Third Idea Consulting

I had some other topics lined up for today—my thoughts on what applications like Scanaroo are doing for social CRM, for one—but it looks like there’s some breaking news on broken social tools that must take precedence.

Today saw a massive denial-of-service (DOS) attack against popular social networking sites, most notably Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I won’t link to them directly right now—they’re the Big Three so you know how to find them, and they also have enough traffic trouble at the moment—but I’ll cheap out and give you the New York Times coverage here.

Social media like these have quickly changed the way we go about our daily lives, so it’s all the more painful when we info addicts get cut off at the source. I was really looking forward to seeing what was happening in my personal Twitosphere today, not to mention driving some traffic to my site and those of my allies. Twitter has been hit hardest, and despite claims that the problems have been fixed, many users (myself included) still have no access. Facebook has been unreliable as well, so my Mafia Wars conquests are on hold for now. LinkedIn is more of a tactical asset for me—I use it when I need it, but don’t stay connected for long—so I haven’t seen the extent of the damage there, but you can be sure that some important business connections didn’t get made today.

The optimist in me says that when irresponsible scriptkiddies with a surplus of free time and a dearth of creativity launch attacks like this, it ultimately strengthens the sites they attack. But the inner optimist is very small, and not nearly as vocal as the rage-filled monster who wants to make an example of these jackholes with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers, Marcellus Wallace-style. I suppose I’ll have to settle for the criminal justice system, but that will do.

This moment of Ahab-vs.-Moby-Fail also reminds us that social networking and customer engagement aren’t new phenomena. We still have phones, and the ability to go to bricks-and-mortar establishments. Most of the Internet still works, too, so it’s not like the engines of enterprise have shut down altogether. Social CRM is a strategy, and the online component is not the only component.

/rant

In other news, I’ll be guest-blogging for my friends Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary, the CRM Playaz. My piece isn’t live yet, but when it is I’ll have the honor of being their first post. Along with that, I’ll also be chatting with them on their next podcast, recording tomorrow. I can’t get enough of these guys—they combine insight with humor, whether separately or working together. They also show exceptional taste in guests.

Thanks to Metafilter (by way of my girlfriend), I found out about a case involving the apparent power of social media. I would have missed it entirely because of the other recent social media event surrounding Michael Jackson’s death. It involves another celebrity, Adam Savage of MythBusters.

Briefly, the situation as reported in the Vancouver Sun is this: Savage got hit with $11,000 in connectivity charges from AT&T for what amounted to a few hours of use over a period of five days. The company shut off his phone as a result. Savage turned an assistant loose on the provider to try and straighten out the charges, but it appears that the real work was accomplished with a few tweets. (No disrespect intended to the assistant, of course.)

Your first reaction to this story might be, “Aha, the power of social media in action!” (It was my second, right after, “Those guys have the best job ever, and I love that show.”) But if you look deeper—not just in the MeFi comments but read Adam’s own words—you’ll see another thing at work: the power of celebrity.

“A lot of people on Twitter are saying, ‘Well it’s great that it worked for you, because you’ve got 50,000 followers, but what about the rest of us?’ ” Savage said. “And I totally agree with them.”

The fact is that the power of massed customer voices is mostly a sea-change thing for the moment. One tweet, one blog, or one Facebook group typically has little power of its own; as they accumulate, they exert pressure on businesses that want to maintain good public opinion. It’s like emailing your senator or congressperson to ask them to put their weight behind a certain bill—no matter how awesome and right I think I am, my note is almost useless by itself. It’s going to take a lot of constituents to shift a legislator’s opinion, or get one to make it a pet project instead of just something to vote on.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and Adam Savage is capable of a much louder squeak than most of us. Kudos to him for acknowledging this.  The typical customer would have spent days or weeks sorting this mess out, or might just eat the charge if it was small enough. You’d better believe that if AT&T hit me with $11-grand in charges I’d become an instant sensation on Cursebird (NSFW).

The change we’re all hoping for is that businesses don’t just use social media as an alarm system directing them to fires which must be put out. If somebody goes to the trouble of starting a social networking group founded on the premise that your company is run by thieves and/or morons, or makes a public-message complaint that is echoed by others, it doesn’t just mean some customers are unhappy—it means you’re doing something wrong. Fix the damage first, put out the fire, but if your next step isn’t taking a hard look at the policies that caused the fire, you’re missing the point of listening and are a fire hazard.

Also, congratulations to MythBusters cohost Kari Byron (no, she doesn’t know me) on successfully completing her pregnancy internship. Good luck in your new role as Doctor of Momology.

OK, first a disclaimer and personal note: I don’t intend to minimize, ensnarkify, or otherwise make bones on the death of Michael Jackson. It will probably happen anyway, because I have the self control of a cracked-out hummingbird. Let me just say that, while I’d never have described myself as a fan, and Michael’s public image drifted past mockable and into pitiable a long time ago, he was a powerful force in music and entertainment. Starting with the Jackson 5, he brought some great music to the world. Thriller is still the top-selling album of all time. Oh, and could he dance—Sammy Davis Jr. and Fred Astaire (among a great many others) seriously admired Michael’s moves. Admit it, you used to try to Moonwalk because Michael did it. There’s more to Michael Jackson than I’ll ever know, and while parts of his life were unfortunate, ugly, and even self-destructive, I respect a great entertainer when I see one, and Michael qualifies.

The Internet nearly broke on June 25, 2009. It wasn’t hackers, EMP, sunspots, or an earthquake at a critical server farm. No, it was far, far worse.

A celebrity had died.

The first I heard of the situation was from good friend and former office-mate Josh Weinberger (or @kitson to you Twitter addicts), who linked me celebrity gossip site TMZ’s report that Michael Jackson had died suddenly. The journalist in me expressed doubt, and I looked for confirmation; early reports from sources I considered more trustworthy said the 50-year-old pop icon had collapsed, been revived, and taken to a hospital, but the granular truth never became clear to me. Whatever the specifics, the King of Pop was dead, and bloggers and tweeters beat the major news sources to the story.

I’m not going to get into a fight over why a famous person’s death should become world news, especially when there’s so much else going on that could have a material effect on our lives. I’ll let Datamonitor analyst Ryan Joe’s Facebook status update sing that song.

There had already been two other celeb passings that week, but they didn’t make as big an impact. EdMcMahon was 86 and clearly slowing down (is it too soon to resume calling him Old McMan?), and Farrah Fawcett had terminal cancer, so to be blunt their passings were a matter of time.

Michael was a true surprise, and he seems to have had a much bigger and more vocal fan base. The sudden traffic spike brought browsers to a screeching halt; sources at Google said the surge in queries seemed like an attack.

Not Jacko's EKG, Google's.

As with any news of this sort, it gets worse. On the heels of the news of Michael’s death, rumors began to spread that Jeff Goldblum had fallen to his death while on a location shoot in New Zealand. Similar stories concerning Harrison Ford started circulating, then a number of other stars got the R.I.P. treatment.

Goldblum answered back with the only force more powerful than a twitterstorm: the Colbert Report.

Whenever a famous person of any magnitude is reported dead and there’s no reason to expect it, one will always be well-served to check the rumor to make sure it isn’t complete bullshit. The fact that the (confirmed) deaths of pitchman Billy Mays and impressionist-comic Fred Travalena barely made a ripple can be attributed as much to the sudden skepticism caused by the hoaxes as to the relative dimness of their stars. (Sorry guys, but anybody who thinks either of these fellows is on the same tier as those I’ve just mentioned has been watching way too many infomercials and ’70s reruns.)

Twitter is a powerful force because of its immediacy, but also because the 140-character limit means that details are lost or ignored—only the headline gets picked up, and lies can spread as fast as truth. On the one hand, I’m glad that somebody (an asshole, but somebody) decided to inject a little perspective into the rumor mill, and remind us that crowdsourced =/= accurate. On the other hand, such a demonstration could weaken or slow the adoption of social media, and that would be something else to mourn.