PubSub CEO snubs Hmm over “abuse and insulting” reviewcustomer adventures, blogs and podcasting, search engines — by TDavid @ 10:29 pm PST
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If you don’t like drama posts, dear reader, then please skip this by. If you do like those type posts, then this Bud’s for you.
Earlier in the comments section of Scoble’s blog (which he affectionately calls the “mudpit”), Pubsub CEO Bob Wyman, informed me that he didn’t respond to the numerous issues with their PubSub features outlined here because he found it to be: “abuse” and “insulting.”
Never mind that the issues I cited were actually valid points about clearly and easily identified flaws in their stats.
You know what I find abusive and insulting, Mr. Wyman? Spam.
So let me tell you a true story of spam, sham and slam. The characters are colorful, the lights are a bit dim, but it’s non-fiction all the way.
Let’s start with the chronology of events so readers are brought up to date and can fully understand specifically how and why my negative review came to be.
1) I was curious what was happening with the Feedster Top 500 list for September. CEO Scott Rafer had posted here to tell me last month that it would be coming out the middle of September. I was curious and was following up.
2) I posted my question because it was getting late in the month and mentioned another nagging, frankly more important, issue that I hadn’t been able to resolve with Feedster’s icon upload function.
3) Nobody from Feedster commented on the blog entry, but I *did* receive a private email literally within hours of the somewhat unflattering post and got assistance from Feedster in fixing the issue.
4) I was (rightfully) corrected by Randy Charles Morin that Feedster had already announced on their blog that there would be no Top 500 list for September. I should have looked there first for the news. My bad, there. Sorry, Feedster.
5) Mark from Pubsub stops by to spam us in the same thread about the new LinkRanks at PubSub features that they “slipped out today” in this same Feedster thread. What exactly does this have to do with Feedster or my icon upload issue? Unrelated, unsolicited and tacky. Spam, Mr. Wyman, spam.
6) I debated privately emailing Mark and CC’ing Mr. Wyman about how tacky this activity was and decided instead to follow Mark’s request and check out and let them know exactly what I thought of PubSub’s new features. In detail.
7) I posted an update on the blog entry indicating and thanking Feedster and the person who helped me for the issue, Sheldon. Thank you again, Sheldon, much appreciated. The Feedster thread and issue is resolved.
I didn’t tag or submit to Digg, Slashdot, etc or try to create any additional exposure for this post beyond what was written.
Now let’s compare and contrast that with what happened with Pubsub in response to their negative review:
1) I wrote the review fully disclosing the details of what happened above so readers could understand why I was angry about the situation.
2) I went through every PubSub LinkRanks and SiteStats feature and function and tried to apply some measure of usefulness to this blog. Specifically, I documented issues that readers could verify and guarantee were inaccurate like the daily post counts, the disparity in times between referral links being updated and showing up on PubSub. Every test I could make showed this data was clearly inaccurate and unreliable and specifc examples were given. Including dates, times and links.
3) Darkmoon leaves the following comment: “All have have to say is: lol. Mark is lucky that you even bothered to go through with all of detailed thoroughness. I would have stopped at the inaccurate spider and went…. you wanted me to LOOK AT THIS??? YOU WASTED MY TIME ON THIS PIECE OF…. I have to say that when I look at Talkdigger and see who’s linked to me, it definitely shows in some of the searches. I hope PubSub reviews and takes your criticism to heart since so far…”
4) An anonymous commenter by the name of Paul then writes: “Long, rambling manifesto full of angst and anger. Over what?? You need to get some sunlight. Quit sitting around in your underwear in the dark eating pizza and go outside. You’ll feel better.”
This comment made me smile because a) I’ve never posted in my underwear and b) I get lots of sunlight and c) I felt a lot better after making that post. The writing was quite therapeutic, actually.
5) I check the IP address of this Paul character against the IP address of Mark from PubSub. We’ll do this with suspicious anon comments sometimes. I never, until this post, have released these details to anybody else, so consider this a Hmm first.
I found it interesting to note that:
Paul
Paul is using Internet Explorer and Windows. Paul’s ISP is located in/near Waltham, Massachusetts. He’s not as anonymous as he wanted to be, unfortunately (for him).
Mark Wagner from PubSub
Mark uses Firefox and is running Linux. I noticed that Mark has replied on Hmm before (unrelated comment, and actually quite helpful) and he had an MSN Spaces blog at that time. Is he a new hire at PubSub? Mark’s ISP hails from Nashua, New Hampshire which is a mere 28 miles from Waltham, Massachusetts.
Hmm …
6) I can’t prove this Paul is the same guy as Mark Wagner from Pubsub but it sure is a coincidence, isn’t it? I decide to let it go, I said my piece. Part of me wanted to update the blog entry with this information but then I think that would have been going too far with something that really wasn’t worth it to me.
Also, it is quite possible that Mark was genuinely trying to be helpful and pass along some information harmlessly about his employer, and he wasn’t trying to spam. I can see being proud of something new where you were work and wanting to tell others about it, but the proper place to do that is not in the comments section of a negative — or even positive — post about a competitor.
7) I gently try to prod this “Paul” character to see if he will post again and come clean about his identity or choose to remain anon. He stays anon. Well, sort of, now as you see in #4 above.
I’m reading through my RSS list earlier and see Scoble talking about yet another new PubSub feature excitedly which rubbed me wrong in light of my recent spam at my blog to review experience. Since I didn’t receive any correspondence from PubSub about the various errors and inaccurate data in their service, I left a comment in Scoble’s blog alerting him to the post I made and mused: “Not a single response from PubSub about the numerous issues I outlined above in detail. Ahh, but they have time to be out there telling everybody what’s new. Seems like messed-up priorities to me.”
9) Wyman responds with the quoted screenshot above. He thinks this is a good case for Scoble’s Corporate Blogging book. He’ll show me.
Actually, that’s the only thing I agree with Wyman on in this scenario. Only, I think PubSub’s response is a good case for the eternal bad example of service and Feedster’s response is a very good example. They didn’t try to stop by and give excuses or snub the informer — regardless of the way the information was conveyed — they dispatched an email to somebody to actually fix the freaking problem.
I believe I provided them with something they may not have liked hearing, but something needing to be said, and every bit of the specific service feedback I gave could be independently verified and tested by their programmers. Or even non-programmers.
10) I didn’t tag or submit to Digg, Slashdot, etc or try to create any additional exposure for that post beyond what was written. If I wanted to promote that post — or the Feedster one — then there are numerous additional tools at our disposal, not to mention the numerous other websites we operate (no links from any of them to the post in question). We chose to utilize none of these options, so please somebody indicate to me where this has been any different than what dozens of other reviews at Hmm have gone through? I don’t even think it’s been the harshest review I’ve written.
11) In light of Mr. Wyman’s dismissive comments at Scoble’s blog earlier today, I changed my mind about #4 and have now decided to share the information and let readers decide what to do with it. Is this me just grinding an axe or is there actual substance to the issues I outlined? Readers are smart enough to connect the dots and I’m sure they’ll take me to the woodshed if necessary.
Too bad, it was a negative review.
I’m guessing if this had been a positive review — and again, if I thought the service was actually worthwhile it would have been — I probably would have heard from PubSub. Just a guess that some sort of back and forth dialogue would have occured — privately or otherwise.
Too bad it was a negative review.
My advice for PubSub CEO, Bob Wyman
Whatever you say or do publically from this point forward, you can control the quality of your product/services. You can ignore bug reports, inaccurate or slow updated stats and negative reviews. You cannot control, dictate, spin and/or obscure the verbiage of the reviews.
My own comments in the initial thread summarize this very well:
I wouldn’t have wasted the extra time if it wasn’t so messed up atop a “check it out” comment in a post about one of their competitors. More than a bit on the tacky side, IMO. We usually delete that type stuff in the moderation queue as spam before it ever goes public (and sometimes we’ll even email the individual who does it and ask them please to not ever do that again). Sometimes I just want to post to make a point so they will know it’s not kosher to do that around here.
Mr. Wyman can, and probably will continue to spin this post and the other one to be something that was done primarily to drum up controversy and traffic — put the blame on me, if you will — or perhaps he can rip a page out of their competitor, Feedster, did: fix the problems I specifically documented and come back and ask me to take another look when it’s ready.
Can the second review be any worse than the first? Doubtful.
Whichever avenue he chooses, if I were him, I’d stop worrying about bad press and worry more about bad marketing and bad code. Kudos for indexing millions and millions of blogs, but if the data is inaccurate it just doesn’t matter. Ever see Meatballs, Mr. Wyman?
Pounds on the floor and says: “It. Just. Doesn’t. Matter. It. Just. Doesn’t. Matter!
Then again Wyman may write this one off as “abuse” and “insulting” too.
Related Posts- New Pubsub daily 1000 list needs heart transplant ASAP
- “Massive layoffs at PubSub … shutdown is imminent” says TechCrunch
- Hooters Casino Hotel blog “not appropriate” place for customer service issues
- Zawodny predicts doom for Feedster by year end 2006
- Comment spam DNA icon art
- Feedster running out of time for September Top 500 list
Can you point me to Mark’s SPAMmy comment? Please email me them.
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — September 27, 2005 @ 8:57 am PST
Found it!
http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20050919/2394/#comments
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — September 27, 2005 @ 8:58 am PST
How is PubSub’s top 1000 list unrelated to Feedster’s top 500 list? Seems relevant to me. He was honestly asking you for an opinion. Although, I tend to agree that Bob’s confrontation nature doesn’t do his company well, this time I agree with him that your comments seem abusive.
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — September 27, 2005 @ 9:02 am PST
Sheesh. I despise people like this. When you ask for constructive criticism, you’re not asking to be patted on the back from the industry. You want to know what’s wrong and how it can be fixed. Honest reviews are the best reviews since you can fix your products if they are faulty.
T - everything you said was right on the money. You didn’t even blow up at them like I would have. You gave every point that you thought was good or bad, and supported it with good factual points.
Finger pointing never gets anyone anything, but obviously they’d rather point it at you than fix their problems that you pointed out. Here’s one for PubSub. Ever look at BlogSearch for Google? See all the spam? Difference between PubSub and Google (at the time of post) is that Google listens to criticism and goes out and fixes it. Instead of contacting T privately, you left a comment thread for your product. He was nice enough to go review it. The review sucked. Deal. TDavid is one of the few people that doesn’t drum up the products and actually gives very brutal but honest answers.
Next time T, maybe you should have me do the review ;).
Comment by darkmoon — September 27, 2005 @ 9:24 am PST
See #7 in the first list, Randy, that was linked in the post above, but probably should have been linked in #5, thanks for pointing that out, and that will be changed in an update. I also thought of a better, shorter title too: PubSnub
BTW, wasn’t this the same Bob Wyman who Dave Winer had to tell to knock off what he believed was vendor pitching during Bloggercon III? Yup, he sure was, in the “Overload” session, readers can listen here: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail278.html
And then more battling over the situation in Dave’s “Fat Man Sings” session and summary where readers can listen here: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail287.html
Wyman: “I said nothing about my product. I did not pitch my product … I do not believe that I crossed the line … and I think it was completely inexcusable that you jumped on me.”
In Wyman’s defense, some say Winer overreacted and I even wrote about the conference (though Wyman’s situation wasn’t specifically mentioned, Dave Sifry from Technorati was) here: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/20041106/1132/
I see you wrote about this before too, Randy, and Wyman showed up to deny he was “looking for trouble” in that instance: http://www.kbcafe.com/iBLOGthere4iM/?guid=20041210141126
History of inappropriate marketing or being in the wrong place at the wrong time … twice? As I said in the post, it’s entirely possible that Mark was not trying to spam in that earlier thread, but it sure came off as spam to me, and the chronology of the events is that was *before* the review that Wyman dismissed as “abuse” and “insulting.”
Readers can/will decide if there is fire where there is smoke. Things that … Make You Go Hmm!
Comment by TDavid — September 27, 2005 @ 9:43 am PST
Randy - Thanks for reviewing the situation and giving your honest opinion.
We’re splitting hairs here but even if the comment had something tangentially to do with the topic, it didn’t comment on the subject or text at all, instead it was a pitch (paraphrasing): “hey, go check out what we did today, here’s a link:” If the topic was about PubSub or linkrank stats in general, then maybe, maybe that would have been appropriate.
At best, assuming readers en masse believe it wasn’t spam, I think the timing and placement was horribly timed and ill-advised.
As for abusive? Well, Randy I have a very low tolerance for spam, as is evidenced by numerous posts about spam over the years. I encourage any other blogger, including you, to run the tests that I described in detail with their own blogs and then rewrite my review so it actually gets somebody with a wrench to actually fix the bugs. Bottom line is the data is inaccurate and PubSub can snub the facts or fix the bugs.
To use Wyman’s words, I found it “insulting” that Mark didn’t bother to run the blog he was pitching to through their stats and compare it against the publically available data before posting his comment. I seriously doubt Mark would ever have made that post if he ran the same basic tests I did.
Would you have done so? Anyone?
Comment by TDavid — September 27, 2005 @ 10:11 am PST
Testing is usually one of the key places most people cut corners on. Unfortunately.
What’s strange is that most of the things you mentioned could be fixed easily. Especially the one about the BBC. I saw a number of similar A class addresses but they were not grouped together. BBC has 3-4 of their servers on that list alone.
Perhaps they WANT to track which subdomain is linked more, but then that should have been defined. Oh well.
Comment by darkmoon — September 27, 2005 @ 10:21 am PST
I’m not gonna defend Bob Wyman and PubSub. Clearly Bob has a public relations problem and PubSub has a broken engine, but that doesn’t mean you can call them SPAMmers.
Saying their engine sucks, is OK (and maybe correct). For instance, my domain [http://www.pubsub.com/site_stats.php?site=kbcafe.com] doesn’t get indexed more days than it does. I have a dozen or so blogs, how they get 0 entries when I ping them everytime, is beyond me. That’s OK, most software simply doesn’t work.
Saying they are SPAMmers, is stepping over the line. We have clear problems with SPAMming and PubSub is not one of them. Bob has expressed to me that he’s concerned about his own database being overwhelmed with bad data. Bob and PubSub are on the anti-SPAM side.
Comment by Randy Charles Morin — September 27, 2005 @ 4:29 pm PST
Whoa, Randy, now I think you’ve jumped the shark.
I just re-read every word I’ve written about this subject to make sure there could be no misunderstanding. I even wrote up a new entry to further explain this (which will be published shortly). No, that entry will not mention Pubsub or Mark any more. I’ve said enough about that situation. The point has been made. However, you have raised a new concern here that I would like to explore.
I never said Pubsub, the *company* or *service* was spamming. I said what their representative, Mark, did at this specific blog in our comments section was spamming. There is a huge difference in context there, so please don’t read something that wasn’t there.
I don’t think Pubsub, the company or the service, are spammers. I think what was done in the comments are of this blog sure seemed like spam to me and was inappropriate at the least. That is what I called SPAMming.
What Wyman did during Bloggercon III is another situation where promotion of the company — whether it was intentional or not — was brought into question by at least the program coordinator, Dave Winer. I didn’t even say I thought that situation was spam. Though I thought it was definitely being in the wrong place at the wrong time talking about something to do with their service.
If you don’t think what was done in the comments area here was spam, fine, we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one, but please do not think or say that I was calling their entire company or the service they provide spamming. Broken, yes, absolutely, but spam? No. I did write that their service has been spammed in the past and left broken with spam showing for months. That’s not an inference, that’s a fact, but I never said the company and/or the service were spammers.
That’s out of bounds without specific proof and not anything I ever wrote or stated anywhere at any time. If that inference was made, even in the slightest, it is 1000% wrong and not at all what was intended.
Again, I read back through the text very carefully and I see nothing that says this, or even infers this.
I would like to explore more of what is and isn’t spam in the comments area though. But we’ll do that in the new post, if you like. And if we can do it without mentioning the company or their employee any more I think that would be good. There are other examples of this involving other commenters, so we don’t have to use PubSnub any more.
Comment by TDavid — September 28, 2005 @ 11:01 am PST
[…] I still would have done the review though. And the content of my review would not have changed one iota. I think that service needs some serious work in the reliability angle. But did I ever call the company spammers? No. Did I call the actions of one of their representatives in the Hmm comment section a spammer? Yes, I did, in my follow-up post here. […]
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[…] Even if/with asynchronous JavaScript calls being used to bring in results from these resources, there will be delays because they are dependent on the source data (servers) and what if they are down or not serving to the gada.be service? Scoble already said three vendors won’t play long: PubSub (no surprise there, they march to their own drum), Newsgator and Bloglines. Ouch on the last two which make up well over half the online RSS aggregator market penetration. […]
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[…] I have some history with Pubsub, namely due to an ill-advised comment placed by one of their employees and reviewing their linkstats service and finding it broken and unreliable. PubSub CEO, Bob Wyman thought my commentary was “abusive” and refused to respond, and then tried to raise the discussion as to what types of criticism companies should respond. Common sense suggests that a response to all bugs in a system should be addressed, regardless of the source. […]
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