The Impact of Social Media

[rogman]

Killington, and other resorts have obviously embraced Facebook and Twitter. The most up to date information about the mountain is the official twitter feed (KillingtonMtn), but other information can be gleaned from posts by Tom Horrocks, Chris Nyberg, Jeff Temple and even John Cumming. The Killington Facebook page is also a source of up to date information, and occasionally the blog. It is a lot sources to follow. By comparison, the Website itself is glacial. It hasn't really changed since it was unveiled a month ago, and still has the same "The Beast..." campaign as its main theme. I'm not convinced this sea change is in either the customer's or Killington's best interest.

For the customer, while Twitter and FB provide the appearance of an inside look at the operations of a company, in fact it is more along the lines of a chat room in that those that publish deliberately or inadvertently, adopt a persona. However the very nature of the media forces the poster into short sound bites, and too often they end up simply appearing vacuous. The absence of emoticons, makes the problem worse. Everything ends up sounding like "blah blah blah, isn't this swell!". It's hard to read anyone's collection of tweets without walking away feeling like the author is channeling Forrest Gump. It is the nature of the medium. Life can't be summarized in 140 characters.

However, while it may provide a company the opportunity to talk directly to their customers (but only up to 5000 in the case of FB), the converse is also true, and therein lies the rub. Dissatisfied or disgruntled customers can post on their wall or via tweets suddenly corrupting the intended message. There are even opportunities for abuse, by posting on a competitors FB page. (There are those that would suggest that Okemo is already pursuing this sort of mischief on the KZone site.) Regardless, when a company loses control of its message, it is letting the genie out of the bottle, since there's no knowing what empowered customers will do.

[JerseyGuy]

Sorry -- stopped reading after 140 characters...

Killington, and other resorts have obviously embraced Facebook and Twitter. The most up to date information about the mountain is the offici

... which ironically seems to turn your cautionary post into a laudatory one!

Gee, maybe there should be a 140-character limit on KZone?

[tt431]

Sorry -- stopped reading after 140 characters...

Killington, and other resorts have obviously embraced Facebook and Twitter. The most up to date information about the mountain is the offici

... which ironically seems to turn your cautionary post into a laudatory one!

Gee, maybe there should be a 140 limit on KZone?

Gee, if that happens you are going to lose your signature. Are you sure about the 140-character limit?

[Mister Moose]

I haven't facebooked or twittered. K-zone sucks enough of my time. It does seem odd that a company, any company, would adopt an advertising/communication vehicle that requires you to hunt down and read several places to get the whole message. I would think that long term a single source vehicle would be far better, like um, a website? I know, how about a dedicated phone line, with a real voice on the end that delivers a message with current information on the conditions and resort? We could call it a "Snow Phone".

[JerseyGuy]

Sorry -- stopped reading after 140 characters...

Killington, and other resorts have obviously embraced Facebook and Twitter. The most up to date information about the mountain is the offici

... which ironically seems to turn your cautionary post into a laudatory one!

Gee, maybe there should be a 140 limit on KZone?

Gee, if that happens you are going to lose your signature. Are you sure about the 140-character limit?

Duly noted. Suggestion withdrawn!

[laseranimal]

^

the problem with the snow phone is that it doesn't update until 7/8 am, which means its completely useless to me if I leave my house at 6 am to start driving to the hill. Same goes for the website, by the time the info about the new snow gets loaded up the lifts are already spinning and its probably tracked out. Furthermore, running the website on my phone sucks, if I'm making a Pow Day run I don't care about kids programs, I don't care about lodging, I don't care about the Beast marketing campaign and the pretty photos of people skiing. I want weather and lift updates PRONTO and I don't want to waste bandwith waiting for all the other crap to load up

With twitter, its a much different situation I've got FIS Weather dashboard giving me up to the second updates based on what they're hearing from all the crazies based all over the Northeast. I've got a feed giving me the weather updates from the greater Rutland/Burlington areas. I've got info from Chris, Tom, and Jeff about what's likely to be open. I know what Magic's planning on doing, and I can grab the feed from Jay that they've seen 2x the snow that everyone else has.

If something goes down, like a power outage or wind hold at Mountain X, I can adjust my plans accordingly. NONE of this info is going to make either the web page or the snow phone before it hits twitter.


And honestly you really don't need more then 140 characters:

"12-24" of new snow at K, K-1 spins at 7:30, everything else at 8, Possible DF opening late morning/early afternoon"


works for me

[Mister Moose]

^

the problem with the snow phone is that it doesn't update until 7/8 am, which means its completely useless to me if I leave my house at 6 am to start driving to the hill. Same goes for the website, by the time the info about the new snow gets loaded up the lifts are already spinning and its probably tracked out.

With twitter, its a much different situation I've got FIS Weather dashboard giving me up to the second updates based on what they're hearing from all the crazies based all over the Northeast. I've got a feed giving me the weather updates from the greater Rutland/Burlington area. I've got info from Chris, Tom, and Jeff about what's likely to be open. I know what Magic's planning on doing, and I can grab the feed from Jay that they've seen 2x the snow that everyone else has.

If something goes down, like a power outage or wind hold at Mountain X, I can adjust my plans accordingly. NONE of this info is going to make either the web page or the snow phone before it hits twitter.

And honestly you really don't need more then 140 characters:

"12-24" of new snow at K, K-1 spins at 7:30, everything else at 8, Possible DF opening late morning/early afternoon"


works for me

Agree 100%. I was talking about the general public, and their willingness to track down multiple sources for information on a standard weekend trip to Vermont. I'm sorry to break it to you Laser, but you are not the general public.

[laseranimal]

Agree 100%. I was talking about the general public, and their willingness to track down multiple sources for information on a standard weekend trip to Vermont. I'm sorry to break it to you Laser, but you are not the general public.

REALLY?, and all this time I thought everybody else was crazy


From a general public perspective I think most people are far more interested in what their friends are saying via twitter/facebook/websites with regards to conditions, then what the official website says. There are a ton of travel websites(liftopia, orbitz, priceline) that are far more likely to give up good deals then the main page of K's website. And if you want the inside line, I think google-ing Killington site:www.epicski.com or site:www.killingtonzone.com is going to give you WAY more info then the K web page ever could.

[rogman]

There are skiers/boarders that don't even have email, and consider it an achievement when they surf the WWW. The great unwashed masses don't look beyond the WWW. At the owners meeting, at best a dozen or so hands went up when Nyberg asked about people the number of people who use Twitter. This is their core constituency, and what is now their primary means of communication, isn't reaching them. It doesn't pay to be too far ahead of your customer base. Their WWW site, which is still their primary means of communication whether they like it or not, has tumbleweeds blowing through it.

[Dwight]

Their WWW site, which is still their primary means of communication whether they like it or not, has tumbleweeds blowing through it.

I'm not sure why you believe that their site is stagnant? Other than snow, lift, trail info, photos and videos, what should be changing on a daily basis on a ski resort website?
Sure new deals come out etc.. but we're talking weekly at best. If the mountain is closed what do they really need to be updating?

Also, per previous emails I think some of the times that things are updated were off by a bit. (May have changed since I was there), but speaking on behalf of Copper our site is updated at 5:15, the snow phone at 5:30 and the snow emails go out at 5:45. Not to mention posting a quick conditions hit to facebook and twitter. Killington's times used to be pretty much on par with that. I'd love to hear your ideas on how we could better get the snow info to you (*not sarcasm). Copper does also have a mobile site m.coppercolorado.com and a facebook snow report app.

[Big Bob]

I haven't facebooked or twittered. K-zone sucks enough of my time. It does seem odd that a company, any company, would adopt an advertising/communication vehicle that requires you to hunt down and read several places to get the whole message. I would think that long term a single source vehicle would be far better, like um, a website? I know, how about a dedicated phone line, with a real voice on the end that delivers a message with current information on the conditions and resort? We could call it a "Snow Phone".

MM, you are showing your age!!! I even joined Twitter, if a 50 year old can do it, a 50+ year old can do it, and it is just as addicting as this place! It is a good source of up to the minute info and you can follow as many resorts as you want on one page. It does have some benefits.

[Geoff]

And honestly you really don't need more then 140 characters:

"12-24" of new snow at K, K-1 spins at 7:30, everything else at 8, Possible DF opening late morning/early afternoon"

I didn't realize that Twitter was a Fantasy site.

[Geoff]

Their WWW site, which is still their primary means of communication whether they like it or not, has tumbleweeds blowing through it.

I'm not sure why you believe that their site is stagnant? Other than snow, lift, trail info, photos and videos, what should be changing on a daily basis on a ski resort website?
Sure new deals come out etc.. but we're talking weekly at best. If the mountain is closed what do they really need to be updating?

Also, per previous emails I think some of the times that things are updated were off by a bit. (May have changed since I was there), but speaking on behalf of Copper our site is updated at 5:15, the snow phone at 5:30 and the snow emails go out at 5:45. Not to mention posting a quick conditions hit to facebook and twitter. Killington's times used to be pretty much on par with that. I'd love to hear your ideas on how we could better get the snow info to you (*not sarcasm). Copper does also have a mobile site m.coppercolorado.com and a facebook snow report app.

I think the point is that the real time information goes to Twitter instead of to the web site where it properly belongs. The information should be easily accessible both from a full featured browser on a PC and from display-limited mobile devices. I refuse to flood myself with twitter droppings. When the red flashy thing on my Blackberry goes off, I want it to have useful information, not that somebody just took a good dump or drank their first beer at happy hour.

[JohnAdam]

Their WWW site, which is still their primary means of communication whether they like it or not, has tumbleweeds blowing through it.

I'm not sure why you believe that their site is stagnant? Other than snow, lift, trail info, photos and videos, what should be changing on a daily basis on a ski resort website?
Sure new deals come out etc.. but we're talking weekly at best. If the mountain is closed what do they really need to be updating?

Also, per previous emails I think some of the times that things are updated were off by a bit. (May have changed since I was there), but speaking on behalf of Copper our site is updated at 5:15, the snow phone at 5:30 and the snow emails go out at 5:45. Not to mention posting a quick conditions hit to facebook and twitter. Killington's times used to be pretty much on par with that. I'd love to hear your ideas on how we could better get the snow info to you (*not sarcasm). Copper does also have a mobile site m.coppercolorado.com and a facebook snow report app.

Dwight,
Perhaps it would be helpful for them to post the date/time with the Conditions report. Sometimes it is hard to tell if the information has been updated that morning, or if it was from a prediction from the preceeding night.
BTW, compliments on the increased frequency of Condition updates. Much better than in 2008. Thanks K.

[chewbacca]

The K website is a very stagnant and boring website. It is stagnant like a bad painting. How about 10 webcams? They surely are not too expensive. No reason that it does not provide more current info in a user friendly way. Plenty of ways to do it and features to upgrade that Dwight you could even import the tweets and latest FB info in 2 seperate realtime windows that cycle and get updated often quickly. Pretty cool. Like trials, lifts, conditions, lifts on hold, weather, etc. And stamp the TIME and DAY on it. If you want to be the BEAST, act like the BEAST.

ps: Loose that new whimpy Killington font and get something BOLD.