Buffer and its Founder/CEO Joel Gascoigne today referred disgruntled customers to their main competitor, Hootsuite. This post discusses this display of “lethal generosity.” For those who don’t know, Buffer is a social media productivity tool allowing users to stock up or fill up a buffer of content to share that will then be disseminated over time on various social media platforms you connect to their service. This way, one’s followers will not be overwhelmed by a number of updates at once followed by complete silence. I have personally found the service useful even if I have not consistently filled up my buffer as of late. Today, I was impressed by the service nonetheless. I got an email from the founder “Joel from Buffer” with an alert about a problem:
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“Give and Take” talk by Adam Grant
Glad I made it to Cal Tech where the Skeptics Society led by Michael Shermer hosted Adam Grant for a talk on his book “Give and Take.” In his presentation, Adam offered persuasive examples of how people who are indiscriminately helpful to basically anyone who asks can get ahead by accumulating a wider network over time and that what goes around comes around.
He claims that Mark Granovetter‘s theory of the strength of weak ties still holds true in that our strong ties often do not add significant news as they are exposed to the same sources and networks as we are ourselves whereas a weak tie moves in circles yet unfamiliar with us where new opportunities can emerge. [Read more…]