This is a guest post by DebInDenver, who writes her own nifty blog called I Can’t Keep Up…social media for busy people.

New media companies are valuing the feedback they get from their users and showing it. Through recent experience with several new applications, I have been able to try out some new technology and experience customer service at the same level as, say, Nordstrom.

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Plurk

In addition to having a great blog that helps users, it’s obvious that the Plurk team listens to the chatter in the Plurk-world. Many of my colleagues have said they receive quick feedback when they contact the team. Plurk has a great blog keeping you up-to-date on maintenance and projects in the works. Additionally, if Plurk is going to be down for planned maintenance, they broadcast a message to all Plurkers letting them know the time and duration of an upcoming repair. One of my favorite Plurkers is Amix, their lead developer. How transparent is that, to follow along with an application’s developer, who lets the community know what’s going on as well as when he’s ordered a pizza.

Finally, if you’re going to give someone an error message, Plurk does it right with the A-Team.
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Flock

Winner of Webby and SXSW awards, Flock is a Social Media Browser.  It deftly combines your videos, photos and friends through integrating popular apps like YouTube, Flickr and Facebook (to name a few!) into your browser. But wait, there’s more- Flock also boast integrated e-mail, RSS reader and blog editor.

Flock team members are customer service pros. Jen Anderberg, Customer Support Lead, always responds to feedback personally and with a great sense of humor. I have worked with her to solve some technical problems and appreciate her commitment to that kind of service. Meanwhile, Evan Hamilton does community outreach – in the offline world- at Flock meet-ups. And he takes it one step further hosting Flock’s office hours on Twitter every Monday 11AM - 12PM PST.

Flowgram

Do you have that cool uncle who took you to do any sport you wanted?

Well, Flowgram aims to be that Uncle. And you get to add video, audio, images and live web sites into a slick package- with a voiceover from you

Flowgram is in it’s beta stage and I can tell you it’s going to be a hot property when it comes out. Their team is hard at work and while working on my own Flowgram (don’t worry you’ll get to see it on my site soon!) I sent them some feedback. Not only did I have a great e-mail correspondence with Tony Lopez, but he also set up a call with a screen share so we could go over some of my questions.

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We’ve talked a lot about how Plurk builds community and I think we can see here that the successful launch of a new application really relies on doing the same. These smart companies are recognizing that in a world well users rule, their success depends on going straight to the source.

I’m DebInDenver. Thanks for hosting me KDFrawg!