Blog Buzz
Case Study: Comcast uses Twitter to delight
Sitting down to the watch the Sox game last night, I surfed over to my hometown paper and found an absolute gem of customer-centricity in the most unlikely of places - a cable television company. As someone who’s lived in a few different markets over the years, I’ve experienced Time-Warner, Comcast, Primestar, Cablevision, and Verizon, and I can tell you there is one common bond that stands out amongst all of Big Cable - the privilege each of the CSRs allowed me to feel for their gracious offering of their service to me 
. But alas, times perhaps have changed.
Truth be told, what stopped me in my tracks when digitally thumbing through the Globe was not the headline, but the leading image of CC Chapman, all-around Podcaster-extraordinaire. Seems CC’s tv was on the fritz during a little thing called the 17th championship in Boston Celtics history, and he twitter blasted Comcast to make himself feel better (he should’ve realized in title-town, it takes a lot more than OD [original def] to keep a team down .) Here’s the amazing part - Comcast responded, via Twitter, within minutes. They also had a technician out to solve the problem…before the tip off of the next game!
We get asked a lot from clients about how to build communities online, or how to shape the conversations that exist online to be more favorable towards their company or product. I can understand and empathize with their perspective, but more often than not, the companies asking these questions haven’t done the basic fundamentals yet. Don’t worry so much about figuring out the 1-3-1 full court trap; rather focus on perfecting a well executed free throw. Not sure where to begin? How about:
1) Setting up Google alerts for your company and/or product name, and commit to spending an hour per day reading and responding honestly and in a human voice to the comments you read. Remember in the age in which we currently live, our heroes are more flawed like Jason Bourne, than the Rockwellian images of yesteryear. It’s ok to not be perfect, but you’ll get torched for not being honest. If you don’t believe me, see Pettitte, Andy and Clemens, Roger.
2) If Google alerts doesn’t give you enough fodder, try Technorati, or Twitter or Niche sites in your space, like Techmeme. Despite what the old commercial said, it’s tough to reach the end of the internet. There are plenty of services out there to help you comb through what’s out on the ‘net, but you may be surprised to see how much you can learn through sweat equity alone.
3) Go to sites that sell your product and have reviews. Mine through the treasure trove of data that your audience gives you about what works and what doesn’t about your product or service. What’s the vocabulary they use? In addition to learning why they hate your product or service at times, I’ll bet you a quarter you find new benefits you never considered that your audience is realizing as a result of your efforts. Bonus points if you use those benefits to rewrite some product copy.
4) If you don’t have reviews on your site (why not?- Is there something you are afraid of hearing?), read your competitors’ reviews, and instead of trashing them, learn from them. Reach out to the consumer base, and offer a few free products in exchange for free flow of feedback. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.
Those are just some top of mind ways you can get started. I’m positive the GrokDotCom audience base has far more, and even better, ideas for how they overcome these challenges, and learn from their current and past customers. Perhaps if we ask them politely, they’ll even share. Anyone care to share their stories & ideas in the comments below?
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Written by:Howard Kaplan
Is Microsoft Yahoo’s Salvation?
Microsoft made a bid for Yahoo!.
On paper this deal might look right, but how about the cultures?
What do you think; is it a good deal?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
This Year in Blogs: The Definitive Marketing Posts of 2007
2007 was the year “blog” became an everyday word. Only twelve months ago, blogs was seen as a fad that maybe, in a few more years, might be seen as credible by the masses.
Oh, how quickly things change. Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.
While this may not represent all of the year’s best marketing bloggery, it’s a start. Are there posts by other bloggers you’d like to see on here? Let us know with a brief comment and (so long as it fits) we’ll add your suggestion to the list. Enjoy!
December
“Best of 2007: Top 7 Tech News Stories” — Mashable (The top tech posts from the Mashable.com team.)
“2007 Brand Autopsy Marketing Book Awards” by John Moore, Brand Autopsy (Find out which books John thought were made to stick, so to say, in ‘07.)
“The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration” by Brian Clark, Copyblogger (Shows how to spin brilliantly trashy headlines into useful attention-grabbers, e.g., “Headline Help: Crucial Tips That Brian Clark Forgot to Mention” [Hint: It’s not just for bloggers.])
November
“The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization” by Aaron & Giovanna Wall, SEO Book (It’s quickly becoming the go-to resource for blog SEO.)
“Who Owns Your Data on Google, Facebook, Netflix?” by Don Dodge, The Next Big Thing (One of the year’s top debates, nicely distilled in a simple response to Jason Calacanis, Doc Searls, and Dave Winer.)
“Amazon Sets eBook World Alight with Kindle” by Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web (Review of a clunky internet-connected e-book reader. Will it catch fire or burn up?)
“Google’s Android Arrives . . . An Open Source Mobile Phone Platform” by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s not a Google Phone, but a mobile operating system.)
October
“Sorry PR people: you’re blocked” by Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (If you’re in PR or have ever considered emailing Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief, or any other blogger/author/journalist, don’t do a thing until you read this appropriately scathing post.)
“Online Copywriting 101: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet” — GrokDotCom (Resources for anyone who wants to communicate on the Web.)
“Radiohead’s In Rainbows: A Look at Anti-Marketing in the Music Industry” by Maki, DoshDosh (One band schools an entire industry on “the ROI of free,” but stumbles a bit in the process. Read our follow-up case study for more.)
September
“Dear Steve Jobs” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (Apple announces iPhone. Zealots and Geeks wait in lines for days. Sales are a bit slow for Jobs, so he drops the price. The blogosphere speaks up. Jobs listens.)
“Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog” by Darren Rowse, ProBlogger (A terrific video post on why it’s important to put content first, then let search engines do their job. Optimization matters, but what you’re optimizing matters more.)
August
“Damn, I am so busted, yo” by Fake Steve, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (One of our favorite satirist bloggers, Daniel “if-that-is-his-name” Lyons, gets outed by a New York Times writer whose name happens to be BRAD STONE.)
“Moving Day” by Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics (In a freak move, NYTimes.com picks up Dubner & Levitt’s popular blog, breathing new life into old media.)
“See Who’s Editing Wikipedia” by John Borland, Wired (A Cal Tech graduate student makes a program that allows us to see who’s editing wiki entries. You might be surprised. Read our follow-up post for more.)
“Answer These 10 Questions Before You Charge for SEO Services” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz (A must-read for all SEO firms and the people who hire them.)
July
“Will The Last Corporation Leaving Second Life Please Turn Off The Light” by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch (The L.A. Times talks about the pink elephant: Are businesses making money or even wooing fans in Second Life?)
“Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Danny and crew launch a cool, 2.0-ish social news service for SEO’s.)
“FreeBurner for Everyone” by Traci, Burning Questions (Google acquires yet another important company. David Dalka gives six reasons why the deal was a mistake.)
June
“Why I disagree with Privacy International” by Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Google gets poor grades on their privacy practices. Matt speaks out.)
“Ask Launches Ask3D” by Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch (The “first” major launch of universal search.)
“Building 43” by Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog (You can’t out-SEO the team behind Google’s algorithm.)
“If Clicks Were Votes” by Andrew Meagher, Compete blog (A fun double-header analysis that tries to infer what could happen to Democrats and Republicans in the ‘08 U.S. presidential election if Web traffic on its own actually mattered.)
May
“Google Maps is spying on my cat…” by Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing (Google Street Views takes some very revealing photos, backlash ensues.)
“New Version of Google Analytics!” by Jeff Gills, The Official Google Analytics Blog (Sparks go off as Google unveils its updated analytics solution. Impressive, but is it an enterprise solution?)
“Thank You for Helping Me Write The New Rules of Marketing & PR!” by David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now (With one of the year’s best executed and most earnest linkbait posts, David proves why everyone should read his book. Thank YOU, sir!)
“The Movie is Finally Here,” by Geert, Bring Back the Love (Have advertisers lost that lovin’ feelin’? This short film shows why it’s time to bring it on back, now.)
[If video doesn’t load, click here.]
April
“Google beats Microsoft in DoubleClick bidding battle” by David Hunter, Microsoft News Tracker, (GoogleClick? They win another acquisition battle.)
“Google Website Optimizer Launches” by Robert Gorell, GrokDotCom (Now everyone can do A/B and Multivariate testing at zero cost. Want some free resources with that?)
“Video: RSS in Plain English” by Lee Lefever, Common Craft (Finally, someone shows how RSS really is simple.)
[If video doesn’t load, click here.]
March
“Viacom Sues YouTube for $1 Billion…The End of the Tube?” by Pete Cashmore, Mashable (If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em? The great debate rages on.)
“Why Online Advertising Economics Are So Messed Up” by Scott Karp, Publishing 2.0 (Now that “page views” are dead, it’s time to take a look at the real problem. Just beware of those zombie metrics.)
“Taking the Week Off” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (After receiving horrible anonymous threats, Kathy Sierra, one of the world’s top bloggers, quits blogging. A regrettable chapter, indeed — but there was a silver lining. Ultimately, greater minds prevailed and the incident fueled a much-needed conversation about balancing professionalism with free speech in blogland.)
“10 Reasons Commenting is Good for Bloggers” by Chris Garrett, ChrisG.com (’Tis better to give than to receive. Here’s why.)
February
“Why People Hate SEO…” by Jason Calicanis, Calicanis.com (SEO is Bull? Although there are likely reasons why Jason would say such a thing, at least he got savvy search marketers to link to him and even challenge him back. Mahalo!)
“National Pork Board Goes After Breastfeeding Search Marketer” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (The Pork Board shouldn’t whine about spilt milk, especially when it’s not their own.)
“7 Big Questions for Online Marketers” by Jeffrey Eisenberg, GrokDotCom (Everyone loves answers, but are you asking the right questions?)
January
“Steve’s Devices” by Nicholas Carr, Rough Type (The post that put the year of the iPhone in perspective, explaining its limitations and predicting, without saying as much, that 2008 will be the year of the open mobile platform. Oh, and Nick does this six months before the iPhone even launched.)
Did we miss something?
Probably. There were so many eye-opening blog posts this year that we need your help updating this list so that it is definitive — or close to it.
What were your favorite posts this year? Leave a comment and/or link to let us know.
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Written by:The Grok
College Tonight Tries to Convert the Facebook Fatigued
In the world of social networks, Facebook is getting all the buzz. But despite Facebook’s much-blogged-about $15 billion valuation, MySpace rules the roost when it comes to total members, unique visitors and advertisement dollars. In fact, according to Alexa.com, MySpace ranks as the 3rd highest trafficked website in the US (sixth place worldwide), while Facebook sits at a respectable fifth in the U.S. (seventh place worldwide). So why would College Tonight, a new social network geared toward, well, college students actively going against the two giants of the “social graph”?
According to their ‘about us’ page, “College Tonight focuses on nightlife events and social opportunities both directly on a student’s campus and within their broader communities.” They even claim to be a social network “that promotes actual social interactivity rather than the sedentary lifestyle nearly all “social networks” relegate its users to behind a physical computer screen.”
But how is that really different than what college students already do on Facebook or MySpace? One thing College Tonight seems to ignore is that the internet is the playground for the introverted. Social communities have virtually replaced the pickup line. And, by the way, introverted students already use those other sites to do extroverted things in real life; to go to concerts, promote campus activities, you name it. In fact, doing anything online is an introverted activity.
If College Tonight really wants to peel attention away from Facebook, they shouldn’t define themselves as being “different” than other social networks in terms of how people will use their site. (People who already use other networks will read that message as self-hype.) Instead, College Tonight should try filling the void left by Facebook a year ago, when it decided to let mom, dad and anyone else who wants to, join. They should sell themselves as a network for college students only. “Want to know what’s happening on your campus tonight? Here’s the place to be.” Not only is that what College Tonight was set up to do, it’s the smartest way to get local and big-name advertising revenue. If they tell that story, it’ll be easier for Pete’s Pub (or whatever the local bar may be) to place an ad, and they’ll have cleaner data to help bigger brands target specific campuses and groups.
Although they’re big and getting bigger, there are a lot of concerns about Facebook right now. If College Tonight is smart, they’ll stay small and leverage that by using a Unique Value Proposition that fits.
Otherwise, it’s like David versus Goliath, but without the slingshot.
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Written by:Peter Lee
Tired of Your Family Already? Read This…
“Saying Stuff is ‘Dead’ is Dead” by Phil Gomes
“Whiteboard Friday — Controlling the Flow of PageRank & Link Juice” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
“‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Button Costs Google $110 Million per Year” by Nicholas Carlson, Vallywag
“Millions in Sales from 3 Simple Words” by Glen Rifkin, The New York Times
“Psychological (’personality’) Types” — Socionics
“Caring for Your Introvert” by Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic
“The Anatomy of Sarchasm: Researchers Reveal How the Brain Handles this Complex Communication” by S.G. Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, et al., APA Online
“The Lasting Digg Effect” by Ben Cook, Blogging Experiment — Interesting analysis. Doesn’t say much about how to capitalize on Digg traffic, but it looks like Cook’s making a fresh start with this post. We’d like to see a follow-up in six months.
“Stanford Class Facebook Apps Blowing Up All Over (translation: holy cow this stuff really works!)” by Dave McClure, Master of 500 Hats
“The Social Graph & Beyond: Tim Berners-Lee’s Graph is the Next Level” by Richard MacManus, Read/WriteWeb
“Web 2.0 Fat-Off: The 2007 Edition — More Options to Lose the Fat!” by Allen Stern, CenterNetworks
“Google: This isn’t about Android” by Marek Pawlowski, MEX: Mobile Experience blog — For those interested in Google’s mobile ambitions.
“PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed by Google” by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch
“Amazon’s Kindle device out of stock” by Michelle Meyers, News.com
“Rumor: News Corp in buyout talks with LinkedIn” by Michelle Meyers, News.com
“Connections” — Internet Archive — An hour-long interview/retrospective on James Burke’s landmark program.
“Visual Illusion Videos” — Mixing Memory — A little optical brain candy.
“James Howard Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia” — TED Talks — 2004 lecture on a thankless part of U.S. culture.
“Thanksgiving Link Karma” by Brian Clark, Copyblogger
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Opting Out of Facebook’s Disruptive Ad Model
Joshua Porter of Bokardo.com has taken a serious look at Facebook’s new so-called “opt-in” ad model.
…Facebook is now partnering with 3rd party sites and selling your information to them for money. How does this work?
Here’s a scenario: you go to Blockbuster.com and rent a movie. A little interface element pops up and tells you that Blockbuster is sending information to your Facebook account. It gives you ten seconds to say no…and then it sends it anyway. This is called “opt-out”. You only have the option to say no. It sends your personal information by default. “Opt-in” would be where no action is taken by default.
You then log into your Facebook account, and it says that “Blockbuster is sending a story to your account”. You have the option to say no to this, but it is not apparent at all. In fact, Facebook gives you the option “Don’t show me this again”, which seems to suggest that they agree this message is annoying. They have designed this screen for you to focus on the pain of having to read a silly message and dismiss it. But what isn’t very clear is that when you do so you’re also giving implicit instruction that all services can send information to your news feed in the future. This is a HUGE deal to Facebook…this is how they’re going to make money. [Continue reading “Facebook’s Brilliant but Evil Design”… ]
It’s an important read for anyone who uses, or advertises with, the popular social networking site.
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
Speaking at Google, Obama Promises Nation’s First CTO
The Google Public Policy Blog offers a recap of presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to the Googleplex yesterday. According to the blog, Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t waste any time getting to the tough questions:
Barack Obama added another “first” to his already notable list yesterday: he became the first U.S. presidential candidate — and, I’m guessing, the first high-level elected official in any country — to have a ready answer to a standard Google engineering interview question. Asked by Eric Schmidt about “the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers,” Sen. Obama replied that “the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go.” Though some might view this as shameless pandering to the bucket-sorting community, others will see a bold pragmatism.
Obama then reaffirmed his stance on Net Neutrality, and offered the following vision for transparency between the United States government and its electorate:
I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. I’ll let citizens track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts. I’ll let you participate in government forums, ask questions in real time, offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made, and let you comment on legislation before it is signed. And to ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards, I’ll appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.
Is this just another campaign promise? We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can see video of Schmidt’s “fireside chat”-style job interview with Obama in its entirety at Google Public Policy Blog.
No word yet on whether Senator Obama consumed his weight in free sushi at the company’s all-you-can-eat gourmet cafeteria. But rest assured that the issue has a good chance of coming up during tonight’s televised debate among Democratic Party candidates (yes, there’s another one).
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Written by:Robert Gorell
How to Make a Billion Dollars in Your Underwear
A few months ago, we blogged about Markus Frind, a lone entrepreneur and founder of the popular dating site PlentyOfFish.com. On a panel interview with Guy Kawasaki (watch it here if you’ve got 30 minutes), Markus claimed that he was his only employee, and that he basically spends a couple hours each day maintaining the site — that’s it — in his underwear.
Fast forward to yesterday, when Read/Write Web’s Richard MacManus caught up with the entrepreneur, who’d just hired his first employee. Apparently, the site may now be worth a billion dollars — billions, maybe. (And hey, if Microsoft thinks Facebook’s worth $15 bills, why not?) Says MacManus:
Markus told me that per page view, Plentyoffish has 5-10 times the click through rate of Facebook. So by his calculations, POF’s 1.2 Billion page views per month is the same as 5-10 Billion Facebook page views per month. Facebook “only” generates 40 billion page views a month and yet it has a $15 Billion valuation. But the crux of Markus’ argument is that despite having about 33 times the monthly traffic of POF, Facebook’s poor click-through ads should bring the valuation models closer. Markus said that “over 40% of Facebook’s pageviews are image related, ads in bad positions and users just generally looking to waste time.” He said that “there are only a handful of sections on the site [Facebook] that will generate good click thru rates for advertisers.”
So getting down to nitty gritty metrics, Markus concluded that “Facebook is only able to generate 10 to 15 times as many clicks on ads as my site and it’s valued at 15 billion. Needless to say I’m watching ad supported business model valuations very closely.” What’s more, some of his direct competitors - e.g. Eharmony and match.com - are apparently valued in the billions.
Kind of amazing how a cheap-looking site with virtually no overhead, aside from server costs, can be worth billions.
Whether or not you believe in these fishy valuation schemes, it’s still pretty cool, isn’t it? Here’s a guy who’s only invested in the things his business requires. Oh, and he’s clearly more focused on ROI than his competitors.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Spirit Air: You Don’t Have to Turn on the Red Light
Spirit Airlines used to have great customer service. It was refreshing, actually. In the late 90’s, you could fly round-trip from, say, Detroit to New York for about $120 in a hand-me-down jet staffed with friendly people. It was a great, low-cost airline that was always able to surpass its customers (even lower) expectations.
But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t do much to help the customer even when they want to. Sure, the fares are lower than ever, but even with off-peak flights for as low as $1 (yes, really), it’s still not worth it. Why? Because, according to their current CEO, Ben Baldanza, the customer is always a cheapskate — and wrong.
Maybe it’s time to put a dimmer on those red light specials. They say that “a fish stinks from the head,” and if there’s ever been any proof, its this email Mr. Baldanza sent to a customer by accidentally hitting “reply to all” on his BlackBerry:
“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
But, wait! There’s more!! Here’s their Director of Communications, Alison Russell, on a separate incident where blogger Alex Rudloff told readers, “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines“:
“We wouldn’t respond to a blog post. This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great.”
Oh, really?? More on my horror story with Spirit 2.0 in a moment. But first, let’s see what Google has to say about the company:
Here’s what Rudloff had to say in his blog post:
“So, instead of losing $5 on a customer who has every right to be angry, I’ll write this blog post and tell all my traveling buddies to add Spirit Airlines to their growing list of airlines to avoid,” Rudloff wrote on Aug. 4. “If Google works their magic like they usually do, at least one of the 4,931 daily searches for “Spirit Airlines” will turn up this result and save someone the headache (and hopefully end up costing Spirit Airlines $6 or more).”
Rudloff later told the Orlando Sentinel that:
“I think ultimately that customers have to speak out and they have to engage in word of mouth . . . That’s what the market responds to.”
Cool! What a great segue…
All Spirit, No Soul
Last May, I was flying from New York (LGA) to Detroit (DTW), as I often do for Memorial Day weekend — my favorite time to vacation in Detroit. I was running late. The car service was half an hour late, and traffic wasn’t moving, thanks to jackknifed truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. After paying top dollar to sit in a car for two hours, it was clear that I’d miss the 30-minutes-before-departure check-in deadline. So, I called Spirit Air’s 1-800 number, only to find there was no “customer service” option. So I waited on hold for, say, 20 minutes until I eventually hung up and called back, pressing a random — and incorrect — selection in hopes of reaching a human who could tell me what to do about the situation. When I finally reached a customer service rep, she told me to go to the airport and speak to the agents at the check-in counter — where I waited for (you guessed it) another 30 minutes.
After all of that, I got to the airport just before the 30-minute mark, but there was a line — a long one — and not enough agents to serve it. When I got to the front of the line, the agent told me that nothing could be done. If I wanted to book another flight, there was one leaving in an hour, but it would cost as much as my entire round trip. I kindly informed this person that I’d be willing to pay a charge — as is typical with other cheapskate airlines — to switch the ticket, but that buying a whole new one, just for a one-way leg of a round-trip flight was absurd. Then, when I asked for a number for customer service because I wanted to complain about the event — after all, I’d been a customer for 10 years — the guy hands me a card with the same freaking number I’d used earlier to get someone who couldn’t help me! When I brought that to the agent’s attention, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do about it” — a common refrain at today’s Spirit Air.
So, Northwest Airlines to rescue (for once), and I was on my way to Detroit with a pounding headache and the world’s dumbest $200 missing from my bank account.
On the way back to New York, I was actually looking forward to flying Spirit. “If this isn’t a good trip after that nonsense,” I thought, “I’m so going to blog this.” Checking in with a smile, I handed the agent my ticket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorell, but we don’t have a seat with that name on it for this flight,” he said. I told him that was impossible and that I wasn’t imagining the ticket in my hand. Then it hit me: They’d canceled my entire round-trip ticket because they couldn’t serve me in time!
Turning beet-red, I calmly told the agent of my snag in New York. As I retold the story, one-by-one, all four agents at the desk came up to me, visibly upset by what I had to say. I let them know I was a blogger for a company that specializes in planning and optimizing the customer experience, and that I couldn’t believe the airline had tied their hands from doing anything of value for its “passengers.” Then a crazy thing happened. They actually encouraged me to blog about it! As it turned out, everyone at the counter seemed upset with the company’s new policies, too. I could tell they were biting their tongues, until…
“We used to be #1 in customer service,” said one agent. “Now we can’t help people.”
Her co-workers looked me in the eye and nodded. It was such an honest moment that I actually bought a one-way ticket from them… for the flight I’d already, supposedly, booked. (Oh, and since this was a last-minute one-way flight to NYC, you can be sure I got red flagged for security screening.)
For months, I let it slide. After speaking with the good people at Spirit in Detroit, I worried that blogging about the experience might put their jobs at risk. That is, until I saw Mack Collier’s post, which hipped me to the fact that a lot of other bloggers out there are also convinced that Spirit’s CEO — and not its employees — is what’s putting their jobs at risk by causing this fish to stink:
Sorry, Mr. Baldanza, but you can’t fly faster than word of mouth (or blog).
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Ballmer: I Wear My Zune Glasses @ Night
When Microsoft (MSFT) launched the first edition of its Zune media player to compete with Apple’s (APPL) iPod, the company uploaded millions of dollars into pushing a bizarre-o slogan: “Welcome to the Social.”
Something felt a bit off-key the first time they said it. (Come again? The “social“? Isn’t that a bit antiquated for Gen Y? What’s next, “Exchange the finest popular musical compositions with your haberdasher”?). But now that they’ve announced a new version, and — despite rumors of a massive investment deal with Facebook — it seems Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sees the social media landscape through Zune-colored glasses.
Playing hard-to-get…
Consider Ballmer’s recent comments to the (London) Times Online:
“I think these things [social networks] are going to have some legs, and yet there’s a faddishness, a faddish nature about anything that basically appeals to younger people,” Mr Ballmer told Times Online yesterday.[…] “There can’t be any more deep technology in Facebook than what dozens of people could write in a couple of years. That’s for sure,” he said.
Mr Ballmer also noted that sites such as Geocities, an online community that was bought for $3 billion by Yahoo! in 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, “had most of what Facebook has.”
Meanwhile, on his Scobleizer blog, former Microsoft tech evangelist (and admitted Facebook cheerleader) Robert Scoble hits back:
I’m 42. Hardly young. And Facebook is appealing a lot to people in my social network and age group lately … I guess Ballmer missed that. This is what happens when Microsoft executives don’t get outside of their ivory towers very often. Steve, you really need to go to any tech industry conference and hang out in the hallways. Don’t come to San Francisco, you won’t believe anything you hear here anyway. But go to, say, LeWeb3 in Paris and hear what they say about social networks. You’ll probably hear Bebo. Facebook. And a few others. From even the old folks. Last night I was at a National Geographic event and lots of people were talking about Facebook.
Scoble goes on to insist that Facebook is not only in a different league than Geocities, but that it easily trumps modern competitors like MySpace, Bebo, and… Basically, he’s saying Facebook is the only relevant name in social networking. That’s debatable, but clearly, when it comes to Facebook, Microsoft’s playing hard-to-get with its pocketbook.
…or playing it cool?
Meanwhile, the new Zunes have been well-received. The folks at Engadget are excited, pointing out all the features that could make the Zune a viable threat to the iPod.
But just how social is it, really? According to The New York Times, the wireless sharing feature — one of the Zune’s main selling points — remains limited.
. . . one of the most striking changes had to do with Microsoft’s effort to enhance what had been perhaps the most talked-about feature on the original device: the ability to share music files and other media wirelessly with other Zune owners. Far too few people, however, purchased the player for such sharing to become commonplace, and the function held little appeal because it was crippled by usage rules negotiated with the music industry. Shared songs expired within a few days, even if the recipient did not play them. And a file acquired from one Zune user could not be shared with a third user.Under the new rules, Microsoft said, shared songs would have no expiration date and it would be possible repeatedly to pass along songs sent from one device to another. But a shared file can be played only three times on each Zune.
Still, there are more deals going on which may offer a work-around to the DRM technology that limits Microsoft’s player. The iPod may be safe for now, but Apple’s iTunes Store could get a run for its money.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
