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| Tuesday, October 25, 2005 |
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Hugh prizes 
| | I'm  glad Hugh has a gig with Budget, thanks to BL Ochman; and that Blogads' Henry Copeland calls it "a quantum leap forward for the medium", and also says, "Budget has launched the first blue-chip marketing campaign created by a blogger, illustrated by a blogger, run on blog software, advertised exclusively on blogs and first reported by blogs." Cool. I wish them well.
Meanwhile, all I want from Budget is to A) Kill the painfully slow redesigned booking UI that I go through when I come from the United Airlines site (I suspect it sucks just as bad coming from other places), and go back to the old, faster system; B) Give a break to FastBreak members (such as moi) who wonder wtf "RapidREZ" is, why the word "FastBreak" has disappeared from the booking UI, why the FastBreak membership number somehow still works as the RapidREZ number (with apparently fewer benefits, though that's not clear), and why the system can't remember the membership number either; C) Quit baiting and switching with compact car bookings that say "Ford Focus" and "or similar" in ittybitty print, when it appears (to this frequent renter) that Budget is phasing its Foci out. (I'll be renting from Budget in Oakland this AM, btw. We'll see how that one goes. Here's betting they'll switch me to some kind of Chevy.) |
| | So, good luck to Hugh and the crew. I'm happy for them. I'm sure it's a great contest, and certainly better than most blogging efforts by BigCo promo departments. And kudos to the smart people at Budget (I'm sure there are plenty) for hiring these folks to make marketing fun. |
| | Meanwhile, as a loyal Budget customer (because they're relatively cheap and rent Ford Foci) who is highly frustrated by the company's new lame-o booking (it is soooo fucking slow, I can't tell ya) UI (not to mention its whole freaking CRM), I wish they'd also spend a few bucks unscrewing what wasn't screwed up before they "improved" it. |
| | By the way, if you go to book with any car rental agency from the United site, you can't open multiple sessions with multiple agencies to compare deals. United won't let you do that. If you start your booking process with one, you can't open another without losing your session with the first. In other words, they replicate the airport experience online. Here's hoping Hugh and the crew can get a message or two about the whole CRM/UI mess that flying renters encounter, and probably not just through United. (I dunno because I hardly fly anybody else, though I'm sure my guess is right.) Best, get somebody high up at Budget to give me a call. I can help. For free. |
| | There's a prize I'd gladly collect. |
| | [Later...] Credit where due: when I got to Oakland, I went straight past the long line at the counter to the Budget FastBreak booth in the lot out back, and had my ass driving off in a nice Ford Focus in approximately notime. They did ask me if I wanted to buy gas (my Fastbreak membership prefs used to be set so they didn't bother me with that question); but that wasn't a bad thing. Anyway, I got what I actually wanted. This time. |
Time to move
| | There is a belief, held by some, that the government can prevent more slides there. I think these geologists make the matter even clearer than a look at the hill would give any objective outsider with a minimal sense of geology: there's no holding this one back. |
| | The real shame, aside from the loss of lives there, is that La Conchita is a great little town, an oasis of nonsuburban paradise on a beautiful coast. Hate to lose it. Also hate to lose more lives. |
Toward a marketroid repuprosing departmet
| | Mike Taht says, I love the idea of a "conversation department", however, how do you retrain or retask the marketroids that haven't a clue as to how to have a conversation in the first place? Includes some funny lines that remind me of Gapingvoid. |
Be there (almost) now
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A CONVERSATION WITH J.D. LASICA & DOC SEARLS
The Rise of Citizen Media
October 26, 2005 @ 6 p.m. in the McCune Room IHC (6020 HSSB) |
| | An explosion of participatory media is underway, as people bypass traditional media to share their own works at outlets such as Ourmedia.org, Current.tv and NowPublic.com. Is this a fundamental shift in people’s relationship with the media? How do grassroots media differ from traditional media? What is the personal broadcasting revolution, and how do we know whom to trust when everyone is a publisher? . |
Be there then
| | I'll be doing the closing keynote at Syndicate in San Francisco, which runs December 12-14. I'm also the conference chair: a first for me. We've got a good line-up of speakers. I'm also hoping we get a good line-up of attendees who are ready to participate, too. Maybe you're one of them. Hope to see ya there. |
Fixing the splog problem
| | The solution to the problem it to click gratuitously and never make purchases on the links at blogspot sites and to keep doing so to drive down conversion rates. This likely will be interpreted as click fraud by the system and, if it isn't, the advertisers are going to be so angry about the costs of these clicks that turn into nothing that they'll drop the program or exclude BlogSpot from their placements. |
| | We need to create pain. Greater pain than we encounter with spam on our blogs, so click away thousands of times. Yes, the splogger will make some money, but they don't face any costs and are, therefore, insulated from pain; the sources of those funds—the advertiser and Google—will feel the pain. |
| | The comments are interesting too. |
| | It's important to note that the splogs are in business to game AdSense. Also that splogs are not only on Blogspot. Here are two (both with AdSense-placed ads) I found via PubSub just now. Neither are Blogspot blogs. Here are some more, also not on Blogspot. But all carrying AdSense ads. |
Linkfarming
| | Jon Watson on Silos: ...it seems ironic that two of the leading 'social bookmark' systems are so anti-social. Open it up guys, let me use whatever system I want without having to comb the web for hacks and work arounds. Let me wander back and forth |
discuss
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