Monday, April 2, 2012

Fifty Ways to Lose Your Customer- Part I

So on Friday, I mentioned that there were two things I wanted to talk about today- the pros and cons of DRM and another article about google's latest idea. Now I'm wondering if I have space for both in a single post. I'm also distracted by someone paying any attention to my award winning polls. Yes, mystery guest, you know your Yellow Submarine quite well. Jeremy, Hillary, Boob and Ph.D are all aliases the Nowhere Man uses to cover his tracks as he viciously causes roses to grow from noses.

So, Google's new idea. You can read about it here. Let me explain...no, there is too much. Let me sum up. Miniature market research surveys which can be used to replace paywalls. Okay, part of me says "score! High quality online newspapers will be free forever!" A tiny part wonders if any site behind a paywall other newspapers would care. Hard to see some freaky hardcore porn site hitting you with questions about your preferences in lube. But mostly I just think "this is a terrible idea."

Which is odd, because Google has many terrible ideas, but usually they're smart enough to make a joke out of it. Hell, they have a whole series of commercials for dumb, fake products and services on Youtube. Here's a good one-



See, here's a few problems I have with it. First, how do you conceivably make it relevant to whatever the viewer was doing? Second, market researchers don't pay much for this stuff. Feel free to look around. There are plenty of places you can take surveys online and get "paid" for it, but that amounts to like, fifty cents for a twenty minute survey. What's one question worth? Here's another problem, how do you control the flow of data? If it's actually done through google so you don't take the same survey a thousand times, doesn't that raise issues of privacy? On the other hand, if you're just trying to read the NY Times and they ask you repeatedly whether or not you like Jelly Beans, whether you've had any in the last month, and whether you've ever considered buying a 135 dollar Ronald Reagen themed Jelly Bean box set* they're going to run into the same people answering the question many times, throwing accuracy way the hell off. Assuming it wasn't way the hell off in the first place because let's be honest. You were just trying to read the news and halfway through the article, in the middle of a quote no less, suddenly you're talking about Jelly Beans or you won't be able to see how it ends.


Or how about the extremely likely "okay, we'll try that out, but we're still going to have both paywalls and advertising." The ads alone are pretty damn intrusive, but they're also a necessary evil for big sites which will naturally have high hosting costs. And if you really need a paywall, I understand that too though it sucks for me, since I'm poor and still like reading the news. But it seems to me that if you offer another way to make money, they may well just add it to the mix. And the potential profit for them is, I think, not that staggering but the inconvenience to readers would be. Which would also risk a migration of readers to sites less likely to ask them what they're wearing right now in the creepiest text they can muster with a few *huff* *pant* *wheeze* noises thrown in just for good measure.

So basically, I'm saying "That's stupid, Google. Don't do that. Just because you host my e-mail and my blog, and fought SOPA and can use your sattelites to spy on me at this very moment doesn't mean that I'm honor bound to agree with stupid things. And this is a stupid thing.

Also, this took longer than I wanted but less time than I expected. Even so...scrollupscrollupscrollup amend-amend-amend. Okay. This article is now officially "Fifty Ways to Lose Your Customer- Part I." DRM talk on Wednesday.

*Totally a real thing. And of all presidents, why Ronald Reagan? I never understood his popularity. Probably because I know too much (to live?) in regards to, say, hostage crises in the Middle East, homelessness, poverty, crime, AIDs, Iran-Contra, education budgets and Reagen's other myriad failings to back the "let's add him to Mt. Rushmore" lobby. Honk if you hate Reagan! If you don't, go, I don't know. Read some non-fiction. Like a newspaper, say.

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