Polynomial!

Ellsworth Toohey IRL: the gaping void of Hugh MacLeod

(Disclaimers: ruthless bashing and ranting ahead. Some dissing of Seth Godin's earlier phrase-mongering, although I do think sometimes he actually has something worthwhile to tell.)

Guru Bloggers, a fancy crowd. Or call them meta bloggers. Their main topic is blogging, their blog, their thoughts on blogging (especially on blogging about blogging on blogging). You get the idea. Of course, for actual credibility you need to own a phrase giving you a nymbus of content and authority. "Crowdsourcing", "Be a Purple Remarkable Cow", "The Long Tail" or "Social Blue Monster Objects".

So what does this taste like?

The Blue Monster wine is also part of the "Smarter Wine" conversation. The main thesis is that it's not the wine per se that is interesting, it's the conversations that happen around the wine that is interesting.

Not per se. It really depends on the people and the topic and the listeners whether the conversations are interesting or not. And if "it's the conversations around the wine", they could be fairly boring actually. But you're right: wine is a utility for socialising, and doesn't matter all that much by itself. You realized that, but that won't mean you can change anything about it.

And that is true for all social objects. People matter. Objects don't.

And "social" objects are no exemption. But here's your core slogan: people matter. I think everyone can agree with that. So everyone can agree with you. After all, "people" is everyone, so you must mean me. Feels kind of good. Always nice being not too controversial, especially if you can still play out the "radical" card fairly conveniently, being the "lonely small-time blogging cartoonist". A man of the people. One of us. And he's changing Microsoft for us, so Mum won't get have to be angry about her computer any longer.

If the Blue Monster wine idea is interesting, it's because of a most unlikely mash-up between a small, obscure winery in South Africa, and the world's largest software company.

Yes, that's all there is to it, Hugh. Such "unlikely obscurity" is a proven way to get attention for a short while. A very short while. Make the most limited-edition lithographs out of it, and better be quick. Because as Remarkable as this is, the next Purple Cow is already around the corner.

Importing different Cultural DNA into an organization is a real balancing act. Too much of it makes it impossible for the company to focus. Too little and the company withers on the vine.

Lots of social engineering here (we are slowly getting to the Ellsworth Toohey part). Just because they let you doesn't mean either employees or customers or shareholder need your Cultural DNA all that much. They like a buffoon with their wine and their software every once in a while, it sure is entertaining. Until and unless it becomes stale. They will keep buying software and wine and goods of production because of their tangible intrinsic values. They will keep not minding funny guru concepts around their products as long as they change often enough before getting boring.

None of this stuff is rocket science. Most of it is glaringly obvious.

Yes, that's the way guru stuff works. I knew that you knew your stuff, but being oh-so-open about it doesn't make it any more sophisticated.

And sadly for folks working in the social software industry, "The people who get it, don't need us. And the people who need us, don't get it."

Sounds like a hell of a business plan to me... literally. The road to frustration. After recognizing this, why keep bothering? Nobody is done a service, and doing a well-paid service that's actually in demand is a lot more gratifying. Tell the social software people to ask the guys at your winery, or at Microsoft (instead of you).

Well, Dave, your low opinion of Microsoft notwithstanding, I'm not looking at this from the executive level. I'm coming at this from the perspective of a small-time cartoonist with a blog and an internet connection.

Delusions of grandeur. I you have never heard of Ellsworth Toohey, consider yourself lucky. Enough name-dropping for now.

And from where I'm standing, it seems to me that in a big company like Microsoft, even a small thing like the Blue Monster can create a lot of value for a lot of people.

Seems to you? Things aren't always what they seem. Microsoft is creating a lot of value, as are many other software companies out there. Wineries are also creating a little value. In either case, what exactly is the blue monster adding? "Change the world or go home"? I would argue that this slogan of yours has been the guiding principle of the well-known and the unknown Bill Gates and Steve Jobs of this world long before you started creating drunken cartoons. True, they never articulated this, they merely expressed the principle in action and production, and so they are probably delighted and amused by you finding the right words.

After some 20 years madness of 16-hour days of production, someone else who wants to actually change the world can finally afford to hire a radical guru evangelist sitting in a NYC bar whose contribution is putting it into words. Nothing wrong here, but the word smith should be exceptionally careful never to reverse cause and effect or overestimate his place in the scheme of things. (Between the lines, you make it very clear that you do have a grip on this.) You can own a meme you yourself created, be it the Purple Cow or Social Object, or even a Wine brand, but not Microsoft or its equivalent. For a short while, you will sell a lot more good-old wines with brand-new cartoon labels (mostly to tens of thousands of Microsofties) and Microsoft has some much-needed mojo juice going. Make no mistake, your stuff resonates with Microsoft because that's their point of getting out of bed every day. So it's not exactly a wave of change. The kind of people bashing Microsoft won't even take notice in the way you hope for. The people who get it won't need you (for long), and the people who need you, won't get it. I might be wrong, but I actually care less about this than you.

No, I have no idea of where all this is going.

I think you do:

All I care about these days is drawing cartoons, doing interesting things with interesting people, paying my bills, and keeping my sorry ass out of the hospital, the mental asylum, the morgue etc.

A safe bet. Despite "all this", you do after all know that's the things you can count on.

Nobody can count on either a Gaping Void or the Glaringly Obvious fascinating anyone forever, or even for long-enough. From what I have seen so far, I have to assume that you know the point of your blog's name better than most people do.

The Joel Wars

The guy drops something, and hundreds of people become all agitated, bloggers and developers and forum hang-outs get in a flap, buzzing with excitement. What a rage. Goodness. 

James writes:

I've come across a number of posts listing ways to increase traffic to a blog recently but none have described anything like this.

Partly that's probably because Joel Spolsky might not read (or need) any such guides...  ;)

"Increase traffic to yet unknown blog" is a completely different (and for guide writers likely more lucrative) problem domain than "regularly get some new peak of buzz to an already highly visible, highly frequented A-list personal website that's been around for years and built a solid fanbase". It must be a different one: part of the rage is that Joel Spolsky wrote it---otherwise, nobody would have noticed it, nobody would have cared, from the writing alone. That's not to devalue the article or the author (though some crabbers will probably see it that way), only something worth being pointed out.

It probably applies to half of his writing; the articles that made him so popular were of an entirely different kind. Neither should this pressurize him into keeping the quality at this level at all times (we all love to freedom to rant away in our blogs; plus we never know beforehand whether and how our efforts will be received; plus it is often the right mix of well-balanced articles and outright rants that is popular with many readers) nor should anyone be tricked into believing that a similar article could create a similar buzz.

So why the fuss about the alleged irony?

Nobody asked him what technology he would recommend for writing a FogBugz-like bug tracker. So when he talks about the technology used for that project, that in no way invalidates the "contrary" recommendation he gave beforehand regarding a completely different kind of undertaking.

Seriously, it must be stressful being him. Give him a break.  ;)

Attracting customers: I see a pattern here, and it's dead-obvious.

Michelle Tampoya asks: How do we get people to buy?

Her advice is certainly good and probably useful, depending on how much you have dealt with the topic yourself before. To imply, however, as she does at the start of her article, that almost nobody else has a clue as to answers to that question, particularly in prolific forums such as the Business of Software or even at dedicated Micro-ISV blogs, is a little drastic to say the least. Such advice, and pretty much along the same lines, is pretty easy to get; it is what is preached on blogs and those forums whenever the question comes up, backed by those who have been there and done that quite successfully. (Most questions there are a variation of that question anyway; that's what business is about: how do I actually sell what I am offering, and once I got that sorted, how do I sell more? What is always interesting are the contextual particulars, the market, the competitors, the customers, the individual strengths and weaknesses with the consequent opportunities and threats. [1]

It is clear that with zero budget you have pretty much no other chance than to find other ways to spread the word. The best marketing is a fantastic product: even with a marketing budget, you'll need that. One of the most important lessons of marketing is that you simply cannot turn poo into chocolate, no matter how stretched your budget.

Still, I absolutely agree that it is worth pointing out that "no budget" does not mean "no chance", which is what many people still believe. Then again, I think this is more of a general state of mind that cannot be "fixed" easily by counterexamples or counterarguments. You may have the drive to find ways to "make it happen" no matter what resources are at your disposal or not. I'm not saying this is determined by nature or fate or nurture, rather that it depends on the context, but given an individual isolated situation, you will probably find that you belong to the one camp or the other, likely revealing our "real" preferences no matter what we wish they were. Just a vague suspicion on my part here.

Michelle writes:

As a community and web marketer, the question that first comes to me is not the how, but the why. "Why aren’t they buying?"

Leaving aside that, from what I have observed, this is the question most forum posters ask to begin with, suggesting that they have figured this mental leap for themselves already, I will point out that this is the only logical next question you can arrive at, were you to ask how to "get" people to buy your stuff.

How can other people be compelled to do something we want them to do? All possible answers boil down to two fundamental answers: attempting to force them (whether through fraud or at gunpoint), or to convince them by argument. In marketing, this is called "persuasion", but the idea is to:

• either design your offering so that it is obviously and plainly visibly in the best interests of that segment of the people you have identified as your target customers to buy your solution (in which case, they will do it, and the purpose of marketing simply is to reassure them, by providing the "arguments" that are applicable in the given context, which may include in a context of, say, consumer beveridges, seemingly "silly" arguments such as refreshment or lifestyle imagery)
• or, if your product is not that self-explanatory, to do the rest of the explaining because your customers cannot immediately deduce how their best self-interest is served from the evidence they have of your product or offering (maybe it is a new way of doing something, or a completely new kind of refreshment drink in jazzy colours)—in which case, the purpose of marketing is more of an argumentative challenge, but essentially the same.

I'm digressing a little but the point is that, ruling out the option of force, the only next question that you can logically arrive at after asking, "how can I get people to voluntary exchange their hard-earned cash for my product or service?" (i.e. arrive at a valuation of your product / service that ranks higher than their valuation of the sum of money you are asking for in exchange), is asking one of two "why" questions, where each will in turn lead you to the other: either "why are they not buying?", as Michelle suggested, or "why are they buying elsewhere?" / "when people do buy stuff, why do they do it?". In other words, why don't they realize (whether correctly or incorrectly aside) that my product serves their best self-interest? [2]

This isn't meant as much as a criticism of the article, as it just got me thinking and blogging after I finished reading it. Her five bullet points pretty much cover the basic prerequisites of marketing in practice, "community marketing" as it is called to contrast it with what is believed to be more "traditional", slap-in-the-face marketing.

Talking about proper marketing, I have to point out Spark This, a marketing resource that I just discovered today and that seems low on quantity (last update was in April), but for my tastes very high on quality.

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[1] Yes, the highly-touted SWOT methodology appears rather obvious to me, I probably missed its essence. In fact, reading about it I could actually feel that I very seriously missed any essence there. As I so often do, I digress. But seriously: strengths/weaknesses are two names for the same thing: assessing yourself and your situation contextually. Opportunities/threats are again two monikers for the same thing: evaluating your findings of that assessment and interpreting consequences. But it is logically impossible, given that you have taken the initiative to assess, that you will not arrive at some conclusion, which was the point of the exercise, so the whole SWOT superstructure to me seems a little redundant and even pointless. Why state the obvious? People do that kind of analysis, arguably to varying degree and depth depending on an unknown number of local variables, all the time, it is a vital part of human action in general.)

[2] I realize that is nothing new since Adam Smith; for all the classical economists' errors, the Invisible Hand or Say's Law remain as timeless (they were valid before they were proclaimed) and true as ever.  ;)

The GUI-Usability-Fallacy

In my previous post I linked to that "Framework Studio" which I read about in the German dot.net magazin a while ago.

I just revisited their site and, browsing a screenshots section, encountered a typical example of what I'd like to call the GUI fallacy. Click the screenshot on the right for an example of what I mean. Somebody has obviously taken great care to give their application a "modern, fresh user interface". Maybe some manager demanded it as a "must-have" in "our competitive market", who knows. One can well imagine how a former version of the product may have looked typically gray and cluttered with information overload. Especially in the business market, you often have manager selling to managers, depending on those managers sometimes with decisions that annoy and demotivate the producers (developers) or the end users (some secretary?) or worse, both.

So now we have a "fresh, modern interface", that box is ticked, maybe they looked to iTunes or something for inspiration, done. But will it be any more pleasant to use? From the looks of it, I doubt it. (I will grant that judging a book from its covers is a risky business, but let me stress this: the customers, or rather, those who will have to use the system, do care; it highly influences their evaluation of a product as Ian Landsman so aptly pointed out.)

So merely judging from the screenshot, it seems to me that the graphics are all shiny, but the the program must be a pain to use. User interface without usability, that's what I call the GUI fallacy. "Just modernize the looks a bit, and we're done."

Who designs such interfaces? Who wants to work with that? People will work with that, no doubt: they have to, once they bought the product. But it is just a matter of time for a more attractive opportunity to materialize just right when they are ready to switch. That kind of GUI really makes it easy for its users to switch (ignoring the general hesitation of most to switch, especially when the financial stakes are high, which is probably the reason why badly designed applications are still so widespread).

But don't count on it.