Here’s a video of their demo:

I give them kudos for addressing these questions publicly and for permitting transparency into their operations and technical challenges. As I see it, however, they’re still not out of the woods yet, even if I (and most of the Twittersphere) am pulling for them in a big way.

Over the past few days I’ve been working on getting our Joby version of the Help Center up and running, and I’m pleased to show off our installation to the world. I can’t say enough about the folks over at Get Satisfaction - especially Lane, Thor and Scott (their lead developer), who have been extremely helpful the entire time. Those guys really do know customer service.

In case you’re interested, here’s the full press release, which includes a little quote from me:

Starting today, companies on the Get Satisfaction support network can respond directly to posts in the public Twitter stream, and incorporate those conversations into their own Web sites. Overheard bridges the public Twitter stream into Get Satisfaction’s support network. Help Center seamlessly integrates Get Satisfaction’s support network into the company’s own Web site.

With Overheard, companies can support customer conversations across the Web. Overheard lists out recent Twitter posts (”tweets”) related to a company and allows any user – employee or customer – to convert a selected tweet into a rich, searchable Get Satisfaction topic. When someone replies to a tweet via Overheard, Get Satisfaction sends a public reply to that person to let them know a discussion was started in response to their issue.

Comcast bridges Twitter to its Get Satisfaction community in order to not only discover customers outside of their traditional systems, but also respond to them:

“What a great way to work with other social media websites! Overheard is a great way for a company to stay connected to their customers on the web.” – Frank Eliason, Comcast Corporation

Yahoo!’s MyBlogLog uses Help Center ( http://getsatisfaction.com/for_companies/help_center ) to give customers a consistent, branded customer service experience with network benefits:

“We try to reach our customers wherever they are. Our bloggers speak to us through their own blogs, Twitter, and many other channels. We want to bring all of these conversations into MyBlogLog so that all members can benefit from the discussion. We’re excited about Overheard and Help Center because these services enable us not only to respond to our customers in a uniform and focused manner, but also to connect via the channels that our customers are already using.” – Ian Kennedy, Product Manager at MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! company.

Joby (maker of the GorillaPod) was also quick to leverage Help Center’s branding advantage:

“We like using Get Satisfaction, and jumped at the opportunity to use the Help Center at Joby.com. I’m a big fan of anything that makes my life easier, and now I can give customers quick answers while keeping them on our site. As an added benefit, the branding is our own and we can provide a consistent Joby experience.” – Peter Berg, Joby.

Help Center is an open source help application, written in PHP and powered by Get Satisfaction Web Services. This open source approach enabled MyBlogLog to embed Get Satisfaction’s customer service engine within its own Web site for a seamless customer service experience:

“MyBlogLog took advantage of Help Center’s open source code because it gave us more control. It was easy for our developer to use the Get Satisfaction API to match our own look and feel, and we had greater flexibility to use the Get Satisfaction customer service engine to meet our needs.” – Ian Kennedy, Product Manager at MyBlogLog, a Yahoo! company.

Help Center has a customizable look and feel, is extensible into internal customer relationship management applications, and supports quick localization. Though Help Center was just released privately this week, the company was pleased to discover that one open source developer has already delivered German translation.

Links to Early Overheard Adopters:

•    http://getsatisfaction.com/comcast/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/oreilly/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/seesmic/overheard
•    http://getsatisfaction.com/mybloglog/overheard

Links to Early Help Center Adopters:

•    http://www.mybloglog.com/gs/
•    http://joby.com/support/
•    http://help.skitch.com/

About Get Satisfaction:

Get Satisfaction ( http://www.getsatisfaction.com ) is a Web-based support network that delivers customer service from the outside in. Constructive, customer-focused communities for companies and products emerge within this ‘Switzerland’ for company-customer engagement. The company is privately held and institutional investors include First Round Capital, O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures, and SoftTechVC.

This can’t be good for the almighty Jobs.

So what could be better than something which marries the two? In an attempt to do just that I downloaded Twitterberry the other day to test it as a client on my Blackberry.

Unfortunately, I found it to be a great concept but poorly executed. It contrasts starkly with the fluid, effortless UI of the Blackberry. My chief complaint is that it’s too difficult to see updates from your friends when using Twitterberry. The screen defaults to an input screen where you can enter tweets, but if you want to see what anyone else is up to, you have to explicitly select the “Friend Timeline” window via the menu button. Doing so not only takes you away from the ability to update, but the friend timeline reloads itself EVERY time you look at it – it doesn’t cache tweets.

Another problem is the fact that you don’t have access to the full menu of actions when you’re looking at any screen other than the input section. So when you’re checking out your replies or your friends’ tweets, the menu button is dumbed down. To do anything useful, you first have to back out of the screen you’re looking at, return to the input screen, and then select whatever action you want. That’s an extra step which gets super annoying if you hope to use Twitterberry with any sort of frequency.

After about 5 hours of having Twitterberry installed, I uninstalled it an returned to using Google Talk for the Blackberry as my mobile Twitter client. It’s super simple, but it’s still more pleasant to use than Twitterberry.

Twitterberry definitely still has potential, but they really need to work on the user interface. For starters, try putting the friend feed and an input field on the same screen. That would make a world of difference.

For all you party animals out there, here’s a quick list of the Web 2.0 parties going on this week. Compiled with some help. You can also find more info on the whole week’s schedule (both parties and expo stuff).

Monday, April 21

What: Pownce Brunch
Where: Dottie’s True Blue (522 Jones St)
When: Monday, April 21, 11:00AM -
Info: http://pownce.com/DigitalKNK/notes/1817275/

What: Pre-Web 2.0 meet-up with Flickr, Moo
Where: Kate O’Brien’s (579 Howard St)
When: Monday, April 21, 5:00PM - 8:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/469348

What: The Finns Are Coming to Web 2.0 Expo!
Where: Foreign Cinema (2534 Mission St)
When: Monday, April 21, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/491643/ (RSVP)

What: Social Media Club - San Francisco
Where: Adobe (601 Townsend at 7th St)
When: Monday, April 21, 6:30PM - 8:30PM
Info: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/110484462

What: Web Monday Silicon Valley
Where: Citizen Space (425 2nd St)
When: Monday, April 21, 6:30PM - 9:30PM
Info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7959317099

What: Love 2.0
Where: Harlot (46 Minna St)
When: Monday, April 21, 8:00PM - 11:00PM
Info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=11322066771

Tuesday, April 22

What: British beer tasting & European networking
Where: Hiller Aviation Museum (San Carlos Airport)
When: Tuesday, April 22, 5:30PM - 8:00PM
Info: http://crossingtheocean.net/seeda/hiller_event.html

What: GAB and Blogtropolis launch party
Where: Gray Area Gallery (1515 Folsom St)
When: Tuesday, April 22, 6:00PM - 11:00PM
Info: http://www.grayareagallery.org/

What: Official Digg Meet-up
Where: Mighty (119 Utah St)
When: Tuesday, April 22, 6:30PM - 11:30PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/471398/

What: Ignite Web 2.0 Expo SF II
Where: DNA Lounge (375 11th St)
When: Tuesday, April 22, 7:00PM-
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/467652/

Wednesday, April 23

What: Web2Open Takeout Dinner
Where: Yerba Buena Gardens (4th/Mission)
When: Wednesday, April 23, 6:00PM-
Info: http://www.eu.socialtext.net/web2open/index.cgi?schedule

What: Photobucket Developer Party
Where: Roe Bar & Lounge (651 Howard St)
When: Wednesday, April 23, 6:00PM - 9:00PM
Info: http://mashable.com/2008/04/16/photobucket-developer-party-tickets/

What: Evolve - Chi.mp and Mashable’s Web 2.0 After Party
Where: Mighty (119 Utah St)
When: Wednesday, April 23, 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/467885/

What: The Big Open Y! Party
Where: Yahoo! Brickhouse (500 3rd St)
When: Wednesday, April 23, 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/469035/

What: South Park Crawl
Where: South Park (Brannan / Bryant / 3rd / 2nd St)
When: Wednesday, April 23, 7:00PM - 10:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454850/
Leverage Software: www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=23295987864
Six Apart: http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/connecting-with.html

What: Web2Open
Where: Moscone West
When: Wednesday, April 23, 8:00PM - 11:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/467423/

Thursday, April 24

SpringMix Party
Where: Ambassador
When: 6:30pm till the sun comes up
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=16723702463

What: Booth Crawl
Where: Moscone West
When: Thursday, April 24, 4:30PM - 6:00PM
Info: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/schedule/detail/3484

What: Amazon.com Networking Party
Where: Jillian’s @ Metreon (101 4th St)
When: Thursday, April 24, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Info: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=6972960853&topic=4431

What: After Hours Event
Where: Marriott (55 4th St)
When: Thursday, April 24, 6:00PM - 12:00AM
Info: http://en.oreilly.com/webexsf2008/public/schedule/detail/4238

What: Web2Open
Where: Moscone West
When: Thursday, April 24, 8:00PM - 11:00PM
Info: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/467423/

What: Web Mission 2008
Where: Redwood Room at Clift Hotel (495 Geary St)
When: Thursday, April 24, 9:00PM -
Info: http://www.webmission08.com/agenda.html

1. Mullets are still very much in style among Eastern Europeans.
2. Europeans still like Americans, even if they don’t understand or like our government. They especially like Americans who hate George Bush.
3. At most hotels parking is relatively cheap, but Internet connections are ridiculously expensive.
4. Swedish expats are kind of like the mafia - they all know each other, stick together, and help each other out.
5. It pays to make friends with Swedes.
6. Parisians are not as horribly unfriendly as I remembered (or feared).
7. It’s hard to get less than 100 CHF bills out of an ATM in Geneva. For example, withdrawing 400 CHF gets you two 100 CHF and one 200 CHF bill.
8. When you withdraw 100 CHF in Geneva and select the “mixed bills” option, it spits out two 50 CHF bills.
9. The French and the Germans are pretty much total opposites. A “half glass” in German in a half liter. In France it’s half of a half liter (0.25 L). Germans pronounce every letter in their words. French pronounce maybe 1/3 of them. The rest are silent.
10. Champagne + beer + white wine + red wine + cognac + limoncello = invincibility.

I’m working out of our European office this week after attending CeBIT in Hannover last week. The tradeshow was huge, with over 500,000 people attending. And although it was a lot of work, we got some great leads, maintained our existing business relationships, and had a lot of fun in the process.

Now I’m sitting in our Geneva office, with a beautiful view of the Jura mountains and the top of the Jet d’Eau visible above the Geneva skyline.  I’m looking forward to a week of working with my European colleagues. Will post more as the week progresses.

If anyone will be in Vegas, drop me a line at peter [at] pberg.com.

I’ll try to post some updates from the field, so watch this space for more info!