Twitter is a fascinating product. If you haven't heard of it (really?), it allows people to post short micro-blogs from a cellphone, blackberry, the Web, etc. The classic "Twitter is so useful story" is the guy who posts "I'm in INSERT CITY, where can I find some good sushi?" and they got 10 thoughtful responses/suggestions..... I think of it as sort of a group IM.
It is growing at a crazy pace, all the cool kids on the Internet claim to be addicts and it has the kind of media buzz/attention that the rest of us dream of.
I have tried Twitter, but to be honest, when it works for me (which is less than you would think, given its popularity), the experience is not that great.
I Twitter poorly. I got no game.
I'm sometimes funny, I am an OK writer, but I have no, um, zip on Twitter. No gift for Twitter gab. A little dry. Nothing going on. Ugh. Also, most of my real-world friends either don't use it or do use it even more sporadically than I do. I can see that if you are young and in San Francisco that Twitter would be tons of fun ("big party at Zeke's"), unfortunately (or fortunately) I am neither.
On Twitter you can follow the posts (tweets) of other Twitter users. I follow an odd mix of people - tech bloggers, VCs, friends from previous jobs, crazies, people that follow me. My favorite person that I follow is the Zappos CEO, Tony. He keeps this semi-insane schedule that makes me feel better about my own. He's funny, he has an interesting life, he is the CEO of a cool company that I actually use, he lives in Vegas, a town I know semi-well, he posts about the right amount (enough-to-keep-you-interested-but-not-so-much-you-get-burned-out). But I don't know him, so I'm not sure even he can keep my interest forever.
It does feel occasionally creepy to know someone's sked when you don't know them - I know that Tony, the Zappos guy had a big party over the 4th, that he was in NYC for a day a few weeks ago, etc. I don't post my own schedule online as I think that it feels like advertising you are out of town, sort of "hey - go steal my stuff!" but I'm clearly in the minority (see here, here). This is something reporters, athletes, sportscasters and TV anchors have had to deal with for years (all of whom have way more stuff to steal than me), so I suspect I'm just being silly/paranoid.
I think "courtesy" could kill twitter. (if their IT doesn't first - when you have a Facebook group dedicated to your downtime, when super-influential tech bloggers like Michael Arrington tweet "jesus twitter sucks" it seems safe to say it isn't going well technology-wise). Courtesy dictates that in general, you should follow people that follow you - yet I get probably 2-5 follows a day (I suspect the top twitter'ers get 100s/day or 1,000s) from people that are using the time-tested method of following everyone they possibly can, in the hopes that a small percentage will follow them - and an even smaller percentage will go to their site, buy their product, whatever.
full disclosure - we do this a bit. We have been testing a twitterfeed of our site articles at twitter.com/d360. It is working ok, but not driving much traffic, so I'm not yet convinced it is worth the effort (granted, the effort is minimal)....
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Closing in on 10,000 members...
We have about 8,900 members of our site, divorce360.com. At our current rate of adds, we should hit 10,000 in July. We should commemorate such a milestone, but how? Any ideas?
PS - if you havent already, join today!
PS - if you havent already, join today!
Madonna divorcing?
According to one study, Catholics divorce at a lower rate than the general population....
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Feeding the Fussies
So a few months ago, we had a family over for a little BBQ. Hey, it’s Florida, so we can eat out and throw the kids in the pool 365 days a year. So I bust out the Weber (I’m a purist – charcoal only!) and start grilling.
No cook here, but I can grill the big three (“B3”) - chicken, burgers and ‘dogs - with the best of ‘em. So I am about 5 minutes into the prep and the Guest Mom (no names, call me a wuss!) sidles over and asks what I am doing.
I don’t really know her well, so I laugh and announce I am (trying) to prepare the grill the “B3.”
It turns out her kids don’t eat any of those.
And by the way, Guest Dad wants his burger “Charred on the outside, but super rare” (is that even possible? Given my very basic grilling skills, the answer is no!). Guest Mom wants her chicken “Well-cooked, to avoid diseases, but not overcooked”?! Really? Who doesn’t?
He wants Becks beer. Sorry. We have both kinds of beer - Bud and Bud Light.
One kid wants Motts Apple juice (only Motts! Is he related to them or something?).
I smile and nod politely, but inside I’m thinking “How soon can I show these tools the door?” Of course, no doors were shown in the name of marital harmony.
Next were the sides – unfortunately my daughter made the salad with – horrors – dressing already on it (not on the side), which was the cause of great consternation and concern. One of their kids wouldn’t eat tomatoes that had touched another food (and the tomatoes were nuzzling some onions I think). And of course, the chips weren’t “Baked.”
The condiments were a disaster – no fat free mayonnaise, wrong brand of ketchup (I tore the label off in an attempt to fool the kid) and I think we were without some fancy mustard. Yellow only.
We entertain enough to know this is a onetime thing (literally), but…. Whatever happened to manners? Are our kids growing up in a world where their EVERY whim is law? (7-up not Sprite? No chocolate chips? Yes, dear, Daddy is on it!) .
Ugh.
I swear – If you invite me to your home, we will be 10 minutes late, we will bring you little gift as a thank you for having us over and we will not whine. At all.
Unless you serve Hunts.
No cook here, but I can grill the big three (“B3”) - chicken, burgers and ‘dogs - with the best of ‘em. So I am about 5 minutes into the prep and the Guest Mom (no names, call me a wuss!) sidles over and asks what I am doing.
I don’t really know her well, so I laugh and announce I am (trying) to prepare the grill the “B3.”
It turns out her kids don’t eat any of those.
And by the way, Guest Dad wants his burger “Charred on the outside, but super rare” (is that even possible? Given my very basic grilling skills, the answer is no!). Guest Mom wants her chicken “Well-cooked, to avoid diseases, but not overcooked”?! Really? Who doesn’t?
He wants Becks beer. Sorry. We have both kinds of beer - Bud and Bud Light.
One kid wants Motts Apple juice (only Motts! Is he related to them or something?).
I smile and nod politely, but inside I’m thinking “How soon can I show these tools the door?” Of course, no doors were shown in the name of marital harmony.
Next were the sides – unfortunately my daughter made the salad with – horrors – dressing already on it (not on the side), which was the cause of great consternation and concern. One of their kids wouldn’t eat tomatoes that had touched another food (and the tomatoes were nuzzling some onions I think). And of course, the chips weren’t “Baked.”
The condiments were a disaster – no fat free mayonnaise, wrong brand of ketchup (I tore the label off in an attempt to fool the kid) and I think we were without some fancy mustard. Yellow only.
We entertain enough to know this is a onetime thing (literally), but…. Whatever happened to manners? Are our kids growing up in a world where their EVERY whim is law? (7-up not Sprite? No chocolate chips? Yes, dear, Daddy is on it!) .
Ugh.
I swear – If you invite me to your home, we will be 10 minutes late, we will bring you little gift as a thank you for having us over and we will not whine. At all.
Unless you serve Hunts.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Comcast 2.0
Success!
Ok, so 4 hours after blogging my semi-humorous attempt to "chat" with Comcast customer service, i got a blog comment from....
Comcast customer service. "Call us, happy to help." (read for yourself, below)
I did and they were.
Literally one day later - and one service call later - my Internet works fantastic. The power of the blog! Who knew?
Ok, so 4 hours after blogging my semi-humorous attempt to "chat" with Comcast customer service, i got a blog comment from....
Comcast customer service. "Call us, happy to help." (read for yourself, below)
I did and they were.
Literally one day later - and one service call later - my Internet works fantastic. The power of the blog! Who knew?
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Preemptive strike! Comcast has a new way to deal with customers
I am very sympathetic to customer service / tech support reps. I suspect it is a thankless job.
I am our family "tech" and have spent many an hour hooking up my relatives stuff: Tivo's, Ipods, computers, routers, etc. It is not always easy to explain things to them over the phone (“O.K. on the Tivo remote, press the ‘thumbs up’ button three times…”) - I have learned this the hard way!!
Comcast supplies my home Internet connection. It has been a bit buggy for the past month or so - not a huge deal, but annoying. It just drops out for a few minutes every 10-15 minutes or so. While watching TV last night, I thought I would see if Tech Support at Comcast had anything to say.
It is important you understand – I have rarely called Comcast customer service, I had not called in at least six months and I had never complained about this particular issue before…
Here is the transcription of our chat (note – I deleted the rep's last name and for readability took out some of the line breaks and time stamps, but the rest is a complete and unedited transcript of our chat – including all typos... )
---------------------------------------------------------
Comcast chat room for Internet Tech Support – Sun Jun 01 2008 22:18:38 GMT-0400 (EDT)
After waiting approximately 45 minutes, I reach the top of the cue and begin my conversation
user GC has entered room
GC > we are having intermittent internet issues. it goes fine for 5 mins then dies for a minute or two, then its back. I have rebooted the cable modem many times....
analyst Angelica has entered room
Angelica > Hello GC_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Angelica. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Angelica > I understand.
GC > ok
Angelica > GC, I understand that we need to get this matter resolved and We are doing everything we can to resolve this concern. The outage is really affecting a lot of people and we have our best engineers and technicians working to get this ironed out. But instead of chatting or talking to another rep and still would not get anywhere, I would want to suggest to you to instead make use of the time to do some worthwhile activities while the outage is being fixed. That way, it would not get you to the hassle of waiting on queue for the next available representative or argueing with someone to get things done since the outage is now being worked on.
GC > what? this is my first time emailing in - i havent argured with ayone
Angelica > I understand.
Angelica > We just wanted to reassure you that the outage will be lifted a few hours from now.
GC > so you are saying everyone has this problem? i have had it a month or so
Angelica > Yes, GC.
Angelica > It is affecting nationally.
GC > so everyone in the US has had spotty internet for the last month?
Angelica > Yes, GC.
GC > wow, ok
Angelica > But do not worry, Comcast is doing everything in its power to restore internet back. The engineers are working on it right now.
---------------------------------------------------------
And that was that.
Somethings speak for themselves... (although I must add I love the part about how I should do something more productive with my time than wait for them to tell me what is wrong.....)
For what it is worth, my connection did seem better last night.
I am our family "tech" and have spent many an hour hooking up my relatives stuff: Tivo's, Ipods, computers, routers, etc. It is not always easy to explain things to them over the phone (“O.K. on the Tivo remote, press the ‘thumbs up’ button three times…”) - I have learned this the hard way!!
Comcast supplies my home Internet connection. It has been a bit buggy for the past month or so - not a huge deal, but annoying. It just drops out for a few minutes every 10-15 minutes or so. While watching TV last night, I thought I would see if Tech Support at Comcast had anything to say.
It is important you understand – I have rarely called Comcast customer service, I had not called in at least six months and I had never complained about this particular issue before…
Here is the transcription of our chat (note – I deleted the rep's last name and for readability took out some of the line breaks and time stamps, but the rest is a complete and unedited transcript of our chat – including all typos... )
---------------------------------------------------------
Comcast chat room for Internet Tech Support – Sun Jun 01 2008 22:18:38 GMT-0400 (EDT)
After waiting approximately 45 minutes, I reach the top of the cue and begin my conversation
user GC has entered room
GC > we are having intermittent internet issues. it goes fine for 5 mins then dies for a minute or two, then its back. I have rebooted the cable modem many times....
analyst Angelica has entered room
Angelica > Hello GC_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Angelica. Please give me one moment to review your information.
Angelica > I understand.
GC > ok
Angelica > GC, I understand that we need to get this matter resolved and We are doing everything we can to resolve this concern. The outage is really affecting a lot of people and we have our best engineers and technicians working to get this ironed out. But instead of chatting or talking to another rep and still would not get anywhere, I would want to suggest to you to instead make use of the time to do some worthwhile activities while the outage is being fixed. That way, it would not get you to the hassle of waiting on queue for the next available representative or argueing with someone to get things done since the outage is now being worked on.
GC > what? this is my first time emailing in - i havent argured with ayone
Angelica > I understand.
Angelica > We just wanted to reassure you that the outage will be lifted a few hours from now.
GC > so you are saying everyone has this problem? i have had it a month or so
Angelica > Yes, GC.
Angelica > It is affecting nationally.
GC > so everyone in the US has had spotty internet for the last month?
Angelica > Yes, GC.
GC > wow, ok
Angelica > But do not worry, Comcast is doing everything in its power to restore internet back. The engineers are working on it right now.
---------------------------------------------------------
And that was that.
Somethings speak for themselves... (although I must add I love the part about how I should do something more productive with my time than wait for them to tell me what is wrong.....)
For what it is worth, my connection did seem better last night.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Adweek article
Adweek wrote a piece on divorce360.com (our site) and our efforts.
Definitely a great read! Obviously, I am a bit biased...
Definitely a great read! Obviously, I am a bit biased...
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