Black Slate Media

Twitter, my most favorite distraction, has been the trumpet of my many rants and raves. Well, mostly the rants. What can I say? I fall into that cabal of society that holds no qualms about voicing a complaint or vexation, but remains tightlipped on praise. At least in the virtual world, that is.

I’m definitely not alone in this, either. The folks from LessAccounting felt that people using Quickbooks were frustrated with its counter-intuitiveness. This being 2008, and when we’re not happy with something and we’ve had enough, we take it to the tweets (sorry). Hence, WeAllHateQuickBooks.com, a twitter-based experiment using an unfiltered query of the public for ”quickbooks.”

Just recently, Verizon FiOS has become available in my building so I am making the switch from Comcast. Basking in total monopoly, they have become considerably more expensive over the years, so I am giving them the boot. Even twittered it. When I was checking my replies the following day, I noticed one in particular. It was from a twitterer by the name of ComcastCares, replying, @bsm_jared I am not a fan of boots. Can I help change your mind? Interesting…

A few friends found this to be a bit scary, but honestly, I felt it incredibly refreshing. In a world where customer service has been eroded into a Sisyphean maze of interactive voice response, here we have someone actually reaching out to me. How personal! Sure, the response was unsolicited, but it definitely wasn’t invading by any means. Frank Eliason, the man behind this (or at least, the name on the profile), I assume is using Summize to query “comcast”. Kudos to him on this effort. I really hope other companies follow suit.

People don’t always go to the source when they need to vent, favoring a manner that is quick and convenient. Twitter proves a great tool for doing so, and over a million users strong, you can bet there are complaints about anything and everything. Plenty of compliments as well. Using Summize and its advanced search is an excellent way to filter it all out.

Are you good to go? Is there pending doom? Test the air.

Update: Summize has now been acquired by Twitter. Link