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And the Least Clueful Company of the New Millennium Award goes to ... British Telecom! Don Marti just posted an Open Letter to Mr. Charles J. Roesslein, CEO, Prodigy on the Linux Journal site. Nobody does a better job of exposing the ridiculous to constructive ridicule than Don, especially when the subject Truly Matters, as it does here. What British Telecom is doing to Prodigy — and the whole damn Net, which rounds out to Humanity Itself — is eggregiously heinous and titanically stupid. Which means that Don is exactly the man for the job. At hand is BT's lawsuit against Prodigy and a heap of other ISPs for — get this — using hyperlinks without BT's permission. Here's Don:
In an Infoworld story, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and founder of the World Wide Web Consortium — of which BT is a member — prevaricated thusly when pressed about BT's insane claim:
As Don put it in an email directly to TBL, If the BT link patent isn't frivolous, what is? Conversational Frontiers Anna Zornosa is President and COO of Topica, which hosts the most active Cluetrain list (which I point to rather often). I knew Anna back around the turn of the Nineties, when she worked at Ziff-Davis and I worked at Hodskins Simone & Searls. It was cool to hear from her again yesterday, when she sent an email not only identifying herself as a fan of Cluetrain (she describes herself objectively as "someone straight up in her seat, white knuckled and nodding vigorously"), but offering an interesting example of how markets often get conversational without any assistance from marketing — or obvious manifestation on the Web, either. Take the case of Lawson Software, which has, let's see... 34 different email lists on Topica. Lawson, she says, "...has not kept its employees from its customers and has encouraged organic, viral dialogues. It's reward has been a deeply committed user community that views the software provider as a partner, and views itself as not helpless and 'sold' but rather involved and included. And, in the process, the company has saved thousands of dollars in consulting fees." With her permission I'll share this from a Topica case study: At a Lawson User Conference in April ’99, an attendee distributed fliers about an HR software email list he had created at Topica. Many subscribed and were interested to learn that these lists were free and easy to set up and use. Shortly thereafter, Lawson users created two more lists that were instantly promoted on the original list. One was for Lawson System Administrators, which grew to 300 subscribers in the first week of its existence. That list has nearly tripled to almost 800 subscribers today. The other list was created to discuss Lawson’s financial software solutions, which now has 600 subscribers. This created a trend within the Lawson user community to set up discussion lists around many of Lawson’s software packages.... The lists are set up and subscribed to mostly by Lawson’s business customers, clients and service providers. Some Lawson employees are also on the list, but mostly to lurk and learn about the software glitches, bugs and problems that are taken into consideration during future upgrades. While Lawson does not endorse or manage the lists, the company unofficially supports their use. Today, there are 34 such lists reaching over 7,000 subscribers. List topics range from job openings for experts who use Lawson’s software products to its regional User Groups planning for upcoming conferences. Does this help or hurt Lawson sales? Here's what the report says: By having instant access to the counsel and opinions of many Lawson software experts on the lists, including weekends when customer service call centers are closed, time and money is saved when subscribers post questions and seek advice. According to Michael Strand, who moderates the Lawson Listserve Policy Board list, “These lists are mainly used by Lawson customers to get cyberhelp on the job so that problems can be solved and decisions made without paying consultants thousands for the same sort of assistance.” Particularly on the human resources and financial lists, the questions subscribers ask would normally require hiring a consultant. Lawson software consultants charge a minimum of $2,000 per day plus expenses. Often, getting recommendations from trusted subscribers reduced the number of days consultant help was needed, leading to substantial savings. Well, superficially it would seem to hurt consulting sales. But in fact it enlarges a market conversation that grows thanks to Lawson's participation rather than its control. This isn't the kind of thing that advertises itself, or that advertises well at all. It's pure word-of-mouth at work. It's market as a noun, rather than as a verb. Nothing sexy about it, yet profound for exactly the same reason. Why marketing has trouble with math Chris Locke has some Free Advice in InformationWeek on "The Customer as a Co-Developer." It asks the question Who has more product knowledge: 10,000 workers or 1 million customers? Check it out.
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