Tom Raftery, social media consultant, speaker, blogger and podcaster
Continuing my quotes from the Cluetrain Manifesto, here is another quote which I love from the 95 Theses:
12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.
Blacknight Solutions contacted me this afternoon and asked me to move all my sites off their servers. They no longer want my business. Why? Because I criticised their customer service after they lost all my podcasts, didn’t tell me about it until I discovered it a couple of weeks later, and when I did report it to them, they blamed me for asking for a temporary home for my podcasts (untrue).
In the comments of that post, Blacknight MD Michele Neylon admitted:
our handling of the “podcast situation� could have been better
I decided to do a quick search through all my posts relating to Blacknight on this blog. I found fifteen posts referencing Blacknight. Of those fifteen posts (below) ten were positive or at worst neutral about Blacknight (mentioning them as my hoster in passing). In many cases I linked to them using the word “host” or “hoster” which can only have been good for their SEO.
Recently I have noted a decline in the standards of their customer service and my most recent five posts were negative about them.
I will always highlight good service when I receive it and poor service too.
It appears that Blacknight are incapable of taking criticism. If you criticise them, they ask you to take your business elsewhere.
Way to build a customer base guys.
For anyone thinking of hosting with Blacknight, beware what you say about them or you may find yourself out on your ear too.
Here are all the posts I found on this blog referencing Blacknight:
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/authimage-error-call-to-undefined-function-imagettftext/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/comments-fixed-wordpress-122-breaks-authimage-addressing/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/site-offline-briefly-sorry/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/offline-there-briefly/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/kudos-to-michele/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/podleaders-in-syndication-deal/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/site-offline-temporarily-apologies/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/hosting-problems-solved-hopefully-site-moved/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/hosting365-loses-internet-connectivity/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/awstats-vs-webalizer-lies-damn-lies-and-statistics/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/blacknight-suspends-site-against-explicit-instructions/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/commenting-problems-on-this-site/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/email-sending-problems/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/blacknight-customer-service-gets-worse/
http://www.tomrafteryit.net/all-this-sites-comments-lost/
The Toronto Sun is reporting that the entire Beatles back catalogue may be released through iTunes in the coming months with the first songs being made available as soon as next month- wohoo!
This follows on from a deal having been struck between the Beatle’s Apple company and Apple Computers over naming and sales of music by Apple Computers.
Seemingly:
Apple Computers plans a “special” announcement scheduled for a Super Bowl commercial on Feb. 4, which may give more indication as to where the new remastered CDs will debut first.
Reuters is reporting today that the number of people reading the blogs of newspapers in the US tripled in the last year.
The study of online habits carried out by Neilsen went on to show that:
Unique visitors to blog sites affiliated with the largest Internet newspapers rose to 3.8 million in December 2006 from 1.2 million viewers a year earlier
So having a blog on your newspaper site, greatly increases traffic to your site, it would appear. And this at a time of plummeting sales for newspapers themselves.
Noted media consultant Jeff Jarvis sounds a note of caution when he says:
Note also that the definition of blogs is up for grabs. Many times, newspapers use blogging software as a means to get up news updates and such; it is the world’s lightest, easiest, cheapest content management system and it’s a smart use. But not all these blogs link out in conversation. Still, I’ll bet this helps take the cooties off the word ‘blog’ in newsrooms.
I think Jeff is correct to point out that not all newspaper blogs allow comment but the smart ones do. Once readers realise some online publications value their opinion, they’ll be very slow to return to ones who don’t.
Hello? Anyone from the Examiner, the Irish Times, the Independent taking note?
Good buddy Dennis Howlett has uncovered, through some clever financial detective work (Dennis is a former accountant), some very dodgy dealings.
It seems that the CEO of Symantec, John Thompson, made $1.5m profit on the sale of Symantec shares very shortly before the announcement to the market of losses by Symantec (and the inevitable share price fall that ensued).
This looks very bad and reeks of insider knowledge (whether or not that is, in fact, the case).
Companies engaged in security need to be whiter than white. When the CEO’s reputation is on the line like this, Symantec needs to explain this one quickly to everyone’s satisfaction of John Thompson needs to resign.
I finally read the Cluetrain Manifesto over the Christmas break. I had dipped in and out of the online version but I treated myself to a paperback copy and read it while offline in Spain. All these things are so much easier for me to digest in dead tree format! Getting old, I know.
Anyhoo, I thought I’d share some of my favourite quotes from the book here on the blog for you.
Here’s the first one, from Chris Locke, one of the four Cluetrain authors, which really resonated with me:
we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers.
we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp.
deal with it.
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