Kathleen and I are taking a little trip to Miami and a cruise to the Bahamas. You can follow along on Twitter (@jerrybrito & @kathleenohearn) and on Flickr where I’m tagging trip photos with “0508“. Wish us well!

Twitter + meatspace

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Twitter is incredibly amazing and I will not relent in talking about it ad nauseam. Yesterday I was one of those caught in the American Airlines kerfuffle and treated to their classy service. I found myself bored at LAX’s Gate 44, which seems to be in an undisclosed location, because I can’t describe to you how to get there; I think I was blindfolded part of the way there. So to amuse myself I nudged everyone I knew on Twitter. I got back some neat replies from lots of folks who don’t Twitter often. The coolest one, though, I got a few minutes after I had landed.

It turns out my friend John, who lives in San Francisco and who I haven’t seen in a while, was in the air when I nudged and had just landed as well. “Just landed at IAD. Maybe I’ll run into @jerrybrito in the Star Wars-esque people mover,” he said. Holy crap! He didn’t even know where I was traveling, yet there he was. Sure enough, we met up a few minutes later at baggage claim. He had come in on another flight. Totally serendipitous and totally wonderful.

In other news, Flickr now does video.

Apr 10, 2008 | 2 Comments | Tags: , ,

I’m digging the idea of edited aggregation lately. Here is fabsearch.com, which compiles hotspots featured in a set of hip media outlets. “Think of us as your private secretary who reads glossy magazines, speaks with local trend setters, then reports valuable info to you.”

Why is Southwest leaving money on the table?

boarding-pass-a.pngSouthwest Airlines recently changed its famous seating policy by which I’ve always been fascinated. If you’re not familiar with it, what happens is that you are not assigned a seat when you purchase a ticket. When you check in at the airport (or online up to 24 hours before the flight) you are assigned a group: A, B, or C. At boarding time the groups are called in order and passengers seat themselves wherever they like. The change now coming into effect is simply that in addition to a group assignment, passengers will now also get a position within the group (i.e. A15, B32, etc.). Still no assigned seating, though.

The change is an improvement. What would happen before is that about an hour or more prior to departure, a line would start to form in front of the gate. Even if you had a group “A” ticket, you had an incentive to be the first in the group. The incentive was even stronger for “B” and “C” passengers because the difference between the first in B and the last might be having to sit in a middle seat or not. The new assigned line position will mean that people will now likely start to queue up about five minutes before departure, sparing us a waste of time.

Now, I think I understand why Southwest wants a no-assigned-seat policy. It creates an incentive for passengers to line-up in an orderly manner and board quickly (in order to get a good seat). As my colleague Drew pointed out to me, that is an airline’s dream. What I don’t understand is why Southwest leaves money on the table by refusing to sell to passengers the order of boarding. There’s clearly a market for this as websites abound that will charge you a fee to automatically check you in at the first possible moment (and therefore get you in the “A” group). If you have an idea why, let me know.

Oct 11, 2007 | Comment | Tags: , ,

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