If you’re like me, you expect everyone and everything you interact with to be as high tech as possible. There is a lot of technology out there and everyone should be using as much as they can. If you have that attitude, you’ve no doubt run in to people that think you’re crazy.

Why doesn’t the GPS in my car update itself from a satellite or open wi-fi signals I drive by? Why don’t you have texting enabled on your phone? Why can’t I just IM a sales rep from your website? Why the hell are you using MapQuest?! Why aren’t you blogging about your business? Why can’t I point my phone, like a Tricorder, at any product and get details about it?

And on and on. None of this is really impossible. It’s not like I’m demanding my own spaceship with an FTL drive. Granted, when it comes to the level of personal involvement in technology, each of us has to decide how wired we want to be. I’m just going to make a grumpy face at you when you tell me you aren’t connected for at least 18hrs a day.

Businesses, on the other hand, have no excuse. Well…they spew plenty of excuses. Too costly, too complicated, “we’re working on it”, etc. Businesses that haven’t figured out that technology, specifically the Interwebs, is key to their survival are quickly dying off. Many are lagging behind and don’t even seem to know what to do with all the options available to them. Take this tweet I saw from @AcmePhoto this morning –

“Marketing failure w/ company I love & trust. They did it wrong w/ email blast. From line “customer-service” subject line “Email blast” ;-(”

If a company can’t handle a technology that has been thoroughly explored, such as email, what are they going do when the Social Web eventually comes charging their way? All they will hear is “I’m the juggernaut, bitch!” and then the lights will go out.

I actually worked for a company that handled email campaigns for big brands like IBM, Polaroid and Sony. There was no sophistication with how these campaigns were prepared and processed. It was embarrassingly low tech and management wasn’t up for investing anything to make these efforts more accurate and profitable. Oh and guess what! They went under! Hahaha, that fact gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

If you have suggested that your company start blogging, that they setup a live video stream, that someone should man a Twitter account or expose their culture via photos on Flickr, thank you. You’re not alone and we all appreciate your efforts. If they looked at you like you’re crazy, it’s ok. Just envision them eventually being tossed in to the Bonfire of Ignorance with the rest of the technologically illiterate companies.

The reason I decided to write about this is that I keep finding organizations that have Twitter accounts and are using them effectively. They are actually interacting with their followers like a normal person instead of only spamming robotic updates (one of the rare situations where I’m not advocating robots :P). Quite a few high profile companies are tweeting. Technically. The number of companies that do it right are few and far between in my experience. If you use Twitter, you’ve experienced the bots that come through and add everyone and have nothing to say except prepared messages. Thanks for making more spam, asshats!

A couple of the good guys I’ve found recently are @goldengatepark (de facto park site) and @scifri (Science Friday on NPR). Now maybe a slick ad agency person convinced them to venture out in to the Twitterverse or maybe someone listened to a “crazy person”. Either way, someone did a good job

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