The person who helped me troubleshoot Mark Cuban’s “Cyber Dust” app was… Mark Cuban

Last week, I read an article about Mark Cuban’s app “Cyber Dust.” It sounded interesting, so I downloaded it and decided to check it out. Upon signing up, the only real person I could find to follow was Mark Cuban- the rest were either topics or Cyber Dust related accounts. I wanted to see what it was like to send a message (aka a “dust”), and noticed in Mark’s bio that he welcomed questions.

“Sure why not,” I thought and I sent Mark a dust asking who his favorite band was. I put my phone away, and wasn’t really planning on getting a response.

But…

Almost immediately, Mark responded.

Cool! I went to check Mark’s answer (maybe he’s a huge Phish fan like me!) but when I opened the app to see the message, I was greeted with this screen:

Hmmm… I couldn’t see anything and looked like I hadn’t received the message. I sent Mark another dust to let him know I hadn’t received his message. A couple minutes later Mark replied, and while I again received another push notification, I still saw nothing.

I wanted to explain the situation more clearly so I took a screenshot to show Mark exactly what I was encountering and sent it to him.

Mark replied yet again(!) but again, I still saw nothing :/.

Realizing he’s super busy and not wanting to waste his time (after all: I’m just one single user), I decided to send one more message explaining that I was still getting nothing.

However…

I was super surprised to find out that Mark not only responded right away, he followed me from another one of his accounts (+mcuban) and sent me a new message.

Finally these I was able to see!

Mark sent me 3 messages explaining what the issue might have been and how to resolve them. The first message expired (Cyber Dust messages expire right after the recipient views them) but it said “Sorry for the hassle.” Below are the other two, as well my response.

A neat story and a huge lesson

This was such a memorable experience that I felt I had to write about it. Not to humblebrag that I was messaging with Mark Cuban (You can too! Just download the app), but rather for the amount of time and care a person of Mark’s stature showed for a single user. But after thinking about this, it shouldn’t come as surprise- all the top CEOs interact with their users this way. Steve Jobs was known for answering emails, Jack Dorsey routinely answers tweets, and Mark Zuckerberg frequently responds to questions in his Facebook posts.

The lesson to be learned here is that no matter how successful or famous a person gets, the top CEOs are constantly listening to feedback and trying to help their users. As successful as they are, there’s nothing that’s “beneath them.”

Thank you Mark!

Oh, and feel free to add me on Cyber Dust! :)