Social Media News of the Day: August 11, 2010

No Worries, Facebook Will Cover Your Bail

At this point I’m sure everyone has heard about flight attendant Steven Slater’s very dramatic and over-the-top exit off a JetBlue flight earlier this week. What you might not know is he is now a social media celebrity and has people all over the country talking (and writing songs) about the most outrageous way to leave your job.

While Steven is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame, what about JetBlue? Let’s be honest, Slater, cursed at a customer, stole a beer from the plane and then pulled the emergency slide in order to exit the plane. The company has suspended him until the trial is over but what a PR nightmare for them!

Personally, I think we’ve all had that Office Space day-dream of pounding the printer with a baseball bat and that is essentially what Steven Slater was doing. With that said, I’ve worked in customer service for many years and you’re always going to have rude customers or clients. It‘s something you have to learn to deal with. What do you think? Should he have become a social media star and hero to everyone wanting to quit their job? What are your suggestions for JetBlue on how to handle this situation?

Twexting

Twitter has announced their new service called Fast Follow, which allows you to follow Twitterers without having a Twitter account. It’s as simple as texting the person’s Twitter handle, and that will give you updates through your cellular device as texts.

It will be interesting to see how many people choose to use Twitter in this way and if it will impact registered Twitterers. If you are one of those against Twitter, but are interested in my very exciting life text “follow ebailey126” to 40404 and you will get my updates!