Whenever the month of December comes around I find that mentally I go into a shutdown state with regards to working. It’s like the whole month of December becomes just one long Friday. Anybody else have this problem? How can you concentrate on work when you have to two major holidays to focus on, vacation, gifts and other stuff?
So most of the time when Paul is doing what he does best (sending 100 emails out a day, turning supermodels into baby mamas) I don’t usually ask “why”. When we started talking about how Jack of All Blogs was blowing up and taking off, the subject of it’s design obviously was at the forefront of our conversation since it was so plain. I once said that Instablogs suffered from DLWD, or Default Looking Weblog Disease, and I’d be damned if something associated with 9rules suffered the same malady. And with that I hit the drawing board.
And it hit me back right in the face. The first design I put together for Fine Fools sucked big time — probably because I was under the gun with so much of our client work that the creativity was just not in me at that time. Just like a good boss should do, when I showed him a design that I’m a bit iffy on, he kicks me in the ass and tells me to try harder and that’s just what Screezy did. Plus he said if I get this design into Stylegala he’d buy me two bottles of Patron at SXSW, and if you ask some of our friends they will tell you just how much of a motivator that is. It probably won’t get into SG, but at least I tried my best :)
With over 8,000 blogs and content feeds generating millions of impressions, Pheedo is the largest ad network connecting your brand with today’s fastest growing and effective online medium.
– Pheedo
The truth is whatever you make of it or whatever boundaries you set for it in today’s Web 2.0 world and it seems those boundaries are either being stretched to great lengths or reduced to shrink the competition. Now making a claim that you are the largest ad network around is a pretty big claim. That means you are putting yourself ahead of Google’s Adsense and many other large networks. How can you even think it’s okay to make a claim like this without breaking the trust of your audience?
I have gotten into the same kind of debate with the founders of b5media who claim to have the largest blog network after merging with About Weblogs, even though their total number puts them below Weblogs, Inc. and the 9rules Network. Their argument is that 9rules and b5 are two different types of networks and therefore they fall under different categories. And even though they fall under the same category as WIN they believe that since most of the sites are inactive that they shouldn’t count. Is this fair?
As someone who is on the web daily and is smart enough to ignore these kinds of claims it doesn’t bother me from a personal perspective all that much. However, from a business perspective I can only imagine what would happen if a “normal” web reader comes across their network and see their claims as being the largest blog network around and therefore associates them with being the best. Same goes with Pheedo. Is this fair? Of course it isn’t, but when you are talking business competition nobody said that things had to be played fairly.
With so many metrics that can be used to measure the size of an ad/content network it’s hard for anybody to make the claim as being the largest or best, yet we still see a lot of people doing it. At 9rules, I know we have made a conscious effort not to say we are the #1 of anything, but we like to give off that impression in other ways. Trust me we would love to say:
But we don’t say these things (at least I am pretty sure we don’t) because where is the proof? Is it okay to set the metrics, rules and boundaries so that we are able to make all of the claims above or should we just worry about making the best product/service in our minds and let our users speak? We like to do the latter and I wish more companies would do the same. Just because you are the largest doesn’t mean I am going to signup with you, but it might mean that more investors wish to jump onboard the bandwagon so maybe I am still missing something there.
In the Web 2.0 world where does the truth end and the lies begin? Probably never since I am now going to claim that I run the most popular web design blog run by an “African-American” living in the city of Tampa with a messy room and 30″ Apple Display. The truth will always be what we make of it I suppose.
Do I think that companies shouldn’ even bother with making such claims? No, because we have to be proud of something, but I do think that we all should be more conscious of the claims we make because we all know that in today’s world where everyone owns a site these claims can quickly backfire on us.
Remember those “Where are the women in design?” type entries that used to be around last year? One of the underlying issues I think that could’ve been discussed, but never happened was the fact that on the web you can still see prejudice and biases at work. I have gone my whole life dealing with breaking down barriers (not as much as some of you I am sure, but more than others) and I always found it interesting the dynamics that occur when nobody really knows who you are.
I think it’s safe to assume that if you write a site such as Whitespace with the ideas that I present along with being the CEO of 9rules, Inc. the assumption is that you are a 30-something white guy. Now I know not everyone has that assumption, but I won’t hesitate to say that the majority of people did about me. Going to SXSW and then the Business Blog Summit was an experience when people see your name tag and then look at you and put 2 and 2 together. Let’s just say that not too many people expected this:
Feel free to make fun of me at DIC.
UPDATE: Mike puts me to shame with his more thorough entry. Scope it.
You may or may not have noticed that we launched with a new site on Tuesday. You can read a little bit about it over at the 9rules blog. I know one of the bigger issues that will come up is the color selection. Mike will be writing an entry at Business Logs shortly to discuss his design choices, but I wanted to ask the Whitespace readers what you see with the site that could be done better? It’s definitely not in its finished form, but from a functionality perspective we think it is better than the previous version and so we have launched it.
Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.
I am sure everyone has heard of Flock by now. It was almost impossible not to read about it at least somewhere with the amount of hype it had going for it. I would like to jot down some quick thoughts on why Flock never stood a chance in replacing Firefox as the default browswer of the non-IE crowd or even have a chance of penetrating any markets. I know it’s still early in the life of Flock, but where’s all the positive buzz now that it’s available to download? I know saying that Flock never stood a chance is a bit harsh and comes across as downright foolish of me to say, but I figured that in this instance I should pick a side and stick with it instead of sitting on the fence.
I have yet to actually try Flock and therein lies part of the problem. I never tried it because I didn’t see a need for it. I don’t need another browser and I certainly don’t need another way to blog or view del.icio.us links. Flock simply doesn’t solve any problems that I am having with my daily computing experience, while Firefox did back in the days.
Part of what made Firefox so successful was that it came at the right time. It came at a time where many people were frustrated with IE and businesses were getting tired of IE’s vulnerabilities. When a company switches software there is a good chance that people will go home and begin to use the software, but companies don’t switch unless there is a underlying need to do so. I can’t think of any reasons why a company would need to switch from Firefox over to Flock.
Why would a normal home user be enticed to switch over to another browser when they just got used to using Firefox over IE? If they blog I am assuming the majority of them are comfortable with using the web-based interface that comes with their blogging package. If they are power bloggers then there is a good chance they use a desktop application to handle their blogging duties. How does Flock properly fit in?
Last week I spoke about branding and the message of a company and this is an area where Flock could use a lot of help. Their website offers no insight into what they are trying to do or even worse what Flock is really all about. A “social browser” tells me nothing.
Notice how nothing that I have written about has to do with how good or bad Flock is? If you are a lover of Flock you would almost prefer that Flock handles all the issues above and releases a shitty product because a shitty product can be fixed (ask Microsoft). It’s funny reading people write about how Flock will make money, but nobody talks about how they will even get the number of users to an amount that will help them make money. Maybe they have plans to stomp out these issues, but I’m just not seeing it happen.
One final thing that I think hurt them was that they simply used the hype machine a bit too well. They got overexposed before the product hit the shelves and you could just sense the blogosphere (yeah I used the word) waiting in anticipation for some great failure. A little buzz never hurt anyone, but a lot of misplaced hype can be killer. When I visited San Francisco I had the opportunity to meet some of the Flock team and you got the sense that they were also getting caught up in their own hype. Hell, it seemed that everyone in SF was getting caught up in the hype of whatever they were developing because it’s such an insular community. But that’s another issue all on its own.
