(Updated with an apology and explanation from Bluepulse noted in the comments.)
From time to time, I get asked by people at various companies “about blogs and stuff”, in particular how companies can best deal with blogs from a PR and marketing perspective. Two things I stress are sincerity and honesty. Companies need to be sincere in their communications with blogs, but more importantly, they need to be honest. Recent history is littered with examples of what happens when companies don’t take these lessons to heart.
Earlier this week, one of my esteemed colleagues here at MobHappy gave a really positive review to a piece of mobile software called Bluepulse. Some people, myself included, weren’t as enthusiastic — which is fine, we all can disagree — and said as much in the comments. Somebody going by “alan” from the company was happy to play along, responding to questions and criticism. That’s great, that’s what it’s all about: taking part in the conversation.
One of my criticisms was that the company’s claim of “any phone, anywhere” was dubious, which it is — how many times did people say “write once, run anywhere” about J2ME? Alan took exception to that, saying the company had never made that claim; I helpfully pointed out where on their site they had done so, in those exact words.
Now where things go off the track is when another guy, “Luke”, who lists his web site as http://www.bluepulse.com, so we’ll presume he’s an employee too (particularly since he posted from the same IP address as Alan), comes back a couple days later to say that I’ve left out a key word, that the quote is actually “Your content and applications, on almost any phone, anywhere…” Click on the link to the relevant page, and yes, it says that… now.
You see, the good folks at Bluepulse have gone back and changed the page, then it would appear that one of them couldn’t resist coming back to the site and pointing out my “error”. The problem — for them — is that they didn’t think about the good old Google cache, as you can see in the screengrab above (go ahead and click it to see the full-size image).
So instead of saying “hey, that’s some aggressive marketing copy, we’ll tone it down a bit”, they change it, then come back here in an attempt (I guess) to try to impugn my integrity, or, at the very least, make me look foolish. Funny how things like that can backfire. So there’s a lesson here in honesty for companies on the web. Well, that, or at least be smart enough to cover your tracks.
Update: Alan Jones from Bluepulse offers an apology and explanation in the comments, as does Luke. Thanks, guys.
So true. It’s amazing how companies (& individuals, too) act like it’s 1947 & a small thing like this becomes a Witchunt. All they had to do was say “We fouled up”, change the statement on the site, & go. Amazing.
Love & Peace, Clarence
Wow, talk about pie in face! It’s so important to behave in a high-handed way if you’re a company. Otherwise one’s integrity is just put into constant doubt.
Blogger Relations 101: Don’t Try to Pull a Fast One…
Over at MobHaappy comes word of some PR professionals who tried to pull the wool over these bloggers’ eyes and now are paying dearly for it. Here’s the story. Earlier this week the site reviewed a new mobile service called…
And I say to you, good sir… Owned!
P.S. You know you’re being linked to by Boing Boing, right?
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/26/carlo_longino_uses_g.html
nice call… i think this further supports the deeper reasoning behind a recent court decision that secured the legality of google cache.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004344.php
I’m from a galaxy far far away
who is misusing my identity ? Aaaaargh !
That is just so wrong — and it doesn’t matter if Bluepulse is dealing with bloggers or traditional media. As I commented on MP, lying is lying (and it’s wrong).
Bluepulse must have a bunch of PR interns running their communications efforts. Either that, or people who are stupid, and just should not be in PR.
Great work! (and I’m in PR).
Mike
http://www.mikespoints.com
I’ve written to Bluepulse and asked them to “please publicly apologize” to you.
It’s one thing to go back and change it and quite another to be an asshole and come back and rub it in your face.
Paul: by “high-handed” you actually mean the opposite: It’s important to behave in a highly ethical way in order to preserve integrity.
Hi Carlo,
I apologise unreservedly; personally and on behalf of bluepulse. We definitely did have “on any phone, on any network” in the headline of that page. The actual sequence of events is: I asked a web developer to correct the headline, as it’s not a claim we should be making. I was then about to reply and let you know we’d made a mistake, apologise for it, and let you know we’d corrected it on the site. It looks like Luke took an alternative approach before I could get back to you.
Luke and I didn’t speak about it first - I’m working part-time at present and I’m not in the office most of the time - this is my first day back at work after replying to your original comment.
Luke is an enthusiastic, talented young guy. He’s an employee of bluepulse, and his job is to help new customers sign up and build bluepulse widgets. He’s also a new and enthusiastic blogger. He’s not a PR person (neither am I) and he’s definitely not an asshole. Sitting in the same room as the developer, he got word of the change I’d asked for, and took it on himself to let you know.
Luke has made an important error of judgement in pretending the text was never changed. However, I don’t think it serves anybody’s interests to go making him out to be anything sinister. Come on, he’s a technical sales guy, and this is his first job out of college - who among us haven’t made an error of judgement in our early 20s?
This incident certainly does highlight some of the important issues in the role of blogs as media, and in workplace environments where employees are encouraged to communicate with the outside world through their own blogs and those of others, rather than through an all-controlling PR manager. I don’t think anybody reading these comments really wants us to react to this event by banning employees from communicating in blogs - in return I hope you can understand that not every bluepulse employee’s comment is an official company statement.
Blogs have been a powerful force for change in communicating company and product news. Bluepulse has enjoyed an extraordindary amount of industry attention in the past week, which all began with Oliver and Michael’s write-ups on Mobilecrunch, Techcrunch and Mobhappy.
It was incredible timing for us, since we had just scraped up enough cash to send our founder, Ben, to SF to speak at eTel. Ben’s invitation to eTel was also the result of blogging - conference convener Surj Patel’s blog was where eTel first heard about bluepulse. Thanks to all that blogging, this week we’ve been fielding emails and calls from analysts, VCs, potential business partners and out-of-work execs, and they all heard about us first as a result of our blog coverage. Looking for full disclosure? Want to know how humble a company we are? Ben was going to be sleeping on my friend’s couch in SF until Surj was able to persuade the conference hotel to comp him a room. I know Ben can’t afford to buy anybody a drink while he’s there, that’s for sure.
It’s all been very exciting for a tiny Australian mobile software startup, and we’re grateful for everyone who’s blogged about us - positive and negative. Through criticism, we learn about what we have to change about or technology and our business to make it work for real customers (at least, that’s true of constructive criticism - I’m not sure how calling people “assholes” helps anybody.)
I hope everyone understands that we’ve a right to be heard too, especially when we think someone might have misjudged us in a blog post or comment.
So I’d like to point out that the paragraph below the headline in question was explicit about what kinds of phones we support (both before and after the headline was changed):
I also said the same in my initial response to Carlo:
So while the headline was misleading, the rest of the webpage, and the rest of the site, hopefully wasn’t. It’s not like we buried it in the fine print. And I’ve also asked the team to change “any network” to “almost any network” in that headline, just in case there’s a kind of data-enabled mobile phone network we don’t know about yet. You may not see that change on the site for another day or two since it’s the weekend here.
Well, this was not the way I’d hoped we’d get mentioned on boingboing, I have to admit!
Once again, hope you can accept my personal apology, and bluepulse’s official company apology, for this incident. We now need to move on to address all the feedback we’ve received about changes we need to consider on billing, IM widget, RSS widget, and more.
- alan jones
It’s not nice to fool Mobhappy blogger…
The How Not To Deal With Blogs: A Case Study entry by Carlo Longino at MobHappy provides a perfect object lesson in how to get on the bad side of bloggers when dealing with them straight would have been much smarter…….
What’s that winding noise? Sounds like back peddling to me! whhhhiiiirrrrr!!!
Blogs are good and bad for PR — BluePulse…
Earlier today, I came across a link on Steve Rubel’s blog to the story on MobHappy about something they wrote regarding BluePulse, a cellphone app startup. As described by Steve and by Carlo of MobHappy, the site wrote something positive about B…
Come off it, Some One. That was a sincere apology and Carlo should update his post to point readers to it.
I applaud bluepulse’s decision to own up to and apologize for their mistake. While they certainly should have done so earlier, it speaks positively for the integrity of the company that they will admit to what they do wrong, and seem to have learned their lesson.
I updated my post here.
I was 22 once… And right out of college too.
Oh, the mistakes I made… Well, I’ve survived. Luke will too. Luke’s lucky to have a boss who is willing to work with and train him in how to work and interact in the business world. This has nothing to do with blogging other than bloggers keep us honest.
-david
Carlo, I certainly never intended to attempt undermine your integrity so I’m extremely sorry if it came off looking like I was.
While Alan has already explained the scenario, my perspective is that I was reading up on some of the posts about Bluepulse from over the last week. I noticed that in one of the posts Carlo made he linked to bluepulse.com and talked about the use of ‘all’ and ‘almost’.
I politely pointed out that the text actually had the qualifier ‘almost’ in there which was relevant to the conversation – little did I know that the text on that page had been changed by Alan since Carlo’s post and that Alan was intending to let him know that the claim was being toned down.
The new website had been released less than a week ago and I was unfamiliar with the copy. It was certainly not a sneaky move on the part of Bluepulse, it was unfortunate timing and a simple & honest mistake on my part:
I saw Carlo’s comment, opened the link to Bluepulse, saw what I thought was an important word missing from the quote and highlighted that it was.
This slip up on my part should in no way reflect on the integrity of Bluepulse – Every member of staff has worked their butts of for a long time to create something great and (excuse my language) bullshitting the community on which we depend is certainly not something we would ever do.
As you can see from Alan’s posts on both bluepulseblog.blogspot.com and many other blogs, he welcomes and participates in the discussion, giving praise and criticism equal consideration in his responses - Sorry to labour the point but there is no way that Bluepulse, Alan or myself would intentionally lie to our users or the larger tech community.
- Luke
Mr. Jones’s well thought out and well written apology seems to have saved the day and managed to turn the gathering tide of criticism against them.
I have to point out however, that the notion of a “technical sales guy, fresh out of college” who does not even have a passing familiarity with how Google’s cache function works is a bit disturbing. The internet and Google’s current role in it is not exactly rocket science to today’s grads. Perhaps “Luke” might be better utilized in an area, uh, less technical?
Thanks guys, I appreciate the apologies and explanations.
Not to rake up bad eggs, but there still seems to be a small discrepancy in how things happened. Alan seems like a fine fellow and sincerely admitted to his mistake in a very respectable fashion. It also seems like Luke doesn’t want to admit to his mistake, unless he can paint it as innocent and unintentional. After reading their posts it was obvious that was not the case. I know the internet (and blogs) aren’t about bringing people to world wide web justice, but I might as well point it out.
Alan: (link)
“Luke is an enthusiastic, talented young guy. He‚Äôs an employee of bluepulse, and his job is to help new customers sign up and build bluepulse widgets. He‚Äôs also a new and enthusiastic blogger. He‚Äôs not a PR person (neither am I) and he‚Äôs definitely not an asshole. Sitting in the same room as the [web] developer, he got word of the change I‚Äôd asked for, and took it on himself to let you know.
Luke has made an important error of judgement in pretending the text was never changed.
—————-
Luke: (link)
Carlo, I certainly never intended to attempt undermine your integrity* so I’m extremely sorry if it came off looking like I was.
…
I politely pointed out that the text actually had the qualifier ‘almost’ in there which was relevant to the conversation – little did I know that the text on that page had been changed by Alan since Carlo’s post and that Alan was intending to let him know that the claim was being toned down.
…
Sorry to labour the point but there is no way that Bluepulse, Alan or [I] would intentionally lie to our users or the larger tech community.
—————-
Luke’s Actual Post
Luke:
Hi Everyone,
Carlo, you seem to have missed an important word when you quoted bluepulses compatability claim.
You quote the site as saying:
“Your content and applications, on any phone, anywhere…”
In actual fact the text on that link says:
“Your content and applications, on almost any phone, anywhere…”
In this context I think ‘almost’ is an important qualifier =)
—————-
If you had known that the text was recently changed, and you posted this in response to the to the guy who’s comments had it changed, I would consider it dishonest and an attempt to undermine his integrity (no matter how politely you worded it). Luke, you should just say something along the lines of “What I posted was dishonest. I was overzealous, and I’m sorry for that. But don’t let that stop you from trying our product, it really is great, and really works with almost all the phones out there (and probably every phone you’ll run across).”
Alan, Luke,
I just wanted to send you some kudos. After making many mistakes myself and seeing many others do them, I don’t ask anyone that they do not make them. What I do value highly is that they listen to criticism, and do their best to correct the consequences as soon as they’re aware. To me, you’re apologies & explanations above are the best possible handling of that. And we _all_ make mistakes, no matter in our 20s, 40s or 60s.
Just a random guy surfing the internet. I liked the behavior above so much I felt compelled to comment.
[...] Hoy vuelven aqu√≠ por un motivo muy distinto. A trav√©s del blog de Steve Rubel me entero de que estos chicos intentaron colarsela a MobHappy despu√©s de que ese site dudase de una de las afirmaciones que BluePulse hacia en su site (en concreto, dec√≠an “cualquier tel√©fono, en cualquier lugar”). [...]
I think BluePulse has handled this well.
I remember when ZDNet Australia ran a story accusing Telstra of fixing a poll on its website. A temporary employee had done it as a joke using a bot. At first Telstra blamed ZDNet for not making a secure poll, but when the issue became bigger they fired the employee (or “failed to renew the contract”).
Of course, the story then became how Telstra had taken excessive action against an employee…
I’ve now had a chance to speak to Luke about this, and I accept his explanation of why he made the comment. I don’t believe he acted dishonestly. We failed to communicate quickly enough - with each other, and with Carlo.
This hasn’t reflected well on either of us or the company, but I hope it counts that we’ve both come out and spoken about what happened rather than tried to cover it up or ignore it.
Thanks everybody for both the criticism and the support. I hope some of you will take a moment to download the bluepulse client and try it for yourselves.
- alan jones
Man, Carlo “punked them off” — Uff. I hope I don’t have any hokus pukus on the Jellingspot website Carlo!
Hi Alan,
‘I know Ben can‚Äôt afford to buy anybody a drink while he‚Äôs there, that‚Äôs for sure.’
Indeed he couldn’t. I am assuming the address of Bluepulse as per their website: Suite 1206/3 Kings Cross Road, Rushcutters Bay, 2011, Sydney, Australia is the same one below?
1206/3 Kings Cross Road, RUSHCUTTERS BAY
Modern two bedroom apartment in the prestigious Altair building. Featuring two large equally sized bedrooms, built-ins, internal laundry, integrated stainless steel kitchen, generously sized living area and two large balconies one offering spectacular NE views of Sydney harbour and the other with views to Botany Bay. Building features pool, gym, security parking and concierge. How much for this luxurious Sydney office A$725PW - I hope to hell someone is living there too!
Perhaps a more meagre setting for a head office might do the trick. More money to pay for important business trips, development and staff training - ouch!; not conceirges and swimming pools. But I aint gonna tell you guys how to suck eggs.
Paratwa
maybe i am misunderstanding. from what you have posted it looks like the company has to be run out of the owners flat. that would suggest to me that yes, they are short of cash.
$725 is not actually that unreasonable for weekly rent in sydney centre.
Hi Paratwa,
I can’t believe you Googled that! Come visit the office anytime, visitors are always welcome if they can squeeze in. I actually had no idea there was a pool here. I guess I missed that when the company didn’t have time to give me an orientation tour.
But life’s too short to pretend we’re really short of cash and actually we’re really a bunch of wealthy real estate barons, surely? Let’s just say we have a great view out the dirty windows from what was probably once a great apartment before it was run down as a rental, and before we crammed it full of hot, sweaty geeks and humming Linux boxes (did the ad happen to mention there’s no airconditioning in the building? that we’re all guys and nobody’s paying for a cleaner?)
Yeah, come on by anytime!
- alan jones
Whooooo do you truuust?…
(With my apologies to George Thorogood.) No matter what we do — marketing, advertising, media relations, fixing cars, molding parts, healing the sick — we rely on our credibility and honesty to be effective, and to succeed. In public relations……
Hi Alan,
Point taken, almost. I love Google :), Anyhoo I thought I was pointing out inconsistencies with comments made. Like this one for example:
Your comment: ‘I don‚Äôt think anybody reading these comments really wants us to react to this event by banning employees from communicating in blogs - in return I hope you can understand that not every bluepulse employee‚Äôs comment is an official company statement.’
Someone better tell the inventor, Ben isn’t it? what the product can actually do and what it cannot as clearly he is under the impression it can do everything that your website once said it does:
‘have it delivered and working on any handset, on any network, anywhere in the world’ (http://www.clubsonyericsson.com/forum/index.php/topic,3776.0.html)
I am wondering how difficult it is to go and amend all the blogs, forums and news articles out there of the slight error in the marketing of your product.
Aint no way I am gonna come visit the Bluepulse team and incur their collective wrath over my devils advocate comments.
PS: I find it hard to believe that the Altair, such a prestigious landmark apartment building in Sydney doesn’t have air con? Aren’t there building regulations about that sort thing.
PPS: So when are you going to add a Homescreen widget. That would seem like an obvious marriage of your involvement with Homescreen and Bluepulse?
“Zack” a few posts up has a really good point that Alan never addressed. The two apologies, Alan’s and Luke’s, are in conflict. What’s the real story?? Did Luke hear about the changes while “sitting inthe same room” and then make “an error in judgement” and lie when he took it upon himself to notify Carlo, or is it like Luke said– he didn’t know anything about the changes and thought he was correcting Carlo’s error? It’s one or the other, guys– someone’s lying. And I’m going to guess it’s Luke.
Good on ya mate!
The truth always prevails!
Don’t let the buggers get you down.
When I made my “Luke” I too was early my career, and I got promptly fired.
Not because I was a bad person, but because it was important for me to learn the Luke lesson, which is ethics generally count.
Objectively speaking, it’s good thing (at least Luke probably thinks it is) Bluepulse needs that kid around, because, at any sizable company, great product or not, he would be history.