Christopher Carfi, Author at Christopher Carfi

January 23, 2006

Salesforce.com’s Latest PsyOp Against Siebel

“To seduce the enemies soldiers from their allegiance and encourage them to surrender is of special service, for an adversary is more hurt by desertion than by slaughter.” — Vegetius, ca. 390 A.D.

It appears that Marc Benioff and his minions are up to their new/old tricks, this time in San Mateo, CA. Through utter and sheer coincidence, I happened to be driving through the intersection in front of Siebel’s offices today, and what do I see? Not one, but TWO Salesforce.com billboard trucks circling the building on two-minute intervals (it’s not a very big block).

The text on the trucks reads (click the pics to enlarge):

Suffering from post-acquisition syndrome?

[circle-slash through “FUTURE”]

Change your future.

http://www.salesforce.com/myfuture

(This harkens back to SFDC’s “picketing” of past Siebel events, and Benioff’s continued unhealthy fascination with both Tom Siebel and Larry Ellison.)

On one hand, this kind of stuff evokes a chuckle. On the other, Paul Greenberg had two great posts on this type of behavior that is increasingly endemic in the industry. The money quotes:

“Its time to stop this crap now – at least with me. I truly don’t care if you have some gloating piece of information on “you’re better than they are because they suck at this.”

I think that its about time for the On Demand crowd to recognize they are a major force in the business world now and they have to act like it.

Or maybe they are acting like it.

All I know is that I find the “tactic” of demeaning ones opponent rather than competing on the merits and value of the applications or services or products to the customer dismaying and disgusting.” – from here

and

“I’m going to reiterate something I’ve said before. The On Demand world needs to stop this ADD [“Attack, Demean, Degrade”] offensive. It is deeply offensive because it is just so damned childish.

What makes this dangerous is that On Demand will be the dominant force in CRM without a doubt very soon and will be the dominant platform for the customer experience over the next few years. Do you want your customer’s experience run by an industry that loves to spit bile?” – from here

Louis Columbus also chimes in with a gem: “Denigrating competitors is a sign that companies doing the slamming don’t really and truly have enough faith in their own applications to sell on the value they deliver. Taking the low road of celebrating a competitor’s misfortune makes you wonder how a company feels about valuable, yet sometimes difficult customers pushing the limits of applications and services…”

Despite the brief amusements they provide, “vendor sports” (a term I believe Doc Searls coined, more refs here) really do, ultimately, hurt the customer. Why? Because the combatants are investing their time, energy and creativity in tasks that ultimate are nothing more than the Silicon Valley equivalent of chest-thumping and locker-room comparisons instead of focusing their scarce resources on the things that improve the customer experience.

tags: appexchange, ondemand, oracle, SaaS, salesforce, salesforce.com, siebel

January 22, 2006

OffTopic: Thomas Dolby At The Red Devil Lounge, SF

Quote of the evening: “I will now do a medley of my hit.”

(Actually last night was a great set. Maybe 200 people in the audience, and RDL is a small venue. First time he’s played out since 1988, and first time he’s done a one-man show since 1981. He’s tuning up for a tour…)

January 20, 2006

A Lifehack For Those Who Fly On Southwest Airlines

Heh.

As I was getting ready to take the El to the airport today, I realized that I had a problem. Since I was flying on Southwest, the earlier the check-in the better, as a result of their “Group A-B-C” boarding policy. Yet, I was in my hotel room and did not have a printer…although I could check-in online, I wouldn’t be able to print my boarding pass, effectively putting me in a Catch-22.

If I didn’t check-in before I left the hotel, I’d be destined for a “Group C” boarding experience. But if I did check-in online, I wouldn’t have a boarding pass to get through security. What to do?

Then I remembered “the magic option” on the Southwest Airlines kiosks that I had seen when I had checked in for my outbound flight. That magic option? “Reprint Boarding Pass.” (I had actually needed to use this option when checking in for my outbound flight, as the first boarding pass had jammed coming out of the printer and had been ripped to ribbons in the process.)

Here’s how this little trick works:

1) Before leaving the hotel (or even the night before), go online and check-in for the flight. The southwest.com site checks you in. Then your browser shows your boarding pass, and puts you in the “group” you’re qualified for by virtue of checking in early. After you’re checked in, close your browser window. (In normal circumstances, such as at home or at the office, you’d actually print this out.)

2) Go to the airport

3) Find the nearest Southwest kiosk

4) Put in your ID, and up comes your reservation.

5) Press “reprint boarding pass” (in the lower right-hand corner) and retrieve your reward for being just a little more wily than the average bear.

6) Voila! “Group A” check-ins, nearly every time!

January 19, 2006

Live From The Gleacher Center

In the session at Ahead of the Curve.

Stowe just finished up a great overview on blogs, blogging and podcasting, and now Bill Flitter is just finishing his presentation. The big take-away for me … RSS is still too complex. It’s too complex to explain … too complex to subscribe … too complex to “show” what an RSS feed is … too complex to communicate how and why it matters.

Once we get beyond the early-adopter crowd, what are the capabilities and metaphors that are needed to enable RSS to become so ubiquitous that we don’t need to go through the nitty-gritty details? (In other words…I don’t want to know how the internal combustion engine operates, I just want to reliably get to my destination.) Back in August, 2005, Chris Selland wrote:

“RSS is still very much the realm of early adopters (which is why only early-adopter-focused companies like Audible, Woot and HDNet are using it). But as RSS readers become more powerful and more ubiquitous – and particularly as they become more closely entwined with e-mail applications – expect the use of RSS to dramatically accelerate – much of it at the expense of e-mail.”

This is still on-target.

Randy Moss is now up presenting the first part of the social networking discussion, and talking about directed apophenia, and leading into a group exercise. Everyone in the room is up at the front of the room, showing their connections to the others in the room, via past experiences, hobbies, hometowns, schools, products/brands they are passionate about, and the like. (By the way, Randy’s book recommendation of the day: The Hidden Power of Social Networks by Rob Cross.)

Randy: “It’s critical for organizations to host communities. If a company does this, they’re the good guy, they are the one who is providing the network for individuals to connect.” (bravo!)

Michael Sevilla from Umbria is now presenting a state of the blogosphere preso. Now moving into a discussion of promoters and detractors, and is highlighting the Qwest’s Terms of Service flap. (Michael was affected by it.)

VERY interesting. Now going through things that one can do with OpinMind. For example, blog sentiment of Microsoft and Apple. (N.B. Kind of a neat tool, but it does not seem to have a deep listing of sources. Hopefully it’ll grow more over time.)

fin

(top photo: UChicago)

January 18, 2006

Thoughts For The Beginning Blogger

One of our clients is starting to charge full-force down the blogging path and asked for some feedback on the posts they were working on. Not going to get into the details of what they’re working on quite yet, but had some thoughts that I was sending over based on reading the initial bits that were being put together. About halfway through, realized that these items were fairly relevant across-the-board, so here they are. What would you add to this as far as suggestions for someone just starting down the blogging path?

“G-

First off … Every successful blog eventually has a voice and a corresponding “positioning” (sorry for the marketingspeak) that is applied to it by its readers. The voice of the blog will evolve and, just like positioning in the pure marketing sense, a “tone” of the blog will be applied to you by your subscribers. This will take some time, but if you have a feeling as to how you would *like* to be positioned, you can certainly help it along via the choice of name, categories, commonly-used phrases, etc. Think about what you want the blog’s mojo to be: is it an inside look at the tales of a startup? Is it a viewpoint and *the* reference on long-tail software, or perhaps SaaS? Something else?

Think about your blog’s tagline. (The tagline WILL be reproduced elsewhere, so try to make it capture the core of whatever theme you want to tie everything together.) If the theme is still evolving, it may take a couple of months for the right tagline to present itself…and it will probably uncerimoniously assault you in the shower in the pre-caffeinated hours one morning. But it will show up. Write it down and integrate it when it does.

The positioning and general mojo are ultimately critical…but short-term irrelevant. Just write. Then write some more. It’ll evolve, and don’t force it. It took about four months after inception for the Social Customer blog to find its voice.

Additionally, a well-conceived and executed “About” page is a must, as is a picture. A well-written post will trigger a click to the About page which will, if also well-executed, trigger a click back to the mothership. Make the About page personal. It’s you!

A couple of other general thoughts:

– More links to other blogs inlined in the text! As a result of the current state of measurement and search tools, bloggers are narcissistic link whores (it’s all about the Googlejuice, baby). The more links you throw out to others, (a) the more likely someone will come to your blog (since they saw your blog show up in their vanity feed in Technorati) and (b) they may even put a reciprocal link in one of their posts in the next week, pointing to “hey….here’s a cool article on *x*” that shows how you can use whatever they are pimping in doing *x*. If you can’t link to a blog, link to a news article. If you can’t link to a news article, link to a product site. But link! As Anthony Kiedis so eloquently put it…give it away, give it away, give it away now. (However, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, please refrain from experimenting with RHCP tube sock attire. ::shudder::)

Last, but certainly not least, make sure you have an RSS feed that can be subscribed to on Day 1. Get readers on the drip. First one’s free…

best,
c”

January 17, 2006

SXSW Reception

A few shots from last night’s SXSW Reception at 111 Minna in San Francisco. Click ’em to make them larger, etc.

(Happily, was too busy being social to take very many.)

The 111 Minna space is currently featuring an exhibition called A Year and a Day, and their archives of past exhibitions can be found here.

tags: sxsw

January 13, 2006

The Social Customer Manifesto Podcast 13JAN2006

click here to subscribe

Summary: Leif Chastaine and Christopher Carfi discuss customer challenges in switching mobile phone plans, a blogging “contest” that may be backfiring on its sponsors, Sony’s rootkit fiasco, how Thomas Hawk dealt with an unscrupulous e-commerce vendor, and a recap of the current legal challenges facing Research in Motion (RIM), maker of the ubiquitous BlackBerry device. (37:45)

Show notes for January 13, 2006

The audio file is available here (MP3, 34MB), or subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically have future shows downloaded to your MP3 player.

00:00 : Intro
01:30 : Cell phone follies
05:45 : Everyday Hogwash
11:45 : “I just want to listen to this CD!” … Real-world experiences with Sony’s rootkit
19:40 : Thomas Hawk’s PriceRitePhoto vindication
28:45 : Troubled waters for Research in Motion and their BlackBerry device
36:30 : Wrapup

Links:
Cingular and AT&T Wireless, Everyday Hogwash, Steve Rubel, Andy Beal, Sony rootkit, Thomas Hawk, NYTimes, BlackBerry troubles

January 12, 2006

Actually, I Want A Copy Editor

Ing

(hat tip: hidden persuader, photo credit: claudia)

January 11, 2006

NYTimes: Thomas Hawk Gets Revenge Over PriceRitePhoto

Back in November, Thomas Hawk ordered a camera online from PriceRitePhoto. There were several “problems” with the order, according to PriceRitePhoto…most seemingly stemming from Thomas’s unwillingness to succumb to the pressure being put on him to buy extra memory, batteries, extended warranties, and the like. Things got heated on both sides, the fulfillment of the order was dragging on and on, and words were exchanged. Eventually, the PriceRitePhoto manager, Steve Phillips, gets into the act. Thomas:

“So today I checked on my order online again and saw that it had not been routed to shipping and called the company back again. Four times I was put on hold for a substantial amount of time and had to hang up and call the company again. Finally I was able to connect with an individual who said his name was Steve Phillips. Steve Phillips abruptly told me that the camera was out of stock. When I protested and told him that it was confirmed online yesterday and verbally by his sales rep he refused to budge.

At this point I thanked him and informed him that I would be writing an article about my experience with his company. It was at this point that he went ballistic. He first told me that if I did this that he would not cancel my order but just never fill it. If I cancelled it he said he’d charge me a 15% restocking fee. When I told him that that would be unethical he went nuts. He accused me of trying to “extort” him and said that he was going to have two local police officers come over and arrest me. He then went on to say that as a “professional photographer” I should have known better than to try and buy a camera this way and that he was an attorney and would sue me if I wrote an article about my experience.”

Thomas wrote up the story, it was picked up by Digg, BoingBoing and others, and it became a phenomenon. Again, Thomas Hawk:

“I think that the popularity of this story comes in large part because the message resonates so strongly with all of us. Although in a sense it is the classic tale of David and Goliath retold, it is much more than this. We all have at one point or another in our lives been bullied and most of us have been defrauded or ripped off. The fact that so many times in the past there was nothing we could do about it makes us feel all that much better about the fact that in today’s internet and blogosphere we actually CAN do something about it.

Out of all of this, hopefully more than anything, this story will serve as a reminder to shady businesses everywhere that in the end fraud and abusive behavior towards customers does not pay. Perhaps I’m being overly idealistic here and perhaps this incident is the smallest possible blip in the greater world of internet fraud — but one thing I do know is that the power of the consumer is growing. And in a new world today with tools like blogs and Slashdot and Digg the consumer is empowered in great ways that they never have been in the past.”

Now, in the span of just a few weeks, the story is in The New York Times (reg. req’d, excerpts here) and the PriceRitePhoto warehouse space seems to have been abandoned. Additionally, according to the article in the Times, no one has picked up PriceRitePhoto’s mail in over two months. (Note: It also appears the PriceRitePhoto has been trying to reinvent itself as Barclaysphoto on Ebay, and has also registered Barclaysphoto.com.)

Thomas, I salute you. And to all the PriceRitePhotos of the world…well, there are some dishes best served cold.

(slingshot photo: http://www.mwart.com, hat tip: jeff jarvis)