Google Bites Off More Than It Can Chew?

A couple of weeks ago everyone at our office was buzzing about how cool Goog411 is, but the service isn't living up to the hype. The past few times I have tried call for a number it hasn't worked out. I keep getting an unprofessional sounding message where people in the back ground shout out random business names like "Roto-router" followed by the gentleman's voice saying "We are a little backed up, please call back. Talk to you soon". The sound quality of the message is very poor, and its really annoying to listen to the tinny distorted voices in the background.

This is not the level of quality we have come to expect from Google. I mean come on if I had the luxury of waiting to make the phone call I would have just looked the number up on the internet..duh!

If they don't put up more lines and a better recording system quickly I might be forced to try out Windows Live 411.....

Radical Transparency...Is It Worth It?

Would you allow your employees to openly blog about what goes on in your company? Would you set limitations (such as never talk about x product)? Would you penalize your employees for admitting to a weakness in your companies structure? For most businesses the answer to that is "yes!".

Wired recently wrote a fantastic article on Microsoft's approach to Radical Transparency. The software giant has created an atmosphere that not only embraces blogging but open communication with their partners as well. From a vendor to vendor standpoint the idea of radical transparency is fantastic. Imagine being able to go to your vendors site and read that x batch of brake pads are defective before you go and put them on 1.3 million cars. Just think of all the time and money you could save!

When I was doing dial up tech support I often wondered if the employees of third parties were as fed up with their system breaking as I was. Did they want to scream and pull their hair out because some dork in the back room didn't think it was important to fix the scripting errors that were causing the OS to crash every other hour?

Personally, I find it is less frustrating to work with a third party when they seem "human". Companies that allow their employees to have "off topic" conversations and to "be real" are so much easier to deal with. After all, if your system is broken and sucks so does mine. We understand that not everything works right all the time, and sometimes people screw up royally..it happens. I would prefer you just tell me the truth so I can come up with a game plan and move on. One customer service job I had forbid the use of "problem, broken, repair, malfunction or issue" in any client facing communication. Have you ever tried to apologize for an issue without admitting that there is anything wrong? The fear that a competitor would figure out that our server went down was so prevalent that if the server did go down we hired a third party to go make the repairs at the Colo instead of using our own engineers.

Is Radical Transparency worth the risk? From a corporate perspective the concept is so new and foreign that we can't really answer that yet. Today, the Channel 9 site is one of the most popular sites in the tech circuit with almost as many visitors a month as Shop.com. The real bonus may be that Microsoft has gained a warmer, more approachable image. The unknown is what lasting effect, if any, this new philosophy have. Is blogging a passing fad? Will Social Networking revamp the businesses of the future? Will Bush's Baked Beans one day release their secret family recipe on Myspace? I somehow doubt that that they will, but you have to admit it would be pretty cool if they did.

Automotive Prediction Monday: Like Football..Only Not

Blogs are taking over the world aaahhhh!!! Two years ago blogging was for the "social misfits" or attention seekers, now everyone is blogging. There are funny blogs, sad blogs, entertaining blogs even blogs that are little more than a few random sentences every great once in a while, but no matter what the content someone somewhere will eventually read these missives.

66% of Americans trust blogs for their product recommendations according to the Nielson Global Survey. Now if I owned a car dealership I would run right out and grab myself a couple of college interns to write a high quality, regularly updated blog for my website. I would have them scour the nets and link to blogs that have positive reviews of whatever the hot model of the week is. Not only would the dealership have a "fresher" online presence but they would be building up their sites keyword density which helps the relevancy scores.

So here is my prediction: In two years it will be almost impossible to sell a car without an excellent blog. I see the PPC market to become so prohibitively expensive that smaller dealerships will have to turn to more creative methods of advertising.

That is my prediction for this Monday...oh wait I have a bonus prediction:

My saying I like Triscuits will not make them more popular...well at least not yet :)