Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

Blogs I Read: MicroPersuasion by Steve Rubel

I had intended to begin my series about Blogs I Read by focusing on the smaller ones -- the ones written by those who are not A or B list bloggers.  And then I realized my blog reading heavily favors the big guys.  So I need to make a better effort to find new voices.  I do that now through feed aggregators (especially the Todd And Power 150 list and RSS feed which I have blogged about before).  So I am being exposed to them, but not in the same concentrated way that I do with some of the bigger players.

So instead I decided to focus on some of the mainstays of my blog reading "diet."  These are the bloggers who have been in my RSS reader for as long as I can remember.  It will be a mix of PR/marketing and VC/technology business blogs. 

So I begin with MicroPersuasion by Steve Rubel.  This is one of the handful of blogs I recommend to newcomers to the blogosphere.  For those interested in blogging themselves or just understanding the medium better, I find Steve to be a good read.  He rarely misses important stories for the intersection of PR and technology and he often makes good points.

Of course, I don't always agree with him.  Regular readers of this space will recall that I have differed with him on many occasions.  But I agree with him often as well.  Any blog that I find myself saying "Amen!" after every post is one I will probably stop reading because I like blogs that make me think, not just ones that reinforce my existing views.

The only major beef I have with MicroPersuasion at the moment is that it is my sense that Steve has become a bit more conventional since his move to Edelman one year ago from the smaller CooperKatz.  But that could just as easily be that blogging has become more common so it becomes harder and harder to have a truly unique voice all the time.

Technorati tags: MicroPersuasion, Steve Rubel, Blogs I Read, media consumption Diet, power 150, todd and, Edelman, CooperKatz

Mark Cuban's Answer to Google/YouTube for Content Providers

Mark Cuban is nothing if not innovative and controversial.  Today, he addresses the issue of lots of Oscars footage being placed online by consumers.  His answer?

To capture Youtube viewers, the first step would be to OVERWHELM Youtube with partial clips of full length that tease Youtube users and point them to Oscars.com. For this Will Ferrell clip, I would have created a video that showed the first 10 secs of the clip, then had 4 minutes of a billboard that said " Great videos from the Oscars telecast and exclusive behind the scenes videos are all available at Oscars.com"

IN addition to the billboard in the video you would have an active link to Oscars.com on the Youtube video page. I wouldn't post this video 1 time. I would post this video 100 times.

He acknowledges this will cause a stir among some but argues that ultimately the audience will adapt.  His answer certainly seems to have some appeal -- as he describes it, paying kids $20 an hour to load this video into YouTube or Google certainly beats paying the lawyers $1000 an hour to send takedown notices.

I don't know whether it would work, but it would be fun to watch someone try!

Technorati tags: Mark Cuban, YouTube, Google, GooTube, Oscars, takedown notice, DMCA, video

Rackspace Goes the Extra Mile -- Actually 2,086 of Them -- For Customer Service

I started using Rackspace back in 2000.  At the time, they were basically a startup managed hosting company.  Today, they are an industry leader.  Over the years, virtually every company I have been involved with as a founder, investor or consultant has used them.

Throughout that time, they have always gone the extra mile for customer service.  But they impressed me -- and I know the tech team at CustomScoop -- when they came for an on-site visit.  That's 2,086 miles from San Antonio, TX to Concord, NH. 

Now, I know that they were in the area for other meetings.  And I realize we're a decent-sized customer, though I doubt anywhere near their largest.  The fact that they sent two people for several hours was a great gesture that I know was appreciated.

One of the members of the CustomScoop tech team, Ian Muir, blogged about the experience and the importance of connecting with customers generally:

Most companies may send an occasional e-mail or make a monthly phone call, but there are a few that really go the extra mile. This meeting is just one example of how Rackspace has exemplified good customer service. We’re always working with the same team and their support is always prompt and helpful. They also take measures like these meetings to stay connected and make sure that our needs are met proactively.

I don't mean for this post to sound like an ad for Rackspace, but if it does, so be it.  They've been great to us over the years, and I wanted to take this opportunity to offer them a tip of my cowboy hat to them.  (The hat, after all, was a gift during a Rackspace customer appreciation event I attended in San Antonio years ago.)

I can only hope that our customers feel as strongly about us as I do about Rackspace.

NON-DISCLOSURE: I don't get compensated by Rackspace in any way.  In fact, my companies pay them a tidy sum of money each month. 

Technorati tags: Rackspace, customer service, Ian Muir, CustomScoop

Recap of PRSA Boston Social Media Event

Mark McClennan, President of PRSA Boston, and CustomScoop's own Sarah Wurrey have both written good write-ups of the PRSA Boston social media event that took place on Monday night.  As I noted before, I was unable to attend because I am out of town for another commitment, but after reading these two posts I wish I had been there.  From what I understand it was a packed event -- I know more folks from CustomScoop wanted to go but were wait-listed since the event sold out. 

It's great to see strong interest in the social media area from PR pros in the Boston area.  I look forward to future events like this from Mark's group.

Technorati tags: PRSA Boston, Mark McClennan, Sarah Wurrey, social media

Blogs I Read, Books I've Read, Podcasts I Listen To, & Other Media Consumption

I'm starting a new series of posts later today about my media consumption habits and recommendations.  I am frequently asked to recommend blogs, podcasts, books, and other media sources that I find interesting and useful. 

In part, this series was inspired by a post I read this morning by Daniela Barbosa.  She, in turn, had been responding to a call from Jeremiah Owyang to other bloggers to discuss their media consumption "diet."  But it is also something that I had been planning to do anyway, this just got me going faster.

In some of the forthcoming posts, I plan to discuss broad categories of media (like magazines and newspapers) and cover what I read regularly and why.  But for the sources that I use the most (especially blogs, podcasts, and other online/social media) I will do posts specific to the source.  I hope to explain why I consume what I do and touch on the strengths and weaknesses -- purely as I perceive them -- of each. 

Hopefully this information will prove valuable.  I expect it will be an ongoing effort, though there will be an initial burst of activity as I come out of the chute.  Obviously those blogs on my blogroll will likely be featured, but I will touch on others that I add along the way.

To give readers some perspective on the (roughly) prioritized order in which I consume media, here you go:

• Web (including blogs, podcasts, and other online media)
• Email
• Magazines
• Books
• TV
• Music
• Newspapers
• Radio
• Movies

I plan to spend some time on the tools I use for consumption as well as the sources, so stay tuned for that in the near future.

Technorati tags: Media Consumption Diet, mediaweek, blogs, podcasts, books, email, magazines, tv, music, newspapers, radio, movies, online media, social media, Jeremiah Owyang, Daniela Barbosa

Business 2.0 Stuck in a Publishing 1.0 World

As I have mentioned, I still read dead tree versions of magazines.  But when I find an article I like in the print edition, I usually turn to the online version to forward links to colleagues or include in posts on this blog.  It's simply more convenient and reader-friendly.

Unfortunately, Business 2.0 remains stuck in a Publishing 1.0 world.  OK, perhaps it is more like version 1.1, but still it falls far short of what one would expect in today's media environment.  It turns out that they don't publish all of their content online.  Now, if they had it all there and charged for access to some, I could understand that.  After all, I'm not one of those "all content must be free" types.  I support subscription models.

But Business 2.0 publishes stuff in the magazine that doesn't make it onto the web in any form.  That's very unusual for a high-profile publication these days, especially one that bills itself as "the playbook for a new generation of leaders."

So when I went to find a link for "A Startup's Best Friend? Failure" from the March 2007 issue to talk about it on this blog, I couldn't do it.  It simply wasn't there.  I looked high and low. Used the search feature.  Got nothing.

I may yet write about the power of failure.  But it will be harder to tell the story without allowing my readers to click on a simple link to read about the experiences described in the article.  They can't read the original source to hear about the errors made by Dogster or Riya and how those companies learned from them and grew because of it. 

Regrettably, my readers lose out on the full quality of the experience as it should have been, and Business 2.0 loses out on some readers.

UPDATE: Business 2.0 posted the failure article this morning (2/28) on its web site.  Better late than never, I suppose.

Technorati tags: Business 2.0, media, print media, publishing, dogster, riya

SmartMoney = DumbAboutBlogs

I subscribe to SmartMoney magazine, the dead tree version.  Although I subscribe to and read several hundred blogs every day, I still find value in printed magazines, especially for reading while on an airplane (my Sony Reader can't be used on takeoff and landing for instance).  And I do find the "serendipity" factor discussed a few weeks ago in this space to be valuable as well.

Usually I find the magazine to be fairly insightful.  But the "10 things" article in the current issue may be the dumbest one ever.  The column generally exposes the dark underbelly of various products and services (see "10 things your florist won't tell you" or "10 things your fitness club won't tell you" -- the two most recent ones).  In this case, however, the writer targets bloggers.

Apart from the fact that bloggers don't charge for people to read their content, the claims themselves are absurd.  Although it may validate the story too much, I want to respond to each in turn.

1. "Hardly anybody reads me." Incredulously, the article contains the following: "So what's the norm? Google CEO Eric Schmidt told a recent gathering of U.K. politicians that the average blog has just one reader: the blogger."  If the whole point of the column is what you need to about a blogger, wouldn't you only care if you were reading it?  Therefore you would automatically double the audience.  But more to the point, all content can have lots of readers or none.  It's just as true for magazine articles as it is for blogs.

2. "The more companies pay me, the more I like their stuff." From the article: "Companies looking for ways to profit from the blogging phenomenon have tried everything from buying ad space on blogs to infiltrating discussion forums with hired PR shills."  Ah, advertising is the same as trolling?  Gimme a break.

3. "Did I mention I'm not a real reporter?"  The author of the piece, Daniel Cho, says that "more than one-third of bloggers consider their work a form of journalism."  I may not have been a math major, but doesn't that mean that two-thirds of bloggers don't consider themselves journalists?  If I don't claim to be a mathematician, should I make sure everyone knows that whenever I use numbers on my blog?

4. "I might infect your computer with a virus."  I'm really not making this up.  This section reads like a 1980s "you might get AIDS from using a public toilet" argument. Cho writes "But blogs can contain malicious code just like any other site ... Another tactic involves targeting innocent blogs and inserting malicious links into the reader comment section — one click and your computer could be infected." Psst! Tell your bosses at SmartMoney because they have a web site and -- are you sitting down? -- they allow comments!

5. "I'm revealing company secrets." This is one where there is the tiniest sliver of merit.  Companies do need to have blogging policies so there are no misunderstandings about what it is OK to reveal about internal company matters online.

6. "Just because my name's on it doesn't mean I wrote it."  It's possible Cho doesn't realize ghost-writing is an entire industry.  Is it better if the owner of a blog authors every word, sure.  Is it atrocious if they have a ghost writer?  No, though it probably won't come across as well.  Celebrities and prominent individuals frequently have others pen their words for their approval. 

7. "My blog is just a stepping stone to bigger and better things."  Wow, bloggers have ambition!  Stop the presses!  Of course, I don't imagine Daniel Cho wants to write "10 things" for the rest of his life and might actually like to see his title shortened from "Reporter-Researcher" to "Reporter."  But I'm sure he didn't think of that when he wrote this article, which as it turns out appears to be his first piece in SmartMoney.

8. "I can control what you see on the Internet."  Yup, tinfoil hat time, folks.  This part is all about Google search results.  That would be Google, the search engine.  Which as we all know bloggers control.  (Just don't tell Larry, Sergey or the aforementioned Eric.)

9. "Blogging just about ruined my life."  Do or say something stupid and it can matter later in life.  But lots of things can do that.

10. "I'm already obsolete."  If blogging is done, why are you writing about it?

(via Jeff Jarvis)

Technorati tags: Jeff Jarvis, SmartMoney, Daniel Cho, 10 Things, blogging, Google

KFC/Taco Bell Rat Crisis Shows Online Media Monitoring is YUMmy

Mark Harvey of Hass MS&L does an excellent job of explaining how the KFC/Taco Bell Rat Crisis in New York's Greenwich Village proves the need for effective online media monitoring.  He demonstrates that Yum! Brands, the parent of the two restaurants, could have used monitoring to more effectively respond.

For those unfamiliar with the story, the 2 minute video below tells the story clearly.

Mark incorporates a timeline to show how the story unfolded and grew in an effort to address his central thesis: "When you sell blog and or board/media monitoring, people may ask, 'How bad can it be, I mean how fast can my reputation go south?'"

He wraps up in a way that I couldn't have probably said better myself:

If this company had media monitoring and crisis monitoring someone could have called to move media crews away from the front window or covered the front window where dozens of media outlets had set up shop filming and getting customer reaction shots. They weren't pleasant. Words like "sickened" and "disturbing" and "gross" all played out on national media with the KFC/Taco Bell logo right behind.

Seven hours is all it took...

I recommend reading the post to understand not only the importance of media monitoring, but also crisis communications.  As readers of this blog know, the marriage of the two has been a topic of interest to me lately.

Technorati tags: KFC, Taco Bell, rats, Yum, Yum Brands, Mark Harvey, media monitoring, online news clipping, clipping service, crisis communications, Hass MS&L

New England Companies @ DEMO Conference

I'm pleased to announce that I will be writing a regular column for Mass High Tech, a regional publication that covers the New England high-tech community.  The column is called "Innovation Notations" and takes a look at entrepreneurship, venture capital, angel investing, and technology innovation. 

My first column appeared today and covers highlights of the DEMO conference that took place recently in Palm Desert, California.  In particular, it looks at what New England companies participated and some initial impressions that I had.

Technorati tags: Chip Griffin, Mass High Tech, Innovation Notations, DEMO, venure capital, angel investing, innovation, entrepreneurship

Another Good Use of Video

I've been pretty focused on the multimedia potential of social media lately, and so you'll have to forgive me for my second post today touting the value of online video in communicating a message.

In this case, I'm talking about Walt Mossberg's practice of recording a video with content similar to his weekly column in the Wall Street Journal.  This week he reviewed the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet.  In writing, you got a decent sense about the product and its strengths and weaknesses.

But as he told virtually the same story in video and could hold up the device and point to it as he was making his case, it was an entirely different experience. 

I continue to believe that most people won't watch a lot of video online, but it still has potential when used in meaningful applications.

(If you are reading this feed and don't see the video, click through to read the post on the Pardon the Disruption web site and view it there.)

Technorati tags: Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal, online video, multimedia, message, Nokia, Internet tablet, N800

Control vs. Influence

Jim Horton wrote today about the lack of control that companies have, especially over product announcements, in the new media era we live in.  That got me thinking to the question of control vs. influence.

The mantra of the blogosphere tends to be that companies cannot and should not attempt to control the conversation.  In reading countless blogs and having conversations with a lot of companies interested in, but leery of, online media, I find that many are confusing the issues of control and influence.

Controlling the conversation is not possible in the blogosphere, or for that matter in any word-of-mouth environment or even the traditional mainstream media.  Even the most powerful and influential media operation in the world, the one run by the White House, can't control the conversation, no matter the occupant of the Oval Office.  All try and all fail.

But just because you can't control what is being said doesn't mean you shouldn't try and influence it.   Some argue that companies should merely participate in the conversation honestly and allow it to follow its natural course. 

To which I say: "baloney." 

Companies, individuals, and organizations with a stake in online conversations should not only join them, but view them strategically and tactically.  To communicate effectively, you must understand what you are communicating, how you are doing it, and what your ultimate goal may be. 

Unfortunately, for many this causes a devolution into "corporate speak," which does not help the cause.  Certainly it is a delicate balancing act, but one must walk that tightrope in order to effectively communicate online.

Don't try to control the online conversation; you can't.  But do be smart about trying to influence it effectively.

Technorati tags: influence, control, blogs, blogosphere

Online Video Makes Ideas More Compelling

A colleague shared this video with me earlier today and it certainly got me thinking.  I have embedded it below, and it is worth the six minutes or so it takes to watch it through.  

It demonstrates several things:

• the world is changing
• online video helps make ideas more compelling
• statistics are powerful tools

As you do, consider that the production of this is relatively simple ... a PowerPoint with background music.  No narration, no fancy video effects.  But just as the much more elaborate video that I blogged about recently that explained Web 2.0, this one gets its point across.  And in both cases the fact that is video drives the point home better than if it were a plain text document.

(If you are reading this feed and don't see the video, click through to the Pardon the Disruption web site to view it.)

Technorati tags: online video, YouTube, Web 2.0, powerpoint, statistics, change, technology

Companies and People Make Mistakes

An excellent post from John Moore at Brand Autopsy reminds us that every company makes mistakes. 

No business is perfect. NONE. Business is a game of progress, not perfection. No business will be perfect. It's an impossibly unattainable goal. But while that goal is unattainable, the most endearing and enduring businesses seem to always aspire to reach perfection. They always make progressive steps to improve their business and how their business connects with people. Sure, they will stumble along the way. But the true measure of a company is how they recover and forge ahead making progress along the way to overcome their mistakes.

Every company I've ever worked for or owned has made mistakes.  I've made mistakes personally.  What I always tell employees is that I don't mind mistakes, as long as they are honest ones.  Typically the only ones that get to me are ones that are repeated.

Make a mistake, make amends, and don't make the same mistake twice.

Technorati tags: Brand Autopsy, John Moore, mistakes, customer service, entrepreneur

Restaurateur Declares Blog War on New York Times

In the Web 2.0 world, when you get angry with the mainstream media, you have some recourse.  You can blog to communicate your unfiltered message.  But how do you equalize the audience for your message with the audience for the outlet that wronged you? 

If you're Jeffrey Chodorow, known to some as Rocco DiSpirito's business partner in the NBC TV reality show "The Restaurant," you declare a blog war on the New York Times.  In a costly full page ad in today's paper, Chodorow savages restaurant critic Frank Bruni and the rest of the crew in the food section.  He announces that he's started his own blog to shadow their work (and presumably ridicule them).

Furious at a scathing review of "Kobe Club" by Bruni in the February 7 edition of the Times, Chodorow decided to get even -- or at least fight back.  Here's how he describes his blog:

This blog was born partly out of my love for food and for great restaurants (from neighborhood joints to the world’s finest) and partly in response to an increasingly negative, downright nasty climate that has surfaced in the world of restaurant journalism. My intent is to provide a different perspective—from a restaurateur’s point of view—as well as to share some of the great food experiences I have been exposed to because of my success in the business. I’ve also made it my mission with this blog to comment on reviews that I feel are not-fair, not-objective and not-constructive.

Certainly Bruni poked his finger squarely in Chodorow's eye in the review:

Kobe Club occupies the Midtown space once inhabited by Mix in New York, Mr. Chodorow’s cheeky, ill-fated collaboration with the French chef Alain Ducasse.

Mix wasn’t even Mr. Chodorow’s flashiest recent failure. Who can forget Rocco’s on 22nd, scene of “The Restaurant,” where Mama’s meatballs were sauced with acrimony and eventual litigation? Or its short-lived successor in that location, Brasserio Caviar & Banana?

Brasserio Caviar & Banana — the name really does bear repeating — tried a grill-from-Ipanema approach and foreshadowed Mr. Chodorow’s fascination with sharp objects. Meats came on disturbingly, dangerously long skewers.

No doubt Chodorow has many in the New York restaurant community silently rooting for him, while others are cringing.  It will be interesting to see what approach the Times takes.  They can try to ignore it; seek retribution using the pen as a sword; or they can tone down future reviews.  One certainly wonders whether Bruni -- or anyone else at the Times -- can objectively review a Chodorow establishment after this broadside.

As a "foodie" and a proponent of blogs as a medium to circumvent the mainstream media, I find this story fascinating and look forward to watching it continue to unfold.

Technorati tags: Jeffrey Chodorow, Rocco DiSpirito, Frank Bruni, New York Times, food critic, restaurant critic, Kobe Club, foodie, blog war, mainstream media, Web 2.0

PR Crises Occur at Broadband Speeds

The timing on this one couldn't be better.  As JetBlue works to dig itself out of Snow Crisis 2007, they might want to join you in checking out "How to Make Crisis Communications More Effective with Media Monitoring" published today by CustomScoop and written by yours truly. The publication is available to download for free as a PDF. 

Here's the premise:

Managing your brand’s reputation in a crisis becomes more challenging every day, given the explosion of information sources accessed by consumers and key constituencies. With reporters, columnists, producers, bloggers, and even average citizens writing or broadcasting about a crisis within minutes of becoming aware of it, the spigot of information you must be aware of can seem never-ending. Worse, these individuals may even be the cause of the crisis in the first place if they jump on incorrect or misleading information and use the media megaphone to trumpet it to the masses.

Effective crisis communications depends on timely and accurate media monitoring efforts to understand the messages being communicated to the public. By arming yourself with the knowledge of how information is being interpreted – and what friends and foe alike are saying – you can be better prepared to respond rapidly and proactively communicate your own messages.

 And here's a thumbnail sketch of the solutions discussed:

Key elements of your pre-crisis media monitoring plan should include:

• Detecting signs of a crisis before it occurs
• Identifying key media outlets likely to write about your company
• Understanding the tone of existing coverage
• Establishing a trusted dialogue with reporters and bloggers

During a crisis, you should seek timely awareness of:

• Stories in key targeted publications
• The evolution of online conversations
• Patterns of message travel
• Tone and content of stories

You can take a deep breath when the crisis concludes. You can even probably go home and get a good night’s sleep for the first time since the crisis began. What you can’t do is stop monitoring.  Instead you should:

• Watch for a rebirth of the last crisis
• Learn from your experience
• Return to your pre-crisis monitoring plan

Go ahead and read this 12 page report for yourself and then feel free to come back here and share your feedback.

Technorati tags: CustomScoop, crisis communications, media monitoring, blogs, crisis, JetBlue, whitepaper, white paper, PR

A $30 Million Problem

I promise to leave the JetBlue thing alone after this.  Probably.  I've already whacked them and praised them.  And now I'm simply sharing what Bulldog Reporter says:

The chief executive of JetBlue Airways said this week that reimbursing passengers stuck on about 1,000 delayed flights and updating its operations to prevent further problems could cost the airline $30 million or more, MSNBC reports.

"It's going to be very expensive," CEO David Neeleman said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show. "I don't have the final number, but it's going to be maybe $20 million or $30 million and maybe a little bit higher."

This clearly demonstrates the importance of solid and timely crisis communications.

Technorati tags: JetBlue, crisis, crisis communications, Bulldog Reporter

I Can't Live Without My Feeds!

OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration.  But it was a tough two hours this morning as I was unable to access my Newsgator feeds using FeedDemon between about 5 AM and 7 AM.  At first I thought it was my new Vista computer since it has been a bit cranky.  But when fiddling with the machine and rebooting it didn't help, I logged in to Newsgator Online.  That's when I saw a bunch of SQL 2005 error messages and realized it wasn't me.

Well, my feeds are finally back so now I can fill my head with all sorts of stuff and get my day back on track.  I guess its only when you can't access information that you realize how much you value it.

Technorati tags: Newsgator, Feeddemon, SQL Server 2005, feeds, RSS

The CustomScoop Founding Story

David Beisel wrote last week about how he values hearing founders' stories and that "the founding story also helps us as VCs evaluate and better understand entrepreneurial team."  CustomScoop isn't looking for funding, but I haven't written about how our company came to be, and I thought it might make for an interesting post.

Throughout most of the 1990's, I worked in Washington, DC in a variety of policy and public affairs roles.  In 1999, however, my wife and I decided to return to New England.  Like many exiles from the nation's capital, I decided to hang out a shingle and call myself a consultant.  At first, it is essentially a codeword for "unemployed," but as time went by I was able to use my network to gin up some contracts, primarily in the area of online communications for non-profits. 

To keep in touch with my former colleagues, I started what would today be called a blog (I called it a newsletter at the time).  Living in NH and connected to politics, it made sense to me to write about the 2000 NH Presidential Primary.  Since both party's nominations were up for grabs, it was a good cycle to do that.  Though I had been involved in partisan politics in the past, I swore off taking sides in the 2000 cycle so that I could write fair posts.  I believe I succeeded in that as I was able to build quite a list of mainstream media reporters and workers for candidates on both sides of the aisle who read my stuff daily.

Once the primary was over, however, I had this great list of several thousand readers -- plus the countless others who visited PrimaryScoop.com (see here for the Wayback Machine's look at a day in the life of PrimaryScoop).  But I couldn't keep spending a couple of hours a day writing a free newsletter -- my consulting business was picking up and I needed to focus on making money so my wife didn't kill me.

Having done some computer programming mostly as a hobby, I had just enough skill to be dangerous, not enough to be useful.  So I wrote a little program that scraped political headlines from about a dozen major news sites and organized them into an automatically updating news feed at CampaignScoop.com (Wayback version here).  I would then add occasional reporting and commentary, but not nearly on the scale that I had done before.

Around that same time, I had been talking with a colleague of mine in New Hampshire about some potential businesses to start.  We both had an entrepreneurial itch we wanted to scratch and as we were both consultants, we had the dream of doing something not tied simply to billing for our time.  Or as we liked to put it back then, we wanted to "make money while we sleep." 

We were talking on the phone one day about CampaignScoop, and we came to the realization that people might actually pay for a service that brought news links to them every day.  In fact, in our consulting businesses and previous jobs, we had used traditional paper clipping services.  Each week we'd get a fat envelope full of newspaper clips that someone had painstakingly cut out of the newsprint edition.  The stories would typically be about 3 weeks old and not organized in any way.  In addition, we paid the clipping service on a per-clip basis, so it was impossible to accurately budget for ourselves or clients since it was anyone's guess how many stories the media would write about our topic in a given month.

We saw that the Internet was dramatically accelerating news cycles and knew that our own clients wanted more timely and accurate information.  So I bought some programming books and went to work turning the CampaignScoop "spider" into a program that would scour a database of news sites for any story that matched criteria we specified.  We put our heads together with a third consultant we knew, and we decided to call it CustomScoop to capitalize on whatever branding I had accomplished through PrimaryScoop and CampaignScoop.   (You can see our first site design here.)

As I think back to those days, it was really a ridiculous undertaking.  I was in way over my head, but I never really thought about it.  For those readers with a technical background, you'll appreciate this: I wrote the first version of the spider in ColdFusion because other than some Pascal I learned in high school, it was the only language I knew.  It worked, but I was certainly relieved when we finally hired a real developer to convert it to a more sensible language.

Looking back to those days in the summer of 2000, the other remarkable thing to me in retrospect was that we sold a product we didn't have yet -- just as Michael Bloomberg famously sold his eponymous Terminal to Merrill Lynch before he had a working product.  I still recall getting the phone call from my business partner saying he had sold the first account and then spending the rest of that day and night coding while my wife did data entry to get the sources ready for action the next day. 

It wasn't a great product in those days, but since our clients had never had anything like it, we still impressed them.  As a result, we were fortunate enough to be profitable starting in that very first month -- which means we were able to stay away from the vultures in the VC world (fortunately, my VC friends don't get offended by that kind of talk; they even seem to revel in it a bit).  In hindsight, that was actually a pretty good accomplishment as the bubble was deflating.  Even today it would be noteworthy for a startup.

Obviously over the last 7 years, CustomScoop has grown considerably and today is what I half-jokingly refer to as a "real company."  I've learned a lot in that time and had an opportunity to work with a lot of great people along the way.  I'm especially grateful to have been able to start the company with two great people who have been so easy to work with. 

The success that CustomScoop has had has given me a lot of opportunities to try different things, including angel investing.  But what gets me most excited today is knowing that the future of CustomScoop can be even brighter than its past.  We have a great team in place working every day to innovate and expose new people to our solutions.  It should continue to be a great ride.

Technorati tags: CustomScoop, founding story, David Beisel, venture capital, angel investing, Michael Bloomber, Merrill Lynch, ColdFusion, CampaignScoop, PrimaryScoop, entrepreneur

JetBlue Turning It Around

What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday, I had JetBlue up against the ropes.  Like a prize fighter, under the leadership of David Neeleman, they are fighting their way back to the center of the ring.

Brad Feld point early in the day to a New York Times article:

In this article, Neeleman shows he is very aware how badly JetBlue has screwed up dealing with this situation.  The article states “Mr. Neeleman said he would enact what he called a customer bill of rights that would financially penalize JetBlue — and reward passengers — for any repeat of the current upheaval. He said he would propose a plan to pay customers, after some amount of time, by the hour for being stranded on a plane.”

In addition to finally speaking up, Neeleman is quoted as saying “I can flap my lips all I want. Talk is cheap. Watch us.”

Shel Holz praises the company for effectively saying "I'm sorry" and notes it is one of the hardest things for companies to say (for legal and other reasons).  More Shel:

A typical corporate response would have said, “JetBlue regretss any inconvenience the storm in New York may have caused passengers.”

What the spokesperson said was that JetBlue apologizes, adding, “What happened last Wednesday was totally unacceptable.”

Totally. How human.

The other Shel, Shel Israel, also weighed in generally favorably.  He says, "JetBlue may not blog, but it is transparent."  He also lauds Neeleman for overcoming likely pressure from the lawyers and speaking clearly.  Note also what he says about blogs:

This is transparency and it is a case study for how a CEO can use it. Using a blog would have been a better communications tool, but I think it's important to remember that like a hammer, a blog is just a tool.

JetBlue has sinned, it has suffered and it has repented.  The guy at the top probably ignored a whole bevy of lawyers telling him not to admit any kind of culpability. He says they'll do better and next time the suffering passengers will be compensated.

The point about a blog being a tool and not an end in itself is one that I like seeing made in the blogosphere.  I sometimes think we bloggers take our medium a little too seriously sometimes and are too quick to dismiss those who don't blog.

In any event, kudos to David Neeleman for providing the necessary leadership to again put JetBlue in a favorable light.  Though I have never been able to fly the airline (my routes tend to take me on USAir most often and Manchester, NH is not served by JetBlue), I am hopeful that their promised passenger bill of rights will eventually spill over to competitors.  As someone who takes nearly 100 flights a year, anything that can improve service and reliability would be welcome.

Technorati tags: Brad Feld, Shel Holz, Shel Israel, JetBlue, David Neeleman

JetBlue Hurting Badly

A snowstorm in the Northeast last week could prove extraordinarily costly for JetBlue.  Accustomed to positive press coverage, the company has been besieged by a multimedia attack from customers and reporters alike. 

First there was the plane stuck on the tarmac for 10 hours while passengers suffered.  Now, the airline has been forced to cancel about a quarter of its weekend flights to try to get back on schedule.

All Saturday and Sunday flights on JetBlue were canceled in and out of 11 airports: Richmond, Va.; Pittsburgh; Charlotte and Raleigh/Durham, N.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Austin and Houston, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Nashville; Portland, Me.; and Bermuda.

As of 6 p.m., about 170 flights had been called off, out of about 600 scheduled for the weekend.

Paul Kedrosky has it right when he says this could have a long-term business and stock impact:

The inmates are running the asylum at JetBlue, with passengers now flipping out pre-boarding at the least sign of a possible delay. As an investment aside, this story has now crossed over from human interest to investment, with there being a large and growing number of people who will not fly JetBlue, and a long list of others who'll try to avoid it.

Once again we are reminded that how companies handle a crisis can make a big difference with customer perception of the brand.  People expect snowstorms to cause problems for airlines; they don't expect to be trapped on planes, receive conflicting information, and see effects for days after the weather has cleared.

Technorati tags: JetBlue, snowstorm, Paul Kedrosky

 

Steve Jobs Blasts Teacher Tenure, Unions

I have enormous respect for teachers.  But the fact of the matter is that, as with any profession, there are good teachers and bad teachers.  Unfortunately, unions and tenure prevent the bad ones from being fired in most cases, unless they step so far over the line that no sane person could conclude they were not unfit.

Steve Jobs delivered this message forcefully in Austin on Friday, according to an Associated Press report.

Jobs compared schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.

"What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good?" he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.

"Not really great ones because if you're really smart you go, 'I can't win.'"

I couldn't have said it better myself.  I went to school years ago in a district that had to implement layoffs as the student population declined with the closure of a local military base.  To see good, young teachers let go while those with seniority but less talent and enthusiasm were kept, was a huge disappointment. 

Teachers educate future entrepreneurs, workers, and citizens.  As many have said, children are our must valuable resource.  Hopefully, more leaders like Steve Jobs will step up to the plate and deliver the message bluntly.  Teachers' unions are a powerful force in this country and will not take this lying down, but we all need to do our part to highlight the structural problems facing education today.

UPDATE: Robert Scoble weighs in and has a mixed view of Jobs' comments:

Steve Jobs is right that unions are corrosive on the quality of our schools. Our schools are bad because we can’t get rid of bad teachers. But, it’s worse than that — Steve Jobs’ fix wouldn’t fix the total problem. Patrick’s Mom was a teacher for a while. She left for a variety of reasons, but partly because the pay is so bad for the work you put into that job.

Dan Farber has similar views on Jobs:

He's right that the ideal would be to only have great teachers, but blaming the bad teacher syndrome totally on the unions isn't going to solve the problem. Paying teachers a better wage to attract more talent (they don't get those nice back-dated stock options) and keeping the good teachers from seeking other employment because they can't afford to teach would be a good start. That's not to say that the teacher unions can't improve on performance standards for their members to eliminate poor performers from the teacher pool.

Certainly teacher pay should be factored in and must both fairly compensate for the work involved and also be substantial enough to attract excellent talent (as is the case frankly for any job).  But throwing money at the problem before the structural issues caused by unions and teacher contracts are solved makes no sense to me.

Technorati tags: Steve Jobs, education, teachers unions, unions, teachers, tenure

Magazine Circulation Down, Number of Ad Pages Up

Fewer people are reading more ads.  That's the conclusion one can apparently draw from dueling reports this week.  A New York Post piece today that more and more magazine readers appear to be headed for the web for content. 

While some titles are enjoying banner sales and strong comebacks, many of the old standbys are suffering double-digit declines in the second half of this year compared with a year earlier, such as the nation's biggest seller, Readers' Digest, which tumbled 12.2 percent to 10.1 million circulation.

Other legends also withered, including Woman's Day, off 20 percent to 4 million; Redbook, down 28.6 percent to 2.4 million; and even Anna Wintour's Vogue, off 6 percent to 1.3 million.

Steve Rubel pointed earlier this week to data that showed the number of pages of magazine advertising increased in 2006. 

According to the Magazine Publishers of America, magazine advertising pages climbed to nearly 250,000 pages last year. While they're down from their 2000 high of 286,000 pages, the trend line has been going up. (Advertising pages tally up the total number of pages in a magazine that have advertising on them. They are a general indicator of the health of the magazine publishing industry.)

While both items mention the migration to the web, neither addresses whether the combined readership of the affected publications, including both online and print, are up or down.  Presumably when you add in online readership, the numbers would be much better.  Of course, from a business perspective one would want to know whether total revenue was enhanced enough by the web audience to make up for the lost print circulation.

Steve does conclude with a good observation, however: "The takeaway here for me is that media is often additive. One format does not always replace another."  He's right, print media is here to stay.  The publishers and titles that evolve with the times will thrive; those who continue to do business the old way will suffer.

Technorati tags: Steve Rubel, New York Post, circulation, magazines, ad pages, advertising, magazine publishers, online media, web audience

Web 2.0 Description, YouTube Style

This is a great introduction to Web 2.0 for normal people.  It has an obligatory Flickr reference, of course, and is posted on YouTube.  Watch it below. Thanks to Alice Marshall for pointing this out -- I agree with her sentiment that videos like these could replace many PowerPoints.  It obviously takes a bit more skill to craft video, but the impact is much more dramatic than simple slides. 

The video itself was created by Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University.  Nice work.

 UPDATE: John Battelle has a great interview with Wesch.

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, YouTube, Flickr, Alice Marshall, Michael Wesch, PowerPoint, presentation

Who Wants to Be a Billionaire?

Heck, most of us do.  If you're one of those people, you should find this post laugh out loud funny: "Four Simple Steps to Becoming a Billionaire." (I especially liked the "Russian World Version" section.) I found this post via a new blog that Brad Feld suggested: Ask the Wizard.  It is authored by Dick Costolo, founder of Feedburner.  I have a hunch this blog will be part of my regular rotation for reading and commenting, based on the first few days of posts.  I hope Dick sticks with it.  As a fellow entrepreneur, it's great to see that perspective being reflected (not that I don't appreciate all the VC blogs, too).

Technorati tags: Dick Costolo, Brad Feld, Billionaire, Feedburner, entrepreneur blog

More on the Ethics of Freebies in the Blogosphere

Muhammed Saleem has a good discussion of "sponsorships and freebies" and the ethics of it all in the blogosphere.  An excerpt:

Again, I find myself thinking that as long as it doesn't influence your opinion at all (meaning if you hate the gift, you blog your hate), and as long as you make fair disclosure about getting the gift (some people forget), there shouldn't be a problem at all.

It's worth a read -- and not just because he agrees with my belief that "Bloggers Shouldn't Fear Freebies."

Technorati tags: Muhammed Saleem, ethics, blogosphere, freebie, sponsorship

I Got Vista Too Soon

I now remember why I don't get new operating systems right when they are released.  My gadget geekiness got the better of me, though, and since I was due for a new laptop anyway, I got a new Dell XPS M1210 with Vista Ultimate.  I got one that was fully tricked out since my last laptop, a Thinkpad Tablet, was great but a bit slow for as hard as I pushed it.

The good news is that the system is very fast.  When it works.  Unfortunately there are a litany of small and large problems with it.  It seems the blame can be spread around pretty evenly among Microsoft, Dell, and various software & hardware vendors.

The Bad

• The driver situation isn't very pretty.  I get repeated messages from my system at bootup that at least one driver has been disabled because of compatibility.  Which might be understandable had I installed it, but the offending driver belongs to the Roxio DVD software which came pre-installed by Dell.  Score one point in favor of Vista for finding the problem and disabling the driver so it doesn't cause more problems; subtract one each for Dell for shipping a product with a bad driver and the Roxio driver folks for not being ready for Vista.
• A big black mark for Cisco for failing to come up with an updated version of its VPN client that works with Vista.  But, hey, I didn't really want to access the company network from the road anyway, right?
• I have yet to figure out what caused it, but I got a couple of Blue Screens of Death yesterday.  I haven't installed much software yet -- just a handful of essentials.  The good news is that after several semi-automatic reboots, Vista had solved the problem and returned the system to a stable state.  The bad news is that it undid a number of changes I had made to the IE Toolbar and Outlook (using only Microsoft options).
• The system came with integrated Verizon Wireless EVDO.  Since I'm on the road almost every week, that's great news.  Unfortunately, I tried to activate the service and it took me to the Verizon Wireless web site, had me fill out a long form, and told me it could be up to 5 minutes before it finished processing.  Over 20 minutes later I bailed out and tried again -- being forced to fill out the long form from scratch again.  Same result.  Apparently I will be subjected to calling customer support on this one.
• It doesn't appear to be related to the EVDO problem, but I do get periodic warnings that some driver is causing problems.  It looks like it is either the EVDO or the WiFi driver, but in Googling it I haven't gotten a good answer yet. This one I'll let go since it hasn't blocked the use of anything as far as I can tell so far.
• The Windows sidebar with widgets frequently pops up a message saying it has to close because of some problem.  But then it seems to stay open.  And I haven't touched any of the setting for it.  Until last night when I figured out how to shut it off entirely so I didn't have to worry about it anymore.
• I keep getting messages from Windows that the Windows and Norton Firewall are both disabled.  The OS apparently doesn't recognize that Norton is running (or at least it says it is) or Norton isn't providing the right information to Windows.

The Good

• As noted above, Vista seems to do a pretty good job of finding and solving problems.  I wouldn't quite call it "self-healing" but it is the best I have seen from any version of Windows in graceful recovery.
• I really like Office 2007.  Outlook only has minor interface adjustments, but the creation of more of a true dashboard view around my Inbox is very welcome indeed.  Word has great features, including a minor but very useful word count feature that automatically adjusts if you select text.  For those of us who write columns and such with a specific word count requirement will find this much more friendly than previous versions.  The UI for Word and Excel does take a little getting used to -- certainly a learning curve there that will likely frighten the less technical among us -- but they become intuitive fairly quickly.  And features are much easier to access than before.

Bottom Line

I'm not ready to give up on Vista just yet, but I do wish that I hadn't rushed into it.  It's a reminder that those of us who live on the bleeding edge of technology will spill some of our own blood, sweat, and tears dealing with it.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows, Vista, sidebar, Norton, Office 2007, Word, Outlook, widgets, EVDO, WiFi, Verizon Wireless, firewall, Blue Screen of Death, Roxio, Dell, XPS M1210, Lenovo, Thinkpad, Vista Ultimate, Cisco

The Difference Between Sales and Marketing

I was talking with Steve Bracy at CustomScoop today who -- among many other things -- oversees our sales and marketing efforts.  We were talking about that very subject when he said to me, "What do you think the difference between sales and marketing is?"  As is frequently the case, my mental ramblings had made me seem very confused and contradicting myself.  So I like to think of this as Steve throwing me a lifeline to rescue myself and see the error of my ways.

Here's what I settled on: both are designed to increase sales, but marketing is lead generation done through mass communication while sales is typically one-on-one communication with the same goal. 

I honestly don't know what the "experts" would say about that definition.  I know that as a founder and CEO, my main interest is in growing revenue through our sales and marketing programs.  In my more excitable moments, I will boil marketing down to "Names! Names! Names!" (as in get us more names to sell to) and sales becomes, appropriately enough "Sales! Sales! Sales!"

The one area of marketing that I have generally been skeptical of throughout my business life is branding.  Until recently, I would visibly cringe and recoil at the word.  Steve and our marketing manager, Sara Adams, learned to omit the word from documents and presentations. 

To me "branding" was just a codeword for "marketing that can't be measured."  I've softened a bit in recent months and now I am willing to hear -- and even use -- the word.  But I still have a bias for direct marketing activities that are designed to lead to sales.

Technorati tags: sales, marketing, branding

Online Video Advertising Finds an Answer from the 1950's

OK, so today seems to be advertising day on Pardon the Disruption as this is now the third consecutive item on online ads of one sort or another.  But wait ... this one has a funny video embeded, so stick with it.

Fred Wilson pointed to a recent Wallstrip Video as an example of how good video advertising might be done in the future.  (Aside: Wallstrip is a much more fun way to get stock information than by reading boring analyst reports.)   And if you like geeky Wall Street humor, the whole video below is worth watching.  It's only a few minutes long.

 Essentially, as Fred notes, it conjures up the 1950's where TV shows integrated sponsorship within the content itself.  In some ways, it is much like sports stadiums today where there are ads on the field, ice, court, boards, scoreboard, outfield walls, and even the arenas themselves are named for sponsors.  Even sports TV integrates sponsors within their broadcasts as you have things like the "Aflac Trivia Question."

Fred is particularly excited because he doesn't think "pre-rolls" (ads shown before the ultimate content is displayed will work.  And nobody thinks "post-rolls" will work because there's no incentive to stick around and watch ads after the fact -- if you even make it all the way to the end of the video in the first place.

I agree in general with Fred on this one, especially for professional web video content.  My concern is it doesn't really answer the question of monetization of consumer generated video, since integrated sponsorship requires additional production cost -- not to mention the relationship with the advertiser must be more direct.  He's probably right that "mid-rolls" will be the real answer in this area once the technology matures.

Technorati tags: Fred Wilson, pre-roll, video advertising, advertising, online video, post-roll, mid-roll, Wallstrip

Page Views and the Future of Web Site Metrics

The page view is (nearly) dead.  That's the drum that Steve Rubel has been beating for some time.  And he's right, but for the wrong reason.  His argument is that new technologies like AJAX and less new ones that are used more frequently today, like Flash, prevent most web analytics programs from accurately accounting for all "page views."  This week Steve examined alternatives to keep the discussion going.

I have opined on this in the past as it relates to objective metrics for comparing web site audiences.  But to address Steve's current concern, I would first argue that his objections relate more to advertisers than to those seeking to measure reach and influence.  And advertisers will rely on a derivative of page views: impressions.  If ads are being displayed inside of AJAX or Flash applications, certainly the ad-serving software will track the number of times the ads appear. 

But in today's world, far more advertisers focus on Cost Per Click (CPC) and in fact deploy Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.  Even if you aren't familiar with the term, you probably know it as Google AdWords and the like.  And ultimately all advertisers would be wise to measure overall success on a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) basis.

All that said, Steve thinks that a new metric, events, and "time spent" on a web site will be keys to the future.  Frankly, I believe the third one he mentioned in his post, unique visitors, continues to hold the strongest sway, despite any flaws it may have.  Larger advertisers seem comfortable with such a measure because it is what they are used to with traditional media where you count readers or viewers.  As important, it is a measure that is relatively easily tracked by third parties without getting in to a huge semantic game about how events are measured or whether "time spent" should include the fact that I kept my browser open while I went to get a cup of coffee and resumed using it when I got back to my desk.

When one gets outside the realm of advertising metrics, however, the debate becomes much more interesting.  For measurement and analysis firms, like my own CustomScoop, trying to assess the relative significance of a mention on one blog or other online media property versus another can be a challenge.  Just this week Biz360 announced its new metric that includes a little of this and a little of that.  Which is how most do it.  Like the traditional PR measurement game, however, it seems unlikely