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GM aborts vehicle after listening to your tweets
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If you’ve been following my column, you’ve heard me lament that some major players in the auto industry aren’t giving Twitter the love it probably deserves. I thought Twitter should have been a concern because these players were so dependent on success among the early adopter crowd that’s so prevalent on the microblogging application (Note: They’ve since started back up (sort of)…perhaps reading my article?) What I didn’t touch on in that article was how useful Twitter can be for an automaker even if they don’t Tweet.
Guaging consumer perception and gathering feedback on a product, service or brand has become one of the key uses for Twitter. GM recently showed just how powerful this new medium can be for doing just that when they announced that they’d be scrapping plans for their new Saturn Vue-based Buick hybrid crossover. According to GM spokesman Jim Hopson they decided to kill it because of “the overwhelmingly negative response to this vehicle.” While he didn’t say it outright, the folks over at Jalopnik confirmed that the negative response was in fact from Twitter tweets!
Aside from the fact that they were on the road to producing a total failure of a product, this is mostly good news for GM. It means that they’re really looking to make moves that please their public. Using Twitter and other social media tools, GM is giving consumers the opportunity to steer their product development efforts and in the process making sure that their efforts are met with success down the road. Fortunately for us as consumers, automakers are coming to realize that Twitter, with its real-time search ability, is as much of a tool for listening as it is for talking.
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