communication

Sean Bonner has a great post at the SBdC about the power of blogging.

[This] was just e-mailed to my by Dana in NYC. It’s pretty amazing…

"One of our authors Tessa posted last week about having a
delivery man force his way into her apartment and demand all of her
money as a tip. The delivery man was with the extremely popular
internet based NYC grocery service Fresh Direct—everyone I know and
everyone they know uses this service (which incidentally has a strict
no tipping policy) so there was a lot of shock, dismay, outrage over
this incident. Tessa’s posts were linked to on Gothamist and Gawker
although she chose not to go to the newspapers about this incident. She
went right to Fresh Direct who told her that the delivery man would be
re-assigned. Many of our readers were upset that this man could deliver
to them next so yesterday I posted information on how to contact Fresh
Direct and demand a better resolution from them. A lot of people told
me that they followed my suggestion and wrote to Fresh Direct about
this too. And just now I just got a mail from Fresh Direct management
assuring me that after an internal investigation that the offending
driver has indeed been fired.

Imagine this same thing happening as recently as five years ago. Based upon their initial reaction to the complaint, it is likely that without the flood of concerns from other customers, this company would not fire an allegedly dangerous employee. (How irresponsible to even consider reassigning him!) Without the blogs, how could she get the word out far and wide? The mainstream media? Unlikely. And even if the victim had been able to get attention from some mainstream
news media, it would never have the immediacy and wide reach of
communicating it on a blog. Who knows how many other doors this guy would have kicked down before he was stopped!

Whenever I am interviewed about my blog, or blogging in general, I always try to get the interviewer to grok that the real power in this medium is that anyone can communicate their opinions, fears, outrage, silliness, or whatever is important to them with a large, self-policing peer network. There is such overwhelming power in communication, if that power is treated responsibly.

That is why blogging is important. That is why it’s exciting, empowering, and cool. For better and for worse, the rules of communication have changed. So far, I don’t see a whole lot of evidence that the mainstream media or current corporate masters of the universe understand that. I wonder when they’ll get a clue(train).

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18 thoughts on “communication”

  1. Thanks for this post. I’ll definitely link it/repost it in my blog.
    It’s definitely so true. Communication has definitely changed due to the Internet, and it’s not only mainstream communication, but interpersonal communications as well.
    I mean, without the Internet, we never could have an inside view on the life of Wil Wheaton, famous actor turned poker star 😉

  2. Unfortunately, the same thing you illustrate here as the power of blogging can also be the problem with it. Based on the information given it appears that blogging enabled a correct resolution to a real problem, and one that might have developed into something worse.
    Of course, for that to be an accurate analysis, we must assume that the story told by the blogger is factual. Given that the company conducted their own internal investigation, maybe they found the claim to be true as well, but this could just have easily been a case of the blogger not liking the delivery person in question, and deciding to use her “blogging power” to cause hardship for him. There is no mention that the blogger ever called the police, filed a report, or otherwise went through standard channels to protect herself.
    I’m with you, Wil, that blogging is a very powerful medium, and the type of communication it facilitates is incredible. However, blog readers need to be ever mindful of the source of the information, and take that into consideration before accepting a blog entry as fact. Look no further than the vast number of political blogs for proof of this.

  3. I completely agree with you, David.
    The currency of the blogging world is reputation. If this claim is proved false, that person’s reputation is forever destroyed and they vanish off the map.
    The self-policing that happens with bloggers is amazing, and I think it’s another reason it’s so valuable and powerful. If someone is full of shit, or trying to rip people off, or whatever, word about that gets around The Internets very quickly, and the liar (or whatever) is usually humiliated and shunned within a day or so.

  4. Blogging, IMHO, gives a better read of public opinion than Major News Outlets(tm) doing polling. Granted, most voting Americans don’t blog, but I’d rather associate with bloggers than Joe Nascar.

  5. I’m a new blogger. I’m simply amazed that with my three month old blog I’m getting hundreds of page views a day. I didn’t know people would be so interested.
    I figure if I write each post like the first one, with the reader being drawn in knowing nothing about me and not needing to read the rest of my blog to figure it out, I can keep going.

  7. WWDN was the first blog i ever read…Wil…you have had a lot to do with the spread of the phenomenon that blogging has become…and i thank you!

  8. Wil, you need to post a boobie shot to get your rankings up while in exile. LOL! (One that isn’t drawn and with nipples, preferably) Look at what the internet made me do. It made me talk about Wil Wheaton’s nipples.
    Seriously, though, I have been much more in touch with life, news, philosphy, fads, and friends due to blogs like yours and sites like Fark. Plus I’m strangely HAPPIER if that’s not too mental to say. If I need an opinion or advice about something, it’s very possible to get 4 or 5 opinions from complete strangers within a span of a few minutes due to the power of the internet.

  10. Oh yes, I meant to add that blogging and reading forums allows the general public to speak freely (for the most part) and share info that the mainstream media can’t or won’t. Sure, some of it is just gossip, rumor or speculation but at least we can sort through it all and decide for ourselves what the big picture is and if there’s a story there that is intentionally being withheld from us.

  12. Great post, Wil. I’ve posted about and linked to it over at http://www.fyreplace.com (permalink).
    Tried to do a trackback, by the way, and received the following error:
    <error>1</error>
    <message>Server IP 72.9.234.70 is too far away from source URL IP 67.15.74.93</message>
    </response>
    1. <message>Server IP 72.9.234.70 is too far away from source URL IP 67.15.74.93</message>www.typepad.com /t/trackback/3423541

  13. Well the post isn’t 100% factually accurate, at least in the facts that I can know about.
    It states that Fresh Direct “incidentally has a strict no tipping policy.”
    This is not true. The policy is that tipping is up to the customer and they should not feel obligated to tip, they should only tip if the service person did a good job. Here is what their website says:
    ” Should I tip the driver?
    You are under no obligation to tip but have the option of providing a nominal tip if you feel that you’ve received exceptional service. FreshDirect delivery personnel are not permitted to solicit tips under any circumstances. If you have a comment or compliment please e-mail us. We’d love to hear from you!”
    Yes, he is not supposed to ask for tips, but that isn’t the statement that was made.

  14. Wow. I know the point of this post was about the power of blogging, but I use Fresh Direct. Now (even though, based on follow up posts, it looks like they fired the guy), I would consider switching to another delivery service if there were a similar competitor in my area.
    FYI, Fresh Direct USED to have a strict no-tipping policy. Now it’s optional. -Which pretty much screwed the customers when they did that. Not that I don’t think people should be tipped, but their “no tipping” policy was a very prominent part of their initial advertising to draw people in -then one day they quietly changed it and lots of people didn’t know. Lots of people STILL don’t know that policy has changed and that delivery people are expecting tips now.
    Anyway, thanks for this info. It’s definitely making me think twice. And as for keeping this more on topic, I wholeheartedly agree that without the power of blogging and the Internet her complaint would have probably continued to be ignored.

  15. Did anyone else read her posts about this? The claim that he had only been reassigned comes from this statement: ‘they “gauranteed(sic) he would not be delivering to my area” any more.’
    Has anyone given any thought to the fact that Fresh Direct may have a policy of not revealing certain information to just anyone? That they may have fired him and decided not to say those words exactly? Note that in the post where Fresh Direct finally tells someone the guy has been fired they say that:
    1) They fired him on Oct 19th
    2) They don’t usually “share this level of employment-related information”
    It seems likely to me they never reassigned this guy, but fired him as soon as their internal investigation was done and that they thought they were saying that to Tessa without having to decide to violate an internal policy.
    What the driver did was way over the line. He should have been fired. He should have been arrested (if Tessa had called the police). But I think Fresh Direct responded in the best way they could and, while I agree that Blogs are powerful and it is a great thing, I think they did it without the power of Blogs.

  17. “I mean, without the Internet, we never could have an inside view on the life of Wil Wheaton, famous actor turned poker star ;)”
    OK, I am the only person that read this as: Wil Wheaton, famous actor turned porn star?
    Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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