In a world where consumers expect instant answers, here are six companies dedicated to helping in 140 characters or less.

Comcast

Many have argued that Comcast was the company who pioneered real time responses to customer service issues. The transition of Comcast’s original Twitter agent, Frank Eliason, was part of the inspiration for this post. Frank quickly became a web celebrity of sorts, standing for a new service directive in a very sensitive corner of the industry. Well done, Frank, and good luck to your successor, Bill at ComcastCares.

Xbox

Microsoft’s Xbox brand, an Edelman client, was so confident in their service record that they went after a Guinness World Record- and won it! XboxSupport’s Elite Tweet Fleet are the first to hold the title of “Most Responsive Brand on Twitter.”

Zappos

Zappos_Service is a name known well among the Internet’s footwear fiends. The Twitter response team is generous with various perks like free shipping while the profile also acts as a collection zone for the comments of happy clients. Customers with service issues are quickly prompted to Direct Message the brand for faster, private order attention.

BT

BT, the UK communications group, updates the names of the agents manning BTCare on a daily basis. The team members on deck connect customers with service information while also directing them to relevant instruction materials for set-up.

Boingo

Boingo is a wireless provider (you may recognize the name from your last layover) that uses their Twitter profile both to address customer concerns as well as to broaden conversation around the brand. Boingo recognizes a Hotspot of the Day as well as links to daily “news of the weird.”

BlackBerry

BlackBerryHelp, also an Edelman client, puts a few faces to customer support. Brian, Scott. Thomas, Pavel, and Mike are a few RIM employees who actively engage customers looking for all types of BlackBerry related help opportunities. In addition, the team shares useful user tips and tags them with #bbtips so you can keep track and browse at your leisure.

Which companies have provided you with excellent customer service on Twitter?

We live in a world that gets more and more casual by the emoticon. The prevalence of popular shorthand has made professional writing in largely personal spaces murky waters. Here are five suggestions curated by the Friday Five team and inspired by Edelman’s own Edit and Proofreading Q-Tips.

Keep it Brief

Even in spaces where speech is not limited to 140 characters or less, there are benefits to keeping your thoughts concise. Studies have shown that entries that are 150 words or less are more likely to generate conversation.

If Twitter is the intended medium and the author would like a tweet to be passed on, care should be taken to ensure that enough characters are still available for his or her user name to be included in the event of a retweet, without any additional editing necessary.

Link Love

Just as other writing formats require footnotes, social media attribution takes the form of links much of the time. It’s very important to link to original source material. In addition to giving credit where credit is due, links provide meaningful back-up and context for the assertions being made in your writing.

You Are Here

“Here” could refer to anywhere. Perhaps that is why it is so often used as the linked word in sentences designed to provide click-through context. For example: “Click here for a map of the museum”. As Edelman Digital’s Phil Gomes noted, “This draws the eye to the most useless word in the sentence.” A better phrasing might be “Download a map of the museum.” From a search perspective, a linked keyword will mean a lot more to Google visibility than a word like “here” or “this.”

Abbrevi8 Only When Necessary

Professionals should avoid overtly casual abbreviations unless absolutely necessary. Shorthand like “b4” or “l8r” looks trite, even when used without absolute necessity. Acceptable abbreviations when necessary include: b/t (between), and w/ (with).

Disclose Early and Often

If the subject matter you’re writing about references a client or directly addresses your client’s immediate field or industry, disclose that relationship early in your writing and again as separate comments warrant (i.e. Individual tweets count as separate comments). The word client in parentheses after the company name will typically suffice.

With thanks to the following individuals for sharing their insights: APAC: IndoPacific Edelman, Jakarta – James Allan, Hartiasri Ariviani, Prima Harrison, Vida Parady, Bruce Poan, Rudijanto; Europe: London – Jo Sheldon; LatAm: Sao Paulo – Gabriela Bruschi, Tatiana Castro, Andre Larrubia, Osmar Maduro, Michele Vercosa; US: Chicago – Phil Gomes, Matt Groch, Jessi Langsen, Suzanne Marlatt, Dan Santow, Danielle Wiley; NY – Kim Berndt, Esther Buterman, A.J. Desjardins, Amanda Kaufman. Special thanks are in order to this issue’s author, Tracy Waldman.

Sharing a meal is one of the single most common social encounters in which individuals take part. So it should be no surprise that a growing group of sites have digitized many parts of the process- from finding a restaurant to sharing experiences or even finding a friend to eat with. This week’s Friday Five is dedicated to the kind of restaurant resources you can access from anywhere.

OpenTable

Boasting 13,000 restaurants worldwide as users, OpenTable fundamentally changed the way diners planned evenings out while also offering value to restaurants in the form of table management without devoting extra energy to manning phone lines. As of June 2010, OpenTable has entered into a partnership with the restaurant review site Yelp, integrating review pages with easy-to-book reservations.

iDine

iDine’s entire model is built around viewing diners as shareholders- going so far as to give cash back when diners eat at participating restaurants more than once. Along the way, users earn frequent flyer mileage and can manage account settings or read reviews from other members online.

Tasting Table

Tasting Table’s tagline is “Food Culture Daily” and it lives up to the it with a wide range of food-related content across the board. Highlighting everything from individual restaurants to recipes to “gastronomic experiences,” this is essentially a rich blog offering a taste of everything.

Toptable

Toptable is a UK-based restaurant review site that’s also incorporated elements of the Groupon model-offering a deal to the group on select venues for a limited time.

Guía Oleo is also worth a mention here- it’s specific to Buenos Aires but uses a unique rewards card to encourage members to visit involved restaurants in addition to general restaurant and local reviews.

InnerDinner

Once you’ve selected the restaurant and made the reservation, it’s time to find someone to share your meal- whether at a restaurant you’ve wanted to try or even at home. That’s where InnerDinner comes in. Operating under the assumption that food is the great unifier, users build supper clubs or more date-like experiences based on personal profiles and eating habits.

The beauty of social media is its ability to provide something for everyone. The prevalence of large online communities like Facebook or Yelp has been discussed widely. Today we wanted to focus on five highly specialized sites you may not already be familiar with but are serving niche interests at a pace that’s worth noting.

GDGT

gdgt, created by the founders of Engadget, is a social network for self-identified “tech geeks”. Individual users create personal libraries of the gear they have on hand as well as wishlists for the products they’d like to purchase. Like Facebook, users can friend other users to exchange reviews of desired items and usage comparisons.

Dogster

Dogster represents a vast community of dog owners and enthusiasts who connect in forums to share care suggestions, product recommendations and breed information. Dogster also presents the expert advice of regular columnists covering topics like veterinary care and grooming. For those of us with a more feline focus, there is also Catster.

Goodreads

Goodreads is a social network for heavy readers, offering recommendations based on identified favorites. For true bookworms, it also provides an organization platform for your reading list. The site also acts as a springboard for the creation of book clubs.

Bakespace

Bakespace is a community aimed precisely at members of the greater digital kitchen. Offering unique recipe-swap features, constant cooking commentary and the ability to create a virtual pantry based upon what you have on hand, the site brings virtual cooking companions to the table without taxing your counter-space.

MVPSpot

MVPSpot is an online community that provides amateur athletes (age 13 and up) the ability to showcase their talents on the field, court, pitch, rink…you name it. This site provides a forum for sharing highlight reels and encourages learning between the athletes themselves while simultaneously acting as an informal recruiting tool.

PSFK, a global digital trend-spotting site, recently released their Future of Retail report.  The 80+ page document has a lot of great insights, all supporting conjecture that digital tactics (related to retail and beyond) are extending far beyond the online space. Today’s Friday Five highlights three key learnings but we’d strongly urge you to check the full report out for yourself.

Price Shopping from the Checkout Line

A new wave of sophisticated mobile apps put price shopping and product comparisons in the palm of a person’s hand. A quick barcode scan using an app like Stripey Lines or ShopSavvy empowers a consumer to gather reviews and competitive data instantly, a game-changer for bricks and mortar retailers.

Shopping Still Social- Just Not IRL

Friends are still an important part of purchase decisions (by many studies, the most important) but they aren’t weighing in from the other side of a dressing room door anymore. Go Try It On is an online community where users are encouraged to post a picture of their purchase consideration and other users then vote. Blippy keeps track of what your friends are buying and Svpply is a retail bookmarking and recommendation service.

Mobile Couponing Presents Unique Loyalty Programming

Mobile couponing has to be one of the most exciting things to happen for businesses within this digital retail revolution. Getting it right has not been without growing pains but customer response is strong and apps like CellFire are only growing more sophisticated.

Shopping Trips Planned from Parking to Purchase

Directional mobile apps will tell you exactly how to get from Point A to Point B in the shortest amount of time.  In some cases, they may even recommend a pretzel place along the way. Fast Mall and Point Inside both offer turn by turn instructions while Google’s new Places section shows snapshots of a store’s interior.

Increasingly Interactive Service Industry

Salons offering consultations via Skype (Plan B in Boston).  Realtors giving virtual tours to faraway buyers (Take Sunset).  Personal shoppers continually tagging unique recommendations (Trunk Club).  The new shopping cart comes with a tour guide and is less likely to have someone else’s coffee-stained list stuck to the bottom.

In a new media world, staking your claim online goes well beyond reserving a web address or two. Even companies and public figures without firm plans to participate in the social media space should be aware that consumers will still be looking for them and plan accordingly. Today’s Friday Five reflects five tips to help your clients (and yourselves) own your brand online.

Primary Twitter Account

Choose a Twitter handle that clearly reflects the company name and/or division. If you do not plan to activate Twitter immediately, ensure that the profile links to the company website and that the first tweet states that consumers can check back or links to a more active social forum (like a Facebook page).

Referring Twitter Accounts

While this isn’t always the case, some brands have been known to claim multiple twitter names, directing to the singular one in use.  This prevents squatters from taking over an official-looking presence but it’s impossible to claim all possibilities.  The best way to ensure your voice is the one consumers are hearing is to participate in the conversation whenever and wherever possible and appropriate.

Facebook

Similar to Twitter, find a unique URL for your company’s Facebook page that clearly reflects what will be represented there.  If possible, this should match the company’s or program’s Twitter handle for consistency.

LinkedIn

Just as candidates represent themselves on this popular professional networking site, companies should keep their profiles updated as well.  Establishing open positions and keeping up with industry accolades is more than just an effective recruiting tool. This is especially important now that LinkedIn allows users to follow company updates.

Blog Commentary

Commenting on blogs is a sticky process for many large companies and requires the consultation of a company social media policy and the participation of a designated spokesperson.  One of the best ways to continue owning a brand online in this arena is to identify natural brand ambassadors proactively so that in times of trouble, they have the correct information to distribute within their invested community.

Dave Levy and I decided to mix things up this week to provide different perspectives on our respective weekly posts – you can expect a Health focused Friday Five from him later this week.

Consumers are becoming more open about their personal health with social media poised as the medium of choice for this gathering groundswell. Everything from chronic conditions to annual goals to insurance questions have found a home among virtual friends online. Today’s update reflects five places across many parts of the online world that you may not already be visiting for insight about healthcare.

The Go-To for Goals

Mamavation already has something in common with the last two segments on the list, it was founded by a survivor. Leah Segedie has lost 100 pounds since the birth of her son and she’s looking to help other moms follow suit. Mamavation’s focus is helping moms set healthy goals for their families while living by example.

Holistic Hotspot

Major health crises have a way of gifting perspective. At least that’s what happened for Kris Carr, the founder of Crazy Sexy Life. Carr was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2003, then turned her response to the diagnosis into a lifestyle movement among patients. While not everyone embraces holistic treatments in lieu of traditional medicine altogether, the site’s contributors have created a positive place for patients that focuses just as much on wellness as it does health.

Perspective on PPD

Postpartum Progress is a blog written by a survivor. Katherine Stone, the blog’s editor, gives other women dealing with postpartum depression an outlet to discuss their fears and share advice for coping. Stone’s blog was brought to light here by another blogger, Casey Mullins of Moosh in Indy, who has been frank about her own struggles with depression. Another worthwhile read is a post written by Casey’s husband with a spouse’s perspective on the disease.

A Blog Rx for RD’s

There’s no doubt that nutrition is a hot topic online but finding advice from licensed professionals online can be a challenge. The launch of the Nutrition Blog Network aims to make this search a little easier by collecting the blogs of registered dietitians in one online directory.

Dr. Mom

If you caught the Mother’s Day edition of the Friday Five, this last link may not come as a surprise. After spending a morning with the team from BabyCenter last week, I was moved to check out a few of their forums for questions and conversation surrounding health. I was not disappointed. For anyone interested in the questions, concerns and peer advice of new mothers, the BabyCenter Health & Wellness section is a must-read.

Have other spots you look to for health updates from peers?

Image credit: tampaempire and van_thanh2910

Earlier this week I was lucky to be in attendance at a one-day event known as Mom Dot Com. Sponsored and hosted by Baby Center and Google, we spent the morning talking about the modern mom and what her life looks online (social media use by moms has increased by 591% since 2006). We’ve known for awhile that moms are the ones making most household purchase decisions. What Mom Dot Com brought to the table were stats and behavior models showing most of those decisions are made, if not also completed, online. In honor of Mother’s Day, today’s Friday Five is built on five key learnings presented at Mom Dot Com, many of which came from Baby Center’s 21st Century Mom Report, a great place to delve a little deeper (published in July, 2009).

Doctor Mom

Moms have always reached out to other mothers when exploring questions about a child’s health. Related queries are the leading topic of interest in online communities (91 percent) followed by childhood development tips (79 percent) and product reviews (72 percent). 84 percent say the Internet has made them more informed about children’s health issues.

Mobile Mom

SMS text usage only continues to increase among moms with 89% saying they are more likely to use texts to communicate since becoming moms and 91 percent said they never leave the house without a cell phone.

Hispanic Mom

Hispanic moms are spending 18 percent more time online compared to three years ago and 81% use text messaging services.

Chef Mom

Of all the duties moms delegate to search engines, the largest percentage (77 percent) use them to find recipes. “Online” has officially become the #1 source for recipes, surpassing both cookbooks and magazines. Recipe searches just recently bubbled over 97 million.

Branded Mom

As soon as kids enter the equation and a woman becomes a mom, every previous purchase preference is called to question. 51 percent of moms change brands completely once the baby arrives. Tightening budgets and health are listed as two of the main reasons. 71 percent of moms would switch brands thanks to a coupon and children also act as the gateway to organics. Women buying organic food jumps from 16 percent to 33 percent once they become moms.

Image credit: Avei Photo

Most of the conferences we attend come down to being about consumption of one kind or another–usually the different ways we consume information. This week I’m in Portland attending the International Association of Culinary Professionals Conference, where we’re talking a lot about consumption from a couple different angles: the food we eat, the places we find it and the ends we go to learn more about it. Social media continues to come up as the game-changer, or in this case, plate-changer. Today’s Friday Five is dedicated to soundbites coming straight from food industry influencers and how the future of food could play out online.

Wanted: Digital Kitchen Curators

Thursday’s keynote included a particularly riveting portion wherein New York Times Food Editor Kim Severson interviewed former Gourmet magazine editor Ruth Reichl. One of the topics they touched on was the need for further curation of recipe resources online. While the growth in the number of people now looking for recipes exclusively online is staggering, the average consumer posting those recipes doesn’t have the professional level of skill or scrutiny that goes into published cookbooks. Both acknowledged that there are many exceptionally talented home cooks who have found a voice (and matching audience) through blogging, but a quality control problem does haunt the hallways of Google Reader. Kim credited Cooks Illustrated editor Christopher Kimball when she said “Do a search for green bean casserole online and make the first one that pops up. I guarantee you it’s awful.”

Severson did make mention of a few sites doing it right, including Food52, which regularly calls for recipe submissions, but entries are edited and tested by an experienced team of pros and run by Severson’s New York Times colleagues, Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs.

If You Can’t Stand the Heat

Members of the food world aren’t exactly known for shying away from conflict. In an industry in which every decision is nuanced (organic farming benefits to egg separating techniques), a healthy difference of opinion is to be expected. While there have been many debates onstage and elsewhere this week, the most infamous came yesterday during a panel entitled “The Death of Recipes?” with panelists Andrew Dornenburg, Karen Page and Michael Ruhlman.

Page loosely asserted that the taxing schedules encouraged by modern culture (including increased media consumption) has left people without time to cook with traditional recipes. Ruhlman’s colorful response can be seen on YouTube. He disagrees and has a few recommendations for finding efficiencies.

Twitter as Edible Equalizer

Reichl has, particularly in her post-Gourmet career, become well-known for her unique use of Twitter, something Severson was keen to inquire about. Reichl’s style comes across as vivid, full-sensory 140-character poetry. An example:

Of her devotion to the medium, she said “The perfect peach is open to everyone. I think of it as celebrating the ordinary–Twitter allows us to distill those moments. You can stay connected to whatever world you choose to join.”

A Seat at the Table from Kitchen to Boardroom

A 2009 study entitled Food 2020: The Consumer as CEO, presented by Linda Eatherton and Phil Lempert, talked about the future of food and, in many cases, how online crowdsourcing will continue to support the “democratization of the international food chain.” Consumers are “wired and powerful” when using services like 1) Twitter to find things like up-to-the-minute product recall information, and 2) blogs to demand a seat within the marketing mix. There’s still a potent amount of romanticism when it comes to consumer food priorities but companies engaging directly online are being rewarded with loyalty as well as consumer-driven product innovation.

General Mills, for example, credits its Open Source Innovation Network, an online tool in which the company poses challenges that are then addressed by site registrants. This process is yielding new products that move to market faster. When the ideas come from the consumer directly, steps can be removed from the long traditional roll-out process.

Karma Police: Consumers Demand a Shared Return on Investment… via Mobile Device

Not only are consumers saying they want a role in deciding the available products themselves, but they want a voice in spending the profits made from those purchases. A model reminiscent of Donors Choose was raised a possibility and has already begun to be implemented by a handful of companies letting consumers choose what worthy cause a portion of their purchase will go to. The build would be the ability to do this at check-out via mobile device.

A second mobile idea is less tied to re-investment from particular brands but instead spans every offering found on supermarket shelves. Using a mobile-enabled barcode scan, consumers can not only see a product’s comprehensive nutritional rating but a combined score that includes its carbon footprint and ethical production values (animal welfare, fair-trade, etc). The regulatory ramifications of implementing an international rating system of that scale are what keep it a decade away but it’s clear from many conversations at IACP this week that an increasingly aware consumer is hungry for progress in this arena.

Arguably one of the most compelling pieces of the broader social networking boom has been the ability to take a relationship built online and move it offline or, at the very least, “online” to “in-person.” It’s the flipping of that paradigm that makes the latest wave of location-based social networking services so interesting. Users take their physical, offline location and put it online. While there is often a gaming aspect to this decision (users get points and badges as rewards for various levels of engagement), the broader goal is to draw attention to that location as both an endorsement and an invitation for others to join. Foursquare and Gowalla have dominated conversation to-date, but today’s Friday Five is dedicated to a few lesser-known services and the nuances that set them apart.

My Town

My Town’s first iterations initially came across as a way to play Monopoly against yourself with properties in your own neighborhood. My Town 3.0 has retained the ability to “buy property” with equity built up from check-ins but has opened up to a much more social sphere. This hasn’t gone unnoticed — recent reports have My Town gaining 130,000 new users a week.

Tweetsii

Tweetsii’s check-in process is potentially among the more elaborate while still boasting straightforward usability. Users snap a photo and upload it, tagging the location where that photo was taken in the process, say, at a favorite pie shop. When that user’s contacts pull up the app, they’ll see that photo situated on a map, pointing to where that photo was taken and who posted it.

BrightKite

BrightKite, like Tweetsii, uses photos to paint a dynamic picture of its users’ experiences. However, the set-up of the homepage is closer to a Facebook newsfeed with streaming content appearing next to the users posting it.

Mobiluck

Europe-based Mobiluck takes the personal location experience a step further by giving Symbian and Windows mobile smart phone users the ability to chat with their MSN contacts. Rumor has it they are also working on a feature that allows connections to users from other platforms like Skype and Gchat.

Check.In

Check.In’s catchphrase is “One Checkin to Rule Them All”, a Tolkien reference used to sell a service that ties of each of a users various geo-locating services together, updating them simultaneously. While Check.In’s services do come at the cost fracturing a user’s identity across the individual platforms (points can’t be assigned the same way), those suffering from “check-in fatigue” could be relieved.