So my wife (in theory, a homemaker) is not on facebook. She scoffs at the thought of Twitter and doesn’t even let our teenagers on MySpace (that she knows of). But my wife spends more than an hour a day in front of her computer. What’s she doing? The original social networking…..email.
My wife uses AOL and after a little snooping I realized that she has over 500 contacts. These include teachers, team parents, other parents for two different schools. She has cousins and other relatives that number almost triple digits all over the country. She serves on two charitable boards so her list of community contacts is pretty extensive. As puffy as I might be about my Twitter following….I don’t hold a candle to her network. These are all real people who like and respect her.
All very interesting I’m sure, but it really came into focus this week for me when I realized how much businesses underestimate and ignore this most powerful of social networks.
Earlier this week, my sister caught me on IM and cascaded hatred down on me
about a retailer that didn’t give her satisfaction with a damaged product. Full of myself and my social network power I Twittered on the situation and got an almost immediate response via Twitter from two separate representatives from the retailer. Great, problem solved right? Wrong. Since then nothing. A call from her to the store yesterday gave her the same answer…no. And apparently they had not heard from anyone higher up associated with "Twitter".
Now this is going to be a mistake. Karen is a single mother with 6 children ranging from teens to early 20’s...all either college graduates or college bound. She lives in an Appalachian area. She has over 1000 people on her personal email list (she's one of these people who forwards everything to everyone)
She also has over 200 friends on facebook. Her 6 kids all have facebook with anywhere from 250 to way over 500 friends each. The other thing to know about my sister…..she’s MEAN.
If Obama got in trouble for describing my people as “clinging to guns and religion” what he left unspoken is how they cling to grudges…..forever.
So imagine what she is going to do. 1,000 emails out, those people forward and so on....not to mention the kids and their Facebook stories. I'm not betting or participating but it makes for an interesting mental excercise. If the old model was an unhappy customer tells 25 people how unhappy they are, and a happy customer only tells 5....I'm wondering how long it takes for Karen to tell 100,000 people? Given her 1,000 email relationships and the almost 3,000 facebook relationships just in her immediate household my guess is about 4 days...
This isn’t really meant to be a rant about how Karen was treated fairly or unfairly (I only know her side) it’s really about the idea that Email is still the highest volume activity on the web. And just because you won’t find my wife or sister on Twitter does not mean that they don’t have incredibly powerful social media voices.
My wife uses AOL and after a little snooping I realized that she has over 500 contacts. These include teachers, team parents, other parents for two different schools. She has cousins and other relatives that number almost triple digits all over the country. She serves on two charitable boards so her list of community contacts is pretty extensive. As puffy as I might be about my Twitter following….I don’t hold a candle to her network. These are all real people who like and respect her.
All very interesting I’m sure, but it really came into focus this week for me when I realized how much businesses underestimate and ignore this most powerful of social networks.
Earlier this week, my sister caught me on IM and cascaded hatred down on me
about a retailer that didn’t give her satisfaction with a damaged product. Full of myself and my social network power I Twittered on the situation and got an almost immediate response via Twitter from two separate representatives from the retailer. Great, problem solved right? Wrong. Since then nothing. A call from her to the store yesterday gave her the same answer…no. And apparently they had not heard from anyone higher up associated with "Twitter".Now this is going to be a mistake. Karen is a single mother with 6 children ranging from teens to early 20’s...all either college graduates or college bound. She lives in an Appalachian area. She has over 1000 people on her personal email list (she's one of these people who forwards everything to everyone)
She also has over 200 friends on facebook. Her 6 kids all have facebook with anywhere from 250 to way over 500 friends each. The other thing to know about my sister…..she’s MEAN.
If Obama got in trouble for describing my people as “clinging to guns and religion” what he left unspoken is how they cling to grudges…..forever.
So imagine what she is going to do. 1,000 emails out, those people forward and so on....not to mention the kids and their Facebook stories. I'm not betting or participating but it makes for an interesting mental excercise. If the old model was an unhappy customer tells 25 people how unhappy they are, and a happy customer only tells 5....I'm wondering how long it takes for Karen to tell 100,000 people? Given her 1,000 email relationships and the almost 3,000 facebook relationships just in her immediate household my guess is about 4 days...
This isn’t really meant to be a rant about how Karen was treated fairly or unfairly (I only know her side) it’s really about the idea that Email is still the highest volume activity on the web. And just because you won’t find my wife or sister on Twitter does not mean that they don’t have incredibly powerful social media voices.
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