Connecting the Dots

Wells Fargo: Doing the right thing...and the smart one too

After my adventure with Wells Fargo the last couple of days, I was pleased to discover this morning that they'd fulfilled the account reinstatement from their mistake and we are back in business online. What I hadn't expected was a call today from Wells Fargo Executive Vice President, Debra Rossi, who is the Head of Merchant Payment Solutions.

She apologized, made no excuses, told me about their recognition of the fundamental breakdown of their normal process (to call the customer before canceling them!), asked what she could do to make us whole, listened to me without interrupting and engaged conversationally while ending with her direct phone number in case I have any issues going forward. Tough to invest this kind of time when you're running a major part of the Wells Fargo $573B business and undoubtedly have pressing matters piling up.

Ms. Rossi will also be supplying us with a letter of apology.

This call went a long way toward making up for the frustrating adventure and embarrassing shut down of our ecommerce, and now gives us the opportunity to communicate with our offended customers (those we know about anyway) so they don't think we're no longer reputable or somehow can't handle Web commerce.

What was enlightening as well was this: my posting, her reaction and action, and a successful resolution (and, I'm certain, lots of awareness within the company so this doesn't happen again to someone else) is a great example of social media and conversational marketing in action.

Though polite queries from Ms. Rossi and others yesterday about my original post were offered as being curious in nature, the implication was now that this matter was resolved would I take it down or what was my intention?  Today's social and new media -- and blogging basics -- dictate that posts are not removed nor materially modified once published and I adhere to that philosophy and practice. It's why I amended/updated yesterday's post and am now writing a fresh one: to detail their action, call out and laud them for it, and to be transparent, but I'm compelled to leave the post up as-is.

Lastly, I always encourage my clients to do exactly what Ms. Rossi did: don't let things fester as they'll become infected like what happened to Dell Computer (remember "Dell Hell"?) and the PR disaster that rained down upon them...from which, one could argue, they're still not fully healed.

Ms. Rossi did the right thing...and the smart one too.

Where the hell is Wells Fargo? Out on the dusty trail, I presume

UPDATE: See this post for final resolution that came in a phone call from a Wells Fargo executive.

Here's a superb lesson in how not to manage your customer relationships and, especially, solve their problems.

What if your business was dependent upon online ecommerce and one of the processing chain providers cancelled your account without telling you, while the organization that owns the relationship and process cordially ignored you?

That's what happened to us, and the big problem lies with our prime relationship, Wells Fargo, and how they dropped the ball (or stuff off the stagecoach if you like that metaphor better) and have not helped me resolve the problem in any way.

There's a reason Wells Fargo uses a stagecoach as their symbol since it's illustrative of the state of their leadership in merchant services...more aligned with the 1800's than the demands of business in the 21st century.

WELLS FARGO AND PARTNERS HAVE ME IN A CHOKEHOLD
After six years of successful ecommerce running on one platform, our hosting company let us know in January they were pulling the plug March 31st. So we made a change, rebuilt our site on a new platform in the first quarter, and launched the third week of March before the old one went dark.

Our new platform required us to set up a new processing gateway (really the whole chain from payment gateway to back-end credit card processing with a third firm to bank and the money then in our account). I chose my personal and commercial banking company, Wells Fargo, since I trusted them. The bonus was there would be a single relationship point, they could set up the payment gateway with partner Authorize.net and the back-end processor, and it was actually less expensive then us going direct with the latter.

But it suddenly stopped working two and a half weeks after we launched.

For the first few weeks we received "successful transaction" settlement reports from Authorize.net and credit card orders were processing fine...and the last couple of weeks my staff flagged me that there were zeroes on these settlement reports. Since many people order by phone or fax even today -- and our sales weren't suffering dramatically and we didn't have a mass mailing going out until this past Monday -- we initially assumed it was the economic downturn, people getting acclimated to the new site and so on.

Yesterday two customers called about credit card payment failures on our site. I went online and tried two purchases myself with two different credit cards: they both failed. Digging in at Authorize.net, I was stunned to see dozens of failed transaction attempts.

You won't believe what I've gone through to get this problem resolved and no, it's still not fixed at 3pm CDT.

---

UPDATE as of 6pm CDT: See the resolution at the bottom of the post.

Virtual Communications: Using Lessons Learned Elsewhere

Moviemakers of the suspense, horror and drama genres learned long ago that in order to build tension in the audience, slowly lowering the sound makes moviegoers start to strain to hear the dialogue (and yes, music and other sound is added to build to a crescendo). Tension builds, the muscles in the bodies of the audience tighten, they begin to lean forward slightly and THE HAND FLIES INTO THE SCREEN, GRABS OUR HERO AND THE AUDIENCE JUMPS IN THEIR SEATS SCREAMING!

Works every time.

Now take a technology we've used for a long time -- conference calling on the Plain Old Telephone System (POTS) -- and realize that people calling in on a variety of devices (headsets, cell phones, office phones) add noise and the telephone system (and conference bridge) sample at only a measly 8khz. The result? Tension builds, our muscles tighten and we actually shift our attention (you know who you are....you surfin' the web folks when you're supposed to be listening to us on the call!) and the quality of the conference and what we're trying to communicate to one another suffers.

Let's look at Skype and how using it decreases tension and increases the quality. Sampling at 16khz means the quality is substantially higher than POTS and is so good that you can hear people breathe, move something on their desk or even click their mouse. The "resolution" of the audio is much higher and thus the call quality is better. The result? Lower tension (or none at all), the callers are relaxed and the communication is higher. Thankfully there are emerging conference bridges that can handle call-ins via Skype and sample at 16khz to maintain call quality (e.g., HighSpeedConferencing).

Let's take this one step further to other forms of social media: Imagine you hosted a party and when your guests arrived, no one greeted them at the door, clusters of people were broken up into little cliques ignoring them, and as you glanced over at them in the doorway thought, "They're on their own and are just going to have to figure out how to participate."

The Cognitive Age: Why Social Media Matters

Our economy is down, gas prices are up, jobs are being lost and outsourced, we're at 'war' with possible escalation (e.g., attacking Iran), and there is tremendous uncertainty in nearly every industry being disrupted in some way by the connecting of the globe and the increasing influence of the Internet.

Let me submit for your consideration that the impact of social media -- technologies, software and approaches connecting any of us willing to participate with them online -- is pointing the way toward new systems and behaviors that will enable us all to move higher up the value chain as we learn how, together, we can create and deliver what the world needs in new and innovative ways.

One of the best op-ed pieces I've read in some time, The Cognitive Age, was published in the New York Times on Friday by David Brooks.

In this piece he's putting globalization in context in this election cycle, which is chiefly on competition with other countries and the policies of government that ostensibly is accelerating job loss in the US. Brooks puts forth this premise which bears emphasis:

"The chief force reshaping manufacturing is technological change (hastened by competition with other companies in Canada, Germany or down the street). Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S."

Then he outlines his central argument which, I should add, I completely agree with:

"The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked."

What does this have to do with social media and why does that category of technology matter?

The Hybrid/RIA War: Adobe's Open Screen Project

Today's announcement by Adobe of the Open Screen Project has been well covered in the blogosphere. What hasn't been well covered is the story-behind-the-story and that this is a major salvo in the hybrid application war.

I've written before about the rich, internet application (RIA) space (here, here and here for example) and the momentum being built behind the tools, approaches and delivery containers with content, data and functionality mashed up and delivered in a hybrid manner.

As the world is increasingly connected and broadband/wireless speeds increase (and device types proliferate with internet connectivity), the demand for more and more functionality integrating the desktop and the internet is accelerating and the major vendors (and open source ones) are trying to figure out how to empower us to create and deliver new digital assets that customers will value and buy.

What isn't discussed much is the now primarily covert 'war' underway between Adobe with Flash (and AIR, Media Player, et al), Microsoft with Silverlight, Apple with WebKit (though little has been intimated publicly on what they might do in the RIA space or how they might leverage the stealth Quicktime installs on Windows with iTunes and the recent Safari Windows release) and Mozilla's Prism. All are focused on how to provide a winning environment upon and within which content creators, developers and strategists can deliver ever higher value and create competitive advantage for they and their companies. Whoever pulls that off will win.

Four very different approaches, market positioning, tools to create and develop, and overall go-to-market plans (most of which an outsider can only guess at) but the promise of RIA's is huge for applications and for us, whether we want to create-n-deliver or just enjoy the fruits of the labors of others: replacement for current web apps; completely new categories; and even one area we're already exploring in my company, a new type of subscription/self-updating ebook that RSS feeds, video and audio automagically appear within when a subscriber opens it and is connected to the 'net.

Who will win? I don't know yet but the winner will be the one with the best tools, the largest runtime container distribution, and the most support from the ecosystem surrounding them. The momentum is with Adobe but, then again, it was with Apple in 1980 at the dawn of the personal computing industry, and we know how that turned out.

Behind The Eyeballs: 75% of All Ads and Content Ineffective?

So many designers, user interface creators and arm-chair critics think they know what makes really compelling content, how ads should be displayed or even how a web site or application should be delivered. But do they? Do any of us really know what it takes to present and communicate content and ads that are truly compelling, cut above the noise, and garner attention from an increasingly scattered audience who have in front of them an overwhelming and accelerating number of choices?

One company is staking a claim to an understanding of the cognitive landscape behind our eyeballs with their quantitative and measurable solutions: NeuroFocus (via AdLab). Dr. A.K. Pradeep, CEO of NeuroFocus, said this in a follow-up interview with Media Post: "We've found that about 75% of all content--not just advertisements--is not neurologically optimal."

"For example, consumers interpret info on different parts of a screen with different sections of their brain. [...] So an advertiser or TV show producer has reduced the engagement potential and effectiveness of their content from the onset if the bulk of the textual and numerical info is placed on the left side--with the imagery or brand logos on the right."

The company obtains their results through biometric measurements. That means volunteers strap on a skull cap with electrodes on it and engage with the content and advertisements of which they're presented. The thing that troubles me a bit, is that like the uncertainty principle in quantum physics, my experiences have shown that when observers know they're being measured their behavior and cognitive processing changes. It does seem, however, that NeuroFocus' research at least provides a baseline from which content and ads can be more precisely delivered. Then further refinement can occur (with we unaware and passive brains behind eyeballs) with other analytical tools or simple measures of clickstream data.

The Nielsen Company (the grandaddy of TV measurement) has made a strategic investment in NeuroFocus so they're obviously on to something.

The promise (to advertisers) of the shift to internet-based ad delivery is measurement and to us (the online user) it's ad relevancy, contextualized or personalized ads. Rarely does significant  and ongoing ad placement occur without measurement nor do venture capitalists sit still for long as ad-dependent-for-revenue companies attempt to drive user engagement and expansion of our involvement with their offering...and thus garner advertisers.

Solid measurement is healthy. Best practices more so as they're indicators of actions we can take with understandable and quantifiable returns. It's still pretty early in the evolution of the internet, but knowing what to do, how to deliver it and how to measure it is key to economic success on the 'net and continued innovation.

To read more, take a peek at this well done New York Times article here and the CEO has a couple of mp3's and a white paper here.

Digidesign Update: Call from Dave Lebolt, VP, GM

After my rant and a subsequent email to Digidesign's VP and GM Dave Lebolt (and their head of public relations) Mr. Lebolt called me this morning.

The intent of my post was to get attention. To be a scream loud enough to be heard from Minnesota to California. But not just so I could get attention, but rather attention paid to customers who paid money for product no longer functional coupled with an internal system at Digidesign not geared to today's customer service and conversational marketing that I and the market demands.

We engaged in a fairly lengthy conversation about them, Apple, supporting the varieties of products and plugins they do, their people and the systemic infrastructure they have (e.g., their customer relationship management system) and what they need to have and do with it (e.g., interact with customers through alerts; implement RSS feeds so we don't have to go back to their site over-n-over again to check and see if updates are available).

He also offered to buy back the MBoxPro2. Yes, I could've been one of "those" customers and leapt on the offer, but that was not my intent and I'd rather they get the Leopard upgrade out and tell me that it's ready so I don't have to go and poke around their site every week. As a management consultant in social media where transparency, conversational marketing and engaging with people who increasingly demand a voice is one of the key tenets of success in today's marketplace, I have to eat my own dog food and bring attention to something so wrong and customer conversations so broken as my experience with Digidesign these last several months.

Digidesign: Why you NEVER should buy their products!

The story I'm about to tell you is such a great lesson in how NOT to take care of (or manage) your customers, I had to share it with you. Take from this what you will, but there are such obvious lessons here for all of us that it might be as informative for you as this experience has been for me.

Four months ago I wrote a post entitled, "My Digidesign Paper Weight..." ranting about my experience with the MBoxPro2 I purchased to drive a new, more powerful Shure SM7B microphone -- and record client interviews, do voiceovers and other work -- and at the time (more than two months after Apple had shipped Leopard), Digidesign couldn't even hint at when they'd support this new operating system.

Since that post, this MBoxPro2 has been worthless to me since it no longer functions with any of my machines and, of course, imagine how agitated I am with a total investment of approximately $1,500 now gathering dust for months and months.

Over the last five months, I've been to their site dozens of times to check on the status of a Leopard upgrade. Never obvious and tough to find, I nonetheless did but found nothing. Since so much time had elapsed -- and terribly unusual in today's marketplace -- I reached out to Digidesign Customer Support who twice responded to my queries with recommendations:

1) To downgrade to Apple's old Tiger OS (but you know the cascading effect of upgrading an OS and all your applications which also would need to be 'downgraded') and I only have a Tiger upgrade disk in my office closet and Apple no longer sells it...making this 'fix' not an option.

2) After pointing this out, a few days later they then recommended I go out and buy a Tiger install disk and install the old OS on a bootable hard drive, reinstall all the relevant applications, Digidesign's non-Leopard-compatible version of ProTools as well as all the ProTools-compatible plugins I purchased OR go out and buy an old Mac. If both of these options weren't so ludicrous in putting the burden of additional investment and the time-to-install effort on me, the customer, I'd laugh.

Here's where the obvious lessons come in from the unbelievably bad customer service job they've done -- and are doing -- and why you should NEVER give Digidesign any of your money...ever:

Why pay for software in a day of open source?

You may have noticed the highly visible online argument going on between SixApart's Anil Dash and Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg. It escalated today when Matt continued the "open source vs. paid" debate (which is really open source ecosystem energy vs. a perceived slow-to-move commercial vendor positioning against open source).

This is amazingly healthy in my view and the competition for the hearts-n-minds of bloggers clearly is driving SixApart to build and deliver better and more robust services (and I've been waiting for them!).

I'd reframe this debate like this however: why should you pay for software in a day when open source is free and the ecosystem surrounding the successful projects is immense?

When I made my decision to begin blogging in earnest in 2004, there was only one vendor I was willing to bet my blogging on: SixApart's Typepad hosting. Though I can easily install, run and maintain numerous types of open source packages (and could've with Movable Type, the software at the root of Typepad), I knew myself well enough and that I'd be twiddling bits instead of writing content if I used the then fairly immature Wordpress. Typepad looked like a sure bet and had the momentum so that was my choice.

Even though I've been at the enterprise software level with Vignette and Lawson Software in leadership positions, for some clients I've chosen Joomla, Drupal and even used Wordpress as a low-end content management engine. But when it comes to betting your business or a new initiative on a new category, it's imperative there's someone or some organization available to ensure a successful outcome with the software used.

Freeconomics: What about MY cost for YOUR free?

Am somewhat amazed by the backlash against Chris Anderson's new Wired piece, "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business". Charges that he wrote a "communist manifesto" were probably the harshest ones, but many people I've been talking with, both in person and virtually, share somewhat of that same opinion: "something is wrong if you have to give away your value" and "we can't all make money by grabbing mass numbers of eyeballs in order to deliver advertising to them."

They're missing his point and he missed one I think he shouldn't have.

Anderson's "it's the falling costs, stupid" premise can be summed up in this paragraph taken, ironically, from his article in the Economist magazine:

The dominant business model on the internet today is making money by giving things away. Much of that is merely the traditional media model of using free content to build audiences and selling access to them to advertisers. But an increasing amount of it falls into the free-sample model: because it is so cheap to offer digital services online, it doesn’t matter if 99% of your customers are using the free version of your services so long as 1% are paying for the “premium version”. After all, 1% of a big number can also be a big number.

Free is a major shift and a huge trend, especially with any sort of online service. If you thoroughly read Anderson's article in Wired you may or may not buy into the argument he makes, and may even accept his premise that free is driven primarily by the fall in producer costs as the costs associated with delivering them continue to drop online.

But wait just a minute.

New York Times is now in (and leading) the conversation

In September of 2007, The New York Times made a monumental decision to stop charging for TimesSelect (the NYTimes online) as well as opening up their archives searchable back into the 1800's. Big risk but was a brilliant strategic move in my opinion.

I've been noticing the Times showing up more frequently as the thought leader blog on the memetracker (blogosphere conversation tracker) Techmeme. Today is a great example (and yes, I understand Sunday is the most in-depth article day), but I've never seen FOUR of them above-the-fold previously.

Why is this such a brilliant strategic move? As evidenced by not only being IN the conversation on Techmeme, they're also LEADING many of the conversations. Very smart, heh?

With more of us consuming news and information on the Web -- and now video and full TV shows -- there is no question that any organization wishing for relevancy going forward needs to be 100% immersed in Internet-centric media and the attention being paid there vs. traditional media. It's the only way to quickly shift, modify, and embrace emergent new media forms as well as be a leading provider right smack-dab-in-the-middle of where our attention is increasingly being focused.

Apple + Presence and Location Awareness

What if you could take your mobile phone near a retail outlet and it would tell you the specials? Have your favorite cup of coffee waiting for you to pick it up? Personalize their offerings so that only the things you might like to buy would be presented to you? Allow the retailer to automatically know who the good and loyal customers are so you could be catered to?

Those are just some of the positives of Apple's recent patent application discussed in this Forbes article.

The downsides? Too early to tell, but having an iPhone stolen would be one though there will undoubtedly be security implementations to avoid that problem. How about ordering something automatically -- a cup of coffee or example -- when today you had a hankering for tea?

My bigger concern is the perfect storm around presence and location awareness. Presence is when systems know where you are and that you're online and/or your device(s) are capable of communicating with you (which is one reason why the Blackberry has done so well since YOU don't have to check for email...it TELLS you when there's a message). Location awareness is like the photo above when machines are aware of where you are geographically.

Both of these are huge for Google since every touch point where any of us could possibly receive and act on an ad is key to their strategy. Imagine you search for, say, an HDTV and the ads delivered to your phone or browser are specific to your location? Or what if you're sitting in a Starbucks and corporate sends out a promotion while you're physically there -- and they know by your purchase history and interactions with them via your iPhone that you're open to what's in the promotion -- and your phone vibrates with an SMS delivering the promo?

Slowly but surely we're handing over more and more of ourselves and our privacy in exchange for what? I've handed over a lot and done so willingly (Gmail, Google Analytics, et al) but there is much I haven't used (Picasa or YouTube with their complete ability to reuse your pics and video).

Lastly, I have to admit being sort of amused by Apple delivering this functionality since they're the LEAST personalized and targeted company of their size on the planet. EVERYTHING that I receive from Apple is completely generic though they have my purchase history, machines and applications registered, and my credit history since I have an account at iTunes. Still puzzles me that they don't bother to use any of that meaningfully.

3 Strategies to Think. Consider. Mull it over. Breathe...

Do you take the time to absorb new information and let it percolate in your brain awhile before rushing to judgement, making a decision or throwing together a blog post, a tweet, an SMS or comment somewhere?

At breakfast this morning my wife, 13 year old son and I were in a conversation about television. In a poor attempt at grabbing his attention, I tried to set context for him on what is was like for me at 13 -- three networks, one independent TV channel, no recorded media -- and what it was like for him now.

We have DVD's, DirecTV with hundreds of channels, game systems, books galore, two daily newspapers, and an Internet with essentially "millions" of channels. He smiled and said, "Whatever Dad" and went on with conversations about his skiing adventure this weekend! He made it clear that he LOVES all the choice and ENJOYS the constant interruptions his mobile phone, IM, Skype, XBox Live teams give him.

I submit that it is VERY hard right now to turn off the river of news, shut out the Twitter's, the social network alerts, SMS, IM, Skype calls, emails, and all the other interruptions and make 100% certain that you have the time to think, to consider, mull stuff over and just breathe.

What I try hard to do with this blog -- and life in general -- is to ferret out the meaning behind a person's incentives, company/product direction or strategic announcement before going off half-cocked to write about it and/or get involved in conversations. Connecting the dots, if you will.

I frequently turn off every possible interruption in order to buffer myself against intrusions that are accelerating and demanding ever higher levels of my attention. It's the only way I can be assured that I'll be able to place myself in a position of contemplation before taking action.

Here are three strategies that you can do right now to set yourself up to be more contemplative. It will pay off and I guarantee it (or your money will be cheerfully refunded):

Why we *must* touch, feel or experience products

How can Amazon sell a kindle that no one can touch, feel or experience? Since Amazon doesn't have storefronts or isn't in the retail distribution channel in any fashion, how will people determine if they want to shell out $399 for a player and then read most of their subsequent books and publications with it?

It appears that their sole initial strategy is to rely on early adopters and influencers touting the merits of the device (which, IMHO, is why so-called A-list bloggers were included in the launch). Since there is monetary incentive to see it adopted, having these influencers buy one (if they weren't just given one) and either sing its praises or show it off to everyone else is undoubtedly a great way to build buzz.

I've been in many conversations recently about the supposed death of retail in a day of ecommerce, the now obvious wisdom of Apple rolling out their own stores, how Dell has begun a shift to a retail distribution strategy and that as devices and products become more complex -- and thus require more initial education of the consumer before a purchase -- that having physical locations where people can touch, feel or experience it is more important than ever before.

Or is it?

Retail is a push-pull for me. On the one hand, like most people I like to go into a store to actually play with a product before I buy it. On the other hand I understand how it's a physical impossibility for stores -- even the size of a Best Buy, Target or Walmart -- to stock anything more than the 60-80% of the mainstream products people will buy which often makes ecommerce all that more attractive.

So how realistic is it that new concepts or paradigms will be launched and need to be sold at retail?  Are influencers and recommenders enough to launch a new product like Amazon's kindle?

Molding and Shaping Perception in an Internet Age

My daughter had a college paper to do and ended up doing it on, "Old and New Media Influence on Anti-American Sentiment".

What was fascinating was to read this report (PDF) from May, 2007 entitled, "The Communication of Anti-Americanism: Media Influence and Anti-American Sentiment” by the Department of Communications at Cornell University and see that this massive research study focused on traditional media and completely left out new media!

They examined all sorts of statistics and variables in the report: country, age, income, media habits, and much more. The problem in leaving out new media is that  most people under 30 have radically reduced their consumption of old media and instead are having their perceptions molded and shaped by exposure to all sorts of opinions and alternative new media forms.

Her argument was that negative perceptions of America were being molded and shaped by all media, not just traditional media. In an age when many globally are eschewing broadcast media for social network's, YouTube, SMS, blogs, and shows like The Daily Show or even Al Jazeera offerings, there is no doubt that any thoughtful consideration and examination of public opinion and cross-cultural perception must include new media forms.

As I wrote this looking at that goofy picture of Ze Frank (which must frighten children and small animals), I thought about how tough it would've been for Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbel's, to have done what he did for perception-controlling had the Internet existed in the 1930's.

Google "doing evil" by invisibly observing?

Google is known for it's internal guiding phrase "Do No Evil". What I've never seen is a strict definition of what "doing evil" really means to the folks at Google. Have you? Should you care? What data is Google looking at when you're online?

An article in SLATE yesterday entitled, "Google's Evil Eye" about summed up what I've talked about previously (a key post is here and another handful are here, here and here) and all of this should at least make you stop and think about all the Google services you're using and how much you're simply handing over to them:

Google's fingerprints aren't just on your e-mail. Last week, the Senate held hearings regarding Google's proposed acquisition of Doubleclick. Google dominates the micro-end of Internet advertising with its text ads. Doubleclick is the leading provider of banner ads, like the one at the top of this page. A combined Googleclick would be a force in Internet advertising—Google makes 99 percent of its profits from ads—and have an awesome ability to track your online behavior. Google will be able to inform advertisers what sites your browser has visited, what ads have been clicked on, what search terms have been used. The company can also get a good idea of your physical location from your computer's IP address. And that's just the tip of the data iceberg. If Sony wants to target teenage PlayStation 3 owners in Southern California with a special promotion on flatscreen TVs, who do you think they are going to call?

When I was at Vignette during the dotcom heyday, I recall the Doubleclick controversy in 1999 that showed, for the first time, the unprecedented capability of tracking and measuring. From Wikipedia:

"In 1999, at a cost of US $1.7 billion, DoubleClick merged with the data-collection agency, Abacus Direct, which works with offline catalog companies. This raised fears that the combined company would link anonymous Web-surfing profiles with personally identifiable information (name, address, telephone number, e-mail, address, etc.) collected by Abacus. This merger made waves and was heavily criticized by privacy organizations. Controversy grew when it was discovered that sensitive financial information users entered on a popular Web site that offered financial software was being sent to DoubleClick, which delivered the ads."

That was over seven years ago which is an eternity in internet time.

Storytelling: The way people remember

It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was howling and rain was coming down in sheets out my home office window. Dressed in sweats with the furnace on as temperatures dipped into the 40's, I sat before the glow of my flat panel display and read articles that were coming through in my RSS aggregator, content to be indoors absorbing new material and exploring new business models on the internet. What I didn't know was that this activity -- which pleased me since it fits perfectly my strengths of gathering input and learning -- was going to present me with a surprise...one that may make you sit straight up in your chair as you realize the same thing I did.

OK....that one paragraph told you a story. You learned what I did last evening, what two of my top five strengths are, and that I learned something surprising on the internet. It also left you (hopefully) with a cliffhanger incentive to continue reading this post.

No one is certain when language first appeared or when human knowledge truly began capturing that knowledge through writing, but one thing is certain: humans have developed a profound capacity for learning, storing and retrieving stories.

I came to the surprise (that a company had built a business model around storytelling and is delivering it via the 'net) through Australia-based Anecdote. The company, 50 Lessons, is based in the UK and they've coupled storytelling with Internet video and created an offering that captures lessons from top business leaders:

Experience is the best teacher – people have learned through stories for centuries.

Fifty Lessons is the world’s leading digital video business library. Using the power of storytelling, our mission is to equip ‘next-generation’ leaders with the experience and wisdom of the most respected and influential business leaders in the world.

We serve corporations, government agencies, academic institutions, small to medium-sized businesses and individual professionals, to help them suceed in an increasingly complex business landscape.

To date, over one hundred and fifty of the world’s foremost business leaders have participated. Their contributions are housed in a fully indexed digital library of over five hundred short videos.

This content is published in multiple languages in both digital and traditional formats, including internet, print, broadcast, and audio and can be experienced on devices such as PCs, Mobile Telephones, iPods and Handhelds.

Fifty Lessons content is distributed globally by our partners, who include Harvard Business School Publishing, Vangent and Sun 3C Media in China.

This is big company, enterprise stuff and they sell access to these top global leaders geared to organization-wide access. What about small-to-midsize businesses or individuals?

Empowered Participants in a Connected Age

Let me tell you a little story about being empowered in a connected age in order to illustrate how a participation culture is changing communications, grassroots efforts and is undoubtedly putting the fear of God into the hearts and minds of PR and marketing professionals.

For over 10 years, the section of the upscale neighborhood in which my home sits has experienced major and minor power outages. Usually two major and several minor ones per year.

What has made this issue particularly irksome is that my neighbors behind me have never been without power while I have as has the majority of our development (my 50 home-ish section is on another part of the grid). A flooded basement that cost me $6,000 in repairs, hundreds of dollars of food thrown out, and untold irritation and frustration have been just a few of the results.

Our utility, Xcel Energy, has been about as responsive as any monopolistic, regulated and bureaucratic entity is: not very. Then, after two outages within days of one another in August after Xcel implied a fix had been done -- I blew a gasket. I had had just about enough and leveraged my squeaky wheel that needs to be greased ability to communicate and ratcheted up my pleas to an atypically responsive (and blogger!) Eden Prairie city manager, Scott Neal.

Neal opened doors for me and pushed to ensure that my voice in the wilderness was helicoptered out and not left in the woods to be devoured by bears. Neal's blog post succinctly describes the issue and positive outcome.

I'll take a little credit for being a diplomatic, nice, persistent pain-in-the-ass to everyone. It was clear I was capable of being an effective communicator and would do so in front of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (which I could), to the governor's office (one degree of separation from Gov. Pawlenty) and all over the Web (which I've done). I made certain it was clear to everyone that I'd NEVER let go of this until a permanent solution was planned/budgeted for and implemented. Perhaps that attitude helped move things along.

TalkShoe adds VoIP with ShoePhone

Want to see, experience and understand a phenomenal way to extend your company, personal or other value proposition online? Then you owe it to yourself to spend a bit of time at TalkShoe and understand the implications of what they've just released with free and easy voice (VoIP) capability with TalkShoe called ShoePhone.

Their press release says in part, "ShoePhone is an easy to use service for unlimited group calling with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Up to 250 people can participate in a live call (which TalkShoe calls Talkcasts™), and 1,000s more can listen to the simultaneous live Internet audio stream. Users can also simultaneously text-chat, and Talkcasts can be recorded and stored on TalkShoe’s website for later listening and podcasting. Talkcasts can be done instantly, or scheduled in advance. ShoePhone is Free to use.

ShoePhone uses voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology to create calls. However, unlike other VoIP services, ShoePhone users can connect with other ShoePhone users as well as to people using standard telephones, mobile phones, other VoIP services such as Skype, and 3rd party VoIP clients such as SJphone and Gizmo. This is because ShoePhone is based on a telco-grade conferencing system unlike other server-based VoIP-only services which have limited conferencing capabilities."

After I pinged famed Internet radio guy Doug Kaye earlier this year he forwarded my note about high quality call-in recording solutions with VoIP to Dave Nelsen, the CEO of TalkShoe. Nelsen immediately jumped in with their solutions, indicated that (what now has become ShoePhone) VoIP solutions I needed would be coming this year which I expected would be December! How's THAT for underpromising and overdelivering.

I've listened and participated in shows and played with the TalkShoe system myself. Though embracing an online system was something I was reluctant to do since I want complete control over the recording, the show itself (using a conferencing service) and so on, I've been hunting for a high quality, easy to use, free-for-my-listeners solution that gives them lots of different ways to call in and either listen to or participate in a show...and be of high quality. TalkShoe has delivered.

"Hey Borsch, are there any downsides that you've discovered?"

iPhone: Perfect PR move by Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs gives iPhone early adopters $100 in store credit. This was the right thing to do (and a good PR move) and should appease the lion's share of people who've felt wronged. Too bad it took the participation and public screams from thousands of customers to get this reaction.

What strikes me as perfect is the tone of the letter. It explains the situation well, the reason for the move (albeit at a high level), and has one of the best mea culpa's I've seen yet, "...we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price."

The "technology road is bumpy" comment removes the USA Today customer-bitch-slap comment as a problem. Jobs ends the note with an apology. Overall, it just feels right and I'm impressed with the immediate reaction and one done so well.

Now on to my thoughts as a shareholder. The margin hit will be analyzed ad nauseum I'm certain (and the stock may drop even further tomorrow), but think about store credit and that most products sold by Apple enjoy high gross margins. From Apple's recently filed 10Q:

Gross margin percentage for the third quarter and first nine months of 2007 was 36.9% and 34.1%, respectively, compared to 30.3% and 28.9%, for the comparable periods of 2006, respectively.

Considering other factors -- and the higher gross margins in the Apple Stores vs. in the channel (e.g., MacMall or Best Buy) -- one could guess that the net effect of this offer on Apple's balance sheet is roughly in the range of $63 to $72. Certain accessory products like cases, headphones, software and the like have higher gross margins than Apple core products so it depends on what people buy to really see the effect on the bottom line.

Figuring an average store credit of $67.50 times a guesstimate on the number of iPhones sold to date (700,000?) would translate into $47,250,000. Sounds like a lot, but the gross revenue of those 700,000 iPhones is roughly between $350M and $400M and who knows about the kickbacks Apple is receiving from AT&T and other mobile providers slated to rollout soon.

They did the right thing to maximize the iPhone opportunity worldwide. The right thing by we early adopters. The right thing for the shareholders.

iPhone Buzz Turns Negative: Gimmee my $200!!

Oops. Yesterday Steve Jobs announces new iPods and -- much to the collective chagrin of thousands of Apple customers -- drops the price of the just over two month old iPhone by $200.

Last evening I lurked around the Apple Support Forum (iPhone section) and watched the hundreds of posts and replies appear and disappear almost instantly. It was as though I was watching a chat window instead of a forum posting area. People are amazingly upset by this drop and even Mr. Pragmatic (me) have to admit being quite surprised by how fast this occurred since I own two of them.

I also posted in the iPhone section but had the posts removed instantly and emails arrived each time saying:

Your message was removed for being in violation of the Apple Discussions terms of use.

From the terms of use:
"Unless otherwise noted, do not add Submissions about nontechnical topics, including: Discussions of Apple policies or procedures or speculation on Apple decisions."

While the purpose of these forums is to allow people to support one another (and do it for free so Apple doesn't have to), the removals appear to be random and subjective as many nontechnical topics remain. What strikes me is that this forum is the perfect place for the rants, the vitriol, and the whining to occur in a place where it can be contained. Instead, it's spilling out all over the place as people like me will post about it instead of placing this sort of stuff within the walls of Apple Support.

There are reasons for everything...including this huge price drop...and the market space the iPhone plays within isn't one for the meek.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs?

Often I take Robert X. Cringely's columns with a grain-of-salt, but this one entitled, "Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership" really hit me since I make my living on Internet-centric management consulting and view broadband as the key enabler of business going forward. Cringely's article is an important one to read if you care about US competitiveness in the future.

Back in the mid-1990's I had an ISDN line with a whopping 128kbps access for $69 per month. Incredibly fast at the time, I even considered their bonded option for 256kbps (well over $100 per month) but I wanted to stay married. Today I have 8mbps per second downstream and 768kbps upstream for essentially the same price.

I have friends in San Francisco with 10mbps symmetrical (both upload and download) for under $100 a month. Others using Verizon's fiber (FIOS) and getting 15mbps down, 2mbps up for $50 per month.

But Cringely talks about the 100mbps speeds in Japan, others have complained about them being ahead of us too and the OECD's April, 2007 report (which showed the US at 25th in global broadband penetration and speed) is open to debate. So is it important for us to have competitiveness in broadband speeds and why aren't we -- the inventor and creator of the Internet -- in the world's leading position for broadband speed and penetration?

When you think about the relative sizes of countries vs. US states, you begin to get a feel for the enormity of the problem. Japan is roughly the size of Montana, for example, and (as of 2001), 79% of the population lived in urban areas with ~20% in Tokyo alone. That makes it considerably easier to provide a high speed broadband infrastructure for the overwhelming majority of Japanese. It's a lot tougher to do so across the vast geography that is the United States.

The stakes are too high, however, to NOT solve this accelerating need for true broadband. ArsTechnica has a good article on House Democrats and discussions about 'true' broadband. I'm not even going to get into the lobbying and politics of broadband, telephony and wireless, but suffice to say there are alot of complexities on why we're NOT the world's leader. What most discussions don't focus on, however, is that broadband is viewed as a driver of gross domestic product (GDP) output and we need to be accelerating the Internet -- both in speed and penetration -- now.

What if a 1% increase in broadband penetration equaled 300,000 jobs? Read on for a very interesting set of data...

iPhone activation = AT&T long distance on landline?

If you recently activated an iPhone, let me know in the comments if this (or other unusual interactions with AT&T) has happened to you. In today's mail at home came a statement from AT&T for April 20th-July 19th for long distance on my home phone line. We NEVER use landline long distance since between our mobile lines, a Vonage line and Skype we have absolutely no use for the continued price gouging of landline telephony. In fact, we have specifically requested Qwest to place no long distance carrier on our home line.

Normally I'm not paranoid, but it's curious this happened after my post-iPhone-activation adventures trying to get AT&T Wireless to set up my account correctly. From an alleged "inadvertent" placing of $2.99 per month for roadside assistance on my account (we have AAA as well as free assistance on both of our cars and would never sign up for this) to text messaging on the wrong family plan number to the wrong number of minutes, I've been coming to the realization that this company couldn't find their ass with both hands.

The customer service guy I talked to in India reassured me that "it is just a coincidence" though my account activation included my home phone number and, of course, all other requisite data that this other area of AT&T could use to simply add-on charges.

I learned many, many years ago this one simple fact: there are no coincidences.

What if there is no equilibrium?

One result of an increasingly interconnected world -- and we humans who are leveraging this network, adding ourselves as nodes to it -- is that hundreds of thousands or millions of changes are occurring everywhere. Change is being accelerated because people can help people; ideas are propagated at the speed electrons can traverse the 'net; and thoughts inform others thoughts which build upon one another quickly.

New companies are popping up all over, industries are being disrupted globally, and the fear most status quo holders have is about the disruption we will NOT see.

I've been observing this massive change enabled, in no small part, by the Internet-as-a-platform, Web/Enterprise 2.0 space and have slowly realized that no one, no analyst organization or set of thought leaders is going to be able to track and even identify disruption and emergence everywhere on our planet.

When I think about industries that have been disrupted by quickly emerging competitors in the past: railroads; vacuum tube companies; minicomputer makers; today's newspaper and television providers; or even the printing industry my 94 year old father-in-law worked in for his entire career; I see now that disruption occurred but there was ample time for adaption. Companies adapted, industries figured out how to stay relevant or go away, economies discovered new revenue streams, and equilibrium was reached.

But what would happen if equilibrium is no longer within reach?

The World is Awakening...

What happens when everyone becomes awake? I don't mean from sleep, but rather have fully developed a level of consciousness that ensures they're aware of human connection, ideas and possibilities in new and radical ways?

If you're a C-level executive, strategist, marketer, in product development, sales, are a teacher or small businessperson (or frankly anyone), the accelerating shifts in consciousness will impact what you do or deliver...and probably already is whether you're aware of it or not.

My work in Web/Enterprise 2.0, community and communications through the Internet-as-a-platform means that I am seeing and experiencing this awakening on a daily basis. Simple things like watching people come together in a collaborative space and discovering how important it is to have everyone see the same vision of a product so they're in sync; understanding the importance of ritual in a virtual meeting (e.g., how to lead a session and ensure everyone has a voice); deepening their understanding of markets and the people within them; and the inner drive people are exhibiting to move toward a vision for humanity that they live by. Businesses ignore this at their own peril.

This article in Fast Company (a publication I'm respecting more than ever as they push against the membrane of the future with articles like this one) is kinda, sorta a mashup about new concepts in 'green', activist capitalism, and open source and is one of the most fascinating examples I've seen for some time about strategies and concepts tapping into this awakening world and an ever-expanding human consciousness.

It starts out, "Somewhere between the Oscar for Al Gore's planetary-disaster epic, An Inconvenient Truth, and the canonization of Angelina Jolie by the United Nations (in association with People (NYSE:TWX) magazine), the message started sinking in: The cultural conversation around the environment, social change, and human rights is approaching maximum velocity. What is arguably urgent has become inarguably hip." To me, the operative words are "cultural conversation", "maximum velocity" and "inarguably hip" in that paragraph and it is blatantly obvious to me that the company discussed in this feature couldn't have happened until now.

As I read I realized that all that I've been seeing and experiencing recently -- both on and offline -- is but a tip-of-the-iceberg of this global awakening.

Unleashing the Collective

Just returned to my office from this Thought Leader Gathering (TLG) put on by Heartland Circle and held this morning at Best Buy Company.

Being in a contemplative mood for the last few weeks, today's gathering was interesting on many levels and also brought me back to one aspect of my work: unleashing the collective. The collective of Internet-connected humanity is my work, but I was sort of surprised by how something NOT directly in my strategic technology domain informed my thoughts in such a profound way today.

The event was about WoLF: The Women's Leadership Forum at Best Buy. The leaders, Julie Gilbert and Mary Capozzi, led off with powerfully told personal stories that helped us understand what led each of them to the formation of this forum. WoLF's essence is that it empowers women in the organization and is clearly unleashing their perspectives, their influence and engaging them. Apparently most women had been relatively excluded.

A key aspect to this forum (and the WoLF 'packs' which have formed) is that partnering with the men within Best Buy is critical to bringing women's energy to bear for the good of them and, especially, the company. Read the link above to learn more but what you won't take away was how powerful this has become and the ROI that Best Buy the business is achieving from it.

If you want to get all left brain and quantified and dismiss my relating this event to you as YAWM (Yet Another Women's Movement) consider this: Best Buy is measuring the results of lower female turnover in an otherwise incredibly high turnover labor pool (i.e., retail). Another fact Ms. Gilbert articulated is that, "Women buy more technology products than men — spending $55 billion of the annual $96 billion in technology sales." Hmmm...so engaging women could be good business and profitable...hmmm. 

Why you should NOT buy Target's TruTech brand

UPDATE 12/25/07: I've been amazed at the hundreds of pageviews of this post every day between the day after Thanksgiving and today, Christmas day (over 16,000 total so far). I've received emails from people, you can read the comments, and see for yourself that there is a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction with the Trutech products. Please note that I cannot do anything myself but have, in fact, reached out via email to Kimberly Youngstrom (kyoungstrom@kaplowpr.com) who is the person sanctioned as responsible for public relations for the Target Owned Brands. Ms. Youngstrom is with Target's public relations agency in New York, Kaplow PR. I've emailed twice, the last time on November 26th but there has been no response.

UPDATE 9/3/07: This post has been amazing in the HUGE number of people that have read it (especially during this back-to-school season) and, most troubling, how many have commented AND have sent me emails asking for help. Target has used at least two vendors to make electronics for the TruTech brand. I've tried to locate the electronics buyer for Target Stores responsible for this brand, but after four hours of trying I've given up. I'd recommend calling Target Customer Service (1.800.440.0680) and let them know of your displeasure and what you could and should do.

Here's a rant/report on an experience I had with Target Stores that might prove helpful as you think about your interactions with customers, how you support them and what it does for a brand -- and a huge caution if you ever considering buying Target's consumer electronics brand, TruTech.

Before I get started some disclosure is necessary: my wife was once the audio buyer for Target and I was a manufacturer's representative calling on her with Pioneer Electronics (no...I didn't ask her out while she was a buyer but waited until she was promoted out of the area into a non-conflict of interest position...but I digress). So we both know this game well and I can only imagine what Joe SixPack thinks since alot of "Joe's" seem to be having similar experiences.

Last November I purchased a Target brand TV/DVD combo for my first year college daughter (this Target "TruTech" model). It was cheap but more than sufficient for her needs. When plugging the batteries into the remote I remarked on how cheap it was and -- having broken and lost many remotes in my day -- was not terribly concerned since universal remotes are so easy to find and cheap to buy...

...unless you're a major mass merchandiser that buys from multiple vendors that do not offer or publish their remote control codes and have one place to buy a replacement for nearly 17% of the retail price of the unit itself!   

A Design Story: 11Mystics

Sit back, relax and let me tell you a short story about design, pent-up demand and being positioned well for the next big evolution of the Web.

You know I've talked before on how design matters...a lot. That said, there seems to be a huge reluctance on the part of tools providers to make a tool high function and high design. They either throw in every possible feature or make a tool so stupid simple that anyone serious would be embarrassed to use them.

But in a time of accelerating change around people generating content, increasingly using the Web for communications and participation, there is significant pent-up demand for easy-to-use, highly functional and in-the-hands-of-mere-mortals vs. propeller-headed designer toolsets and some vendors are shipping new tools that are meeting demand in the marketplace.

Last October we embarked upon an adventure to build Rise of the Participation Culture, initially as a Web-based report. It seemed prudent to use content management or blogging engines like Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress or even Typepad to deliver it, but the realization quickly came to us that we were considering using bazooka's to kill an ant.

I'm revealing for the first time -- and holding myself up for potential ridicule from those who view iWeb, Rapidweaver (RW) or Sandvox as "stupid simple" or "Borsch you should be embarrassed to use it" -- that we used iWeb to deliver the report. It was clearly a 22 caliber pistol to go after that ant and allowed us to quickly deliver the content...and that's what mattered and no one cared if it was created in Dreamweaver, Expression or any other higher level and more complex tool.

As has always been my experience, the stock templates in iWeb are cheesy so I went on the hunt for more professional looking templates (and one that would resemble the look-n-feel of my blog).

I found them at 11Mystics since I was searching for great design that I could map to iWeb and 11Mystics offered very nice templates that would do the job. After buying one and discovering that the PNG images wouldn't render in Internet Explorer 6 (one reason why I wrote When Will Internet Explorer 6 Die?), I queried support and the owner, Suzanne Boden Boben, and I began interacting by email. She provided us with a pre-release version of the template with JPG images instead of PNGs and it was flawless. GREAT customer service.

But it gets more interesting and revealing. I'll tell you why all of this matters to you and how I perceive Suzanne as the poster child for remaking yourself and creating a business where one didn't exist through great design, filling a need and being well versed at conversational marketing.

Microsoft Surprises: Controlling the Process

At the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005, a relatively new to Microsoft Ray Ozzie was fully engaged (spoke twice) and I had the pleasure to be seated in the back of the room near him and we bantered back-n-forth (as I mentioned in this post) a few times.

This past Web 2.0 Summit in November of 2006 saw, in my opinion, a significantly different Ray Ozzie. Rather than being the seemingly humble, I'm-one-of-you stance and conversational tone, he was positioning, spinning and coming across as though he'd been fully assimilated in the Microsoft way.

That said, it's tough to walk in his shoes. I don't know the man nor have I spent quality time in conversation with him. I'm not playing the game at his level nor am I someone who has to try to be THE guy that carries the essence and spirit of Bill Gates forward. Imagine doing that OR being the guy that takes over when Steve Jobs retires. Big shoes to fill.

This interview gives a glimpse into the gargantuan responsibility that he faces. The questions are: Will Ozzie change Microsoft...or will Microsoft change him? Since Ozzie didn't even show up for Etech and seems to be in stealth mode, is he crafting some surprises?

I have little inside information though a good friend of mine is heading up one of their new, emerging categories. He is beyond busy so we have only cursory conversations and connections so everything in this post are my own observations and musings.

Here's what I'm beginning to realize: Ozzie will be driving a series of Microsoft surprises that leverage Internet-as-a-platform AND PROCESSES in new and fundamental ways. Here are some of the signs I'm seeing to bring me to that realization:

EFF Pioneer Awards

Last night I attended the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Pioneer