As most of you probably know I produce a live internet talk show with Jonny Goldstein every Wednesday at 9pm. Jonny’s Partay, as anyone who has ever done live streaming knows, relies on a lot of different factors; your camera, audio, and pc are all your responsbility. You are however at the every whim of the internet gods when it comes to two things: your streaming service provider and your internet service provider. We’ve dealth with both – the real beast being the ISP. If Mogulus is down, which it has rarely been – there are always the old handy backups (i.e. Ustream, BlogTV, Operator11, etc.). On the flipside if Comcast is down – you have to change locations, find another way to get online, or FAIL. A huge thanks to Jill Foster and her man Sean for allowing us to use her place last week for the Frank Gruber/ Tech Cocktail episode of Jonny’s Partay. Which brings me to the purpose of the post…

Comcast Crashes
Jill Foster’s appearance on the Partay was compromised due to an uncertain internet connection that would only days later be pinpointed to an RF level issue after some investigation. With much frustration, having dealt with Comcast on the phone before, I made the dreaded call. For the sake of it, and after hearing many good things about his efforts from the likes of Michael Arrington of TechCrunch and Dave Winer, I made it a point to check out the touted @ComcastCares account on twitter.

Within an hour, Frank Eliason, the man behind the twitter account, had an answer for me. In the meantime, Comcast’s phone service personell had given me the old we can have someone out in a day or two in certain 5 hour windows. Frank, however, had managed to dig in, checked not only my box but cable boxes in my neighborhood and ascertained that it was in fact a broader issue.

With that – the issue was escalated and within 48 hours my Comcast connection was repaired along with those of my entire neighborhood.

Comcast Cares
I am one of many that have benefited from the seeming single-handed efforts of Frank at Comcast. A Google search for “@comcastcares twitter” reveals a number of links to now-believers-like-myself:
Marketing Nirvana, Conversation Agent, BKM Blog, A Wider Net, and Tech Crunch have all blogged similar success stories related to this unorthodox (but much appreciated) behavior from a company who in the past may not have had the best relationship with their customers.

So the questions remain – is Twitter valuable as a service agent for other companies? Is this an important step for companies like Comcast to take – is it a PR stunt – or is it simply the workings of one over-achieving-geek within the company that gives the company a better name and ends up convincing people like me that Comcast really does care? Regardless of the big picture and all the arguments of “how many people does the availability of this service on Twitter really affect.” One guy made a difference. Thanks Frank – now I’m a believer.

Update
In typical @Comcastcares fashion Frank responded to this post with the answer to my previous question.

Thanks again and best of luck to Comcast , your staff, and the many new channels and tools you’re using to improve Comcast’s image as well as your customers overall Comcast experience.