Rupert, my son had a simple request. “Daddy, can we watch last week’s episode of The Simpsons?” No, son, we can’t. You can blame Rupert Murdoch for that.

Rupert, I know you’re all upset about all those SOPA & PIPA protests last week. Why, without them, how will you keep all your shows from being accessible to people who just want to pirate them for free through things like Google TV.

Here’s the thing. Go look in a mirror. See that guy looking back at you? Put a big dose of the blame on him. Because he makes people like me, who are already paying you three times to watch The Simpsons, to end up thinking maybe you just really want us to watch pirated content instead.

Pay You Three Times, Shame On Me

That’s right. I pay you three times for The Simpsons. First, I get it broadcast over the air. That’s me paying you for it, because the airwaves are mine — not yours. You’re simply allowed to lease them from the public. You’re getting a piece of that spectrum from me. In return, I expect you to deliver me valuable content through it. Well done with The Simpsons.

But you know, it’s easy to miss things broadcast live over the air. Also, my signal is pretty bad. So I pay a second time, to DirecTV, to get exactly the same content you send over the air to me through satellite TV. I get a better picture. I get the ability to DVR episodes to watch later. And I pay something like $125 per month for my subscription, some of which goes into your pocket.

That brings me to my third way of paying: Hulu Plus. I don’t DVR everything. Somehow, I missed The Simpsons when it started up again this fall. But Hulu Plus has turned into a lifesaver in these cases. It has let me catch-up on programs. It’s been well worth the $7 per month I pay for it, some of which, again, goes directly into your pocket.

The Simpsons: Web Only?

And now to tonight. My son fired up Hulu Plus, so we could watch The Simpsons, as we have in the past. But no luck — he got a “web only” message. Turns out, I discovered after doing a little searching with your least favorite search engine, last year you started limited next-day episodes.

Whatever you did, it’s clearly gotten worse. Apparently, I can’t watch it on Hulu at all through my TV:

Despite paying for Hulu Plus, I cannot watch The Simpson on any device like my Roku player that is designed to play The Simpsons direct to my TV.

I gather this is because you don’t want me to buy Hulu Plus and stop paying for DirecTV, right? I get that. But it’s not like I have the same option to watch archived episodes on DirecTV, If they’re offered on demand, they are impossible to find.

I can’t even authorize my Hulu account to know that I’m paying DirecTV already, as I apparently could if I had a Dish account. Why not? Who knows. You or DirecTV or Hulu are all probably fighting with each other over rights issues.

But hey, it’s not like I can get HBO GO on my Hulu, either. Despite paying for HBO through DirecTV, they don’t let me enable my Roku with it, either.

Lesson? Search For TV On The Web

Now what have you taught my 13 year old, who wants to watch last week’s episode? That he should fire up his computer, because if he does that — and sits through the 2 minute load time for The Simpsons web site, you’ll give him the episode for free.

Why would you do this? Think. What’s a teenager like him likely to do, if they’re looking for The Simpsons, if you don’t offer it through easy, safe, direct-to-TV options like my Roku? He’ll search for it through things like Google and perhaps find it, in this case. But if you don’t offer it, since you’ve driven him and other kids to think they should search, maybe they’ll keep searching until they find some place that does offer it.

Now, if I really wanted to watch last week’s episode, on my TV and without firing up my laptop and digging out the HDMI cable, I could buy it from Amazon or Apple iTunes. But don’t you think paying four times for the same content is a bit much?

Blocking TV Devices Promotes The Piracy You Hate

Let me end with Google TV. Remember at CES? How upset you were to learn (you’re just learning this?), that if someone searches for video content on Google TV, they might reach pirated content?

Hey, I’ve used Google TV from the beginning, from before you and the other networks blocked it. Before you did this, the Google TV search results sent me directly to your web site, where I could watch your content directly from you, exactly as I could if I wanted to hook-up my computer to my TV. That’s because, after all, Google TV is really just a really small computer.

Thanks to your blocking, they don’t even bother to list your site, because why do it? It’s not like it works for those who use it. Instead, it pretty much searches the web — which lists things you might not like.

It’s not right, Rupert. Finding the TV content I want shouldn’t be this complicated, especially for someone who is actually paying you. Fix it.

This might be the last year I renew with ZoneAlarm. I like the security software and have used it for years. But they crazy and somewhat misleading renewal process is making me feel less than valued.

My subscription was nearing its end, so I got this warning telling me to renew. Clicking through, the price was $60. Now that’s about double what I paid initially. It was also $15 more than I could buy the service new.

I know from experience that if you don’t renew, you get offered a substantial discount. But I didn’t want to play games. I just wanted to renew then and there at the lowest price I knew they’d offer me.

I hit the web site looking for a contact form. They don’t have one. Everything is through chat. That’s it.

OK, I chatted. Told the rep the situation. Was told there was nothing that could be done. They couldn’t even extend my current subscription at a new price.

So, when subscription did expire, I purchased a new one for $45. I thought about waiting, but my ZoneAlarm software icon kept displaying an image giving the impression it wasn’t really working. It does, thought anti-virus definitions will slowly get outdated.

Still, being paranoid, I renewed. And then an hour later, in case a 60% off request to renew.

Sigh.

I replied to the email, since the address looked like it actually might go to something other than an auto-responder. Nope.

That meant it was back to chat. Told the person I was looking for credit. They asked for my account number. Gave it. He issued a refund.

What?

Yeah, refunded the whole amount. The solution, you see, was that I needed to again go buy the software.

What a giant waste of time. But at least now, since I’ll be using the renewal code I was sent, I’ll no longer get the daily email reminders from Zone Alarm that I need to renew my subscription.

Oh, and thanks but no thanks for the Extended Download Service that’s absolutely unnecessary, Zone Alarm, since the latest software is always offered for current customers.

Let me ask you this. If last year was all about Google’s war on thin content, does taking a bulletpoint list of 20 items and turning it into a 22 page slideshow make each individual page too thin? I’d say so, so maybe Google could turn its attention to penalizing the Huffington Post?

I follow the Huffington Post on Twitter and saw this tweet just now:

Interesting story, “A tale of two worlds: The highest and lowest unemployment rates in America.” OK, I’ll bite. I headed over:

Two arrows. Let’s focus on the lower one first. The story promised me the cities with the highest and lowest unemployment rates in America. But it’s not actually delivering that. None of the three paragraphs of the story actually tell me what these cities are.

Instead, to discover this, I have to start clicking to open up one of the 22 parts in all that this story is made of. To get to the cities with the highest unemployment rate, that’s 10 additional clicks:

All that, just so I can find underneath the giant photo the answer to one of the questions the story purported to provide: “Unemployment Rate: 27.2 Percent.” And to get the other city I was promised, that with the lowest unemployment, it’s another 10 clicks:

Again, all this just to get the short text: “Unemployment Rate: 2.8 percent.”

Basically, this is a single page article that could have been done with two sets of bulletpoints, one listing the ten cities with the highest unemployment in the US, the other listing those with the lowest. But the Huffington Post craptastially turns it into this unnecessary slideshow because that generates plenty of page views.

The Huffington Post is far from the only publication to do this. Business Insider is also in love with slideshows in this way. But at least BI always makes sure to provide a single-page view, so that at most, it’s only causing two clicks.

Not the Huffington Post. If there’s an option for this, I’m completely missing it. That first arrow points to a print-only version, but that only shows what’s on your current page, not the entire “article” all at once.

But hey, why stop when you still get rewarded like this:

There’s the Huffington Post article, top ranked on Google for a search on “highest unemployment.” Are those searchers really being best served by being routed into an article with a misleading headline, misleading in the sense that the only way you get the answer to your question is if you perform 20 additional clicks?

Right now, Wikipedia is busy asking for donations to stay afloat. Here’s a thought. If it wants donations, maybe open things up so that outsiders feel like they can contribute expert knowledge without wasting their time.

A Debate Over Notability

Here’s a case in point. About two weeks ago, Jessie Stricchiola let me know that her Wikipedia page had been deleted. Apparently, she wasn’t notable enough.

That’s absurd — this is the woman who was the pioneer in fighting click fraud, along with other accomplishments.

I cruised over to take a look. At the time, the page (well, the discussion to delete the page) looked like this, with this message at the top:

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article’s talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. As far as I can tell, the numbers are split about 7-6 in favour of delete. That’s not normally going to lead to a consensus to delete unless there are unusual circumstances, such as one side having significantly stronger arguments than the other, so much as that can be ascertained objectively. In this case, the final three unchallenged delete !votes—DGG, ItsZippy and Metropolitan90—demonstrate such strength.

At The Tone (If You Can Find It), Please Leave A Detailed Message

Already, I’m annoyed. As usual, trying to contribute to Wikipedia means that you’ve got to know what a “talk page” is or where to find a “deletion review.”

Because the page was already deleted, it had no talk page. And the deletion review, who knows where that it. I assumed it was the page I’d headed to. So, I ignored the instructions and shoved a big message at the top, detailing all the reasons why Jessie was notable:

I’m modifying this page despite the big warning not to modify it because, as the article was already deleted with a “consensus” of 7 against 6, there’s no way to add further comments on the original talk page.

I’m a notable person on Wikipedia, as well as an expert in search marketing. So for what it’s worth, you’re seriously questioning whether Jessie should have her own page? That’s just crazy.

The page should be restored, and immediately. She’s clearly notable.

First, I don’t see how Mkativerata starts off saying that 7-6 is not a consensus, but then concludes that it is. Clearly, it is not. When in doubt, err on caution.

Jessie was a founding member (not just a board member) and driving force behind the creation of the SEMPO organization, the search marketing industry’s largest trade group. That alone should make her notable. This is an easily verified fact: http://www.sempo.org/?page=pr_20030820

Here’s what I wrote about the group when it was founded in 2003, where Jessie is cited at the beginning: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2064338/SEMPO-Search-Engine-Marketing-Professional-Organization-Opens-To-Members

“I think a testimonial at the SEMPO launch meeting last month by one of SEMPO’s board members Jessie Chase-Stricchiola put it best: ‘When I tell people that I’m a search engine marketer, I want them to know what that means,” she said — or words similar to that effect’.”

Jessie was one of the first search marketers that highlighted the issue of click fraud. She was a pioneer in that space, and would be notable for her teachings and writings on that subject alone.

I don’t know anyone who spoke on this topic before her in 2002 — her pitch to cover it was one of the reasons I invited her in 2002 to participate in what became the first of many conference appearances: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2065421/Perfecting-Paid-Search-Engine-Listings

I’m hard pressed to think if there was anyone else with near her stature in this area, from as far back.

As I wrote in 2006: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2048086/The-Latest-Click-Fraud-Roundup

“Alchemist is headed up by Jessie Stricchiola, one of our long time SES speakers on the subject and a true pioneer in raising alarm over the issue”

That was referencing a BusinessWeek article that was also citing her company and work it did on research in the area with Fair Issac. Got it? When the credit card fraud spotting people wanted to understand click fraud better, they turned to Jessie:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2006/tc20060227_930506.htm

Jessie was an expert witness in a landmark case about click fraud that was settled with with Google. Wikipedia itself finds it notable to cite her for this on its own click fraud page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud

As a long-standing leader in the search marketing space, she also co-authored a popular book on the topic. But wait, WorldCat only shows 12 copies holding in libraries or whatever.

Perhaps being #7 in the internet searching category on Amazon helps? Or #22 in web services? http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/69771/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_1_5_last http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/books/377886011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_b_2_4_last

Reading some of the debate on this is laughable. You want to figure out what makes a search marketer notable based on what you think makes an astrophysicist notable? In the search marketing space, speaking at conferences is indeed one way that search marketers are validated — it’s a type of peer review, because if you’re a bad speaker, you don’t get called back. Being referenced by other SEOs is a huge measure of respect, because marketers can be loathe to point people to other marketers.

Someone should restore this page. Moreover, you ought to expand it and do Wikipedia’s proper job of documenting notable people like Jessie, rather than relying on guesswork and whatever you think you can discover by just by searching the web for information on subjects you’re not expert in.

I am a subject expert in the field of search marketing. A notable one — after all, Wikipedia says so. But my type of first-hand assertion isn’t enough. Wikipedia would rather find third-party mainstream media resources that quote people, as if that is somehow better than first-party information.

Thanks For Your Message; We (Don’t) Care About Your Feedback

Having left my message, I moved on. But yesterday, I got an email from Wikipedia:

The Wikipedia page “User talk:Dannysullivan” has been changed on

23 November 2011 by Metropolitan90, with the edit summary: deletion review

See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dannysullivan&diff=0&oldid=207042508

for all changes since your last visit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dannysullivan for the current revision.

To contact the editor, visit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Metropolitan90

Note that additional changes to the page “User talk:Dannysullivan” will not result in any further notifications, until you have logged in and visited the page.

Your friendly Wikipedia notification system

To Hear Your Messages, Push % On Your Keypad

I love that last part — “your friendly Wikipedia notification system.” It’s anything but. I cruise back over to Wikipedia to see what my message is:

OMG, my message is a revision comparison of what’s been added to the user talk page that I barely even know that I have? Who creates this type of mess? Who tolerates this as an effective working environment?

My message tells me this:

In regard to your comments on this page, please note that one reason not to post additional comments to a closed AfD page is that, within a few days after closing, hardly anyone is likely to see those comments and thus posting there does not attract attention. I just happened to see your comments there today. If you want to challenge the deletion of [[Jessie Stricchiola]], you can follow the procedure at [[Wikipedia:Deletion review]]. –[[User:Metropolitan90|Metropolitan90]] [[User talk:Metropolitan90|(talk)]] 04:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

To Contact An Editor, Please Contact An Editor

No. No. No. So much wrongness here. So much so, that I cruised over to explain with a message to the editor on Wikipedia who left me this. I used the link in that email I got, the one that specifically said: “To contact the editor, visit” along with this link.

The page I arrived at told me this:

Oh, don’t post messages on the page I was specifically told to go to in order to contact the editor. Nice, Wikipedia. Instead, I should go to a different page, which I did.

Now look at this page I was sent to, and see if you can spot the helpful friendly way to send a message:

Yeah, there’s nothing like that. If you’re leaving a message about an article that was deleted, assuming you even know how to leave a message, you’re also informed to do it with an “appropriate red link” with instructions on how to make links red, except that leads to a page that doesn’t explain this, and OMG, did my head just explode over all this bureaucracy?

RTFM & If You Don’t Know What That Means RTFM

I hope it didn’t, because there’s more to come. In the end, I vent. Sorry Metropolitan90, I was mainly venting at the absurdity that is Wikipedia, but yeah, I’d had it:

Hey Metropolitan90, thanks for cruising by and leaving me this message: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dannysullivan&diff=0&oldid=207042508

Telling me that by golly, I left a message on a close AfD page (huh, what, can you just speak plain language?) and that hardly anyone will see those comments there (even though you did) and that if I want to challenge a deletion of something, I should use some arcane cryptic obscure Wikipedia deletion review process.

Here’s a little acronym for you. WTF?

Look, somehow in the insane closed little world of Wikipedia editors, where non-specialist editors pretend to be experts on what’s notable, you decided that this person wasn’t. You know, because you all couldn’t find enough references, in part because you don’t know the subject enough to even know how to find the right references — but even if you had, since you’re not subject experts, they mean nothing to you.

So, despite my general feeling that contributing anything to Wikipedia is a big giant waste of time, I actually left you all some pretty detailed references. At the very least, I’d think you’d have though hmm, maybe there’s enough there that this should be put up for re-review. And since you’re actually an expert on Wikipedia procedures — why didn’t you just do it?

What’s the point here? To have an accurate crowd-sourced encyclopedia, or to only have it be as accurate as the incredibly tiny few number of people who care to play in the high priesthood of Wikipedia editing allow it to be.

If it’s the latter, well, job well done. If it’s the former, well, you know what to do.

Geez, just to leave you a response, in the email I got, I was told to go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Metropolitan90

Which then told me at the top that actually, to contact you, I should come to this page. Which in turn, you know, isn’t particularly user friendly.

If you skipped all that, it highlights my frustration over all the acronyms and procedures that make Wikipedia, in my view, a closed little society that actually excludes subject experts from wanting to participate in it.

To Request A Review, Push The 10 Button On Your Keypad

But wait, there’s more. Remember, I was told the proper procedure was to follow the Deletion Review process. Let’s look at that page:

Hey, all I want is a form where I can submit some comments to someone with enough common sense to say “hmm, maybe we should reconsider this.” Instead, it’s like a novel — I’m only showing the first two of five major sections.

Oh — and it’s not even the right page that I was pointed at. That’s because, as best I can tell, this process is for pages that are being considered for deletion. I’m talking about a page that was deleted. Which means, yes, that’s right, a different page:

I wish my head hadn’t exploded before, because now it really would. This looks deceptively like what I want, a simple form. Enter the page title to get it undeleted. However — hey, how do you know the title of a deleted page? I suppose you can guess, but given how bureaucratic everything else is on Wikipedia, I have little faith.

Don’t Fold, Spindle Or Mutilate

More important, this process is only for pages that were “uncontroversially” deleted. What’s that mean? Well, say they were deleted through CSD G6. Whaaaat? Or if there was little to no debate.

How much debate is debate? Who knows. And what if there was debate? Go back to that first page that I said seems designed only to help pages that are being considered for deletion, not after they’ve been deleted.

Walls That Protect Also Divide

It’s insane. It really is. And with respect to the many hardworking people who have created a generally useful resource, it’s not a friendly resource. It doesn’t have systems, as far as I can tell, designed to help it improve. It has walls, walls you believe (with many good reasons) are designed to protect it from being vandalized. But those walls themselves are their own type of vandalization of the very resource you’re trying to protect.

Subject Experts Need Not Apply

Bottom line — I’ve gotten no indication that anyone at Wikipedia actually cares what a subject expert has to say on, well, a subject they’re an expert in. Instead, you drown in a morass of bureaucracy. It shouldn’t be this way.

By the way, comments are closed. It’s Thanksgiving tomorrow, and I wanted this off my chest while I was dealing with it now, but I don’t have time to response to comments that might come up. I’ll reopen them after the weekend. If you really care to comment, come back then. If you agree, well, use all those share, like, +1 and tweet buttons.

The White House decided a new voluntary agreement between ISPs and Hollywood on internet piracy was important enough to blog about. Unfortunately, the blog post pretty much said nothing. Since I already wasted time reading that White House post, I decided I should waste more time deconstructing what a waste of time it was.

The Administration is committed to reducing infringement of American intellectual property as part of our ongoing commitment to support jobs, increase exports and maintain our global competitiveness.

Well, I assume you’re committed to reducing anything that’s against the law, right? I mean, that’s why we have laws. But if you want to give me the this is all about jobs spiel, I suppose an election year is coming up.

The joining of Internet service providers and entertainment companies…

I’m sorry. Was there a merger of some sort? Is the FTC involved? Don’t some of the entertainment companies already own ISPs? But go on, I’m sure you’ll explain more.

…in a cooperative effort to combat online infringement can further this goal and we commend them for reaching this agreement. We believe it will have a significant impact on reducing online piracy.

Say what? What effort? What are they doing? Got a link or anything about this? Sounds pretty important. If I wanted to understand more about it, um, you want to point me to anything in particular?

We believe that this agreement is a positive step and consistent with our strategy of encouraging voluntary efforts to strengthen online intellectual property enforcement and with our broader Internet policy principles, emphasizing privacy, free speech, competition and due process.

Again, what agreement? You’re telling me this is all wonderful, but you can’t explain what’s going on? I mean, I know it’s all voluntary or whatever, and you’ve got nothing apparently to do with it other than saying you support it. But if you are so supportive of it to do a blog post, maybe you could explain it?

As such, we will follow the implementation and outcomes of this arrangement with great interest. Our expectation is that the new organization created by it will have ongoing consultations with privacy and freedom of expression advocacy groups to assure that its practices are fully consistent with the democratic values that have helped the Internet to flourish.

There’s a new organization? What’s it called? Does it have a web site? A Twitter account? Throw me a bone here. Maybe tell me some of the organizations behind it?

Simultaneously, the Administration will continue to pursue comprehensive solutions to the problems associated with Internet piracy, including increased law enforcement and educational awareness. To win the future and succeed in the global economy, it is critical to protect the intellectual property of America’s innovators and creators.

Really, that’s it? You called me over to the blog to tell me basically nothing? Thanks. I ended up having to head over to Techmeme, to read what journalists were writing about this new rosy future. Thank goodness they were around, because you told me zilch.

Next time, if you have nothing to say, then say nothing.

Oh, special request. If you’re all for helping Hollywood fight piracy, how about helping those consumers who actually do buy thing legitimately. For one, I never, ever, ever want a DVD to force me to sit through 5 minutes of previews. Can we have a law that if I push Menu, I immediately get the Menu button?

And that FBI warning? Enough. Let them put it on the box. I don’t need to see that logo over and over again. What other industry gets to shove those kind of warnings down the throats of consumers over and over again, outside of maybe the airline industry. And it’s not like we’re getting safety instructions, or anything.

Dear Jeff–

Thank you for your letter today, informing me that after seven years of being one of your affiliates — and having earned for you about $150,000 in that time — that you “deeply regret” unilaterally terminating my contract with Amazon to be an affiliate. I also especially appreciated the part where you reassured me that this action wouldn’t affect my ability to keep buying from your company. Nice touch.

I deeply appreciate that after so many years of supporting your company, and earning my 4.5% cut over those years (as I figured today, looking at my stats), that you’ve decided that I should be a pawn in your fight with my state. That type of loyalty really makes me want to support you in the future, should you restore your program. It also encourages me to want to continue shopping with you.

Jeff, I’m fortunate. Unlike the case with many of your affiliates, this won’t have a big economic impact on me. Having affiliate links here on my personal blog is more a hobby than anything else. I’ve got a successful day job.

But I don’t like unfairness in general. I also don’t have a lot of time to waste. And right now, I feel like you’ve just delivered a double-dose of both.

Cut The Program & Keep The Links

I’m not sure how many affiliate links I have on the blog. Not that many, maybe 25 to 50 in all. But until about an hour ago, those links were worth something to you. Now, because of your squabble over the sales tax issue, you’ve decided to just take for free what you’d previously paid for. If I don’t find time to track down and kill those links, you keep grabbing orders that get made through them and keeping the cut I previously received.

Over the next day or so, you’re going to get a lot of orders this way. Bigger affiliates will eventually move. Plenty of smaller ones won’t be bothered to change. But those small ones that don’t will add up into plenty of money for your company. You, of all companies, really understand how all that long tail stuff can mount up, right?

I’m not a big fan of class action lawsuits. They just enrich lawyers and let the plaintiffs end up with a $20 coupon to buy goods from the same companies that wronged them in the first place. But thinking about all those links that will keep earning you money for free, I kind of hope someone files a suit against you. They probably won’t win, but you deserve a little hassle, too.

I Get To Be Your Pawn With Only 10 Hours Notice?

You want to just up and terminate my contract with you with only ten hours notice? Hey, to be honest, I don’t even know what my contract is — or was — with you. I suppose you granted yourself these rights. Most big businesses tend to do so.

But really, it only occurred to you today to give your California affiliates this notice? I’ve checked. You’ve sent nothing to us about this. Nothing yesterday. Nothing in the past month.  Nothing at all, not until now. Since you clearly want to make us your pawns, maybe you could have told us sooner?

Then again, it might not have made a difference. See, I think you should collect sales tax. I don’t care what your “it’s unconstitutional” arguments are. Go argue them in court, with the people you’re upset with. But collect sales tax in the meantime. I’ll give you a simple reason why. It’s fair.

Let’s Make Amazon A Fair Trade Company

First, it’s fair to the affiliates that have helped build your business. You could collect sales tax and continue to have them support you, rather than suddenly make them all angry. Angry perhaps at the state, which is what you hope. But also angry at you.

For another, isn’t it time you grew up and became a real business that can compete against the bricks-and-mortar shops you undercut? Can’t you still win against them, even if you play on a more level playing field?

Of Borrowing Stores & Exporting Revenue

Look, I like to save money as much as the next person. And believe me, when I’m walking around in a Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics, I’m checking prices against Amazon.

But, I’m also feeling guilty if I’m checking out a product for a hands-on verification in these other shops that I might buy from you. I feel so guilty that that unless there’s a really big price difference, I’ll stick with them. After all, I like having them there. They give me the one thing you don’t. The ability to really experience an actual product — though with your great return policies, that’s growing less of an issue.

Still, for some people, that 8.25% tax (at minimum, since some counties and cities tack on more), can be a big enough difference to send those in-store shoppers — and in-store testers — heading over to your place.

That’s a pretty nice business to have, isn’t it? Merchants who invest in real stores effectively serve as your stores, too.

Some of these stores guarantee to match your prices, but they can’t beat that sales tax difference, can they? So when you write to me that the new California sales tax law is “supported by big box retailers, most of which are based outside of California,” I don’t really care.

Surprise. While I’m an Amazon affiliate (or was), I actually support those big box stores, too. And even if they’re outside California, they do collect sales tax — which in turn supports my state.

Affiliates Are Also Californians

Oh, yeah. That’s another issue. Not only are you sucking purchases (and thus potentially jobs) out of my state and undermining those retailers, but you’re also not letting the state earn off the sales tax like those retailers who actually are based here do. That makes me feel really good as a Californian.

Now sure, lots of us affiliates here have been earning off of you — and thus ourselves being taxed by California — so the state has been getting revenue from you indirectly. But that brings me back to the fairness.

Collect The Taxes; Fight Without Us Pawns

You could collect the tax, voluntarily. You could keep your affiliates, give back to the state, be more competitive with those retailers here and not cause all this ill-will that’s more about enriching your company than fighting the good fight.

So, Jeff, if you want to fight this, go ahead. But don’t make us your pawns. Take an hour of programming time to make a change to start collecting those taxes, just like you already seem to do in states like New York where you have a physical presence.

I like Amazon. I like buying all types of products from you. I depend on you especially these days for music and video rentals. Don’t make me hate you. Don’t make me seek out an alternative to your affiliate programs or worse, an alternative to buying from you period.

Thanks,
Danny

NOTE: For my search marketing readers, wondering about affiliate links as paid links (which are bad with Google), I usually nofollow these here, in the odd posts where they appear. Older ones might not have nofollow. But Google’s said fairly recently that most major affiliate programs do not need to have nofollow attached to them.

Also, I don’t pretend to understand Amazon’s arguments with California or other states. I claim no expertise in this. Violet Blue has written a nice background piece on some of the issues here that you might find useful. There is also round-up coverage on Techmeme.

While I don’t know the legalities, I do know that affiliates in California are clearly being used by Amazon in a fight it has with their own state. I think Amazon can fight that fight without penalizing them. And it should.

Postscript: See my follow-up piece, Amazon Welcomes Back Its California Affiliates.

So I’m cruising along at the LA Times today, and I get another one of those weight loss ads that you might have seen:

Let’s take a closer look at that ad:

Hmm. Lose weight by using this “1 weird old tip.”

I confess. When I first saw this type of ad last week, I clicked. I was curious just what that old tip was. Here’s the type of site I ended up on:

Welcome to “Channel 7 Heath Beat,” where you can hear the click of teletypes in the background, and Will Ferrell is due out to reprise is Anchorman role at any moment. Or he should, because this ain’t a news site. It’s just designed to look like one. And that weird old tip?

Yeah, there is no weird old tip. The words “weird” and “old,” as it turns out, never appear on the page. In fact, the opposite happens. You’re told how acai berries are the latest fad.

Now if you scroll down past all the comments (which are probably like this “news” site and not real), you get a ton of disclaimers about those logos used and this, perhaps the best part:

You get that? Don’t take the stories or comments on this page literally. Heh.

All done? Well, when you try to leave, you get a “wait, don’t go” interruption:

The good news is that neither “choice” will cause you to be trapped in an endless loop of messages preventing you from going. But you will get another page loaded (and presumably, someone’s making more money for showing it to you).

There are a string of these fake news sites out there. I suppose they work, but I find them kind of sucky.

Don’t want to see these ads any more? The ad, unlike Google’s ads, doesn’t report what ad network is delivering them. But looking at the URL, it turns out to be Zedo. You can opt out from Zedo ads here.

Personally, I’d like to see Zedo up its standards for the type of ads it will accept. This type of junk shouldn’t be allowed. Here’s hoping that one of their advisers, Esther Dyson, might push for that.

Postscript: Michael VanDeMar did some more digging into the ad and discovered that ultimately, it IS being served up via Google, apparently through its DoubleClick ad network.

The ad space on the page itself is using DoubleClick code to pull in ads. In turn, Zedo is serving into that space. In turn, this ad from the Zedo network appears, with Google’s help.

This changes nothing from my perspective. I think Google should raise its standards as much as I think Zedo should.

Ironically, I’d assumed initially that this was a Google ad, because most of the ads I tend to run into are served by Google’s AdSense system. But those are all identified with an “Ads by Google” disclosure next to them. When I didn’t see that, I figured Google wasn’t playing a role here.

Suffice to say, I think DoubleClick units should carry a similar “Ads by Google” type of message. Or more to the point, if there are bad ads that I run into, I like the ability to easily find the network and report them.

Meanwhile, since I have AdSense here in places on the site — and this is about acai berries tangentially — apparently AdSense is now delivering up ads that appear to link back to the same company that was running through DoubleClick/Zedo. Talk about irony.

I’ll dig into my settings with AdSense to see if I can just block ads from “acai berry” vendors in general. Meanwhile, the fact that AdSense itself may be sending people to these “news” sites might put more pressure on Google to remove them.

Also, further in the comments, Jon notes that these type of ads have been around, things that get you into recurring payment and so on. I know. That wasn’t the main point of my article. What’s annoyed me most is that the ad is so clearly different from what the landing page delivers. You’re promised a “weird old tip,” but nothing like that at all is delivered. That seems misleading right from the start. It, of course, goes downhill from there.

And sadly, as also some have said in the comments, opting out of the cookie doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t see these ads any longer.

Postscript 2: Dug into AdSense, there’s a category filter option you can use. Weight Loss is now blocked, which I hope gets rid of those ads. Interestingly, “Get Rich Quick” is a category that’s also listed — and which apparently was generating 3% of my AdSense income. Killed that category, as well. Guess I’ll get rich less quick without get rich quick ads.

Postscript 3: Going back to Mike’s post, I noticed Aaron Wall had a comment highlighting this whole category filter that AdSense has, saying how this shows ultimately that Google is OK running these ads, even though it knows that some publishers might want to opt-out. Indeed, that was my same reaction when I saw this feature. “Um, you have a group of ads called ‘Get Rich Quick’ but rather than block them, you leave it to the publisher?” I suppose some publishers might want to run such ads — and I’m glad that I have the option to turn them off. But I think it might be better if Google just said no to some of these types of ads.

Two months ago, I ordered a monitor extender from Dell. It didn’t work as I’d expected. I thought I returned it. Today, I learned hadn’t. Horror — it’s now 20 days past Dell’s 21 day return policy. Would they be flexible? Would they be understanding? No. Worse, they were just inept and wasteful of my time on the phone.

Below, a short recreation of my past hour….

NOTE: Dell’s since resolved the issue, as noted at the end of this piece.

Me: Ring Ring.

Dell: [Automated System, a billion choices, please enter your order number]

Me: [punches in the number. and again. and again until it takes]

Dell: Hello, Dell Returns.

Me: Hi. I have this thing that I forgot to return within your policy. Any chance I can still return it?

Dell: What’s your order number?

Me: Here you go.

Dell: [after a wait] – OK, I need to transfer you to someone who can help you.

Me: Awesome.

Dell: [new person] Hello, how can I help you.

Me: Hi. I have this thing that I forgot to return within your policy. Any chance I can still return it?

Dell: What’s your order number?

Me: [wondering if I've been locked into some sub-routine]. You want that order number I punched into the system and just gave to the other person?

Dell: Yes.

Me: Here you go.

Dell: [after a wait] – OK, I need to transfer you to someone who can help you.

Me: [didn't we just do this?] OK

Dell: [new person, my third one now] Hello, how can I help you.

Me: Hi. I have this thing that I forgot to return within your policy. Any chance I can still return it?

Dell: What’s your order number?

Me: You want that order number that I’ve given out three times now?

Dell: Yes.

Me: Here you go.

Dell: [A really long, long wait]. It appears that this is outside our 21 day return policy.

Me: I know. That’s what I said. I was hoping I could still return it. It doesn’t work the way I thought it would. I only discovered today that it wasn’t returned.

Dell: We can’t take this back.

Me: But I ordered a really expensive monitor from you at the same time. I’m about to order two more monitors from you. There’s nothing you can do?

Dell: No.

Me: OK, transfer me to your sales people. Maybe they can help me.

Dell: They can’t.

Me: Well, you clearly can’t, so I’ll take my chances with them.

Dell: [after a transfer] Dell Sales, how can I help you?

Me: I want to buy two of your high end 20″ monitors.

Dell: I’d be happy to help.

Me: By the way, I also have this thing I’m trying to return worth about $200 that’s outside your returns policy. The return department was no help. Maybe you can do something?

Dell: We’ll see if I can get you a discount.

Me: Awesome [imagining a $200 discount]

Dell: Unfortunately, we don’t offer discounts on those high end monitors.

Me: That really sucks. Returns couldn’t help me, and I was hoping maybe sales could make it up some way.

Dell: Let me have my supervisor talk to you.

Me: OK

Dell: [Sales supervisor] I understand you want a discount, but we have no ability in our system to actually discount those monitors. But I could give you a credit after the fact for $30.

Me: That seems kind of small given I’m stuck with this other thing that I can’t use.

Dell: Did you talk with a supervisor in returns?

Me: No

Dell: You should try that and be really insistent.

Me: OK

Dell: How about $40, and I’ll set up a conference call with the returns people.

Me: OK, let’s do that.

Dell: [takes my order, transfers me over to returns. really long, long wait] Dell returns, how can I help you.

Me: Hi. I have this thing that I forgot to return within your policy. Any chance I can still return it?

Dell: What’s your order number?

Me: [pondering if I should have my order number tattooed on my arm]. Here you go

Dell: [after a long wait]. That’s outside our return policy. We can’t take it back.

Me: OK, can I talk with a supervisor?

Dell: The supervisor will only tell you what I told you.

Me: OK, can I talk to a supervisor so the supervisor themselves can tell me what you’re telling me they’ll tell me.

Dell: The supervisor will only tell you what I told you.

Me: I’m sorry, are you a supervisor?

Dell: No, but the supervisor will only tell you…

Me: Transfer me to a supervisor

Dell: [after transfer] Hello, I’m the supervisor, how can I help you.

Me: Well, about an hour ago I called to see if I could return something outside your returns policy. I was transferred and transferred and eventually told no, because it was outside your policy, something I said from the beginning. Then I tried to see if sales could help, and they said to call back to returns and ask for a supervisor and be really insistent. Then I was sent back to returns, where the last person didn’t even want me to talk to you. But now that I am, I know this is outside your policy. But I was hoping Dell might give some consideration here. It doesn’t do what I needed. I can’t use it at all. I’ve bought an expensive monitor from you with it, and I’ve just bought two more. And by the way, I bought a laptop from you earlier this year that died after two months, leaving me stranded. So I was kind of thinking Dell might be flexible.

Dell: It’s outside our policy. We can’t help you. Sales shouldn’t have told you that. We have different departments. Support is the department to talk to if something doesn’t work right.

Me: It’s not a support problem. It technically cannot do what I want, because my monitors are of different resolutions. I simply can’t use it. That’s all. But since you’re mentioning different departments, do you have a customer service department at Dell?

Dell: Yes.

Me: Good. Tell them this. If I call Returns and say that something is outside your policy from the beginning, and you can’t break that policy, then just say that immediately. Don’t send someone to three different people and waste their time. At this point, I’m more upset that you just didn’t say no at the beginning than that you won’t take back something that’s past your policy.

Bottom line? I’m outside the policy. It’s my fault. Dell’s totally within its rights not to take back the product. I completely get that. What I don’t get is how much time they wasted with me on the issue. How much better to either have said (1) no from the beginning or (2) yes and kept a current customer happy.

Postscript: I tweeted out about this to @dellcares, which promptly followed-up and cut through the madness. Dell agreed I should have had the situation dealt with on the first call and had decided to make an exception for the trouble. Thanks!

Cast your mind back to July. Fast Company launched its “Influence Project,” a scheme supposedly designed to see who has the most influence online. The results are in! And the winners aren’t anyone that Fast Company mentions in its write-up about the project. That’s how stupid the entire thing was. [NOTE: Turns out, the winners do make it into the magazine in a separate article -- more below].

Fast Company initially pitched the effort this way:

This experiment will show what happens when an individual takes an audience at rest and applies an unbalanced force–through suggestion, advice or direction–that converts it into an army of action. That’s power that can be quantified and lead to an understanding that can be applied to both the largest and smallest of networks. No doubt it’s profound to address a million followers and get 100,000 of them to respond. But what does it mean when you have one hundred friends on Facebook and 97 of them click through to a site on your recommendation?

The clicks and networking and connectivity (out to six degrees!) collected in this experiment will provide a compass for where real influence lies on the Internet.

Awesome — we’ll finally know who has real influence! If you ask me (and SF Weekly did, in its write-up on the project at the time), about who has influence on the internet, you’ll hear some familiar names. As I said:

Steve Jobs decides not to include Flash on the iPad, which causes a huge ripple among web publishers. That’s influence! But this “Influence Project” will measure none of that.

It’s fair to say that some of the most influential people on the web aren’t going to take the time register in a project, to begin with. I mean, they’re influential! As part of being influential, they’re probably busy doing the things that made them influential in the first place, not worrying about proving their influence.

Can you see Eric Schmidt, Steve Ballmer, Carol Bartz or Steve Jobs – all of whom are fairly influential people on the web – taking time from running their companies to register?

There was plenty of criticism about the project, and how it would play out. But no more guessing or speculation. The final results are out. And the most influential person on the interwebs is …. Shoemoney!

Shoewho? Most people outside the SEO and affiliate marketing spaces probably won’t know the name. Shoemoney (sometimes written “ShoeMoney” is the online moniker of Jeremy Schoemaker, who runs the Shoemoney blog. Shoemoney is a great guy. He has a well-deserved, loyal following. But respect to Shoe, he’s not the most influential person on the web. He’s just a master of playing Fast Company’s lame poll in his favor.

How about some of the other most influentials? Here’s the top ten:

By name, they are:

1. Jeremy Schoemaker
2. Shefqet Avdullau
3. Tod Sacerdoti
4. Cory Boatright
5. Greg Clement
6. Frank Kovacs
7. Sebastian Saldarriaga
8. James Dunn
9. Richard Lee
10. Pace Lattin

Congrats to each and every one. You worked your networks, proved your influence according to Fast Company’s own rules, and you deserve to be included in Fast Company’s story about the project’s final results — “The New Faces Of Social Media,” which starts out:

From YouTube celebrities to chief social-media officers, these unexpected players exert outsize impact and power online — offering new channels of communication that businesses can’t afford to ignore.

You deserve to be there, because you are absolutely the unexpected players according to this poll. But you’re not there. Sorry. I guess you weren’t the faces Fast Company was looking for.

Who is there? The story starts out with a profile of Justine Ezarik, “iJustine,” who we are told:

The most effective participant by far in this regard was iJustine; she converted 4,800 of her friends and fans into participants — 15% of the eventual 33,000 participants.

Odd, I thought Shoemoney won. Oh — but wait, she’s the most effective of those in the “YouTube Celebrities” category that Fast Company decided needed to be created — one of six categories that were never mentioned in the initial project.

Overall, the winners are like this:

1. Justine Ezarik, YouTube Celebrities
2. Jill Fletcher, Chief Social Officers
3. Gary Vaynerchuk, Gurus
4. Christopher Poole, Cabals & Compatriots
5. Greg Allan, Specialists (apparently, it’s kind of hard to tell)
6. Jonah Peretti, Filters

Shoemoney, by the way, would be considered a “guru” by many. Not only doesn’t he get listed as the top guru. He’s not mentioned in the guru section at all. And as best I can tell, none of the top ten in the poll got mentioned at all.

I thought the project was lame from the start. Ignoring those who actually won the contest is even lamer. Far classier would have been to have done the story about the real “new faces” that won. They actually have a lot of lessons that Fast Company’s readership probably could learn from.

Postscript: Fast Company editor Bob Safian commented below that the winners are mentioned in the magazine. Indeed, there is a separate article about them, with interviews and covering the polls actual results. You’ll find it here, and it’s worth a read.

I was surprised that I missed this. I looked — and looked — for a piece like this. But you only find it listed if you go to where Fast Company lists all its stories by print magazine edition, something that I didn’t find that obvious.

The project slideshow itself was listed in an email to participants (I got one of these, as I signed up to see how it worked but didn’t promote it). It was also listed on the home page of the Fast Company site. That slide show linked to an About page, which in turn linked to that  “New Influentials” write-up, then another link back to the slideshow, plus a link to the blog about the project:

I went back to each of these — and back to the Fast Company home page — to scan for any reference to the winners. I found nothing. But after Safain pointed at the magazine table of contents, the “The Influence Project” took me there:

All of which shows two things. Fast Company needs to think better of its cross-referencing. And had I bothered trying to ask Safian or someone at the magazine, I’d have saved myself a blog post.

Dear FTC. Instead of worrying about whether bloggers are disclosing all they should when writing about products, perhaps a little more attention should be focused on TV programs and product placement? This season’s 24 took things to a new level, where plot points were constructed around featuring a product. Is a tiny mention in credits at the end really disclosure enough?

I love 24. I’m sad to see it go. I’m used to exercising a huge degree of suspension of disbelief about some plot points, because I’ve enjoyed the show so much. But the plot points designed only to position products were one twist too far.

In one episode, Chloe and Arlo decide they need to work together secretly,  outside the CTU network but while within the CTU offices. “I know!,” Chloe says. “We’ll set up a mobile hotspot.” She pulls out a Sprint mobile modem, and they get working.

Um, all that modem is really designed to do is let one or more people get out on to the open web. So was she using that to go outside, then log back into CTU’s network, which they were trying to avoid in the first place?

It was a plot point solely because someone was told, “Write something in about Sprint hotspots.” It was awkward and stood out (and didn’t go unnoticed).

In the finale, Cole’s sitting in his car finishing up a phone conversation when a big truck pulls up alongside him. Ohh — something ominous? No, it was just designed so Cole had to backup his Hyundai using its rear TV camera in it to navigate away from the truck.

There was no reason for the truck to be there, other than to highlight that camera segment.

You want to show me ads during breaks in my TV shows? Fine. Want to have some products get camera time. I guess I’ll live with that. But writing the plots around products, in exchange for payment. That’s not on.