Digital Marketer : Statistician : Sociologist
While digging myself out of e-mail hell today I came across this gem ComicSansCriminal.com. The only person I know that uses it on a regular basis is our work travel agent. If it wasn't for the fact that she makes sure I don't get stranded in strange cities, I'd probably just delete her e-mails. Maybe I am just not appreciating the fun that work travel brings to my life.
The Innocence Project is something I follow online and I am pretty intrigued by the work they do to help people who were wrongly convicted. I was especially ashamed of our justice system when reading the stories of 17, 18, and 19- Bivens, Dixon, and Ruffin,respectively. Ruffin died in prison for a crime he didn't commit and Dixon died only two months after his release. I recommend you take a minute to read some of their stories, it will change the way you think about crime, stereotypes, and the media.
I know what you are thinking- I work for this company, I work with these people, and, of course, we are going to promote self-regulation on the FTC online privacy issue because we are an ad agency. Hear me out because regardless of what pays my bill, I support self-regulation and these smart people I work with make some really good points.
+ Companies operating outside of the United States, or companies deciding to identify ways to bypass the
legislation, would gain a competitive advantage
+The relevance of online advertising would suffer, and consumers would forgo a personalized ad experience
+ Ad prevalence may actually increase as publishers try to make up for the smaller CPM earned from less qualified
visitors
+ Websites that offer free content or services may have to change to a paid model because their revenue is typically
generated by online advertising with value derived from online tracking
I have a crush on 37signals. I've read their books, I use their products, and I read their blog religiously. Last week, Campfire was a disaster and had quite a bit of downtime. I wasn't that upset about it because there are other communication options here, but I am sure there are companies and people out there who rely on it and they were pretty frustrated. Yesterday, the attached message started showing in Campfire and you can read the full message here.
Growing up, December was always a favorite month of mine. School would let out for two weeks, snowflakes would start falling and I’d write my letter to Santa to remind him that I’d been especially good that year (and ask if he’d mind bringing me a few Ninja Turtles). He never answered those letters—he’s a busy guy, after all—but what if he could pick up the phone and call me instead? What if Santa had Google Voice and could easily call all the kids on his list?Well, this year he can—with your help. If you know a kid (of any age) who’d like to hear from Santa, create and send a personalized phone call from the jolly man in the red suit himself at sendacallfromsanta.com.There are hundreds of options to choose from, so you can send unique, customized phone calls to anyone you know, from your nieces and nephews to old college friends, over the phone (to U.S. numbers only) or via email, Facebook or Twitter.If you or your kids have a special request or message for Santa, you can leave him a message at his Google Voice number: 855-34-SANTA. Although he’s too busy to return messages himself, you can always create one on his behalf at the Send a Call From Santa site.Ready to spread some holiday cheer? Listen to a sample message, and visit sendacallfromsanta.com to send a message of your own.And don’t forget—if you want to keep up with Santa as he travels around the globe delivering presents on Christmas Eve, you can track his journey on Google Maps, on Google Earth with the plug-in and on your mobile phone, too.Posted by Michael Bolognino, Product Marketing Manager
Verifiable (shut down August 1, 2010)
Stuart Roseman shut down Verifiable, a crowdsourced charting and data analysis site, to start SaneBox, a product that automatically identifies important email and separates them in a user’s inbox. Below, he explains how he knew when it was time to pull the plug on Verifiable.
“We couldn’t charge for it. It was pretty clear. I’ve done this for a long time. I said, ‘This is a bad idea. I need a new idea.’
“The Verifiable problem still exists. It hasn’t been solved. There’s still chart junk. It’s got to be easier. But Verifiable was something I thought the world needed. SaneBox was something the world was asking for.
“My new mantra is: ‘I will make a product that people want to pay for and that they will be happy to pay for.’ I wake up in the morning and I say that. And I go to sleep at night and say that. It really changes everything.”
Related: “Out with the old business, in with the new”
Wesabe (shut down June 30, 2010)
Wesabe launched as a site to help people manage their personal finances. While competitor Mint was acquired by Intuit, Wesabe eventually shut down. In “Why Wesabe Lost to Mint,” Marc Hedlund dissects what happened.
“Mint focused on making the user do almost no work at all, by automatically editing and categorizing their data, reducing the number of fields in their signup form, and giving them immediate gratification as soon as they possibly could; we completely sucked at all of that…I was focused on trying to make the usability of editing data as easy and functional as it could be; Mint was focused on making it so you never had to do that at all. Their approach completely kicked our approach’s ass.
“You’ll hear a lot about why company A won and company B lost in any market, and in my experience, a lot of the theories thrown about — even or especially by the participants — are utter crap. A domain name doesn’t win you a market; launching second or fifth or tenth doesn’t lose you a market. You can’t blame your competitors or your board or the lack of or excess of investment. Focus on what really matters: making users happy with your product as quickly as you can, and helping them as much as you can after that. If you do those better than anyone else out there you’ll win.”
Related: “Wesabe is discontinuing its Accounts tab as of July 31st”
Storytlr (shut down February 24, 2009)
Storytlr let members create their own lifestreaming service (i.e. connecting Twitter, Flickr, Last.fm, and other accounts) at their own URL. Founder Laurent Eschenauer on what happened:
“Storytlr started as a personal project to power my own site. People liked it, so we decided to build a nice UI and start hosting it for others. We were developing and operating the service next to our day job and families. We were quickly successfull, reaching beyond 10,000 users quickly and this meant a lot of strains on our lives (maintenance, support, etc.) and budget (~500$ monthly hosting bill) without any revenues.
“At that point, we started researching potential revenue models and investors, but quickly realized that the service was not well suited for a strong revenue stream. It was a tough choice, but, for the security of our families, we decided to pull the plug.”
Related: Laurent Eschenauer pitches Storytlr to Google’s Sergey Brin
TwitApps (shut down September 13, 2009)
Stuart Dallas created TwitApps as a technical exercise for himself. But after some early blog coverage, it attracted 4000 active users (and that number was growing). Despite that base, he couldn’t turn it into a product that was worth the effort.
“I considered the whole thing to be a toy project for a long time and it took me a while to realize that people were starting to rely on the service.
“Once you’ve established a free service and that service has other free competition, it’s very difficult to monetize it. It’s also very hard to change people’s impression of what something is once they’ve decided for themselves.”
“It became difficult to juggle the time demands of supporting TwitApps with the requirements of a full time job, several contracts and the need for downtime. In the end something had to go and it was clearly going to be the bit that wasn’t earning any money.”
Related: “TwitApps shutting down”
I am currently a Product Strategist at iCrossing in charge of Business Intelligence. Formerly, I was the Manager of Advanced Analytics. I'm a marketer, mathematician, sociologist, student of the web, crafter of my own social network, amateur knitter and potter, people watcher, Red Cross disaster volunteer, and warrior against clutter.
I do all of this from Salt Lake City, UT. Don't knock it until you've lived here!
