A Networked World

And the website-based business ...

Good grief, this guy will go NOWHERE. He makes niche market, retro cycle clothing because HE LIKES it. He spends almost nothing on marketing and worst of all, he doesn't even put his own brand on the gear, all the brands and logos on the gear are fake.

TOTAL FAILURE COMING UP!!!!!!

Oh, wait: Big wheel snaps up Kiwi biking gear.

Aucklander Paul Mason, ... owns the cycle clothing business Solo. International cycling superstar Lance Armstrong is opening a new store in Austin, Texas, in May and wants to stock Mr Mason's line of retro cycling jerseys.

Mr Mason , 44, said he was shocked to receive the email from Armstrong's camp.

"I know Lance has a big connection with Nike and has his sponsors pretty much locked in, so it surprised me they'd want Solo, which is pretty much a cult brand and a niche market."

[...] Ninety per cent of the company's New Zealand-made clothes are exported.

Solo, whose sales are largely website-based, has sold clothing to cyclists in 32 countries. It also sells in high-end bike shops in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Denmark and Japan.

Fluke.

Oh, wait.

Ground Effect, which specialises in mountain biking outfits, sells about 50 per cent of its goods overseas.

"We've been designing and making stuff for 14 years and about half of what we sell is sold offshore, mainly in Australia and the UK," said co-owner Guy Wynn-Williams.

And the website-based business is growing solidly every year.

But, but, wait, what about SEO? What about community? What about "piccies of me in your gear in Nepal pages?

Actually, check out their sites; Solo is about as simple, clear, no BS a site as you could want, Ground effect has a lot more, including their own online magazine (Underground) and a nice line in Kiwi self-deprecation.

But the bottom line is that one does 50% of its business globally and the other does 90%, which suggests that the Craigslist approach is still pretty good.

The craigslist E-Commerce Primer: 'It Just Feels Right'

I'm just going to pull the bullet points, read the whole thing here: 'It Just Feels Right'.

• I was going to call it "SF Events," ... but friends told me that they already called it "Craigslist," that I had created a brand unintentionally
  Everyone creates their brand unintentionally, it comes from what you do and, more than anything, how you do it.
• I could write code and that I could make Craigslist into a Web site where the code would do most of the work for me.
  Damn, its a TOOL for doing stuff, NOTHING else
• The first three years of Craigslist, I ran this by myself, and it somehow built critical mass.
  Count 'em, three years. OK, YouTube took less than a year but Craigslist and you and me are in the long tail.
• a few people approached me about running Craigslist on a volunteer basis. I tried that in 1998, where we would all work together on a volunteer basis. We tried it, but it failed.
  Find me another business leader who can say "we tried, we failed, we changed what we did". Apart from Warren Buffet who says it all the time.
• I did a mediocre job at best, because I'm not very good at the business end of the operation.
  And find me one who can say that in public, let alone to their mirror.
• most of what we do is based on what people in the community suggest.
  How much notice do YOU take of people who don't even PAY for your services?
• The idea is that we're a community service.
  Not "THE community", not "your community portal" or your "online destination" but
  A. Community. Service. What kind of claim to leadership, best practise, world class enterprise is THAT?
  
  
• Almost 100 percent of the site is free,
   "What's the right way for us to pay the bills, and maybe do better than that?" People told us to charge people who already paid too much for less-effective ads.
  The net is a race to the bottom of the profit margin pile, get used to it.
• We just do what feels right and plug away.
  Aaaarrrggghghg!! No corporate back massages or foosball in the rec room? No CEO jets and corporate boxes? How the hell do they MOTIVATE people? See, here's what's wrong with that:
  "Just Do", uh uh, first you need a vision and a strategy, then a mission statement and a PLAN, "
  DO" comes waaaay down the list
  "feels" - please, NO!. If it can't be measured it can't be valued and if it can't be valued we don't go near it, for a start it doesn't show in our performance review!
  "right" another disaster, it has to be profitable, you're in business, that means never, ever, leaving a dollar on the table that could be in your pocket, take it all wins, remember?
  "plug away" I give UP. This guy will never do anything significant.
• I'm a really good customer service representative.
  I'll bet he doesn't mean customer service as in "hit them hard with a racquet" either.
• We always need to improve customer service. For example, we need better tools to detect and remove spam listings.
  There's that tool thing again, focused on customer service, again.
• One thing we found doing customer service is that there are not that many bad guys out there.
  But, but, the net is populated by scammers, predators and hackers, its NOT SAFE. Oh, you mean you talked to most of them and they are OK?
  Now, How do WE rip these gullible hicks off?
• And regarding our look and feel, someone said that our site has the visual appeal of a pipe wrench, and that was intended and taken as a compliment.
  Tell that to your web designer, have smelling salts handy.
• We don't need much new fancy stuff in general. We need tools that get the job done.
  More tools talk, who is this guy, Tim Taylor?
• It does help that the site is almost all free.
  Dang, I'll bet HE's never heard of monetizing your traffic
• We think we have a really good culture of trust, and that's because without consciously doing so, we have stood by some core shared values. The fundamental value is that we feel you should treat people like you want to be treated, which means that you provide good customer service, and it means that you should have a "live and let live attitude," and it means that now and then you give the other person a break. These are values that most everyone in the world shares. And there's nothing noble or altruist or pious about this; it just feels right.
  No comment.

Check them off, then answer these two questions

1. Is that how you do business on the net?
2. Are you more successful than Craigslist?

And while they're at it

After getting my narky email cease and desist from the Yellow Page people a while ago, this is pure schadenfreude: Search overhaul for White Pages site.

Sensis has admitted its White Pages directories site struggles with even the most basic search queries, but promised frustrated users a fix is on the way.

Responding to reader complaints that searches for business names on whitepages.com.au rarely narrowed down an accurate result, spokeswoman Danielle Horan acknowledged that "in some instances the site is performing below expectations".

For instance, a search for "Sydney Airport Corporation" returns five pages of results including every listing with the word "airport" in it. Similarly, a search for "Gould's Books" returns another five pages and includes all listings with the word "books".

One reader responding on the MashUp blog said: "The bucket of crap infesting Sensis is more appropriately labelled as a 'search, search and search again' engine, and any positive results produced by it are probably the result of obscure planetary alignments and the disembowelling of a large number of chickens."

What still amazes me is how long it takes between identifying the problem and finally getting to fix it.

Unauthorised use of the Registered Trade Mark "Yellow Pages"

I guess it had to happen sooner or later

I just had an email from one Sue Cremer, Personal Assistant at Piper Alderman which promotes itself as the "Best Professional Services Firm in South Australia 2007"

They claim that this posting last year Endangered Species - Australian Yellow Pages infringes their client's trademark by my "use" of their trademark and that the posting might mislead poor widdle you to believe that I have an association with their client, Yellow pages or Sensis.

Now it beats me how I am "using" their trademark beyond "quoting" it in a series of screen shots to demonstrate that their search tools are really not up to snuff. I am certainly not pretending to be a business directory or to provide phone numbers and other details to anyone who uses my site, and if I HAD a business relationship or "association" with the companies I would expect that it would damned quickly have been severed for publicly giving them a zinger.

But I'm always interested in learning something new so here's the challenge; what's their problem?

Oh, and at the end of their pdf attachment they invite me to signal my co-operation by writing the same on the letter and faxing them a copy back. Right, like I'll sign up to fix an unspecified example of an unspecified infringement to satisfy a company that already has more money than god and spends too little of it on putting together a decent web strategy.

Or could it be that they just don't like being criticised and are trying to use an irrelevant piece of law to shut me up? Nah, that would be unprincipled and stupid, I might blog about it, couldn't happen.

Update

This is what they sent

This is what they got back.

Please explain in what way I am infringing the use of the trademark. I am not conducting any business as a telephone book, telephone directory, business directory or any other kind of telephone number search tools, nor am I attempting to pass myself off as the "yellow pages" I do not offer search of the yellow pages or anything like it, nor do I attempt to sell advertising, listing or any other kind of service as yellow pages or anything of that kind.

The page to which you refer is a criticism of the efficacy and adequacy of the Yellow Pages search tools on the date specified and in doing so demonstrates the efficacy by quoting (via screen shot) the points that I wish to make. No reasonable person could possibly mistake my blog for the Yellow Pages and even if they did, could not possibly find any such service there.

Under fair use provisions I am entitled to "quote" from a source and identify that source correctly so that there is no doubt about the point, intention or organisation to which I refer. I do that, and no more.

Furthermore you suggest that my "use" of the trademark Yellow Pages or a mark which is substantially identical or deceptively similar to your clients registered trade marks, infringes your clients trade mark rights.

Can I ask you to be specific please? What "use" of the trademark itself am I making, or is the trademark I am using substantially similar or deceptively similar to your client's? Or perhaps it is all three. Then we come to the term "use". Please be good enough to specify the "use" to which I am putting this actual, or similar or deceptive trademark and whether said trademark is the actual one, or some similar or deceptive one.

Finally you suggest that such use is "likely to mislead members of the public into believing that there is an association between your organisation and our clients."

I would be fascinated to learn from you the nature of the "association" implied, expressed or entailed in the article to which you refer. Please specify both the kind of association and the specific language used to imply that that would be likely to lead people to that assumption.

Frankly, that is absurd on its face and indicates that you have not bothered to read the article that you refer to. At no point do I claim to have such an association (beyond that of interested user), nor do I hint, imply or invite the reader to assume such a relationship. However, if you can specify the precise language to which you refer I will be more than happy to reconsider.

I am, however, critical of the product/ service being offered by Yellow Pages as inadequate to the environment in which it is being offered. Could it be that your clients are not happy with that criticism and, rather than engage with me about it, or responding to the criticism as they are both entitled and enabled to do in the comments on the posting, they have resorted to using your offices and an irrelevant piece of law in an attempt to intimidate me into shutting up and going away?

Facebook Suicide watch - Dumb Execution

It didn't take long for the fertiliser to get into the ventilation: Facebook users arc up over new tracking tool.

Some users of the online hangout Facebook are complaining that its two-week-old marketing program is publicising their purchases for friends to see.

Those users say they never noticed a small box that appears on a corner of their web browsers following transactions at Fandango, Overstock and other online retailers.

The box alerts users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click on "No Thanks." It disappears after about 20 seconds, after which consent is assumed.

Its called inertia  mqarketing and you DON'T do it in any half ethical offline business.

"Hi earl, we're going to send you your new Jaguar next week and invoice you in 2,000 easy monthly instalments UNLESS you say no in the next 20 seconds. Damn, even the email spammers haven't stooped to that; although I'd bet it would get plenty of responses.

Users are given a second notice the next time they log on to Facebook, but they can easily miss it if they quickly click away to visit a friend's page or check email.

"People should be given much more of a notice, much more of an alert," said Matthew Helfgott, 20, a college student who discovered his girlfriend just bought him black leather gloves from Overstock for Hanukkah. "She said she had no idea (information would be shared). She said it invaded her privacy."

Yah reckon?

Looks like facebook has decided to go out with a bang, cut their wrists and shoot themselves in the head so they fall into a barrel of freezing acid. Just to be sure.

The Grudger Web ecosystem

Gerry McGovern gets the hammer dead centre on the nail with: rise of the grudger customer.

Too much marketing and advertising treats the customer like a sucker. By cleverly manipulating our core emotions, advertising gets us to buy products that are never quite what they seem.

[...] A large multinational found that every time it added a “hero shot”-that perfect, smiling face-to a webpage, the number of customers who left the page immediately after arriving shot up. Once the hero shot was removed customers stayed on the page much longer.

Puzzled, the multinational started doing some usability testing. A typical response from a customer was: “When I see a picture like that I just think marketing. I’m at the website to solve a problem. I don’t have time for this stuff.”

Yeesss! The net is a, wait for it guys, its a TOOOL! A really flexible tool that is constantly being improved and extended within the basic framework. Its a magic wand that becomes whatever you need it to be to do whatever you need to do in the place that you find yourself, at a fundamental level, we LOVE magic tools.

Actually, even Gerry forgets this too often, treating the web especially as a publishing medium instead of focusing not on the initial text and image but on the tools-use that arises from them. Great text and highly informative graphics are totally useless unless I can then do something with them; share the information, archive it, blog it, buy the item, oh and here's one, CORRECT THE ERRORS.

[...] The Web is where customers become the biggest organization of all, because the Web allows them to organize in a way they never could before. A good product or service has nothing to fear from the Web. The grudger will trust, but you had better deliver.

The media lives off our fears. Advertising lives off our dreams. The grudger customer is nobody’s fool.

And one addition, do NOT PO the grudger because in the past she could just whine to her mates, but now she can go online and create hell, really, commercially affective hell for your business. Whether or not the customer is king, s/he is a bloody tyrant and now wields a BIG stick.

Facebook Chooses Suicide

Facebook got itself into a stew a while ago by enabling online stalking among its users and now its trotting out another, equally dangerous idea: Facebook Unveils Ad Targeting Program.

Facebook has unveiled plans to target advertisements by injecting them into its members' conversations,

See, right there, the word TARGET is not a good look.

the popular online hangout must persuade its users to embrace the initiative.

Facebook is giving users some control over whether to share information on their buying habits and other online activities with friends.

Some control. Ruh Roh.

For the program announced Tuesday to work, enough users must actually say "yes" so advertisers can show users their pitches in the guise of friends' endorsements.

There they go again "IN THE GUISE OF". can anyone say "identity theft"? Here's the news, if I want to endorse a business, I'll do it myself, thanks very much. Its called word of mouth, viral marketing, whatever. But it puts ALL the CONTROL in MY hands. Geddit guys? Apparently not.

David Hallerman, a senior analyst at the research group eMarketer, warned that users might not be as receptive to ads when they are communicating with friends on Facebook as they might when they are reading articles elsewhere in a more relaxed, consuming state.

Ya don't say. Wow, how about that. Who ever would have thought it.

Doc Searls had the final word on this stuff a long time ago, there is NO demand for messages and there is certainly no demand for an ad break while I'm having a meetup with friends.

Yes, Facebook is free and yes it has to be paid for but using my purchase as an endorsement for you to market to my friends?

Here, take the knife, apply to throat, slide sideways.

Seth's fans wag the Dog

One of the things I like about Seth Godin is that he gets down among the weeds and calls it a garden. Gardens don't come much weedier than Seth's Book Tour: When the funnel gets flipped.

If you don't have customers who are willing to organize this sort of event, what are you missing? It's easy to imagine doctors doing it when bringing a brain researcher to town. Or chocolate or wine fanatics welcoming a particularly talented vintner to their neighborhood.

And it doesn't have to be an in person visit. It could work just as well in sending people to a vibrant, important YouTube document on a politician, or a blog post about a new actuarial practice. It's taking the world (including me) a long time to get around the top-down, Oprah-driven mindset that comes so naturally.

[...] The takeaway for all of us is this:
1. Build a permission asset: a group of people that actually wants to hear what you're up to.
2. Create something (a product, a service, a story) that those people want to spread (not get paid to spread, but choose to spread) and get out of the way.

ESPECIALLY Get Out Of The Way. yet another example of the Long tail that wags the dog, can I call this one, "Don't weed the Garden: Garden the Weeds"?

PS3 but no IPO

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't see the difference between this ..

A PlayStation 3 system sold on EBay at about 1 p.m. eastern this afternoon for $2,861.53.  A "completed item" record also shows many other systems have already been sold, including one a week ago for $9,100 with 42 bids.  That price did, however, include free shipping.

As many as 2,200 Sony (SNE) PlayStations were listed for sale on EBay Thursday afternoon, despite efforts to restrict what has become a free-for-all to cash in on preordered units and long waits at electronics stores for the game consoles which go on sale at midnight.

Reports have EBay prohibiting offers of PS3 systems from anyone who hasn't already done a goodly amount of business on the site already and have very positive ratings from buyers.  Listings are also required supposed to include a photo of a receipt.

and any IPO on the stock market where certain privileged insiders get opackets of shares at teh list price and get to dump them into the rising market over the next few days, scoring an absolute fortune for doing squat.

If some kid in Kansai or Kuala Lumpur or West Buttock Virginia is prepared to stay up half the night to be first in line for the right to buy the ticket that lets her buy the first batch of PS3 and then drop it onto eBay at any price she can get to some other kid whose parents have too much money anyway, its OK by me.

And what's with the "checking the probity of the seller" crap? What happened to the joys of the unregulated marketplace all of a sudden? When it comes to buying our pensions or other investments, its caveat emptor and "sorry about that, we seem to have piddled your money down a large drain, oh well, call us back when you make some more money for us to 'manage' "

The people who suck money out of our pockets every day get Knighthoods for this stuff; but god help anyone making a serious chunk of change on the FREE MARKET without the approval of those who own it.

Just saying

/snark

The Shot Across the Bows

The scary thing about EBay could replace banks in the future. is that it is just the kind of extravagant claim that Internet evangelists were making about the media and music buisnesses a decade ago.

EBay, or an equivalent trust system, could replace banks within 20 years, according to a Gartner analyst.

Stephen Prentice, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, told vnunet.com that the existing financial services industry was unlikely to exist in 20 years' time.

"Ten or 15 years ago, people trusted banks. Nowadays banks in the UK realise that most of their customers don't actually trust them. They don't even like them. They only use them because they know there isn't really an alternative," he said.