I was using a product the other day and it was a real disaster. It prompted me to think that somewhere, someone was showing up to an office where their task was to market this peice of crap. From that thought, this list:
If your product stinks,
If your product stinks, you won’t engage customers, you’ll stalk them.
If your product stinks, the only thing your customers will engage in with you is arguments.
If your product stinks, customers won’t “friend” you, they will “foe” you.
If your product stinks, you will have more “word of mouth” than you ever possilby wanted.
If your product stinks, it’s not fireworks and balloons when you have an announcement, it’s pitchforks and bonfires.
If your product stinks, you don’t have users, you just have the “used.”
If your product stinks, you don’t have customers, you’ll have victims.
If your product stinks, you won’t need to watch what you say, because no one will be listening anyways.
I’m so busy I forgot to book my summer vacation until yesterday. Apparently the kids go back to school a week earlier than I thought so I will be off the week of the 17th. Which I hadn’t planned…so let me know if you have some cool, cheap, ideas for New England summer fun with kids.
Even with baseball, I’m gonna admit, it hasn’t felt like summer to me. Where has that skin scorching heat been?
Some times those little ideas are the ones that stick sideways in your throat on the way down. Like “gee, let’s change ad servers…” or “let’s move the data center…” They sound great in the initial meeting, but when you get around to it, it always seems like its “the work you planned, times 6.”
After careful thought I have to admit that I really don’t like javascript. Can you say “obtuse and obscure”? Sure you can! Why not develop a decent client side counterpart to the php we all know and (okay, not love, but maybe) tolerate.
Motivation: it’s one thing to talk, another to do. I am working on less talk, more do, myself.
The exigencies of current business climate necessitate much more effort from all of us than was required a year ago. Try to focus on the stuff that really matters, and don’t be afraid to let some of the little stuff go.
I’ve been a huge fan of vBulletin forum software since I first installed it on Reel-Time.com in 2001. In the intervening years, I’ve seen software come and software go, but vBulletin continues to chug along.
Over the past 10 months, I’ve spent a lot of time working on a massive vBulletin site, http://www.splitcoaststampers.com and I’ve got to admit, I’m finding the vBulletin experience somewhat lacking. Perhaps it’s just that so many of the same old foibles remain in the core product, but truthfully, I’m looking for a more satisfying experience in forum software.
Let me be clear, the software works great and continues to chug away. My issue is that some of the things I’d like to be able to do with the software that should be easy, aren’t.
My main grudge is this: the software is still table based. Tons and tons of nested tables, all of them making it a nightmare to style. Each of the pages reuses a common header, but due to tons of <div> tags with no id or class, you have to get very creative to make any changes. Even worse, those divs are reused throughout the software, in different roles, so often, you will want to make a change on one page and you’ll end up affecting others. So you write a conditional (if this, then that) which is page specific. However, soon you find you’ve got a header file that is hundreds of lines of code, as it must account for a multitude of variables.
The vBulletin folks are in the process of a rewrite, which will be released in the fall as version 4.0. This version will supposedly get rid of all the tables and move to a fully css driven design, but frankly, I’m hearing rumblings now that, well, it might be mostly css, or worse.
My general list of stuff that’s got to be fixed:
Search doesn’t scale – one of the systems perennial Achille’s Heels, and a constant source of pain for site owners.
Tables, bloody tables – yeah, I mentioned it before, but it’s got to be mentioned before.
Template debugging – the vBulletin template system consumes errors. Testing of templates and plugins is an utter nightmare, because it doesn’t allow you to see even PHP’s most mundane error message.
Nesting of Conditional Statements – we’ve got a pretty good model in PHP for how an if then statement ought to work. However vBulletin conditional statements for some reason don’t follow that logic. They’re powerful, don’t get me wrong, but they’re hard to keep straight when you have a need for a good “else if” which currently requires nesting.
So I’m now thinking: is there any other software out that that isn’t table based that is both scalable and provides a top notch user experience? I’m interested in your suggestions…
Welcome to our brave new world…it is a place in which style triumphs substance, and appearance supercedes truth. A place where the personal myths we create become truth, and are rechristened as “personal branding.”
We are in the age of the micro-celebrity. The era in which we don’t need to be fully rounded individuals, where simply being the “thought leader”, guru or expert in a certain online niche is enough. Warhol was right, we indeed will all have our 15 minutes of fame.
Deep down, we all really want to be the Paris Hilton of our own personal fiefdom. We’d all like to have red carpets rolled out for us, to have a tribe of fauning syncopants to “me too” our every post. We want everyone to realize what utter geniuses we really are.
The problem is that in online communities, like sewerage treatment plants, it is not only cream that floats the the top. It is easy, at least for a time, for the poseur to assume a position of stature within a community. The good news is that over time, and as the community matures, the fraud is generally identified, the true experts eventually become evident.
So how do we become that micro-celebrity in our online community?
Be a good citizen – it’s not all about getting involved in the latest falderall. Take the time to welcome newbies, answer the simple questions, and generally be available.
Correct The Incorrect – I see oh so many “accepted truths” that are absolutely incorrect. Perhaps they fit for one situation, but not for the one in question. Don’t let it pass, but do so in a way that builds the corpus scientia, without starting a flame war.
Discuss and Accept – We don’t know everything…and we’re learning all the time.
Give Credit – It’s easy to do, and everyone likes to be appreciated.
I’m tempted to add a list of what not to do, but instead I just offer this advice: before you are the teacher, you must first be the student.
I read an interesting post this morning by Michael Hickins on The Faster Times that posit that “Internet Isn’t Killing Papers, We Are“. His basic premise: that the tech industry, and the web in particular with with the dotbomb era and sky high salaries and insane stock packages, inflated journalist salaries well beyond their regular levels.
Why? Because salaries had to be adjusted for the stock options that artificially inflated the potential compensation packages offered by the dot-com start-ups. How could Walgreen’s compete against Drugstore.com without compensating for the stock options that could make someone an instant millionaire? They couldn’t. The dot-com bubble burst threw some people out of work for a short period of time, but did nothing to bring salaries back into line.
So all of a sudden, in 2001, I went from making $45,000 for the print publication to $60,000 per year for the online version while working for the same publisher, Conde Nast. Not that I complained. At my last full-time position, I made $90,000 per year working as an editor at Ziff Davis Enterprise – and had reporters working for me who earned well above that. It’s public knowledge that Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal earns over $1 million per year.
I posted the link via Twitter and was quickly reminded by Stephen Hadley that “…Most of my reporter friends who are losing their jobs aren’t overpaid. It’s just that the papers they work for no longer are able to sell advertising to support their staffs. Ad dollars are moving.”
That, to my mind is the crux of the matter. You will definitely spot other problems throughout the newspaper industry, but the real problem right now is ad revenue going away. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t a myriad of other compounding issues here, such as circulation declines, outdated technology, Jurassic management, etc., and certainly those are all factors. But the real problem comes down simply to a matter of dollars not coming in the doors.
Brian Carr pointed me towards the AnnArbor.com launch – a Michigan newspaper opened a new site, using 54 staff members. (according to their site masthead) Ponder this: 54 newspaper folk took a couple months to launch a site using what appears to be a bog standard MoveableType installation. Frankly, given part of a weekend and a 12 pack of Mountain Dew, I could have outdone them. Seriously…
The big problem for journalists is this: even though Hickins may tell us that the web got us big salaries back in the day, the sad truth is this: the prevailing thought on the Internet today is that content is free. As content originators, that means our work isn’t under valued, if FLAT OUT ISN’T VALUED.
Back in the day, I got $500 for a blog post. Granted, those were some excellent blog posts, but right now I do basically the same thing for free.
Look at the fiasco a few weeks back when Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame, and EIC of Wired Magazine lifted huge sections of wikipedia articles for his new book “Free: the Past and Future of a Radical Price” (and yes, he’s talking about free content…). If a Wired Magazine editor can’t even manage to properly cite Wikipedia, what does that say for his view of the value of content? Oh, right, I guess we should re-read the title of that book…
The real problem inherent in all of this is that after we’re done killing off all the reliable primary news sources, such as newspapers, television news, or even magazines, is that we’ll find we’re left with a gaping void. The thought is that blogs will take over. unfortunately, while blogs are generally interesting sources of commentary and opinion, I see very few that provide anything like news, and when and where they do it, they generally do not do it reliably. You can’t count on today’s source to have good info, or any info, tomorrow, and you definitely should not expect extensive enough general coverage that will allow you to get a good picture of the world, or any small part of it for that particular piece of time.
Okay, I’m sure one of you is thinking now about the Iranian Election a few weeks ago, and how it broke on Twitter. In fact, it would have broken on major news outlets as well, but it got bumped for the MJ Media Circus. Even so, Twitter may be many things, but it’s not a reliable primary news source. Yes, it may provide a lead here or there, but any good journalist knows, that’s just where the story starts…not where it ends.
Getting back to the original theme here, I think now that we can see that news generation was a loss leader for newspapers. It took a lot of effort to do it right, but it was something they could monetize through ad revenue. Today, we need to forget about how content gets delivered, and remember that content generation is still a valuable and necessary product. When we rediscover a proper way to monetize it, the world for journalist and everyone will be a better place.
Jim Louderback of Revision3.com has a great article up at JackMyers.com entitled “Murphy-Goode Wines Social Media Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong” about the companies recent trip to the Internet woodshed over their handling of I-celeb Martin Sargent during a recent online spokesperson ballot.
While the specifics are generally quite funny…Jim gives us an excellent list of 5 takeaways that any of us who might consider a Social Media campaign ought to commit to heart:
Respect the Wisdom of the Crowds: If you’re going to solicit entries from the internet, and then ask people to vote, then you need to at least pretend to abide by their selection. Murphy-Goode built a framework that would have let them finesse this. All they had to do was put the top ten vote getters into their top 50. Even if they had zero intention of ever giving Martin or the other nine a job, they should have – at a minimum – given them some recognition for winning the popular vote.
Know Your Web Stars: You may have never heard of Martin Sargent. But he’s an extremely powerful web celebrity – both because of his own following, and his influential friends. If John Stewart, Tom Brady or Britney Spears had entered – or even Wine Spectator editor James Laube — you can be sure they would have been treated with kid gloves. Martin got snubbed and snubbing sucks. But Martin was powerful enough to get a (well deserved) revenge.
Monitor Constantly: While running a social media campaign, keep a close eye on what the social-sphere is saying about your brand. Use Twitter search tools, Tweet Deck, Trendrr, backtype – among others – to keep track of how your campaign is doing. And when you notice something going awry…
Fix it Fast: As soon as “Martin-Gate” began to spread around the web, Murphy-Goode should have jumped in and fixed it. Perhaps they could have added a 51st finalist to the list. Or maybe they could have expanded the competition to end up with two winners, a winery choice and a people’s choice. Rapid action could have saved this campaign. Even an apology and am “I’m Sorry” would have gone a long way to repairing the winery’s reputation. Instead, company representatives responded with lame platitudes like “You’re too famous” and called Martin overqualified for the job. That just served to fan the flames – particularly because one of the top ten finalists was Rachel Reenstra, former Animal Planet and HGTV show host.
Don’t be half-assed: But here’s the biggest slap to the face of everyone who created, watched, voted and even paid attention to this online kerfuffle. As the story got out, it turned out that some of the candidates for the temporary position were actually sourced by recruiters, who told them that “the online votes were relatively unimportant.” That’s the worst thing that ever could have gotten out. Today’s engaged social network users are no less passionate than the millions of Iranians that flooded the street when their votes were ignored. And they’re far more connected as well. Be honest, be authentic and be real. Murphy-Goode, alas, tried to pull a fast one. But on the internet, it’s extremely hard to be opaque.
I think the big thing here is this: if you’re going to do a campaign that is designed to look and feel “democratic” you better be prepared to accept whatever the results from the people are. Otherwise you’re going to have a lot of people feeling very disenfranchised, and in the end, that’s worse than not having done the campaign at all.
One of the things that is most missed in the Social Media rush to “join the conversation” is that in many cases, by offering a plethora of places to get our content, we’ve turned the tables. Our readers who used to find us now expect us to find them. Even though I write on my blog, I’ll often get the comments for that post on my Facebook page, or via FriendFeed or Twitter, or on some other blog somewhere that quoted from my post. So instead of my comments coming to me, right alongside my post, I need to schlep out into the great wide web and find them.
Think about where your content appears. It may start on your blog, then it shows up on a myriad of social media platforms in which you participate, each with their own means of commenting or discussion and even, in some cases, yet another email function. Let’s face it, in many cases, those commenting functions are ratholes. You may not even see them for days or weeks, at which point, why would you even bother responding?
Look at the previous post here. I had a great comment that came in via my Facebook account, but I had to do a cut and paste to pull it into my blog. How 1998 that functionality is.
How about:
If social apps offered a “redirect comments to original publishing platform” option?
What if we had a function like a ping back that used xml-rpc to import a comment when it was made on your Facebook, or on another blog.
How about if readers thought to try to comment on the original article, instead of the summary?
I love comments, I love forum discussions. The problem I have is that when you start to spread them out acrross many separate and distinct platforms, their value decreases. The “conversation” is affectively split and disjointed, and we end up with a grand, yet failed, experiment.
I’m at the point that I can barely watch the news anymore. Almost a month in and they are still talking round the clock about the death of the mono-gloved King of Schlock…as though we should really care. What I do care about is that we stop looking at drug-addled sequin-encrusted performers as heros. They aren’t.
Real heros are the folks that do the right thing when it’s too easy to do the wrong thing. They’re the people that take the hard road, so that others can live easier. They’re the people that stand up, not just in war, but in all facets of life, and say “I’m going to do something about it…”
People like:
Byrd and Melanie Billings who were murdered in a home invasion this week. They have adopted 12 handicapped and mentally challenged children, on top of their own 4 children.
I picked up a great explanation of the great divide between business speak and tech speak at Rands In Repose today entitled “The Words You Wear.”
The engineering burden is that when it comes to the product, we know how it works. Everyone else outside of engineering has vastly less working knowledge of the product; they don’t need that depth for their job. The engineers know the intricate details of the system, the people who built it, and what it is capable of.
This is why, when fashionable words show up in our day, we grind our teeth. We’re cynical because we don’t trust fashionable words. They sound important, but over the years we’ve found they obfuscate our product’s capabilities, they portray our development process as trivial, and they create productivity destroying expectations elsewhere in the building.
An absolutely perfect assessment, which I’ve seen in spades in the newspaper software industry for years. How many times have I seen “enhancements” that were requested, speced, built, etc. that really did no more than offer functionality that was already in the product to begin with? And how many times did we burn development cycles on “feature requests” that were never going to earn anyone any money, or save anyone any time. The engineering version of “hey gang, let’s put on a show” except the trained poodles all wore button down shirts and had bags under their eyes from extra hours spent trying to meet expectations with their deliverables.
Take the time to read the post, no matter which side of the fence you’re on. The payoff is his list of buzzwords, which is tremendous and will pretty much ruin every Business Requirements Meeting you attend from here out.
I was using a product the other day and it was a real disaster. It prompted me to think that somewhere, someone was showing up to an office where their task was to market this peice of crap. From that thought, this list:
I’m so busy I forgot to book my summer vacation until yesterday. Apparently the kids go back to school a week earlier than I thought so I will be off the week of the 17th. Which I hadn’t planned…so let me know if you have some cool, cheap, ideas for New England summer fun with kids.
I’ve been a huge fan of 
Look at the fiasco a few weeks back when Chris Anderson, of Long Tail fame, and EIC of Wired Magazine 
Jim Louderback of Revision3.com has a great article up at JackMyers.com entitled “
One of the things that is most missed in the Social Media rush to “join the conversation” is that in many cases, by offering a plethora of places to get our content, we’ve turned the tables. Our readers who used to find us now expect us to find them. Even though I write on my blog, I’ll often get the comments for that post on my Facebook page, or via FriendFeed or Twitter, or on some other blog somewhere that quoted from my post. So instead of my comments coming to me, right alongside my post, I need to schlep out into the great wide web and find them.
I’m at the point that I can barely watch the news anymore. Almost a month in and they are still talking round the clock about the death of the mono-gloved King of Schlock…as though we should really care. What I do care about is that we stop looking at drug-addled sequin-encrusted performers as heros. They aren’t.
I picked up a great explanation of the great divide between business speak and tech speak at Rands In Repose today entitled “