www.nickhodge.com

Only the para­noid sur­vive. Even the para­noid have enemies. And the list of para­noid quotes goes on.

Within the last 18 hours, I’ve had two exper­i­ences with twit­ter that are worth shar­ing. If only for twit­ter brag­ging rights.

Firstly, whilst ABC1’s Media Watch was shown last night – what I con­sidered a long “advertorial” piece about tab­let devices and their impend­ing saviour status for news­print. I tweeted:

Someone should #mediawatch#mediawatch for 15 minutes of “Apple iPad” advert­ise­ment. NOT F***KING HAPPY MARK SCOTT

Within an hour, the host of Media Watch, Jonathan Holmes, respon­ded:

@NickHodge ah! U work for Microsoft! Wondered why u were SO upset!

Oops, sprung. Well almost. My twit­ter bio is clear about my employer. As I had already respon­ded to the iPad shills, I respon­ded sim­il­arly to Jonathan. The ABC must be above spruik­ing products; it is a part of their edit­or­ial policy. I will admit that my tweet is tain­ted with the per­spect­ive of my present employer: for sure; no-one is truly inde­pend­ent from their source of income. But I do expect all com­mer­cial organ­isa­tions: includ­ing Microsoft, to be treated equally in terms of pub­li­city on our ABC.

A thankyou, Jonathan, for being con­cerned about your show and look­ing at “the stream of conversation.” This shows you care.

Second incid­ent. Only a few hours later, in response to Tony Abbott appear­ing on ABC TV’s Q and A: a prom­ising TV show that has fallen below my expect­a­tions. Tony, in response to a ques­tions on Cath­olisism men­tioned that another leader, Kristina Keneally – the NSW Premier, being not so har­angued about her faith. My tweet:

ooh, @KKeneally is at least a ser­i­ous Cath­olic as @TonyAbbottMHR ..#opusdei !!!

Very early this morn­ing, 5:47am Sydney time, the Premier responded:

@NickHodge hi Nick this is an old and false rumour. I’ve never been a mem­ber of opus dei. My area of interest is fem­in­ist theo­logy. Cheers

Oops, sprung again. My response to her was a pub­lic, hope­fully grace­ful mea culpa. I doubt that I would vote ALP in the next State elec­tion – but that fact that Ms Keneally took time out to respond to mine – and other ques­tions on twit­ter shows a level of care. And she spelt rumours correctly.

So, two fam­ous people respon­ded to my rather cheeky, spe­cious and snarky tweets. In both cases, apart from the indi­vidual tweets these people do not know me. Nor the some­what satirical/childish nature of my tweets.

In the con­text of “social media” for organ­isa­tions – can per­son­ally respond­ing to indi­vidual tweets like mine scale? Whilst NSW has 6 mil­lion res­id­ents, only 4000 fol­low her on twit­ter. If twit­ter goes main­stream like Face­book, one could expect a Premier of NSW to have up to 2 mil­lion fol­low­ers (30% of Aus­trali­ans are on Face­book) . No one, magical per­son can respond to them all.

Here at Microsoft in Aus­tralia, a few product groups have been exper­i­ment­ing with social media mon­it­or­ing tools. Watch­ing the con­ver­sa­tions, and respond­ing where appro­pri­ate in a formal way. This also involves an escal­a­tion pro­cess for response to quer­ies that include PR, Cus­tomer Ser­vice and Evan­gel­ism. I know of other organ­isa­tions doing sim­ilar for their products and ser­vices – Inter­node, for instance.

So, be care­ful out there. You are being watched. And if your com­ment is not satir­ical, hope­fully respon­ded to. Personally.