Posts Tagged ‘Raves’

Customer Support on Twitter, and Good P.R. AT&T’s new ride.


03 Feb

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Posted in Rambles, Raves | 1 Comment »

In Class we’ve discussed how more and more companies are taking an active role in social media. The best example that comes to mind is the @ComcastCares Team. If you tweet about them, odds are you will get a response asking if they can help. This has had mixed results in the past it seems, but it’s a little nifty to get a response from a big company saying that they actually do see you, the little person.

Last night, I tweeted, asking if anyone has ever forgotten to hit send when waiting for a text message. In replying to a follower, I wrote that my phone randomly switches to SOS (Emergency Calling only) mode quite often and needs a power cycle to fix it. I tagged my tweet #att #fail.

When I woke up in the morning, I had an @reply from @ATTCustomerCare “@Freekie Hi, I’m with AT&T and saw your tweet. If you DM you contact info, I can reach out to try to help. I’m following. Thanks!” I thought that it was pretty cool, however did wonder where this was when I had phone problems in the past. So, I followed them and sent my phone number along in a Direct Message. A few hours later, I got a voicemail from AT&T’s Social Media Department. He explained who he was, and why he was calling me. While I haven’t had a chance to call them back, it was pretty cool to actually get a response and know that they have an actual department to handle such things as twitter. I do wonder what else they monitor, if it’s face book, or what else. Apparently they have a presence on Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and even YouTube. It is a pretty impressive list.

I think that it is very important for companies and even people to watch what is said about them on twitter and other social media places. Doing a quick google search usually finds you a good place to start. Search.twitter.com allows you to look over tweets that have been sent as well. I have a few of my frequent searches as an RSS feed and have it into my RSS reader. I think it’d be worth checking out for most companies to keep their tweeters happy. Good PR goes along way on the internets (sic).

IRC as a Social Media


11 Jan

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Posted in Random, Raves | 2 Comments »

As you may or may not know, I am a very frequent member of the IRC community.  IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a early internet technology that allows users to chat from all over the world in a simple and easy environment.   IRC has seen a new life come out recently from some social media events such as Online streaming.  UStream uses IRC to allow users to communicate within a community and show, Justin.TV uses a hacked form of IRC to communicate as well.

Depending on the network that you chat on, you can find users that chat about anything. From software development, fighting malware, talking about technology, or even discussing the latest movies and video games. IRC is a place that you can find many people to pass time and even find good bits of help and friends.

There are two networks that I frequent are GeekShed, and DevilsFreek.  GeekShed is ranked as one of the top 100 IRC networks that are rated by users and channels by SearchIRC.  DevilsFreek is more of a quiet and small community that is more of a test bed for my workings.

IRC has had a few bad bursts of publicity in the past, media often covers IRC as a place that hackers hack, and steal credit card numbers and botnets are from.  While there are a few places that this is true, the majority of IRC networks are safe and have active network administrators that keep the trouble makers away.

If you want to connect to GeekShed to take a peak at what IRC is, and what not, feel free to click the More button and a flash chat should appear below.

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Corey's Rants

A Web Developer's rants, raves and randomness.