I’m normally a pretty cordial fellow. I don’t like to upset people and try to be both respectful and professional. I try to be mindful in how I communicate with others. I blew it today.

I attended a meeting with a sales rep from a fairly major company selling mobile app products and services to the college. The rep jumped right into his presentation without taking time to really introduce himself or explain why mobile applications are important to the college. He certainly didn’t take the time to find out why we are interested in exploring mobile enterprise products. His presentation was loaded with reminders of how “popular” mobile is right now and how “frightening” it is how much time we spend with our smart phones and other mobile devices and blah, blah, blah.

The product wasn’t bad. The sales connection was.

I came into the meeting frustrated and grew more so with each passing “popular” and “frightening”. So I tweeted my frustration. Not sure why. Not sure what I was hoping the tweet would accomplish. It was like my “rescue me” note to the world. Don’t bother looking for it. I’ve deleted it. I sent it, forgot it and moved on.

Suffice to say, it was snarky. 140 characters lends itself rather nicely to snarkiness.

A few hours later, a manager from the company emailed me asking for a chance to speak about my tweeted frustrations. I was caught by surprise that someone actually read my tweet. Duh. That’s what tweets are for, right?

I know that smart companies constantly scan the social web for mentions of their company. That’s good business. I was impressed that someone personally reached out to engage me on my issues and discuss further.

Just a reminder that Twitter is a phenomenal tool, connecting us to a host of other people around he world in real time as well as putting us into conversation with the people we need to talk to before we even realize we need to talk to them.

And a reminder to be careful with those 140 character capsules. You can’t know where they are going and what harm or help they are likely to create.