Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:37:02 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/blog/startups/articles/20120314/01233418096/help-provide-useful-feedback-startups-announcing-step2-startups.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/blog/startups/articles/20120314/01233418096/help-provide-useful-feedback-startups-announcing-step2-startups.shtml Step2 discussion platform lately, and today we're announcing Step2 Startups -- in which various startups reach out to the Techdirt community for feedback/thoughts/advice. Step2 has already been set up for people, creators, entrepreneurs and innovators, but now we're starting to specifically highlight interesting startups that are asking for feedback from the community. The first participant is the startup Snackr, "The Pandora for Audio News".

A little over a year ago I was blown away by Paul Ford's brilliant essay entitled The Web Is a Customer Service Medium. It inspired me to write a post about the key idea in the essay: that the killer app for the web is providing the answer to the "Why wasn't I consulted?" question -- simplified to WWIC. Since then I've spoken dozens of times about WWIC in the context of building communities and navigating digital challenges.

The key to building communities really is to focus on the WWIC question -- and that was a big part of our thinking when we set up Step2. The platform was initially focused on business models and ideas for content creators, but the plan has always been to expand it to cover more and more useful concepts. We'd noticed that our community has a lot of opinions and insights into various new online tools and services. Any time we mention anything on Techdirt, people get into pretty detailed and involved discussions, and we thought we should leverage that with Step2. At the same time, we get tons of requests from PR folks or startup entrepreneurs themselves (we definitely prefer to hear from entrepreneurs directly over their hired-gun PR people) hoping to get coverage on Techdirt. Doing straightup "this startup is launching today" stories isn't really our bread and butter -- unless it fits into a larger trend we're looking at, it just didn't seem to be of much value. Plus, there are dozens of blogs doing that kind of thing.

But what we could do is help startups get feedback and insights from our opinionated and thoughtful community. We could help make sure you folks "were consulted" on various interesting new tools and services. Hence Step2 Startups -- where we'll be highlighting various startups that request feedback and thoughts from the community here. Step2 is an open platform, so any company can just post their questions directly and seek feedback, but if you want to be featured on Techdirt as well, like Snackr here, we ask that you hit us up via the feedback form. If it's appropriate, we'll work with you to find an interesting question on which the community is likely to have thoughts.

So head on over to Snackr's request for feedback, check out the company's demo video or get the software itself (for iOS devices only at this point)... and help improve the product.

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]]> keep-it-going http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120314/01233418096 Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:55:45 PDT Carlo Longino http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090312/1321164093.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090312/1321164093.shtml try and prevent their patients from reviewing them online, the British government says that it will soon open up a feedback system for people there to review doctors in the country's National Health System. Not surprisingly, a doctors' trade body has taken exception to the plan, saying it "could reduce NHS care to a meaningless popularity contest, encouraging perverse behaviours and an emphasis on the superficial." Perhaps that's true, but it could also put pressure on doctors to be more responsive to patients and pay more attention to how they treat them. The move is part of a wider effort to open up all sorts of public services in the UK to public feedback, rating service providers like police, schools and childcare providers. The value of the feedback when people don't have any choice in provider -- such as police -- may be debatable, but it could prove to be a useful tool to help encourage improvement.

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]]> A++++-gr8-doctor!!! http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090312/1321164093 Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:29:28 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090108/1426443338.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090108/1426443338.shtml The Pirate's Dilemma is that piracy almost always is a leading indicator for what the market wants, but isn't being delivered. This is a point that's extremely difficult for those whose content is being pirated to grasp -- because their natural reaction is to feel like a victim, rather than the recipient of useful market data. So, it's great to see that's not always the case. A couple people have sent in a story about a pair of small time iPhone developers who recently discovered that their iPhone game had been cracked and a ton of people were downloading it for free. Rather than freak out about it, the guy had an open conversation with the cracker who explained why he did it. Basically, he said he was disappointed with the fact that many games did not live up to the quality level promised, and a cracked version let them try before they bought. The developer actually felt that was a good point, and is now looking into alternative business models for his app, including a try-before-you-buy option, or an ad supported version. It's also worth pointing out, by the way, that the day that the app was getting pirated a ton, it also brought in more sales than usual...

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]]> about-time http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090108/1426443338 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 07:17:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081023/1318392628.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081023/1318392628.shtml sellers to give feedback, since many sellers were using it as a weapon to force buyers to give good feedback, or risk getting bad feedback themselves. However, the latest outrage over eBay's feedback system seems a bit silly. A seller in the UK is suing a buyer for libel for his eBay feedback.

In this case, the buyer bought a mobile phone, but was disappointed that the phone was beat up and not the model that was advertised. He complained to the seller, sent it back and asked for a refund -- which was given. However, he then posted feedback saying: "Item was scratched, chipped and not the model advertised on Mr Jones's eBay account." From the sound of things, this was accurate. The seller, unfortunately, seemed to think that because he refunded the purchase, that the feedback was now libelous. It's hard to see how he has much of a case (even in the UK where libel laws are much stricter). The feedback was accurate. The fact that the seller agreed to take back the phone and refund the difference doesn't change that.

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]]> truth-is-a-defense-against-libel... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081023/1318392628 Tue, 20 May 2008 11:36:00 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080516/1612421141.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080516/1612421141.shtml ban negative feedback from sellers to buyers. The problem was that many sellers were apparently using it as a weapon against buyers who might criticize them. That is, if you had a bad experience as a buyer, rather than fix the problems that resulted in that bad experience, the seller would simply slam you back in the buyer feedback. In other words, it had become something of a nuclear stalemate -- forcing buyers to be too afraid to leave any negative feedback for sellers. Of course, banning negative feedback on buyers seems a bit extreme as the response. And, in the comments to our post, people suggested a variety of alternatives eBay could have tried (including not letting you see the feedback someone left for you until you leave feedback for them). In the meantime, sellers who are upset about this may now have another weapon. One site has set up a system for sellers to share their own buyer "blacklists," effectively creating a large list of problem buyers. What's most interesting to me, is how this shows how the community itself responds to a change in the rules that they feel has too many negative consequences -- rather than just waiting for eBay to fix the problem.

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]]> well-that's-one-way-to-deal-with-things http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080516/1612421141 Tue, 5 Feb 2008 17:29:53 PST Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080205/160733184.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080205/160733184.shtml fee changes that initially were promoted as "lower fees," but the details showed were only lower for goods that didn't sell. The fees on sold goods were actually higher. Now, the company has banned sellers from giving "negative" feedback on buyers. This is quite an interesting move. Years back, eBay was often held up as the epitome of user feedback/rating systems. However, over the years, problems have cropped up, leading to questions about how effective the system really is, as it's often been gamed. A specific complaint is that many buyers are afraid to leave negative feedback, as a seller can retaliate and provide a similarly negative response to the buyers. The hope, then, is that by not allowing negative feedback, buyers can start being more honest about sellers. Of course, from the sellers' standpoint, it also means it's much more likely that buyers can now be problematic, without worrying about a response. eBay claims that it will now personally handle complaints from sellers about problem buyers -- which seems like a pretty big undertaking for the company. Either way, there does seem to be something silly in having a company offer a feedback system if you can only say positive things.

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]]> here-in-lake-wobegone... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080205/160733184 Tue, 28 Aug 2007 02:31:55 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070827/022206.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070827/022206.shtml silly ambient "orb" devices that were supposed to quietly alert you when your stocks were losing money or the weather was turning bad, to alert people to when they should cut back on their electricity usage. Apparently, it worked wonders. While sending emails and text messages had no real impact, the glowing orb actually made people cut back on their electricity usage when necessary. Of course, from the article it's not entirely clear why people did so, though you could imagine that a glowing red orb would have a sort of... creepy "someone's watching you" feel. Perhaps that's what leads to Thompson's follow-on suggestion that a good way to get people to conserve energy would be to have them "broadcast" their energy usage on something like Facebook. The idea is that we're mostly blind to how much energy we use, but if it's suddenly made visible to us, it makes us a lot more concerned -- and if it's made visible to all our friends, then we have a peer pressure element as well. Of course, for some of us, our electricity usage is made quite visible once a month when the bill from the power company shows up...

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]]> one-way-to-keep-things-in-check http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20070827/022206