Hello Dell

Robert, you said:

“Well, let’s see, in the past 12 months I’ve been in 140 newspapers worldwide, the Economist, BBC, and BusinessWeek is calling today.”

When I was a reporter for the Associated Press, I was in thousands of papers each month. BUT, I had enough sense to know that what was important was any useful information I conveyed, not me. Ditto for when I was among the top one hundred bloggers a couple years ago. Your lack of judgment is amazing. The same is true of people you impress, like that sycophant Guy Pelletier. They are a vacuous lot.

And, what’s with this?

“Or, in a store, I can only help one person every 15 minutes or so at the Genius Bar.”

Just a couple comments ago you said Apple had nothing to do with this thread.

OMFG. I don’t understand how people fall for this and believe that it makes people think that a company is actually treating everyone differently. The blog for Dell is under the PR department, not the support or quality areas. It’s pandering. Pandering to the most vocal and influential people. A smart move, yes. A move to make the company better overall, no. Don’t fall for it. Ridiculous. Lip service.

Dell says they want to talk about innovation and you pat them on the back?

*scratches head…

Talk is cheap.

Dell Ditties are too.

the conversation is well and good… for those guys who happen to know that there exists such a forum… but still, there would be portions of dell-gruntled that d2d can’t reach. i suggest a more active support. d2d should be complemented with other things.

@26, Podesta,
Given your wide range of exposure both in MSM and as a top blogger, I have to assume that your evaluation of me is correct.
What I do not unbderstand is what I am doing wrong as a Sycophant, because I am obviously trying to suck up to Robert to improve my own page views with my blog.
The problem is that I average 6 views a day. How will I every get to the exaulted position that you have achieved.
maybe that is what I am doing wrong, i should be sucking up to you, not Scoble. he did drop last week in the ratings to a UFC blog.

Guy the Sycophant!

>And I know bloggers WANT to believe they are influencing people outside the echo chamber. Not happening to the level they think…yet

Well, let’s see, in the past 12 months I’ve been in 140 newspapers worldwide, the Economist, BBC, and BusinessWeek is calling today.

Translation: My Penis brings all the boys to the yard, that’s right, it’s bigger than yours, so much, damned bigger than yours….

The influence is a lot wider than you realize. I’ve seen many articles that were discussed on blogs first regurgitated on the front pages of newspapers and on CNBC too. When I was in Seattle recently Zillow had a front page newspaper story that was almost wholly ripped from blogs.

I love it when they do that…”OMG, it’s on a BLOG, it MUST be true. Hey Robert, remember that dude from Microsoft Australia you hung out to dry before you bothered to talk to him? Did you ever see if your half-assed apology for that when you found out how wrong you were ever got more play than the original “ORF WIF HIS HED!” post? I’m curious, since it’s obvious you never learn from those mistakes, I just wonder if the apologies get as much play as the fallacies.

Neither is a phone, but I don’t see you telling companies to stop answering their phones.

Again Robert, let me state this clearly:

You

Suck

At

Strawmen.

I did not ever say that a blog was not a valuable PR tool. It is however, not a replacement for work, however, you and the rest of the acolytes are happy to accept that Blog = Problems B Gone, in spite of the fact that there is no reliable data that a blog ever fixed a single technical issue.

They are a method of communication. Nothing more. Used correctly, they can, as in Dell’s case, allow people to communicate with a company that is literally impossible to deal with in person. Apple is not Dell. You can, in many cities around the world, directly interact with Apple on a problem. They have other means of communication that Dell does not.

Repeat after me: Everything is not exactly the same

If you have a problem with that, find a small child to sing you the “one of these things is not like the other” song. I’m sure that will help.

As well, you forget that blogs, like all other PR can be effectively used to mask inaction, such as Port 25 used to mask Microsoft’s growing hatred for Open Source and Linux.

It is a tool robert, not a magic spell, not a new religion. The sooner you internalize that, the better.

Oh, and Guy…why not show a little spine and reprint all of my rebuttals, not just the convenient parts. If you like, I can put up a post or two that will really give your (profanity) macro a workout. I’m quite good at swearing, and recently started in on adding chinese to the mix. If I can get some Korean in there, that will truly rock.

John,
I reprinted the one comment to set up how we got to what Podesta said. If you clicked on the link to my blog you would have seen you entire comment was quoted. I did not copy all of your comments because this was not about you.
Yes, you are proficent at profanity, you blog is filled with it to the point I do not know what you are trying to say.

The basic premise of this entire thread seems to be what Don says @22.

Blogs are a communication tool that will allow one person to express his opion to the world and allow everybody else to reply and express their opinon about that thought.
With this global freedom, it brings out the best of minds and you.

Guy

Don’t be silly Guy, blogs most certainly do NOT allow the entire world to reply. That’s just ridiculous, unless you have proof of internet access for every human on the globe.

Blogs are a toy for the tech-enabled. That’s all they have to be, but let’s dispense with this silliness of worldwide democracy via blogs. They’re a tool for the connected, and that Guy, is a rather small number. Your blog is in english. Care to guess how many people are left out?

In fact, were you not to link to your blog, I’d not know you have one, not that you care. But you have to go LOOKING for blogs. They don’t just come to you. If that weren’t true, then there’d be no need for Technorati, or Digg.

As well, the comments on Digg show that ten thousand monkeys will never create Shakespeare, just more crap on the walls.

I would love to know where this idiocy granting blogs nigh-magic powers came from. Whoever started it needs to be mocked, severely and mercilessly.

“Blogs are a toy for the tech-enabled.”

Bravo, John!

S.G. (Sycophant Guy), even here in the U.S. , more than 30 percent of the population does not have regular access to the Internet. You and Robert have a similar tendency to confuse opinion with fact. I recommend that you actually read some material about Internet access and usage. Start with the very useful research from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

http://www.pewinternet.org/

John, Podesta,
You are right, I used a sweeping statement without checking any facts. John I am curious, is blogging a toy or a tool, you mentioned twice in this post that blogging is a tool (a PR tool) and you state that it is a toy for the connected.
As far as using facts go, I use the CIA’s World Fact Book and it states that a little over 15% of the world is connected (2005 figures).

My opinion is that if you have a computer, chances are pretty good that you will have an internet connection.

Blogging is a tool for PR and for anybody with a connection (Thanks again for the correction). If you do a Google search you will find several blogs, for instance, search Sears Sucks, you will find 396,000 results. Now I did not count them all, but my opinion is that a very large portion will be coming from blogs of z-listers.

Again, the whole point of a conversation as Robert describes it, is to remove the barricades from between the consumer and the producer. If you can tell the VP of operation of Dell that you have a problem, and you show this statement on a media that people will find with a simple search, you are going to get results.

Podesta, thanks for the new source, the only problem I see with it is that it appears to be based on surveys, not facts. Use CIA.org and look for the World Fact Book, it is updated regularly be people that actually count and investigate in the field.

Guy

John I am curious, is blogging a toy or a tool, you mentioned twice in this post that blogging is a tool (a PR tool) and you state that it is a toy for the connected.
As far as using facts go, I use the CIA’s World Fact Book and it states that a little over 15% of the world is connected (2005 figures).

Don’t be so binary. It’s both of course.

My opinion is that if you have a computer, chances are pretty good that you will have an internet connection.

It’s my opinion that most people are too stupid to live, but that’s meaningless too. The plural of speculation is not data.

If you do a Google search you will find several blogs, for instance, search Sears Sucks, you will find 396,000 results. Now I did not count them all, but my opinion is that a very large portion will be coming from blogs of z-listers.

If no one reads a blog, then does anyone really care about it?

Again, the whole point of a conversation as Robert describes it, is to remove the barricades from between the consumer and the producer. If you can tell the VP of operation of Dell that you have a problem, and you show this statement on a media that people will find with a simple search, you are going to get results.

See, you were doing good, and then you started hitting the blogpipe. You don’t know who you’re talking *directly* to at Dell. The comments to posts may EVENTUALLY end up in a VP’s hands, or they may get a precis/digest of the comments. I also don’t see ol’ Lionel’s email address in the post, or anywhere on the site. In fact, there’s no actual email address, just a “suggestion box”.

So other than blog comments, there’s no “conversation”, just a “lecture”. There’s no one you can directly contact. How is that ANY better than the feedback email addresses on Apple’s site. Oh wait, you can COMMENT IN A BLOG. Damn, you’re right, that’s like being IN THEIR OFFICE.

Wait, no it isn’t, it’s a PR manipulation for people with more blog religion than sense.

Podesta, thanks for the new source, the only problem I see with it is that it appears to be based on surveys, not facts. Use CIA.org and look for the World Fact Book, it is updated regularly be people that actually count and investigate in the field.

Really.

You have links to the raw data and details on the collection methodology? Not seeing them on the site. Oh, and it’s https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html, not cia.org, by the way.

John C. Welch,

It’s my opinion that most people are too stupid to live, but that’s meaningless too. The plural of speculation is not data.

I guess that says it all

Guy

It does indeed Guy.

If you’re going to offer up opinion as fact, how about actual supporting data.

Lessee..I have a Mac with a bad CD-R. It’s under warranty, so that’s good, but in order to fulfill this warranty I have to jump through Apple’s hoops of registration, fulfillment and then schlepping the box over to the mall to drop it off with the “genuises” for service. If I’m lucky, really lucky, I’ll get it back in a couple weeks.

Today, one of my low-end Dell servers through a shoe. I called Dell, did some troubleshooting over the phone and the parts were at my office in an hour. It looked like a memory stick was bad, but it could have been the memory slot too, so they replaced both the RAM and motherboard, no questions asked. The tech arrived in another 2 hours. The server is happy now, and so am I.

Yeah, there’s a problem with support alright, just not at Dell, at least not from where I’m sitting. Now if only the RDF would get potted down to somewhere below IMPUDENT, that might be more apparent.

I guess there is a direct correlation between people who don’t like Robt. Scoble and people who use bad language. You learn something new every day.

bye