{"id":332025,"date":"2010-02-17T10:15:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T15:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36063"},"modified":"2010-02-17T09:37:02","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T14:37:02","slug":"twitter-wars-kevin-smith-vs-southwest-airlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/332025","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Wars: Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, director Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest airlines flight in order to preserve the “safety and comfort of all customers,<\/a>” i.e., for being too fat. He didn’t take it sitting down.<\/p>\n

Smith tweeted<\/a>,
\n with characteristic color<\/a>,
\nhis frustrations throughout the ordeal. Through the magic of Twitter,
\nSouthwest responded<\/a>,
\n contacted the director, and apologized<\/a>
\n (but stuck to their “Customer of
\nSize” policies<\/a>). <\/p>\n

The Smith\/Southwest fiasco is being touted<\/a>
\nas the latest evidence in the awesome power of Twitter, the one playing
\nfield that consumers can take on the Goliaths of the corporate world
\nand emerge victorious; it’s @ThatKevinSmith<\/a>
\n vs. @SouthwestAir<\/a>, and RT<\/a>s are the weapon
\n of choice. <\/p>\n

But
\nthis notion is misguided at best. Kevin Smith is a powerful figure on
\nTwitter with more than 1.6 million followers. Kevin Smith’s tweets were
\nso effective because he’s Kevin Smith; the fact that Twitter provided
\nthe bandwidth is incidental. Twitter is not a wholly democratic
\nshouting platform – it’s merely celebrity in a new medium. The average
\nJoe Beergut who tries to tweet his way into an airline’s good graces
\nisn’t likely to succeed. <\/p>\n

But Kevin Smith’s indignation reverberated
\nloudly in the Twittersphere, and within hours, Southwest found itself
\nwith a doozy of a PR problem. Perhaps, you might counter, Twitter is
\nimportant precisely because it gives such a forum to those that would
\notherwise be denied. And that’s true, to an extent — it’s often useful for consumer complaints<\/a>, for example. But this claim is a
\nfar cry from empowering the regular individual. Here<\/a>
\nis an unofficial list of the top Twitter users: you have to go way, way
\ndown to find someone who isn’t a celebrity or a corporation. Yes,
\nTwitter does provide an open platform, even if it occasionally
\nresembles a verbal cage match with millions of rowdy participants. But
\nit’s dishonest to claim that the service is really anything more than
\njust that.<\/p>\n

Twitter itself isn’t all-powerful. It merely empowers
\na small, already-privileged group of celebrities who might, if
\nsufficiently pissed off, can really grab an airline’s attention. Now if it could just do something to make those seats a bit wider…


\n

\n Email this Article<\/a>
\n Add to digg<\/a>
\n Add to Reddit<\/a>
\n Add to Twitter<\/a>
\n Add to del.icio.us<\/a>
\n Add to StumbleUpon<\/a>
\n Add to Facebook<\/a>
\n

\n\"\"<\/a>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, director Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest airlines flight in order to preserve the “safety and comfort of all customers,” i.e., for being too fat. He didn’t take it sitting down. Smith tweeted, with characteristic color, his frustrations throughout the ordeal. Through the magic of Twitter, Southwest responded, contacted the director, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4833,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4833"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}