Me!
Fortunately, I wasn't one of those stuck on the road in Indiana for over 12 hours. United Airlines canceled my flight from Chicago to Cleveland Sunday afternoon. The only rebooking option was flying the next morning and connecting through Washington D.C.. I hate connecting, but I only had a carry-on so it ended up working out alright (My 3:30AM wake-up call? Not so much fun).
Which brings me to my first subject:
Social Media Doesn't End After Business Hours
United Airlines left their Twitter account completely abandoned when all hell broke loose in the Midwest last weekend. I mean, when your largest hub has over 1000 flights canceled over the course of two days, leaving your social media account unattended isn't the best idea.
It took me an hour and a half on the phone to rebook with United when it canceled my flight on Sunday. I ended up checking my new itinerary online several hours later and my rebooked flight was not showing up on my account. I tweeted United asking if I should be concerned. No response.
I had to call reservations and wait on hold for almost two hours. The man who finally answered said my reservation was there even though I was not able to check in for it online. To be honest, I had my doubts about what he told me since United outsources their call centers and I've known people who had problems with them. Luckily, my reservation actually existed and I was able to get home (after dealing with a surly flight attendant on my 6 AM flight to DC, but that's another story...).
Social media is a 24/7 animal. If an incident happens after regular business hours, it needs to have attention. American Airlines, for example, responded on Twitter about a flight skidding off the runway in Montreal on a Wednesday night immediately. They even beat out the @BreakingNews Twitter account.
United knew a major weather disruption was happening, yet didn't have anyone assigned to their social media accounts. Social media is not a 9-5 job; it's 24/7.
PS: United did end up responding on Monday, after I landed in DC. Their advice was about adding my Mileage Plus number to the reservation, which didn't make much sense.
PPS: My nonexistent economy plus for my return trip has not been refunded yet. Boo.
Coffee Fight!
Starbucks and Kraft are bringing an end to their relationship.
Well, Starbucks is actually kicking Kraft to the curb but Kraft is not leaving without a fight. Starbucks wants to go at it alone on the grocery store front since their VIA product is a huge success. Starbucks wanted to buy Kraft out of their agreement, but Kraft thought the offer was way too low.
The result? A legal battle between Starbucks and Kraft plastered throughout business headlines. Starbucks says Kraft intentionally stymied growth of their coffee in grocery stores. Kraft says Starbucks is making unreasonable demands and wants Kraft to shift focus away from its own Maxwell House coffee.
It's going to be an ugly battle.
Yahoo Rearranges Deck Chairs on the Titanic
Yahoo gave the pink slip to 600 staffers yesterday. This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone.
Yahoo has no real identity and is not on top like it used to be ten years ago. The company acquires the most random entities (Flickr, Rivals.com, Associated Content, MusicMatch, etc...) and just sits on them. I briefly mentioned this in my post about MySpace.
All Yahoo does is respond to what others do. It hasn't come out with an original, successful idea in a long time. Google won the search engine war. Pandora is better than Yahoo Music. Examiner is more known than Associated Content. Though Flickr and Delicious are probably the most successful Yahoo entities right now. This goes to show a company can't buy its way to success.
If I worked for Yahoo right now, I'd be looking for another job as fast as I could. This isn't the first and it won't be the last round of layoffs. Unless Yahoo can be innovative, it's going to die.
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