Ely Rosenstock's Blog

I recently used the blind search test whereby you search for a term and the site spits out results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo without telling you which search engine provided each set of results. It then asks you which one provides the better results. Surprisingly, for most of my searches I chose Bing. So I decided to switch my default browser in Firefox from Google to Bing and see if I like it better. Bing didn’t last long.

The next day I saw a job posting that seemed interesting and I wanted to learn more about the position. Unfortunately the listing was posted by a recruiter and I always avoid going through recruiters (it’s much better to speak to the company directly). So I do what I typically do. I copy two sentences from the posting and put it in quotes to find the exact job posting elsewhere, hopefully with the name of the real company.

Bing – 0 results

Google – 2 results

Google had picked up the job postings on two other job boards, one of which had the company’s real name and not that of the recruiter. It seems to me that Bing is a pretty good search engine but Google indexes more sites more often (this is just a guess based on my experience). I switched back to Google for now. I’ll check back in a couple months and do some more tests.

Man, that was a boring post. Sorry about that.

Many users have developed  a significant following on Twitter. We should expect many of them to want to cash in on their new <cough> “popularity”. Company sponsored tweets were inevitable. The debate over sponsored tweets is gaining some steam. Some arguments are just ridiculous and here is why.

I’m amazed by how many people think Twitter will save the world. I was recently watching a stream from Jeff Pulver’s 140 Character Conference where one of the presenters criticized the potential of the Twitter community. Not only did the crowd boo, but someone from behind the camera actually said, “He’s crazy. We’re going to cure cancer!” This is what many Twitterers believe. They actually think they’re changing the world by retweeting funny links or getting an @ mention from Rainn Wilson.

Let’s be clear about this. Twitter has become an incredible source of public conversation. It has many uses, especially for marketers, and should be seen as such. The collective information that is gained from Twitter is where the value is for the world. The individual pieces of that collective is usually mindless drivel. It’s sort of like a Monet. Zoom in and you can see random little strokes of color. Move far enough back and take all the strokes together and you get a masterpiece.

Regarding sponsored tweets, many feel that sponsored tweets sullies the Twittering world. Some feel that sponsored tweets should be required to disclose that the following tweet was paid for by <insert company here>. These people want to regulate social media conversation similar to the way print publications all put the word ADVERTISEMENT on top of a sponsored article. The argument for this is that now readers will be able to decipher quality content from advertisement.

Where do I even begin with this ridiculous argument. What some are talking about regulating is freedom of speech. Tweets are not made by a company or part of any profitable exchange of information. Tweets are words you scream out your digital window. That’s it. The idea that any requirement or regulation can be put on them is preposterous.

Furthermore, this debate goes to the heart of the ridiculousness surrounding Twitter. Popular TV and radio personalities make lots of money and are very influential. Popular Twitter personalities, if that’s all they have under their belt for being noteworthy, are not at all influential and are probably not making a dime off their social media addiction.

Companies such as Izea, TweetROI, adcause, and Twittad are trying to take advantage of this opportunity gap in Twitter marketing. I commend them. Forget about what the Twitter-crazy social media addicts are saying about sponsored tweets ruining Twitter. Twitter will be ruined if we don’t allow these companies free reign. If Twitter REALLY wants to keep tweets ad-free than it will allow ads to show up on Twitter pages and pay people for the traffic they give the site. Otherwise, don’t complain.

There is a list somewhere of people who are banned from certain casinos. Usually this is because these players have found a way to beat the house by somehow breaking the rules. It’s not illegal, but casinos lose money with these people and have no interest in having them continually win more than they lose. The business equivalent of these people is my friend Jerome (names have been changed).

Jerome will complain to EVERY company that he thinks he can get something out of. He claims to have good reasons for this but all his friends know the truth. If he drinks a Snapple that tastes funny, he calls to complain and gets free Snapples. If he goes to a hotel and sees another person’s hair, he demands three free nights. Amazingly, many of the times he gets what he wants, or at least more than you would ever expect a company to give up. Jerome recently complained about Kenneth Cole shoes that he had for a few years and were starting to wear out in places that he felt shouldn’t have worn out. After much back and forth with customer service, he was able to get a $250 gift card for new shoes. His original shoes retailed for $200. I know, amazing.

Market research has shown that happy customers are repeat customers and it seems to have become standard practice for companies to give in to the Jeromes of the world because the additional cost will be made up by good word-of-mouth for quality customer service and repeat business.

Another friend of mine, Kyle, had his backpack replaced when he was in 7th grade by Jansport because a hole developed. To this day (he’s 28 now) he continues to buy products from Jansport, including his latest laptop case. This is an example of customer service that made an existing customer, a loyal one.

The world of social media has blown the communication channels wide open. No longer do you have to go out to find the right number to call or person to email. Brands are looking for you. If you own a product, that company wants to have an online connection with you. Complaining about a product to a customer service representative is as easy as writing a 140 character message. The Jeromes of the world love it but the Kyles get screwed. All the legitimate claim holders will be drowned out by all the Jeromes of the world.

In a perfect world, customer service would be transparent. Defective items would be replaced and false claims would be ignored. That isn’t how the world works. People are greedy and take advantage of big business (yes, big business is sometimes the victim). Utilizing social media is an amazing new approach to customer service. If a company isn’t careful, however, it could easily backfire into losing the quality customers amongst the crowd of irrelevant ones. To reinterpret a line from “The Incredibles”, “If everyone gets excellent customer service, then no one does”.

UPDATE: Regardless of my warnings, here is a good post by Tamar Weinberg as to why companies should be utilizing social media in their customer service initiatives.

All this media attention on Twitter reminds me of the buzz surrounding Digg in 2005. One of Digg’s biggest issues back then was how easily one could get a story to the front page. What people haven’t been talking about yet is how easily Twitter can be gamed.

It’s quite easy to become a top trend on Twitter. All you would have to do is hire a couple hundred people to keep on using your company/brand/product over and over in their tweets. Sounds like something a couple of hundred Russian kids would do for $1 apiece. Digg, to this day, acknowledges and fights ways of spamming Digg. I’m waiting for Twitter to step up to the plate because everyone knows that those top trends are being gamed daily.

I recently had an interesting conversation with some friends about the future of Facebook. One friend of mine who works at a hedge fund was comparing Facebook to AOL. His argument was that Facebook, for many, is the portal to the wide social web that is now emerging. Over the next few years, other services that do what Facebook does best (share photos, status messages, etc) will be replaced by services that specialize in these fields, Flickr, Twitter, etc. He believes that as the Facebook community realizes they don’t need Facebook to fulfill their need for an online social graph, they will flee, as did AOLers when they realized they don’t need AOL to access the internet or their email.

My rebuttal to this argument was that comparing AOL in the 90′s and Facebook now, I think, is ridiculous. AOL was a gateway to the web. It was, as time went on, an unnecessary barrier. The death of the modem sealed the deal for AOL. Facebook, on the other hand, is on the forefront of the social web. While other services do things better, none connect people like Facebook. And while people talk about the services that Facebook provides, the only real service I see is the network. I can’t think of one company that provides a service as valuable to a user as their Facebook network. The switching costs are astronomical. Facebook is over the mountain. There isn’t room for another Facebook-like company that provides similar services slightly better. Facebook, in my opinion, isn’t going anywhere….unless they still can’t figure out how to make money in 10 years, which is possible.

It’s great to watch technologies develop from something that is cool but useless into something phenomenal. There are two really cool technologies that keep getting better and better but have yet to be real useful to most people. The first is facial recognition. I’ve been using it in iPhoto and while it’s cool, it’s not extremely helpful in my day-to-day life. Here is how that works:

Then there is the new geo-coding technology that layers metadata on physical objects that can be picked up by phone cameras. This is the latest company that I’ve seen doing something with geo-coding:

See where I’m going with this? We’re probably only a few years away from facial recognition technology being used on every picture on the web. Your camera phone could instantly scan the person in front of you, check the web, and come back with a name instantly. I would find that EXTREMELY helpful. I’m calling it now, folks. Real-time facial recognition is only a couple years away. First company to do it well could make a killing.

I remember those days back on the playground in 3rd grade where everyone wanted to be cool. If you got into an argument with someone bigger than you, you had three options.

1. Try to outwit your opponent and win the argument (or the fight depending on how things escalate)
2. Sincerely apologize and hope your opponent backs down (depending on how much you riled him up)
3. Go tell the teacher

The first two options are the choices that most people make and while it was considered more cool to stay and fight, apologizing wouldn’t hurt your coolness factor too much. That #3, however, was a social status killer. Those were the kids that no one wanted to hang out with.

Yesterday I saw an actual fight (verbal fight) on the Twitter playground. And yes, Twitter really is one BIG virtual playground. Loren Feldman (@1938media) and Jessica Gottlieb (@jessicagottlieb) got into a fairly heated back and forth which sent ripples (albeit, small ripples) through the Twittersphere.

Loren is a well known video blogger and web 2.0 commentator who is famous for his lack of restraint when stating his sometimes controversial opinions. In other words, he doesn’t hold back. Jessica, from what I understand, is a Mommy blogger who has a significant following on Twitter and is a social media strategy consultant.

The scuffle began, from my understanding, when Jessica wrote this tweet.

After that, Loren replied.

What ensued was a back and forth of nasty name calling. No big deal really. A typical day on the Twitter playground. Loren doesn’t liked to get pushed around and has no problem having it out with people who annoy him. Jessica seems to be the same.

Then things changed when Jessica, in so many words, called Loren’s wife a prostitute. Loren went ballistic. Understandably so. Jessica crossed a line that most people know not to cross. I happen to have spent some time with Loren and his wife, Michelle, a couple months ago. Not only did I get along with both of them and had a great time hanging out, I found Michelle to be an extremely sweet person and it’s understandable why Loren would get so angry at such an accusation.

That accusation prompted this video on Loren’s 1938media site. The attack dogs of both followers got involved in attacking the other side (even though I think Loren’s fans seemed much more aggressive). The end result was that Jessica eventually apologized (sort of) on her blog and seems to want to move on. Loren, true to his style, doesn’t seem to back down as easily.

So what can we learn from this exchange?

1. Twitter is a playground with significant cliques. Don’t mess with somebody you don’t know.
2. If you do mess with someone you don’t know, expect to be hit back harder.
3. Even though Twitter is digital, the traditional social rules of confrontation rules still apply. In other words, feel free to attack someone but don’t go after their family. Once you cross that line, you’ve left your family open for cheap shots.
4. If you say something that you shouldn’t have, be an adult and apologize as quickly and sincerely as possible.

What I found to be the strangest part of this back and forth was Jessica’s apology. In it she wrote that Loren’s posts made her Mom cry. If my daughter talked the way Jessica did to Loren initially, I’d be incredibly embarrassed as a parent. I’m guessing her Mom crying has nothing to do with Loren’s posts. That leads us to our last lesson.

     5.  Don’t let your Mom read your tweets unless you’re ready for your Mom to REALLY read your      tweets.

I don’t know if there will be any further confrontation between these two but if you start to see Twitter get involved, you’ll know somebody told the teacher.

We have our first guest writer on Crastinate.com. Due to the sensitivity of the information being provided all names, including that of the post author, have been changed. Or as the guest author, Brad, put it, “names have been changed to protect the innocent…and the stupid.”

As one of the VP’s in a small company, I wear a few hats. One of which is human resources – I don’t always do the hiring, but I’m responsible for getting the job description into the right place and whittling the onslaught of resumes down to a manageable number.

Meet the players
“Arthur” is a sales manager who’s being replaced. He likes to travel and eat out on the company’s dime, and blame everyone else when the deal falls through.

“Nick” is the former VP of sales – he’s been demoted due to poor performance, some of which probably isn’t his fault and is a symptom of the economy.

“Anne” is the new VP of Sales – she’s a former sales manager who has an incredible work ethic and kept her numbers up even in a down economy. She’s also divorced, practically lives in the office, and probably hasn’t dated in years.

So it was my duty to draft a job description for Arthur’s replacement, and place it where it will get maximum exposure but not anywhere where Arthur might see it (how am I supposed to know where that is?). Once we find New Arthur, he can seemlessly take over Old Arthur’s few but lucrative accounts, and the transition will be perfect.

I decided to post the job on a specific industry group’s page on LinkedIn.  I knew that Arthur wasn’t on LinkedIn, so I was pretty safe. Within 5 minutes I had a response from John, who was geographically undesirable but otherwise perfect.

John worked until recently as the director of sales for one of our biggest competitors. He had the experience, knew the industry, and most importantly, had a network of buyers.   John emailed me his resume and cover letter, and suggested that we “speak immediately.”

I replied to John that the job was not in my department, but that I would give his resume to the VP of Sales and that if he did not hear from someone in a few days, feel free to follow up.

John apparently couldn’t wait – he searched LinkedIn for other employees of the company, and found Nick, who was still listed on the site as VP of Sales.  He emailed Nick his resume and shpiel – “please consider me for the position, here’s my resume, let’s talk immediately.”

Nick got into a panic and started accusing everyone of trying to replace him – remember, he just got demoted and he’s kind of paranoid already. Thank goodness Arthur was out of the office, or he definitely would have gotten wind of what was going on.

John’s aggressiveness cost him the interview, and potentially the job. We had no other prospects for the position and it very well could have been his. I understand that it’s tempting to use social networks to go direct to the source, but here’s a case where it had the exact opposite of the desired result.

“Brad”

Well, I think we can all learn a valuable lesson from Brad’s story. The new world of social networking doesn’t give you permission to be rude, inconsiderate, or annoying. If anything, you have to be even more careful not to bother people. Aggressiveness is fine but this guy took it a bit too far and potentially lost a good job because of it.

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Do you have a great idea for a Crastinate blog post. Email me at ely@crastinate.com.

Last year I took part in the Microsoft MBA Digital Market Competition. The competition was set up by a few MBA graduates who work at the search division at Microsoft in New York. The competition required the creation of a marketing plan around two of Microsoft’s online products. My team came in second place and it was lots of fun.

The reason I bring this up is because even though this was a Microsoft competition run by a search division (which means they value search heavily in a marketing plan), Microsoft usually made up only 10-15% of the budget allocated towards search marketing in the contestant’s submissions. The large majority of the search marketing budget went to Google even though we were presenting to Microsoft executives. This is understandable. At the time, Microsoft’s search marketing wasn’t considered to be a worthwhile investment of time and resources. Google seemed to just do everything better.

The fact is that public perception plays a large role in how much money Microsoft makes from their search. Companies won’t even bother advertising on Microsoft Search if they think no one is going to click on the ads. It’s just a waste of time and resources that could be put to better use on Google Search ads. This also has a huge effect on what each advertisers pay for keywords on MS Search. Remember that advertisers pay one penny above what the next lowest bid for that keyword is (actually, that’s not entirely true. There is a quality score which comes into play but the cost per keyword plays a large role). So if some advertisers pull out or just don’t bother, the ripple effect is lower rates for keywords for all current MS advertisers.

Bing has solved a lot of these problems. Bing is getting very good reviews and is now seen as a competitor to Google. We all know that Google will continue to dominate the search industry. Microsoft knows that too. But what Bing has done is given Microsoft the public perception that they have a product that is worth using in your search marketing campaign. This means more advertisers, and higher payments for current advertisers. Microsoft may not win the search war, but they don’t have to. They just need it to bring in some solid revenue and I think with Bing, it will.

The movie “Happy Feet” is on the television as I write this post. For all that don’t know, “Happy Feet” is a kid’s movie about penguins (I won’t go into details). Anyway, there was just a scene where all the penguins follow each other off the cliff into the icy water.

These images make me think about how easy it is to follow the crowd. We saw it in the financial markets. We saw it in the dot-com heyday. We saw it in real estate investments. People just follow without asking questions. Well, we’re seeing it today in the social media world.

The landrush to grab Facebook vanity URLs was ridiculous. Loren Feldman made a quick video explaining the stupidity behind it. I think Loren touches on a point that goes far beyond Facebook. The business world has become obsessed with social networking and social media as a whole; To the point that they forget what they’re selling or what their marketing goals are.

Why would a company advertise Facebook.com/mybusiness or Twitter.com/mybusiness instead of mybusiness.com. Sure, it’s great to have both Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to foster community but the point of EVERYTHING is to make sales. Maybe not short-term, but in the long-term (by building brand loyalty and customer satisfaction). All this hype around Facebook vanity urls is ridiculous. All the hype around Twitter is….well….it’s not ridiculous, but it’s over-hyped.

All these sites are tools to use in your marketing plan. Tools that are experimental and have trouble clearly connecting to revenue generation. While I recommend all my clients and all businesses as a whole to do some form of social media marketing, I recommend it with a disclaimer. Don’t expect social media to bring in money. If you want money, build a great product and market it via the measurable marketing methods. Social media is the party that you need to be at in case it becomes the next big thing but don’t jump off the cliff because everyone else is.