Read a story of how a mortifying travel experience of a musician could turn into a handsome charity through a country song and a few clicks along....

Dave Carrol, lead singer and his Canadian band Sons of Maxwell were travelling to Nebraska on tour.

They were flying on United Airlines and Dave sees his guitar being manhandled by baggage handlers right in front of his eyes on the tarmac - A $3500 710 Taylor guitar.
He complains to the crew, they ignore him.
He complains to United Airlines about now broken guitar, they did not take any responsibility.
He follows up consistently, with representatives at various levels in the airline - his claims falling to deaf ears - this goes on for nine months.
He holds fire, manages to hold on to his sense of humour and writes a song about the misery at the end of this gestation period of anger and frustration
This is the incredible step - He makes a video and publishes it on youtube powering one of the most famous social media libel suits in modern times.

The shocking scene of seeing his instrument being manhandled is humorously described by Dave in the lines of his song - United breaks guitars (video).

I flew United Airlines on my way to Nebraska
The plane departed, Halifax, connecting in Chicago's "O'Hare".
While on the ground, a passenger said from the seat behind me,
"My God, they're throwing guitars out there"

The band and I exchanged a look, best described as terror
At the action on the tarmac, and knowing whose projectiles these would be
So before I left Chicago, I alerted three employees
Who showed complete indifference towards me

Dave replies to United Airlines's continual denial to his claims in his blog:

"In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and offer them for free download online, inviting viewers to vote on their favorite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year."

Here is a social media savvy musician who absolutely is sure of what he is talking about; however United Airlines again didn't take that seriously - Only to be forced to respond after the video gets 50,000 hits in 1 week of its launch and over 2,000,000 hits since the video was published this July 11th, 2009.

The song became a rage and provided a voice for similar United/other airline negligence inflicted audience in a cool country groove.

Moreover the song has kicked off a major branding trade and you have forums filled with people talking, millions of subscribers on youtube, Downloads available. Also available "United Breaks Guitars" printed T-shirts on sale.

The movement got massive PR coverage and is reported to have taken a blow to the share price - for damage control they've agreed to contribute to a charity of their choice - Dave says on his message.
"United will donate $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz for music education for kids," a spokeswoman said from the airline.
The airline has also asked Dave to use his video for internally training staff for better customer service - can you beat that?

We've all faced indifferent attitude and denial from service providers in our life often resulting in frustration and anger. If big fish like United is thick skinned to our claims and outcries, Suddenly you are not just a helpless guy with a laptop - The next door blogger just got bolder. Coverage can run wild though clicks and there has never been a more powerful tool to raise voice. With a little bit of creativity to channelise our juices the web offers powerful ways to move petitions, which could wrap the world over over-night such as this.

Communication is universal and very fast if we use the proper tools.

Check out Twitter's petition tool and many more online petition tools.

The 'United breaks guitars' wave gives us another strong reason to renew our faith on social media and reassess our understanding of its reach and scope. Now we have a strong citation on how video sharing, collaboration and such viral social media activities can really take marketing campaigns way over full throttle!

Social media can achieve in weeks what conventional media and forms of advertisement can achieve in years. Right here we have a measurable case study.

I feel doubly proud of this, firstly as a Social Media activist I can't bridle my excitement of being in the trade and secondly, being a guitar player myself, I would second the fight for a broken Taylor guitar - I'm happy Dave could get even.

- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

I am in the process of buying my first home. Exciting, right? Also nerve-wracking and scary and confusing and exhausting, but mostly really exciting. Talk about learning curve- the last couple months have been similar to my first months at BMC. It's a whole new vocabulary, complete with acronyms, jargon and legalese... plus, they make you do math! Truly shocking, although I do now feel a sense of pride when I casually throw around terms like "loan origination fee" and debate the relative merits of fir v. oak for hardwood floors. I am also full of real estate cliches and catch phrases passed down from our agent. The most important of which, of course, is:

Location, Location, Location.

So that is the context for my brain right now. Everything, including work, is somehow filtered through a real estate lens. Which is why, I think, I had a very interesting thought the other day when perusing some best practices for blogging. Across several articles, the most consistent and emphasized advice was:

Link, Link, Link.

A light switched on. The L word repetition. The insistence of importance. My mind conjured old SAT analogies:

location : real estate :: linking : blogging. But how exactly did these ideas connect?

And then it struck me: community.

Location is the holy grail of real estate because of community. I suppose it also encompasses the size of the lot and the pretty trees out front and the proximity to a park, but really, it's about the people and the way they interact with each other in that space. It's about friendly neighbors, a welcoming vibe and a comfortable environment- who cares if there is a park a block away if no one goes to the park, or even worse, the people in the park make you feel unsafe? "Location, Location, Location" holds true because our feelings about community don't change. We want to feel welcome, we want to feel comfortable, we want to feel like a part of our tribe.

I think linking brings the exact same thing to blogging. It demonstrates community.

Linking shows that you're a willing participant in something bigger. That you're paying attention to what people in your community are saying and that you respect them; you want to promote their ideas, engage with their opinions and encourage others to do the same on your turf. It's chatting over the fence, giving your neighbor a good recipe or even sharing some gossip (community, of course, isn't all sunshine and kittens.) A blog without links is the guy across the street who never waves when he walks to his car and doesn't pick up after his dog. Links are the social currency of the online world, the recipes, the gardening tips, even the slander. They engender the exact feelings of the perfect location: A link-friendly blog, like the home in a good location, is part of a community.

What do you think? Are links always the blogger's tools to build and grow, or can they backfire?

(And believe me, I know that there aren't any links in this post. I think it's my first one without them. Embrace the irony and wait for Friday's Round-Up.)

- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

Two weeks ago, a fifteen year old Londoner named Matthew Robson began a fortnight-long work experience program at Morgan Stanley. He was placed in the media and internet research team, given a list of tasks, and told to go get 'em. One of those tasks was to compile a report on how teenagers, his peers, consume media. He wrote it in a day. Less than a week later, the press, the twitterverse and the blogosphere are all abuzz with the implications of the "revelations" contained in Matthew's report, How Teenagers Consumer Media.

The UK Guardian trumpets the "flurry of interest from media executives and investors" caused by the report.

The Times calls Robson "the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City," and claims that "Fund managers, CEOs  and analysts are poring over his report."

According to CNBC, the report's "striking claims" are "making waves among media executives and investors."

Bloomberg.com quotes "the analysts" as claiming the report contained the “clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen.”

I find this all slightly ridiculous. I tend to agree with Time's Dan Fletcher, who summed up his opinion of the hubbub over the report in one word: toss.

Maybe that's a bit harsh. I don't literally think that the report is garbage. I think Mr. Robson (do you call a 15 yr old "Mr."?) deserves serious props for getting a good internship and taking advantage of it. He clearly did his job well, contacted a wealth of primary sources and put together a not-too-terribly written report (although, as an English major, I have a hard time with all of the members of the press out there- writers, no less!- who seem to be implying that it's equivalent to a professionally created document. I mean, come on. He used the word "release" instead of "realize" in one of the most frequently quoted passages. Let's not make this out to be more than it is. *takes off Grammar Police hat.* )

His content is mildly interesting. Turns out that teenagers have short attention spans, enjoy video games, won't pay for music, love their cell phones, and - this is the biggie, apparently - couldn't care less about Twitter. It's a good snapshot into the youth psyche. But here is my big question: why is this news? Isn't this all completely, blatantly obvious? Don't any of these investors, analysts, fund managers, CEOs and the rest HAVE teenagers? Haven't they noticed all the advertising directed at teens that is predicated on this very information?

And more importantly, why do they care? Is Morgan Stanley selling financial packages to sophomores in high school? If teens aren't your target audience, as is the case with many of the marketers so hungrily devouring this report, then who cares that they prefer Limewire to iTunes and think tweeting is for old farts?

The answer is, they think the teens are trendsetters. They seem to believe that (a) what this demographic is doing now, they will also be doing in ten years when they are old enough to spend serious bucks, and/or, (b) what is cool to teenagers will soon become cool to adults, changing the adult consciousness towards media consumption.

And that's where I disagree. That's where this whole hoopla gets really silly to me.

For instance, let's look at Gen Y ten years ago, when we were Matthew's age. I think I was pretty typical of my generation. I hung out on my parents' computer, the family computer, because my friends and I didn't have our own laptops. Internet was painfully slow. It was the heyday of Napster, and like today's teens, we did not pay for music... of course, it took somewhere around 10 minutes to download one song, so our pirating was probably quite a bit slower than our modern counterparts. I was given a Zack Morris-style cell phone for my 15th birthday, and I think it had somewhere around 200 minutes/month on it. I used it exclusively to make calls, and not very long ones- more along the lines of "Mom, I'm sleeping over at Lucy's, see you tomorrow, bye," than protracted conversations. There was no Facebook, there was no Twitter. We did instant message; first it was ICQ, then AIM. That too was slow. All in all, technology played a role in my life, but not a particularly huge or important one.

Clearly times have changed. But I changed with them. So did the rest of Gen Y. As we grew up, our actions evolved along with technology, trends and personal maturity. I no longer use AIM because I now chat on Facebook. I no longer download music illegally because I'm conscious of the implications to the industry and the artist. My cell phone- probably a quarter of the size of that first one- is now my primary means of communication and I couldn't use up my minutes if I tried. This picture looks nothing like it did when I was fifteen.

Furthermore, I really don't think that teenage trends will significantly affect adult actions. Fifteen year olds are coming from an entirely different place. Things become cool for different reasons: because they're free, and when you're in high school, you have no money; because you have an abundance of free time in which to play video games; because it's easy to circumvent and avoid adults. These reasons don't translate to adult coolness, at least in my book.The fact that teens aren't on Twitter has nothing to do with my efforts to use that particular tool to gather and disseminate knowledge or to promote my work and my company.

The information that Matthew Robson presented is certainly relevant to anyone marketing to teens. But I really think the buck stops there. Who knows where they'll be by the time they're buying into hedge funds and enterprise software- somehow, I don't think it will involve Twitter.

- by Alena Hitzemann, Associate Web Editor

Earlier this week, my Web Strategy cohorts and I met with some representatives of BMC's HR team to discuss opportunities on the web. Careers have a strong presence on our company website, but we wanted to explore ideas and options beyond bmc.com. This led to an interesting conversation about HR's current relationship to social media.

To me, the connections between recruiting, job hunting and web 2.0 seem intuitive and obvious. I was on the job prowl not too terribly long ago, and social media played an integral role in the process. Before submitting an application, I not only Googled a company, I searched Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to see what the general public was saying. When I was lucky enough to get an interview, this research intensified. I dug deep for details on anyone I'd be meeting, and usually discovered a wealth of information. By the time the interview began, I often knew what these people looked like, where they lived, where they'd worked in the past, where they went to school, and more.

Was this process slightly creepy? Maybe. Semi-stalkerish? Perhaps. But the thing is, I assumed that they were doing the exact same thing about me. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn't. I keep constant tabs on my online reputation, making sure that Google results, Facebook pages and the like present both information and images that I'm comfortable showing the world. In my opinion, this is common sense. Don't want future employers seeing intoxicated/questionable/incriminating photos of you? Don't put them on the internet.

But- as our conversation with HR proved this week- it's not that simple. From a legal and ethical perspective, knowing too much about a potential employee can lead to shaky ground. Best practices around recruiting and hiring are constantly evolving. The essential tools in the HR professional's belt change frequently. The gray area surrounding the confluence of staying up to date, staying relevant, staying on the ball, staying legal and staying out of trouble continues to grow.

And so, in the spirit of making that gray area just slightly more clear, I present the first installment of the Friday Round-up. These links represent my attempt at learning more about social media and HR. I hope they help you do the same.

LinkedIn:

Savvy Companies Get LinkedIn To Find Top Talent

I’m On LinkedIn… Now What?

Discrimination Issues:

Social Media, Recruitment, Discrimination & The Legal Implications

Is it ethical for a recruiter to Google a candidate?

General Social Media:

CareerBuilder’s Top Ten Best Practices for Using Social Media as a Recruitment Tool

Enterprise 2.0 - Using Social Media to Address HR Priorities

Social Media For Hr Professionals Beyond Linked In 4 16 2009

Three Ways to Use Social Media for HR Needs

Social Media and HR Communication Strategy

Smart Ways to Use Social Media Tools

5 Must-Use Social Media Tools For HR & Recruiting Professionals In 2009

52 ideas on using social media within HR

- by Anirban Dutta, Web Producer

Tidal wave?

The concept that has sent a Wave of excitement through the tech and non tech community alike comes from the innovative giant on the web – Google.

They’ve named it Google Wave.

Founders of the Google wave are Lars Rasmussen, Jens Rasmussen (brothers) and Stephanie Hannon - the same team that came up with the Google Maps application.

As Lars Rasmussen, co-founder of Google Wave highlights, email was created some 40 years ago, before the creation of the Internet its self and it was done without the experience and knowledge we now have of things such as wikis, social networks, sms, instant messaging and so on. He introduces the Wave as “Google Wave is what email would look like if it was created today”. He says as opposed to emails which try to instantiate a point to point conversation, the Google Wave is "one metaphor for hosted conversations" object hosted on a server somewhere.

The Wave concept typifies an utopian Web 3.0 world where we have all the caliber of Web 2.0 ie emails, IMs, wikis, blogs, bulletin boards, Social networking, sharing and collaboration merged with a much more real time focus; so we have all of the cool stuff happening in a single browser session in a single pane with more enhanced features like we never imagined!

So how does this Sci-Fi set look?

Features like real time translation in 40 languages, contextual spell check, grammar checking and all in one drag drop file sharing, document creation, sharing and editing, starting forums. It certainly packs the thrills of a Spielberg flick!

Plus a very cool feature is its Playback option which lets you refer back to a conversation trail and see which participant added what and at which time and locate the origin of the Wave - each conversation is a wave.

Open Source and the Wave

Google shared its baby with the world at Google's Developer Preview forum Google I/O May 2009

Watch the launch video

Google has actually invited the developer community to participate in the Google Wave program by throwing open a forum to contribute to its features. Majority of the Wave's code is open source and the developers would be given accounts in a sandbox within Google's system  to start developing add on features and extensions to coincide with the launch. This is way too cool.

There is also a feedback capturing mechanism if you wish to be updated on whats going on - Fill up the form

I think I can definitely suggest some cool aliens in this movie on the semi technical side straight to the directorial suit.

The Wave is a platform in iself and it supports robots to automate tasks and functions, embed Waves into external blogs and web sites, “talk” to popular web services such as Twitter collaborate across different platforms, merge other Google tools and gadgets in short Google calls it a "Game changer".

I enhanced my open source knowledge from whurley's podcasts.

I'm not walking the technical line on this red hot topic - there's enough out there on the internet, a particularly good read is the Google Wave guide.

Concerns, resistance to change?

Does this mean the end of the world of CCing and BCCing and SMTP mails and the very recent blogging? How would it impact my business/ Do I have to resort to cloud computing? Would the corporate world accept the wave? Would the concept be scalable enough? These are some of the initial questions that make the tag cloud of this mega project but coming from an organization like Google I have full faith on their to realizing abilities.

My part of the shock was when I realized the concept of the Google Wave was so massive and yet so simple that Social Media would be turned into a subset of this giant - where I always thought Social networking encompasses all - I feel this Tide has a magnitude of possibly redefining Tim Berners Lee's www into World Wide Wave.

Cant wait for the tide to come sweep us over!