Seesmic, the so-called "Twitter of video", earned a unique accolade this weekend: my complaint of a site issue, posted to Twitter, received a response within 3 minutes. The problem was fixed within an hour.
My question: is Seesmic indicative of a wider trend, wherein corporations actually (gasp!) listen to their customers (beyond mere lip service), responding in a human voice and turning markets into conversations, much as the Cluetrain Manifesto envisioned back in 1999? Or is this kind of responsiveness impossible to scale: utterly unique among burgeoning startups?
And, more importantly, how does your company stack up?
Startups: are you using tools like Tweet Scan (or Terraminds) plus blog search engines like Technorati or Google Blog Search to track emergent conversations around your brand? Can you meet the 3 Minute Twitter Challenge, answering a user complaint in real time?