LannyCardow.com

I just posted a quick piece on using location-aware services in politics over at Navigator’s new Comment Blog.

For those of you who haven’t seen our site in a while, check it out — it’s all been redone and should have a relatively steady stream of fresh content. More big news on that coming soon… stay tuned.

LC

Ryanair, the UK budget airline (with the really budget website), has a fantastic reply to a harsh blog post by Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon.

Gordon’s April 7 piece starts like this:

“You know those lists that detail the world’s favourite brands, the ones usually topped by Google or Apple? You never see Ryanair on those lists, do you? For that matter, you never hear anybody casually mention that they have just flown with Ryanair, and that they really enjoyed it. I am willing to bet my flat and its contents that nobody has ever said the words “Ryanair”, “marvellous” and “service” in the same sentence.”

…and it gets worse (far worse) from there.

So what’s a scorned airline to do?

Respond like this.

“Ryanair is now seeking possession of the ‘flat and contents’ of Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon since her claims that Ryanair passengers have never complimented our industry leading service are clearly false. Unfortunately for Bryony she overlooked the fact that Ryanair is the world’s favourite airline and provides the best on-time, baggage and flight completion performance of any major European airline, while also offering Europe’s guaranteed lowest fares.

“Ryanair will grow to 73 million passengers this year thanks to our industry leading customer service and we look forward to receiving the keys to Bryony’s ‘flat and contents’ in due course”.

Clever, gets their message out, and sure to go viral.

Ryanair’s release puts their customer letters, mission statement (charter) and comments in full view, and makes Gordon’s blog seem downright nasty in comparison.

A great reaction to a negative blog post.

Some of my former IPDI colleagues have been doing some great things lately in Washington and outside the beltway, and I wanted to take a moment to share their good news.

IPDI is a research institute affiliated with The George Washington University’s GSPM school. It specializes in researching where the Internet meets Politics and/or governance. IPDI runs the fantastic Politics Online Conference (POLC) every year which is just getting better and cooler all the time. This year’s POLC looks wonderful – kudos to the organizers so far.

Popular atheist author Richard Dawkins, unimpressed with the rudeness and bickering happening on his heavily-populated message boards, recently attempted to scale them back. Predictably, a full-scale online rebellion ensued, forcing Dawkins to defend himself with this note to his fans, customers, and commenters.

I feel for Dawkins – nobody should have to tasteless ad hominem attacks, especially on their own site.

While he is fortunate to have some his online community that is so boisterous and thriving (others only wish they had such problems) his difficulty managing their scope demonstrates the problem with trying to tightly control community forums – it’s almost impossible. Sometimes it’s just best to let discussions bloom naturally, even if they stray from your vision for them.

If content concerns and language were really a pressing problem and had to be addressed, perhaps
implementing some form of peer filtering or caretaking system would be best. At least in that case, your community is empowered with patrolling the site, and it’s not coming from “above”.

Dawkins’ predicament helps to illustrate why online community managers are a popular new career for so many people. While Dawkins’ case is a little bit different as he is not selling a product, community managers interact with customers and forum participants to ensure that the community has a human face, and ensure that concerns are being responded to … before eruptions like this occur.