Google Search Results Encourage New Wave Of Negative Customer Service
A fascinating article in today’s New York Times examines the case of DecorMyEyes, an online eyeglasses retailer who’s found an interesting exploit in Google’s search rankings.
Noting that Google’s PageRank algorithm doesn’t determine if a linkback to a Web site is positive or negative, store owner Vitoly Borker games that system simply: He fights every customer complaint bitterly, with verbal abuse, counter-complaints, and what some construe as overt threats of violence.
(Update, Dec. 2, 2010: Google has changed its PageRank algorithm to weigh the negativity of comments.)
This aggressive, seemingly destructive behavior is so over-the-top, it leads disgruntled customers to complain everyplace they can online, including at such massive entities as Get Satisfaction.
The long and short: Lots of mentions and links to his Web site, plus lots of mentions of the brands he sells, all in context, often on high-traffic Web sites, means searching for a specific pair of eyeglasses often leads to Borker’s Web site being listed first in a Google search.
Borker effectively preys on the inexperienced online shopper. “If you’re the type of person who reads consumer reviews,” says the Times, “Mr. Borker would rather you shop elsewhere.”
He gets away with it via a combination of apathy and obeying the letter of the law.
His previous hosting company and eBay (from where he buys glasses for resale) ignored scores of complaints until the Times inquired about his accounts. The confusion law enforcement has over Web-based commerce crime, including the IC3, means police have largely been absent, even in the face of obvious violations of the law.
Borker carefully monitors Visa and MasterCard complaints, making sure he doesn’t go past the monthly complaint limits. After MasterCard closed one of his merchant accounts, he opened another:
“There is no such thing as shutting someone down on the Internet,” he said during our initial telephone interview. “It isn’t possible. If Visa and MasterCard ever shut me down, I’d use the name of a friend of mine. Give him 1 percent.”
Most interesting, Borker sells on Amazon.com’s Marketplace, and doesn’t employ any nastiness there, because Amazon has a very low tolerance for customer complaints, according to the Times.
Continue reading: Google Search Results Encourage New Wave Of Negative Customer Service »
How Jim Rome Uses Social Media To Control The Worst Of His Audience
One of sports talk radio host Jim Rome’s catchphrases is “more of me, less of you,” meaning that the people who call and e-mail his show tend to offer opinions that don’t improve the conversation.
Today’s show-teaser post on his Facebook page illustrates the problem perfectly:
Setting aside for a moment that “first” posts are, by definition, trolls, one has to wonder about the mindset behind posting “sixth,” especially when he winds up eighth. As tends to be the case, a few very bad trolls overwhelm this open (by which I mean “not moderated in advance”) conversation.
But Rome’s Facebook page is there for the express purpose of sating trolls and low-quality comments. It’s not meant to advance the issues at hand; it’s specifically meant to siphon away from his premium product — radio airtime — problem comments, keeping that premium product clear for high-quality content.
In leveraging Facebook as troll control, Rome has found an interesting social media strategy — one that won’t work for everyone, but can serve as a model to other information media providers.
Continue reading: How Jim Rome Uses Social Media To Control The Worst Of His Audience »
Designers And Developers: Donate Your Time, Talent At New England GiveCamp, June 11-13, 2010
One of the things I found out about at Tuesday’s MSDN Northeast Roadshow stop in Augusta is the first New England GiveCamp, June 11-13 at Microsoft’s Northeast Research and Development center in Cambridge, MA.
I’m attending, and I’d urge you to do so.
A GiveCamp is basically a gathering of developers, DBAs, project managers, designers and other IT folks in a given place, to donate their time and skills to charitable projects.
In the case of the New England GiveCamp, typical projects include upgrading Access databases, or converting Excel spreadsheets to Access; integrating open-source tools, such as Joomla, Drupal and Django, into existing Web sites; adding various gizmos to and tuning up existing Web sites; and several requests to spruce up the look of various types of collateral.
I believe the biggest mistake you could make in deciding whether to participate is thinking that you don’t have the kind of skills needed. From what’s been said at the GiveCamp’s Web site, there’s going to be plenty to do, whether you’re Linus Torvalds or Linus Van Pelt.
I think this goes doubly for graphic designers. Trust me, if you are an artistic person, no matter how little you think of your work, your worst effort is 10 times better than the best design ever produced by a programmer. I am speaking from extensive personal experience here. We’re the people who gave the Internet Comic Sans, animated GIFs and the <marquee> tag, remember. Please, save us from ourselves.
As the Northeast GiveCamp put it, “If you have the passion, we’ll find a place for you.”
In addition to the technical work on site, there are a myriad other volunteer opportunities both before and during the event, including registration, sponsor solicitation, organizing the development teams and matching them to non-profit organizations, handling logistics for food and snacks, and others we’ll discover along this journey!
RSS Feeds Now Show Full Entries
As I’ve finally gotten the hang of Google Reader, I see the value in having full posts, and not just excerpts, available from an RSS feed.
It’s so 2000-and-late to think in terms of whether a Web site is “sticky,” and even in terms of SEO; it makes far more sense to think in terms of whether you are “loud” within your social networks, and whether you’re easy to find and appreciate to people who might be interested in your network.
In honor of which, I have changed this blog’s settings to provide full posts in the posts and comments feeds.
So, add http://www.dougv.com/feed/ (and, if you’re crazy enough, http://www.dougv.com/comments/feed/) to your favorite reader, and you’ll have the whole story!
All links contained in this post on delicious.com: http://delicious.com/dougvdotcom/rss-feeds-now-show-full-entries
It’s Time For Facebook – Or, At Least, Someone – To Vet Third-Party Applications
It’s no mystery to anyone who’s been on Facebook for more than a week that one of its biggest boons — and, in the finest Zen tradition, one of its most nagging banes — is the plethora of third-party applications that leverage its data.
Virtually all the value in Facebook is crowdsourced — that is, users generate all the content, they create all the connections, they drive interest in whatever direction it may flow, they create scores of memes every hour.
Since Facebook’s primary business model is driven by collecting data about usage, this means that opening its use to the creators of new social media tools makes tremendous success.
Why bother taking Microsoft’s old-school tack — create a standard, then ride it into the grave — when, instead, you can provide users, and let others give them reasons to stick with you? Why bother even taking Google’s approach — create lots and lots of things, in the hope one of them proves popular — when someone else can assume all the risk, presenting you with the opportunity to buy or duplicate his success with your framework?
How many people, do you suppose, would have stopped using Facebook after a few days, had it not been for Mafia Wars, Farmville or Bejeweled? That’s my point.
But every day, there’s also a new crop of the outright obnoxious third-party applications that promise to do the exact opposite: Drive users out for fear of their privacy and security.
Take, for example, the recent spate of “see who’s stalking your profile” applications. As The Register notes, all of them are at best cash-for-clicks scams; at worse, open invitations to load malware onto the computers of tens of thousands of unsophisticated users.
I’d like to expand upon a central tenet of a blog post offered by Rik Furguson of Trend Micro, from which The Register drew its article: That it’s high time Facebook employed some sort of vetting process for third-party applications.
Continue reading: It’s Time For Facebook – Or, At Least, Someone – To Vet Third-Party Applications »
