by Karl Sakas on December 23, 2011
Nice -- Wells Fargo put up a new sign in Raleigh to prepare for paying me $1 million a month.
In time for Christmas, Wells Fargo sent me a unilateral notice that they’re requiring binding arbitration starting February 15.
As you know, mandatory binding arbitration means you can’t sue them. I’ve never sued anyone but hey, fair’s fair!
Consumer Reports and others have long criticized such provisions as unfair to consumers, primarily because they’re one-sided — if you want to use or keep using the company’s service, you have no choice but to agree to the terms.
But now two can play that game!
Wells Fargo, starting January 1, 2012, you’re going to pay me $1 million every month. You’ll deposit it into my checking account by 12:01 AM on the first of each month — don’t worry, you already know the account number. [click to continue…]
by Karl Sakas on December 19, 2011
by Karl Sakas on December 12, 2011
by Karl Sakas on November 29, 2011
If you do online marketing, you should know Facebook just agreed to a 20-year Federal Trade Commission privacy settlement. The FTC found that Facebook made marketing promises the social network didn’t keep.
Working at a marketing agency that specializes in website usability, my favorite tidbit was in Mark Zuckerberg’s rebuttal blog post on November 29, 2011:
In the last 18 months alone, we’ve announced more than 20 new tools and resources designed to give you more control over your Facebook experience.
The Facebook CEO goes on to list some of the changes, like adding inline privacy controls to existing posts. Great, but if Facebook’s averages one new privacy-protection tool each month… how are users supposed to keep up the latest changes? That’s not good user experience.
I’m sure more than a few of Facebook’s 800 million users miss things along the way. Even if each new feature had a 90% adoption rate, only 12% of Facebook users would be using all 20 of those features. I’m sure the adoption rates are much lower — I can’t be the only person who hasn’t re-tagged all my friends to the Lists feature.
It’s disingenuous marketing for Facebook to tout that they’ve got a bunch of privacy features, when most people won’t actually use them. If I were to paraphrase Top Gun, “Mark Zuckerberg’s ego is writing checks his servers can’t cash.”
Marketers beware. I’m fascinated to see the FTC is requiring Facebook to get third-party audits for the next 20 years. Imagine that — Facebook will be guaranteeing its privacy practices to the government until 2031. Twenty years!
What do you think?
by Karl Sakas on November 22, 2011
Results of user testing, c. 1874
Before they started mass production, two early typewriter developers asked the era’s leading court reporter to test their new business machine. In 1869, James Clephane’s rigorous tests destroyed one expensive prototype after another.
Adding insult to injury, the stenographer attacked each iteration with his “caustic” feedback about their continued shortcomings — and the inventor took it personally:
Said [Christopher Sholes] to [business partner James] Densmore: “I am through with Clephane!”
Densmore’s comment was: “This candid fault-finding is just what we need. We had better have it now than after we begin manufacturing. Where Clephane points out a weak lever or rod, let us make it strong. Where a spacer or an inker works stiffly, let us make it work smoothly. Then, depend upon Clephane for all the praise we deserve.”
We still do that 140+ years later, except that web developers and pharmaceutical researchers now call it “fast-failure” — and user testing services from hesketh.com rarely involve typewriters.
What do you do to determine fast-failure on your projects?
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons public domain via Wikipedia
