A YouTube video by a musician upset at United Airlines for breaking one of its instruments has reached nearly 3 million views in just a few days, and is creating a lot of buzz in social media circles.  United Airlines led the musician on a year-long goose chase for reimbursement, and finally told him “no.” The airline reversed its decision and said it had resolved the issue, according to Times Online, last week, “one week and 2 million views” after the posting of the video. Apparently, United had resolved the issue by the time Dave Carroll’s video was posted.*

Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars (the brand of guitar broken by United) brilliantly used the situation to record a response to show his support for Carroll, give some tips on traveling with a guitar, and to promote his company and its guitar service center. Shameless capitalism at its finest!

Many have analyzed and criticized United’s response to the video. The airline indicated through its Twitter account “As Dave asked we donated 3K to charity and selected the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz 4 music education 4 kids.” In at least one tweet, United says, “No excuse; we’re sorry,” words that should be heard more often from corporate spokespeople.”

The airline also tweeted that the video “is excellent and that is why we would like to use it for training purposes so everyone receives better service from us.” A friend pointed me to a great post on Jane Bozarth’s blog calling United on its superficiality for invoking the cliche of training as a response to a crisis situation:

“Sorry, but I don’t see a training problem here. I see employees constrained by bad practices and protocols, and others whose knowingly substandard performance would have no consequence. Basically, they were doing exactly what they were expected to do. Even Dave Carroll defended the employee who gave him the final ‘no’ from the airline as, ‘Acting in the interests of the policies she represented.’”

But this is not a story of how companies should use social media. It is a lesson of a new world in which the individual consumer has a new way to get through to companies that have forgotten how to listen. The airline industry in particular, despite its obsession with on time flight statistics, has a reputation for not giving a damn about its customers. (There are exceptions, but just ask anyone whether they think “the industry” cares.)

This is a story of the breakdown of customer culture. Despite the annoying announcement when the plane lands, you do not “have a choice when you travel by air.” There are fewer and fewer carriers and routes, and with near-monopolies, many airlines treat customers like an annoying interruption to their daily routines.

This is where the problem started for United. Not with its lack of understanding of social media, or its communications practices, but with its failure to help a customer simply, quickly, and fairly and for not considering the consequences. Customers have always had ways to voice their concerns about their treatment by a particular company. The difference now is they can do so with a voice that can be heard by millions and can do irreparable harm to the company’s brand. Like Joshua, the computer in the movie War Games, said, “The only winning move is not to play.” The only way to win a customer dispute in the blogosphere is to avoid the “war” in the first place, by being sensitive and responsive to customer needs.

Meanwhile, Bing Futch, whose mountain dulcimer had been damaged by Northwest Airlines, recorded his own video Northwest Breaks Dulcimers. Wisely, according to the Times Online, Northwest jumped in quickly and agreed to compensate Futch before becoming another bad customer service viral video case study.

“‘We’ve reached out to the customer and offered our apologies and compensation,’ said Susan Elliott, a spokeswoman for Delta, who owns Northwest airlines. She said that his dulcimer was damaged, in part, because it was packaged in a soft-shell case but they still decided to offer compensation.”

Futch’s video had just over 2500 views as of this afternoon.

* I had misunderstood the timing of United’s decision to respond to Carroll’s request for reimbursement. I have corrected this post to reflect that. Sorry for any confusion.

Tags: United Airlines, United Breaks Guitars, Dave Carroll, Taylor Guitars, YouTube

Social media just got faster. Immediacy is one of the Six Valuable Attributes of Social Media. We’ve recently had an obsession with brevity in the form of Twitter, and shortened URLs for example. The ability to communicate about something as it happens, as opposed to hours or even days later, is a big part of the appeal of social media. And the iPhone 3GS and Posterous represent the latest advances in real time communications.

Yesterday afternoon I was having trouble with my Flip video, which I haven’t used in a long time, and complaining about it on Twitter. Erick Schmidt commented (in two separate tweets):

“Video has become inherently social. Sharing short clips *fast* is threshold feature…Was just talking w/someone who said his Flip was going to stay in the drawer w/advent of iPhone 3GS - impulse video is key.”

The Flip support people have been VERY helpful, but the camera isn’t working yet. So much for immediacy. When I want to “grab” something from the world around and me and share it, I want to do it now. Posting an image or video in near realtime is the online equivalent of saying, “hey, there’s an awesome Dodge Charger outside of Starbucks.” The longer it takes me to share that information, the less interesting it becomes.

I’ve already talked about Posterous which is an amazing tool that lets you post almost any kind of file to almost any social network, blog, etc simply by emailing it to your unique Posterous address. I used it to post an iPhone Audio Memo to my blog and it worked flawlessly. There are plenty of sites that allow you to upload/record audio and then link to your blog or embed, but if you can eliminate steps, simplify and post faster, why not?

The iPhone 3GS has solved the video problem. You might not have known there was a video problem, but there was. There are too many steps to recording a video, moving it from device to device, getting it ready to upload, and uploading it.  I have had many camera phones and many digital cameras but it’s only since I got my (original) iPhone that I have posted images to my blog and Twitter via Flickr and Twitpic.

The breakthrough has come through the ubiquity of smart phones, and let’s face it, the iPhone is the smartest, and thanks to Apple’s maniacal focus on the user interface and simplicity of use, it’s the platform of choice for mobile social media. For further proof, look at how mobile video uploads have taken off on YouTube. According to a post on the YouTube blog by Dwipal Desai and Mia Quagliarello, “In the last six months, we’ve seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day.” (Thanks Steve Rubel for the link.)

Now, if AT&T could offer true, always on, always fast 3G broadband, we’d see a real revolution in mobile streaming, mobile videoconferencing, and other applications that were out of reach until very recently.

Tags: iPhone 3GS, Posterous, Flip, impulse, YouTube

AcrossAir, developers of the TVGuide.co.uk iPhone app, have introduced Nearest Tube, a 3D Augmented Reality (AR) app for the iPhone that overlays a tube map on live video to help users quickly find the nearest tube station.

There’s a brief “demo” on YouTube:

The application, available only to Apple iPhone 3GS users, further cements the iPhone’s role as the great enabler for advances in mobile computing. Delivering practical consumer grade AR applications like Nearest Tube was impossible one year ago.

I wrote about AR here on May 22. The AR space is starting to heat up, and VentureBeat DigitalBeat has a nice report today on some of the startups jockeying for position in what promises to be a fascinating market.

Thanks Simon Mainwaring for the pointer to Nearest Tube.

Tags: Augmented Reality, Nearest Tube, iPhone app

You’re at a conference, the wifi is good, and you’re excited about live tweeting the next speaker. But have you ever wondered whether it’s “OK” to copy and publish someone else’s words and ideas? If you were at the movie theater, neither the studio nor the theater operator would permit you to videotape portions of the movie to post on your blog. On the other hand, the art of critical commentary goes back to at least Shakespeare’s time, so it’s definitely established both in common practice and in the law that reproducing information, even copyrighted information, is acceptable under certain circumstances.

Setting aside issues of whether the practice is actually useful, and whether it is distracting to the speaker and to others in attendance, live tweeting and live blogging of conferences, events and webcasts raises legal and ethical issues. Producers of webcasts and live events often charge admission for these, and they may include copyrighted material. Speakers may also have copyrighted their presentations, or may (in my case) quote substantial portions of a copyrighted book or other work. These words and ideas are essentially products that are sold commercially, and the owners have certain rights to them.

On the other hand, the law does permit reproduction of portions of copyrighted material. I have two biases that affect my opinions on this issue, but I think they balance each other. I have a degree in journalism so I appreciate the need for journalists to incorporate information from third parties in their works. As the author of a book, I also understand the need for copyright protections for commercial content.

The best guidance for whether live blogging and live tweeting is acceptable comes from the Fair Use provision of U.S. copyright law, which allows a certain percentage of a copyrighted work to be reproduced for purposes such as a review of a book or theatrical play. Factors that affect whether reproduction of a copyrighted work is fair use are:

1. “The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission.”

In other words, fair use is in the eyes of the beholder. The government will not rule on what is or isn’t fair use, leaving it the judgment of the individual, and in some cases, the courts to make the ultimate determination.

Despite the federal government’s unwillingness to establish numerical guidelines for fair use, many organizations have set their own limits. The University of California for example, in its Policy on the Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials for Teaching and Research, permits teachers to reproduce for classroom use “either a complete article, story or essay of less than 2,500 words or an excerpt of not more than 2,500 words from any prose work.” The policy was written in 1986, long before blogging and tweeting. Today, 2500 words is quite substantial and I think excessive. The UC policy also reminds teachers that if they exceed fair use limits they “can subject the one making unauthorized copies and the University to severe penalties.” The UC policy pertains to photocopying, not live events, but it does give some ideas of how to apply fair use. (I did not find a UC policy covering other fair use guidelines.)

Last year, the Associated Press announced it would “attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright.”

A practical approach is to simply ask yourself, does the speaker want his or her work reproduced and distributed free of charge? Some may, some may not. The right, and the ability, to freely share information is such a cornerstone of Web 2.0, that I think most conference organizers and speakers in the Web 2.0/social media sphere are happy to have their talks live tweeted and live blogged. Either practice is more like reporting than reproduction, and would involve the “copying” of relatively small percentages of the content.

Most speakers make their slides and speaker’s notes available to attendees and these are freely distributed. I do the same, and I don’t care if my talks are reproduced in full, as long as there is attribution. And if someone can benefit from the information, I am happy for them to have it. Who knows — it could lead someone to buy my book or choose to engage my company.

My publisher generally allows me to grant permission to people who request the right to reproduce content from my book as long as the material constitutes less than 10% of the book. It is unlikely that someone live tweeting one of my talks could approach that 140 characters at a time, or even that a blogger could do so.

In one recent case, a blogger and researcher was criticized for live blogging a scientific meeting because the organizers felt he should have “abide(d) by the rules governing professional journalists attending the conference.” These rules include the requirement that journalists inform conference organizers in advance of their intentions.

Another interesting issue journalists are contending with is how Fair Use applies to information published on Twitter. Last month, Julie Posetti wrote a piece on the PBS MediaShift blog, Rules of Engagement for Journalists on Twitter. She believes that anything that appears on Twitter is “fair game”:

“Although social media etiquette may not recognize a journalist’s right to report any material published openly, the reality is that open Twitter accounts are a matter of permanent public record and fair game for journalists. While attribution is vital and it might be polite (but not necessary) to seek the approval of a Twitterer to quote them, I don’t see anything unethical about using tweets in mainstream news coverage.”

She goes on to say, however that she feels private Twitter accounts, those requiring owner approval of subscription requests, are off-the-record and not fair game. I disagree with her take that simply because something is published it is therefore a matter of public record and fair game. This would probably apply to quoting someone in a story, but not to reproducing material that might be copyrighted. Just because a tweet is only 140 characters does not remove it from the domain of copyrighted material. Multiple tweets could be used to convey an article, or a Twitter-based webcast. A journalist could quote a portion under Fair Use, but could not reproduce something in its entirety.

This also points out one of the weak links in the integrity of information in the Web 2.0 world. Bloggers and tweeters are NOT professional journalists. They don’t have training in ethical practices in areas like attribution and when and how to quote a source.

I generally hold that new media does not require new ethics, and I think this is largely the case in live tweeting/live blogging a presentation or webcast. Given that these practices don’t generally involve reproduction of any significant portion of the entire “work,” both common practice and the law seem to permit this.

Do you live tweet conferences and web casts? Do you have any personal guidelines you follow, or are you aware of any guidelines established by your company or organization?

Tags: Fair Use, copyright, Twitter, live tweeting, live blogging, guidelines