If you still don’t know about the story, here’s a quick flashback.

Kevin Smith is an American Film Producer, writer, comedian and podcaster. (Wiki link)
He’s got a pretty good number of people following, 1,650,657 to be precise on Twitter.

The other day, Kevin boarded a South West Air flight and was “ejected out” (in Kevin’s words) for being “fat” and too risky for a flight. ( If you didn’t know SouthWest is an Airline service that is “very social” ! ). They insisted that he buy an additional seat for which they offered a $100 voucher as well.

While being done so, he tweets to his 1 million followers that SouthWest Airlines deed was unfair and they had no rights to do so as he was already boarded.

This erupted a Twitter storm where people started to reply @SouthWestAir in agitation. @KevinSmith continue his complaints and frustrations via his Twitter audience.

@SouthWestAir replies to Kevin’s tweets promising him a solution, and tries calling him, in fact all they can do to save their image. ( Not very familiar a thing for Airline companies )

SouthWest comes out with apologies on their official blog explaining the situation, stating their company policies (what they say are industry norms).

Kevin calls the apology stupid and un-acceptable via his tweets. Also challenges @SouthwestAir to come on TV with the same seats, so he can show the world that he actually fit in them, contrary to what they claim to have happened.

So what does it all look like ? A new Social Media case study right ? What are lessons you can learn from it?

The Good lessons from the story.

• Air Line companies do listen, the ones like @SouthWestAir particularly. And this time they are more personal than ever before with social media.
• Its hugely likely that if you’re on social media, your complaint will be heard and acted up on.
• Being on social media isn’t easy for companies/brands, they need to be extra vigilant if they want to get things right.
• Brands need to figure out if they are really ready for “conversations”, if they aren’t sure,  better back off.

The Bad lessons from the story.

• Having a huge number of followers on Twitter helps.  (Not possible for everyone.)
• Not all the time does companies respond positively. It could be for the bad.
• Individuals can possibly get manipulative for their own benefits sometimes, on social media, because there is no regulatory body here. You believe what you hear.
• The noise to signal ratio is huge sometimes, and you have to make your own judgement.
• If you’re on social media, don’t be corporate, be human (kevin’s words)

Oh, and by the way, Kevin’s new movie Cop Out is releasing in about two weeks.

Has this got anything to do with the “Social Media War?” Go figure !