Endless Information via the Internet

I look at real estate listings from time to time and think... why in the world would they include that picture? And how in the world do people live in messes like that?

This person made a blog about it.

Ewww!

Target didn't really diss bloggers...

I've had this bookmarked for over a month - planning to blog about it. But I haven't been blogging. I've been working full time, consulting, and doing that pesky MBA. It's a lot. And it's pretty stressy. But it's almost over (not the job part, but the school parts).

So this isn't very timely, but I'm going to blog about it anyway. The link references a post on Consumerist--evidently a nice feminist blogger wrote Target to complain about an anti-woman/offensive billboard. In response, Target told her:

"Good Morning Amy,

Thank you for contacting Target; unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with non-traditional media outlets. This practice is in place to allow us to focus on publications that reach our core guest.

Once again thank you for your interest, and have a nice day."

This response garnered a lot of bad press for Target - evidently people saw this as Target dismissing the power of bloggers.

I think everyone might have missed the point. At first read, I was going to say Target should know better than to say it doesn't care about nontraditional media outlets... but then when I read it again, I realized that the Target person was was saying they didn't think Amy's concerns or her organization were a very big deal.

So, the lesson here is probably not that Target has an issue with bloggers, but that Target doesn't care what Amy thinks about their ad. The "new internet" is all about honestly. I wonder what Amy would have thought if Target had been bluntly honest. Hmmm.

Facebook vs. MySpace

The preps vs. the outcasts?

Evidently kids know this already - but Facebook is for good kids and the party people all hang out on MySpace. Who knew? Turns out marketers knew. Those smarty pants!

http://www.danah.org/papers/essays/ClassDivisions.html

Ethics, Connections, and Power to the People

I just spent 3 days in an MBA seminar designed to teach us things we should know in our future careers but weren't important to appear in the regular class curriculum. Guess what one of those classes was? No come on, don't read ahead. Guess. You got it, right up there with "Executive Wellness" - we had a fluffy seminar on business ethics.

You get a B!

It quickly became clear that many of my classmates don't spend a lot of time either thinking about or pondering ethics. This may be because they don't encounter ethically challenging issues very often. Or, it may be that their religion gives them a code to live by. Whatever it is, the time we had clearly wasn't enough - as one classmate shouted out the spine chilling proclamation, "well if it's legal, then it must be ethical." That's pretty par for the course in business today. Well actually - it's more like "it's ethical if you don't get caught and you can rationalize it to the people that need to know what you're up to." "Legal" is just a technicality.

Ok, watch this. Now I'm going to connect this to Web 2.0. No really, I can do it. Hang tight!

In a world where horrific ethical breaches barely make your stock price waver (HP) and you can clearly get away with a lot for a long time and get very rich doing so (WorldComm, Enron), and just about everyCorp is under investigation for accounting creativity of some sort or another... it PAYS not to get too connected to people. It pays to only see the numbers. Creativity in the books means someone is getting more while someone is getting less. As long as you can keep it "us" and "them" and you don't see the people you're screwing around as people with lives and their own financial pressures (I'm seeing those Enron people walking to their cars holding their boxes of possessions), then well, you can do whatever you want to to "maximize shareholder value." But it's the connections that really are the rub.

And the Web 2.0 world allows us to bring those connections to bear in some important ways.

1. It's no longer just the companies that have a voice on the internet. We all do. The presses are in the hands of the people! If you screw me over, or I think you're doing something you shouldn't, I might blog about it. I might comment on someone else's blog about it. And then people will know. And we'll all talk about it. And the media will know... and then you'll be asked some hard questions... and then....

2. Because everyone has a voice, and they talk about what happened inside their companies, we can identify cues that something bad might be happening to us.

3. Because we all have a voice, companies hear us. The marketplace hears us.

Whether companies choose to connect with "us" or not, Web 2.0 has allowed "us" to connect with each other. And that's made us stronger. A blogger onslaught can have the strength of a financially mild yet immediate and VERY public class action suit. And that hurts companies where they feel it most.

Connections = power. Connections in business = good. Connections make it easier to get things done.

Tune in tomorrow, when I talk about Burning Man again.

i've got too, much, time on my hands.....

Please sing blog post title to the appropriate tune to get into the mood to view...

This! Venn diagram madness! You can click on the image to see the whole thing on the Valleywag site.




It's actually pretty clever, but really, umm, who'd take the time to do that? I do have to say, I love Valleywag.

Interview with the creator of "that wonderful web 2.0 video"...

John Battelle of SearchBlog was fortunate enough to interview the creator, Michael Wesch. It's a great interview... what an interesting person! You'll recall the video posted by fellow maven ryin.

Read the interview.

Admitting You Are Wrong - It Works!

Jonathan Schwartz never ceases to amaze me in his blog. He's approachable, likable, and puts a face on Sun that makes me want to buy their stuff (a comment many ppl make in the blog on a regular basis). In the same way Jobs's little kid excitement makes you want to go buy the new Apple gadget in a rush of childish enthusiasm, Jonathan makes you feel like dealing with Sun will be an amicable, "friends sitting over coffee at the local coffee shop" deal. He's looking out for you, and he's going to explain Sun's decisions in customer-centric terms. He gives blogging a lot of credit in Sun's turnaround, but it's not just the blogging that does it. Lots of big companies have exec bloggers. Yup you know what I'm saying. Enough said.

So this post: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/good_bad_and_brave is an excellent example of a CEO stepping off the podium and engaging the blogosphere. What does he say in this post? Well.... from the post:

"And before you send me the email, yes, I saw the entry written by Matt Mullenweg - and all I can say is... I'm really sorry, Matt. That's not the way Startup Essentials is supposed to work. We screwed up, and you're completely right to suggest if that's the norm, we should kiss goodbye our aspirations of reestablishing our business in the startup community.
If there's anything I can do to win a second chance, I'd like to know. I appreciate your first sentence. "

Sun has a campaign to engage startups and basically, they treated this gentleman VERY poorly. He blogged about it, and Schwartz addressed it in his blog, apoplogized, and one will assume, made it right. One would also assume, whoever dropped the ball in the program will also be fixing their ball dropping issues. Boy I know I'd be shaking in my boots if the CEO had to take one on the chin bc I did a potential customer wrong.

The repliers to this post LOVE what Jonathan said. LOVE it. While they still hold Sun responsible for taking care of their customers, Sun gets a lot of credit for stepping up to the plate and admitting a mistake. The attitude is: "no harm, no foul, just fix it and you're fine." Honesty and trust go a LONG way in any relationship, even business relationships. Yah, I know, hard to believe, but yet... true.

Here's a few comments:

"This blog amazed me enough to want to reply, to communicate, and that's the first step in making me a customer. "

"Thanks for listening to the blogosphere, and thank you for taking time to respond. So many other business leaders could do more of that...."

"A CEO who blogs is rare. A CEO who publicly admits a mistake is priceless."

The rest of the replies are chock full of advice and insight. Some of it very usable for marketing departments, some it not. But all of it showing engaged customers and potential customers.

And that is priceless.