September 2006

For a day or two, Cingular added the name of widely read technology blog Engadget to the list of banned words and URLs on its customer forums. The move brought some light snark from Engaget, after which Cingular reversed course and allowed users to refer to the popular blog once more.

Speculation about the reason for the 48-hour ban is rampant. But regardless of the reason, the ban was a bad decision on Cingular’s part.

Limiting profanity is absolutely reasonable. But if you provide a space for your customers to discuss your products–be it a blog or a forum–you have to allow them to say what they believe and cite sources to back up their opinions. This is true even when those opinions or sources offer criticism. Suppressing dissent usually only makes people madder.

We’ll be talking more about the best ways to manage blogosphere criticism at our upcoming conference.

Even for businesses who don’t blog, RSS monitoring has become an important way to “take the temperature” of public opinion about your company. The most assiduous monitors will usually track the feeds of relevant blogs, as well as feeds generated from search engines that allow users to track an RSS feed of their results like Yahoo! and MSN.

Another great way to track the vox populis is by monitoring online forums such as Yahoo!’s message boards on topics that are relevant to your company. This is particularly useful for getting a broader perspective because many people who post or participate regularly in message boards are not necessarily involved in the blogosphere.

Most message boards offer RSS feeds, although many are tricky to find. Using an RSS-enabled browser like Safari or Firefox is advised.

We’ll be talking about RSS monitoring in the “RSS and Feeds: Monitoring the Blogosphere and the Buzz” session at our conference coming up this October.

If you check out our speakers page you’ll notice that many of the speakers for the upcoming conference have been posted. This is a very exciting lineup, and there are more still to come. Stay tuned for more information.

If you take a look at our sessions section, you’ll see that a lot of sessions have been fleshed out. Some of them have not been. We’re working on it.

I’m particularly excited to hear Jason Calacanis’ keynote on day two of the Conference, but just about everything should be awesome.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates and more speaker announcements in the coming days!

Full disclosure: This post was updated at 3:22 pm on 9/12/06 to reflect the fact that many of the sessions are not completely fleshed out.

Last week, I gave the McDonald’s corporate responsibility blog a rave review. I stand by that review for the most part, in the face of growing criticism over the inordinately long wait time between when a comment is submitted and when it is posted.

About a week ago, blogger Matt Fried posted a comment on a post by McDonald’s Vice President Bob Langert about McDonalds’ decision to give away miniature Humvees in children’s happy meals:

I polled my staff who have or had children. One of them said her children enjoy the little Hummer replicas as toys, just as many kids like toy trucks, regardless of make or model. She drives a MiniCooper, walks with her children to get groceries, bicycles with them on weekends, etc. Another said her grandchildren absolutely love the toy Hummers–that they’re fun.

Of course, there’s nothing scientific about this poll, but I think it makes an important point. Looked at through children’s eyes, the miniature Hummers are just toys, not vehicle recommendations or a source of consumer messages about natural resource conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.

Thanks for your comments. We welcome the dialogue.

After a considerable wait, Fried’s comment has still not appeared on the site despite the fact that it was ostensibly constructive.

McDonald’s comment policy current reads as follows:

McDonald’s owns this site. As a result, from time to time, McDonald’s may monitor comments to or the contents of this site to ensure adherence to all applicable policies and procedures. McDonald’s shall have the right not to post or to remove in its sole discretion any content or comments that it considers violative of these Terms of Use or any other policies. McDonald’s may post some or all of the comments and other content it receives in original form or in any form acceptable to McDonald’s. McDonald’s may, but will not always, reply to comments and other content submitted to this site.

Mack Collier criticizes McDonald’s in a post saying that if companies can’t play by the blogosphere’s rules about comments–publish everything critical if it is constructive–they shouldn’t join the conversation.

I have to disagree in part. McDonald’s stated policy is reasonable, although it could be better articulated. For example, McDonald’s could offer commenters some guidelines for making their comments adhere to to “all applicable policies and procedures.” They could elucidate those policies and procedures further so that commenters can at least know what to expect, even if they ultimately disagree with the policy.

The bottom line is that companies need to either play by the standard rules or explain why they choose not to do so. When a company shuts down or doesn’t post a constructive comment that is critical of the their practices, the commenter is liable to take the conversation elsewhere–most likely to his own blog, where the company has no control over what is said.

Not only does the comment issue become a subject of much piling-on in the blogosphere. It also draws attention to the original practice that the commenter was critical of. That’s something any company would like to avoid.

For this reason, it’s usually the best strategy to play by the blogosphere’s rules when moderating comments. But if you choose not to, you should explain your reason prominently and offer compelling support for that policy. People may disagree and even criticize you, but it will diffuse the debate somewhat and keep your company from being the subject of a blog mob.

We’ll be discussing strategies for entering the blogosphere, as well as comment moderation best practices at our upcoming Blog Business Summit conference.

On this fifth anniversary of September 11, it bears mentioning that the day that changed the world was also an important day in the genesis of the blogosphere. Wired has a fascinating article on the subject that credits 9/11 with the rise of both personal and political blogging:

This collective tragedy demanded a forum to be shared by people all around the world who wanted to talk about what happened with anyone because it was the only way of making any sense of it. Were it to happen again, blogs and social networks would play an enormously cathartic role…

Since 9/11, the rise of “warbloggers” and online political commentators like Glenn Reynolds’ Instapundit has been, in many cases, a direct response to the U.S. government’s post-9/11 foreign policy, kickstarting a culture of questioning, poking and prodding from which no public figure is safe.

Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel have analyses of the piece along with their own personal remembrances of that horrific and difficult day and its long-term aftermath.

And now, for a bit of offbeat news, because it’s Friday.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I regularly bitch and moan about Seattle Mariners manager Mike Hargrove. “My father could manage the team better! When are they going to get rid of this bum and bring Lou Piniella back?” Sometimes I wish I could just manage the team myself from the stands.

The minor league Flyers of Schaumburg, IL allow fans to do just that. Before every game, fans get to determine the lineup, the pitcher, and who will play what position.

This takes user generated content to a whole new level. Now we can enjoy user generated baseball.

Via Digg.

Steve Rubel has a post up about Paul Gillin’s new book The New Influencers.

As I understand from Steve, the book examines how individuals equipped with new Web-based tools have revolutionized the politics of influence and how this affects public relations and the broader business communications community.

It should be an interesting read.

The controversy over Facebook’s new features has been bouncing around the blogosphere for a number of days now. Even Robert Scoble–who doesn’t use the service–felt compelled to throw in his two cents.

Now Facebook has responded to their critics, posting an open letter from creator Mark Zuckerberg on their blog and adding privacy features that make the News Feed and Mini-Feed features more customizable.

What I really liked was Facebook’s willingness to admit that they’d screwed up, apologize, fix the problem, and learn from their mistakes. As Facebook, Inc. spokeswoman Melanie Deitch told Wired, the company has “learned the importance of better explaining and testing new features.”

One of my favorite bloggers, danah boyd compared the current Facebook crisis to that time when Six Apart really pissed off users, then apologized and changed.

There are three big takeaway lessons here for businesses. Two I’ve mentioned before:

• Ask what your customers want and then listen to them. To paraphrase danah, you should configure your product to match your users, don’t try to configure your users to match your product.
• Admit when you screw up. Then communicate frequently and consistently about what measures you are taking to solve the problem.
• And finally, even after you’ve corrected the big issue, continue to respond to feedback from your audience.

Obviously recoding the privacy settings was a big step in the right direction for the Facebook team, but their task will never be over. They should continue to communicate with their users about their product and the direction they want to take it. They should also reopen comments on their blog, as this is a key channel for communication that they have effectively shut down.

In his open letter, Mark Zuckerberg encourages students to support free flow of information on the Internet. He has started a Facebook group for that reason and will be answering questions in the group’s forum tomorrow. I plan to join that discussion and ask him why exactly the Facebook blog doesn’t have a comments feature if he supports free flow of information. If they’re not going to open comments again, they should at least say why.

The demise of Joe Lieberman’s bid to retain the Connecticut Democratic Party’s favor has been attributed in large part to a network of liberal blogs, which illustrated his friendly relationship with the unpopular President George W. Bush by widely distributing a photograph of the two men allegedly kissing (left). Lieberman has repeatedly lashed out at those bloggers, but now it seems that his philosophy is, “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

“The fact is, for the last several months we ceded the online debate to our rivals,” wrote Lieberman campaign staffer Dan Gerstien in the Lieberman campaign blog’s inaugural post, “that changes today.”

Since its launch, the Lieberman campaign hasn’t been afraid to use the blog to take on the new Democratic candidate, Ned Lamont, in the harshest terms. In one post, they went so far as to call Lamont supporters, “Lamonsters,” and nitpick over very petty issues.

Often, when an organization is in the midst of a tussle with bloggers, I think to myself, “they should launch a blog to deal with this crisis.” The Lieberman blog is a great example of why that’s not always such a good idea.

Yes, it’s gusty and great that the Lieberman campaign has launched a blog. But they’ve got to crank down the snark factor a few dozen notches. We get it, Joe. You’re pissed that you lost to Lamont. And we understand that you blame the snarky bloggers, but that doesn’t mean that you should let your campaign staff sink to their level.

If the Lieberman campaign wants to retain its 10-12 point lead in the polls, they’re going to need to suck it up, get over the humiliation of being beaten, and start using their blog to engage with the people of Connecticut about the real issues that are affecting their lives.

Via The Bivings Report.

We’ve raised the price of the October Blog Business Summit Conference by $50 today. As with airline tickets, the cost of the Blog Business Summit goes up as we get closer to the date of the conference.

Within the next 48 hours, I will have some more information on this site about speakers and sessions. While I can’t divulge all the specifics yet, I can tell you that we have an incredible lineup for you.

The speakers that I can talk about are:

• Robert Scoble, formerly of Microsoft and now with PodTech.
• Jason Calacanis, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc. and now in charge of Netscape’s turnaround.
• John Battelle of Industry Standard Magazine and now founder and Chairman of Federated Media.

If you like what you see, and you’re excited to see even more speakers of this caliber, then I’d recommend that you register as soon as you’re able. You won’t be disappointed, I assure you.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the fallout from Facebook’s big interface change today and I have a few things to add to my previous posts on the subject. The conclusion I’ve drawn from all this is that your customers want you to ask what they want, not tell them what they want. (Duh!) This is especially true of young audiences who are used to this as a best practice.

Now to the specific points…

Point Number 1: I agree with Jeremiah Owyang when he writes:

I’ve seen feature releases happen many times with websites where users were not involved, the results are hit and miss. I like 37 Signals approach, they involve users/customers nearly every step of the product development cycle. Customers have such ‘loud’ voices now, they’re in charge now.

Facebook should have introduced this product as a public beta and asked users for feedback. Listening to your customers is never a bad idea and it’s incredibly lame that failed to do that. I think a lot of the student objection over this is about the lack of options associated with the way the feature was introduced. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m alarmed at how many students believed that Facebook was “private,” or the fact that I think they’re immature for not making use of the privacy settings if they’re so concerned about their privacy.

Point Number 2: I disagree with Biz Stone when he writes:

But [Facebook creator] Mark [Zuckerberg], the Facebook community formed around the fact that people had to go digging for these bits of info. Just because you can programatically make it easier to get this info, doesn’t mean you should.

For some people–it looks like a lot–the thrill of Facebook was wasting time hunting around for updates about your friends. But for me, it was just a waste of time, and not one that I welcomed. I love the new feature because it means that I can get more information about my friends in less time and with less clicking.

That’s why the feed feature should be optional and not foisted upon everyone. Facebook didn’t even attempt to listen to their customers before launching this feature. That’s the lame thing here, not the “privacy issue.”

Point Number 3: I agree most vigorously with Michael Arrington when he writes:

I gave the new features a thumbs up yesterday and stick by my review. No new information is being made available about users. Facebook privacy settings remain in their previous state, meaning you can have your information available throughout the network or just among your closest friends. Don’t want a particular piece of information to be syndicated out even to them? Remove any single piece of data by simply clicking the “x” button next to it and it will not appear in the news feed.

If this feature had been part Facebook since the beginning, their users would be screaming if Facebook tried to remove it. It’s a powerful way to quickly get lots of information about people you care about, with easy settings to remove that information for privacy reasons. No one can see anything that they couldn’t see yesterday. It’s just being distributed more efficiently.

I also applaud Facebook for launching a product clearly designed to reduce total page views in the network by no longer forcing users to go to their friends pages for updates. That shows serious long term vision and dedication to the principle of facilitating communication among its users.

An easy fix to the problem is for Facebook to simply make each of the new products optional. Users who don’t participate will quickly find that they are falling out of the attention stream, and I suspect will quickly add themselves back in.

So what’s the overwhelming recurring theme here? Facebook needs to listen to its customers, not just after the fact (although that’s critical now) but before it launches a feature that totally changes the way people interact with its service. The misstep was not in launching a feature that violated people’s privacy in a “creepy” or “stalkerish” way, it was unilaterally activating the service for everyone without asking.

Facebook further compounded its mistake by shutting down commenting on its fledgling blog at the same time that it launched the new feature. It should have been using the blog to communicate with users about the new feature before it was launched.

Let this be a lesson to you companies. Launching a new interface or anything else that changes the user’s experience without offering some options is going to piss off some of your users. Facebook is in particularly deep doo doo right now because it has a customer base that is used to being given exactly what they want when they want it, but everyone can learn from their mistake.

We’ll be talking more about using your blog to listen to your customers and work with them when you’re making changes at the next Blog Business Summit.

Josh Hallett has an excellent post up about how to blog a conference. I really liked his focus on outreach and conversation.

He recommends that, “during the conference use tools such as Technorati and Flickr to search for other bloggers posting about the events.”

Part of what makes blogosphere-oriented events so interesting, informative and fun is that half of the event is taking place in the flesh-and-blood world and half is taking place virtually. The more that participants join the virtual conversation, the more they’ll get out of the flesh-and-blood portion.

I hope that the virtual discussion at our upcoming conference is rich and multifaceted in this way, with people debating and sharing tips, tricks and hands-on information. If any conference attendee needs a primer on using tools like Technorati and Flickr to join the conversation, you’re welcome to ping me at teresa [at] blogbusinesssummit [dot] com and I’ll happily walk you through what you need to know.

Don’t worry, I don’t bite.

Mack Collier at the Viral Garden posted today about the impact of viral misstep last week.

Apparently, a Starbucks competitor has offered to honor the coupons from noon until 8pm this coming Friday.

When these sorts of things happen, Starbucks’ pattern is to either stonewall or issue a statement and then stonewall. Discussing the issue openly currently seems to be a non-option. I would do just about anything to be a fly on the wall inside their marketing department right now.

Update: I take that last sentence back. Actually, I’d give anything to get Steve involved with their marketing department right now. I think having us around would be a big value-add for Starbucks right about now.

As I wrote yesterday, the social networking site, Facebook has integrated a news feed into their user interface. The feed aggregates information about my friends and posts it in a central location on my dashboard page.

I personally like the feed. I enjoy seeing what my friends are up to. But there are nearly 180,000 more than 278,000 Facebook members who disagree with me. They’ve formed a group to protest the inclusion of the news feed. They feel that their privacy has been violated.

All this hullabaloo led me to revisit my previous statements about how people my age use the social Web. I’ve concluded that I grossly overestimated my cohorts when I wrote that “for people who grew up in the computer age, the social Web is our frat house bulletin board. It’s a pervasive part of our tech-savvy culture, and its not necessarily a bad thing.”

My longtime friend Emmett Shear co-founder of the now defunct recently sold Kiko calendar project observed that in this Web-based world privacy is no longer a black and white phenomenon, it exists on a continuum determined by how easy information is to access.

Yes Emmett, it’s true that Facebook has unilaterally altered the privacy bargain by changing the way that information is presented. But they’ve also included a feature that allows users to keep any information they deem private from being aggregated into the feed. Unfortunately, nobody seems to be using that feature–even the people who are vehemently protesting the “creepiness” of Facebook.

In fact, even people who claim to care about privacy don’t use features designed to protect it. According to a recent Newsweek article on social networking–only 17% of Facebook users ever change their privacy settings beyond the default that makes everything they say and do available to everyone in their networks. It’s like they believe that they don’t have to work or think critically in order to make Facebook function the way they want it to.

The problem here isn’t with what twenty-somethings do with their Saturday nights, it’s their ignorance of the format they use to broadcast their antics. As a professional in an increasingly Web-based world, I’m not sure that I’d want to work with someone who is too lazy to change his own privacy settings or who can’t grasp that the Web isn’t private, even in a walled garden like Facebook.

We’ll be talking more about the public-private debate as it relates to human resources best practices at the upcoming Blog Business Summit this October.

Dear Spamming Jerks,

I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me. It seems like every time I log into the Movable Type back end on this blog, I get bombarded with comments from people who claim that their names are “Tramadol” and “Propecia.”

When are you people going to learn that your comments are never going to see the light of day on this site? We have a nearly foolproof spam trap that catches 100% of your garbage. If you never see any of your links here, why do you keep coming back? I don’t understand the value add, I just don’t.

Why won’t you just leave us alone?

Sincerely,

Teresa Valdez Klein

Ford’s turnaround team made big splashes in the news today with the announcement that Bill Ford would step aside as CEO while remaining company chairman. Now in the driver’s seat is Alan Mulally, the Boeing executive who oversaw the comeback of Boeing against Airbus.

Amidst all this hubbub, Ford has been conducting a splashy but candid self-examination on its Ford Bold Moves Vlog.

In episode two, “Commitment to Design,” Ford gives its critics within and without ample opportunity to talk about their dissatisfaction with the cars that are currently rolling off the assembly line. “The cars that are being produced now have no style to ‘em,” said Anthony Dettore, a Collision & Repair Center owner. “they all look the same.”

The response from within was all but an echo of Detorre’s sentiments. “We all have a different perspective on who the customers are” said Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s Director of Advanced Product Creation and Special Vehicle Team. “More often than not, the thing you can get everyone to come to common ground on is the lowest common denominator and you go to the market with vanilla instead of rocky road.”

The rest of the episodes are riddled with similar self-critique on everything from business model to corporate culture to fuel efficiency and design. Ford has made it clear, they are dedicated to change, and they’re making an impression.

Thanks to Tom from Terrapass for tipping me off to the existence of this very interesting site. We’ll be covering the importance of candor in blogging, Vlogging and corporate blogs at our upcoming conference.

And speaking of Starbucks (since I’ve already criticized them twice today), have you heard the news about what’s happening with the independent coffee shop in downtown Kirkland called Reality Coffee?

Owner Renee Kappes has been driven out of business–and into over $100,000 of debt–because of the way that Starbucks has handled her franchise agreement.

Now obviously, we don’t know Starbucks’ side of the story on this one, since their media relations department hasn’t responded to questions about Kappes’ story. It certainly seems that they were entirely within their legal rights to treat Ms. Kappes as they did, but from where I’m sitting, it certainly doesn’t look like they were very fair to her.

But no matter what the facts, the fact that Ms. Kappes has been getting so much media attention over the story–she also appeared on the Dave Ross Show on Seattle’s 710 KIRO radio station today–doesn’t look good for Starbucks.

It will be interesting to see how they respond.

Full Disclosure: I have some loyalties to Reality Coffee, since I’ve been visiting that coffee shop since I moved to Kirkland last year. These past few months, it’s become my office away from the office and I’m really going to miss it.

While reading the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, I came across an ad for Starbucks. The headline was “Owned and Operated by Human Beings.” The ad went on to describe how Starbucks adds value to their product by adding value to the community. At the bottom, the ad referred readers to a Website: whatmakescoffeegood.com.

I went to the site, unsure of what I would find. The “human beings” bit piqued my curiosity, and I dearly hoped that it meant that Starbucks had finally started a blog. But when my browser finished loading, I was disappointed to find an overproduced Flash site outlining–in marketing speak–the various ways that Starbucks was making the world a better place. Ugh!

Meanwhile, McDonalds–whose French Fry Blog drew criticism from around the blogosphere last year–has changed course and developed an excellent blog about corporate social responsibility. They’re doing a great job of facing McDonald’s previously spotty track record on the environment and obesity while explaining what they are now doing to promote sustainability, healthy lifestyles, and their Ronald McDonald House charities.

The stated mission of this blog is for readers to “get personal perspectives on the issues, meet the people behind the programs, and hear open assessments of the challenges [McDonald's] face[s].” The blog has received some very positive feedback for its unvarnished approach to sensitive issues and how McDonalds deals with them.

This brings up an important point. When you’re trying to convey that you’re a responsible, conscientious corporation, why on Earth would you start a one-way messaging campaign with magazine ads, all to promote a Flash Website that nobody is going to visit? Why wouldn’t you go with the cheaper and all-around more effective option of starting a blog that will actually spark a conversation?

I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this. It’s obvious to me that if ever there was a company in need of a blog–with the exception of Dell–it’s Starbucks. They want their stores to be community hangouts where customers drop in to enjoy high speed internet, good music, and yummy coffee. If they want to get the word out about their good deeds while fostering community involvement, they’ll get much more from a blog than that silly website could ever accomplish.

Starbucks Senior VP of Marketing Anne Saunders said in an interview last year:

The average customer is in our store six times a month. If I look at our heaviest 20 percent of customers, they’re in our stores an average 16 times per month. So I have this great opportunity to have those people have an experience and a relationship with us that in many, many businesses you don’t. So, part of that gives me the luxury to think about marketing in a different way.

That’s great, Ms. Saunders. You’re thinking about marketing in a different way. You’re reaching out to customers on a regular basis and giving them your message in small doses. You’re community oriented. You want a relationship with your customers. We get it. So why the heck aren’t you guys blogging yet?

We at the Blog Business Summit really, really want to know. So we’re making you an offer we hope you can’t refuse. We’ll send you a free copy of Steve and Byron’s book, Publish and Prosper: Blogging for your Business if you’ll give Steve 20 minutes of your time to talk about what you guys are doing to reach out to the community.

If you’re interested, drop me a e-mail at teresa [at] blogbusinessummit [dot] com and I’ll set the whole thing up.

Oh yeah, and feel free to join us at our upcoming conference if you do decide that blogging is for you. We’ll give you the hands on expertise you need to make a Starbucks blog happen.