The hype on usage based billing demonstrates the ability to whip up a crowd to stir political action.
The independent ISPs have developed tremendous social media skills, cultivating a loyal following which begs the question: Where are the alternate voices?
The CRTC has a Twitter account that it opened in November of 2009. It has tweeted exactly twice (actually, just one message but delivered in both official languages). As of yesterday, the CRTC follows only the Privacy Commissioner, although it is followed by 225 people.
On the other hand, the Privacy Commissioner has been on Twitter since March 2009, follows 108 others, has almost 2,000 followers, has posted more than 750 updates and maintains a blog as well.
The FCC joined Twitter in August 2009, and has more than 380,000 followers and close to 1000 tweets.
Among the carriers, very few of the traditional players have leveraged social media other than to monitor their brand reputation or promote products. Yesterday, Rogers provided reassurance to its customers (on its RedBoard blog) that they were not impacted by the UBB decision.
Not enough people are engaged by the CRTC’s conventional regulatory processes and means of communications. Although we’re in the communications industry, it seems that help is needed to ensure that means of conversing evolve, leveraging the technology and applications that have supplanted conventional media for the emerging power generation.
Last November, in a post called Effective blogging, I pointed to an irreverant blog maintained by the Senior Cruise Director of Carnival Corporation. It is not only tolerated by Carnival, but it is also encouraged and assisted by their communications group. Be sure to check it out – unless you have a thin skin.
Will other companies or agencies have the courage to allow the degrees of freedom needed to attract an audience and engage with the public?
Hmm. Rogers used social media to calm its customers and reassure them that this UBB decision would not impact them. Nice transparency.
Of course they stick with good old snail mail last week to notify me – yet again – that my rates were going up. Wonder why that announcement didn’t hit the blog?