Archive for August, 2009

Newsletter on holiday

Aug 28 | by Sam Deeks | Scambusters!, Twitter, news
No Comments

The Mu! newsletter has gone on holiday – thanks to all who subscribed

We’re taking a break from writing the newsletter for two reasons: firstly, our newsletter plugin has become extinct and secondly, we’re in a period of evolution here at mukaumedia.

breakThe plugin issue is typical of working in this kind of open-source blogging environment: a piece of software designed to add functionality made by a developer who then loses the motivation to upgrade his plugin in line with the development of the Wordpress platform.

The result is something that worked well for a couple of months progressively breaking down and becoming unusable.  Moral of the story?  Don’t bank on anything in the open source world.  Why? Because most people developing for it haven’t worked out how to ‘monetise’ what they’re doing.  No money, no customer service or inclination to support their software.

With regard to mukaumedia, some visitors will know that I’ve been working more and more with Delta7 Change Ltd in London.  That’s been hugely rewarding and exciting so it’s taken up a lot of my time and created the space to have a re-think about what we want to do with mukaumedia in the longer term.  We’re planning on a review towards the end of this year (ideally on a beach somewhere warm).

Meantime, this blog will still be the home of critical feedback (about all things digital, marketing and customer service).  Expect me to carry on the crusade against nasty online ripoffs like Expo Guide and World Business Directory as well as pointing out the kinds of do’s and don’ts that we’ve learned (usually the hard way!) from our 3 years in this business.

Once again, many thanks to those who’ve subscribed to our newsletter over the last year.  If you’d like to stay in the loop, then please feel free to follow me on Twitter here.

Student debt poll

Aug 25 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, change, critical approach to online media
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The TimesOnline’s ’student debt’ poll: annoying for all kinds of reasons

beerandsmoke2“Would you pay an extra penny on income tax to subsidise students?” asks the TimesOnline in this worst-of-all-kinds-of-survey.

Why is this so annoying?

Firstly, because the question is pretty meaningless.  If you don’t think so, then take it seriously for a moment and try to answer it yourself.  Yes?  No?  It depends…?

It’s annoying because the issues of student debt and the way that education is funded are far more complex than this dumbed-down, ‘web-friendly’ question implies.

Secondly, because I’m not prepared to talk about subsidising education until we talk that other big student expense that never gets talked about: alcohol and drugs.

But guess what?  When did you last hear ANYONE honestly account for the part that alcohol and drugs played in their ‘£15,000′ overdraft?  Funny isn’t it?  They don’t, ever.  It’s always ‘tuition fees, books, rent, food’.

Booo!  Party-pooper!

In case you think I’m being fuddy duddy, I’ve been there and done it myself.  First as a student at university (where I spend a healthy amount on drink and drugs) and secondly as a university lecturer (where – like most, if not all of my colleagues – I also spent a healthy amount on drink and drugs).

So it’s not about a moral highground.  It’s about honesty.  In answer to your question, TimesOnline: ‘No.  I’m not prepared to subsibise ongoing cultural denial about the trouble our education system and our students are in with alcohol and substance abuse.’

Now, which box should I tick?

The Venus Project: Beyond Politics, Poverty and War….

Aug 23 | by Sam Deeks | change, critical approach to online media
4 Comments

Picture 2

..but not Shopping, ok?

The Venus Project claims to be “a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.”

Top of the drop down list of ways to ‘Get Involved’?  Why, through the Store of course, where you can purchase DVDs and other Venus Project goodies (including T-Shirts).

Sorry if I this sounds critical, but is there anyone else out there who thinks that the first thing we might need to lose in a total redesign of our culture is our attachment to selling each other stuff?  Hmmm?

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe social media and online shopping can fix the world.  What do you think?


BA Complaints: How does British Airways respond to feedback?

Aug 21 | by Sam Deeks | feedback
7 Comments

We’ll see how they respond to my recent poor Club World experience

Fri 21 Aug 16:00: Fill out online form

Fri 21 Aug 16:21: Receive email from BA with ‘case’ reference number

BAletterWed 26th Aug 15:49 Receive email from BA (click thumbnail left to read in full)

Club

I recently travelled BA from Mumbai to London in ‘Club World’ class.  By comparison to a competitor airline I flew long-haul that same week, it was a poor experience.  So poor, in fact, that I was moved to write to British Airways and offer them feedback (under their heading ‘complaints comments and claims’).

Now, we all know that BA – like many airlines – is in dire trouble in this current economic crisis.  So much so that it recently asked staff to volunteer to work for a month unpaid to help ease the company’s crisis and keep it afloat (sorry ‘in the air’).

If my flight with BA last week is anything to go by, then it’s also starting to show in the customer experience.  I’ve given them my feedback but what can they do?  What would you do?

Working for nothing to try to save your job is one thing.  Expecting customers to join you in that heroic struggle is another.

Tweetie: If I have to search Google for ‘How can I retweet a tweet in tweetie?’

Aug 12 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!
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… then is Tweetie worth using at all?

Re-tweet. Can’t. Spent 5 minutes trying to find out inside Tweetie; with Tweetie ‘help’ files and finally via Google.  Need I say anymore?  Oh, except there aren’t even any meaningful answers out there.

And I vow NEVER to use as many ‘Twitter-derived’ words in one post ever again.

Nope, Tweetie’s not happening.  Crap. Goodbye.

FriendsReunited: what’s it really worth?

Aug 4 | by Sam Deeks | critical approach to online media, marketing
No Comments

FriendsReunited is worth about as much as RMS Titanic shortly after it hit the iceberg.

titanic4It doesn’t matter how big or fancy your ship is – or how many souls there are on board. If it’s sinking, it’s worth nothing in a financial sense. You can’t do anything with it except watch with grim fascination as it slips beneath the waves.

But there is a lot to be learned about social media from its demise.

FriendsReunited started with a great idea – to use the web to reconnect people with other people. Nothing wrong in that – it’s what people want to spend all day doing, given half a chance. So where did it go wrong? Two big – simple – mistakes.

1) Horrible, clunky, counterintuitive and frustrating user interface. Yes. It was an awful experience. Whenever I used it, I had no idea where I was or what I was doing. The site developers couldn’t see past their own thought-processes. Full steam ahead, no matter what was happening around it.

2) Even the free membership wasn’t worth the effort, so there was no chance for those poor people in First Class. Ok, that’s stretching the Titanic analogy a bit but developers beware. If you’re trying to charge for what other people do better for free, you’re history.

Meanwhile, expect to see the social media war become anything but social over the next couple of years as the big players seek to herd all the people in the world on board a single, um, unsinkable network. :-)

Yet another guide to Twitter for business… yawn.

Aug 3 | by Sam Deeks | how to, online networking
No Comments

Oh, my.. God.  Everyone’s doing it.  Writing guides to Twitter, I mean. So here’s mine.

Twitter is a way to publish / broadcast little chunks of information (140 characters).  That can be text, links to interesting things or repeating things other people have said.  This takes place within a global network.  You build up your network by following other people or being followed.  Often people follow the people who follow them.  Sometimes they don’t.

Everyone you follow or who follows you is part of your network and each person in your network has their own network.  You can explore all the people in the network of someone who is in your network.  Wherever you find interesting people you can view them and their tweets (their ‘feed’).  If you want, you can follow them.

When you follow someone, their tweets appear (along with those of everyone else you follow) in an overall ‘feed’ of tweets from everyone in your network.  When you’re following 20 people, that’s quite a few tweets a day.  When you’re following 10,000 people that’s a hell of a lot of tweets a day.

What’s the point?  Well, you can follow people who are particularly interesting in terms of your speciality of niche, for example.  How do you find them?  Maybe you already know them – in which case, you find out their Twitter name and follow them.  Maybe you find them because someone you’re already connected to in Twitter has them in their network.  Or, maybe you find them by searching all Twitter’s tweets for certain keywords.   If you search for ‘nasa’ you’ll get back a list of tweets mentioning ‘nasa’.  You can skim through all the people tweeting to decide who you think has something useful to offer you and follow accordingly.

Twitter makes it just as easy to find every time you’ve been mentioned (offering lots of potential for measuring the success of online marketing efforts).  It allows you to send private, direct messages to people that you follow and who are following you.

Once you’ve created a Twitter account, there are many ‘Twitter clients’ you can use to manage your Twitter communications whether via a browser, your iPhone, a blackberry or your laptop.

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s brief, almost instantaneous and global.  It is faster than the news networks meaning – increasingly – that it’s the place for breaking news.  And it’s currently free.

On the plus side, Twitter is the fastest global communication tool currently out there with all the power and searchability of the internet built in.  It’s what social media is really all about.  It’s so good that it will kill Facebook off within a couple of years.  Use it to offer people valuable information and links and you’ll go far.  Use it to feed your overblown ego, on the other hand, and you’ll find yourself on a fast-track to damaging your reputation in no time.

Do’s:

  • Do give away useful information (via links or by ‘re-tweeting’ things other people have given away)
  • Do ‘big up’ other people in your network and get introductions going
  • Do be a real person (not a cool nickname and avatar)
  • Search for people talking about the things you care about and follow them

Don’ts:

  • Don’t follow people just to build up your numbers
  • Don’t try to use Twitter to get rich quick
  • Don’t be indiscreet (personally or professionally)
  • Don’t post 100 tweets a day, it’s really boring

World Business Directory / Expo-Guide: no wonder they get away with it

Aug 1 | by Sam Deeks | GRRRR!!!, Scambusters!
No Comments

Why do scams like World Business Guide and Expo-Guide get away with their fraudulent behaviour?

Because not a single one of the UK’s major, publicly-funded agencies have any idea they exist.

A search on the following websites gave no results whatsoever: Serious Fraud Office, Metropolitan Police Service, SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency), Home Office, CIFAS, IC3.

This fraud (and variants of it) have been known about for years.  The best (and disgraceful to report – ONLY) resource online about this nasty form of scam is Jules Woodell’s ‘StopECG‘ site.  Despite repeated personal attacks, JW has continued to wage war on these people single-handed.

If you’ve been scammed by these people (who use forms designed to trick you into signing a contract for services you think are free but in fact cost around £1000 a year for three years) then you ought to be disgusted that no-one in authority has any idea about it.

The fact that it’s down to people like Jules Woodell and, to a much lesser extent me, to try to stop people being defrauded is a national disgrace.  What’s even more worrying is how unaware government, police and legislators in this country are in respect of these matters.  And while that is the case, expect to be ripped off at pretty much every turn.

As an amusing yet depressing footnote to this post, my quick search for official online fraud advice turned up this nasty piece of work (below) masquerading as helpful advice. Exploitation at £1.50 a minute or more.

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