No, I am not going to start off with why I haven’t been blogging lately – I keep giving the same reason! Let’s talk something else.

I have lately been fascinated by the power of twitter but have always wondered how/when they are going to generate revenues . As your granddad might define, a tweet *originally* was supposed to mean a high pitch sound of a bird. But now it’s taken a whole new meaning with words like microblogging, social networking associated with it, so much so that there is a website dedicated to it’s definition – http://www.definetwitter.com/ !

But then after I joined, I realize that twitter is much more than a social-networking site! It acts as a real time search engine and provides information that sometimes even Google can’t! You knew that the entire world was cribbing when GMail contacts went down recently.
I also think it’s the best platform for publicizing your product/event/short-notices, etc. where people get updated immediately!. Alright, everything is fine, but what is it in for me? – I will tell you 2 short stories about 2 famous bloggers whom I met a while ago. I have been following their blogs since then….

1st short story – Kiruba and his Kleared Trip
Kiruba is a famous blogger and a tweeter who has close to 30K+ people following his tweets! He had booked his tickets to attend a conference at Kuala Lumpur using ClearTrip.com. All set, he and his wife reached the airport and they were in for a big surprise, shock I should say! The airport authorities declared his ticket VOID! 12 minutes to go and his *booked* ticket was declared void, wtf?!

In what would typically happen only in Tamil cinema, luckily happened to Mr. Kiruba also. He found a travel agency outside and booked another ticket for the same flight and phew, what a rush it should have been to the flight! Now, how do you vent your anger? Simple, just send a tweet, and that’s all he did which immediately went to his 30K+ followers, some of whom re-tweeted and you know the news has become big, don’t know if it was the trending topic of the day

The ClearTrip guys immediately confirmed their return tickets and guess what, they promoted the tickets to Business Class! Wooohooo! To read the full story, click here

2nd short story – Sidin and his Jungle safari – madethemrip.com
Sidin, an NIT-Trichy, IIM-A alumni works as an editor for livemint journal. On a peak holiday season, somehow makemytrip.com[MMT] had managed to book rooms for him and his wife at a resort in Corbett – yes the jungle . Once they arrived at the resort in a relaxed mood, they too, were in for a big surprise – apparently MMT did not confirm with the resort authorities and there was no room available! OMG!

How do you vent your anger? Simple, he sent out a tweet saying “Thank you MakeMyTrip. I am at my hotel in Corbett and they don’t have a room. Never did. Sorry, but I am taking this very personally indeed.” – exactly 140 chars! . Within 10 minutes he received a call from MMT staff who reassured him that everything would be fine and taken care of!

As promised, MMT booked rooms at another nearby resort. As they sat back watching a movie, a knock at the door – the resort staffer with a wine bottle, courtesy MMT! Wooow! You can read the full story here

Well, as you may have noticed, technology is making great advances. Gone are the days of calling up customer service, posting a comment,e-mailing them, etc.. Now, all it takes is just a tweet!

Next time, you are going for a vacation with your girlfriend/wife, make sure you have enough people following your tweets . And yeah, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/rvivek. Don’t ask where I am heading to