The Power of Twitter

In Wes' case study last week, he discussed the way airlines use twitter to interact with consumers to address user's complaints and let consumers know what's going on. This past weekend though, Southwest was caught receiving some intense and very publicized complaints from a famous voice, via twitter.

Kevin Smith (writer, director, actor, etc.) of Mall Rats and Jay & Silent Bob fame, had purchased two tickets (a "customer of size" policy required him to do so) but upon standing by for an earlier flight he only had once seat. Southwest then told him after he had boarded the flight he would not be able to stay due to limited space and, well, him being larger.

He became irate and went to the fastest spreading media outlet: Twitter. Posting comments such as "Dear @SouthwestAir I know I'm fat, but was [the] captain […] really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?" and various explicit tweets directly to the Southwest customer relations twitter page.

Twitter caved and apologized many times, to which Smith never accepted, nor did he accept their $100 voucher gift.

This shows how intense the pressure of the public is, and how you can gain the attention of many extremely quick with Twitter. Everyone has this on their phone, laptops, desktops at work, pretty much practically anything with an screen and a microchip supports Twitter, and now Southwest is suffering VERY bad P.R. with this situation. Kevin Smith's tactic was very effective and it doesn't seem Southwest is going to be able to get out of this situation without egg on their face.

I do believe this was done to the extreme, in after looking at Kevin Smith's twitter page he has posted nothing but aspects of this situation constantly (to a point of annoyance) and his true motives, a new movie coming out, may have shown through.