The thing is that there is something else about this whole incident that makes me more than a little curious. It is the fact that the majority of reports that I’ve read about this are all thanking someone called Darren Paul for tipping them to the story. I received an email from him as well at 1:52 AM this morning but by that time I had already seen a couple of reports of the problem so decided not to follow up on it. Here is a verbatim copy of the email

fromshuster.paul@gmail.com <shuster.paul@???????.com>
to"steven@winextra.com" <steven@winextra.com>

date Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 1:52 AM
subject quick news tip? Darren

hide details 1:52 AM (12 hours ago) Reply

Steven …I’m not pitching a client of mine here, but one of my colleagues (and former clients)
just told me that thousands of websites/blogs have been shut down — from
PerezHilton.com, Consumerist.com, to thousands of other popular sites — because of
SiteMeter (an analytics problem that services thousands of sites). The problem
appears to happen with anybody using Internet Explorer to open any of these sites.
Just a quick news tip on a Friday night! Thought you might want to be one of the first to
know — not sure if this is an advertising story (millions of lost dollars) or an
Internet story (chunk of the Internet going down) or an IT story (analytics
problem). Anyway, good luck, and we’ll keep in touch down the road, Darren.

Darren Paul
Consumer/Lifestyle Publicist
Phone: (xxx) xxx-xxxx
shuster.paul@???????.com

Now an interesting thing is that when I check with Mark Hopkins one of my fellow writers at Mashable; who had written a post about the problem, it turns out that he had received the same email approximately one minute (taking into account the time zone difference) before I got mine. Which really was about enough time to change the name and email addresses before hitting the Send button.

Even before talking with Mark something about this was beginning to rub me the wrong way so I decided to see if I could find out something about this Darren Paul person. The two results that I could find that could be related to him were on the Buzzmarketing About page (down at the bottom) and on the Night Agency site (which Mark had found as well) where he is listed as a Managing Director.

Now granted this may or may not be the same Darren Paul as in the email that a lot of people apparently have gotten but he does call himself a publicist so the good assumption is that it is the same person. If this is the case why is a publicist doing a large email run to some major and lesser known bloggers to give them all the same tip?

Given that this is a well known bug that any web developer should have known about and the fact that this tip comes to all these bloggers courtesy of an acknowledged publicist one can’t help but wondering if there is something else going on here.

But it is something to make you go hmmm at least.

Update:

Rather than just speculate and to try and provide some balance I shot off an email to Darren to see if he would be willing to answer my concerns. This is my email to him:

First off I didn’t post anything directly about your information but your actions have raised some questions which might do with some answering since this is beginning to look more and more like some sort of campaign.
By current count there are at least 6 bloggers who received the identical email from you within minutes of each other .. this is raising some interesting questions.
Perhaps you would like to provide some more background on your relationship with Sitemeter or even about yourself since there is conflicting information in that regard as well.

This is the reply that I just received back from him:

Nope. No relation. No campaign. Not a single tech client anywhere near
my roster. I am a PR guy with a tip that came my way from an ex-client
of mine who thought it would be good to alert some Bloggers/other
media about it as a way to make friends. And, yes, as I do work for
tech/dotcom clients sometimes, I thought it would allow me to have
additional contacts in the future.

I just though it would be a great way to make some friends as a PR
dude. And, by the way, I meant for my original email to say "one of
the first to hear about it" rather than ‘the first to hear about it"
(editing mistake on my part).

Nothing sinister. Although, I was accused of working for Perez Hilton
because I mentioned them in my news tip.

At this point I guess it will be a matter of personal opinion and so I’ll leave it there for you to decide if this was just an innocent email to a whole bunch of bloggers or something else.

Conversation Tags: Sitemeter, marketing

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Big deal right?

Well I’ll be doing this on a new Talkshoe show by that name where I’ll spend the first few minutes of the show talking about the post and my thoughts on it. After that anyone who calls into the show will get unmuted and have a chance to talk about the subject with me. Depending on the number of callers (if any ) the length of individual discussion time will be limited. The planned length of the show will be from 15 to 30 minutes – no longer – so please try and keep you discussion points on topic.

The show start time will hopefully be the same each time and should be around the 4:30 PM EST (1:30PM PST) and I will post the subject of that day’s discussion point on the blog one hour before the show so you have a chance to give it a read over and see if it is something that interests you. Now remember to be kind as this is my first effort using Talkshoe as a host so chances are I’ll goof up at some point until I get this down pat.

So with out any further ado:

Show Topic: Are Web 2.0 startups wasting their time with Web 2.0 early adopters? – Andrew Chen

Show Time: 4:30 PM EST (1:30PM PST)

Place: Talkshoe – WinExtra Discussion Points – click on Join Call button to join te chatroom or dial in using Skype or your preferred means. Show ID is 23010

 Update: Finally got a playable link to the today’s Discussion Point

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I am sure that my father would scream in horror at my spelling and grammar but I never was really good at the technical parts of translating thoughts to paper. I blame James Joyce and Finnegans Wake for that failure (hey it’s a handy excuse so I’m going with it) but sometimes the thoughts come faster than the fingers can type and I’m a lousy editor of my own work.

Through all this though has been the utmost desire to write things that good or bad (for me) make people think. For me the rewards are as simple as seeing Felix write this in a post this morning [nw]

I was reading this piece on Mashable, by the ever thought-provoking Steven Hodson. And true to form, my thoughts were provoked.

That alone will carry me forward for many days but the problem with having a lot of time to think there are times where I have thoughts that don’t fit in with the areas I blog about. For example when I write about the Web and Social Media much of that will first find its way on to Mashable as those thoughts best fit there (and I get paid for it which is a big bonus ). What they don’t feel is a best fit for them gets posted here along with my thoughts about technology and the Internet in general.

Some of the other things I think about is our society in general but that is usually out of bounds of what WinExtra is about. As well I think a lot about blogging itself – both as a profession and the tools that we use to do our jobs. Maybe the time will come where I will have a home for those thoughts as well and can spark conversations about them as well.

Because that to me is what blogging is all about – the new art of the conversation. The spread of ideas and thoughts at a speed we have never experienced before. That is why I get up each and every day to sit in front of my keyboard and share my thoughts.

There can be no better reason.

Oh and thank you Felix for being a part of the conversation and I am glad I provoked some thoughts for you.

Conversation Tags: blogging, writing, thoughts, ideas

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I can’t get Ponzi to laugh at my Monty Python references, sit down and watch one of the original Star Wars movies, or readily admit that Captain Picard was *WAY* more awesome than Captain Kirk. All things considered, I’m happy to have a hot chick for a wife - geek or not.

Well I can definitely relate to that but as I come up on my 53rd birthday and 16 years with my wife I can say this – it doesn’t matter if the woman of your life is a geek or not as long as they understand and accept what drives you forward and supports you with all her heart.

I am that lucky and for that I will love my beautiful wife and great friend for as long as we are alive

this is a picture from many years ago now but
the love and friendship has only gotten stronger.

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Well needless to say the friendships didn’t last much longer than it took them to cash my entrance fee into this rarified dream world. Neither did I ever end up owning a mansion or a private jet and neither did I ever get to vacation in the playground of the rich and famous. I did though manage to piss off a lot of family and friends in the process of following these tried and true practices of wealth building.

Flash forward thirty some years to when the Age of the Internet is well underway and it has become the new playground of the nouveau tech rich crowd as they flit around the world from conference to conference and startup to startup. To a time when voices like Stowe Boyd, Chris Brogan and Marc Canter (when he is making sense) are preaching the gospel of freenomics and the power of TwitPitches to a new generation of wide-eyed and breathless neophytes of the social media generation.

A generation that eschews the need of business models and cradles itself in the warm bosom of the Angel investors. A generation who have been made to believe that making a pact with the devils of advertising in order to bring the illusion of software and computing freedom to the great unwashed masses is a fair trade. Once more we are being presented with a dream world by the privilege few who managed to grasp this new style multi-level marking of social behavior and in turn set themselves up as the sages of this social multi-level marketing bonanza of financial duplicity.

Where traditional multi-level marketing (MLM) folks were at least sideways honest about their leech like behavior once they deceived you with their getting together with friends meetings and took your signed in blood sample case check the social media mavens dangle the word free. It is this kind of tactic that almost guarantees that the ranks of social media multi-level marketing will swell incredibly fast with both those dreaming of a pajama job lifestyle and those wanting something for nothing.

After all isn’t that the ultimate goal of life - to be able to get something for nothing and so what if you have to put up with advertising. There’s the rub though. You aren’t getting something for nothing are you unless of course you’re smart enough to know what ad blockers are and how to install them. This minor segment of gullible mooks though are an acceptable loss for the ad networks all clamoring to get their hooks into this willing and forever growing group of mindless link clickers.

While these social media ad providers startups might like to blindly think they are doing good all they are really doing is lining the pockets of those smart enough to have figured out this new MLM scheme. It is a scheme where both the money people of these startups and the advertising networks have come together to create this perfect model of money generation called social media. Along the way they attract people who maybe out of good intentions become the voices for this new social media and because of their reputations provide a nice cover for what is really happening - a small group of people making a lot of money by convincing another group to talk their friends into trying out this new social media thing that is all the rage.

When you look at how MLM advances itself through its faux pyramid build up it always has charismatic people in the forefront who by their very strength of personality convince a number of folks to sign up with the understanding that they will make a lot of money. From there this group then spreads out and begins evangelizing (or advocating as that is the new hot buzzword for this) their money making scheme. As more and more people sign up for this impossible mission of a rich lifestyle with minimum effort those who started the whole movement sit back and watch the money roll in.

This is not really any different that what has happened with this whole social media shebang. A small ground of folks got together and using the word free as the entry price managed to convince another small group of folks about their <em>good</em> intentions which got them engaged in the process and out there evangelizing this whole new way of communicating. The masses as a result of this new freenomics have rushed headlong into this social media with some thinking that they to can be a part of this new road to riches and the rest falling head over heels for the free stuff being handed out like candy.

In the end you can say what you want about social media and freenomics but it all boils down to making money by providing the same type of top to bottom weaving of dreams of riches but this time there is no price of entry. Where MLM in the past have made their money from the initiation of fresh meat being brought into the game by previous suckers this new Social Media MLM has made it so everyone you know can be that sucker as long as you know their email address except this time the circle of real money makers is even smaller and the base of the pyramid is the size of the Internet.

Don’t fool yourself by the warm and fuzzy rhetoric of the freenomics and social media mavens - this is all about making money the easiest way possible and that means making you think you are a part of the process and can have the same access to the riches as them. Don’t think that this is about leveling any playing fields or making the world equal for all - this is all about making you do all the work like the MLM peons before you.

Conversation Tags: multi-level marketing, social media, social networking

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It is all suppose to be about interaction with friends, strangers and customers. To level the playing fields so we can all feel empowered and that our thoughts and concerns are important. The problem is that one of the most and needed type of web company has to be one of the worst communicators around.

With the proliferation of things like blogs and other self hosted forms of communication the demand for homes for all this grows daily. As result web hosting companies have become the new corner store where we all go to plugin our newly minted domain names and install our hot off the press blogging software. Sure they are quick to take our money and set us up with those under $10.00 per month accounts that might be fine for the typical blog but God help you if you hit the blogging mainstream.

Yes you can upgrade if you have the funds but there is an underlying problem with these web hosting companies and you hear about all through the web – that is if blog accounts haven’t been suspended for excessive usage. Therein is the problem – these hosting companies don’t communicate unless of course it is you are lucky enough to get one of those dreaded excessive usage emails. Chances are though you won’t and you’ll be left there scratching your head until they decide to answer a trouble ticket cry for help – which will get you some cryptic reply about excessive usage and until you fix it no blogging for you.

Then there are the times when the host themselves crash and burn for whatever reason and you’re left staring at some 500 error page where your blog once lived. You are left at the mercy of them fixing it in the shortest time possible during which you have no explanation as to what is going on. It’s not like they are smart enough to put up an understandable Fail Whale page or anything – no you get a plain white page with some cryptic message on it that makes no sense to you at all.

Where is the communication here?

Where is the knowledgeable help that the majority of user are going to need to fix a problem?

Sure we could go with one of those big Fortune 500 web hosting companies but they don’t communicate any better – if anything they are even worse. That is one of the reason I prefer the smaller web hosting shops because there is the hope that they will communicate with their customers. It is hoped that they will be smart enough to have knowledgeable staff on hand that can really help their customers. It is hoped that instead of being left hanging not knowing what went wrong they will actually step up and help you through the process of fixing things that have gone wrong.

It is hoped that they would c o m m u n i c a t e.

But they don’t and that is a sad state of affairs for what is a cornerstone business of the Internet.

Conversation Tags: web hosting, communication

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Recently Robert Scoble has had the pleasure to be hobnobbing with political types in Washington DC and as result has come up with some sort of technological agenda for the US. As interesting as the three points are that he outlined on Twitter and showed up in my FriendFeed stream the second one shows how totally out of touch that he and the whole early adopter crowd are when it comes to technology and the real world.

In his second point he suggests that “We need to move away from a computer for every kid and toward an iPhone-level device for every kid”. Ummm Robert what fucking drugs are you on man because I want some of what you are taking. I mean you can’t seriously be suggesting that every kid in the US be handed over an iPhone – c’mon get a grip on some reality here. I am sure that Steve Jobs would just be salivating like a crazy bugger at the thought of it and the service providers would be getting woodies at the very thought of all that cash flowing their way but I’m sorry – you’ve gone off the deep end on this one.

You might like to think that “We are also 15 years away from having every kid have a portable Internet-enabled device like an iPhone” but the chances are the only thing we will be experiencing in 15 years is a greater technological divide in which our children will be on two opposite sides of the chasm – those with access and those without.

The idea that handing each and every child something resembling an iPhone or some such other connected mobile device might be all noble and such but you obviously haven’t been out in and amongst the inner city kids, or the rural kids or the homeless children lately. When you have parents that are struggling daily even to maintain a roof over those children’s heads or food in their bellies the idea of a mobile phone magically appearing in their hands is ludicrous at best.

As it is our children are proving daily how much a mockery the whole No child left behind policy really is and if you don’t believe that I know a couple of teachers who would be more than willingly to you the reality of the joke. Even taking the logistics of such an idea into account who is going to pay for all those mobile phones and who is going to pay for all that access? Is it going to be government sponsored and it is what strings are going to be attached? Are we going to make it easier to censor what our children see and learn via this new form of education tool?

Robert you might think that giving each child a mobile phone is the answer but the fact is it raises too many questions that need to be answered first. You might think that an iPhone in every backpack will change the world and it might but it won’t be in the way you envision it. You might have spent the past week in the halls of power of the Beltway but I think it is time that you spend some time in the ghettos. It is time that you wander the halls of inner city schools. It is time for you to learn that those new friends of yours in the Beltway don’t give a shit about anything that won’t earn them votes and line the pockets of their corporate backers.

Sorry Robert but it is statements like this that just reaffirm the real world how out of touch the technology world really is.

Conversation Tags: Robert Scoble, iPhone, technology, children

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As integral a part of our lives that mobile phones have become there seems to be an almost lackadaisical attitude about when they go missing; whether they have been stolen or just plain lost for whatever reason. This attitude really struck with two separate incidents this past week or so where cell phones were lost and I was left with the impression of oh well I’ll just go and buy another one without any regard to how much it was going to cost to replace them and the loss of whatever data had been on them.

The first one was when Robert Scoble announced on Twitter that he had just lost his iPhone in a cab and the basic reaction was that this would be a good reason to buy the 3G iPhone when it comes out. Granted he didn’t have any valuable data on the phone but wait a second what about the cost of all this. Are we really made that much of money that we can brush off the loss of a $400.00 or $500.00 phone without even a single swear word and then turn around and spend another $200.00 (not counting AT&T bloodsucking) to replace it.

Then this morning we have Fred Wilson writing on his blog how he had lost his mobile phone while biking through Paris and while he pointed out that as a phone it was useless in Europe it could still be used with WiFi connections. While he was worried because some-one might end up being able to post to his blog or impersonate him on Twitter he wasn’t sure if his various social media accounts could be de-activated. In short his on-line identity could be stolen and there was basically nothing he could do about it.

Granted he raised the point that social media – especially those accessible via mobile platforms – need to provide a way to de-activate accounts I was left with a feeling that his next stop would be to pick up a new phone, load it up again with his social media applications and be on his way.

Both these examples; and these are just the one’s we hear about, for me are a prime example of why mobile phones can be a very dangerous platform to entrust our personal data on. When our wallets get stolen or lost we go ballistic and spend time making sure credit cards get canceled and we spend time replacing all the lost information. With mobile phones though we just seem to shrug our shoulders and head to the nearest store to buy a new one.

It is this kind of attitude that is making stolen mobile phones such a lucrative market and it will only become more so as we start carrying more and more of our lives in them.

Conversation Tags: security, mobile phones, theft

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