Category Archives: Essays

I’m not a Digg user. I got tired of seeing LOLcats on the front page. The inherit weakness in the “old Digg” was that it relied solely on users to do the work. Users had to submit stories and vote for them. The model puts what’s popular right on top. That is, of course, if the users do the work they’re supposed to do. The thing is, users never do.

We live in a society of consumers. Most of us still drive cars even though we know we should walk because someone else will take care of global warming. If I’ve learned anything in building websites, particularly ecommerce sites that require user input, it’s that a.) users never do what you think they will and b.) a small number of users actually engage a product, most just read it and move on.

Then there are the power users. These are the people who are hyper-engaged. Over the years they’ve become the Digg masters, voting up what they want to see on the home page and, in a sense, becoming the curators of the community. They are responsible for elevating stories to the top ranks because they are the only ones engaging the product. The problem with that model is that the average person does care what a TV editor in Los Angeles (aka MrBabyMan) thinks is important. If we did, we’d follow him on Twitter, Facebook, a bookmarking site or even ask him to email us his favorite LOLcats.

That’s what went wrong with Digg. By relying completely on user interaction it created a situation where a small group of hyper-engaged users could create a community *for them*. The content wasn’t balanced and thus not appealing to a wide demographic. Advertisers need a bigger audience than people who laugh at LOLcats.

Kevin Rose clearly believes in voting. At the last TechCrunch50 he remarked as a judge that the Citysourced app would be better if people could vote up the problems (like potholes) that were important to them. He created Wefollow, a user-powered Twitter directory. I get it, give users a voice. It’s an admirable belief. But after his years in this business he should have learned that people don’t want to work for their content. To be successful, you need to be able to tell people what’s interesting to them without making them tell you. Visit amazon.com, notice the product recommendations system doesn’t force you to vote, it just tells you what to buy. And it works.

So the launch of a more automated platform elevating more mainstream news using a similar algorithm as Techmeme was inevitable. So too was the inevitable grumbling of the power user community. After all Digg took away their power and, in a sense, their community. But frankly it’s their fault for using the Digg platform as a tricked out Delicious.

The genius of Digg, namely Kevin Rose, is how masterfully the Digg brand has prospered. Diggnation created a loyal group of followers (think of it as the original Tosh.O but with more than video.) This is just a guess, but I think the Diggnation brand could exist even if Digg went away. It’s a fun show to watch.

I’m hopeful that Digg will find a balance between satisfying its core users and making Digg a more appealing product for more people. The power users will be loud, they’ll scream and most tech blogs will declare Digg dead, but if they can attract a real demographic, one beyond a small group of basement dwellers, then they’ll have a business.

The competitive landscape is more crowded than ever. Watching Mad Men I’m reminded that even as recently as a few years ago, all you needed to get a message out was money. Today you also need an authentic message. When you have neither, appealing to a person’s fear is also effective.

Take this harmless example. Some time ago I signed up for Baseline, an email newsletter than I never read. Here’s their pitch:

Dear Zach Ware,

You are dangerously close to losing your FREE subscription to Baseline.

Losing this subscription has bigger consequences than you might imagine. When you fail to renew in time, your complimentary subscription is then awarded to the next qualified professional on the waiting list. That professional could very well be your business competitor.

We enjoy having you as a reader and want to give you fair warning before you relinquish this fantastic IT business aide to someone else. Don’t let this publication fall into the wrong hands!
Keep your complimentary subscription active renew now.

Sincerely,
Baseline Subscription Services

Honestly I can’t remember what Baseline is about. It’s a safe assumption that given the flood of email most of us receive, most recipients wouldn’t either. So a more effective pitch would have been to tell me how good the content is and remind me that Baseline has made me a ton of money. I would probably believe that.

Appealing to my sense of fear reminds me of the shady consultants who pitch my company with scare tactics and technology jargon. There’s no substance and they know it, so long as they can keep you scared you’ll keep buying.

That’s not an authentic business model and today, authenticity counts.

Mistakes are learning experiences and I like to make them. If I make too many of them, you should fire me or at least slap me around a bit. But making mistakes is the only way to learn. In reality people make them all the time, to act as if you don’t is disingenous.

In an organization taking responsibility for your mistakes makes you a better, stronger team member. It also helps your organization focus on results instead of on the witch hunt of finding who to blame.

Next time something goes wrong, try telling your colleagues that it is “completely your fault.” Sure, it hurts your ego a bit, but if you watch closely you will notice the tension in the room dying off immediately as people stop worrying that they will be blamed for the mistake.

Read this post by Alexander Kjerulf. It’s all about screwing up and uses the $1.6 million mistake made by someone a Zappos subsidiary 6pm.com.

2: You don’t have to waste time on CYA (Cover Your Ass)

Huge amounts of time and energy can be wasted in organizations on explaining why the mistakes that do happen are not my fault. This is pointless.

Here here.

Launching a product is a symphony and an art. So many things have to come together at just the right time. For a time it seemed that no company had the art mastered better than Apple. Over the last year, though, I’ve noticed a few things that leave me wondering if a master plan is at play or a comedy of errors.

Surely a disclaimer is in order. I am not Steve Jobs, I am not worth five billion dollars and the company I founded isn’t…founded.

Apple demonstrates my point better than I can.

January 27, 2010 – Apple unveils the iPad Wifi and 3G, highlights the keyboard dock.

March 16, 2010 – Announcement: iPad keyboard is delayed.

April 3, 2010 – iPad Wifi release. No set date for 3G version. Keyboard not available, case not available.

April 14ish, 2010 – iPad case available, sells out.

April 30, 2010 – iPad 3G release.

May (ish) – iPad Keyboard dock release.

June 6, 2010 – iPhone 4 unveiled. Face Time unveiled (only works with other iPhone 4′s which most people can’t get).

June 15, 2010 – iPhone 4 pre-orders opened. Apple/AT&T’s systems crash.

June 21, 2010 – iOs 4 ready for download on 3GS models but not on iPad until Fall 2010.

June 22, 2010 – iPhone 4′s start arriving via Fedex early, but can’t be activated until Wednesday, possibly Thursday.

Surely launching a product of such enormous scale is challenging and clearly an decreased supply leads to increased demand. Thus, if I constantly hear that the iPad is out of stock, I’m more likely to want one. Agreed.

But there is a fine line between planned scarcity and poor execution. When a company always has something in the pipeline we want, consumers will always have a reason to return. But when a company never delivers a final product as presented, consumers grow frustrated.

Since January 2010 Apple has taunted us with a beautiful product, one we have to fight to get and one that is never quite complete. Keeping a consumer’s interest is difficult enough when the experience is seamless.

It’s clear that products evolve and I appreciate Apple’s strategy of releasing new models to keep us coming. A year ago my frustration was with the state of the mobile phone market and its contracts. New iPhones meant new contracts and then new iPhones (that had to be purchased out of contract.) But Apple’s recent performance is its own doing, born either of strategy or sheer discombobulation.

The question is, at what point will the frustrations of doing business outweigh the *wow* that is an Apple product.

The iPad was made for air travel. From 2006-2008 I traveled four days a week and I would have killed for the iPad. So when I bought the 3G model a couple of weeks ago, I had high hopes for what it would do to my monthly flight to St. Louis.

I purposely waited for the 3G model because I can’t stand not to have connectivity. Wifi in San Francisco is hard to come by and the convenience factor of having a nearly complete computer in my palm is very alluring, but I don’t want to rely on wifi.

Here’s a raw account of the travel day.

815am – SFO: Ate a breakfast burrito. Connected to my company’s ecommerce VPN to make a display update and deploy it. Worked like a charm on 3G. The iPad handles long text boxes OK. Learned that you can scroll down in longer text boxes using two fingers, but keep your fingers together when you do it and do it slowly.

830am – SFO: Went to update my podcasts for the flight. I used to do this on iTunes then sync my phone. Some time ago AT&T started to allow larger downloads of 3G but my subconscious hasn’t figured that out yet. Opened iTunes on the iPad, found This American Life. Error city. “Cannot Play Video” popped up over and over again. I think it was trying to play the preview. Five minutes later, This American Life is still stuck in Downloads “Processing.” Radio Lab downloaded fine after a hard reset. (Update: It’s 115pm and This American Life is still stuck. Is there no way to cancel a download?)

905a – SFO: The iPad does the same thing with email that the iPhone does. It seems to download a new message but doesn’t get the content. Occasionally it will download a message then it will disappear. (Good luck duplicating that issue at the Apple Store.) I thought it was a problem with my corporate email system but Gmail does the same thing. Odd. Took two minutes to download three messages over 3G.

915am – Plane: Had wifi on the plane, could have connected. All I wanted was my podcast and BusinessWeek. Since my tasks are in Omnifocus (and they don’t have an iPad app yet), used my MBP to work.

100pm – LAX: Had 3G on my iPhone while stuck on the tarmac. Now in the terminal at the LAX Admiral’s Club. Spotty Edge service in the terminal, no 3G. Opened Zinio to download the new BusinessWeek but can’t do it. No connection. Refuse to pay T-Mobile wifi and can’t use Admiral’s Club access because my MBP is using my login (no double logging in.)

139pm – LAX: It’s magic. I’ve been in the same little cubicle for an hour and now I have three bars of 3G. The BusinessWeek download is moving slowly but it’s moving. Download time = 8 minutes.

155pm – LAX: Checked iTunes again. The podcast download is showing a “Download Error. Tap to retry.” I tap and nothing happens. Odd. I *can* delete the download, though, so I do, and search for it again. Man 3G is running slow. iTunes loads the little modal window, well, it doesn’t actually load, just fragments of it do. I know where the download button *should* be so I tap it. Success! Now on the Downloads screen we’re “Processing.” Eureka! Error message: “Item over 20MB. Connect to a Wi-Fi network…” So that was the issue all along.

1032pm – STL: Made it to St. Louis. Worked on my MBP half the flight and read Too Big To Fail on the iPad. Didn’t listen to the podcast I worked so hard to download. Meh.

The iPad was a great travel companion. Most of my frustrations came thanks to the AT&T network – AT&T oversold its readiness yet again. Airports are slammed with data traffic and after years of experience with the iPhone AT&T should know that.

After two years dealing with “no service” zones and unresponsive maps, I don’t get mad when the AT&T 3G network goes unresponsive. It’s hard to believe we put up with underperforming cell networks, wifi and broadband when it’s clear the problem isn’t technology but the businesses that own it. The function of the iPad, though, greatly overshadows the flailing network it’s attached to so like millions of others, I’ll deal with AT&T’s sluggish network because without it I would have nothing to complain about.