EchoDitto - Business

It's National Customer Service Week! - posted by Anne Keenan

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:49:04 -0700

These are the reasons I keep up with Twitter—so that I know this week is National Customer Service Week (thanks @perks!). Perfect timing, as I’ve been thinking a lot about how companies go right (and oh so wrong) online.

Example #1: FreshDirect/Asking for Feedback
I love FreshDirect. Now, I understand that some of you may not know about FreshDirect, having the misfortune to live somewhere outside of the NYC delivery zone. If you don’t know it/love it yet, FreshDirect is an online supermarket that delivers directly to your house, 5th floor walk up and all. Although I’m sure I could spend an entire post lauding their intuitive layout, informative emails, and incredibly delicious foods, today I want to talk about their surveys.

More than any other company I know, FreshDirect asks its customers for feedback on everything from the appearance of their delivery personnel to the freshness of their fruit and vegetables. They use a service called Linescale that lets you place choices next to each other on a continuum, which I find much more intuitive than a Likert-type scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. But that’s neither here nor there—I fill each survey out diligently and thoughtfully because they actually change their service, based on the survey results. Amazing! Four days after I completed my survey online, I got an email in my inbox describing the results and a list of 10 improvements they were making in response.

This sounds simple—ask your customers for feedback, listen, and adjust your service accordingly—but it’s rarely implemented. It made me think: what if all companies sincerely asked for feedback from users, and actually made changes based on the results?

Example #2: The Container Store/Seamless Online-Offline Experience
I love the Container Store. They have exactly what I’m looking for, every time. While I think their online store could be easier to navigate, their customer service truly gets it right when it comes to merging the online and offline experience. An example: only after I bought my apartment did I understand that it only has two closets—not a lot of storage for a girl who likes to color-code her sweaters. Looking to make the most out of my limited space, I went to the Container Store to design some closet solutions (hold off on judging me, just for a second…). In the store they made me a perfect system that I managed to install myself. So I did the same thing for my office closet—this time on the phone.

Now I’m moving things around and needed to adapt a few things. I went online, added everything to my cart, but when I went to check out I had a question. So I called customer service, and here is where the magic begins. First, my customer service rep, whom I’ll call Donna, pulled up all of my existing designs—both the one designed in the store and the one from the phone. Then she accessed my online shopping cart, added a few impulse items I picked out while we chatted, checked for product availability at the 6th avenue store, took my payment, and set up a time later that day when I could pick the entire order up.

Again, it sounds so easy—of course the store should be able to view your past transactions, access your current online list, and see stock in their retail locations. But it never happens. Retail locations are more often like little fiefdoms run by jealous tyrants (“Oh, no, we don’t have that here. You could call around to other stores in the area…” “Could you just check?” “No, I can’t.”); corporate headquarters generally seem to have no connection to their stores (“Well, you can buy that online…” “I’m actually next to a store, can you tell me if it’s there?” “No, sorry, I can’t do that.”); and online *never* integrates with offline (“well, I’m looking for the one that matches the one I bought online a week ago.” “Oh, then you’ll have to do that online. We don’t have access to that system.”).

I guess I understand how these bureaucracies can build up, with systems layered on systems, not communicating with each other, but the Container Store gives us a glimpse of how the future can be.

Example #3: Clicktime/Creepy
At EchoDitto, we use a time-tracking system called Clicktime. Mostly, I find it incredibly frustrating, but I think it’s part my fault: trying to remember how I broke my time out into all of my different clients; and partly their fault: a tedious interface and slow response times. I was griping to colleagues on Twitter: “Why do I find clicktime so tedious? Any tricks to make it better?” My colleagues didn’t come through this time, instead I got a message from Clicktime themselves: “@akeenan Can we help you? Please email support@clicktime.com.” Creepy.

I understand rationally that Clicktime customer service probably searches Twitter every day or so for mentions of its products, and responds directly. I appreciate that technique in spirit. In practice, however, it feels like being caught by the teacher passing notes. “Do you have something to share with the whole class, Ms. Keenan?” Uh, no? I was just talking to my friends?

Also, I didn’t appreciate that the onus was put back on me to follow up. At least send me a link to tips, or respond to my comment directly. A general suggestion to contact customer service is exactly what I don’t need.

Summary
It feels amazing when a company really puts clients first—thinking through how to make shopping online and offline a seamless experience for the customer, or asking for feedback and then really listening to it. What if we all stopped for a minute to ask our clients what works and what doesn’t, and then adapted our practices to make their experience as enjoyable as possible?

Probably a lot more sentences that begin with “I love.”

Got Scrum? - posted by Cristen Perks

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:40:06 -0800

If you do, you're probably better off than you think.

In case you're a client or partner of mine and were wondering--- I'm alive and well. I just completed a two-day training on agile project management given by Sanjiv Augustine of LitheSpeed. I have to admit it, I'm kind of a sucker for information organization and process theory.

Even though I may be a process junky, I'm generally pretty skeptical about any type of training. Am I going to learn anything? Will I be able to apply this to what I do? What is the point?

Turns out that agile methods (with their roots in lean production and thus lean thinking) isn't too far a departure from the way that we currently do work. I was amazed at how applicable agile methods are to all types of processes - even the training facilitation. Specifically, we spent a lot of time studying the scrum method.

Agile project management takes the project planning phase and blows it into pieces. Instead of doing all the planning in the beginning and limiting the scope changes throughout the process (and creating huge gantt charts and critical paths and all the other documentation that we know from waterfall/SDLC methods of project management), APM breaks down the requirements and forces a prioritization of those requirements. I think that's probably the scariest part of it all. You then go through an iterative process where you complete a certain amount of functionality within a predetermined time frame and re-evaluate requirements and process at the end of each time frame. Agile methods can really be applied to anything that's iterative.

I won't bore you with the all the details (if you haven't quit reading this far), but it's pretty exciting and could really add a substantial amount of value to the work we're doing for our clients - and in turn, hopefully impact the social change that we are able to facilitate.

Music for the Masses - posted by Terrance Heath

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:07:17 -0700

I almost bought it. A moment of nostalgia almost made me long for "the good old days" when you had to go to a record store and rifle through the bins if you wanted to buy music. I really should have expected it, after hearing the news that iPod sales have topped 100 million.

But I think I can be forgiven a momentary lapse. After all, I had my first "dream job" working at a record store (just using the term "record store" is dating myself, for sure), and went to college in a town that was known as the "Liverpool" of its time.

Yes, I too remember Wuxtry records in Athens, Georgia.

On a recent trip to Georgia, I spent about an hour in the record shop where Michael Stipe met Peter Buck in 1979, beginning a friendship that led to the creation of R.E.M.

That's the kind of name drop that 15 or 20 years ago might have triggered a response along the lines of: "You were at Wuxtry Records in Athens?!"

Today, the more likely reaction would be: "They still have record stores somewhere?!"

… Sharing music nowadays consists of sending a download link via e-mail. Or handing over your iPod. Or, worst of all, cranking up the volume of your ringtone.
Does anyone in 2007 wrap up a hard day thinking: "Man, I'm ready to hear some Stevie Wonder 'Innervisions.' What'd I do with my cell phone?"

Assuming someone wants to actually pay for music, kids are more likely to log onto iTunes than they are to drive to an actual store. Shops like Wuxtry, mentioned at the beginning of this column, are few and far between – mostly relegated to college towns and big cities.

Downloads and cell phones are convenient, I suppose. But I can't for the life of me figure out how a guy with no money gets dates anymore.

I also remember the summer of 1987 (now I'm definitely dating myself), which I spent working at a record store that was part of a corporate chain that no longer exists anymore. That was the summer when REM's Document came out the same time as Michael Jackson's Bad.

They might even have come out on the same day. It's burned into my memory because I was working that day, and all we played in the store all day was those two albums. First Bad, then Document, then Bad again, etc., etc. Then I went off to college in Athens, where "The One I Love" was pouring out of every car, dorm, and fraternity house window.

One other thing I remember is that Wuxtry was worlds different from the corporate record store where I'd worked that summer. Wuxtry had music from local artists, as well as obscure artists I'd never have seen in my record store, because they they mostly stocked what was topping (or had topped) the charts. Everything else was special order. Wuxtry was all special order, but unless you were in Athens you couldn't shop there.

That's what I think the author of the column above is missing, when he laments the rise of online music stores like iTunes. Now everybody can shop at their own personal Wuxtry, and find artists they'd never find in their local store. The good old days weren't always good for everybody, especially if their music or taste in music strayed from the mainstream.

Like, I can read about an artist like Colin Waterson on Queerty, and immediately go to iTunes and buy the album after listening to snippets of it. I get to hear an artist I wouldn't have otherwise, and Waterson gets a listener (and a record sale) he wouldn't have otherwise. Everybody wins. Music lovers can find a lot more of what they want and independent artists can reach much larger audiences.

The very mainstream iTunes store has created a venue where even the most obscure artists can exist—and even thrive—independent of major labels. For instance, in most record stores, “you have to pay to get the placement, the listening stations, and posters, whereas with iTunes, the promotions are [staff] determined,” says Chris Jacobs of Sub Pop Records.

More importantly, 70 of the 99 cents of the download fee goes directly to the artist. With this more favorable exchange, and freed from the burdens of a major label’s enormous cash advance, the independent artists benefit most. Apple’s dominance of online retail—last year, they had more than $1 billion in annual sales—has created a check on major labels. This was evident in 2005, when Apple refused the majors’ requests to raise downloading fees. If this benevolent giant’s behavior is in any way indicative for the future of online retail, indie rock may have one less thing to be cynical about.

…And though indie bands have always built audiences without the Top 40, the advent of Web 2.0 and resulting proliferation of niche markets make traditional means of promotion look inefficient. Stereogum, which averages about 13,000 hits a week, is one of many online communities that features user-generated reviews, features, and videos of indie bands while unabashedly keeping the public up on the latest Britney headline. The Hype Machine, an aggregator of such blogs, updates hourly with dozens of new songs and their links to Amazon and iTunes. These user-generated sites not only empower listeners to decide what will be popular, but have the ability to do something a copy of Rolling Stone never could—play music. Hype Machine’s Web site puts it this way: “We do this to let people discover new artists, fall in love, buy their CDs and go to their shows.”

I can imagine that more money going to artists hasn't escaped the attention of the record industry. That's probably why they're revising royalty codes in a way that would shut down sites like Pandora, where I've found tons of new music that I've ended up buying online.

Since I'm morphing into something of a "Long Tail evangelist" these days, I'll defer to Chris Anderson to explain the rest.

Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.

When consumers are offered infinite choice, the true shape of demand is revealed. And it turns out to be less hit-centric than we thought. People gravitate towards niches because they satisfy narrow interests better, and in one aspect of our life or another we all have some narrow interest (whether we think of it that way or not).

And now music fans are organizing events like Bum Rush the Charts to drive independent artists up the charts on iTunes, and labels like TuneCorner are getting the attention of the Wall Street Journal.

Things aren't what they used to be, and I'm glad of it. (And so area lot of independent artists, I think.) Don't get me wrong. I totally get the romance of a store like Wuxtry, and I'll stop by there next time I'm in Athens. But if I want to buy what they're selling between now and then, I'll probably find it online, and the artist will see more money than they would if some of it went to pay for bricks and mortar.

I heart lists. Let me count the ways... - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:28:34 -0700

If you're like me you feel like you have a million lists going at once: a couple online, one in a random notebook, 2 post-its stuck to your computer, a list on the magnetic notepad on the fridge... I feel like I need a list of lists sometimes to keep track of everything. Turns out your constituents probably dig lists too (or digg them, if they're super geeky like us).

Using lists on blogs or in communication is something we've been talking about around the office recently. Yeah those super activists that you're trying to reach out to - they're most likely super busy just like you. They're happy to advocate for you - just spell it out for them ASAP. One "ask" is usually all you need, but "how-to's" are great too.

Well, yesterday I attended a business blogging seminar sponsored by Six Apart. The best part of the seminar was listening to Alison Byrne Fields talk about best practices for 2.0 Politics and Advocacy. Alison gave me another reason to be the fan club president for "lists" - bloggers love them to.

To stick with the theme here, I'd like to share with you Alison's top 10 tips for engaging constituents on blogs.

The old dog doesn't need to learn new tricks - folks who are used to on the ground organzing understand the nature of blogs
Listen to your constituents
Start a conversation
Give them something to do
Door knocking works in the political world too - raise awareness and funding
Know who is influential in the "blogosphere"
Make it personal
Be remarkable (easier said that done)
Be honest about who you are and what you're doing (don't be a sockpuppet)
It's not all about the toys - while fun is good, achieving goals is even better

I totally just crowdsourced! - posted by Justin Miller

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 09:48:05 -0700

Fresh off of last night's NetSquared MeetUp featuring Marty Kearns of Green Media Toolshed, I totally just crowdsourced!

Marty spoke briefly (and compellingly) about crowdsourcing tasks to help the general environmental movement, as well as crowdsourcing in the general progressive world. Crowdsourcing is an idea where an organization can use the wisdom of crowds to accomplish small tasks within a larger goal.

In my case, the goal wasn't very high and lofty, but it was something that was proving to be out of my reach. For those who don't know, I maintain a shareware program called Pukka and occasionally it gets written up here or there by a blogger. Frequently, the posts are in a foreign language, so I make regular use of Babel Fish to translate them. Today, I noticed a post written in Swedish, however Babel Fish does not provide a Swedish translation service. I figured it would be an easy task to Google up a service that did, but it actually proved quite difficult and I came up blank -- most people wanted to sell me either translation products or translation services.

With a suggestion from Echo-alum Emily, I turned to Yahoo! Answers. I asked my question and within several minutes I had a great answer among several. Read the Swedish post, my question, and the service I ended up using.

While admittedly a relatively meager use of crowdsourcing, it really drove home the points from last night. The challenge is for organizations to stop thinking about members as merely donations or emails on a list and more about how to harness their power and collective wisdom to move the organization's goals forward. For example, GMT is creating useful media tools, such as how to get such-and-such reporter to write a story about your campaign or what the most effective email address to contact a certain press outlet is. Volunteers, often anonymous, will come to the site, participate for a short while, and may be never heard from again. Cross-verification between volunteers can weed out the bad results and the net result is that larger benefits can be constructed out of the work of the collective.

For my experiment, the aggregate time spent asking the question, getting answers, and translating the article was probably less than the time it took to write this blog post. But the potential is there for organizations to put to work millions of volunteers on the internet. As Marty said, what would you do with 10,000 people for ten minutes? Or as I like to say, a million monkeys banging randomly on a million keyboards for a million years will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare -- isn't it time you harnessed that power?

Making Room for Everyone - posted by Gisele Toueg

Sat, 06 May 2006 08:30:17 -0700

Having spent the past 7 years working in the Internet space at a variety of for-profit and non-profit companies and organizations, I've noticed that the differences between the two become increasingly blurred. While the goals of each may be different--selling software and driving traffic to media outlets vs. raising money and promoting online advocacy--the methods and overall objectives are surprisingly similar.

In both cases, everyone wants to see some kind of measurable result--whether that means selling more Adobe Acrobat 7.0 versions than the other guy, or breaking fundraising records in a time of national crisis. The tools we use to accomplish these results are also quite similar--drive traffic to the site, offer compelling reasons to buy or donate, and make a case for why your site or cause is unique. In the end, it's all about marketing and message. The tools are simply the means to an end.

Still, the importance of said tools cannot be underestimated--no one likes to see spotty product, and ease of use remains the most important barrier to overcome. But once you have a solid grip on your tools, it's all about making a convincing case.

What's even more astounding is how these tools are crossing all boundaries and closing gaps between new and old media companies, etail and retail stores, cutting edge political campaigns and old school non-profits. In many ways, the dot com boom of the late '90s is experiencing a renaissance, only this time, people are ready for it.

We're accustomed to seeing established Internet giants like amazon.com and google innovate and astound every day, but what we're seeing now are smaller operations like flickr, youtube, even small non-profits break boundaries and revolutionize the ways in which users interact with technology, and with each other. And the Internet giants are catching on, not only by acquiring these smaller sites but by learning and incorporating the successes and innovations made apparent each day.

In the late '90s, everyone who worked at a start up thought they were going to become the next Jeff Bezos. We accepted half pay in exchange for hundreds of stock options that promised to make us all billionaires before turning twenty five. People who were worth millions on paper found themselves selling off their cars months later in order to pay off unexpected debt, and suddenly everyone was applying to law school or taking off to be a ski bum in Tahoe to ride out the storm.

The storm is over, and the sun is shining. And there's more than enough sun for everyone, whether you're advocating for human rights or creating viral videos. In fact, you may just run into each other along the way.

Blew by South By - posted by Justin Miller

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 21:58:30 -0800

I'm kind of left in awe of South By Southwest. I think the thing that best sums it up is what Wilson said: that everyone was excited about something. The buzz was palpable, and it was widely distributed.

I roamed the convention center, I attended a panel during every slot, sometimes jumping around to keep my interest piqued, and I definitely participated in the essential nightlife. I drank it in (no pun intended), from eight every morning until past midnight every night. I'm not sure it would have been the same without the posse, but even then, it wouldn't have been the same without all the great people that I met and got to hang out with.

I talked to folks about EchoDitto and about my side project, handing out popsicle sticks in an attempt at guerilla marketing. I even got photo-sniped. I learned about classic rock-fueled pork recipes and PonyFace69. I learned that some people get excited about Brad's use of perfectly legitimate legal terminology. And I learned that even a SXSW first-timer can seem to go to all of the coolest stuff and meet all of the coolest people.

I guess my biggest takeaway is that there are a lot of creative and brilliant people out there and that they know how to have a good time. This sounds trite and obvious, and I'm sure some folks are wondering if that takeaway was worth the associated financial costs, but It's important to me to be reminded of this so that the times that I feel like Bruce Sterling made me feel, I can still find some optimism in things. When the Wisdom of Crowds seems to be rapidly destroying our environment and culture and a whole lot more, it's reassuring to think about people out there working for change, be it technical, social, or mostly, a mix of the two. Brilliant, creative, excited people. I fit in with them, and we had a raucous time.

It's a good thing that after the week was through, I was up, and after Bruce spoke, I was f*&@ing blown away. It's good to have a motivator, to attempt to make things better, and to be reminded of other places where nearly every single aspect of what we do and have in this country seems like a Godsend.

I can't wait for next year.

(This post was cross-posted from my personal blog.)

Sony: A comedy of errors - posted by Justin Miller

Tue, 22 Nov 2005 08:39:22 -0800

I was surprised to learn that some of my coworkers had not heard of the Sony debacle, so I thought I'd give a quick run-down. The progression thus far:

1) Sony ships new music CDs for purchase by retail customers.
2) CDs are discovered to have DRM software (basically, copy protection) that auto-installs on your Windows PC when you play the CD, without warning.
3) Sony issues an uninstaller, which creates a security vulnerability on your Windows PC.
4) Managing to uninstall the DRM software disables your CD drive.

Oh, it gets better.

5) Despite saying they do not report personal data, Sony's DRM software reports which CDs you are listening to. Also Sony can control your computer.
6) Sony denies doing anything wrong.
7) The president of the RIAA says Sony did nothing wrong, except maybe write buggy software because of the security problem.
8) Sony is discovered to have used open source software illegally in the DRM software.
9) An estimated 500,000 networks are reported to be infected, including military and government sites.
10) Apple and Sony drop possible plans for collaboration.
11) Sony CDs are banned in the workplace.
12) The EFF and the states of Texas, New York, and California sue Sony.

This string of unfortunate incidents has set back legitimate DRM, as well as progress in the music industry, a fair pace. And the worst part is, most people haven't even heard of this yet.

Get the full scoop at www.sonysuit.com.

Are you a mechanical turk? Do you need a human computer? - posted by Michael Silberman

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:05:38 -0800

Have you noticed how our "what's happening now" del.icio.us feed has gone nuts lately? Well, one link that warrants additional explanation—and which i want to be sure doesn't get buried—is Amazon.com's announcement of an "artificial, artificial intelligence" program called Amazon Mechanical Turk.

Basically, it's a system that connects regular web users (and computers) to a large decentralized network of humans who get paid to complete "Human Intelligence Tasks," or respond to info requests -- tasks for which humans are better equipped than computers. This investment is a Big Deal because it speaks volumes about the company's appreciation for (a) the online multiplier effect, where many small, individual actions add up to a larger whole, and (b) the proven nature of distributed and decentralized processing via the 'net.

Thanks to Marty for the tip-off on this one. He was pretty taken by it when we first connected about this, and hiss energy is appropriately contagious—especially when you consider the endless possibilities here for the political and non-profit worlds, as Marty points out: "This is unbelievable! Amazon just launched a network-centric work service! The last several years we have been pitching the ideas and concepts behind "packetizing" work of campaigns and advocacy..."

And Windmill thinks thinks this is the beginning of "a global network of intelligence where machines and humans are completely intertwined!"

We should keep our eyes on how the Amazon system tracks the success rates and reputations of different human workers (do you earn more if your work is rated to be of higher quality, or if you produce results that provide greater satisfaction to the person or computer requesting work?). And from a sociological perspective, what sort of people are most willing to do the work -- the unemployed, the bored, or the generous?

Here's the most succinct summary from Amazon's announcement page (emphasis mine):

Amazon Mechanical Turk provides a web services API for computers to integrate Artificial Artificial Intelligence directly into their processing by making requests of humans. Developers use the Amazon Mechanical Turk web services API to submit tasks to the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site, approve completed tasks, and incorporate the answers into their software applications. To the application, the transaction looks very much like any remote procedure call - the application sends the request, and the service returns the results. In reality, a network of humans fuels this Artificial Artificial Intelligence by coming to the web site, searching for and completing tasks, and receiving payment for their work.

Yahoo! CMO Had Some Advice - posted by Joshua Shimkin

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 09:10:22 -0700

On September 28, I listened to a key note from Cammie Dunaway, CMO of Yahoo!, at the OMMA East conference. She gave an engaging summary of the online advertising campaign for Yahoo!'s recent music service launch. Cammie was a great speaker particularly because she spoke with a lot of energy in her voice and explained the reasons for many creative choices she made.

For example, the online ads featured celebrities like Shakira and Missy Elliot because Yahoo! has seen much better results with ads featuring photos of celebrities. No surprise, but it's always good for those rules you take for granted to be reinforced by recent experience.

I especially liked her mnemonic device to remember best practices with online advertising:

Integrated

Measureable

Personal

Actionable

Consumer-fed

Targeted

Washington Post uses TypePad - posted by Justin Miller

Mon, 10 Oct 2005 10:52:34 -0700

Hot on the heels of my personal blog getting picked up by the Washington Post Express paper, it turns out that I accidentally stumbled upon some info that shows that the Post uses the popular TypePad blogging service to host their own blogs.

Basically, it was all about the favicon.

I was looking over blogs.washingtonpost.com when I noticed the site's icon up in the navigation bar:

It looked awfully like the TypePad icon -- in fact, exactly like it.

So I started digging around some DNS and WHOIS info (basically the behind-the-scenes stuff that makes web page addresses work) and I found that blogs.washingtonpost.com is actually an alias to washpost.blogs.com -- and blogs.com is one of the vanity domain names you can use with your TypePad account.

Now, I'm not faulting them or anything, but it's interesting to note that the Post uses an outside service like this and not their own infrastructure.

Update: After starting this post, I did some quick research and found that they were very upfront about this and mention the technical reasoning behind it. So it's old news and my post is definitely not up to journalistic standards, but at least I find the whole topic kind of interesting. But can I say -- how about a custom favicon?

eBay Scoops Skype - posted by Justin Miller

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:03:42 -0700

I've read this morning that eBay has agreed to buy Skype, the fastest-growing provider of VoIP services, for anywhere from $2.6 to $4.1 billion dollars. Now Skype is cool, don't get me wrong, but something doesn't sound right about the angle the press is taking on the deal.

I'm of course no business maverick, but the whole thing smacks of a lot of hype and not much substance. Skype in its first year had revenues of only $7 million dollars and although that is expected to rise dramatically, I don't see the potential to make back the investment in the near term.

The other thing that strikes me as odd about this is that eBay says Skype would be used for "greasing the wheels of its online marketplace by making it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate" (link). Another article interprets this as "one-click calling between sellers and buyers" (link).

I once worked part-time for a place (now long since dried up) that provided integration of file sharing and instant messaging and part-time for another place that provided online "malls" to encourage local patronage of small businesses via the internet. One of the ideas at Place A that didn't fare so well was selling instant messaging services to Place B.

The fact remained that the customers wanted asynchronous communication and didn't want instant access to each other. I suspect that eBay buyers and sellers would feel the same way. I'll bet that many successful "store" owners excel because of a combination of volume and efficiency -- something to which voice chatting is not conducive. Besides, do you really want to talk to the person you're buying that vintage ALF t-shirt from? (Full disclosure: I may or may not have purchased an ALF t-shirt on eBay.)

If you look from another angle, though, the partnership could work, but not in the way that you'd first think. eBay also owns PayPal, who just last week introduced micropayments. Combine PayPal micropayments and Skype and you eliminate the current need to set up a debit account of "SkypeOut" units to make real telephone calls using the service.

Bottom line? My hunch is that asynchronous processing of financial transactions is much less attractive than asynchronous communication. As more and more services offer you the ability to spend small amounts of money at a time, I think the option of micropayments in real time instead of debit accounts is much more desirable -- there'd be no interruptions when your debit accounts run out.

Sure, eBay and PayPal probably already realize this, and bringing Skype into the fold is likely beneficial to both sides. I'm just not sure it's worth billions of dollars.

Update: ArsTechnica weighs in:

Do bidders need to be able to ask questions of sellers over their PCs during the last five minutes of an auction for a Precious Moments figurine? eBay is betting US$2.6 billion that the answer is a resounding "yes."

Roberts on Tech - posted by Terrance Heath

Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:57:24 -0700

Everyone's talking about John Roberts, the Bush
administration's Supreme Court nominee, and wondering just what his
potential confirmation will mean for various issues. Thus far, Roberts is hard to tack down on any number of
issues, tech-related issues among them, but there are a couple of
things that can be inferred from what's known of his background.

href="http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-5796732.html?part=rss&tag=5796732&subj=news">Paul
Festa, on CNET's blog, informs us that during his brief
tenure on the D.C. appellate court that Roberts joined in the href="http://news.com.com/Court+RIAA+lawsuit+strategy+illegal/2100-1027_3-5129687.html?tag=nl">RIAA
v. Verizon decision back in December of 2003. According to
lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Roberts was an engaged
questioner and seemed to have a firm grasp on the technical issues.
Festa suggests that this, along with Roberts' apparent pro-big-business
leanings and his wife's partnership in a href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SCOTUS_ROBERTS_PROFILE?SITE=MIDTF&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">law
firm specializing in technology-related transactions, means
that:

high-tech big business could either be getting a sympathetic
Supreme Court justice, or a future of Roberts recusals.

What does it mean for technology users/customers? As with
everything else about Roberts, it seems too soon to tell what his (all
but certain?) confirmation to the Supreme Court will mean for us geeks.

We've already heard from the high court on the subject of file
sharing, in the MGM
v. Grokster ruling, where the court came down on the side of
the larger of the two businesses involved but also seemed to leave the
door open to future tech innovation. So, whatever leanings toward
high-tech big business the court has already demonstrated, it doesn't
yet appear to have any detrimental effect on high-tech users and
consumers.

Roberts is still something of a cipher when it comes to
technology, but the signs are that he's reasonably knowledgeable about
it (and can probably get pointers from his wife if he needs them). If
he's confirmed, he'll join a Supreme Court that already -- based on the
questioning
during oral arguments in the Grokster case -- some
understanding of technology. It doesn't seem likely that Roberts'
addition to the Court will shift the balance much as far as
technology-related law is concerned. But, as was the case with some
other Supreme Court nominations, one never knows.

We're wide open - posted by Justin Miller

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 14:28:36 -0700

We've long had a bunch of code that we'd like to get out into the community, but not a lot of time to package it. Now that we have an army of interns and have been able to free up some time, we're going to start getting it out there. Look for updates as we move things along:

http://opensource.echoditto.com

That's it for now; short and sweet, with more to come soon. Feedback is welcome.

The Business of Blog Watching - posted by Terrance Heath

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:00:35 -0700

Wanna be in a focus group? If
you're a blogger, or partcipate in an online community or
forum, there's a chance you already are in a focus group. In fact, you
could be part of the biggest focus group ever.
A recent article from the href="http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB111948406207267049-qs710svEyTDy6Sj732kvSsSdl_A_20060623,00.html?mod=blogs">Wall
Street Journal reports
that businesses are mining blogs for nuggets of knowledge about what
their customers want (or don't want.)

Blog watching seems to pay off
in a number of ways for businesses, from spotting trends before they
hit corporate media to prepping CEOs for tough questions from
reporters. Companies like Motorola and Electronic Arts even hiring
blog-monitoring firms – like href="http://www.intelliseek.com/">IntelliSeek
and MotiveQuest
– to parse bloggers' language and acronyms (like, OMG, or
FUBAR) into blogger demographics a company can then use to better track
its audience and their desires.

So blogs are turning out to be
not only a useful tool for businesses to reach consumers, but also a
rich source of consumer information for businesses willing to mine it
and use it. I'm not sure that this in and of itself is news, but it's
worth nothing.

What I'm waiting to
see is whether bloggers and other online conversationalists will take
to corporate campaigns the way they have to political campaigns, like
the href="http://www.bigbrassblog.com/bba/">Big Brass
Alliance's campaign to bring
broader public and media attention to the href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html">Downing
Street Memo.

Will bloggers/consumers band
together for the purpose of bringing their concerns to
corporations? Sooner or later, yes. When they do, will they
stick to demands about services and products, or will they also tackle
corporate responsibility? It remains to be seen, but it'll be
interesting to watch.