Category Archives: Weblogs

I Wonder if SunTrust Would Care if They Knew

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A Greensboro-based blogger named Jay Ovittore wrote a post about the policy at SunTrust Bank to immediately debit a transaction yet hold a refund for several days.  The policy came to his attention when a store clerk mistakenly overcharged a transaction and then immediately refunded it.  Since the refund didn’t kick in right away several other transactions caused him to overdraw his account and rack up over $200 in overdraft fees.

What’s interesting to me is that Jay got 10 comments on his post, and all of them were recommendations for other banks and credit unions.  SunTrust did eventually make things right and it’s not like they’re the only bank with this policy, but they now have their competitors being promoted at their expense on a blog post that will eventually pick up search engine traffic, and at least locally it has stirred up a little noise.  (It’s the network effect in action).  SunTrust is a big institution, so my question is do they know about this and if they do know about it do they care?  Somehow I doubt it, because if they did they would have a representative posting a comment in their own defense.

Should SunTrust care?  Sure they should, because even in the offline world one disgruntled customer typically tells their friends and colleagues when they get bad service and they also tell those friends and colleagues when a company does something extraordinary to make up for it. Conversely, customers rarely tell anyone when they get adequate or even good service which generally makes them a silent majority. Right now SunTrust has a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-customer that offers them an opportunity to get out a positive message about their company and they’re missing it.

New Business, Blog in Winston-Salem

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There’s an independent publisher that recently opened its doors in Winston-Salem and also launched a blog.  Press53’s website can be found here, and their blog can be found there.

Looks like they’re having a launch party on January 27, 7 p.m. at the Borders on Stratford Road in Winston-Salem.  Hopefully Celeste and I will have the chance to get out there and say hi, especially since that Borders is such a frequent date location when we need to get out of the house.  On top of that I’d love to see a little cottage publishing industry get going in this little city.  There’s a surprising number of artists in this town and I’d love to see them supported by local companies, and maybe even bring a little balance to the ready-to-explode local biotech industry.

City Official Shows Public Blogging Done Right

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Over in Greensboro, NC the police chief has resigned after being locked out of his own office and threatened with administrative leave by the city manager.  These events are the result of an ongoing controversy surrounding the apparent profiling and investigation of black Greensboro police officers.  You can read the Greensboro News & Record’s coverage here.

City Councilwoman Sandy Carmany is one of the first public officials I’ve seen who consistently maintains a blog, and her post about this issue is a great example of how public officials can use blogs to better inform their constituents.  The comments to the post are also a great example of why that one feature, comments, makes blogs such a powerful communication tool.

Blogging Has Changed Everything; I Voluntarily Read a Poem

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Poetry is something I suffered through in college, which is frightening when you consider that I was an English Lit major.  Really the only poetry class I remember attending regularly was a comparative literature class (Wordsworth and some dead white English dude) being taught by a really hot, brunette 26-year-old professor.  Even then I only made it to mid-terms before I began skipping class in earnest. Other than that I remember nada…zilch.

Since college I’ve intermittently tried to read some poetry just to see if my tastes in literature have changed since then (they haven’t) only to discover that poetry still bores me silly.  I’m probably just not smart enough to get it, but for whatever reason I just can’t do it.

Well, today bookofjoe had a poem by Kenneth Koch that I both "got" and enjoyed.  You can read it here, and I can actually say I recommend it.  Will the wonders of blogging ever cease?

I’m Not Gonna Get Rich This Way

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I added the Google Adsense bar to the right side of this blog a week or two ago.  In that time they show me as generating 880+ page views with exactly zero click-throughs.  Yikes.

As a consequence I’ve deferred my retirement plans by another 20 years and am now re-evaluating my get-rich-by-blogging strategy. I’m considering the following:

  • Selling my blood via my blog.  I’m a universal donor and I no longer trust the Red Cross, so I’m thinking a direct-to-consumer approach might be worthwhile.  I’ll worry about little problems like blood sucking and delivery when I get my first order.
  • Selling my dog via my blog.  The challenge here is figuring out how to get rid of the dog without the family noticing it.  I could make a cardboard cutout of the dog with motion-activated slobbering, peeing and whining, but that’s a temporary solution.  Perhaps I could just tell them that they were playing in traffic, were killed instantly when they were hit by a passing pickup and I’ve disposed of the remains to spare them the agony of seeing the carnage.  Promising.
  • Selling my clothes via my blog.  I work from home so really I just need a couple of t-shirts, some sweats, a pair of jeans and one suit for special occasions.  The only problem is I’m not sure if there’s a market for paint-splattered sweats and t-shirts or suits that weren’t in vogue even when the president’s dad was in office.  Probably a non-starter.
  • Selling my 2001 Saturn that has a weird body-odor smell that just won’t go away.  You never know what kind of freakish stuff will sell online; this might just pull in some serious bucks from someone with a strange fetish or a fan of a certain Seinfeld episode.
  • Selling my opinion via my blog.  I think there’s an untapped market for commentary from a semi-literate, middle-aged, married-father-of-three whose idea of a good time is being able to watch a Tivo’d episode of CSI without being interrupted for 45 minutes straight.  You think O’Reilly or Dowd have something to say?  They represent about .001% of the population.  What the country needs is to hear from a representative of the largest class of Americans out there, the befuddled and exhausted guy who never thought he’d be caught dead saying things like, "That power-paint-roller is the greatest thing sinced sliced bread; I was able to cut my project time on painting the exterior by at least half."  I guaran-damn-tee you that Bill O’Reilly hasn’t painted anything other than his toe nails since 1975.  Of course Maureen Dowd does a lot of painting, but it’s all in front of a mirror.

I think that’s it.  I’ll use this blog to launch my career as a syndicated-everyman-columnist. Now you might be concerned that savvy editors could find this type of content by merely surfing the internet and finding blogs just like mine, but your concern would be misplaced.  With the rare exception of fine editors like our friend John Robinson at the Greensboro New & Record the editors at today’s newspapers don’t have a clue what’s out there.  It’ll be like selling candy to a baby.

Now if I could just find my first original thought.

Inside the Mind of a Blogger

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There’s an item on PressThink written by the woman who writes/runs H20town, a blog for and about Watertown, MA.  It’s an interesting look at the motivations and rewards for someone who’s not a professional journalist but provides hyperlocal coverage of her town’s business anyway.  She brings up some great points about how people like herself aren’t necessarily motivated in the same way that industry "pros" are, and she also asks some good questions about the future of the news business.

Reading List October 25, 2005

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  • You’re Pre-Approved = A Real Family Application (The Post Money Value) – Rick Segal points out something I’ve been saying for a long time: while there are services out there that people can use for sharing family information (shared blog, shared photo, etc.) there isn’t one that is really non-techie, geared to people who have just gotten used to email.  He smells opportunity and so do I.
  • What Did Cheney Know? And When? (Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire) – Did the VP lie when he said he went on Meet the Press two years ago and said "I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson…. And Joe Wilson
    — I don’t know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I
    ever saw when he came back." Three months earlier his chief-of-staff had documented a conversation with the VP about Mr. Wilson and his wife.  Hmmm.
  • The Earthquakes Changed Kashmiri Politics (StrategyPage.com) – The US has the opportunity to make strong inroads into Pakistan and the region in general via its relief efforts in response to the earthquakes in the Kashmir region.
  • Innovation is Bursting Out Again (Don Dodge) – Microsoft’s emerging tech guy looks at some of the areas that are seeing a burst of innovation, and highlights some of the companies providing said innovation.
  • White House Insisting on Torture (Bayosphere) – Links to a piece in the New York Times about the Bush administration’s stance on a pending bill before congress, and an amendment proposed by John McCain in particular.  "Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of
    detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence
    Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of
    suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists."      Make sure you read the comments.
  • Dickless: W Without Cheney (Davenetics) – Not a particularly revealing post, but I kind of like the headline.

Reading List October 24, 2005

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  • The Entrepreneurial Mind Set (Moore’s Lore) – Dana Blankenhorn is entering the entrepreneurial realm himself and it has caused him to take that position that countries like China and India are developing more entrepreneurs, the US education system stinks and the Baby Boomers have killed the golden goose (the last are my words, not his).  It’s an interesting take on our society right now.
  • The Fall of the Warrior King (New York Times Magazine) – The story of Col. Nick Sassaman, his role in Iraq and how it led to his fall from grace.
  • Good News: People are Social Animals (Fractals of Change) – Tom Evslin talks about why peer-driven services on line have developed, and how/if they will continue to work.