Perhaps it’s a sign of me being stuck in the past - It just seems that there are fewer and fewer companies that fight in an honorable way. There are two things in particular that have been bothering me -
- The ridiculous number of companies using whimsical notions like ‘openness’ to compete. This becomes particularly annoying when the companies aren’t really ‘open’ (or whatever other things they claim to be).
- Companies that attack and bad-mouth competitors instead of actually improving and competing with them fairly.
Let’s look at two examples and make ill-advised analogies with actual wars. We’ll start with a company that twists the truth marvellously well.
Posterous’ rather pretentious user stealing drive
Posterous isn’t exactly WordPress. It isn’t exactly Twitter. Some would argue it isn’t even Tumblr.
Yet, it’s announced that it will introduce ‘importers’ that will let users import their posts from 15 dying platforms (their words, not mine) onto Posterous. The list includes Ning, Tumblr, WordPress, and lots of other very good sites and platforms. Having used WordPress and Ning extensively and Xanga sporadically I can assure you that these platforms are not dying out and the notion that it makes sense for users to switch from them to Posterous is borderline comical (especially as in some cases Posterous won’t preserve your URLs – the worst possible thing if you’d like search traffic).
What Posterous writes on their blog borders on outright lies -
Post Title: Posterous launches new tools to switch from dying platforms.
Post Subject: A lot of you have asked for help moving your old blog, photos or videos to Posterous. You grouched about dying platforms that haven’t added new features in ages, sites that have made it too complex to perform the most basic tasks and places that smother your content in ads.
WordPress adds so many features it’s hard to keep up. Both WordPress and Ning have easy paid options to turn off ads and they are both pretty simple. These are obviously downsides to both – However, calling them dying platforms is doing users a disservice.
WordPress in particular is an insanely strong site that’s been growing phenomenally – it’s orders of magnitude bigger and better than Posterous (in my opinion, clouded by being on it for 2.5 years).
If we were in a war between nations Posterous’ strategy would be akin to finding citizens of an enemy country and lying to them about their country being terrible and trying to get them to defect. A strategy that a country that lacks ethics or an actual strong army would indulge in. There have been numerous instances when an army’s bravery and courage have impressed even their enemies and created a deep respect – This is the exact opposite.
TwitPic is one of the companies targeted by Posterous and it’s done the right thing (in my opinion) – Made it a legal matter.
Spread misinformation about us and steal our users via deceit – Well, then you better get ready to have a conversation with our Lawyers.
Companies pretending to be open and benevolent
There’s a wave of companies that are using charity, the environment, the notion of openness, and other hard to prove and easy to fake qualities as the basis of their strategies.
It’s like an army that is moving through countries pretending it’s a convoy of farmers -
We just want to till your land for you – these aren’t swords – they’re just more efficient tools. Did some of your people die? Do you now have to pay taxes to us? Are you now our colonies? Oh, there must be some mistake – but you might as well keep paying taxes now.
These are companies who don’t have the courage to straight up state what they really are – companies trying to maximize profits and shareholder value, companies made up of people who want money and power and influence.
These are also companies that lack the ethics and internal moral compass required to be honest with users – They pretend that exposing user information is good for users, they share user information with advertisers without letting users know, they try to trap users into their offerings, they use the debt of free without letting users know it’s piling up.
Makes me wish for the good old days when companies competed on quality of product and value for money? Where are the honorable companies that want to add actual features and deliver better products and not just fool users into believing they are doing good things?
It’s devolving into a world where companies are more interested in pretending to be good than being great companies, where companies would rather paint illusions for users than provide more value, and where the honorable companies are left wondering if there will ever be another honorable war.
Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | ethics, good vs evil
It’s much easier to pretend to be good than to actually be good.
very true.
youre not stuck in the past, youre stuck in a fantasy of a time that never existed. business is honorable where it is more profitable to be honorable than dishonorable, and vice versa. business functions on darwinian selection principles, where profit is the measure of suitability.
at this point i want to pause to make it clear that i do not think this is a bad thing. i am 100% pro-business.
the reason why “pretending benevolence” is so prevalent at the moment, is because customers are so effing stupid at the moment. slap a “GREEN!” sticker on it, and the sheeple just lap it right up. a business doesnt have to actually BE green, because the consumer is too effing stupid and lazy to bother to research whether what they are buying is what it say is it. they just want to feel better about themselves and ease a bit of that indoctrinated guilt. they dont actually care if theyre green or not, they just want to FEEL GOOD, so they spend spend spend on these huckster products.
so what you have are CUSTOMERS that WANT fake, easy “benevolence”… and an emerging market of business thats willing to sell it to them… and i think its GREAT. if i could figure out a good way to do it, you can bet your rear id be sucking as much of that stupid-cash out of the populace as i could, too… while sheering the sheeple isnt business’ highest calling, its definitely the one that goes the furthest towards keeping the lights on every day.
btw, i was just using “green” as an example, this applies just as well to “open” and “healthy” and all the other buzzwords the lazy consumtards want to see on their products so they can get that fake “feel good” high when they spend. this ALSO applies to government as well as business.
the bottom line: lazy, stupid, weak customers/citizens dont just get the businesses/governments they deserve, they get the businesses/governments they WANT, whether theyre willing to admit it to themselves or not.
Agreed.
Don’t have a problem with sheep farmers or with actually good companies. My only problem is with companies that pretend to be good when they aren’t. Be honest – Honest Bad or Honest Good is much better than pretend Good.
“Honest Bad or Honest Good is much better than pretend Good”
except when it isnt
its far, far cheaper to pretend than to be, and if your customers are willing to accept pretend, well…