I ranted against stupid, mindless mass-mail before – now Espen Antonsen brings us an example of doing it right. Here’s the full text of his shipping confirmation email, after purchasing a CD online:
Subject: Espen – Your CD Baby Order!
From: CD Baby loves Espen
Espen –
Thanks for your order with CD Baby!
Your CDs have been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.
A team of 50 employees inspected your CDs and polished them to make sure they were in the best possible condition before mailing.
Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CDs into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.
We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Wednesday, July 25th.
I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Sigh…
—
Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little store with the best new independent music http://cdbaby.com cdbaby@cdbaby.com (503)595-3000
Espen, you do have to go back and purchase again – if only to test what their second message is like
The side effect of the spam affair was that it attracted far more readers to my post than it would have received otherwise – so I guess .. thank you, spammer.. I don’t think it did a lot of good to the supposed beneficiary/sponsor company though: I had SAP customers tell me they would not work with this Tryarc, the services firm behind the spam. Side note: I used to run businesses like this, and would never have resorted to marketing us this way. But times change … what do I know?
This morning I received an email from an Enterprise Software startup CEO – it was a long joke without any comment. A fairly dumb joke for that matter, but that’s beyond the point: why did he send it in the first place, with a link to his product site? Even worse, it looked like a mass email sent out to his contact list. Hm… the timestamp was 3am, poor guy probably got drunk and lost his better judgement….
Then I found out it was actually a quite old joke (yes, I am always the last one to hear them), it’s repeated on hundreds of blogs (is it a coincidence that they all have zero or 1 inbound links, and some only this one post?), and there’s even a cartoon version.
Now, on a site aptly named “Twisted Humor”, this is perfectly OK – but when an Enterprise Software CEO inserts a line to his product site and re-sends it to potentially hundreds of business contacts .. well, that’s an entirely different matter. And it wasn’t a spontaneous drunken act, either. It was a well-prepared campaign: a contact record was set up, as well as an anonymous blog pointing to it several days before the email… so I guess someone in that company thinks this is a good marketing strategy. Again, who am I to criticize, I don’t know Jack Sch**t about Marketing.
I was an Ooma White Rabbit – for a grand total of 10 minutes. There’s a lot of buzztoday about the new VOIP service which offers free local and long distance calls. Free, after the purchase of the $399 box, which takes care of routing your calls and a lot more.
The company seems to have pulled off a PC Coup, listing Ashton Kutcher (yes, *that* one) as their Creative Director. They are in pre-release test mode, and intend to seed their network by giving away 1,500-2,000 units throughout the country. I signed up via Om Malik’s free offer, and within minutes was confirmed as a White Rabbit, i.e. “one of the chosen few who will help us change the game of phone service forever.”
I started to develop suspicions during the online registration: there were several questions only a true POTS user could answer, and I haven’t used a local phone company for years. I’m on Vonage, but Ooma is being heralded as the Vonage killer (not that they need one), so I should be OK, I guess (?). Nope. After completing registration, I called customer service, and was confirmed that at this stage they need a good old traditional phone-line. Now, if you read the comments on all the blogs welcoming the new service, it becomes obvious that this new service needs early adopters, the experimental types, who are likely already VOIP customers.
Ooma says around September when they roll out the service they will no longer have the local phone company requirement. I guess that puts an end to my White Rabbit status – although if Ooma still sends me the box, I will give it a try…
Socialtext, the enterprise wiki company offers a free Wiki Essentials kit for download. It includes a basic wiki-intro, two analyst briefs and several customer case studies. Of course all of them Socialtext-flavored, but that’s quite understandable, and I think the package is a valuable intro into how corporations can use wikis – just replace Socialtext with “enterprise wiki” and do your own research.
What I’m not too happy with is the way these web 2.0 goodies are served up in good old “1.0-style”.
Registration form. Ouch! This is where I normally quit, but since I wanted to report about it, I patiently filled out all the fields. Sorry for the phone no. 111-111-1111, but some of you at Socialtext have my real number… I understand this is part of a sales-push, but believe me, it’s also a turn-off for many. Why not just be the nice guys (and gals), serve up information, and provide your contact form at the end of each doc? Which brings me to the next point…
Download. Unzip. Deal with several PDF files. This is so un-cool and 1990’s. Why not make them available online? In fact, why not link the individual documents to each other? Wait… wouldn’t that be a … wiki?
(P.S. I’d like to make the point that this is good info, I’m just teasing ST for not delivering it 2.0-style)
Update (7/19): There is indeed on online site Cases2.com, which is not a 100% overlap: it does not have the analyst writeups, but Harvard Prof. Andrew McAfee expects it to grow into Case Study Central” . It’s open for contribution by anyone – the Web 2.0 way. (hat tip: Ross Mayfield)
Well…sort of… SVASE, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs and Garage Technology Ventures picked my birthday, June 5th for their joint mega-event, Launch: Silicon Valley 2007. Guy’s presentation has a long-winded title:
“How I Launched a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for only $10,918.09”
His recent startup, Truemors sparked quite some interest. Some thought it was amazing to launch it at such low cost, others thought he was ripped off, the whole thing is WordPress with a plugin… It certainly sparked quite a conversation, so whether you think Truemors is the Next Big Thing or all fluff, come and hear Guy discuss it.
Of course Launch is about a lot more: Out of 160 applicants in the areas of information technology, mobility, security, digital media next generation internet, life sciences and clean energy30 startups have been selected to present to an audience of VC’s, media, movers-and-shakers on June 5th in Mountain View. The presenting companies are:
BooRah
Catalog Data Solutions
ClearlyBest.com
Concilio Networks
Connectance
d.light design
Datamash Corp.
Data Robotics
Exinda
Eyejot
fix8, a division of Mobinex
FogScreen
GroupScope
H3.com
Industrial Origami
Jaxtr
Kongregate
LogSavvy
MyShape
Nuvora
Ready Solar
Redwood Renewables
Sensl
Shapewriter
SnapJot
Spresent
Telid
VastPark
Wrike
Yodio
They will all have a demo-table set up in the networking area. Talk about networking, it really starts the day before, at a Pre-Event Party at a prestigious location in Palo Alto for Presenting Company Executives, Registered Audience Members, Bloggers, Press, Sponsors, Advisory Board and invited guests.
Finally, since it’s my Birthday Party, I get to give away discounted tickets: $145 instead of $195 for non-members, and $125 instead of $145 for SVASE members. Take advantage of the special rate, and hope to see you there.
Two days ago I attended a Google @ Work Breakfast event in San Francisco. Below are my raw notes and some conclusions in the end.
Google is not @ work at the Westin, where we are now, for lack of a wireless connection. But that’s OK, this is more of a briefing, they want us to watch, not play 🙂 Oh, and breakfast is good.
Speaker: Michael Lock, Sales Director, North America, Google Enterprise
Consumer Technology seeing a lot of Innovation, while Enterprise IT falling behind on the innovation curve. 75% IT budgets going to maintenance. Gartner , 2006: $8 out of $10 $ IT spend is dead money. (Hm… I feel like I’m hearing a generic speech, it could have been delivered at Software 2007 last week).
Google wants business users to have apps that they will not be forced to use, they will love to use.
More than 7000 Enterprise customers (Wow!I wonder how “Enterprise Customer” is defined. Using Google Apps with my own domain, am I one? )
Google Enterprise team about 300 people. Not making new products, leveraging what already exists in consumer space.
3 Key Areas: Search, Geo-spatial Products, Google Apps.
3 lessons Enterprise IT can learn from Google
Fast is better than slow – talks about traditional software deployment cycle. (20 minutes into the show, where’s the beef?)
Simple better than complex (storytelling, this is the generic “SaaS is better” pitch) Complexities of the on-site model. “Every Tuesday somebody issues a patch” – subtle hint to Microsoft Patch Tuesdays…good slides, btw.
Assume Chaos and Deal with it. “This is what Google does best” ( yeah, right… OK, the link was a cheap shot, I admit). Data has changed and it does not come in rows and columns. 80+% unstructured data. Typical way we deal with it: Inbox > categorization, hierarchies. Manual categorization, hierarchies are dead. (I *almost* agree: still doing some categorization, using labels) Refers to Yahoo’s original name: “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle”. Too much data today to manage hierarchically. Search to replace hierarchies. Uses slide that compares Outlook folders to Gmail – (hm, his Gmail screenshot does not have any labels!) Embrace search as a way to navigate.
Security fears, adoption curve: uses analogy of money in mattress vs in Bank, online banking > trust issues, we got used to it. Where’s the best place for money? for email?
Demo – pulls up his email account. (Has a bunch of Interview Feedbacks with actual names – one can never be too careful). Pitch against categorization, for search. (still missed the label concept – when the actual common word may not be in the mail. Has 33k unread mail in his inbox. Needs some GTD training?)
Calendar – shows integrating several calendars. Spreadsheet demo, with another user shared, including IM. Complementary to MS Office environment.
Enterprise Search
Easier to find things on the Net than in your company. Cute slide: top search engine on the Net: Google. top search engine in the Enterprise: …. the phone- aka asking around.
Shows MOMA, Google’s internal internal page. Pulls up a manager’s record (search), gets all reports/management chain – link to map, down to cube level. “key match”: unlike public Net, here admin can control what goes to top of search results.
Shows examples of how search pulls info from Oracle expense system. Pulls Cisco orders from order entry system. (Somewhat reminds me of how SAP’s Plattner talked about accessing data via search)
Search appliance works with existing permission systems, too.
Geo-Spatial
Maps, Earth, SketchUp
Earth Pro – data import, telephone support ..etc. Earth Enterprise – create custom earth. e.g Caltrain adding their own imagery. Utility companies ..etc.
Live demo from NT Department of Transportation, traffic cameras included. Traffic snapshot (every 5 mins) pops up. Asset tracking from Toronto company. (Runs out of time, I learned more from Mono, the Citi College guy sitting next to me, who talked about using all this stuff for facility management)
Summary: This was a standard road-show pitch, I did not hear anything new – for a while this irritated me (hence the early comments), but towards the end, looking around the audience I realized I was wrong. I need to re-calibrate my expectations. Perhaps I came to the wrong meeting, but if Google is to achieve mass adoption outside geek circles, then doing these basic road-shows is probably the right thing.
Michael’s story-telling was good, the jokes, the Powerpoint tricks were all in the right place… somehow I still felt this was the “classic salesy” style I could have heard 15 years ago from Oracle, IBM and the like. Naive me, I was hoping Google’s innovation does not stop at technology, they also bring some freshness to sales… like actually knowing one’s product well enough not to have to dodge most questions. (To be fair, after the presentation there was an hour left for product demos in the breakfast area).
Finally, considering the amount of “new information”, I wonder what the big deal was uninviting some Microsoft participants. Unless of course Google Marketing subscribes to the “bad PR is good PR theory”, since the rejection earned more blog feedback than the seminar itself.
I used to really dislike Snap (the obtrusive preview bubbles popping up and covering just what you were about to read), but I changed my mind when they became “civilized” and introduced little preview icons, instead of popping up over any URL. Even so, the preview bubbles were clearly just a popular Trojan Horse to get users install their script and help them build their search capabilities.
They want you to install their CO2 Saver Bar, which will:
Save energy when your computer is idle – Reduce electricity usage;
Reduce harmful CO2 and other emissions;
Lower your electric and cooling bills;
Show how much you’ve saved!
What it does is adjust some of your Windows Power settings. I have those set just right, thank you – why would I need to run another resident program ALL the time? Isn’t that .. get this! – a waste? Oh, and note to Snap: before you tinker with my system settings, the minimum I expect is that you tell me exactly what you’re about to change. Not some fuzzy BS about saving the Earth…
Oh, and by the way, while you’re so happy about “going green”, you also have installed Snap’s Search Box. That’s what it’s all about: Snap knows very well nobody would download just another search-bar, so they dress it up in “save-the-Earth” theme. A very, very dishonest effort.
If you have a lot of documents, you should use Windows Media Player to pull them up…
No, it’s not a joke. This Vista review by the Wall Street Journal (subscription only, but here’s a summary by Michael Parekh) discovered that if you have thousands of files, Vista comes to it’s knees. Displaying a complex directory structure with thousands of entries took Vista over 6 minutes – still better than XP, which simply crashes. (Mac: 30 seconds).
The reviewer contacted Microsoft, and here’s the hilarious answer (no, it was not on April 1st):
“Microsoft said I would have had better luck viewing my files in its Media Player software. As for why its file system simply wasn’t more robust in the first place, it said it put its development resources in areas that affect the most people.”
The Amazon / Statsaholic (previously Alexaholic) fight just got a lot uglier: details of Alexaholic owner Ron Hornbaker’s past conviction surfaced, and are being played out in a lowly game.
TechCrunch reports rumors of Hornbaker attempting to blackmail Amazon earlier, while Hornbaker claims that “Amazon is using his conviction as leverage in the case, threatening to disclose it publicly if he doesn’t settle immediately by paying $25,000 and transferring all Statsaholic assets to Amazon.”
I’m not going to provide details of the old conviction, what’s done is done, it has nothing to do with the current case, and it’s really unfortunate that it surfaced now.
But something is seriously wrong here: the assertion that Amazon “outed” Hornbaker as part of a smear-campaign is ridiculous. Just think for a minute… wouldn’t any half-brained PR person know digging up dirt on the “little guy” would backfire, negatively reflect on Amazon? Amazon can railroad Hornbaker all they want, but they would be using money, lawyers, the court system … the entire war machinery much rather than doubtful methods that so obviously can hurt them.
And Amazon blackmailing “the little guy” to pay $25K? C’mon, this is just pathetic.
(Disclaimer: I have no factual information on the case, the above is just my opinion – although I’m obviously not alone…)
I don’t think it did a lot of good to the supposed beneficiary/sponsor company though: I had SAP customers tell me they would not work with this Tryarc, the services firm behind the spam. Side note: I used to run businesses like this, and would never have resorted to marketing us this way. But times change … what do I know? 
I was an Ooma White Rabbit – for a grand total of 10 minutes. There’s a 
I started to develop suspicions during the online registration: there were several questions only a true 
Well…sort of…
)
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