Gift Card And A Smiley

Last week I gave you my opinion about Facebook and got some really great comments, looking at the social networking sites I see there are different uses for each one, I really only touched onto one, so now lets look at this again from a different angle.

Our Friend Stephen from The Chubby Chatterbox made a point in his comment that got me to thinking, he pointed out “Blog if you have something to say once or twice a week, Facebook if you have something to say every day, and tweet if you have something to say every hour”, just how would the exact same scenario look from the different formats.

To use an actual experience I had, lets look at it from all three formats, I had a telephone that we bought from Wally World, it worked great for a while then stopped, I had to return it for another. Now that the story is set up, lets view the differences.

Twitter: four tweets one hour apart.
Going to Wal-Mart to exchange a broken phone:

Standing in line at Customer service:

Leaving with my new phone, hope this one works:

The Greeter was in a bad mood, no sticker from him:

Facebook: two status updates twenty-four hour apart.
Status Update: (Picture of me with the door greeter inserted here) Exchanging a phone at Wal-Mart.

Status update: installed the phone I returned yesterday, the phone is good but that trip was not fun.

Jimmy’s Opinion Blog:
Last Christmas we bought a new phone for the house, we actually needed one that would ring loud enough so we could hear it over the TV or when we were outside, the old one had gotten to the point that you couldn’t hear the ring even if you had it up to your ear, it was only about ten years old, so I really don’t see why it would have stopped ringing loudly, Cindy tells me the older I get the louder I get, why wouldn’t this be the same for a phone.

The new phone was great, the silly thing even talks to you while it’s ringing, when Cindy calls in it proudly says “Cindy”, when her sister calls it proudly says “Cristy” when a private caller rings in, it stutters and says something like “Coll-er Pre-e-vet”, I suppose you cant have everything.

As I said before it worked great for a while then all of a sudden it quit talking altogether, then it stopped ringing in, you could still call out but no calls came in, Cindy was not having this so here I am packing this thing back into the box and making a return trip to Wally World.

Walking up to the door I notice our usual Door greeter Don was not there, Don had a way with words, he was one of those greeters I have joked about in the past that glares at you while mumbling “Welcome to Wal-Mart, here’s your damned basket”, instead I ran into a much younger man with a temperament exactly opposite of Dons.

“Welcome to Wal-Mart, can I help you” as he stuck a smiley face sticker on my shirt pocket, I told him I wanted to return the phone, he promptly scanned the phone, placed a return sticker on it, and directed me toward customer service.

I mentioned that it looked like I was going to be here a while if I went to customer service, rather than going in and picking up another phone first, he smiled and said “No sir, just go on over to customer service because they are so fast today you won’t even know you were here”

He was a friendly young man and sad to say I have never seen him again, wonder if he was too friendly for Wally World? He was correct about customer service though, I was right up to the counter and had a gift card for the amount of the phone in my hand before I knew what had happened.

I walked back to electronics/photo/phones or whatever they call that area and found my replacement right away, rather than going back up front to pay I stepped up to the register there and waited for the guy in the white coat, he was looking over pictures he had printed and dropped on the floor, while cussing under his breath about not wanting to reprint anything, it appeared to me one of those making a mountain out of a mole hill situations.

He finally came over to ring up my purchase, and promptly asked if I wanted to apply for a Wally World Credit Card, I declined the offer and handed him the gift card, he mumbled I see you already have one, I told him it was actually a gift card, he just gave me a blank stare and scanned the phone.

Ringing up the phone to the price of $59.95 he slid the card and just froze in place, he looked at me and said you only have $59.95 on this card, how did you do that, I told him I had just returned the same phone and was buying a replacement, he said “No really, how did you do this” I repeated myself and he said, I really don’t understand what you are trying to pull here, handed me the phone and began punching buttons on his register.

Walking quickly out of the store I ran right into Don the Door Greeter who wanted to see my receipt, he looked it over and glanced into the bag at the phone, shook his head and said “China, got yourself a Chinese phone” I replied Yes Sir, had to bring one back for this one, he glared at me and said “I’m serious that one is made in China, if you were smart you would have got one made in America”

I made my way to the car understanding why to this day I still hate going to Wally World, The phone is still working in spite of being made in China, and if it decides to stop working, Cindy will be making the exchange, I wonder if Don has any smiley face stickers?

There is my take on all three, which do you prefer? Is tweeting or face booking any faster than blogging? Look at it this way, with the first one you got your information in four installments that took a total of three hours, the second came in two installments that took twenty four hours, and how long did it take you to actually read this blog post, even if you are a slow reader it was way less than three hours.

See there you go, for your readers they get a huge amount of information in one post, so my summary of all three is that blogging has faster and more quality information than any social networking site out there, that’s kind of like getting a gift card and a smiley just for showing up.