Activity 14

Ok, it may sound silly, but the site that I decided to blog about for this activity is from Twitter and Pendemonium, a brick and mortar site that caters to the fountain pen community. I don't particularly want the tweets coming to my phone - too much input right now for my little mind - but I do know Sam and Frank and am interested in their business. Sam was tweeting about dumping the 800 phone line number in that 99 % of their business (not from the store or going to pen shows) comes from on line orders. As I read through the tweets, I noticed that Sam (I'm betting that Frank wants nothing to do with Twitter) was basically answering other tweets and thinking out loud. The end result was her decision that it was not financially sound to continue with the 800 number. That lead me to think about Max and his use of Skype. These are people who are buying and selling (ok, mostly selling) vintage fountain pens and pencils and who are embracing technology to reach their customers. I have the luxury of participating in the 2.0 web course and being exposed to various educational technological sites - who keeps these folks up-to-date?

So, where are we with 800 numbers? I can't remember the last time I dialed one to order from any site. Are they going to be dumped by most stores/catalogs? And what about Skype? I note that Oprah has used it on almost every show to provide feedback from the average person. On one show, she had a chef preparing a meal and Skype was showing, in real time, 2 other people preparing the same meal in their own kitchens. Yet another use of interactive media.

Make it a great day!