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Personal Experiences of Twitter Being Useful

Chia — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 17:52:32 +0000

By now Twitter is a well-known platform for sending out quick blurbs of info. In the beginning, it was more of a novelty for alpha-geeks who tweeted about being at the grocery store or what they just ate for breakfast. Big deal. However, as time has gone on, Twitter has been a viable tool for most anyone that knows how to use it effectively. Granted, it’s easy to get lost in the Twittersphere but done correctly, it’s just a great resource of information and can even be helpful.

To wit: Not only have I discovered great new music (huge music fan here) but it’s also helped with a few job leads, helped me meet some good people, and my latest greatest achievement has been fixing a giant snafu with Capital One that was pissing me off beyond all belief.

I’ll start with the good story, the useful story. In mid-January, Capital One decided to put a restriction on my account even though I made the payments I was supposed to make. I even had confirmation from no less than two different reps that everything was fine. Not true. I find they put a restriction on my account and they refuse to lift it. No less than two dozen calls over the next two weeks brings the same result…script reading “customer service” representatives hiding behind the “it’s our policy that once a restriction is placed, it cannot be removed” rhetoric. Even though it was THEIR mistake, they refused to fix it. I spoke with manager after manager with still no luck. A variety of emails were also sent, all of them having the same “policy” response. Fed up with this crap I called my bank and placed a stop payment claim with the fraud department because I didn’t get what I paid for with Capital One (use of my card). The calls and emails continued and all came back with the same result.

Finally, I hit the Twittersphere and voiced my displeasure with Capital One. Lo and behold, I get a message from someone named @AskCapitalOne asking if they can help. Sure…why not? We send a few DM (direct messages) back and forth (all the while my super anti-phishing guards are up making sure all is legit), she asks a few questions and I’m convinced she’s legit.

NOTE: never ever never ever give personal info away to someone you don’t know. She asked my name, street number (not even full address) and then asked if she could call me at my number (that I did NOT give…this helped ease my mind a bit). She called and we went through a couple more security questions…some I intentionally answered wrong to make sure someone wasn’t just collecting my info. She clearly had my account info in front of her and we proceeded. I recounted the past few weeks of frustrations and she said “I can see all that here in the notes” and then proceeded to lift the restriction. I checked my account again while on the phone with her and it was true, restriction was lifted.

This experience alone proves a lot:

Used correctly, companies can repair massive damage by keeping tabs on what people are saying on Twitter
Twitter is truly another tool that can benefit companies and shouldn’t be ignored
Twitter isn’t just a toy for bored people
Twitter isn’t just a tool for marketing or for information passing

Companies should seriously consider using Twitter to help their business in one aspect or another.

Twitter Twitter Twitter

Chia — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:32:39 +0000

Twitter? What’s that? For most of the faithful Chia Town readers Twitter is old news. Oddly enough Twitter is still not known by some and not understood by others. This post will be mostly for people that have heard about Twitter, know what it is (a quick way to send quick updates as to what you’re up to or what you’re thinking) but still haven’t fully grasped what it is. It MUST be good though…rumors of Apple and of Google buying it have been flying around now so huh…it’s gotta be worth something, right?

So there you are, you’ve set up your Twitter account. You’re still not sure why yet. Who cares if you’re eating a ham sandwich right now? I sure don’t. When Twitter first started that’s pretty much what it was. “I’m taking a crap” and “I just got back from the grocery store” were fairly prevalent posts. After I initially signed up I quickly got bored with it and abandoned it for a while. As I saw more of my friends hopping on I decided to give it another try and see if I missed something the first time. After spending some time figuring out just what I wanted to do with it and what it was useful for I found myself becoming a Twitter junkie. I find it to be a great way to stay up to date with friends and business news.

There are a few things you should ask yourself when setting up an account:

Why are you setting it up? Personal reasons? Professional?
How active do you plan on being?
What do you plan on getting out of it?

These are important questions as you figure out how to configure your account. For example, if you want it to be more professional in nature you’ll want to connect to more businesses and people that are more business-oriented (ie, steer clear of the “I’m so drunk right now” posters). Conversely, if it’s going to be more personal in nature then connect with your friends and avoid the barrage of advertisements and other business-oriented tweets that come from the business people.

There are also some key etiquette points to keep in mind. Please please PLEASE be mindful of these as it can get really annoying for people following your tweets.

DON’T post what is happening on TV shows that you happen to be watching live. Many people nowadays record shows with their DVRs to watch later. Do NOT give away what happens. Not cool man…just not cool.
Try to keep your posts down to a max of 10 a day or so. There are people that post a couple hundred times a day and I’ve had to drop them from my list because their flood kept me from seeing posts from other people.
If someone sends something cool, retweet it and give them credit.

There are also some tools out there to make Twitter more useful to you. For example, I use the “mobile devices” feature so that I am able to send tweets from my cell phone and I am also able to receive tweets from selected people to my cell phone. This can be handy for personal things (“dude! So-and-so is at Brewhouse…let’s go meet them there”) or professional reasons (companies send out coupons or special treats via Twitter and you don’t need to be at the computer to get them. Very handy when a restaurant posts a deal and you are already out looking for food). I myself use TweetDeck to keep things organized as it puts all tweets in one pane, direct messages in another, and replies in yet another. Other utilities that serve similar purposes are Seesmic and Nambu.

Twitter can be fun. Embrace it. Enjoy it. Follow friends. Follow celebs if you want (I was receiving mobile updates from Lance Armstrong during the Amgen Tour of California…cool insights!). Follow businesses. Prove yourself to be a guru in one business or another as you tweet cool stuff. It’s yet another tool that can help you in one endeavor or another if you allow it to be and use it correctly. Interested parties can find me at (@ChiaTown). Other Twitter accounts that have been set up (yes, you can have more than one) are for WaxPorhetoric.com (@waxporhetoric) and TheSocialBeast.com (@thesocialbeast).

MS Sharepoint and Apple Safari 3 Frustrations

Chia — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:59:31 +0000

Apple just resently released Safari v3 to the world and I’d been holding off. At home where I primarily run on a Mac (G4 PowerBook…old school baby. My XP-based HTPC crapped out on me recently and haven’t had the time to tinker with it yet) I generally use Safari and Firefox. When I heard about the newest release of Safari for Windows I couldn’t wait to get to work and fire it up.

Downloading was easy (the company I’m contracting at right now blocks iTunes, YouTube, and a myriad of other sites for “inappropriate attire” and the like so getting to download Safari was a small victory for me), installation was a breeze, and it really did seem faster than Firefox (my default browser at work…unless I have to get to some site/part of Sharepoint that some goomer coded only for IE). I was pleased and as I ran through a few test sites to determine whether I would make it my default browser or not I continued to pay attention to how pages rendered, the speed, functionality, etc. I was especially excited because Safari is supposedly one of the most advanced browsers out there now, supporting HTML 5 and to be a great rich internet application browser. But alas…it will not be my default browser at work. Why?

First, I already have to have two browsers open. I begrudgingly use IE because Siebel does not play nicely with Firefox. I then have Firefox open so I can have the four or so tabs I need to do work and (shhhhh…don’t tell anyone about my personal emails that I check) play and also do research. Much more convenient than having another five windows open. When I fired up Safari…it get no Sharepoint support.

I’m finding this horribly frustrating. I just want to have one browser that supports all my needs. Really now, is it THAT hard to do? Tabbed browsing, not a memory hog, stable, secure (we all know IE is a security nightmare), and one that works well with everything I need to do. The fact I would need to run three browsers to get what I want and need is ridiculous. So until Apple and Microsoft can figure out how to get Sharepoint to run smoothly (ok, to run at all would be a good start), I’ll have to settle with working with two browsers that do what I need (yet I still have my wants). Blasted…I’ve been foiled once again by incompatibility issues.

Addendum – After posting this I finally got Sharepoint to work on Safari. Finally! However, there are still parts of Sharepoint that still do not work at all (let alone correctly). Also, Siebel still blows chunks (my Siebel rant would take days to complete. I can’t think of one person here that is a Siebel fan. Slow, clunky, unintuitive, confusing, not compatible with other browsers…) and doesn’t work on Safari either. I’ll keep testing Safari as my main browser for a while and see if it’s good enough to beat out Firefox as my default browser on XP or if I’ll switch on back.