Gripes and Grins

Love for other people's gripes

Digital Nation over on Media Post has some great customer experience posts, including this very interesting one re: a guy's experience with Live Nation and the tour stops in Indi. Give it a read: http://www.mediapost.com/…_frontier/

Mobile post sent by AaronB using Utterli.  Replies.

Grin: Comcast finally doing something right

I gripe about Comcast a lot on my blog. To summarize my previous posts, I believe the corporate guidance on set-top-box products is to be adequate and cheap, so the product experience is always lacking, and frequently buggy. The crappy set-top/software solution is amplified by periods of crappy networks operations.
And, because their back-office is a mess, their support peoples can't win.

As a customer with some experience in TV STB systems and services, I am frequently frustrated because Comcast does some really dumb product stuff, giving them a jenky brand identity. For example, a new system bug (new to me anyway) I discovered on their HD/DVR receiver during the All-Star game Tuesday... if you have more than 70% of your DVR space allocated for stored programming, your FFWD and RWD controls flat out don't work if you pause and create any kind of buffer. This bug totally ruined the first four innings of the MLB All Star game for me... but I digress, this post is supposed to have a grin.

Sam Schechner and Vishesh Kuma wrote a Story in the Wall Street Journal about a goood product/service decision from Comcast. Here is the title and excerpt.

"Cable-TV shows, including TBS's "My Boys," are coming to the Web -- along with a full complement of ads.

The shows will be part of a new Web-TV trial that begins this month, spearheaded by cable operator Comcast Corp. It involves more than a half-dozen other media companies, including CBS Corp. and Time Warner Inc. The idea is to put more TV shows online, but only for paying cable subscribers.

The effort aims to address one of the biggest concerns facing producers of cable programming: how to keep viewers from canceling their subscriptions to watch free TV online."

Finally, something smart from Comcast. Good job fellas, no don't screw it up in the execution. Be elegant for once.

Mobile post sent by AaronB using Utterli.  Replies.

Are the airlines travel bating

Just got this tweet from Amy McIntyre, fitness podcasting queen (http://twitter.com/fitness):

"i get to the final step in purchasing a ticket on delta airlines and then they say - btw the flight price has gone up $100?!! not cool."

It struck a chord with me... I'm having this experience lately too. Attached is a screenshot from a recent effort to book a flight through United Airlines. The advertised flight prices at Kayak, Sidestep and UAL.com were all exactly $100 less than the price upon checkout.

If United and Delta are doing this, it looks like market fixing and potentially false advertising. Does anyone know how to report this to California State Attorney General offices?

Mobile post sent by AaronB using Utterli.  Replies.

Media Gripe: AP coverage of NYC bombing clueless or using Brad Pitt or both

Associated Press writer Colleen Long just posted a "Fight Club" bombing story.  Here is the pick-up in Globe & Mail. Brad Pitt's name is referenced multiple times, no mention of Chuck Palahniuk or real world Cacophony Society, the organization that inspired Tyler Durden's "project mayhem" crew in the book written by Palahniuk. 

The facts are sad, and the suspect is obviously misguided.  But, the coverage is also stomach churningly stupid and, or nefarious.  Not to equate the story with bombing coffee shops and foreign consulates, but it's pretty bad nonetheless.

What's so wrong here?  Chuck created the characters of Fight Club.  The story is his making.  If anyone were to be identified with this bombing, Chuck should be the one.  But what kind of distribution would that Fight Club story get?  Answer: Not nearly as much as the one with Brad Pitt's name splashed on it. 

Long and her editor are either clueless about the fact that Fight Club was a book first, or they have made a conscious decision to leave out these details and bait search engines with Brad Pitt's name.  Either way, this is piss poor writing/editing.  Someone let me know if you find an unabridged version of this wire story that does include Chuck or the Cacophony Society.

The AP and the half-dozen big-market newspapers that picked up this story in the first hour should be ashamed of themselves.

Google vs. Microsoft beats re-runs

Like a lot of people in Silicon Valley right now, I'm very interested in the impact of Bing.  Granted, I'm a former employee of Microsoft, and all of my positions and disclaimers are listed in previous blogs here and here. When a friend who actually consults with Microsoft asked me why I find this stuff interesting, the answer was simple, but it might surprise you... I love the familiar plot lines. Tis the season for summer re-runs.

Greater "high tech" hasn't had the drama of colliding giants in years.  Not since Microsoft beat down Netscape (Navigator), Sun (Spark), Oracle (the Nic) and staved off a break-up threat from the DOJ have we seen something so impossible to predict and laden with the potential for drama.  This is a big narrative with all of the classic story devices waiting to unfold.  It's so big, that there are plenty of corners for interesting side stories and personalities to be profiled -- it has the potential to be epic, literally Homeric and sustaining for publishers.  Only this time, we're in a social media landscape where the vast numbers of indie-publishers include polished grads of J-school as well as the new breed of much-followed blogger-hacks that rival old media for audience and mind share. 

Yeah, I'm hyping it up.  But this is what people want to see/hear/read whether these big fights are new to you or old hat.  And, this time around, the corners of this potentially-great epic story are being explored quickly.  For example, the first time that I know of, we have members of the media wondering aloud -- "what if there were no Google?".  People asked the same thing about Microsoft ten years ago -- rather they fantasized.  At that time I was on the inside of Microsoft -- an individual contributor, merely a pee-on.  My job was to defend the ship with the other soldier ants... it was no fun for me the last time around.  This time around, I know folks on both sides, and no agenda, and I'm planning on watching intently. 

So, my reasons for interest in MSFT v GOOG are really simple: nostalgia, hopes for a great new storyline, the unknown element of Social Media in a dramatically revised media landscape.  I'm really interested in all of that "do no evil" bravado coming out of Google during the IPO, you know Google is due for a humble pie.  

All of that, and TV really sucks this summer.

Great post on Facebook scams

Very compelling play-by-play: http://www.marketersstudio.com/…union.html

Mobile post sent by AaronB using Utterli.  Replies.

More on Microsoft vs. Google

Joe Marchese in MediaPost this morning is a must read: http://www.mediapost.com/…lications/

Here's the best paragraph:
"Why can Microsoft succeed? Unlike Google, which focuses on mathematical media efficiencies, which means it is limited by what can be measured, Microsoft has a history of focusing on people's productivity. If advertising has taught me anything, it's that "Microsoft makes People-Ready business" ;-). Seriously though, productivity and efficiency are not the same thing in this case. The human element to advertising and marketing cannot be ignored; it's the classic art vs. science argument. Whereas Google's efficiency goals look to optimize the science, productivity focus means better enabling for the practitioners of the art."

This is why I love MediaPost. Writers like Joe really know the business of marketing at a deep level and they do a great job of summarizing and explaining the critical factors succinctly while covering a "meta category" like search advertising.

Mobile post sent by AaronB using Utterli.  Replies.

The case against marriage... or, how 'smart' people look and sound idiotic

So, I'm waiting for a call to start, and I go to Drew Curtis's Fark.  There's an MSNBC story on the top of the stack, tagged with "ASININE" and the descriptor "I cheated on my husband and destroyed my marriage. Obviously the problem is that I didn't have enough husbands, and a community of women to communally care for my children "

The genius of Fark cannot be underestimated.  Everyone I know is burning the candles at both ends because they have it all -- marriage, kids, good jobs, career challenges, outside interests.  And, for the most part, no one I love or befriend is so fucking thankless or self-absorbed as to bitch about these challenges.  And, no one I hang with is so fucking narcisistic as to extrapolate their own personal challenges as indicative of a "meta" experience for the American society as a whole.  Warning: Rant coming!

The video below, and the companion story in the Atlantic, by Sandra Tsing Loh, is the most self-unaware example of authorship and publishing ever.  While elegantly written, and a well constructed argument, the premise is so fucking ridiculous that I wanted to carve my eyes out with a rusty spoon.  In short, women ( really people as a society) need to rethink the need for marriage. 

Have we learned nothing from the political times?  Do we not know that marriage is a religious institution or a personal/individual choice to apply for a state sanctioned class, defined as the voters of a state or municipality choose to define it (I'm pro gay marriage, btw)?  Why should the media pedal these ludicrous ideas of rethinking marriage as a societal construct?  My friend Jeremy Zawodny would have some juicy thoughts on the media's interest in perpetuating this shit, but I digress.

The main point here is that this lady is a characature, a very ugly distortion of the people involved in the divorce rate.  Who cheats on their husband and ruins a bueacolic life because they aren't getting enough out of their relationship? 

The answer is simple: Idiots that don't understand life -- that's who.  Life, and this includes marriage, is what you put into it... and, yes, you're an idiot if you're in your forties or fifties and you've been married twenty years and you don't know this.  Sandra is most definitely an idiot.

In the article, Sandra chooses to cast her life and effort as thankless efforts, and even casually chides the new (read younger) American male trying to put more into their home-life by taking on more traditional female/mother efforts around the house.  In the video she jumps right into challenging the realisticness of marriage in a modern context... what?!

I feel sorry for Sandra's ex-husband and her next victim.  And, based on her self-glorifying descriptions of her parental superpowers, I'm betting that her kids need some sympathy too. 

As for the read, it's idiotic drivel, but if you want to see a smart person come undone in their own qwerty juice, read it.  Here's the video of an interview with a half-witted Viera and some other random that actually has some common sense.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

How to market Social Media... I kid you not, here's a good video on this subject

Every single day, I get bombarded by all kinds of messages, through all types of media channels.  My favorites are focused on how to use social media for marketing purposes.  By favorites I mean I hate these messages.  I wish there was an opt-out list so that I could avoid the "jr. edition" versions of social media 'how to' emails/posts/videos/presentations. 

There's nothing worse than getting a "how to market through Social Media" sponsored newsletter from GoDaddy, or, worse IBM.  I want to respond with PDFs of the PodShow presentations delivered to these companies' execs back in 2006... you know, the presentations explaining the basics of how podcasting and blogs worked... maybe include a copy of my expense reports to prove I was there, along with a request for a newsletter opt out. 

But, I can't do that.  I'm resigned to sift through mountains of basics to find nuggets of true insights from real professionals, my peers.  It's out there -- the good stuff. But, I get soured on the basics and get really pissed that email marketing experts aren't segmenting their audiences, sending basics to the noobs, and sending me the good stuff.  My assumption is that's its too hard to create social media marketing presentations for a broad audience.  But, there's an exception. 

As, I've noted before, Richard Brewer-Hay and I worked together at PodShow/Mevio, and before then at WebTV and Microsoft.  In the interest of full disclosure, we're friends.  I've even seen him with his shirt of... gross, I know.  Richard is a very good presenter on camera.  Watch his interview below... great insights into the specific challenges of creating and launching a corporate blog.  I know this stuff, but it still held my attention, contained some very good info I can apply to www.smartycard.com/blog, and it felt right for any marketing noob.  Kudos to Richard.