Kevin Muldoon

Although the internet has been around since the 70′s, it was on 30th April 1993 that Cern brought the world wide web to the public domain. I didn’t start using the internet regularly til my first year at uni in 1996.

When we first started we were all fascinated by what you could do in the web. There were old C64 roms available, chat rooms had thousands of people abusing each other verbally and Yahoo was just a directory.

It’s kind of hard to imagine some aspects of life without the internet now. I remember starting an office job in early 2000 and at the same time this really really geeky guy started. Infact, geeky isn’t the best way to describe him, he was just plain weird. I know that sounds mean but lets just say he wasn’t a people person. Anyways, whenever anyone asked him what he was doing at the weekend he would always say, I don’t know, I’ll check my emails. At the time this was very uncommon and I thought it was really sad.

Fast forward 8 years and most of my weekends are organised via email with friends. My how times have changed.

I wonder what the web will be like in 15 years – I doubt many aspects of it will be unrecognizable to todays web. Hopefully I’ll still be making a living through the net regardless

BBC Story

I wasn’t going to write about the Joel Comm saga which has developed over the last few days but I’ve read about it on several blogs I read on a regular basis and the reactions from some bloggers has surprised me to say the least.

To summarise, Joel Comm has been promoting his new Adsense Secrets 4 ebook the last few weeks with such high profile bloggers as Darren Rowse recommending the book. Across the board bloggers were raving about how good the ebook was but 4 days ago Mark Wielgus noticed that Joel Comm was actually scamming his customers. You see, in his badly designed 10,000 word sales pitch he had one small sentence telling readers that by paying $9.95 for his ebook they would also be subscribing to a $29.95 monthly subscription. Mark hit the nail on the head when he said that this is ‘deceptive nonsense’. I read the sales page a few times when Mark wrote his post and I only found the subscription text by using the search facility in firefox.

A few days later Joel was forced to issue a grovelling apology on the site for his actions. He has also promised to give two weeks of profits to Hearts and Hands International.

You know what, I think I would have more respect for Joel if he put his hands up and just shouted ‘OK, you got me’ rather than issuing an insincere apology. For Gods sakes, how can you believe an apology from a guy who puts a sales pitch at the end of it to buy the same product he ripped people off with!!

Surprised by bloggers response

I mentioned at the start of this post that I wasn’t planning on writing about this whole saga but what forced me to say something was the response from some bloggers. I have been really surprised at how quick some bloggers have been accept his apology. Joel Comm is only human and we all make mistakes but you would have to have your head in the sand if you think Joel didn’t know what he was doing when he decided to sign his customers up to something they didn’t want signed up to. It’s not like he accidently set this up, he consciously made the decision to mislead people into a monthly subscription payment 3 times more expensive than the ebook which he is trying to sell.

This kind of tactic disgusts me, it really does. He is no different to the webmasters who infect your computers with spyware, no different from the webmasters who sell your email details to other parties and no different from any other scammer on the net whose only motivation is money, regardless of how ethical the methods they use to get it are. I emplore you not to give this guy another penny. I agree wholeheartedly with David Peralty who said ‘Don’t buy Adsense Secrets‘.

Clearly not everyone shares my view on Joel’s apology though. John Chow and Mark Weilgus gave Joel kudos for apologising, Zac Johnson is giving away free copies of the book and Shawn Collins has went as far as saying that he applauds Joel’s response. I have a lot of respect for these bloggers but I have to disagree with them on this one (* my respect for Mark certainly went up for warning bloggers about this scam in the first place).

I hope I don’t sound like a mean bastard with all of this. I’m sure Joel is a nice guy and I have no doubt he has realised he has messed up in a big way. I always try and put myself in someone elses shoes but I just can’t this time. This is someone who understands how the internet works and he has been working online a long time to know how things work, in short, he knew what he was doing. That is why it’s difficult for me to believe this apology is sincere.

Consider this scenario. How would you all feel if next week someone finds out that I placed a spyware worm in this page which got me $10 for every computer it affected. Would you accept my apology when I was caught? Would you believe that I made a mistake and that I’m only human? More importantly, could you ever trust me in the future?

You see, integrity is a big part of writing on the web, particularly for guys like Joel Comm who are selling themselves as much as their product. Daniel Scocco talked about this today. In particular he said that :

I am pretty sure that those Internet marketers are nice guys, the only problem with them is that sometimes they put their desire to make money above their principles and above integrity.

And therein lies the main point of this whole debate, can you ever trust someone who has tried to scam his own customers in the past, can you have faith in their product?

I’d love to hear your view on all this so please leave a comment if you have time

Ryan from Love Inventions left a comment a few days ago asking how my online shop is coming along. I haven’t spoke about it in a while and Ryan’s comment reminded me that I haven’t updated all you guys.

E-Commerce is Flaming Nuts

Myself and my friend Eddie started working on our ecommerce site at the start of the year. The name of our site is FlamingNuts.com. We picked a generic non product specific domain name so that we didn’t limit the type of products we sell in the future.

We decided to sell ipod accessories at first, the reason being that the value of the stock does not drop much over time so we don’t need to worry about the logistics of selling within a certain timescale. Long term I was keen to sell electrical devices like portable laptops and UMPC’s because I’m interested in them but of course, the value of that type of thing drops very quickly and you have a short window to sell them in.

We got our stock in February however we quickly realised how saturated the market is. Our initial plan was to sell on ebay for a few months until sales picked up on the main site however there are people selling the same products as us for less than what it cost us to ship it from China. The problem is, all of these sellers are shipping direct from China so we highlighted this in our sales and told potential customers that we can do next day delivery. Unfortunately it seems that most ebayers are happy to wait 2-3 weeks for their ipod case if it means they save 3 or 4 pounds.

We did of course realise that this was a competitive niche however we didn’t realise just how much.

Does this mean we are giving up? No, well, not just yet. We are looking to sell off the stock we bought and we are still getting a few trade magazines delivered so we are keeping tabs on what we could sell and how we market it. We have also started working on a few other projects. Eddie is trying to get more involved with online work and as well as landing a blogging job with a real estate site, he is working with me on our new humour blog.

Long term, I’m not sure if ecommerce is for me. I do sell things on ebay from time to time and selling is essentially a very easy thing to do – I mean it isn’t hard to box something up and ship it to someone. However, a successful ecommerce site would make a big difference in my lifestyle as I currently have a great amount of flexibility with the hours I work and can work more one day so that I can can go away the next. Although I want to make much more money, I do not want to sacrifice quality of life.

I’ll let you know what we decide to do with the site but one things for sure, I don’t regret starting the site as it’s good to try out new ways to make money online

A week ago , popular blogger and online market Jim Kukral launching a marketing experiment called TwitterMeThis.

Basically, TwitterMeThis is an experiment by Jim to see how the Twitter media can be used. He has asked people to follow the TwitterMeThis account at Twitter and periodically he asks his followers a question. The first person who responds to this question gets $5. There are currently 701 followers so it’s safe to say it’s proved to be popular with a lot of people.

The experiment has generated mixed reactions. Some bloggers think it’s a good idea whereas others think it’s pointless with some going as far as saying it will ruin Twitter.

The fight begins

One argument in particular has gathered some momentum, between Jim Kural and fellow marketer’s Sam Harrelson and Shawn Collins.

Round 1 : Jim launches TwitterMeThis as a marketing experiment.
Round 2 : Sam Harrelson cricizes Jim via Twitter.
Round 3 : Jim responds with a video response via GeekCast.fm.
Round 4 : Sam responds with a video via CostPerNews
Round 5 : Shawn Collins joins in the debate with a video entitled ‘Death of Twitter by Jim Kukral‘ (in his post Is Jim Kukral Killing Twitter?)
Round 6 : Sam Harrelson launches TwatterMeThat, a blog which imitates TwitterMeThis and links to a Twitter account where Jim’s Surname is spelled incorrectly (something I have did in the past too!).
Round 7 : Jim states on Trisha Lynn’s blog that he doubts he will continue to their joint project GeekCast anymore.
Round 8 : Shawn Collins deals a knockout blow and takes this ‘over the top’ debate into overdrive by stating that Jim was already emailed about being replaced.

Is TwitterMeThis ruining Twitter?

I responded to Shawn Collin’s post last night and stated that ‘this kind of thing isnt good for twitter’. I didn’t really expand too much on this statement at the time but those who have read this blog in the last month will know that I’m not a fan of gaming or manipulating social media as the medium gets ruined when people try to exploit the site for their own benefit. That being said, I don’t have any major problems with those who do, I just don’t want to be part of it (some might say that if I’m not part of the solution I’m part of the problem but I prefer to look at it that I’m leading by example!! ). However, do I have the right to assume that Jim is using TwitterMeThis for self promotion or is his sole aim of this project to experiment with this new social media. I’m a regular reader of Jim’s blog and he has come up with some innovative methods of getting traffic so my initial thoughts when I read about this project was that he was using it to drive traffic to his blog. Maybe that is partly his plan here but at the very least he has stimulated some good discussions through this (it’s not like he’s selling his account!).

Since last night my view has changed slightly about this whole thing. I still agree with Sam’s original comments that TwitterMeThis is not really pushing any boundaries however I’m not 100% sure if my original view that it is ‘ruining Twitter’ is correct.

Michael Buechele posted a great post about all of this yesterday and ended it with the following statement :

Ultimately, Twitter Me This is an experiment. Jim had an idea and wants to see what happens. I say if people, the Market, users, friends, followers, or whatever the term is now, do not want something like Twitter Me This, then let the Market decide. All you have to do is un-follow. Hard to get a question answered when no one is reading it.

Trisha Lynn said pretty much the same thing the day before when she said

I don’t see what the harm is in TwitterMeThis. If you don’t lke it, don’t follow it.

Michael and Trisha are 100% right. If you have a problem with people using Twitter to promote themselves or promote their site then don’t follow them. You have full control over what messages you see as you can pick and choose who you follow. This is in stark contrast to a social media site like Digg where posts can be spammed onto the front page.

What do you think?

Michael and a few others have suggested that this whole debate is perhaps a scam to get more people to use the TwitterMeThis service. I doubt this is true as this is the kind of thing that can do more damage to a bloggers reputation than good.*

I do share the opinion with the commentators on Shawn’s blog that this spat is getting a little childish. I love debates like this that get bloggers and web developers talking but when you know it’s too far when the personal attacks start.

What do you think? Is it wrong to create a twitter account for the sole purpose of promoting something. Whether you agree or disagree, Jim Kukral has definately shown that Twitter can be used to to do just that.

TechCrunch today announced that Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron is selling his Twitter account on ebay.

As expected, a debate has been sparked around whether this is even allowed and more importantly, what effect will this have on Twitter. Currently the account has reached $510 on ebay and with 9 days to go I’m sure it will go for a few thousand dollars. I don’t know too much about Andrew Baron but I suspect he is doing this to raise a point and get some traffic along the way (he has done both!).

Will this backfire on him? I don’t think I’d be too happy with someone if they asked me to follow them and then proceeded to sell their account. At the very least I would be reluctant to take part in or support and future ventures from the person.

An interesting discussion has started on Chris Brogan’s blog, check it out if you have time.
Chris Brogan’s View on the subject : Is Your Community For Sale

I have read about Twitter numerous times in the last year however I constantly resisted invitations to join Twitter. Although I could see the benefits of using it, I just didn’t want something else wasting my time (msn messenger and skype waste a few hours every week for me as it is!). Jason Blanton emailed me once or twice a few months ago and told me to start tweeting but still I resisted – you see the problem is I know I will waste my time on it!!

However, in the last month or so I have so many people join Twitter and use it to network that I have no choice but to try it out as well. Dozens of bloggers who I follow on a weekly basis have recently joined including Nate Whitehill, John Chow, Jim Kukral, Darren Rowse, Zac Johhson, Andy Beal and Chris Garrett.

So, if you’re into Twitter, feel free to follow my rants at http://twitter.com/system0.