<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Matt Schlicht, a UStreamer and avid Twitter user, advanced a proposed solution to the PR issues the Twitter-folks are currently facing - do a live townhall. The live townhall concept is something that Digg started after they narrowly avoided a top user revolt following the deployment of some new features that weren't recieved as well as they had hoped.\nThe obvious idea here is that Twitter and Digg are both services that are enormously popular amongst a particularly vocal subset of the tech user community.\u00A0 Any time either of these companies falters, even a little bit, because of the nature of their business those foibles are amplified far afield of the appropriate proportions (even if they are technically in the right, the negative press will still often outweigh the positive).\n\nThat's why the townhall is such a great method to utilize. It's free but for a little bit of your company's time, and it allows you to connect with your users in a meaningful way, utilizing all aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication. It puts your company out in front of the potential troublespots, acts as a megaphone for not just the rough patches but the bright spots that you'd actually want to highlight. Most of all, it offers a means for explaining in depth all the intricacies of what's going on behind the scenes that make us scratch our heads and go \"Why is Twitter doing that?\"\nMatt has offered UStream as the platform of choice to broadcast this townhall, and I'd like to join in on his petition and offer Mashable as the official (or even unofficial) home of the liveblog coverage, much like what we do for Digg's townhalls. We understand that managing a chatroom with that many interested users can be unruly, but when the hordes of Digg fans came for their townhall, we were able to provide a stable and slightly moderated communications arena for them to exist in for the duration.\nSo Twitter - my suggestion is you accept Matt's proposal. He's told me that he's standing by, and that UStream will put their full efforts into supporting this endeavor and making it an effortless and effective means of communicating with your users on a mass scale."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/05/30/twitter-townhall/>