Flying High 81 Because the idea of open, genuine communications--even al- lowing complaints and mistakes to be viewed by the public--is such a foreign concept to many large, well established corporations, many companies both then and now make only a token effort at social com- munications. They carefully craft blogs or videos in much the same fashion as those of traditional media. They don't allow comments, or they edit them to such a strict degree as to prevent anything neg- ative from appearing. As you've already begun to see in the previous chapters, this attitude will no longer cut it in a digital world. And this is not the route innovation superstar Southwest Airlines went. As the blog gathered a larger following, Southwest made the natural progression to other social channels as well. "During the 2006 to 2007 timeframe we started communicating on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube," McNeill said. "Those channels have grown immensely now, so company-wide we now have three em- ployees focused solely on our social media channels, but our entire communications and marketing teams are responsible for feeding content through all our different channels." While writing this book, Southwest Airlines was a frequent flyer in the media for wear and tear found the same in some of its