Michael Dell wants to be your friend
- September 12, 2008
- Technology
- 2 Comments
Michael Dell cares about you. OK, maybe not. But he does care about his company’s online reputation, so much so that he’s going all “Web 2.0″ to try and fix it.
The company has been logging on, reaching out to potential customers, and trying – sometimes awkwardly – to listen to them. And it’s using social media to do so. That’s right, Web 2.0 isn’t just for college sophomores anymore. Apparently you can use it to patch up a $37 billion PC business too. …
It has a squad of 42 employees who spend their workdays engaging with the communities on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. What is this Team Web 2.0 learning? One important nugget: that potential customers spend 99% of their time on the web doing research and just 1% actually buying. So the company has tried to dial down the hard sell and become – or at least appear to become – more helpful.
In recognition of the 50th anniversary of the creation of ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Department of Defense agency that would give birth to what is now the Internet, Vanity Fair has attempted to compile an 
