iPhone Customer Experience Retains customers, freaks out Monopolistic long-distance carriers

USA Today has a piece today suggesting that the new iPHone "gulps network capacity" in such amounts that AT&T is having having tough time keeping up.

According to Nielsen's Roger Entner, "the average iPhone user eats up around 400 megabytes of capacity each month. Average smartphone usage is 40 to 80 megabytes. "

Poor, poor AT&T...all these customers who can't get enough of your product and can't switch to a competitor!

But what's really happening with the claim that "network demands are only going to increase as pricing on the current iPhone 3G drops to $99"?  The article skips over at least one link in the syllogism by concluding that as price drops the number of devices increases in absolute terms (notwithstanding the millions of iPhone early adopters who will surely be buying their second or even third iphone, as loyal AT&T customers).  This is inaccurate rather than plainly untrue. 

Imagine it: a device manufacturer finally built a device that represents valuable customers who demand good data service (even though Sprint's network can probably deliver as much throughput as AT&T, there's no way I'm going to demand that much data on my Blackberry Curve- the browsing experience sucks, but the email is great).

The iPhone's competitive advantage is the customer experience, from the interface to the data connection, so AT&T's iPhone business goes to hell if they stop investing in the network.  Great customer experiences, at some pricepoints ("every purse and purpose" is not the play here) are what retain customers. 

AT&T likes locked-in customers, though- it always has, from back when AT&T was....(ahem) AT&T.  I don't know if I see that attitude changing at the company until my generation is managing it; people who have always had a cell phone but have switched six times before they turn 25.

Customer Service excellence, twitter and @comcastcares

The surest sign that a company has a bright future is when its employees are focused on the customer.  If the various Twitter customer service anecdotes (Comcast, Jetblue, etc) have done anything, it is to expose gaping holes in the lifeless void that most customer service operations force customers to navigate.

In the WSJ, I found Comcast’s Twitter Guru Speaks.

But unlike other marketers using the service, Mr. Eliason said he’s unconcerned with how many followers he has. “When people follow me they’ll see me say ‘Can I help you?’ 150 times in a row,” he said. “I wouldn’t follow me either.”

Amen to that- he's not trying to build a community of influencers, he's trying to fix a broken customer support system.  There aren't that many communities with multiple cable companies- people know Comcast is the local monopolist.  So this is not about finding people who don't know about Comcast and convincing them to buy, this is about loving your customers...forever.

What is sad is how recent this phenomenon is.  Airlines, telecom companies, cable companies, all use enormous call center operations to deal with the inflow of customer contacts.  And they usually do it very, very badly.

The fact that Social Media approaches find so much low-hanging fruit is more a testament to how bad the other systems are at dealing with customers.  Should we be rewarding Comcast for NOT screwing up this time? 

I'm digging into the CRM Magazine's June 2009 issue entitled, Who Owns the Social Customer and will be posting a few thoughts about how CRM is both an integrated customer relationship function and a marketing function, but also a recognition that the world's largest firms MUST change the way they do business.

Monetizing User Karma

A Twitter direct message from a friend suggested to me that I check out Spymaster- a twitter based game that asks you to participate in a global covert espionage war against your...twitter friends.  You won't need a new video card or a crazy detailed mouse for this.

The game is played both on the web and also in the twitterverse, as you can interact with the game via twitter, and the game will update twitter when you do certain things.  Helpfully, the game not only tells the user up front about the possible notifications it will send to twitter, but also lists the rewards available for this permission.

Spymaster2
As the user grants permission for more frequent access to his social graph, and a more prominent role for the game in his life stream, the game grants him more points and a more enjoyable (at least theoretically) game experience.

Wouldn't it be nice if more services worked like this?  Told you what kind of engagement they were looking for (for Spymaster, say, it's getting users to both enjoy and publicize the game experience) and amplified the site's response and reward for these activities?

Heavy doses of WIIFM here, to be sure.  Don't you wish your bank thought about this occasionally?

I took a look at who is behind thes site, and it appears to be classifieds site Ilist.com, which had this to say in their blog post called  Got Karma?

What is it?
Karma is the unique point system used by iList to reward users for their activity in the community. Click on “Karma” at the top of each page for a quick rundown.

How do I get it?
Earning Karma on iList is easy: treat others the way you would like to be treated. You want as many people to see your listings as possible, right? Well, so does the rest of iList. If you help others promote their listings they will likely do the same for you. Then, not only will you be rolling in Karma, but you will also have more people viewing your listings.

Other ways to receive points include completing your profile, posting listings, and inviting friends to join the iList community. The more the merrier.

What do I do with it?
You tell us. Now that you’ve got all these points, we want to know what you think you should be able to do with them. We already have a  few of our own ideas simmering on the back burner, but we’d love to hear from you as well. So, if you know you’ve got some great ideas and want your voice to be heard, get to sharing and leave us a comment.

I like firms that understand the value of rewarding visitors, making engagements, even the small ones, matter.  The marketing is part of the user experience-the product isn't just a classifieds site; it's loving customers.  Producing customers who love you?  Now THAT's good Karma.

A gigantic free ride into the New New Economy

Wired's Chris Anderson echoes the sentiment that the revolution in web services, combined with the collapse of debt-laden superfirms, is about to user in a new era of micro-production, wherein small firms are better able to compete, and adapt.

Working for yourself is hard.  Working for yourself might or might not make you happier.

The New New Economy: More Startups, Fewer Giants, Infinite Opportunity. To all the usual reasons why small companies have an advantage, from nimbleness to risk-taking, add these new ones: The rise of cloud computing means that young firms no longer have to buy their own IT equipment, which helps them avoid having to raise money or take on debt. Likewise, the webification of the supply chain in many industries, from electronics to apparel, means that even the tiniest companies can now order globally, just like the giants. In the same way a musician with just a laptop and some gumption can accomplish most of what a record label does, an ambitious engineer can invent and produce a gadget with little more than that same laptop.


Anderson isn;t alone, time magazine asks us to consider

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Cuil vs. Google and the DOJ

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My dad emailed me a link to  search upstart Cuil, which I had come across before but never adopted.  It got me thinking about the Obama administration's antitrust hounds barking at GOOG, and now maybe a credible competitor might be important.  But the standard- for being a credible competitor- is really high, I think.

Google's dominance stops when it's not useful, or as fast, as competitors. I think it's doubtful they will lose on speed, but utility is a maybe. Whether the Wolfram Alpha product solves the same problems, or solves some other ones may also affect this determination. 

In the long run, I think Google knows that it's don't be Evil motto really translates into "Don't be useless." 

  • it wouldn't be useful to force users to download Chrome in order to search Google or check their gmail
  • it wouldn't be useful to prevent people from embedding Vimeo videos in their blogspot blogs
  • Google Docs kills Microsoft Office by being Useful for group collaboration
  • Even if Google buys twitter, if they make it less useful, they'll have a problem
 


If they stick to that, they're probably in good shape.  The DOJ may wonder: is Google's ubiquity anticompetitive?  I think for the bulk of its interaction with the world, Google is just a bunch of nice guys who offer a free utility, or maybe a phone.  For those few (relatively speaking) individuals on this Earth who do some form of business with Google, it can seem like a monolithic, and scary, creature.  It's the latter group who want antitrust scrutiny of Google, not the former.

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Facebook's Long-term Bet on the User Experience

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Thinking about the news that Facebook is introducing an alpha test of a payment system, I keep thinking that the one thing facebook has left is to make a play for the wallet.  They've earned the attention- around 30 billion minutes in the first quarter of 2009 (comScore)- of the world's internet users, and an intimate relationshoips with those users's entire online life.  Facebook lives and dies by the assent of these clicking masses, as revolt afetr revolt has shown, over site design, privacy, and even its esoteric terms of use.

Facebook's reach is exploding- but monetizing attention hasn;t worked especially well.  With display ad rates plummeting, an unproven social ad model, and a long term growth strategy, Facebook deserves some wiggle room.  Itchy investors calling for an IPO In 12 To 24 Months don't make it easy to bet the way Facebook has, but the company expects to be cashflow positive by the end of the year.

Amazon IPO'd early and grew explosively, provoking skepticism that it would ever turn a profit (big hat tip to the still-poignant satirewire.com).  Founded in 1994, opening in 1996, going public in 1997, and finally turning a profit in the fourth quarter of 2001.  The company is unquestionably a juggernaut of commerce, logistics, and long term business strategy.  They've lasted all the way into web 2.0!

I'm drawn to the analogy between the two firms - can the industry at this point allow for the possibility that Facebook can build loyal users now and the profit later?

Without a doubt, the engine for Facebook's profit in the long term is a ubiquitous social graph, to be the identity that users take with them to sites across the internet.  If an e-commerce site fears abandonment, drop offs at the registration page, visitors who don't return, Facebook fears that its users will stop finding it useful.  As long as the Facebook on-site and off-site experience makes the web experience easier, social, trusted and secure, it can be an infrastructure player.

Amazon's constant optimization work, its willingness to please customers and create long-term value, as well as its back-end infrastructure plays, should suggest there is light at the end of the tunnel when you bet on your customers.

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Freelancing opportunity and the future of the labor force

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I did a lot of work at Columbia on the mobile workforce, seeing labor in firms as units dividing their time between mutliple employers on an engagement basis.  The endgame there seemed to be the end of the traditional labor force.  I even suggested ata  conference last month that it would be interesting to create a real-time job index- jobs that need to be done in the next X hours or Y minutes.  Not sure we're there yet.

Reading a post on Please Feed The Animals, the post title speculates that perhaps there are Fewer Advertising Jobs, But Greater Opportunity.  The post links to a great WSJ article on freelance employment in the downturn.

I think the data are interesting to think about there. The ultra-mobile (where mobility is also lateral between firms) workforce is a chaotic place to be, and strategically, I think this robs many firms of the opportunity to differentiate through talent acquisition. Perhaps this really doesn't matter as much as it once did, and a firm having access to a network of talented freelancers is the talent differentiator these days.

I wonder: is this is a long term spike that will re-make the firm, or perhaps just an example of how firms cut way past the fat in their layoffs, and are burdened with cost structures that don't make sense anymore?  Could agencies have fixed that instead of laying people off?

Hospital TV spots offer real stories of patients

This piece from yesterday's NYT seemed to be heralding some great TV ads for the health and wellness industry.  The drama of real stories at akronchildrens.tv is powerful and real.  The spots break throguh because they are about people, the drama of trying to get better, and not exaggerated claims about the quality of service.

What I really liked the "commandments" that NY ad shop DeVito/Verdi crafted for its hospital campaigns, that sounds like it's got a few things to say for other ads:

“No pictures of doctors,” it begins, “no smiling people, no fancy machinery, no over-promises about medical care, no complicated medical terminology: just truthful expressions of critical care and breakthroughs.”

It's about selling the environment that the hospital creates for its patients, not the cliched descriptions of 'teamwork' and dedication.  

Alma Mater discovery: Cornell AAP in NYC

Just learned today that Cornell has a loft near Union Square for the Architecture, Art and Planning students, and that the AAP in NYC has a semester-long program in the city for Architecture and City and Regional planning students.  I also learned the Cornell AAP in NYC has a blog!.

What a neat discovery, which I write about from the Cornell Club in Midtown, as a former participant in the Cornell In Washington program in DC.

Price versus value

What is it about Craigslist that makes it so darn good at killing newspapers?
CL hardly charges for anything, yet it is a hugely valuable business. 

Wenda Harris Millard And Dave Morgan On The Coming Golden Age Of TV And Journalism | paidContent.org.

—The CraigsList model: The classifieds site has is regularly cited as being one of the primary forces killing newspapers. But Morgan finds that model also offers a clue about where media business can look to, at least the ones who survive. Morgan: “That’s an amazing business model, but people look at a hobby. Jeff Zucker says he won’t trade analog dollars for digital pennies. Well, what choice do you have? CraigsList is worth a billion dollars or two. That’s a profitable business.”

Spy Social Networking: Top Ten

The inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report on the failure of the ODNI to improve US Intelligence gathering by breaking down territorial/divisive behavior among the 14 US intelligence agencies.  I wonder what they've tried?  How about "A-Space?". What's A-Space?

 American officials in recent years have unveiled a series of initiatives intended to improve intelligence analysis in the wake of a botched 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which concluded that Saddam Hussein’s regime was stockpiling unconventional weapons.

One such initiative is “A-Space” — modeled after the popular social networking site MySpace — intended to allow analysts from different intelligence agencies to better communicate and share information.

Oy.  I can't even imagine what happens on A-Space.  Or can I?...Here's my top 10 in progress. (Updated with help from my friend Cy)

10. ZOMG check this out: 2 Syrians 1 Cup
9.  Bob, that was really mean for you to Ollie-North-roll me during the NSC briefing
8.  2 tix to sell 4 briefing on trans-border shipments in Afghanistan - cheep! 
7.  Error 007: profile not found.  Ha!  Try to find me!  Just Try.
6.  Tx 4 the add!  Check out my band here: a-space.mil/secretmonkees
5.  Spring break pics of a CIA analyst doing a bodyshot...off an actual body.
4.  The White House will respond to a 'poke' by a covert CIA agent by revealing her identity to the New York Times.
3.
2.
1. 

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Twitter Backlash as Marketers Adopt and Automate

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I read about Scoble thinking of killing his Twitter account, and it seems more and more like the anti-commercialism backlash that we hear with each new service- Going back to Canter and Siegel- the couple in who sent their Green Card spam to thousands of usenet groups in 1994. 

I keep seeing outrage posted on Twitter, in the form of "Why is [company] using twitter to [perceived spammy practice]? [hateful judgement]" It seems to have grown worse with the advent of bots for automating a corporate/for-profit twitter presence.  The ghost-writers/celebrity tweet phenomenon (seriously, Guy Kawasaki?) didn't seem to help.

The tools to automate an external social media presence (e.g. marketing or PR) are getting some traction but it's becoming painful to the user community.  Should we get mad at the brands, or Twitter?

It seems like a much better response to attempt to influence the strategies employed by firms to manage their social presence.  If Twitter doesn't want us to leave, the ads will be tasteful and/or relevant.  Not to mention that at the enterprise level, the opportunity to drive internal morale/knowledge should be just as large as driving brand love and PR externally.

But can we remedy the corporate, pretend to be a person presence?  Is this a possible business for Jeff Dachis new venture?  I'll keep an eye on that.

Shareholder primacy and agency layoffs

This post at Please Feed The Animals was a reminder to me just how few public corporations really seem to be in the business of creating long term value.  While all would agree with the premise that corporations are in the business of creating value for stockholders, the time horizon of this value creation is less clear.  I began this post with a comment at PFTA and am continuing it here.  PFTA wonder show many of the large agency holding companies laid off staff because they had a duty to shareholders.

I don't think this has as much to do with the structure of the corporation as it does with the short-sighted investment climate we have had in the last decade.  Flipping Teldar Paper, or Anacott steel, or breaking up Blue Star airlines (ok I have seen Wall Street too many times) seemed like a good idea to shareholders, but only because those shareholders were in the game for the short term.  Gekko offers them a bunch of money and they take it.

Value investors have fallen out of favor.  Classic value investors like Warren Buffett don;t get freaked out about a bad year or even a couple of bad years.  They wouldn't neglect infrastructure investments that they know they are going to need anyway.  Strong companies are built on long term value creation. 

Wealth creation, on the other hand, has so frequently in the last 10 years been divorced from long term value creation, or even preservation.  How many of these are the result of such a division?

  • Quant hedge funds
  • The mortgage mess
  • The .com boom and bust
  • Egregious CEO compensation linked to share prices

And then we come to layoffs.  Firms that have been inefficient for years may have a problem that now they need to lay people off to ensure their survival, like the auto industry, but in other cases, it's suspect.  How many layoff decisons are a desire to maintain short term profitability, anf how many to create long-term value, should be the question every executive asks. 

Changing the structure of the corporation - the uncorporation, or whatever collectivist model is ppopular is in my mind not as cponvincing as a need for a nationwide, if not worldwide, shift in the demands that investors place on corporations.  Buy. Hold. Profit.

Has Social Media Failed Starbucks?

Harsh words by C. Edward Brice  about mystarbucksidea.com and Starbucks social media efforts at The Marketing Gimbal.   I couldn't agree more with the general proposition that a Youtube channel for Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts is basically just going to be filled with video press releases.

I don't know how well an outsider (even one as brilliant as I) can evaluate whether mystarbucksidea.com achieves Starbucks strategic business goals or solves its business problems, but I would suggest that the goals are close to these:

  1. Listen to the Starbucks community about the Starbucks experience from beans to online.
  2. Engage the community in a meaningful way-identify popular or insightful suggestions and engage in discussion with the community about these themes and ideas.
  3. Test ideas for effectiveness and profitability and customer loyalty.
  4. Report back to the community about the process and create a virtuous feedback cycle.

Compare to [share-vote-discuss-see] as the consumer call to action- I think I'm probably close.

If I were Starbucks, I'd be investing the most money in harvesting from the idea exchange, and trying to identify high-value ideas; I wouldn't just implement the most popular idea, though customer enthusiasm for an idea might be one important factor.  The Starbucks audience might be too broad to vote a really effective lid idea to the top, but how about posting that idea as a challenge somewhere else- there are lots of crowdsourcing innovation forums out there.

The engagement Starbucks can cultivate-online, outside the store environment- has intrinsic value, which is amplified by acknowledging this community and responding to its needs.  

Brice's point about getting the service element right is taken- there's no substitute for getting my coffee order right.  But assuming that problem is addressed through training, and that there is some other avenenue for testing its effectiveness, aren't we back to where we started?  Finding ways to engage Starbucks customer online, beyond advertising, ought to be seen as the major challenge.

I'm not personally a fan of the product (I'm a Peets drinker), but this element of the Starbucks marketing strategy always struck me as the right idea.

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Learning about apologies from Clif Bar & Company

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If anyone wonders about the relationship between PR and marketing: how many of your customers will take the time to write a blog post acknowledging your greatness?  Are you working as hard as you can to make sure your customers Keep on Loving You?  Clif Bar & Company is. Sometimes your company, or your agency, will make a mistake.  How you handle that situation is a crucial part of marketing at any level.   My quick lessons:

  1. Keep it short.
  2. Acknowledge responsibility while pledging to fix the issue.
  3. Create a reason to come back.

Clifbar_logoI purchased a box of Clif Bars on January 28, only to learn on February 6 that my Chocolate Peanut Crunch bars were being voluntarily recalled by Clif Bar & Company as part of this peanut business.   While there was no evidence that the product was affected, the company decided to recall the product.  I was a little annoyed that I would be throwing away food, but I went to the Clif web site and requested a refund.  I received a very nice email in return, which included this letter from Gary and Kit, which was nice but every bit expected.

I'm just going to retype the note I received in the mail from Clif Bar and Company, along with 12 coupons for single free Clif or Luna bars.

We want to personally apologize for any inconvenience out voluntary recall may have caused you or your family.

As a food company, we make consumer health and safety our top priority.  It was out of a great deal of caution and concern that we issues the voluntary recall something we've never had to do in 16 years of business.

We appreciate the effort you have made in contacting us about this situation.  Though coupons won't buy back the time or energy you may have spent dealing with this situation, we hope that they will at least minimize the expense.  As you shop, please know that 91 Clif Bar and Company products are currently available for your enjoyment and are not impacted by the recall. 

Gary and Kit

My emphasis in bold on the part I liked the best about this note-I wish my 401(k) provider was as generous. I found this note a delight to open up and read.  I'll be buying Clif Bars in the future.  I'd give them 'kudos" but don't want to encourage the competition :)

I enjoyed the Clif Bar web site as well- not sure I need to review it but I encourage you to check it out at www.clifbar.com.

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Food Brand Site Done Right: Kashi

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In the wake of the Skittles dustup, what can a food brand do?  I wanted to comment on Charlie's post, but I decided yesterday that I didn't have anything to add- Charlie said it right. I  knew that I didn't really like the site, thought it was derivative of Modernista's home page...but what was Skittles  supposed to do?  What can the web do for food brands until mind control beams?

Skittles_at_bsbnyc

After seeing a Kashi ad on TV, enticing me to visit their web site and get a free frozen entree, I said, let's just see about this. Conclusion: Kashi did something very cool. 

As background: I love Kashi.  I didn't always.  Kashi used to be these crazy rice puffs my friend Matt would eat, and I wasn't really up for that.  After I started trying to eat better about 18 months ago, I discovered Kashi frozen entrees, and shortly thereafter the GoLean cereal.   In my apartment right now I have Kashi GoLean cereal on the shelf and a Southwest Chicken frozen entree in the freezer.  I am a loyal consumer.  I tell people about Kashi products.  A lot.  The products work in my lifestyle: whole grains, protein, and trying to avoid artificial sugars.  But not everyone is as vigilant as I am :)

Now, as a comparison, it might not be fair to suggest that Skittles can claim any kind of identification with me, because hey, when was the last time I bought candy?  OK.  However, what Kashi executes is something that is relevant, connects you to the core of the company, and gave me something in return. Here's the Black Bean Mango Frozen Entree.

Kashi1

See the additional contest on the right?  You better believe I want a year's supply of Kashi food! 

I decided to join their community, which actually has some very interesting things about reaching goals, whatever they might be, in wellness and mind/soul health, not just nutrition.  How about: Challenge yourself to sanitize your sponges?  I think this site does great things for the brand.  Is it personable?  You bet.  Here's the Kashi Customer Relations staffer's profile:

KashiCommunityManager Anjanette  

If you're wondering what at thoughtful company Kashi is, check out their registration Captcha.  I'm not opposed to ones like ReCaptcha, which I think works rather well, but this was fantastic, and so refreshing:

With the Kashi Captcha, You could request a verification email instead, but why would you want to?

You could request a verification email instead, but why would you want to?

I willingly entered my home address three times on Kashi.com because I realized, if there is one food brand I wouldn't mind hearing from, it might be Kashi. The TV campaign Kashi is running, which offers a free frozen entree, and encouraging visitors to join a well thought-out community site is at least a viable alternative to creating a social media firestorm just so people will talk about Skittles.  Instead, try Kashi.

So who IS getting hired by agencies during the recession?

Will it be "Liberal arts poet types" or quant analysts?  I think over the long term we'll clearly need both, but as someone who fits somewhere in the middle, and more frequently fits the qual jobs than the straight quant jobs, I can see the problem in viewing this as black and white. 

In this mediapost article "Industry Execs Find Opportunities In 'Deep, Dark Period' Tim Hanlon, EVP and Managing Director, Publicis' new media unit VivaKi Ventures suggests that "agencies have to increasingly invest in data-focused engineering-mind talent rather than "liberal arts poet-types." 

Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com did not agree.  In his view,  "[at] the end of the day, agencies are about big ideas...I worry when it becomes too much about data churning."

The question is, for agencies, how much can you bill for the idea vs. "measurable media."  At the point where digital dollars are cut, some clients will want to cut the pure idea-generation first. The optimization of ad buys and e-commerce sites using customer segmentation, behavioral targeting, multivariate testing and ad networks and exchanges require talent who can crunch the increasingly complex data coming out of digital advertising activities.  I recall seeing a report on viral advertising which took graduate level-statistics and epidemiology to produce; definitely not your typical "narrow tie" ad man's talents.

But the people who have a feel for the brand, who think of new approaches, who develop long-term plans...what of them? Truly empathic work around a brand that connects a company with its customers and inures them to the company for the long term.   I believe that smart managers on the client side know this, but truly smart management, and truly exceptional companies, are rare.  So what is an agency to respond to?  Is it equipped to fight its clients, to fight for long-term value creation and its digital instincts?

See the agency layoffs twitter @adagencylayoffs; there are shops hiring, but a lot of people are being let go.

What is a fair price for "guilty"?

When I was 16, and had been driving with a license for about 4 months, I was in a minor car accident.  A Jeep wanted to merge on to Highway 13, right here, and I was in the right lane.  I braked, the Jeep braked as well, and pretty soon we were going to run out of shoulder.  I decided to move into the left lane, and saw only at the last moment that there was another car in my blind spot to my left.  The other car swerved left and did a little dance with the guard rail.  I panicked and pulled over to the shoulder.  I felt instant regret.   The other car pulled in behind me (the Jeep was long gone) and I carefully got out of the car and proclaimed my guilt and apologized profusely .  Between my parents and myself, we paid to have this lady's car repaired- it was an expensive mistake.

I made the opposing party whole for her loss - 100%.  What in the world is Madoff going to do?  By all accounts, his fraud is probably in the billions, and it's all GONE, or nearly so.  So when I read that  Madoff Agrees Not to Dispute S.E.C.’s Civil Case and that someone will have to figure out how much he has to pay in fines, I am dumbfounded.

All of it.  If he has anything left after this I will be really annoyed- he stole from rich people in a lot of cases, but the kind of trangression he represents, the scale of it, I think we need Bernie Madoff down for the count- and I'm only talking about the the civil proceeding (the rest of his life probably will be in jail).  Perhaps I am just getting paranoid that his plea deal leaves him out of jail just for cooperating, yet another of the SEC's lax prosecutions and "neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing" settlements, but please, let's not go easy on this one.

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Facebook Deal-breaker

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I have now seen this "Get Your Obama Check" ad about 30 times in the last 48 hours.   ObamaCheck

As a resident of planet internet I've gotten used to the morass of spam that hits my email account, with offers from every salacious, medical, impossible, fraudulent, Canadian, or just mis-spelled offer in the land.  I'm fine with my mental state, my body, and my darn watch for now, thank you very much.

I don't really see the value in the display ads on Facebook thses days.  The dating ads were under my skin for a while- they just seemed to have mean ad copy that took advantage of my profile to target me and be mean.

And now, in this climate, the "Get Your Obama Check" is beyond the pale, a scam sending in $2.99 to "get $12,000" is ridiculous. It's the kind of late night drivel we've seen for years.  I implore Facebook to get rid of these ads, and for my fellow citizens to report such ads as tasteless, opportunistic scams. 

Where will Facebook build significant advertising value?  Does such a thing exist when most people I know deploy a combination of resentment and unconscious filtering to ignore the ads we see?  Did you think that I didn't notice your addition of a third ad slot in the right gutter, Facebook? 
Even at 150 million monthly active users, I'm skleptical of the long term advertising value proposition if Facebook is going to let these kinds of ads destroy what little positive perception Facebook ads enjoy.

Perhaps the pro version of Facebook polls and Facebook's Lexicon utility are where the real money is- if that's so, why should Facebook still be taking these scammers' money?