Loving new realtime for hating you big time

This week I took my first forays into Twitter’s realtime search function. Just lob in a search term and see what the world (or at least those on Twitter) have to say about the subject. Fascinating. As a marketer, I’m drooling at the prospect of how this could develop in the future – and at the impact it could have on companies and consumers.

Realtime search lets you tap into the collective consciousness and see what is being said about pretty much any subject you choose. Allied to Twitter’s organisational capabilities, this could become a very powerful tool both for marketers and consumers.

This morning, with a bee in my bonnet about Ticketmaster, the online ticketing agency, I released my first tweet of the day – a grumpy complaint about their ludicrous charges. While I would probably have overcome my initial reaction to the £65 a ticket pricing for Steely Dan’s visit to the Edinburgh Playhouse, I’m not giving Ticketmaster £7.50 per ticket as an additional fee. Neither am I willing to pay £3.50 to have my ‘tickets’ emailed to me so that I can print them off myself.

Am I alone in feeling like this? A quick look at what they’re saying in the Twitterverse confirms that I am not. Ticketmaster tweets fall into two categories: the ‘I got my tickets on Ticketmaster’ type and the ‘I hate Ticketmaster’ variety.  And that’s pretty much it. No surprises to discover that Ryanair (where it may soon cost a quid to go to the loo) is pretty much the same.

The thing that unites them both in Twitter’s realtime search engine is genuine customer rage. So much rage, in fact, that people feel the need to tell others. While neither may care at the moment (Ticketmaster has a virtual monopoly and Ryanair seems to have almost institutionalised rudeness) the tools from the emerging social media will increasingly give consumers the ability to organise and channel their annoyance to good effect.

It isn’t just me trying to take on the big company on my own anymore. It’s all of us and we’re coming to get you.