LinkedIn is Greedy

Posted on April 14, 2009 | 15 Comments

linkedinlogo

LinkedIn is greedy.  They work hard to get you to upgrade to a premium account and then make it nearly impossible for you to downgrade back to the free version.   

They intentionally hide the steps to downgrade, make those steps as manual as possible, and don’t remind you that you are paying for their premium services.  All together, this clearly shows a pattern of intentional behavior designed specifically to keep you paying for their service and to discourage you from downgrading to the free service when you realize the premium services are not worth the money.

A few highlights:

  • Upgrading to premium account is extremely simple and painless.  They clearly know how to design a sign-up process effectively. 
  • Once upgraded, there is no clear method to downgrade your account. 
  • There is absolutely nowhere within your account settings or emails you get from LinkedIn that provides details of how to cancel the premium service.
  • They charge you in advance and require you to pay for the full 30 days even if you want to cancel immediately. 
  • There are no emails sent out to remind you of your monthly premium subscription.

Let me take you through the sign-up and cancellation process.  You can then come to your own conclusions.

Sign-up is a cake (click to see a larger version):

upgrade-sm

Here are the “terms” you agree to during the sign-up process.  This is the only place now or later that you are told how to cancel: 

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Posted in LinkedIn, networking

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Google Grants over $10K in Free Advertising

Posted on March 23, 2009 | 1 Comment

googlegrantsSometimes, you come across little things that really surprise you.  Today I discovered Google Grants, a Google program which provides non-profits with up to $10,000 (that’s right, ten thousand dollars) of free advertising each month.  Beg, borrow, or steal someone with some technical and/or marketing experience to get this setup for your non-profit because, if done right, it can be the best money you never had to spend.

Here are some examples of feedback from non-profits who have taken advantage of Google Grants:

It’s not often that you see a chance like this so I’d suggest you sign-up today!

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Posted in Non-profits

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Facebook Changes Not Fully Tested

Posted on March 23, 2009 | Leave a comment

b_1234209334_facebook_logoAs a technology entrepreneur, change is a part of who I am and what I breathe every day. I generally get excited when the services I use update their interface because I consider it part of the value of today’s hosted site.  Great new features or interfaces become available without having to do anythign at all. 

So, when facebook rolled out their latest changes, I understood some of the reasons why they did it and where they are going with the concept.  However, someone clearly dropped the ball and didn’t do enough real-life user testing as they:

  1. dropped some very important features most users love
  2. made the life stream significantly more cluttered and redundant then necessary.

Here’s one example of a great feature that was removed from this SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE:  you no longer see who your friends are adding as new friends on the home page.  That was one of the most interesting things I looked for every day. 

Secondly, I am no longer using Facebook as much as I was because the new twitter-like social timeline is broken with this new design.   Here are two screenshots highlighting why I am so frustrated with the new design (click to see larger versions):

Screenshot showing repeated entries from same person for same gift

Screenshot showing repeated entries from same person for same gift

 

Second screenshot of friend giving lava lamps to other friends

Second screenshot of friend giving lava lamps to other friends

So, if Facebook adds some of those lost features back and combines actions like the above back into a single entry, I am completely happy to accept the changes.  Until then, I am going to be using facebook a lot less every day and will constantly be a little frustrated with their offering.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE NEW DESIGN? What do you LIKE and what do you HATE? Add your comments below.

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Posted in facebook, networking, user interface

New Gadget: iRobot Verro 500 PowerScrub

Posted on July 31, 2008 | Leave a comment
iRobot Verro 500 PowerScrub

Disclaimer: My company was involved in the software design / interface for the iRobot ConnectR product. 

I love having a pool but one of the things that I have never been particularly interested in, or honestly, very good at, is cleaning it.  When we first bought the house 10 years ago, we looked into a pool robot but most of the reviews were very, very bad.  However, this past summer, I decided to take a look at the market again and found some very good reviews on the iRobot pool cleaners. Based upon my research, the best choice for our pool was the iRobot Verro 500 PowerScrub.

Overall first impressions are that this is an amazing product.  It came pretty much all set to go and that is exactly what it did.  I let it run without doing much and then I brushed the floor and let it run again.  The pool has never been so clean and using it was a snap. 

From a consumer point of view, the only gotcha was that the power connection from the robot to their power supply was hard to connect properly.  But other than that, I would say that this device, though expensive, is a homerun.  I’ll follow-up after I’ve used it for a month but it was simple to use, extremely effective, and will save on electricity, pool pump, filter, chemicals, and water refilling.  I may try do a ROI on it, but, it is hard to calculate the pleasure of seeing and using a sparkling clean pool.

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Posted in Gadgets

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Treating failure as the best opportunity to learn

Posted on July 24, 2008 | Leave a comment

Earlier this week, I came across this great article by Roger Ehrenberg:

It is definitely one of the most objective and well-written startup post mortems I have read by a member of the actual team.  His list of Seven Deadly Sins, which in my opinion is not complete but a great list nonetheless, consists of:

  1. The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
  2. No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
  3. Too much PR, too early
  4. Too much money
  5. Not close enough to the customer
  6. Slow to adapt to market reality
  7. Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board

Now, depending upon the situation, some of those may or may not hold true for all startups, but I would like to highlight the first one “the buck stops here” along with “not close enough to the customer”.  You need a strong leader who can come to final decisions and be responsible for them (but be ready to change as the market or situation requires) and you also need to truly get in bed with your customers.  Now, by that, I don’t mean you need to cowtail to each and every whim (especially on the features side) but you do need to truly  understand their pain and come up with a solution that directly addresses it.

I want to send out my thanks to Roger for sharing his insight into the problems and struggles at Monitor110.  It is great to see others willing share their real-life experiences building startups and doing it without placing blame all around.  That’s a hard thing for most people to do and I applaud those that are able to successfully accomplish it.

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Posted in Entrepreneur

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Hiring (and firing) at a startup

Posted on July 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

The recent post by Dharmesh Shah (Startup Hiring: An Entrepreneur Disagrees With Entrepreneur Magazine) reminded me of a few simple rules I follow regarding hiring and firing people:

  • Find great people who excel at learning new things as they will almost always be of the greatest value to your organization.  This is expecially true for startups as you need people able to quickly adapt as your company grows and changes. 
  • Put an emphasis on finding people who are able to execute.  In a startup, whether it is a sales guy, a programmer, or a customer support specialist, your employees need to accomplish the task and move on.  Some people get caught up with the process or by trying to do it perfectly. However,  when you are trying to launch and grow a new company on a shoe-string, you need people who can really get it done with as little fanfare and struggle as possible.
  • The moment you realize that someone is not working out, fire them.  Dragging it out (and that is what you are doing) makes it worse for everyone.  When it comes to employee management, this was one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned but one of the most critical in keeping the company productive and the morale high.  As soon as it starts going sour for you (or them), cut the ties, find a replacement, and move on. 

So, when hiring at a startup, find those people who love to learn and execute.  And, don’t let the difficulties of firing someone prevent you from doing the right thing for your company.

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Posted in Employees

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Comcast Support: How Twitter Saved the Day!

Posted on July 2, 2008 | 1 Comment

This is the story of my experience with Comcast, their support teams, and how Twitter saved the day. Now, unlike many of the people I see complaining online, I have, for the most part, found Comcast to provide very good service.  I did, however, try their new Comcast TiVo DVR box and that was a complete failure…but except for that, for the most part, they have met my expectations in regards to service and support.

So, yesterday, July 1, was the day we launched VendorCity to the public.  So, it was going to be a crazy and stressful day no matter what.  However, it got off to a VERY BAD START when I awoke early to get a jump on my email. I went to send email through my ”old” company’s email server which uses port 25 and does security via IP address.  (I know…I know…it should be over secure connections..let’s just ignore that issue for now and chastise me later).

I started up Outlook and my email arrived without a hitch but I was unable to send out (but had no trouble with my VendorCity account which is hosted by Google Apps).  After a quick investigation, I was able to definitively determine that port 25 was blocked.  Well, you can imagine my surprise and frustration of having to deal with this on the day we are launching VendorCity. 

I called Comcast support and get connected with a standard first-level support person.  I made it very clear that I needed to speak with a networking expert because it appeared that Comcast was blocking port 25 (the smtp port). She asked me what email program I was using (MS Outlook) and she said that Comcast does not support Outlook (only Outlook Express) but that she would work hard to help me anyways. 

Well, that was nice of her but then she proceeded to try and walk me through lots of Outlook and Control Panel settings.  After my, oh, 10th time trying to explain to her that it had NOTHING TO DO WITH APPLICATIONS but it was a problem with my network and specifically sending SMTP email over port 25, she told me that the only way to get someone else to help me would be to hang-up and call in again. Well, you can imagine my surprise and anger when I was told that. 

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Posted in General

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