Originally, I planned on blogging about Apple’s keynote address and how Twitter probably carried as much, if not more detail along with quicker commentary than any of the larger blog outlets would have managed.
Then something interesting happened this morning. I noticed the top trending topic on Twitter was AT&T. I hadn’t paid it much mind until I saw a friend of mine tweet, “RT @steveagee Dear AT&T, how does it feel to be the number 1 trending topic simply for being a piece of shit?” For the record, I don’t know or follow Steve Agee, but he brings up a good point.
I’d never want to be where AT&T is on twitter, nor would I want one of my clients there. The fact remains though, if you’re doing crisis communication, you damned well better to be prepared for that possibility.
Just for a little background, AT&T doesn’t support two very desired features on the iPhone. One is something called tethering, which basically lets you use your phone as a modem. The second and (apparently) more important one is MMS, which includes picture messages. While the iPhone on AT&T won’t support it, it can be supported on other carriers (in Europe) and other AT&T phones. Add to this the multitude of issues customers have with AT&T’s pricing structure. The latter probably wouldn’t be that bad if not for the other issues. It all adds up. Keep in mind this is a quick summary.
AT&T does have a twitter account, and it does tweet. How useful is it? They have around 5,500 followers but say nothing about the criticisms that iPhone customers have hurled their way. In fact, the twitter feed for AT&T contains a mind-numbing list of promotions. It’s not very useful and definitely not conversational.
AT&T’s situation is precarious. The Cult of Apple seems to be ready to cut the company off at the knees. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is starting to look at new carriers. Right now AT&T is taking the bad road of silence and finger pointing. Officially AT&T has said very little. They could take a lesson from Dominos and at least try and calm people down over twitter, but I don’t see that happening.
I can’t stress it enough – in today’s climate of conversation, you cannot ignore negative talk about your brand. It will not go away. Likely it will only get worse.