Sigh. Microsoft’s marketers will never learn

I agree that MS isn’t the best marketing company, I think in terms of computer marketing Apple always seems to do a dam good job.

And like many I prefer RSS over email my email should be kept for stuff I care about from people I care about…RSS is a less intrusive but more active way of informing.

When you buy a MacBook, it comes with Safari. Safari has an RSS reader. Apple pre-populates the RSS reader with multiple feeds, accessed by buttons at the top of the browser window. One of the RSS feeds is for Apple Hot News. The other is for the last 25 albums released on iTunes.

http://www.apple.com/rss/

Perhaps not everyone who buys a Mac realizes they subscribe to feeds… but I think Apple gets RSS.

> I don’t see RSS on Apple’s iPod marketing
> pages

Look harder. Go to http://www.apple.com, click “iPod/iTunes”, scroll down until you see “Top 10 Songs RSS.”

> I agree with MollyC that you are in no position to
> judge people, and suddenly that means I *am* in
> such a position?

Um, telling someone they’re incapable of judging something is a judgement, isn’t it?

This reminds of that point in Episode III where Anakin and Obi-Wan are about to do the Good vs. Evil showdown, and Obi-Wan says, “ONLY a Sith speaks in absolutes!” Which, uh, was an absolute…

No wonder Anakin hated the Jedi. LOL

Oh wait — when you tell someone they’re not in a position to do something, it’s merely a “trenchant observation,” right? And when someone else does the same thing, it’s a “judgement.” Did I get it right? Just want to make sure I’m playing this game by the right rules.

> Running the risk of sounding incredibly
> condescending here, and no patronising intended,
> but: copy-paste your last couple of dozen replies
> to comments (heck, couple of hundred), and have
> someone you know and respect read them. And then
> listen to what those people will tell you, and act
> on their advice.

Robert: you are going way too easy on these clowns. LOL

Not that I’m judging you or anything.

Dude just because audiences in conferences you speak at raise their hands when asked if they have RSS feeds is no indicator whatsoever. You speak primarily in echo chambers. As for influencers, I would contend the influencers that made the iPod prominent weren’t “geeks” but were were peers. All the “cool kids” started buying iPods (and I would venture say weren’t your definiton of geeks), then all the non-cool kids wanted them, too.

I could speak at a music trade industry confernence and likely have very few people raise their hands when asked about RSS.

There’s a reason Microsoft used Billboard to “announce” Zune. How many Billboard readers do you think use RSS or know what it is?

You are sticking your head further and further up your RSS ass.

@20. Now your just being pedantic. You’er smart enought to know what question was being asked. It was overall marketshare. Either that or you really have problems understanding what you read. Just cuz you see a lot of luxury cars in your little SV world is no indication of any type of market share. I could drive around here in Beverly Hills and Brentwood and conclude that Mercedes, Bentley and Rolls Royce had considerable market share. You realize how idiotic that conclusion is, right. So, answer the question honestly: how much overall marketshare does BMW have?

Just like your illogical conclusions about RSS adoption in the populartion. Again, you speak in echo chambers. Try this: get on stage at the next Eminem concert and ask how many people use RSS. Or go to a Billy Graham revival and ask how many people use RSS. Or get on the microphone at the start of the Pennslyvania 500 tomorrow and ask how many people use RSS.

BTW, I see no RSS feed on the NASCAR home page. How in the HELL did they get so popular without it?

and, no RSS feed on NFL.COM, them most popular sport in the US.

No RSS feed on the World Cup home page, but how many people watched the World Cup

And finally, NO RSS feed on the BMW home page! How in the HELL did you ever know to buy one?????

Agreed. RSS has legs. Now, just introduce me to a good RSS reader and those legs can do some walkin’.

? they are marketeers. Of course they won’t learn.

At any rate, the name is “Zune” eh? I haven’t been keeping up with the news. But with the name, the logo and the product pictures I can tell it is going to tank.

Most customers and consumers I run into have no idea what RSS is. Email subscriptions to newsletters, etc are still a smart way to communicate content – in parallel to offering RSS.

RSS implementation and ease of use has a long ways to go – until it gets to that point, dual delivery is very smart. At GottaBeMobile.com, we are looking into email notifications about new content we publish.

Rob: I’m not making the case that everyone has switched over to RSS. I’m making the case that your most passionate and influential users are already using RSS.

Oooh, oooh, can I try one?

Get on stage at a Billy Graham revival and ask how many people were at the Eminem concert last night.

Grab the microphone at the next NASCAR event and ask how many people have below average IQs. NO ONE will raise their hand. You see? That means the percentage of people with below average IQs is effectively zero.

Go to McDonald’s and order a hamburger, fries, and RSS. Do they have RSS? NO!!! Then order just a hamburger. Did they use RSS to make your hamburger? NO!!!!

Until McDonald’s uses RSS to make hamburgers, I think we can safely conclude that it’s not of any importance to anyone.

I rest my case.

(…how was that?)

“Have you spoken with more than 4,000 people about this topic? Have you blogged about it for years? So, who’s arrogant here?”

Robert: read your comment back to yourself slowly…and think about the last time that someone tried to impress you with such logic. In the “King and I”, the character played by Yul Brinner declares that he is the smartest man in the world because he owns some large amount of books. It is the same logic as your comment and appears just as stupid to the rest of us.

being an influential only makes it that much easier to alienate the long tail (known as your readers). You’ve got to do a better job of balancing the down sides of being an influential. Trashing people for stating what seems obvious to most of us seems counterproductive to your goal of…umm…influencing people..

Perhaps a large number of your readers were bullied in school and are sensing that familiar feeling. In a sense, you have become the bully (at least in your comments section) and there clearly is a growing number of your readers that aren’t liking that. You can only apologize for such behavior so many times before permanently alienating your readership.

Booger

Booger: you have an awesome point. But, then, I do listen to people who’ve done their homework and become expert on a topic. I guess what you’re saying is there should be no hierarchy in the world, right? Well, sorry, that’s just simply wrong.

I look around to the bloggers I read. I don’t care about whether they are arrogant or not. I care about whether they are expert on the topic they are writing about.

But, you’re right. It’s arrogant on my part. That’s OK. There are plenty of people who are very arrogant, but who have lots of trust.

My son, for instance, totally loves Steve Jobs. But Steve is well-known for being totally arrogant. The thing is, he also turns out to be right more often than not.

Hence: arrogance is just noise that we have to work through. The real question on the table is “which idea is best?”

You’re allowed to call my idea rotten. I’m allowed to say back why I think your idea is rotten.

The market will decide all on its own who is right.

Thread Insanity Recap:

MOLLYC: I’m subscribed to probably 250 RSS feeds (maybe more). But I only check 5 of them on a daily basis. I have no clue what’s going on in the other 245 feeds.

ROBERT: if you subscribe to RSS and don’t check them, then why stay subscribed? In email it all comes into one place and you gotta deal with it. It makes you less productive. But, if you’re into being less productive that’s up to you.

Scoble forgot to add the “;-)” here.

MOLLYC: Your question had a very arrogant tone BTW. You have no idea who I am or whether I’m “productive”. Come down off your high horse. Celebrity has gone to your head. You are in NO position to judge me as to how I subscribe to RSS feeds, email mailing lists, newsgroups, or anything else.

In other words, asking the question, “why stay subscribed?” is arrogant. If someone says they do something retarded, like subscribe to a bunch of things they don’t read, you must NEVER EVER QUESTION that. Also, Scoble is in no position to judge MollyC, but MollyC can easily judge Scoble.

ROBERT: Sorry, I’m just going off of your own words. You say you subscribe to RSS feeds, but then forget them, but you stay involved with your email. I find that to be bizarre behavior. I should have been more inquisitive rather than nonplussed, sorry. Have you spoken with more than 4,000 people about this topic? Have you blogged about it for years? So, who’s arrogant here? I’m trying to tell you that — based on my experiences — you’re wrong. You’re trying to tell me you’re right. Yes, our egos are clashing. That’s OK, it’s part of finding out who’s right. At the end of the day one of us will be shown to be right. Maybe it’s you. I can accept that. But I’ve done my homework and been around the world talking with both industry insiders and everyday users and RSS is kicking ass and taking no prisoners.

In other words, “We disagree, but I think I know something about this topic.”

Oh, and Robert: you were inquisitive. You specifically asked her, “why stay subscribed?” Whereas I would have just called her an idiot for subscribing to stuff she doesn’t read. (But that’s just me.)

BOOGER: Perhaps a large number of your readers were bullied in school and are sensing that familiar feeling. In a sense, you have become the bully (at least in your comments section) and there clearly is a growing number of your readers that aren’t liking that. You can only apologize for such behavior so many times before permanently alienating your readership.

In other words, “I have psychoanalyzed the mental state of your readership, and your readership has been emotionally traumatized by bullies, and because this is YOUR problem and not THEIRS, you should not intimidate any of them by implying that you know more than they do on any subject whatsoever. Implying that you know more than someone else is bullying.”

I say, permanently alienating idiots is a Good Thing.

(But that’s just me.)

>I say, permanently alienating idiots is a Good Thing.

Heheh, Karim, my mistake was in trying to do your job.

I always love your writing, even when the idiot alienation is aimed my way.

I’m not sure that choosing a solution that 90% or more of internet users have heard of and are familiar with could be called “rotten” or even “mildly mutually exclusive” of RSS. I’d venture to say that there isn’t even a right and wrong in this case…just two “differents”.

The noise that you speak of seems to be misdirecting the message that is being received. By your post above, I’d swear that you are saying that email lists are “wrong” and RSS is “right”. However, I suspect that the point that you are trying to make is somewhat different (and correct my paraphrasing if I am wrong): “Influentials tend to use RSS and companies wont be able to keep influentials informed because they generally prefer RSS to keep up with technology rather than email lists.”

Your readers have a wide range of experiences and many might well be considered influentials in their own right…regardless of if you’ve heard of them or not. If nothing else, each reader has 2-3 friends that can be influenced….even a booger like me. We as readers understand that you know your own preferences and have had untold conversations with influentials…so you likely have some weight to the paraphrased argument. But, that weight doesn’t exist when the perception is that it’s being used to uphold an argument of good/bad that simply doesnt exist.

booger

@34. Clever, but inane. Is RSS important to some people? sure. Not saying it isn’t. But Scoble seems to again be making this a two valued argument. He’s said or implied numerours times that marketers are idiots for not putting RSS on their web sites. Well, he managed to buy a BMW with no RSS on its web site. How did that happen? The other examples I gave were of businesses and industries that seem to be surviving quite well without RSS being a part of their marketing strategy. I’m sure I can some up with plenty more if you like.

We had these same arguments 10 years ago about those that didn’t see the value of getting on the email train. Some eventually saw the value, others didn’t. I’m sure a huge majority of those that didn’t are still in business and dong quite well. Would all the email newsletter subscibers to ExxonMobile, Citigroup, Chevron, AIG, ConocoPhilips please stand up, please stand up! Just to randomly name a few companies at the top of the F500 list. How DO they manage to be so profitable without RSS? It’s mystery! It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle, inside an enigma! Would you like more examples of companies being successful without RSS in their marketing strategy?

I think that the major way to reach agenda setters (the phrase we learned in my j-school days for what Robert refers to as “influencers’) is still mainstream media. The articles about Zune in the WaPo, NYT and other major newspapers and broadcast media will get agenda setters interested. BUT, there has to be a transition from them to the general population. That is where blogs and RSS feeds come into to play.

In regard to the RSS v. email controversy, I think that many of us experienced Net heads have become protective of our ‘real’ email accounts. We either are reluctant to give out the addresses or direct anything we are not committed to to little used accounts. So, to reach the Net savvy, RSS feeds are, indeed, the better idea.

Things spread from the edges to the mainstream virally. We trust recommendations of our friends. Things do not spread when they are carpet-bombed directly into the mainstream. We mistrust that, and rightly so.

Email went from edge to mainstream, and RSS is doing the same. Heck, it’s the story of the whole damn interwebs.

Zune would have done better if it had started at the edge and been allowed to grow toward the center. Maybe Microsoft wouldn’t have had a great holiday sales season this year, but in two years they would be flying off the shelves.

Too late! They already dropped their bomb and ruined any chance of that.

Robert, FWIW some Microsoft marketers are listening to you. I’ve read your book twice now and its really given me much to think about and has had an impact in my thinking on how I want to reach out. I’ll be curious if you notice once the campaigns begin in earnest later this year.

Umm wasn’t this about the Zuned or rather Zuned Out? And it de-evolutionary descends into yet another RSS ‘will heal the sick, cure cancer and raise the dead’, Scoble pitch up. It’s tired even fighting that absurd twist of logic. Obviously he’s content in the sherr illusion, as it keeps him in the ‘influential’ spot. So all a waste of words…

This is a crazy waste of words. If they have a Zune blog (crappy or no) they have an RSS feed (someone geeky enough to even know the Zune existed can find the blog). As for influencers, RSS is a silly geeky thing. They can include it or not, but the mainstream users that buy $300 ipods or $400 Zunes will make their decision on what their friends and actors and rappers are using, and what doesn’t suck in their own experience. Apple has enormous mindshare here.

MS is going to have trouble getting traction with this. Their Xbox adventure is hardly an unqualified success. And a new hardware venture of this type is really problematic. This is an expensive way to tilt at windmills.

It’s time for MS shareholders to stage an intervention before MS really screws up. Not that billions wasted on MSN chasing AOL and xbox and Zune couldn’t have been better spent by stockholders, but MS hasn’t really identified and pursued the right opportunities even in their own markets (Groove, Bungie was purchased, PalmPilot was first, Symbian still more popular, Mysql, etc.).

The really troubling thing is not that MS is trying new opportunities and spending a lot on them. It’s how they’re identifying opportunities: money. They don’t have a killer idea for a new ipod, they haven’t even settled on a set of wifi/networking/community features, so it’s not like they’re playtesting and saying, “This is a billion dollar idea, guys, we have to do this”. They’re just fed up with their hardware and content partners and in their hubris, they’re convinced they can do a better job. But being rich doesn’t make up for execution (as we see with both Sony and MS in the console wars). They’re just letting their paranoia lead them into dumb ideas, attention-grabbing acts basically. If you don’t have your hardware in hand, polished and finished, and playtested with basically everyone in Redmond, you have no idea if you can be more successful than Samsung or Sandisk, and in fact you should have large doubts. But not MS. They don’t even have a final version, but they’re convinced that their spending will make it the best ever.

Not likely.