So you got a new product. And your website design is based around having some great pull-quote, preferably from some cool design shop.

But every so often, you can’t get a quote. So you use your own Senior Creative Director, or worse, the Product Manager.

I don’t get it - do Adobe think we’re going to buy the spoutings of their own team? Even if it is cleverly disguised as “real quotes from real people” - geez…

Note to Adobe - go check out Campaign Monitor or 37signals. They’ve got real customers talking about their products - not their product managers.

Leisa says: “If you’re smart enough to look for customer intelligence (who’s stopped buying what), then be smart enough to respect a customer’s intelligence.”

Spot on! I’ve had experiences like this in the past. What’s worse is when some rep asks you why you’re leaving, then you tell them, and you just know they’ve not actually taken any interest in what you’ve said, and probably because there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it anyway… If you ask - be prepared to back it up and respond.

Better still, take the time up-front to ask your customers what they want, then build a better service - just like Freshview have done with the billing component of their new MailBuild service. They proposed some ideas, asked for feedback. Got 500 responses, and recrafted their offering based on that feedback. I can see a lot of happy customers coming…

On a complete side note: I was interviewed by the AFR today about Campaign Monitor, Freshview’s other product. I’m constantly impressed by the service, and Freshview’s customer service and approach to things - so it was an easy interview to do

WorkHappy often has cool stuff, but this interview with Mike McDermont of FreshBooks is exceptional value.

I’m sure I’m not the first to notice, but I realised today that it is very difficult to find stats on the actual effectiveness of online advertising.

There’s lots of stats and announcements about ad spend, but very little on cost-per-click.

I’m not a fan of online advertising as it is (even though we’ve been testing it for campaigns and will probably do some more testing for specific fundraising appeals), and this lack of information just makes me all the more dubious about its effectiveness.

Update: seems I’m not alone.

AbstractDynamics: Power 2.0:

In the old model a media company had thousands of paid employees, journalists, anchors, video editors, printers, delivery guys, all there just to get the content made and to the audience. Now the same company, has millions of “users” doing the creation and distribution work for free. Is that empowering the little guy, or is that empowering Mr. Murdock and co’s bank accounts?

Good question!

Evan Williams posts some correspondence from Naveed Ahmed about being an entrepreneur:

I think to be a successful entrepreneur only 3 things matter:

1. A clear vision of where your company is going.
2. Genuine desire and passion to create amazingly great products/services.
3. Strong conviction that your product/service is going to make a positive difference in your customer’s life.

Evan likes it - so do I. I think it captures the essence of what my aim was with joining Marc at NETaccounts (I don’t speak for Marc, but I believe he feels this way too).

Recently the NY Times put their opinion columns behind a subscription-only “paywall” (that is - you have to pay a subscription fee to view the information). Of course, there are a few people who have paid the subscription fee, and then post on their blogs about their take on the article.

What this means is that the conversation continues regardless (of course), but the Times basically has no voice in it - the opinions that are published outside the paywall are the ones that get traction, while the Times’ articles almost become a secondary player, even though they originated the content.

And in some sense the Times has lost the “right-of-reply” because all of their stuff is hidden - from Google, from the blogs, from the general public - the (non-paying) public has to trust the people commenting on the original article and any response from the Times’ (in the form of follow-up articles) is lost.

Apart from all the issues with the subscription process, and the issues of information inequality (people who can pay the subscription vs. those who can’t), this seems like a lost opportunity for the Times to maintain it’s status in the changing media landscape.

So I sent a quick note with my unsubscribe request to Ethical Investor’s email list with feedback about why I was unsubscribing. The lack of links to articles and the unavailability of more than one article for free viewing being my gripe. “What’s the use” was the general gist. I wasn’t overly polite…

The next day I get an email thanking me for the feedback with an offer of a two week trial subscription to get a better taste for the paid service. Three days later I receive the current edition in the mail with a thank you note and subscription information. Nice work!

Turns out the information in the print magazine (and the cheaper price point) make it a possible option for subscription at work. We may not subscribe, but regardless my impression of the company has been boosted as a result of their excellent response.

One of my colleagues was misquoted in a major daily today. A classic case of a long (approx. 1 hour) interview boiled down into one misquoted sentence.

I can’t help but think two things: 1) how does the media justify/get away with this? and 2) I’m sure that weblogs and the net have a part to play in reducing the impact (if not the occurrence) of this kind of thing - transcripts of interviews and weblogs immediately come to mind.

Worldchanging: Triple Bottom Line, Down Under. The author notes how little press the report has garnered here (and how what little coverage has occurred has mis-represented the report). I recall reading reports of plans by the government to reduce funding for CSIRO - but I can’t seem to find a reference. But CSIRO does perform an important role in Australian research and policy development, so I hope that I’m mistaken.