Comments on: Hostage Marketing: Hot New Fad For 2010?

By: Maranda

Maranda — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:23:43 +0000

I’ve had my first experience with this recently with my cable company. I thought I had rid myself of them last year, but with a move I had to go back. They keep calling my personal cell phone (which has no connection to them) asking me if I would like to 1.) Upgrade and 2.) They’ll throw in Showtime for 6 months. My response is always the same, I’m already a customer, why are you pulling my cell number off my account to offer me something that I already have? My response will be to pull my account when my contract is up. They don’t care about me being a part of their business, they only want more money, losing me won’t hurt them and they know it.

By: Steve Perez

Steve Perez — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 05:19:37 +0000

I believe the only relevant movie reference I omitted is “Discovering the object of the game is the object of the game.” – The Game (1997- Michael Doulas – Sean Penn). I think Google and Microsoft have yet to figure it out, in a purely real time, metaphorical sense.

By: Nick Gowdy

Nick Gowdy — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:08:54 +0000

“…all the major search engines become self aware as one entity, like Skynet, and we then live our lives vicariously through them. Here come the Borg.”

Did you just combine Terminator, The Matrix, and Star Trek into some kind of superfuture? And yet, somehow, the idea of Google and Microsoft coming together is the least plausible aspect.

By: Steve Perez

Steve Perez — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:34:43 +0000

Along with Google’s launch of Real-Time Search, all the head spinning deals being brokered between search engines and social media outlets, a lot of folks are beginning to wonder just “Whose data (my data) is it anyway? theirs, ours, yours , the Feds?” In this case, the bloodied casualty of instant gratification search technology is privacy. Or, maybe, somewhere down the road, in the twinkling of an eye, all the major search engines become self aware as one entity, like Skynet, and we then live our lives vicariously through them. Here come the Borg.

By: Elisa

Elisa — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:49:48 +0000

Yep, it looks bad. On the blog they announced it like it was an exciting new era! Instead of apologizing, etc:

http://blog.imeem.com/2009/12/08/imeem-is-now-part-of-myspace/

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:46:59 +0000

Ha. Mental image, FTW. The problem is none of these businesses think about their customers or what their response to the action will be. They’re not even thinking that far. All they’re thinking about is those dollars signs — which is sad because dollar signs don’t generate themselves. You need people to do that and a lot of businesses are seriously pissing off those customers.

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:45:29 +0000

It’s all about the story, for me. Had they informed people about what was going on, that they were out of cash and that they had worked out a deal with MySpace so that users could keep their music and their playlists (blah blah), it’d be a very different conversation. Instead, you’re right – they just look like they sold out and didn’t care enough about their users to even tell them.

By: Elisa

Elisa — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:37:07 +0000

If you click on the imeem Twitter search link, you can see that most people don’t realize imeem sold out as a last resort (they were out of cash, up against license renewals and hit with a lawsuit); they just think, ‘Oh, it’s part of MySpace now, I guess they decided to suck.’ I guess you throw reputation management out the window when you’re about to die.

By: Nick Gowdy

Nick Gowdy — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:53:12 +0000

I can just imagine the short-sighted group-think that goes into businesses believing these are sound marketing decisions: “Yeah, spam the hell out of these peoples’ Inboxes. We might piss a lot of people off, but we’ll make up for it with a surge of sales to close the year! Then we’ll blame January’s bad numbers on the economy. That’s still doing bad, right?”

Meanwhile there’s the lone reputation manager sitting in the back of the room hating their life, but not having the spine or clout to stop it from happening.

By: Lisa Barone

Lisa Barone — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:50:03 +0000

I spent a good 30 min on the phone with Verizon as they were trying to get me to upgrade something. I kept telling them I wasn’t interested and the guy just wouldn’t stop talking. I hate hanging up on people but…after 30 minutes it was clear he wasn’t going to end his spiel no matter how disinterested I was. Sorry.