Small Fish, Big Pond

In my opinion twitter has two major types of user.

• One is important or powerful people and businesses that use twitter to blast out quick announcements to people who may be interested.
• Two is the other 99.9% of the people who just repeat the above tweets, keep us on the edge of our seats telling us when and what they are having for dinner, or bitch and moan about all the ways the world seems to be dumping on them, “32 minutes to deliver a Pizza is unacceptable!”

But today I’m thinking I may actually start using my twitter account to bitch, apparently some people are listening and will help make good on the problem… or sue you for mentioning it.

Via Ars, Woman sued by landlord over negative tweet.
But the part that interested me was this quote:

Zipcar, Boingo, one of my local pizza places, and even Allstate and Comcast have all swooped in to help out Ars staffers in need after we have aired some complaints.

Damn, apparently some businesses are actually scanning twitter and instead of attacking those who make complaints, they’re learning from them and making customers happy!

I don’t know if having tens of thousands of followers has something to do with it and this is just an example of how having more followers/influence gets you more benefits in life; or if some people are finally using the masses of twitter posts to gauge public opinion.
I’m hoping it’s more of the latter.