Global Neighbourhoods

Scoble Banned from Facebook

Scoble was banned last night from Facebook and all his data was taken down. The company has accused him of using a script to scrape user data a violation of customer security. Over at Twitter, there is a firestorm of pissed off former customers.

In fact, ror reasons other than this, I'm likely to become a pissed off former customer. The problem is I'm addicted to Scrabulous.

Now, any of the million or so folk who regularly follow Scoble know that he is just about the last person who would scrape user data and use it for evil purposes. The situation is as he claims it is. He was playing with a geek tool to show what a bad guy could do.

Many of us have been talking, no shouting about the dangers of Facebook and how suspicious we have come with what is happening to our data. So, it actually comes as a pleasant surprise that Facebook responded at all to Robert's experiment.

I have a hunch, once the Facebook people are down with their long winter's sleep, they yawn, stretch, have their coffee and do the usual check on what is being said about Facebook, they will actually restore Robert, with apologies for a very bad misunderstanding.

That's what they should do. I for one, would prefer to see Facebook over react and make a fool of itself, then to see it have under reacted and confirmed that bad guys could use the service to make fools of us users.

Dave Winer's Mac Crashes & the Geniuses Claim Disk ownership. Why?

First off, I prefer Naked Conversations, so when there's a customer support group, called "Genius Bar," who requires I make an appointment, even in an emergency, I get bristly and suspicious.  That being said, I am a new Apple customer, and have had good support from the Palo Alto Apple Store. If the people behind the counter were geniuses, they wouldn't be behind the counter, but that has to do with marketing, not support.

Dave Winer tells a story today, that I have heard twice before. He experience a hard disk crash and went to see his local geniuses.  They quote him a disk replacement price of about double what you would pay elsewhere. He says what-the-hell, signs a sheet and the repair is done. But when the computer is returned Apple keeps the old hard disk. He asks for it and they inform him that he just signed an agreement to let them keep the disk.

Now this sucks on lots of counts. First, most f us have confidential information on our hard disks. I had a crash and took the disk, knowing that if I really needed something I could pay one arm and two legs to a group in Petaluma who can pull the data off a crashed disk. I did it at the only othe Mac repair place I know--also in Palo Alto. My new hard disk was twice the size Dave paid for precisely the same price.

But that's not the point.  We all own our own data. We have the right to keep or destroy our own data.  What is Apple doing with it? Why is Apple getting customers to sign in such a squirrelly fashion?  I can think of no customer benefit derived from Apple's policy and behavior.

Which brings me back to my first point. May the Geniuses are doing something that benefits Apple more than it benefits Apple customers. Of course, if they had a company blog, they could explain.  We could have an open conversation. Perhaps they have good reason for their policy. Perhaps they should listen to their customers.

Like Dave Winer, I own Apple stock. Policies like this make me nervous as an investor.

Releasing CAPTCHA & Holding My Breath

CAPTCHA is the Typepad feature that requires you to copy a string of six hard-to-read characters before you can post a comment.  I have to do it on this blog even though I am the author. Most people find it annoying.  I know I do. We use such things to stop robots from leaving nasty spam on our sites.

Last December, I told Michael Sippey, Six Apart's top Tyepad guy that I really wish that visitors could get something simpler to prove they were human, such as a simple arithmetic problem like Josh Hallett uses. I also think they should be able to eliminate challenges to the post authors as well and finally, I'd like people who leave comments the option of being notified when someone else joins the conversation.

While Typepad is getting a lot better, it has not done any of these three burning wishes from this user's list. So today, after flunking a test to post a comment on my own site, I have disabled CAPTCHA.  I'll see how it goes.  Hopefully I will be able to manage the little maggots when they come with their spray paints and graffitti, but if I cannot, I'll just have to reinstate the annoying defense feature.

Typepad improving slowly, but steadily

[Six Apart's Michael Sippey. Photo by Yaniv Golan.]

Last December, I posted a complaint that Typepad, my blog publishing platform had not improved for a long time and if it did not get better sooner, I would leave it soon. Almost immediately, Michael Sippey, who runs Typepad contacted me and asked me to join him for lunch.

I had not previously met Michael and found him credible and easy to like. But that was not going to be enough to keep me, I told him, the platform had so many areas needing improvements, I didn't know where to begin.

He told me that in order to get Six Apart's family blogging platform, Vox launched, internal technology resources had been diverted and that they were being restored to Typepad.  He told me that I was see changes every couple of weeks, some small, other subtle, but over time I would notice real changes.

This has been generally true. Very slowly, very steadily Tyepad has been improving, with new and better templates, with better spam filtering, making it easy to take down offensive comments.

Today, with very little fanfare,they came up with a new and improved comment management system. Now, I can read an entire comment inside my email client, rather than having to log in, then register then comment. They took three asenine steps and turned it in to one simple step. Very cool.

In my opinion, they deserve recognition because they still have some distance to go before I give them anything like a blogging ovation. I think Sippey desreves credit because he is doing what he said he would do in about the way he said he would.

I'm not a product reviewer type and I have used Wordpress too little to make any credible comparison. Wordpress is newer and it is open source and that gives it some advantages. But I am among millions of users who have a great deal of legacy invested in Typepad and I am very pleased to see headway being made.

 

Jet Blue: How do you feel about them now?

It's been nearly 60 days since Jet Blue conducted a Valentine's near-massacre to its reputation. Much was written about how they would come out of it. I'm not sure what the answer to that is, so I thought I'd ask you folks out there in our studio audience.

Do you feel better or worse about Jet Blue today than you did before the incident occurred 60 days ago? Post your answer in comments below.

Jet Blue: There's a problem with your audio channel

The other Shel, Mr. Holtz, has a great post about Jet Blue's disdainful attitude toward PR folk who wanted to give them advice on how to handle the problem caused by customers stranded on runways in Valentine Day blizzards. They ignored them.  Not only did they ignore them, they have put the name of people contacting them on a list that they will share with others on who not to use in a crisis.

It seems to me that this is yet another disturbing shard of evidence that Jet Blue, America's favorite airline, according to many surveys, has developed an auditory problem that is going to do it damage in the long run.But maybe, what the company spokeperson meant to say, was that this
referred only to the ambulance chasers, not to everyone. 

Debbie Weil,
author of the Corporate Blogging Book, was the first person I know of
who pointed out the company had a blog and should be using it. Since
the blog is very corporate and pretty lame and doesn't allow comments,
I'm not so certain it would unstick Jet Blue's plugged ears to the
public. Debbie has sent them a copy of her book and received a nice call saying that it will be passed along and someone will call her if they are interested.

We shall see.

I am watching all this as a Jet Blue fan. I am planning to write about this seven year old company in Global Neighborhoods as an example of a low-cost network that is changing lives by letting people who could not previously apport it, go places and meet others face to face. Now, the story I was planning is getting complicated.

Evidence is starting to stack up that Jet Blue is starting to become guilty of the first lethal sin of large organizations. They don't want to listen. Yesterday I wrote how a Jet Blue service representative had a justifiably distraught customer and her child removed by police from a claim office. Today we hear implications of a Jet Blue enemies list.

Sooner or later it adds up.

I think Debbie Weil had a good idea. A blog would be a great tool to use in a crisis. Seems to me there's another book that wrote about it as well. But the issue here is not to blog or not to blog.

The issue is whether or not a company listens.

This is the key issue between large organizations and there markets. They don't want to listen to customers.

We buy a product or service from a branded company and a problem develops.  We go to the web site and after a difficult search we find that if we want to contact a human we should email "support@company.com." We call the 800-line and get lost in a voice processing system that is essentially telling you that the human you have called is no longer available.  If you need further assistance, too bad.  We really don't care."

Blogging is a great tool to use, because it is a highly efficient way to listen to your customers. The most valuable part of a corporate blog is that you hear-pro or con- from your most passionate customers.  Instead of being handed a filtered and sanitized report from a mid-level underling, a CEO can very quickly see a realtime sample of what customers are thinking.

Right now, as a customer, I'm beginning to think that maybe Jet Blue says the right thing.  But it doesn't listen so well.

To that degree, they should be humiliated and mortified.

A customer tells a Jet Blue horror story

Responding to my previous post complimenting Jet Blue on its transparency, Don Raimondi has left a long and painful comment about how he, his wife, his child and father-in-law, not to mention his luggage were all recently abused by at least one Jet Blue employee--Jessica of the company's West Palm Beach Claims office.

Having recently gone through my share of lost luggage, I feel Don's pain. I don't know him and recent experience has taught me to assume nothing is true until I hear from the others side, but his story rings true to my ears.

Oh Jet Blue Jessica, you are invited to chime in with your version of this story, but I think you need to go some distance to drag in a police officer to threaten a customer and reduce a child to tears when all it appears she wanted was what Jet Blue should have provided--the luggage they were traveling with.

As for Jet Blue in general, I would also be grateful to hear an explanation of why this family was treated the way it apparently was.

Technorati Tags: jetblue,

Lenovo Thinkpad Support reportedly falters

I have previously written in  glowing terms of how pleased I am with my Lenovo Typepad and remarkably high quality of support I received when I needed it. Apparently, this is not the experience of all users as someone named suyog writes in the December issue of BlogCritics Magazine.

The article names of the some of the same people I worked with and reads very credibly.  If this is true, I'm sorry to have to report it. I would be more comfortable reporting it however, if I knew Suyog's real name and the source of some of the expertise he seems to have.

I also welcome any rebuttal comments from Lenovo.  Dave?

Technorati Tags: lenovo, thinkpad

Is Typepad about to improve? I hope so.

A few weeks back, I commented that I was becoming increasingly frustrated with Typepad.  A few hours later, Six Apart's Mike Sippey who is in charge of the Typepad product,  pinged me and invited me to lunch. We got together yesterday, chatting for over two hours. 

After spending some time discussing, industry and personal niceties, I let loose with a 20-minute barrage of why I was considering a divorce fromTypepad. Fueled by excessive coffee and a frustrating morning, I was pretty aggressive.

Mike did what I think any company representative should do when confronting an upset customer: He listened. He really listened. He jotted notes, asked drill down questions, that got into specific details.

Mike told me that new human resources had been added to the Typepad team and in January users will start seeing a steady flow of extensive improvements just about everywhere in the product and its deteriorating support service. I agreed not to post specifics.

I believed what I heard. if it happens as he says, then I will likely find myself once again a happy customer. If I don't, then it's nice to know there are other options open to us end users.

Stay tuned.

StartUps On Stage

My friend and former client Gibu Thomas over at Sharpcast has been in start up launch mode and has invested a fair portion of his company's resources in presenting at some of the major tech conferences. Most of us know that people pay to go to these top tier industry schmoozes and companies pay to present.

Wat most people do not realize is the chasm of difference that goes into the production.  Some producers, such as DEMO, go through agony to select the best possible companies and guide them toward making the best possible presentations. Others, apparently including Web 2.0, seem more intent in getting the money and letting the companies flounder through an experience that would make Kafka wince.

Gibu has a long and passionate post of the differences in his personal experience. Any tech entrepreneur should read it.  Any conference attendee should read it and keep it in mind while watching some company founder struggle against the demon of shoddy production at their own financial expense. Mostly, producers should read this and be called upon the carpet for it.

I spent years covering conferences for Conferenza, one of the best resources on the topic.  This was among our hot buttons, getting us on the dirt list with many producers for pointing out their shoddy preparation of presenting companies and we lauded Chris Shipley and DEMO for precisely the same reason.

For producers, there is not that significant a cost for building quality in. All three of your communities deserve it.