Some trends in new media reach great heights of popularity while others vanish.  While it isn’t clear in every case what differentiates a future IPO-worthy juggernaut from a worthless abandoned domain name,  success stories tend to come from those ideas that are widely embraced by business.  Suggest that your interweb gewgaw makes or saves money in some way, and its prospects brighten.  Prove it, and they brighten even further.

This was the history of the rise of Twitter.  In 2008, the microblogging service didn’t have to struggle much to explain itself, as its proponents could point to a series of corporate early adopters who had leveraged the medium.  Of these, at least to internet pundits, cable TV operator Comcast was the most remarkable.  The audacity of the hated, legendarily customer-hostile company making a digital whipping boy available for damage control one pissed-off customer tweet at a time made lots of news and generated lots of notoriety for both Twitter and Comcast.   PR flacks, net pundits and social media consultants agreed: nothing could go wrong with this new synergy.

To be fair, none of them were thinking of Ozzie Guillen, Comcast customer/avid Twitterer.  As a fellow victim, repeatedly burned by Comcast’s classically laissez-faire approach to showing up and doing stuff, it is with a certain joy that I present the skipper’s afternoon tweets as reported by Sun-Times blogger Kyle Koster:

Ozzie Guillen’s White Sox may have used the comforts of home to snap a four-game losing streak with a victory over the Tampa Bay Rays last night, but he’s having a bit of a rough day back at his own home.

It seems Comcast has drawn the ire of the outspoken manager.

“Waiting for comcast people to show up in my house godddddd please take a little longer is not free,” he tweeted.

Guillen was apparently led to believe the cable company would be there at 8 a.m. As of around noon, he was stil waiting.

“Its amazing to me how u have to wait for cable. As if I was getting it for free. 8 am they said wow,” another tweet reads.

“Comcast is now saying they came to my house. They suck. Its not free they r not the only cable company,” he continued.

It just goes to show it doesn’t matter who you are. Between 8 and noon doesn’t always mean between 8 and noon, World Series ring or not.