Comments for Rethink

Comment on Disaster with Zazzle, Kinkos to the Rescue, or is it FedEx Office? by WhiteheadCaitlin

WhiteheadCaitlin — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:52:31 +0000

Don't you recognize that it is correct time to get the home loans, which can make your dreams come true.

Comment on Disaster with Zazzle, Kinkos to the Rescue, or is it FedEx Office? by Bob Williams

Bob Williams — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:11:26 +0000

Ric – Too funny. I’m easily distracted by stuff and would get plastered with those stickers quickly.

Embedded in the story is a great example of how an organization was not customer focused.

Thanks for sharing.

-Bob

Comment on Disaster with Zazzle, Kinkos to the Rescue, or is it FedEx Office? by Todd Oberman

Todd Oberman — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:52:30 +0000

Good thing you but a squirrel sticker on this blog entry. Nuff said.

Comment on 10 worst customer service experiences of the last year by Eben

Eben — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 22:49:42 +0000

Guud stuff Ric.. (: Aftur all the numburs are crunchud und all the partnurs sourced, sometumes dialung back un a little luve und personaluty cun be the challunge.. (:

Comment on Could Rovio or CCP kill Microsoft or Google? by Ric Merrifield

Ric Merrifield — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 17:36:11 +0000

No argument that they could buy them. I think you missed the point of the blog.

Comment on Could Rovio or CCP kill Microsoft or Google? by Joe

Joe — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 05:00:29 +0000

Are you fucking brain dead? Microsoft could buy both of these tiny companies a million times over, and them some. Or they could squash them like a frickin’ bug. When Rovio does something other than getting lucky by ripping of an old PC flash game, let me know. They’re living off Angry Birds, which is completel ripoff of Crush the Castle, which existed long before anyone even knew who the hell Rovio was.

This is dumbest damn article I’ve ever read in my life.

Comment on Why did Linkedin beat Plaxo? by Bob Williams

Bob Williams — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:52:08 +0000

I abandoned my Plaxo profile several years ago for three reasons:
1. I had a duplicate professional address book on LinkedIn
2. I thought aggregating my social presence was cool, but I was ahead of my friends in this space. No one really cared.
3. I had a personal address book in GMail.

So it became a place that didn’t add incremental value to my daily routine.

LinkedIn added something unique. A professional profile, which really became an on-demand resume. It was more than an address book and soon added other features such as groups, Q&A, company profiles etc.

Comment on Why did Linkedin beat Plaxo? by josh

josh — Tue, 24 May 2011 14:42:41 +0000

Ric, I recall that plaxo actually stumbled a couple of times really badly in terms of the end user experience. both LI and plaxo tried a strategy of plugins for outlook to pull C drive based contacts up into the cloud but in Plaxo’s case I remember having a very bad experience where it corrupted my local PST. I also remember Plaxo getting aggressive about sending “update your information emails” — it was a horrible spammy user experience. And also cross marketing. They were much more spammy than LinkedIn ever was. As a result of the bad tech instability (I doubt I was the only one who had a bad experience with Plaxo’s plugin) and their spammy aggressive marketing culture I began to see Plaxo as less trustworthy… Lastly, I think LinkedIn was building a hub and a community, place where you wanted to develop and manage a profile, have a presence and a directory where you could go to learn more about someone and understand their background and experience. I don’t recall Plaxo ever developing that kind of strategy. Plaxo stayed my lower on the food chain and focused on trying to aggregate and sync contacts as opposed to develop a profile platform community system that people would manage and develop. Of all these things, I think Plaxo lost because they lost my trust… and with a professional profile and contacts management you don’t want to risk losing that info much less sharing it with a service provider that may abuse it. That all contributed to me completely ditching plaxo around 2001…

Comment on Why did Linkedin beat Plaxo? by Preston Smalley

Preston Smalley — Tue, 24 May 2011 03:06:09 +0000

As the current GM of Plaxo.com here’s how I see the situation:
1. When Plaxo was trying to compete with LinkedIn (in 2008/2009) it was not focused enough on the business customer’s needs as it was still trying to go after social aggregation (ala FriendFeed). Add do that the fact that LinkedIn was also ahead in terms of engaged business customers and the outcome isn’t all that surprising.
2. As of early 2010 around when I joined Plaxo, our focus shifted away from LinkedIn and back to its original purpose of keeping address books up-to-date and in sync across all your devices and email offerings. In this new positioning we see Plaxo’s new value proposition as complimentary to LinkedIn and focused on staying in touch with the people you already know (vs. the ones you want to meet).

Related references:
Plaxo CEO TechCrunch Interview (Apr 2010): http://tcrn.ch/m4801l
Relaunch of Plaxo (Mar 2011): http://bit.ly/pa-release
Plaxo Product Line: http://www.plaxo.com/products

Comment on Why did Linkedin beat Plaxo? by Travis

Travis — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:28:16 +0000

LinkedIn positioned itself better. It offered a value prop to people — connect and network with people you already know. Plaxo, on the other hand, offered me no value prop — go in and update information so your friend can stay up to date.

I had one friend who used Plaxo. The emails they sent were beyond obnoxious — they stank of, “Wow look at this cool opportunity! We will allow you to go into your friend’s address book and change your address! How cool is that?!?”