Category Archives: Web/Tech

One Real Case: Does Fake Buzz Work? Do Fake Reviews Work?

September 17, 2010Business Ethics, Marketing, Web/Tech, Weblogsamazon.com, reviewsTim Berry

Annoying, yes, but does it work? We all assume spam works because it keeps on coming, right? What about putting fake comments on blogs, faking reviews at amazon.com and elsewhere? We all hate those tactics when we see them, but the real question for today is whether or not those tactics actually work. Are the culprits better off?

Of course it’s hard as hell to get good data on a question like this, but I decided to track one case just to satisfy my curiosity.

There is a book for sale at amazon.com that was promoted last month by sneaky fake trackbacks on blogs. I’m not going to mention the book or its author because I don’t want to throw good publicity on bad.

I discovered the fake by accident. The same identical trackback appeared overnight on both of the two blogs I moderate, this one and Up and Running. Otherwise I might have just approved without checking because it was cleverly engineered to look like a legitimate link from another blog that was discussing my post, with a generic tag line like “good discussion on this issue here.”

Because of the coincidence, I clicked the link to check it first before approving it to show up as a trackback below the post. Instead of going (like it should) to a discussion that referenced my blog post, it went straight to the sell page of the same book on amazon.com. And it’s not a book related to the subject. It’s just a book on amazon.com.

I was annoyed. I bookmarked it to check back later.

I’m happy to report it doesn’t seem to have worked very well. Six weeks later, that book is ranked 996,133 in books.

And the book has three reviews, all five-star raves. And (no surprise) two of the three reviews are by people who have reviewed only two books in their life – this book and another book by the same author. They are allegedly by different people. What do you think? Are these just fake reviews? I think so.

I admit it. I want that book to fail. I want those tactics to fail. Seems mean, why wish ill on anyone, but still…

Is it Possible That MBAs, Like Wine, Need Aging?

September 10, 2010Business Education, MBA, WeblogsMBA, McKinsey Management ConsultingTim Berry

It occurs to me that I’ve had many good experiences, with hires and colleagues and business contacts, with people who had MBA degrees and years of experience. And I’ve had generally bad experiences with young MBAs fresh out of business school.

You could guess the reasons. Arrogance and entitlement come to mind.

Maybe it’s a matter of seasoning or tempering that fresh knowledge with some of the battering that comes later. Arrogance and entitlement leave a lot of sharp edges that time and experience wear down.

I am no different. As I got older, I found that my MBA studies gave me a better vision of the whole business, the forest as well as the trees; and I was glad for that. I’m sure that it helped me in business and was worth its weight in money many times over. And what I got from the degree wasn’t a higher salary, it was the knowledge to make my way on my own.

On the other hand, fresh out of business school, I recruited into a fancy and prestigious position with McKinsey Management Consulting, and I fell flat on my face. I disliked them, and they disliked me. (I did a post on that mistake here). I hated that job.

I’ve heard that fewer than one in five MBAs lasts even a year in the first job after business school.

Do you think there’s a pattern there?

(Image credit: JakubPavlinec/Shutterstock)

Whoops, my Bad: Blogging Tool Fail

September 7, 2010Weblogsblog fail, Windows Live WriterTim Berry

Whoops! Sorry. If you came here for ‘what I got from my business education,’ the confusion related to that title was my mistake. I posted the title accidentally, then deleted it. If you’re interested, I covered that topic in 2007 with reflections on My MBA Experience.

What happened was that I was changing options on my Windows Live Writer (which I use often and really like, by the way) on a new computer, using a new version, and I clicked too fast and accidentally posted something that was just that title: what I got from my business education.

Then, realizing my mistake, I quickly deleted it.

Meanwhile, two different well-meaning twitter friends tweeted it. I think they have some automatic settings. And that, I assume is how you got here.

And I’m enjoying the irony: for a while there, several hours, you could have clicked a link referencing me as the author of “what I got from business education,” and found the result was … nothing!

I am cynical, I do like to be contrarian, but that nothing that was there, a “page doesn’t exist” error, is not really my assessment of what I got from business education. I promise.

I was drafting something about that, which might still materialize, maybe in tomorrow’s post.

And Who Can Blame Her for Cutting Off Comments…

September 1, 2010Social media, WeblogsJolie O'DellTim Berry

Damn. It’s been a long day, some of my sites got hacked, a car didn’t start, and … well, you know how that goes. You have those days too. This will go up tomorrow morning but I’m mad as hell tonight, while writing it.

Just look at this picture:

What a damned shame. Who can blame her for shutting off comments? I don’t. I do blame the people who have about the same contribution to thought, writing, or culture as slash and burn vandals.

So here’s what happened:

I was settling in after dinner, checking some of my favorite sites, and I ran into Jolie O’Dell’s well researched, thoughtful women in tech: a realistic look at the numbers. This is an important subject, and she’s obviously done some real work digging into it. Like a journalist, I might add. I’ve been trying to cover this myself too, but she went beyond opinion, into some real numbers. It’s an excellent post.

I went to the comments, and WHAM, no comments. That’s disappointing. Then I discovered this, also by Jolie, a few days earlier: The Commenting Free for All is Over. At one point she says:

For the hundreds of nasty insults I’ve had to wade through, delete, or publish at my own peril, there have been only a handful of insightful comments that actually contribute to the conversation. In between the great comments and the crap ones, there are a sea of “me too” or “good for you” notes that, while encouraging, don’t necessarily justify having a comments section open to all.

You read a blog post, well written, well researched, and serious; and you get to the comments and welcome to real world ugly. Why is it that the gender inequality issues seem to heighten the stupidity underneath? Is that just me, or have you seen the same thing? And do I get the impression that this kind of trashing things behavior increases when the author’s a woman?

(Image credit: it was posted on Jolie O’Dell’s blog. You can click here for the original).

Is Personal Branding Really Impersonal Faking?

August 27, 2010Rants, WeblogsBrazen Careerist, Dan Schawbel, klout.com, Me 2.0, Megan Berry, personal branding. Arienne Holland, Raven ToolsTim Berry

Don’t get me wrong: I think the thinking behind it, the advice wrapped around the idea of personal branding, is excellent. I’ve recommended, for example, Dan Schawbel’s personal branding book Me 2.0 and I’m sticking to it. Dan has a great collection of real-world suggestions in that book. But I’m beginning to think I hate the term. And maybe some of what’s behind it.

Last Friday I read Personal Branding is Bullsh*t (cowardly * by me, not her) by Arienne Holland, communications director of Raven Tools. She writes:

A person doesn’t need a brand. A person is a person whether or not there is paperwork filed with the government. A child doesn’t create a personality, she has one.

She also objects to a magazine article recommending personal branding for employees of large companies:

If you want to travel between companies, you don’t need a personal brand, you need skills and character and friends.

This was already on my mind before reading that because of a conversation I’d had a few weeks ago with my daughter Megan, marketing manager at Klout.com. At the time I was talking about some of Dan Schawbel’s recommendations, and Megan shared that she didn’t like the term. She explained that recently in Why I Hate the Term “Personal Branding” on her blog:

“Worse yet, there’s the idea that this is something new. Personal branding is just a new way to talk about reputation. Well, you know what? Reputation is a much better word for that.

Personal branding implies you should be fake to make it (if you disagree, do let me know). Before you tweet, interact, blog, or walk down the street you need to think if it fits with the image you want to portray. Well, you know what, if there’s only one facet to your personality you’re not an excellent brand, you’re boring.”

She’s not objecting to the things we do as personal branding, at least not if it isn’t faked; instead, she is objecting to the term we use to describe it.

There’s a lot that I like about the whole field of personal branding, particularly the emphasis on actual people and authenticity and humans communicating with humans. But I admit, I hadn’t thought of the underlying meaning of the term “brand.” It does carry a sense of artificial to it, doesn’t it? It makes us think of Mad Men, advertising, consumer opinion research, and expensive image advertising like insurance companies and such, on a very large scale.

Are you the same thing as your brand? If so, then what’s the point?

Your Brain on Drugs? No, Your Brain on Computers.

August 26, 2010Personal Productivity, Technology, Web/TechMatt Richtel, New York TimesTim Berry

Remember the “your brain on drugs” commercials? You’d see the egg frying in the pan, and then the announcer’s voice would say “this is your brain on drugs.” What do you think of the Your Brain on Computers take on this? It makes it sound almost as bad as your brain on drugs.

That brain on computers theme is from the New York Times piece earlier this week, with the full and scary title: Your Brain on Computers – Overuse of Digital Devices May Lead to Brain Fatigue. This is not a pretty picture, but it’s the New York Times. And it cites research. So we have to believe it. Have to.

Author Matt Richtel (of the San Francisco bureau, of course, part of the Silicon Valley … everybody is petting their phones constantly) notes how people fill every last minute with connection. Waiting in line, exercising, they are also checking email or linking somewhere on their phones. He warns (with research studies to cite):

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

Me, I hate waiting in lines. No, come to think of it, make that HATE waiting in lines, with more emphasis. If I get trapped waiting for something, anything, I’ve got my phone in an instant. If I run out of email, then there’s twitter, or, if I’m really desperate, that novel I’ve been reading.

But studies, or so says this story, indicate that it’s not that simple. I should breath deeply and reflect on things, absorb things, maybe – God help us all – think. Here’s another quote:

Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university [of California], where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.

This would have worried me, if I’d stopped to think about it. Instead, I turned to my phone to check email.

(Image credit: Roman Sigaev/Shutterstock)

5 Reasons Not To Build That Online Community

August 25, 2010Social media, Technology, Web/TechMarc Andreessen, ningTim Berry

Trends? “Let’s develop a community,” they say, meaning an online community. Search google for let’s develop a community and you get 23 million hits. You tell me: is there a marketing meeting brainstorming web opportunities that doesn’t include an online community?

So, contrarian hat on my head, I want to list some reasons not to develop that online community you and your team have been talking about. I don’t want to be negative … but still …

1. So many communities already.

How many logins can anybody manage? We’re lost in a sea of communities. Each assumes we’re going to log in regularly, check messages, look around, see what’s new, respond to people, and interact. Realistically, though, how many times are you going to do that in a single day?

We’re dealing with several hundred already-established social media communities. There’s Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn, plus all those others. And then there are those school sites, alumni sites, home town sites, media sites, fan sites, in sites, over sites, and hind sites … never ending. Who can deal with that?

2. Ning, a cool idea, grows up. And gives up Free.

Do you know Ning? One of Marc Andreeson’s brainchildren, it produced hundreds of millions of dollars for its founders, and countless similar-look-and-feel community sites that all did one version or another of community, with log-in, profiles, friending, posting, and so on.

I’ve had notice in recent weeks as one after another of those sites closes shop. Ning is focused on the corporate enterprise market, where there’s money to be billed. And all of those community sites were competing with all of the other ones for your and my limited time available. It wasn’t working.

3. Oh the spam! The never-ending spam!

I’ve been involved with maybe half a dozen serious efforts by major business media and related organizations to build an online community of entrepreneurs, small business owners, and assorted interested parties. I won’t mention names here because I’m involved with most of them, like the people, would like them to work; but they don’t.

The self-serving shallow sales message, some of them thinly disguised, most of them blatant, end up flooding these sites like sewage from a failed treatment plant. Who wants to look at messages when they’re all that? The supposed or alleged interaction, the likes and votes and all, are similarly polluted with commercial sludge. It’s a shame, but it’s also reality.

4. Those disappointing messages.

The business community sites are also flooded with messages that ask authors and experts to summarize, presumably in a couple of paragraphs or so, the thousands of pages already published on that same topic. I know these people mean well, and I like to answer questions. But it would be a lot nicer if they’d look at the site they’re on first, rather than just asking for a three paragraph summary of 50 good pieces already posted.

I get it. They’d like to have it all in a personal message. But it isn’t really that simple. It takes reading all the ins and outs and on the other hands. So that email doesn’t work. And the authors who get it are disappointed, because they thought they’d already answered that question, and put it on the web where people could get it.

5. The molten lava landscape is cooling into solid ground.

I doubt it’s coincidence that two of the three Ning sites I think of first are giving up the Ning model and moving over to Facebook like instead. It’s human ability to support so many different motifs that ends up pushing us all towards a few big ones. With Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, we have consolidated logins, comments, links, suggestions, and updates.

It seems to happen a lot. The winners emerge, the also-rans fade, and the business landscape solidifies.

Please, don’t do that online community you were thinking of.

Do, however, focus on one or more of the already-existing online communities and make it work for you, and your business.

5 Tips On the Art of Saying No in Business

August 18, 2010Entrepreneurship, WeblogsCreativity, ideas, innovation, Management, StrategyTim Berry

Strategy is focus, which is about saying no. Management, particularly in the world of entrepreneurship and small business, boils down to knowing when and how to say no. On the surface, from the outside, that probably seems simple. But try it and it gets a lot more complex.

For example, how do you say no to a new idea without stifling the flow of other new ideas? How do you say no to a bright young enthusiastic person without dampening that enthusiasm? Saying no can be as hard as nails.

Still, you really have to be able to say no to manage a company. And not just to not-so-good ideas, but — and here’s where it really hurts — sometimes even to good ideas that just won’t fit into the space allotted. You need to say no to some things to have any shot at strategic focus. It blends in nicely with the principle of displacement, which is basically that everything you do rules out other things that you don’t do. And you can’t do everything.

I have no delusions about being good at saying no. But maybe that’s why I’m sensitive to the problem. I do have some tips, developed through the years, that might help you.

1. Recognize the problem.

It starts with recognizing the problem. Yes, you have to say no; but realize that every no answer reduces the chance of another idea or suggestion coming forward. Be very mindful of the problem. You’ve got a strike against you. Be aware of it.

You’ve got some explaining to do.

2. Blame the company, and the situation, not the idea itself.

It wasn’t a bad idea, it’s that this company needs to do something differently right now because of these company-related reasons. Actually it’s a great idea and it’s really disappointing that we don’t have the resources to jump on it now. We’re stuck in this valley and we need to get up on that hill so we can start working on great ideas like this one.

3. Blame displacement.

So, given displacement, it’s not that your idea isn’t great; it’s that we can’t jump on it without pulling off of some of the things we’re already doing. What do you think? Which of our priorities can we adjust? Where do we cut time, money, effort, and resources from something else so we can get them for this new thing. Where do you think those other things are off base?

4. Reward the idea and suggestion.

You can fight the sting of a rejected idea by rewarding the person even without adopting the idea. “Even though we can’t move forward with that, I love the creativity and that you made the suggestion,” you say, “so take somebody out to dinner with the company card.” Or give some other immediate reward, a small bonus, extra time off, whatever works in your context.

5. Keep an idea archive for the future.

Find somewhere in your organization to keep a file on new ideas and suggestions. Just putting them into the file reduces the sting of having said no. And sometimes that file becomes a source for solutions to future problems. It’s a quick way to give value to the ideas that didn’t fit, and reinforce the organization’s respect for ideas and suggestions, even without implementing them.

iPhone, Luvya and All That, but Couldya Clean This Up?

August 16, 2010Software, TechnologyApple Computer, iPhone, SoftwareTim Berry

It’s not like I don’t know how to read around this, but with all the slickness of the iPhone, why allow this simple error? The high for the day is 92 degrees when the current temperature is 100 degrees? Isn’t that just sloppy?

There is no computer language that doesn’t have an IF- THEN clause capable of making this look good. Call the high temperature that was there when we started the day H, and the actual temperature A. I don’t program iPhones but whoever does has the ability to do this:

If A > H, then H = A

Which would replace the 92 with the 100. Why not? Wouldn’t that look better? What bothers me is my own in-my-mind related if-clause:

If a logical error like this one, as obvious as this one is, shows up in this obvious a place, what’s going on with the system software in the core?

Software does have its production values, and it’s not like Apple Computer doesn’t have the resources. My guess is they’ve decided to let us keep the predicted high as a reference value, so we can compare it to the actual. Still, is it just me?