Drunken, expletive-laced rants are bad forum fodder.
It’s sad I have to say this, but…
When you’re the CEO and/or Lead Developer & co-owner of Company A, it’s usually counterproductive to your business efforts to hang out on Company B’s user forums bashing them and belting out drunken, late-night, expletive -laced rants about Company B.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened recently on the Flickr forums when Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk started dropping the F-bomb like it was nothing. Here’s an example:
This is not even slightly unprecedented. In fact, Thomas Hawk has been openly railing on Flickr for a very, very long time. (I’m not the first one to bring this up) I even debated the relative merits of this unsavory way of doing business with Thomas. He made the case that, as a flickr user, he has full right to rail on his competition, despite his connection to Zooomr. My response:
Your point about using multiple photo site is completely valid, at least to some extent. You’re right, many people have accounts all over the place. Personally, I’m on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and others. I regularly comment on the activities of those sites. I’ve railed on MySpace many times on my blog and other places.
But I’m also not the CEO of any of those sites. Can you imagine (Facebook CEO) Mark Zuckerberg creating a MySpace account and then take every opportunity to bash MySpace, no matter how politely? (I’m actually trying to think of examples of CEOs who use competitors services rather than putting their efforts into their own site…having a hard time of it)
You ask if some random Yahoo employee, as a Google user, has a right to complain about Google services. Sure they do, but with a significant caveat: Assuming they are able to dissociate their job from their private activities. A random programmer is certainly able to be "just a user" online, separate from his job (although this doesn’t apply in all cases), whereas Yahoo VP Bradley Logan is not at all able to separate his job from his private, hobby activities.
But I’ll give you an even more simple answer to your other question: Yes, working for a company is and should be a (type of) gag order on what you can do and say about your competition. That’s the professional and courteous thing to do.
Life is all about choices, and choosing to work for (or in your case, lead) company A absolutely restricts (if not outright prohibits) your ability to talk about company B. If you wanted the utter freedom to rail on company B, you should have become something other than the CEO of company B! If you were any other user, I’d have zero problem with you getting upset with Flickr’s policies and actions. But quite simply, you’re not just "any user", at least not any more.
The only bright spot of Thomas’ drunken rant, and the thread that surrounded it was the response from Stewart Butterfield (Original co-founder of Flickr, and now Yahoo’ Director of Product Management). Thomas could learn a lesson from Stewart about how to best respond to issues publicly.
And even that wouldn’t bother me so much if it didn’t seem like you think that’s a path to success. It’s not. You can’t win that way. You have to deliver: there are all kinds of variables and randomness and happenstance that goes into success, but you also have to offer a great product.
Despite my incredible respect for Thomas as a photographer, I’ve utterly lost respect for him as a business person. In fact, I find myself defending Flickr and rejecting everything that is Zooomr. If Thomas’ plan is to rail on Flickr in order to turn some users to Zooomr, it’s seems a highly ineffective strategy. Heck, the fact that I have to say "don’t drop F-bombs when you represent your company" is more than a little scary.
UPDATE: Thomas replies (he asked me to repost since he was having problems with my comments)
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5 Responses to “Drunken, expletive-laced rants are bad forum fodder.”
Thomas, thanks for stopping by and responding.
The link doesn’t see to be working quite right, but I assume you’re trying to help me understand the issue is about flickr and censorship. Perhaps to you it is. But to me, it’s a discussion about the appropriate, ethical, moral, and all around worthwhile behavior of a businessman and CEO.
I’ll ask a couple of very basic questions to help me clarify my point, as well as better understand your position:
1. Do you believe that you give up anything as flickr community member by agreeing to head Zooomr, a flickr competitor?
2a. Do you believe your behavior in public has affect on your own business?
2b. Do you believe your recent drunk posts were helpful to the Zooomr business?
3. Do you believe that your participation in flickr, both in photo posting and forum posting with links and discussion that points to Zooomr drives traffic to your own business’ site?
3b. If yes to 3., is that then a marketing strategy?
4. Would you feel comfortable with the CEO of Facebook blogging and creating a MySpace profile that pointed out, often and regularly, the problems with MySpace, regardless of his affiliation notification?
5. Do you feel that identifying yourself as the CEO of Zooomr is a “get out of jail free” card that allows you to say anything you want about Flickr without fear of repercussions from the blogosphere?
(More characters now to answer all this)
And just to reiterate for clarity - my point, my concern, and my blog post have nothing to do with whether or not Flickr is or is not doing something wrong.
The question is one of professional ethics.
Thanks Thomas, sorry about the trouble. I posted your comment as a new blog entry (along with my thoughts), and updated this post to include a link to that new post.
Thanks again for your willingness to discuss.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Jake, I tried to respond but I ran out of characters due to your comment form character limit.
I’ll just point you to this comment I recently left on my blog instead. I wouldn’t expect you to understand because you haven’t been part of the Flickr Community in the same way that I have. I do appreciate your criticism and feedback though.
http://thomashawk.com/2007/06/update-on-censorship-problem-on-flickr.html#1211174743702474165