This isn’t exactly a new development in social media, but a few examples of it have caught my attention lately. It seems more and more people are taking their customer service complaints public via social networks.

At the time this post was written, this pic had 3,289 diggs and counting.

Comcast isn’t exactly known for it’s great customer service, but I thought this was just plain funny.

Here’s one that Ed Skidmore told me about.

According to Dave Carroll’s website,

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didn’t deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say “no” to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

The first installment (shown above) has gotten over 3.1 million views on YouTube. Two of those were me.

It seems that, at very least, taking a complaint social can draw some attention to the issue. At what point do you decide to do this? And, does it accomplish anything?

A few year’s back, I had a laptop I purchased from Best Buy. I took it in for a small fix covered by the warranty, but when I got it back, they had created a new problem. For the next 2.5 years, I took into back to the Geek Squad with some frequency. Each visit brought a new excuse (and by the way, a different reported cause for the problem which kept them from having to write my notebook off and replace it). It was during this same time period that Best Buy was sued for not honoring their service plans (I was aware of the lawsuit, but did not pursue it in hopes of getting my computer fixed). I wonder what, if anything, would have been different about the outcome of those events if I had taken the fight public?

How does it make you feel that people take their complaints to YouTube, Digg and Twitter. Should churches worry? How do you think this will effect the public at large? Will companies be held more accountable?

Came across an article by Scott Berkun (via CollideMagazine.com) berating social media for over-hype and and the proliferation of noise. And it hurt (a little). Scott makes some excellent points and his post is worth reading for anyone invested in social media.

But, for all its woes and shortcomings, there are two things that make today’s social media important. Its interactivity and its real-timeness. Scott acknowledges the first of these, but I believe the real power of this “movement” lies in the freshly broken ground of real time. Twitter has always existed here, but now Facebook has joined them. OneRiot allow us to search in real time. Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and Flickr all have real time Meta searches. Real time makes social media!

One can hardly avoid reports of unrest in Iran. Questionable election result. Protests. Attempts to censor the masses. Violence.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this whole episode (to me) is the way many Iranians have responded to their government’s attempts to silence them. They simply refused to be censored. In many cases, this was done by bypassing restrictions and accessing social networks like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter to get the word out (one picture or 160 characters at a time). An article on MSNBC.com highlighted that protesters really utilized Twitter. “Posting images, opposition activists shared with the world photographic evidence of bloody protests and notified each other about scheduled protests in Tehran.”

Social networks have the potential to change the balance of power, even in the midst of tyranny.

@zoecarnate (Mike Morrell) raised a few important questions (via Twitter obviously) this morning. “Thank God for Twitter in Iran. But what of Darfur? How does by-the-minute awareness raise empathy/action? #iran #sudan #darfur #iranelection”

I believe one of the most important functions of social media is to provide perspective. According to the AP one Iranian said, “When I’m not connected to Twitter it means that I’m disconnected from the world because the state TV doesn’t report many things!” For too long, information has come from too few sources. Information gathered from social means provides multiple points of view, circumvents censorship (kinda), and let’s the people be heard (regardless the will of the State).

But, what about Darfur? Why do some stories get attention and other don’t. Some of it is timing. Social networks were not at their peak when Darfur first became embroiled in violence and conflict. Part of it is access. Access to the net (and social networks) seems much more widespread in Iran than in the Sudan. Iran came to the forefront, not because a bunch of middle-class Americans posted tweets, but because Iranians posted about what they were experiencing.

According to compete.com, Twitter surpassed the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in unique users last month.

ReadWriteWeb and PaidContent both discussed it this week.

Here’s one that is more significant to me. Digg.com has been beating the pants off of them for sometime now. For those of you not familiar with Digg,“Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.” Basically, Digg is a user submitted new site. More people are getting their news socially than from traditional sources.

I would be more surprised if newspapers weren’t such tired dinosaurs that have been teetering on the verge of extinction for years. They were so late to the internet game. Even later on social media. They have been clinging onto a dead business model for dear life. At this point, it seems their only chance for survival rests in an endless stream of bailouts and government intervention (which doesn’t exactly bode well for their integrity, not to mention long-term viability).

So, what does this mean for the church?

First, we cannot hold onto traditional methods of communication. I know if is so cliched and overplayed, but we cannot be married to methods. Too often I hear, “we can’t do it that way, because [fill in the blank with appropriate minority of staunch opponents to progress] won’t buy into that.” Life and all that is good is quickly leaving them behind. We will be left behind if we let “them” (whoever they may be) dictate what we do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we leave “them” behind. I’m just suggesting that we don’t let them hold us back.

Second, stewardship is crucial. Without getting lost in the details, these social media communication models are much more efficient (not to mention cheaper). In many cases, this is why traditional models can’t keep up; they aren’t cost effective.

Let’s adapt.

I twitter (tweet). I love it! In fact, I am sending a tweet right now. I have even posted about the potential of Twitter here at epic. But, there is a bit of truth is this twitter parody.

Churches and the way they do (or don’t) use social medial has been the topic of a few posts recently (Facebook, Angry Whoppers, and the Future of Social Media on January 23, and The Spiritual Discipline of Twittering). Social media is a big part of my life and I have invested much of my life/career in the Christian experience.

Collide Magazine recently asked people to respond how their church was utilizing texting and twittering. @mikeyanderson let Collide know that Mars Hills Church in Seattle had recently been featured on a local news broadcast because of their use of Twitter. You can check out the news video at www.king5.com

Mars Hills is not just using Twitter to send information and promotional material. Mars Hill encourages their people to twitter about the Mars Hill experience. Some Sunday Morning, you should do a Twitter search for #MHC and see what comes up.

What do you think? How could your church benefit from encouraging your people to twitter? Would your church even be open to this?

Texting requires more attention than talking. Unless of course you are 8-14 years old; for the rest of us, it can be a consuming task. Thanks to the prolific twittering of @zaibatsu, @DannyTRS, @OneLuvGurl, @holycowcreative, and @espn (to name a few), my LG is experiencing a higher text volume these days.

This caused me to experiment with something recently. I began following @prayingpsalms. @prayingpsalms tweets a verse from a Psalm every hour. I’ve been following for a few weeks and here are my thoughts.

1-I like the regularity. I have started taking the time out to stop, read and pray every hour. I have always gotten a lot out of praying through the Bible. This is a consistent way for me experience this.

2-I enjoy the spiritual distraction. Let me explain. My days tend to get busy. A lot of things are vying for my attention. These tweets catch my attention and give me an excuse to take a break and do something kind of spiritual for a few seconds.

3-They can be redundant. I’m not sure if they recycle the Psalms or if they just tend to sounds alike, but there seems to be a lot of repetition.

4-This is only a small glimpse of what tech-spirituality could be.

Here’s my job for you. Let your brains go crazy. What does the future hold for spirituality?

Businesses are constantly blurring the lines between advertising and social media. I have despised a lot of these campaigns. Think Dr. Pepper and Chocolate Rain. I don’t mind advertising through social media and I certainly don’t think it hurts the authenticity of the medium. Myspace did that.

One that recently caught my attention was the Angry Whopper Facebook App. Users boot 10 friends and get a free Angry Whopper. I thought it was genius. Facebook did not. They axed the app saying it was inconsistent with Facebook’s values. I thought the idea was genius.

Social media is a constantly changing beast with virtually limitless potential for good.

How is your church using social media? (Maybe I should ask, is your church.) Some churches have opted for rip-off christianized versions of social media, like GodTube.com or GodSpace.com. Others have come to the game late. I remember starting up a xanga site for my youth group months after all my students had started their xangas (which happened to be right around the time myspace took off). The tragedy of being late is that you end up chasing every trendy format around the web 2.0 (2.5, 3.0, whatever) with limited results.

Twitter is still strong. It just passed Digg in popularity. I just downloaded the e-book “The Reason Your Church Must Twitter” and am planning to review soon. I twitter. A lot of my friends twitter. But if your church is just now figuring out twitter, it may be too late. By the time you get the hang of it, it may not be the social media giant it is today.

So, where does the church fit into the social media scene?