Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short)

It’s unusual that I blog about a book before I’ve actually finished it, but this one is too timely to pass up given today’s news about newspapers.  The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen, at least the first 1/2 of it, is a pretty intense rant about how the Internet’s trend towards democratizing media and content production has a double dirty underbelly:

poor quality — “an endless digital forest of mediocrity,”

no checks and balances — “mainstream journalists and newspapers have the organization, financial muscle, and and credibility to gain access to sources and report the truth…professional journalists can go to jail for telling the truth” (or, I’d add, for libel)

So what’s today’s news about newspapers?  Another massive circulation drop — 3.6% in the last six months.  Newspaper readership across the country is at its lowest level since 1946, when the population was only 141 million, or less than half what it is today.  The digital revolution is well underway.  Print newspapers are declining asymptotically to zero.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m an Internet guy, and I love the democratization of media for many reasons.  I also think it will ultimately force old media companies to be more efficient as individual institutions and as an industry in order to survive (not to mention more environmentally friendly).  But Keen has good thoughts about quality and quantity that are interesting counterpoints to the revolution.  I hope at least some newspapers survive, change their models and their cost structures, and start competing on content quality.  The thought that everyone in the world will get their news ONLY from citizen journalists is scary.

I’m curious to see how the rest of the book turns out.  I’ll reblog if it’s radically different from the themes expressed here.

Update (having finished the book now): Keen puts the mud in curmudgeon. He doesn’t appear to have a good word to say about the Internet, and he allows his very good points about journalistic integrity and content quality and our ability to discern the truth to get washed up in a rant against online gambling, porn, and piracy. Even some of his rant points are valid, but saying, for example, that Craigslist is problematic to society because it only employs 22 people and is hugely profitable while destroying jobs and revenue at newspapers just comes across as missing some critical thinking and basically just pissing in the wind. His final section on Solutions is less blustry and has a couple good examples and points to offer, but it’s a case of too little, too late for my liking.

Executive and Closed Sessions

Brad has a good post up about what he calls “closed sessions” in Board meetings — time at the end of the meeting reserved for a conversation with Board members ONLY, no other observers or non-Board management.  While we differ in terminology, I agree completely with the sentiment and with his logic.

We call the part of the meeting that Brad describes the Executive Session.  We’ve always done them.  And the Board and I find it incredibly useful, and a good practice, even if there are no contentious or puzzling issues during a meeting.  Not that our Board holds back much, but the Executive Session is a good time for us to connect 100% freely about management issues as well as elements of business strategy and performance that might be better hashed out without others present.

We also have an additional part of the meeting at the very end which we call the Closed Session.  This part of the meeting has NO MANAGEMENT in it, even me, although I’m Chairman of the Board.  This time allows the other directors an even greater degree of freedom to discuss the business or my performance without worrying about saying something in front of me — and without hearing my opinion.

Both sessions are incredibly valuable parts of high functioning Boards.

Drawing the LineWe are having a bit of a debate at the moment internally around our Sender Score deliverability business about how to handle clients who are in businesses that are, shall we say, not exactly as pure as the driven snow.  As a company that provides software and services to businesses without a vertical focus, we are often approached by all sorts of companies wanting our services where we don’t love what they do.  Examples include:

Gambling
Tobacco
Neutriceuticals
Guns
Adult content or products

Our challenges are along three dimensions, each of which is a little different.  But common threads run through all three dimensions. 

Dimension 1:  Our deliverability technology platform.   Our basic technology is used by mailers of all shapes and sizes to preview their campaigns, monitor their deliverability, and analyze their reputation metrics.  It doesn’t deploy campaigns.  Do we care who the users are?

Dimension 2:  Our full service deliverability practice that comes with consulting and high-touch account management.  This service offering has an additional layer of complexity in that our employees work closely with accounts and their web sites.  We already allow employees to opt-out of accounts where they find the work objectionable.  But is that enough?

Dimension 3:  Our whitelist, Sender Score Certified. This one is even trickier.  On the one hand, our program has fairly clear, published standards.  We do a thorough qualitative check of the client’s web site and email program to make sure, among other things, that the program is opt-in.  We monitor the client’s quantitative reputation metrics in real-time to make sure its complaint rate is low, signifying that its customers like (or at least don’t mind) receiving its email.  On the other hand, this program is supposed to signify the best of the best for email marketing and newsletters, which is why it’s used by so many ISPs and filters as their standard for defining “good mail.”  And yet on a third hand (perhaps there’s some sort of herbal remedy that can help me with that problem), for many ISPs, our program is their only whitelist, so clients who are above board, even if in a grey industry, may have no other option.

So is it our place to legislate morality, or should we just focus on what’s legal and what’s not legal?  How much accountability do clients bear for content that shows up in their emails from advertisers?  For example, and I’m making this up, what do we do if a men’s health magazine that’s a client has links in its email newsletters that are placed by an affiliate network that click through to a pornography site?  What if the pornography in question is legal in one country but not another?  How much time and energy should we spend vetting clients before we take them on?  Or monitoring them around these issues once they’re a client?  Does it matter which product they’re using?

I’d love feedback from the outside world (or the inside world) on how we should think about and handle these issues.

Poor Systems Integration Just Makes It Worse

I attended  a day of classes at Harvard Business School in 1992 as a college senior.  I distinctly remember a case study on how poor systems integration was impacting companies’ ability to get a whole view of their customers and thus provide high service levels.  In fact, the case study I remember was about American Airlines and how one system showed that a customer’s flights had been delayed or canceled, while another system showed a customer’s travel patterns and was able to tell when the customer had defected to another airline, and a third system sent out rewards and notices to customers.

That was 16 years ago.

I received an email from American Airlines today about this past week’s service debacles around additional airplane inspections.  It was a good email, until I read this line:

If in your travels you were among the many who have been personally affected, I sincerely regret the inconvenience you have experienced.

Um, hello?  McFly?  Shouldn’t you know whether or not I was “personally affected” by your cancellations?  You haven’t figured out how to tie those disparate systems together in the last 16 years?

American’s not alone, by any stretch of the imagination.  I see the same problem all over the place — banks, telco, retail.  I just find it amazing that large companies with huge IT budgets and decades to work with can’t figure out how to tie systems together to understand what’s going on with their customers.  Still.

No Recession at Return Path

I know, I know.  I shouldn’t jinx us.  But we’re growing like mad at the moment, so much so that we have well almost 50 open positions now across all divisions of the company.  If you want to come join one of the fastest growing, most innovative, and just plain coolest places to work in the industry, we’d love to talk to you.

What’s driving the growth? 

• All our operating units have open positions.  Sender Score (deliverability/whitelisting) has the most openings and is growing explosively.  But Authentic Response (market research) and Postmaster (lead generation) both have openings as well
• Geographic expansion.  We have a bunch of openings in Europe as well as in the U.S.  Other parts of the world…stay tuned for later in the year (or let us know now that you are interested once we get to your corner of the globe)
• The power of email.  Parts of the economy may be a bit choppy now, but online marketing, and email in particular, are going strong.  Clients are finding the e-channels to be more and more effective and efficient ways of driving sales and customer loyalty

Visit the careers page at our web site to have a look — all the new jobs probably aren’t posted yet, but many are, and the rest are on the way shortly.  This is a fun and exciting and rewarding place to work.  Trust me.  I’m completely unbiased.  No, really.  Come join the team, or refer others!

What’s the Response Rate on This Campaign?

This is a doosie.  I will hide names to protect the guilty, but I just received my third form letter in the last five years from the CEO of one of the big public companies in the direct marketing space inviting me to sell Return Path to him.  It was delivered via FedEx with some of the company’s marketing materials and public financial reporting. 

All I will note is the ironic list of ways that this letter does not conform to direct marketing best practices:

• It’s not personal
• It’s only theoretically relevant
• Behavioral targeting would catch that similar mailings in the past haven’t generated a response
• Treating solicitation of a CEO about M&A like it’s a pre-approved credit card offer isn’t exactly congruent with the message of "come join the team"

Oh and of course this one, in this day and age of consumer choice:

• I can’t unsubscribe from future similar mailings

Amazing.

Closer to the Front Lines

When we started Return Path, we added a little clause to our employee handbook that entitled people to a sabbatical after 7 years of service (and then after every 5 incremental years).  Six weeks off, 3/4 pay.  Full pay if you do something “work related.”  Sure, we thought.  That’s an easy thing to give.  We’ll never be 7 years old as a company. 

Now, 8 1/2 years later, of course, the first wave of people are reaching their sabbatical date.  A couple have already gone (one trip around the world, one quality time with the kids).  A couple others are pending.  Four of us at the exec level are overdue to take ours, and we all committed to take them this year, planning them out so we can back each other up.  My colleague George Bilbrey is in the middle of his 6 weeks off now, and I’m his backup.  And wow – is it a great experience.  Busy, but great.

The reason it’s great is that I am one step closer to the action.  Usually when someone on my team goes on vacation, we just let things run for that week or two.  The people who report into that exec know I’m around if they need something, but I don’t take over actively working with them.  Not so this time.  Six weeks is too long for that.  I’m actively subbing for George.  I’m sitting in his office in Colorado every other week for the sabbatical.  I have weekly meetings with his staff.  I’m working with them on their Q2 goals (for added fun, we’re even working on George’s Q2 goals!).  I’m attending meetings that George usually attends but that I’m not invited to.

The insight I’m getting into things in George’s area of the business is great.  I’m learning more about the ins and outs of everyone’s work, more about the team dynamic, and more about how the team works with other groups in the company.  Most important, I’m learning more about how George and I interact, and how I can manage that interaction better in the future.  And I’m making or suggesting some small changes here and there on the margin.  Hopefully I’m not messing things up too badly.  Otherwise, I will hear about it in 3 1/2 weeks!

I strongly encourage everyone who is a Manager of Managers or higher in their company (especially if that company’s name rhymes with Geturn Fath) to use any vacation of someone on their team as an excuse to really substitute and get closer to the front lines.

Don’t Ever Do a Conference Call from an Airport

Ever.  Just say no thank you, you’re not available.  Airports are terrible places to be on a phone call.  You can’t hear the call, the call is barraged with P.A. system announcements.  It’s disjointed and difficult. 

Better to force the call to happen at another time or send a delegate from your team or company on your behalf.  If you *must* do a call from an airport, I’d say best practices are:

1. Let the meeting organizer know ahead of time that you have no choice (if the meeting must be scheduled at that time)

2. Remind all participants up front that you’re in an airport

3. Make liberal use of the mute and unmute functions.  Phones all have different ways of doing this, but most conference call platforms have universal *6 mute and *7 unmute commands

4. If you can’t hear everything you need to hear on the call, ask one meeting participant at the end of the call if they can recap key items and next steps for you after the fact

A Flurry of CAN-SPAM Activity – But Is It Meaningful?

Our four-year old oft maligned anti-spam legislation in this country, the CAN-SPAM act, has seen an uptick of activity this past week. 

Melinda Krueger sums up the sentiments of many in the anti-spam community in her Email Insider column today when she says,

There is no provision in the act against sending unsolicited email as long as you comply with the rest of the act. The motivation of the act was more to make voters feel politicians were doing something about this annoying problem.

In the last two days, however, we got news of ValueClick’s $2.9 million settlement with the FTC over a CAN-SPAM violation (the largest ever), as well as notorious hardcore spammer Robert Soloway pleading guilty on a variety of charges for Really Bad Things, probably including spamming (I’ve read differing reports of his plea, some of which include the CAN-SPAM violation, and some of which don’t).

I’ve never felt that CAN-SPAM did all that much to stop sneaky practices.  It has loopholes so large you can drive a semi through it.  People joke that the law means, “yes, you CAN spam.”  Yet, the law does seem to be doing at least a little of what it was intended to do, which is give the federal government the teeth to go after the bad guys. 

Soloway undoubtedly is a bad guy.  ValueClick may or may not be a bad guy, depending on who you talk to.  But, weak as the law may be, public fines and convictions for violations of CAN-SPAM will ultimately start to impact both the black hats and the grey hats.  Let’s just hope the feds keep up their enforcement work!

Book Short: Smaller is the New Small

Last month, it was Microtrends. This month, it’s MIT Professor Ted Sargent’s The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives. It seems like all the interesting things in life are just getting smaller and smaller. (Note to self: lose some weight.)

Sargent’s book is geeky but well-written. He dives into a couple dozen examples across many fields and disciplines of how nanotechnology holds extraordinary promise for solving some of mankind’s toughest scientific challenges — while creating a few new ethical and economic ones.

The science is for the most part beyond me, but the practical applications are fascinating:

– making solar power the sole source of global energy needs a possibility

– detecting cancer at the level of a single cancer cell rather than waiting to discover a grape-sized tumor; curing that cancer through embedded “pharmacy on a chip” drugs that release the right drugs over long periods of time locally at the spot of the disease

– figuring out how to keep proving the ever-more-challenging Moore’s law when only 4 years from now, parts of a transistor will need to be only 5 atoms across

– curing blindness with wireless retinal implants

Once every year or so, I read a book that makes me sad I didn’t go into engineering or science. The Dance of Molecules is that kind of book.

Couldn’t Happen to a Nicer Guy

As I said in this post, sometimes calling for the boss’s head is a mistake, and that

an alternative — an honest apology, some kind of retribution, and a clear and conspicuous post-mortem

can often be a better way for an organization to move forward after a leader-involved crisis. 

But not today. Elliot Spitzer has to go.  The hypocrisy he displayed in running a law and order campaign, administration, and career, using his office as a bully pulpit and unnecessarily ruining innocent people’s careers to stroke his own ego, while willfully breaking the law himself in the manner that he did, is way too much for an elected official at that level. 

I just hope the relevant prosecutors here don’t make a deal that lets him off the hook if he resigns his office.  That would be an ultimate, final abuse of power.