Dan @ Avista: Why I Joined HBO

I’ll be on the panel discussion tomorrow, “Social Networking Forum in the U!” and wanted to share some thoughts on why I, and Avista find value in social media. For the past few months I’ve gotten a lot of questions from members of the community (and fellow utilities across the country) about why Avista decided to jump into social media (blog, discussion forums, video, twitter). The truth is we’d been pushing for its use since early 2008. We talked about blogging and participating on discussion forums. We dabbled in the easy stuff for about a year and a half. The beauty of most social media tools is that you need very little initial capital investment to get started. YouTube, flickr, twitter, blogger – it’s all free. That’s where we started too. Then last winter hit us with a thud/ Dan @ Avista . More here .

Question: Do you think Dan @ Avista helped or hurt his company by jumping on Huckleberries Online this winter — and afterwards — to explain Avista’s side of controversial stories. Should other major companies do so, too?