most likely end up resolving other customer issues before your employees even have time to respond. That does not mean you shouldn’t have employees moderating the forums to make sure things are running smoothly.

6. Facebook Fan Page (Virgin America)

There are many ways a facebook page can be used – two of them include addressing customer concerns and soliciting feedback. As a fan page grows, companies should pay closer attention to new discussion board posts and comments left by fans and respond through a private or public messages to any concerns. There are also add-ons like the Reviews app which allows fans to leave reviews of the company on your fan page.

Final Thoughts

Of course many companies use several variations of the above to keep customers happy. There is no right or wrong answer when it comes to evaluating which of these different approaches any one company should take. Do a Google search for ‘online customer service’ and you will find a ton of services promising you to be the best and cheapest solutions. Most of these offerings are complete crap which likely don’t get any love now that there are options like the 6 above.

Am I missing any other methods which you have noticed companies using recently? Why is one way better than another? Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr.

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Mar

4

5 things people like to TwitPic

Filed Under Misc, Social Media | Comments

The image hosting service TwitPic has become one of the most popular 3rd party services for Twitter. Because of its popularity, most of the mobile Twitter apps that are available offer an easy way to upload pictures directly to TwitPic to post along with your text update.

While breaking events and celebrity photos generally get the most views, you can browse through the hundreds of the pictures being uploaded every couple of minutes by typing ‘twitpic’ into Twitter Search. Without any stats, I thought a little about what people are most likely uploading the most to TwitPic and came up with these 5 things (click on them to see the latest Twitter search results or click on image to enlarge).

1. Sunsets

When you get to witness a great sunset, your first reaction is likely to take a picture if you have a camera. For Twitter users, that first reaction is taking a picture, uploading it to TwitPic, then posting it to Twitter. Almost as frequently as sunsets, people are tweeting pictures of rainbows.

I love Arizona sunsets, even if photographed from a cell phone. on TwitPicShare photos on twitter with TwitpicWatching/taking pictures of the sunset at the beach on TwitPic

2. Dessert

What is it about desserts that makes us want to remember what they looked like before we devour them? Probably because for most of us it’s a rare occasion. Thanks for making everyone else on Twitter jealous but just remember who is going to be feeling better after it’s all gone.

Share photos on twitter with TwitpicShare photos on twitter with TwitpicShare photos on twitter with Twitpic

3. Puppies

Puppy pics might be a close tie with cute babies. Either way, Cute Overload should be paying attention.

Share photos on twitter with TwitpicWatch out! It's the abominable snow puppy! on TwitPicShare photos on twitter with Twitpic

4. Driving

Probably not the a great idea (especially while holding onto an iced coffee) but people are doing it anyway. Hopefully your next tweet won’t include a TwitPic of your car accident.

Share photos on twitter with TwitpicMini road trip with new to me car offered a chance for caffei... on TwitPicShare photos on twitter with Twitpic

5. Drunk Photos

Why only regret drunk dialing or texting one of your friends when now you can reach several people at once through drunk Twittering? I say do whatever you can to share these funny moments with everyone (Twitter can be too serious), just don’t drop your iPhone doing so.

My stepdad is SO drunk! LOL!! on TwitPicDrunk people like to lick beer on TwitPicMe - Very Drunk on TwitPic

We should also start to see more drunk videos posted through Qik, Seesmic, and 12seconds.tv as more phones come with video recording options. This is only going to continue to get more interesting as Twitter adoption grows and as mobile phones come equipped with higher resolution cameras. I hope TwitPic considers adding a better way to sort and view the best pictures being uploaded.

Any other common or funny trends that you have noticed lately?

Leave a comment below with a link to some other good Twitter search results or TwitPic’s you have come across. Connect with me on Twitter @jsmakr.

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