JetBlue and Twitter Save New Years

Unless you have been hibernating (I wouldn't blame you), you know about the mess that resulted from blizzards in the Northeast a few days ago – on city budgets, on the cities' residents, and – most "loudly" – on the airline industry.

Lee tweeted a NYTimes article a few days ago called For Some Travelers Stranded in Airports, Relief Is in 140 Characters. It was perfect timing, because at that exact moment, I was writing this blog post.

I kept hearing about thousands of flights being canceled and people sleeping at airports. I figured my 12/29 JetBlue flight from Florida to New York would be okay, since it was a full four days after the storms, and every flight from 2 days prior to mine between the two airports seemed fine - at worst, a few delays here and there.

Wrong. At 2.30 am my phone rang – a JetBlue robot telling me that my flight was canceled.

I was on hold for two hours and fifteen minutes, trying to re-book. Finally I was told that the earliest possible flight for me was on the 3rd of January, 5 days later. I went back to sleep at 5.30 am, delirious.

The following morning, I was furious. I laughed at the irony that after boycotting JetBlue (I was directly affected by their 2007 crisis) and taking a few cautious maybe-we-can-be-friends-again flights 4 years later, this happened. I considered a lot - paying close to $500 for an earlier flight on another airline, renting a car and driving two and a half days, taking a train. I heard about another guy on my flight that had put himself on a standby list and flown to New York an hour later. I tweeted.



I combed Bing Travel. I was hung up on by JetBlue's support call center. I searched CheapTickets. I planned around the day of work (and four days of sanity) I would be missing. My phone rang.

"Hello, is this Johanna? This is Jeff with JetBlue, and I might have some good news for you."

Jeff told me that he would be able to get me on a flight at 9am the next morning. I was utterly confused and asked him why he called me, of all people on that canceled flight. Turns out Jeff Hofmann manages their Twitter account. He saw my tweet of desperation, looked me up in JetBlue's system, found that one seat, looked up my phone number, and called me personally. He said that he would have DM'ed me but was too worried the seat would go before we could speak. I was so stunned I almost cried on the phone to him.



And there you have it, folks. Jeff single-handedly restored my faith in the airline, saving them from another 4-year boycott. I knew JetBlue had a social media strategy and knew what they were doing, but I honestly never thought someone handling a Twitter account could have the power to do something as big as changing a flight reservation for someone. This level of personalized service went above and beyond what I ever thought a Fortune 1000 company could be capable of. Well done, guys. My doubt for you has gone out the window.

And: Happy New Year, everyone!

The thrill of the location-based chase

I don't really have to write a lot about the fact that people continue to have fun by taking advantage of their cities with the help of technology. The return of the annual Come Out & Play Festival this past weekend (rats, I missed it!) and Newmindspace's ongoing popularity prove it pretty well.

Brands are doing a good job lately of releasing location-based services (click on that, it's awesome, more later this week) that manage to fit who they are and what they offer to people. To take it up a notch, I've been noticing a few that have been doing cool stuff with an already-existing service – yes,Twitter, bear with me – combining the nature of their product with our appreciation of location-based fun.

The first I noticed was Cupcake Stop, a truck that travels all over NYC to sell – yup – cupcakes.


[photo: roboppy]
Cupcake Stop's Twitter feed had hundreds reading before it even officially launched. During their "beta," they tweeted to test out routes, give previews of what flavors would be available (including an "invent our new flavor" contest), and let people know when and where they were baking. It was like a Krispy Kreme "Hot Now" neon sign on steroids.


Another food truck that did something like this is NYC Cravings, which sells Taiwanese meat and rice dishes. They park in a different spot every day, post their schedule online and use their Twitter feed for spur of the moment changes in plans and location prompts & reminders. Both Cupcake Stop and NYC Cravings leveraged the fact that they are mobile with a tool to help bring more people to them in a fun way.


Brands-who-move-around aren't the only ones who can do things like this, either. Handbag designer Rachel Nasvik created quite a stir over the past couple of weeks, when she hid 90 of her designs in secret spots all over the city and tweeted clues about their whereabouts.



Those clues are so awesome; reminds me of my Carmen Sandiego-playing days. Anyway, followers of this bag scavenger hunt feed (which has over 1,000 followers at this point) ran all over New York, from ATMs to public bathrooms and even our neighbors Van Leeuwen, to try to get their hands on one of the bags (which were also filled with goodies like cosmetics and key chains).


[photo: thrill of the chase]
The fun and inviting "come and get it" attitude is a great way to leverage the craziness that "time sensitive + limited availability" does to people. And the thrill of finding whatever it is you're chasing (be it cupcakes or a handbag) is SO HUGE. You turn the corner and go, "WOW, it's there! It's really there!" (Or at least that's how I reacted when I saw NYC Cravings, after planning my week around it and walking out of the way to get to the nearest location). Rachel definitely got more press than she would have with a more traditional giveaway; the event was covered by Daily Candy, NBC New York, Creativity Online, and Beyond Madison Avenue.

It may seem counter intuitive these days to think that it's good for a brand to make its consumers come to them, instead of the other way around. But the creative use of a nimble platform and a bit of fun changes the game completely.

EDIT | My friend Satish just sent me another cool example of a big brand doing this – Eminem. There was a Twitter feed sending people all over Detroit to find hidden concert tickets. Very cool.

EDIT 2 | My friend Anjeli commented on my cross-posting over at House of Naked... check out this wedding! It "incorporated [the couple's] favorite food carts for their reception by following Twitter." I agree on the photography too – beautiful. Wonder if they used the Leica Noctilux? ;)

Best in class tweets

Sometimes when I feel stress or ennui, I go through my Twitter Favorites to lift the mood a little (and it always works). Almost everyone I know is feeling a bit "eh" lately, so I thought I'd share some of my favorites from the past 2 years.

These made me laugh (sometimes until crying)












Some that made me want to hug the Tweeters /remember why I love them








Beautiful thoughts & scenes that make me want to run away and write for 6 million years












About little life annoyances that are amusing/charming after the fact





That's it, not a lot of writing on my end. I just wanted to share the little things people have said (maybe without even giving them much thought) that have made me smile. Hopefully you did too.

Analogue Twitter project

I took December off from Twitter.

It was a combination of being creatively bored, in the mood for a project, and feeling too digitally transparent at the time. So until the first day of 2009, I wrote down my short thoughts instead, in the notebook I carry around with me.


Now, obviously the two can't be compared. First of all, the obvious: analogue takes longer. You need to find two things in your bag (notebook and pen), and writing takes exponentially longer for me than typing. Secondly (also obvious), you don't have the instantaneous sharing with hundreds of people that you do with Twitter. Even though I knew I would eventually scan some of these and put them here, it definitely wasn't as satisfying, somehow.



Here is the most interesting thing I discovered: the mode that my brain goes into when writing thoughts in a small book (as opposed typing) is a more private one (again, even though I knew I would be showing this to people). I have been documenting my life and thoughts since I was six, and when I was a wee Toky, that meant having diaries. With locks on them. Pen and paper used to be reserved for thoughts I didn't want anybody else to read. The moment I started typing those thoughts into Angelfire when I was 16, I typed knowing that there were people on the other end.

I never realized that my subconscious had those two behaviors divided so much. I noticed it when I told Faris about my experiment a few days into it, and then panicked a little when he took the notebook to read. I think the panic was a visceral reaction, though (associated with the construct in which I place the "writing down thoughts" behavior), because there was nothing too private in there. Nothing too private: the content would have all remained the same had I not taken this digital hiatus, though sometimes phrased in a way that I wouldn't exactly want to broadcast to the world. So I guess the mindset I'm in when documenting thoughts in each medium also influences how they come out.


One of the other reasons I did this was to see if I could live without that periodic sharing throughout the day. And I was able to do it, but only because I'm stubborn. It was really hard. A lot of the thoughts I had didn't get written down at all because they were things I wanted to say right that second. My compulsive nature will never go away, and losing that immediacy gratification just sucks. So, am I glad I did it? Yes. Would I do it again? Nah. I know now that there is a time and place for everything (or, every thought).

[You can read a few more of the scanned "tweets" here]

WIRED is more articulate than I.

Surprise, right?

A little over a month ago, I was trying to explain the appeal of Twitter to someone who had never used it and didn't understand it - they thought that "with the short sentences there's not room for much substance." I responded with, "If you are Twitterfriends with someone, and you get their updates for a week or so, there is so much substance. You get little snippet insights into their lives: how they think, their habits, etc. You get a feel for the city they live in. What they eat. How their moods affect what they do elsewhere. It is almost like long-term ethnography, because people don't put a ton of thought into when they Twitter - they just do it."

This was realized by my friend Chet at last Friday's Sweet & Vicious thingie. He mentioned something about my penchant for Jameson. I, shocked, said "How did you know that?" "Twitter," he responded. Out of my now 779 Twitters over the last several months, three to five of them have mentioned the delicious Irish whiskey.

The latest issue of WIRED explains this in a much better way that I did (or ever could):

...the true value of Twitter is cumulative. The power is in the surprising effects that come from receiving thousands of pings from your posse.

'...when I get such granular updates every day for a month, I know a lot more about her... I begin to develop an almost telepathic awareness of the people most important to me.'

So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it's experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can't explain the appeal. You have to do it - and more important, do it with friends.

You're creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

I know people are writing about Twitter to death. I won't again, I promise! Except for my article that's coming out in a couple of days that talks about real time documentation. Okay, okay. I can't stop. Sorry guys.

self reporting bias, or reality?

Are those-who-Twitter hungrier than they are horny?


TweetVolume uses Twitter and Google to allow you to compare the frequency of words or phrases that are Twittered. Type in five words /phrases and you get a pretty little bar chart that compares them all. In my search, "food" outnumbered "sex" by 6,470 tweets. It's a fun little site to spend a little bit of time on. Get creative with the words you put in. Let me know what you find.

Thanks to Russell for Twittering about this. ooo, meta.

I love technology.

My favorite timeline of the day:

Kate [in Naked kitchen]: "Anybody know how Ben takes it?" - 4.06pm
Me: [Twittered the quote] "Twittered!" - 4.06pm
Noah: [text messaged me] "Re: your last twitter--ha!" - 4.08pm
Me: [text message response to Noah] "I love technology." - 4.09pm
Dino: [Twittered] "oh my johanna, what is going ON there?" - 4.10pm
Noah: [text message response to me] "Its great that I can be in san Francisco and still enjoy the deprecation of Ben" - 4.12pm