Salesforce.com Support: Is Quickly Not Helping Really Helpful?

So a funny thing happened on my way through a normal workday. Wearing my Salesforce.com Admin hat, I was contacted about a problem by one of our users. After guessing at the first answer -- what would be most logical -- then diving into it myself, I found myself mired in another one of those "this is something that people have been requesting from Salesforce for years and they haven't done anything" problems. That by itself would probably merit an annoyed blog post, but it's what happened after that that sent me straight to Blogger.

Let's start with a bit of background. Imagine you're in Salesforce and you're on a custom object page (I think this actually applies to standard objects, but I don't really want to explore the nuances of things that don't work). Let's say the object is a "Quote". Now you've just created this quote and you want to use Salesforce's email tool to send the Quote to your customer. But you don't want to send it just to Bob, your primary contact. You also need to send the quote to Sue in purchasing and maybe Alex in administration. Here's the screen that you'd see:

From here, you'd enter Bob's contact information in the To: and Salesforce would link the email to his contact info (including using the email address from his record). But for Sue and Alex, you'd expect to use the Additional To or the CC fields. However, if you click on the Additional to link, what you'll be brought to is a window with this at the top:

Now, what several online items suggest -- and you might expect to happen from "All Co-workers in Company" is any contacts on the Account linked to the Contact. However, what the list actually holds is all of the Users from your company. This happens from any of the search window buttons as well. Oh, and you might expect that the "Show" would let you choose from another list option. It doesn't.

If you want to add Sue or Alex, you have to type their email addresses into the Additional to or CC email windows. And if this is part of a process that you repeat frequently, you can expect to do a lot of typing.

But Wait, There's More...
This has been a problem in Salesforce for a long time. When I went looking for solutions on Google "Salesforce email additional to", I came across these outstanding ideas:

First, here are three Ideas covering the exact same issue, going all the way back six years ago.
https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000Z2vmAAC
https://success.salesforce.com/ideaview?id=08730000000HARDAA4
https://success.salesforce.com/ideaView?id=08730000000jJn3AAE

Next, here is some misinformation in their help knowledgebase that incorrectly informs people of how the functionality is supposed to work:
https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewSolution?id=000180786&language=en_US
https://success.salesforce.com/answers?id=90630000000gtrnAAA

Are you frustrated yet? Discovering this, I went on Twitter to share my frustration with @asksalesforce. Usually, they're pretty responsive, and the got back to me quickly. They also created a case. And this is where it gets even funnier.

The Quick Customer Service Response You Didn't Really Want
So this afternoon I received a call from Salesforce Customer Support. The call came from slightly soft-spoken Indian woman calling from a rather noisy call center room. I mention this because, between her accent and the background room noise, it made it a bit challenging to understand a lot of what she was saying. Without much of an intro, she requested that I go to GoToMeeting.com. I explained that I was in the middle of a project and she repeated her request that I go to GoToMeeting.com so that she could see the issue.

Now, the security guy in me would normally be pretty wary, but I have to admit that I was finding this so ludicrous that I decided to play along. So I fire up GoToMeeting and she gives me the meeting ID. And, of course, when I open the meeting, it immediately wants to share my screen and access my mouse and keyboard. No introductions, no gentle ask to access my screen.

Anyway, so I turn on the screen share and she asks me to demonstrate the issue. So I take her to a record and show her. Then we discuss it briefly. I also show her the Ideas. Then she proceeds to confirm that this is standard functionality. Rather than me explain, here's from the case file:

This is the standard functionality of salesforce and you also confirmed that you saw a couple ideas which were for the same issue. These ideas are under point threshold which means that they have been planned as a future roadmap and may be available in future releases. 

Needless to say, the call was a waste of both of our time. I told her she could close the case and I hung up.

In this case, Salesforce customer service was very quick in trying to help. Unfortunately, what they accomplished not only wasn't helpful, it actually annoyed me more than it did anything else. For example, they didn't even note that the ideas actually covered the same issue and, if combined, might reach their threshold for consideration. But beyond that, I could have told the Twitter team at @asksalesforce that this wasn't worth a case because I already knew they weren't going to do anything about it. I mean, the Idea Exchange shows that they've had six years to address it.

The whole thing reminds me that, several years ago I'd actually installed a component that would at least auto-complete email addresses in the Additional To field based on scanning the existing contact table. Unfortunately, like many free little add-ons over the years, I don't think that one works any longer.

So what's the take-away? While monitoring customer service channels like Twitter are great, it's probably not so great if you don't actually intend to fix the issue. For whatever reason, there are some functional issues -- like email sync that isn't using Microsoft Exchange -- that just don't rank highly (although they're supposedly close to fixing that for Gmail). Honestly, I'd be disappointed in Salesforce, but this is one of those where I really got what I expected -- I'm just no better off for having been there.

Another Look At Twitter vs Facebook and Algorithms

Here's another story courtesy of the MediaREDEF newsletter. This link is from the Washington Post, again comparing feeds from Twitter and Facebook on Ferguson. What this does have is a great little bit of analysis about why you probably aren't being deluged with stories about Ferguson in your Facebook feed.

Content that causes dissension and tension can provide short-term rewards to Facebook in the form of heated debates, but content that creates accord and harmony is what keeps people coming back.

The article backs it up with some study data that suggests that when that guy you sort of new posts a bunch of anti-Obama political crap, not only do you regret adding him as a friend, it makes you uncomfortable -- and therefore less likely to log into Facebook.

United Airlines On Twitter: My First Sighting of Actual Next Gen Customer Service

For several years now, we've heard the tales of companies monitoring social media so that they could respond quickly to customer issues as the blossomed on Twitter and Facebook. I remember reading stories about Comcast investing huge amounts on their social media customer service infrastructure. So it's always struck me as kind of funny when you're facing an issue or a complaint, then you post something on Twitter only to hear the sound of crickets. Nothing. Silence.

In some ways, I think of this more as the legend of social media customer service. Like the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot, you hear stories, but you never see any actual evidence of their existence.

I remember one time experiencing a very frustrating issue with Comcast, then attempting to use every outlet possible to contact their customer service. It turned out that the long wait on the phone was the fastest -- I never saw any response on Twitter.

So imagine my surprise the other night when I was sitting at SFO, wrestling with a flight delay for a red eye back east on my way to a technical conference the next day. Normally, I try to avoid red eye flights, but it was the best option for balancing my schedule requirements with the exhibitor set-up schedule. But, since the conference was in one of those not-an-airline-hub locations, my red eye was supposed to connect with a regional jet later that next morning. The flight delay was looking, increasingly, like that connection was not going to happen.

It's times like this that I miss the old days with my Red Carpet Club membership. The customer service people in the Red Carpet Club would always give you straight answers and they'd do everything that they could to help you out. So when I went to the customer service station inside the terminal to discuss what things looked like, I got some vague, disappointing news.

The best that she could tell me was that, not only was I likely to miss my connecting flight, but all of the flights leaving Newark that next day were full. They couldn't get me on another connecting flight until after 10pm the next night. Besides not really being thrilled about the idea of spending 24 hours with United just to make a west-to-east cross country flight, arriving at midnight would mean that my show set-up day would be lost.

Not satisfied with the answers that I was getting there, I decided to let the problem simmer for a bit and headed over to gate to chat with the workers at the gate desk. They took a look at my flight schedule and determined that I was indeed looking at problems. But, rather than settling for that, they dove in and found that they could put me on standby for a 12pm flight that was booked full but probably wouldn't wind up being full. While it wasn't a perfect answer, it struck me positively enough that I took to Twitter to comment, particularly since this wasn't the first time that the UA people at the gate were quite helpful to me. Twice this year flying out of New Orleans, the two guys at the gate have jumped through hoops to arrange or rearrange my schedule and and save me from a potential nightmare of flight delays and being stranded at various airports. Those guys were awesome and the two women at the counter this time also receive a ton of thanks.

Anyway, to wrap up this long story, I was surprised to receive a reply to my Twitter posts from @united. I happened to catch it just as we were finally boarding the delayed flight. I was so surprised, that my first thought was -- is this from a real person or an automated chat bot. When I arrived in Newark the next morning, they had replied again to tell me that they were real. And, @united, I would have replied with a DM if I get some time to sort through the stupid Twitter interface to figure out how that once easy-to-navigate function works in the current version of the app.

So, my take-aways from that trip:

1. The weekend red eye may be a problematic flight. End of the day on a weekend seems like a good recipe for delayed flights. Yet another reason to avoid the evil red eye.
2. Don't give up on customer service. Have patience and a positive attitude -- there are some of them out there who really will jump through hoops to help you if you give them your support.
3. There may not be a Bigfoot or a Loch Ness Monster, but there is a social media customer service team at United Airlines and they do listen to Twitter.

By the way United, don't think that this makes us all squared up on everything that we've been through together -- we still have some pain points. But that being said, more than the customer service support, your little note made my day. Chappeau!

Social Media Engagement Comedy: Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback

It's not unusual for businesses to monitor the web and social media looking for mentions. Companies like Dell, Comcast and Best Buy have noted social media customer service programs designed to engage people over social media, listened for disgruntled customers and making efforts to resolve issues before they turn into Dell Hell.

So along comes this story of Governor Sam Brownback and a Kansas teen. Here are a couple of the details from Talking Points Memo.

A Kansas teenager got in some trouble with her school for comments she posted on her Twitter account -- in which she claimed to have trashed Gov. Sam Brownback (R) to his face during a field trip.

And her post:

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot

And then what happened:

But as it turns out, Brownback’s office watches Twitter for comments about him. Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag told the event organizers about the comment, “so that they were aware what their students were saying in regards to the governor’s appearance,” the Wichita Eagle reports, also adding: “We monitor social media so we can see what Kansans are thinking and saying about the governor and his policies.”

Brownback’s office flagged the tweet to the event organizers, who in turn passed the complaint on to Sullivan’s school. This got her called to the principal’s office:

Imagine if Dell or Comcast had the option of calling the principle at your school to 'discuss' your complaints about their product. Imagine if, instead of contacting you about your product problem or your complaint, they attempted to contact your boss or the company president. Instead of engagement for resolution, this event essentially amounts to hostile engagement.

Considering that I've since seen several reposts of this story, the whole thing blew up far beyond a simple negative post on Twitter. Lesson one of social media engagement should probably be obvious. Of course, politics is different than customer service. One might argue that, if this were a political post from an ideological zealot, there would be no way to change the dialog, to resolve the complaint.

But instead of reflecting on the politics or on the 'tell your principal' approach to the dialog, it's probably a worthwhile thought experiment to think about the possible outcomes and to try and how this should have gone. Imagine seeing this tweet come across your wire -- what would have been the right way to resolve this situation? Is there a way that you could improve the outcome? In some cases, this kind of media explosion might actually be a welcome result. Are you prepared to resolve issues that you face on social media?

Branding Case Study: Paris Hilton vs Kim Kardasian

While celebrities and celebrity culture is a topic usually best left for the tabloids, gossip blogs, and SEO link-bait, sometimes celebrities and their media entourage provide good case studies in modern media communications and PR. For example, I still hold some sense of shock and amazement over learning that Kim Kardasian was using Twitter for sponsored tweets as $10K a tweet.

Setting the Stage for a Branding Case Study
Apparently, Paris Hilton appeared on Good Morning America recently and was asked (more or less), "aren't your 15 minutes up?" She walked off the set. Keeping in mind that both Paris Hilton and Kim Kardasian launched their brand at a similar time and through a similar path, it's an interesting comparative analysis between the two celebs and their brands:

• Why is one still viable while the other has jumped the shark? 
• Are there differences in programs and practices that have driven the success of one or the failure of the other? 
• Are there specific PR or branding blunders that stand out? 

Anyway, that's enough celebrity culture for me...

Another Link Worth Checking Out

Here's a post from earlier today on Techcrunch. Jack Dorsey & The Golden Gate Bridge (Exclusive Video) features a video that touches on a theme that I've been crafting a blog post around for some time now. Mine isn't ready to publish, but this really does highlight the importance of design.

Check it out.

Who Needs Social Networking Anyway?

These days, you can't throw a rock without hitting yet another software service pushing social networking features. Social is the next killer app, or so we're told. Social is the feature that will vault your ho-hum service into the realm of Facebook or Twitter. Social is the must-have feature for services like touch is for smart phones.

The problem with social is that, while it makes sense to some, some isn't everyone. For all of those that are interested (or should be interested) in what somebody else is doing, there is an equal or larger number (I'll let you estimate the multiple) of people who not just don't care or can't be bothered -- knowing is an inconvenience. This is particularly true in the business world -- understanding why social is relevant can be difficult for many business users.

This issue is getting pushed to the front burner with the newest update to Salesforce.com, Winter 11. With the Winter 11 release, Salesforce has activated Chatter for everyone -- force-feeding it to their customer base so to speak. If you're dealing with a user base that get's freaked out by changes or new technologies, this may have dropped you into a hurricane, but is it actually a tempest in a teapot?

Social Networking for Business
In the early days of Twitter, many of us dove into the technology, thrilled by the power of "follow". For many business users, follow was a cool idea, but Twitter wasn't secure for business communications. Then there was start-up company Yammer, and some similar knock-off companies that followed -- basically Twitter for business. We did some experimenting with Yammer, and while it did perform like Twitter, we struggled to find an effective use case for the platform. With Yammer -- simply basic Twitter functionality -- we found that emails and direct communications tended to supersede Yammer posts. Essentially, the problem with social was that it was like adding a layer of social to our social business interaction.

When they were first introducing Chatter at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference last year, initially I had the same feeling. Here was something that wouldn't really change the way that we use the software, instead acting like yet another add-on. But as I realized the potential impact of being able to follow key account or opportunity records, I started to get really excited. Here was an opportunity to roll up all of your important business activity into a single feed.

When Chatter first rolled out, I pushed and pushed to become part of the beta, and when we finally got it activated, my excitement turned to disappointment. While I had envisioned a system that, if you follow an account, would let you know when there were any related records that appeared (or were updated), the actual implementation didn't work that way. Currently in Chatter, you have to follow specific records to receive feed updates from those records, and it only generates feeds based on that record. In order words, you can follow an account and still not know if anything has happened (in terms of activity) on that account. Theoretically, this functionality will be implemented in a future release, but until that time, Chatter remains yet another social layer.

Don't get me wrong -- Chatter stands unique among most social networking tools for business in that it integrates business records, not just people. This has the potential to swing the balanced for business users that don't think that they care "what other people are doing." I'm truly looking forward to the future implementation of this functionality -- assuming they don't get side-tracked by adding some of the other "social" functionality features.

The Real Cornerstone of Social
While people and follow are often considered the core for social networking, I think that the real cornerstone of social is the aggregate feed. Whenever people ask me about Facebook or Twitter (particularly questioning their value), I try to explain it to them in terms of the feed. By simplifying and aggregating brief updates of all of the things that you follow -- and creating your own headline news -- you can more easily feel connected to the things that are important to you.

When Salesforce can get this functionality fully implemented into their platform with Chatter, it promises to be an incredibly powerful tool. Imagine following a key account in Salesforce and receiving an update whenever an invoice is sent to that account from an integrated Oracle system. Or maybe you need to see when your parts shipped from China. Imagine being able to get that data and review it on your iPhone while you're standing in the checkout line at Costco. Meanwhile, your account manager can customize their feed to follow any new cases created at their key accounts.

Simply put, the key to social is the customizable follow-feed relationship. With Salesforce.com, Chatter, and your key business objects, you can see the lights coming, but there's still some time remaining before it runs over everything else. Hopefully they can get it implemented before they alienate the anti-social business users.

Monday Morning Reading: Paul Carr's Post on Techcrunch on New Journalism

Skimming through Techcrunch this morning, I came found myself reading through Paul Carr's post, Rollover Minutes: How Adam Penenberg Has Legitimised New, New, New Journalism. Again. It's an amusing read in terms of the state of journalism, traditional media versus online media, and the great myth of the firewall between editorial and advertising.

Comcast and Twitter: Social Networking and Customer Service Converge, but is it better?

Here's an interesting post over on TechCrunch this evening. It's a look at Comcast, and how they are approaching customer service and Twitter. Comcast is promoting this concept that "Twitter has changed the culture of their company." Now, instead of just providing sucky service and having a public network of problems, they engage customers when they complain (using Twitter). Apparently they now have ten people working, actively monitoring Twitter for complaints, then engaging them.

On the surface, this is becoming an increasingly popular strategy for businesses, particularly consumer-facing businesses with poor service reputations. But if you look at the comments in the Techcrunch post, there's an implied question -- does responding to a disgruntled customer (if you can't do anything to change some of the core problems that are making the customer unhappy) really equate to better customer service?

While the basic question may seem silly or irrelevant, keep in mind that Salesforce.com is now offering a Twitter-to-Case extension on their App Exchange platform. What this means is that, in a matter of clicks, you too can start monitoring Twitter, listening to for customers who are complaining about your business. And while that may seem like amazing, enabling technology, if you don't have a real strategy for solving the issues raised by those unhappy customers, your new technology may not be a solution.

Anyway, I just wanted to call your attention to the link -- it may get some thoughts rolling in your head, kind of like it did mine.

More on Disclosure - Best Practices from WOMMA

When I was looking for a quick roll-up of something brand and word of mouth related, one of the first places that I looked was John Moore's Brand Autopsy blog. In addition to some analysis, he links to a webinar from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

For your convenience, I've embedded it here.

SHORT VERSION | Ethics and Endorsements: What is Adequate Disclosure?

View more presentations from Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

Enjoy.

FTC Publishes New Rules for Word of Mouth Marketers

In case you didn't see this somewhere else, I wanted to fire out a quick post on this new ruling from the FTC regarding "sponsored conversations" and disclosure of those relationships. I haven't had time to go over the information in detail, but here are some initial links for your reference.

Here's the link to the FTC site
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm

And here's a couple of links to some good posts on Techcrunch about the news.
FTC Values Sponsored Conversations at $11,000 Apiece.

This is Not a Sponsored Post: Paid Conversations, Credibility & The FTC

Here's a good quote from the TechCrunch post explaining disclosure practices:

In the meantime, brands and bloggers can only benefit from disclosing the nature of endorsements. In the realm of new media, transparency and ethics speak louder than the value proposition of the product itself.

The FTC could not be reached for comment at this time in reference to the delineation between consumer bloggers and subject matter authorities who blog. We will update this post once we receive a response.

Update: The FTC responds

When asked if the FTC views bloggers equally and whether or not it recognizes levels of authority on par with traditional media, Mary Engle, associate director for advertising practices, clarified its position and perspective, “All bloggers aren’t the same and we are not saying that all bloggers are marketers. Most of them are ordinary folks musing or sounding off. The question as we put it in the notice we published today is whether, viewed objectively, the blogger is being sponsored by the advertiser. (We list a number of factors to consider.) Independent product reviewers, whether offline or online, would not be viewed as sponsored by the company whose products they are reviewing.”

Engle further observed the distinction between expert and consumer bloggers, “But if bloggers regularly receive free products from a company, the blog audience might view their reviews differently than if they went out and bought the products on their own. Under those circumstances, bloggers should disclose they got the products from the company. This is consistent with the WOMMA code of ethics. And, companies who use bloggers to generate buzz about their products by sending free merchandise should have a policy that their bloggers should disclose.”

More soon...

In Defense of Eric Cantor's Use of His Blackberry

One topic that arose from the President's health care reform speech was a furor surrounding Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va, Minority Whip) and his Blackberry. Rep. Cantor was caught on video, eyes down, focused on the screen of his phone and not "paying attention" during the President's speech. Across a spectrum of media that I tuned into yesterday, there were repeated comments about his behavior. Most of the commentary that I heard ranged from disappointment to exasperation, with a general consensus that the behavior was rude.

The entire incident reminded me of an earlier post I did on how age and demographics affected perceptions of using a Blackberry or a laptop during a meeting. In this case, it appears that the media has tapped into that demographic that is uncomfortable with this kind of behavior.

While I suspect that it's unlikely to find me defending a political position that Rep. Cantor holds and it normally wouldn't bother me to see him swimming in bad press, in this case I feel inclined to defend him. While I understand that for some, it probably isn't good formal meeting etiquette to text or check email during a meeting, short of presenting the illusion of an enraptured audience for the video cameras, what was the harm here?

It's not like he was driving a moving vehicle or operating heavy machinery. He wasn't being asked to make quick decisions on-the-fly. Realistically, he didn't really have to do anything other than sit, quietly (for the most part). It wasn't like his phone rang or he was talking during the meeting (I gave a couple of presentations at a conference in Beijing where the audience members talked on their phones during the presentation). It's not even like this was a dimly lit theater, where the glow from his phone would distract from the movie or the stage performance.

This was a presentation, not a conversation. It wasn't like the President was running through a list of statistics and formulas, where absorbing every moment and every data point were critical. Theoretically, if that were the case, you would expect that he could get a detailed review following the speech, either from the transcripts or through notes taken by his aides.

What's more, who knows what he was using his Blackberry for. Maybe he was looking up the history behind one of the medical cases sited by the President during his speech. Perhaps he was sending a note to his staff to pull all of the data relevant to a specific point in the presentation. Or maybe what he was doing wasn't related -- perhaps planning a secret romantic encounter or he might have just been looking at NFL news and planning for his upcoming fantasy football season. He might even have been doing several of those things during the speech.

Meanwhile, take the guy four seats to the right or to the left of Cantor. What do you think is on his mind? Medical cases? Instructions for his staff? Romantic encounters? Football? Some of this is all about the illusion of attention and behavior; simply put, acting for the camera. In many ways, it's similar to the note pads that candidates use to write on during the televised debates. The purpose of 'taking notes' is not the notes, it's to manage the candidates' appearance during 'off-screen' camera shots -- within the context of an event that is structured like a conversation.

For me, the bottom line is that I don't think that Rep. Cantor's behavior with his Blackberry was inappropriate. Put into a different context, if the speech was that exciting, the content was that compelling, or the event was that engaging, he would have put down his phone. Or not picked it up in the first place. All too often we are asked to pretend to listen politely to bad speakers and lame content -- or people format their presentation content to follow a predictable structure that alienates their audience on technique alone. It's like the pre-flight safety presentation -- is there anyone on the plane who isn't already familiar with the basic content presented, and if there were a change to the content, do you really expect anyone to hear it since you've already lost them by using the same old script?

Imagine if Rep. Cantor Had an iPhone
What if, instead of having a Blackberry, Rep. Cantor had an iPhone? While he might have been texting, browsing the web, or looking up his favorite section of the Constitution (there's an app for that), what would have happened if he were using it to play a game, tipping the phone back and forth or moving it in 3D space? I would say that, if you're behavior is such that you stand out more than the presenter, then etiquette dictates that you've crossed a line. Perhaps, somewhere in there, we can offer some etiquette guidelines for when and how it's okay to use your phone in a meeting and when it isn't.

When You Should Avoid Using Your Phone (for texting, not voice calls)

• When the glow from your phone display is the brightest light in the meeting (not including dim participants), you might consider refraining from using your phone.
• When you're engaged in a direct conversation.
• When you're in a meeting where somebody asks you a question and you need to have the question repeated.
• When you're participating in a social network where the other people in the meeting are linked to you but expecting you to be focused on the meeting.
• When you haven't turned your volume off.
  

When It Should Be Okay to Use Your Phone (for texting, not voice calls)

• When the other meeting participants bring a phone or laptop to the meeting.
• If you get a text from another meeting participant.
  
• When you the one who sets the meeting agenda and rules.
• When it's a large, boring meeting, and you are not the center of attention.
• When you want to show off your techno-nerd chops.
• When you want to look like you have something more important to think about.
  

TweetDeck may be my new favorite iPhone Twitter Application

Recently, one of my colleagues was talking about the idea of rolling out an internal version of Twitter, and that lead me to some recent exploration into Yammer, a closed "enterprise" tool with some Twitter-like functionality. While doing a bit of experiment with it, I came across a feature that I've heard about with Twitter, but been unable to figure out how to take advantage of -- specifically following hashmark tags.

While researching that, I came across another Twitter client, TweetDeck, that makes it easier to do things like following tags. Tweetdeck features a handy multi-column interface that makes it easy to view and manage multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. So far, I'm pretty impressed. While the user interface takes a little bit of time to get used to (very tiny buttons), once you get the hang of it, it seems pretty powerful. It has a lot of cool functionality built in too.

I also loaded the iPhone app -- I love the interface on the iPhone, but I was able to get the app to crash pretty quickly, just by trying to open a link. There were a bunch of comments about the app crashing, so the jury's still out on the best Twitter iPhone app. Tweetdeck is free, so that is one plus!

TweetDeck is definitely worth checking out.

Science, The Brain, and Influencing Behavior

Recently, a couple of items came up that seemed oddly harmonic with a blog post that I've been working on regarding marketing and influencing behavior. Here are a couple of links and a couple of comments.

1. Jonah Lehrer was on Fresh Air the other day promoting his book about the science of the brain and the decision process. He's one of the guys behind the RadioLabs broadcast that I linked to. His blog is The Frontal Cortex and it's worth checking out.

2. Once again, I can't say enough good things about John Moore's blog, BrandAutopsy. I went ahead and added him to my new Twitter account, and that reminded me to go check his blog again where I found this great post on Nudges.

3. John's post lead me to the Nudges Blog. It's put together by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, and it's an excellent read. There's tons of great stuff about influencing decisions and behavior. They've also added a couple of new terms to my vocabulary -- Choice Architecture and Decision Architect. Check it out -- they may influence the way you look at what you do.

I'm on the bandwagon

I signed up for a Twitter account over the weekend. As I start to work with it more, I'll see if I can add a Twitter component to the blog. Right now I'm still trying to see how it fits with my day-to-day activities, so once I get a better sense of that, I'll have a better idea of how it fits with the content here.

Twitter in Space?

Are you looking for an interesting, Web 2.0 approach to promoting you're product? What if you're JPL, the Jet Propulsion Labs? Welcome to next generation space exploration -- the Phoenix Mars lander has a Twitter feed.

FYI, in case you didn't believe it was real, here's the page on their site pointing to the feed.