Community Guy – Jake McKee

A book we don’t need…

I suppose this was bound to happen, whether it should have or not:

Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies

Another Great Quote

Martin passed this great quote along:

Nobody believes the official spokesman… but everybody trusts an unidentified source.

-Ron Nesen 

Welcome to Community Development!

Flame Wars – by design

Clay Shirky takes a look at flame wars as part of the process of any mailing list or forum.

A shining example

I love great customer service experiences.

For Christmas, my folks bought me an iTalk for my iPod. I had originally picked up a Belkin Universal Microphone Adapter in order to plug in an headset mic for the Community Guy podcasts I’m working on. The Belkin worked like a champ and I was very impressed. But since I got the iTalk as a gift, I returned the UMA. Plus, the iTalk has a speaker, which is pretty cool.

Stupidly, I didn’t test the iTalk before returning the UMA. The speaker volume was pretty low, even at full volume. And today, when testing, it wasn’t picking up the microphone signal unless I absolutely yelled at the top of my lungs.

So after doing a google search (no results really) and searching the Griffin site, I decided to call their customer support. After hitting 2 for tech support, a real live person picked up. A terribly nice guy who immediately was offering to send me a replacement unit. He said the newer units had some improvements and since the Apple Store likely had the old batch still, he’d send it out. In 3-5 days, it’ll be here. I could have paid to have it shipped faster, but didn’t want to spend the cash.

This is yet more positive experiences from a company who clearly understands their consumers. The “get it”. Not only do they offer up cool stuff in response to what people are asking for, they’re presenting ideas for cool stuff that us iPod folks haven’t even thought about yet.

Good work Griffin. Don’t let me down in 3-5 days!

What is Flickr

An interesting look at the question “What is Flickr“:

I?ve been trying for a week or so to figure out what flickr is. I mean I know it?s a photo sharing site, but what makes it so damn interesting? Then, last night, I finally figured it out: flickr is a MMORPG.

Really, it should have been obvious, since the site is literally a MMORPG (it?s built on the old Game Neverending code, which is why you?ll see files ending in .gne on flickr). And Ludicorp says as much on their homepage (?Groupware for Play. We?re building a better platform for real time interaction online.?), but for some reason I was tricked into thinking it was more like iPhoto crossed with Friendster than Ultima Online.

Why does this make flickr successful where Friendster, Orkut, et al fall flat? I believe it?s because flickr?s designers are among the first (I can?t think of others but they surely exist) who have grokked video game design and (more to the point) figured out how to translate it to the web. What does this mean? It means that, unlike say Zoto, which is just a tool for storing and sharing photos, flickr is inherently, down-to-its-bones about play. If you look at a list of the elements of a successful game, they are all present in flickr: a sense of space to explore, a range of challenges, a range of abilities which can succeed, the need for preparation and skill, a variable feedback system.

The Long Tail Blog

The author of the fantastic article in Wired recently, “The Long Tail“, now has a blog. Great reading.

Great Quote

“Saying Windows is equal to Macintosh is like finding a potato that looks like Jesus and believing you’ve witnessed the second coming.”

- Guy Kawasaki

Blogging Admissions

The MBA program at Wharton is using “Student Diaries” (i.e. blogs) as a recruiting tool.

They have also created an “Admissions Blog“. Very slick. Nice way to show your incoming students that you’re teaching new principles, not the biz concepts from decades past.

Community Bubble

The FCC and FAA are discussing allowing cell phones on planes.

Just when air travel seems to have become our national gripe, along comes a possibility to make us appreciate flight as we now know it: A cabin full of people talking, loudly and simultaneously, on their cell phones.

Hear the prayer of frequent flier Bill Kalmar of Lake Orion, Mich.: “There are so few places these days where we can escape cell phones, pagers, BlackBerrys and CNN. Please let my airline flight be the last comfortable, quiet cocoon that is left to me where I can get lost in my own thoughts.”

Fortunately they are asking for feedback before they make any decision.

Besides the large annoyance factor of having multiple people scream over the noise of a plane at 30,000 feet, there’s something else that troubles me about this.

Planes are one of the last vestiges of pure social interaction. Since cell phones and other communication methods aren’t allowed, you are nearly forced to talk to people. I regularly interact with the people in the seat next to me, simply to have something to do. I doubt I’m alone in this, and I would be surprised if this dropped off siginificantly if anyone could make a phone call.

Oh, and for crying outloud, how annoying would this be??

Google Christmas Evangelism

In another stroke of Google genius (those two words more and more seem to be associated, don’t they?), they’ve released a pretty cool method of enabling Google evangelism.

 We’ve packaged all our software tools into a convenient holiday keepsake that fits nicely into a stocking or adds a festive touch to that new computer you’re giving your beloved. It’s absolutely free to download, free to install and free to use, so no mucking about with gift receipts. There’s Google Desktop Search and the Picasa photo organizer and the Google Toolbar and the Google Deskbar — a veritable cornucopia of time-saving Google products for the PC. And it’s all yours for the giving with just one click. We’ve even provided festive gift certificates and handcrafted packaging artwork so you can burn your own gift CD. The Gift of Google is appropriate for all ages and connection speeds. Batteries not included.

They call it a keepsake, I call it a pretty amazing marketing device. This cost minimal money to develop, and the distribution and production is absolutely zero cost – since users are creating CDs and distibuting themselves.

Once again, great job Google!