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I Guess I Really Don’t Know Jack**** About Marketing
Posted on July 21, 2007 ·
I guess I am dumb. Or just getting old, not understanding the new ways of Marketing.
My recent post: Can Tiny Zoho Beat Microsoft and Google in Online Office Apps? The Real Sanity Check attracted a strange comment, that was long, canned, promotional, barely related to the subject, essentially spam. Instead of deleting it, I educated the (fake) commenter, and hopefully others on why it was spam. This sparked a discussion in the Enterprise Irregulars group, and triggered Jerry Bowles to post on the FastForward Blog and his Enterprise 2.0: PR and Social Media: Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
The side effect of the spam affair was that it attracted far more readers to my post than it would have received otherwise – so I guess .. thank you, spammer.. 
I don’t think it did a lot of good to the supposed beneficiary/sponsor company though: I had SAP customers tell me they would not work with this Tryarc, the services firm behind the spam. Side note: I used to run businesses like this, and would never have resorted to marketing us this way. But times change … what do I know? 
This morning I received an email from an Enterprise Software startup CEO – it was a long joke without any comment. A fairly dumb joke for that matter, but that’s beyond the point: why did he send it in the first place, with a link to his product site? Even worse, it looked like a mass email sent out to his contact list. Hm… the timestamp was 3am, poor guy probably got drunk and lost his better judgement….
Then I found out it was actually a quite old joke (yes, I am always the last one to hear them), it’s repeated on hundreds of blogs (is it a coincidence that they all have zero or 1 inbound links, and some only this one post?), and there’s even a cartoon version.
Now, on a site aptly named “Twisted Humor”, this is perfectly OK – but when an Enterprise Software CEO inserts a line to his product site and re-sends it to potentially hundreds of business contacts .. well, that’s an entirely different matter. And it wasn’t a spontaneous drunken act, either. It was a well-prepared campaign: a contact record was set up, as well as an anonymous blog pointing to it several days before the email… so I guess someone in that company thinks this is a good marketing strategy. Again, who am I to criticize, I don’t know Jack Sch**t about Marketing.
Tags: marketing, email campaign, email etiquette, humor, spam, jack schitt
I Got ASCII-d
Posted on July 21, 2007 ·
Amit Agarwal created the ASCII mugshots of 100 bloggers, including yours truly.
The current list includes aaron brazell, adam pash, amanda congdon, amit gupta, andy beal, andy beard, andy hagans, anil dash, beth kanter, brian clark, chris garrett, chris messina, chris pearson, chris pirillo, danny sullivan, darren rowse, dave winer, david pogue, dawud miracle, duncan riley, eric giguere, eric rice, frank gruber, gabe rivera, gina trapani, guy kawasaki, howard lindzon, hugh macleod, ian kennedy, index, jason kottke, jason mccabe calacanis, jason shellen, jeff jarvis, jennifer slegg, jeremiah owyang, jeremy schoemaker, jeremy wagstaff, jeremy wright, jeremy zawodny, john battelle, jon udell, kristopher tate, leo laporte, leon ho, liz gannes, loic le meur, long zheng, loren baker, marc orchant, mark evans, marshall kirkpatrick, mary jo foley, mathew ingram, matt cutts, matt mullenweg, merlin mann, michael arrington, michael mcdonald, michael parekh, minic rivera, neil patel, niall kennedy, nick denton, nick douglas, nicole simon, om malik, orli yakuel, paul kedrosky, paul thurrott, pete cashmore, philipp lenssen, rafat ali, rafe needleman, rand fishkin, randy charles morin, richard macmanus, rick klau, robert scoble, robyn tippins, ross mayfield, ryan stewart, scott beale, scott hanselman, scott rafer, seth godin, shawn hogan, shel israel, steve rubel, tara hunt, thomas hawk, tony hung, tris hussey, vanessa fox, veronica belmont, walt mossberg, wendy boswell, wendy cheng, wendy piersall, yaro starak, zoli erdos.
Thanks, Amit! 
Update: Hey, Chris Pirillo, is this soft-porn or what? 
Arrested for a Kiss
Posted on July 21, 2007 ·
A woman has been arrested on suspicion of kissing a painting by American artist Cy Twombly and smudging the bone-white canvas with her lipstick, French judicial officials said Saturday…
Full story on Yahoo News.
Windows Seven in 2010. Does Anyone Still Care?
Posted on July 20, 2007 ·
So the next OS from Microsoft will be Windows Seven (where’s Windows 6?) – does anyone still care?
I simply don’t get it: Vista is barely out, nobody seems to like it, CIO’s refuse to upgrade, analyst firms tell them to wait, individual users who tried it switch back to XP, others time their new PC purchase so they can still get an XP machine – generally speaking Vista was as poorly received as the ill-fated Windows ME.
Apple is gaining market share, the major computer manufacturers are offering Linux PC’s, the Web OS concept is getting popular, applications are already on the Web – can anyone clearly see the shape of personal computing in 2012? (Yes, I know MS plans for 2010, I’m just adding the customary delay.) Will it still matter what OS we use to get on the Internet? How can Microsoft be so out of touch?
Considering the resistance to Vista ( see this Computerworld article on making XP last for 7 years) why would the world want to upgrade switch to yet-another Windows OS in five years?
Of course I’m not saying nobody cares. This hypnotized crowd certainly does. 
Update (7/23): ZDNet’s David Berlind is asking the same question.
Update (7/25): Why ‘Seven’ and Not SP1?
Update (8/9): a very good analysis by eWeek: Broken Windows
Ooma: Perception Matters
Posted on July 19, 2007 ·
Which one of these units would you buy for your home?
Clunky old 80’s style answering machine (OK, make it That 70’s for Ashton Kutcher’s sake)
Nay, this is almost the same with colors …
This is better…
Cool 🙂
Funny thing is, they are all the same, different photos of the new Ooma device being launched today. What a difference a good photo makes!
P.S. I was an Ooma White Rabbit for ten minutes.
Tags: Ooma, design, perception, photography, style
I Was an Ooma White Rabbit for Ten Minutes
Posted on July 19, 2007 ·
I was an Ooma White Rabbit – for a grand total of 10 minutes. There’s a lot of buzz today about the new VOIP service which offers free local and long distance calls. Free, after the purchase of the $399 box, which takes care of routing your calls and a lot more.
The company seems to have pulled off a PC Coup, listing Ashton Kutcher (yes, *that* one) as their Creative Director. They are in pre-release test mode, and intend to seed their network by giving away 1,500-2,000 units throughout the country. I signed up via Om Malik’s free offer, and within minutes was confirmed as a White Rabbit, i.e. “one of the chosen few who will help us change the game of phone service forever.”
I started to develop suspicions during the online registration: there were several questions only a true POTS user could answer, and I haven’t used a local phone company for years. I’m on Vonage, but Ooma is being heralded as the Vonage killer (not that they need one), so I should be OK, I guess (?). Nope. After completing registration, I called customer service, and was confirmed that at this stage they need a good old traditional phone-line. Now, if you read the comments on all the blogs welcoming the new service, it becomes obvious that this new service needs early adopters, the experimental types, who are likely already VOIP customers.
Ooma says around September when they roll out the service they will no longer have the local phone company requirement. I guess that puts an end to my White Rabbit status – although if Ooma still sends me the box, I will give it a try…
Update: Perception Matters.
Related posts: TechCrunch, dslreports.com, CrunchGear, VentureBeat, MobileCrunch, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband , Podcasting News, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, Engadget, IP Democracy, Alec Saunders .LOG, Mark Evans, robhyndman.com and VoIP Watch
Tags: VOIP, Ooma, Vonage, POTS, telephone service, Ashton Kutcher
My Office 2.1 Setup
Posted on July 18, 2007 ·
…and although laptops are crippling us, there are times we can’t live without them
Update: I guess the pic above is my answer to Guy Kawasaki’s question.
Tags: office 2.0, office 2.1, laptops
The VC Woulda Coulda Shoulda List
Posted on July 18, 2007 ·
It’s nice to see honest VC’s who don’t just brag about their hits but admit their misses, too. Josh Kopelman just did it again, having turned down an investment in Right Media which got acquired by Yahoo for $680M last week. His previous big miss was Youtube.
Of course his firm, First Round Capital hasn’t been around long enough to get anywhere close to Bessemer Venture Capital’s Anti-Portfolio: the list of big misses includes Apple Computer, eBay, FedEx, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lotus, Paypal … just to name a few. Bessemer Chief Blogger David Cowan writes about it in several posts.
After all, as we all know, VC’s are in the lottery business 
Publisher / Editor of CloudAve and Enterprise Irregulars.
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