slimster.net

I will always remember the day when I was at a conference in New York…I believe it was in 2003…and the Yahoo! speaker announced that they would be charging people to get into their directory and then, on top of that initial, yearly, $299 charge, they would also charge a per-click fee every time someone clicked a listing. Imagine that.

Luckily, people booed and that model never went forward.

So now when Yahoo! needs a some more cash, they don’t bother with silly announcements that could get booed. They just get right down to charging their customers. The fine print is in place, it’s all legal, so it must be all good. Oh, how I miss the corporate life and the wonderful decisions that come from a spreadsheet.

There is a reason I don’t advertise with Yahoo!. And I’m really glad I don’t. Because if I were a Yahoo! advertiser, it is likely that they would have already “optimized” my account, like they just did for so many unwitting other accounts, by adding keywords and distribution that results in more exposure, more clicks and higher costs with a complete disregard to relevance and transparency.

The fact that things are technically “legal” doesn’t make them right. There’s no wonder that Yahoo! continues to come up short in their quest to be the leader in online search. They just don’t seem to understand that customers are actually people.

I have been using press releases over the past several months to highlight some major changes that are happening in my company. I have used PrWeb a couple of times as well as Transworldnews. I am also looking into using other services such as prlog.org, eworldwire.com and www.fprc.info.

PrWeb definitely positions itself as the premium service. They charge $200 per release, which is certainly premium and much more than the other services. They do offer a lot of features and have positioned themselves as the authority.

But when I used them to put out a press release regarding the launch of our new website, the release was immediately scraped by PR-USA, a service out of Bulgaria that specializes in scraping (stealing) content and attributing it to themselves. And they are good at scraping (effective, but they suck). Their scraped press release stole the show on Google and the PRweb release was nowhere to be found.

No one has control over Google and I didn’t expect PRweb to flick a switch and make the scraper site go away. But I did talk to their customer service team to raise the issue, especially since one of the main points of the release was “Made in the USA.” A press release from Bulgaria doesn’t exactly help.

PrWeb customer service was apologetic and very nice and suggested I put in a ticket with their product management team to elevate the concern. So I did. The response back was amazing. The product management team didn’t even acknowledge the problem and gave me a bit of a sarcastic reply. Hmmm…a defensive product management team that won’t admit mistakes…sounds familiar.

Here’s part of Chris’ reply from PrWeb:

Again, if your goal is to get your release far and wide on the Internet, then other organizations finding your press release and reposting it is a good practice for you. It just gives you more exposure. If for whatever reason that is not your goal, then perhaps you may want to reconsider posting them on the World Wide Web.

He said, “World Wide Web”.

Gee, thanks Chris. As a seasoned snarkmaster myself, I wasn’t amused. I ended up calling Chris “smarty pants” in my reply and that’s when the management stepped in and offered a sincere reply to my original concerns (i.e. – they’re getting scraped and they don’t like it). Perhaps I will use PRweb again in the future, but for now I can’t justify the expense. Just because something costs more doesn’t mean it comes with higher quality.

I can take my Dell computer with Vista just about anywhere and it easily connects to the wireless network. If I have ever had a problem connecting to an unsecure, public network, I can’t remember when.

But when I come home, inevitably, I have a connection problem. The solution? Like all things Microsoft, a reboot.

I don’t just reboot once. The process is a 3 reboot cycle. Lately, it has taken 4 reboots.

Thanks Microsoft. I could have been sitting in traffic and enjoying the sunshine.