Isn't there already lots of avenues for solving problems? Twitter, specialist forums, even the company's own complaints section.

Seth's blog is full of interesting insights, but this time I think that he might be getting it wrong.

The squidoo service he founded never really entered the public consciousness in any meaningful way - many of the pages I've seen published there are little more than link spam - and as far as I can tell this might well be a last attempt on his behalf to make it work/rebrand it.

Squidoo in itself is an odd bird. It's half blogging service, half online website editor. Strangely enough it derives income from google banner ads. I say strangely, because Seth has done more than most to rethink and reshape the business of marketing and advertising, generally for the better.

Companies already have ways to connect with consumers. Facebook groups and well maintained twitter accounts will reach a lot more people than a service like Squidoo, that few consumers have ever heard about.

It's a good idea from Seth Godin to launch brands in public. But how many users from twitter, facebook .... are going to watch these pages on Squidoo. It would be difficult to control who says what about the company anyway in a wild west situation like this on the Internet today.

I'm a fan of Seth Godin but this is a bad idea that only benefits Seth Godin. It doesn't provide anyone with anything of any real value. The principle of the venture seems unseemly: creating a venue that aggregates information that's already available elsewhere, and then charging companies to respond. It's like lighting people's houses on fire and then knocking on their door to sell them buckets of water to put out the fire.

I'm sure it was only a matter of time before someone did this, but feel it's going to damage Seth's brand.

As a service offering, it's a great idea. Aggregating info into a single location/page will quickly pull the pages to the top of the search indexes - perhaps even out-ranking the brands themselves. But I feel the approach is wrong and will hurt his reputation.

Seth could have ran a private test with a few companies (where they had control of responding to content) to get their feedback on whether they thought the service was valuable to them. He could then offer these "brands in public" pages as a service using testimonials as social proof.

But in my opinion, for Seth to move forward with creating the pages first and then telling companies they can have access for a price, simply comes off as "pay me or else". And that's just bad business.

I also feel that the $400/month price is way too steep. Not because it's too high of a price for a company to pay to protect their brand, but because a company can easily create their own similar pages for less.

I've read Seth's books and think he's a smart guy. Just don't think this approach is smart.

I used to be a huge fan of Mr. Godin; however, I have noticed a steady decline in the quality of blog posts -- I should say a decline in relevance, for me. I have read every book since Permission Marketing and was a long-time blog subscriber. For me, it may simply be a case of too much Godin. Many posts seem to be posting just to post, or somewhat forced and not as insightful as I had grown accustomed. Anyway, I certainly do not begrudge Godin his right to attempt to profit from the social media trend. He still has ample credibility in the marketing world, which is why some big names have signed on, perhaps. All I can do as speak for myself when I say that this seems to me to offer nothing new and very little of interest. Godin has a legion of followers, so maybe that is all he needs for this to succeed and all I can say to that is... good for him.

Isn't this just charging companies for providing them with aggregated comments on them from around the web? And then making that information public, so there's more reason for a company to pay up to respond.
If I were Home Depot etc, I'd be monitoring online anyway to see what people say about me, and if someone republished that info for all to see, I'd pay to respond. And I'd also make sure that if there were negative comments from disgruntled consumers I'd talk to them directly, as well as dealing with the PR.
So I don't see that it's bad for the consumer, because an individual complainer has more chance of getting heard, and if lots of people are complaining about the same thing, it's more likely that the company will change whatever they're doing that's annoying people. So it's good for everyone.
But mostly, I think it's a clever money making idea - threaten to expose negative comments about people and then charge them for the right to reply. Of course, it could be completely misused by mischief makers and competitors...or no one will ever look at these pages or care. We shall see.

I'm not digging Seth Godin's new venture. It reminds me a bit of Get Satisfaction but poorly conceived. It's not really about the customers or crowdsourcing. It's about how companies can spin their brand for a fee.

Nice take and completely true. The beauty of the social web is that we talk to people on their turf, rather than only responding on ours. This takes that part away.

Pretty or not, it's still a digital billboard.

Am I missing something, or couldn't the companies just, for example, respond to tweets using Twitter, resulting in their comments also being aggregated into the Squidoo page(s)?

Leave it to Godin to drag consumers into a thorny debate on our relationship to our corporate producers. The implications are far-reaching, but one begins to wonder if all this transparency and openness is actually always a good thing. "Blasphemy!" you gasp? Well, corporations and brands are not always the bad guy, and the little old consumer is not always the good guy. Disgruntled consumers now have the power not just to choose the competitor and thumb their noses at your brand, but to actually orchestrate attacks on your reputation. Maybe we should have some sort of social responsibility code for consumers before we force some arbitrary code on the companies that provide our goods and services. Just a thought.

I too am a Seth Godin fan but I hate this idea. It runs contrary to everything the web is supposed to be. $400 is beyond the range for a small business. So this means the consumer who has a problem with Allstate can be smothered by synthetic love on a propaganda page paid for by Allstate. And a small company can't afford to answer back. One of Seth's core principles is that the web is a level playing field where I can put up a site comparable to the biggest players.

To whom will the loyalty be owed? The company paying $400 or us little tweets with a complaint? Will we know how many negative comments are removed or not posted? The big players have plenty of places to fight their customers---this is providing them another. I agree with the poster who said the only one who will benefit is Seth Godin.

I never could see the value in Squidoo--unless you really have time to kill who cares about 1,000 things to do with an old phone book? The lenses are like web pages for content that could never stand alone as a web page. Now he's selling a platform for propaganda. There are enough of those.

The $400/mo. part taints the whole thing in my opinion. If there is full disclosure on every page----"Allstate is paying me $400/mo. to operate this page." Seeing that, would you not have the sense to question the validity of the entire 'feel' of the page? I would.

What if people complained that Allstate was not paying legitimate claims. Would it be a good idea for CNN to all Allstate news time for a fee to counter the story? (Yes, they do it now, but note 'for a fee')

Chris Reich

I've reviewed many of these "listening" tools and so far TNS Cymfony is the best in my opinion. I will definitely take a look when this is ready.

This is merely a digital form of industrial sabotage and corporate blackmail and extortion and should be denounced as such, no matter the pretty social media flag it is wrapping itself in. Say, we already have TechCrunch.com to read thousands of angry, hateful posts from users hysterical about losing even a minute of their ATT or Comcast service, and that aggregate already gets a lot more attention share.

I've been writing about Seth Godin's ideology for awhile. In a sea of hysterical adulation of this troublesome figure, I find I'm one of the few pointing out the essential totalitarian nature of his tribalist ideas.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/03/the-totalitari...

I'm not at all surprised that his technocommunist set-up that provides "state capitalism" for some and labor on digital Internet collective farms for most then leads him to high-way robbery of this type, "selling the rope".

@Rebecca: A company that puts an answer in Twitter can't assume that this will make it into the view in the aggregate or that it might not be culled out by Godin's coders and editors, as they always end up *really* controlling such "open and free social media sites" by framing the issues and enforcing a TOS which will usually prevent criticism of themselves and those like-minded with vaguely-worded offenses like "don't troll" or "don't make personal attacks".

It's very much about gaining power over other people to the advantage of him and his cult followers.

On Wikipedia, companies can edit their pages, and that's a good thing, or otherwise they'd fall pretty to editing by the core editors' cult of Wikipedia, which is pretty anti-corporate except where it involves a corporation friendly to their own ideals.

There's several ways to respond here. First of all, who uses or reads Squidoo? Have you looked at Squidoo? It's a very long tale of odd hobbyists and multi-level marketers and spammers trying to come in under the radar against Godin's increasingly fussy rules. I can't really see any serious influence that Squidoo itself has or any use by really influential mainstream journalists or new media bloggers and such.

Second, to counter this, a few corporations could get together and run a social media buzz site that offers more monetary compensation for the user than Seth Godin, who lures people with the promise of the usual pennies for ads. If people got paid for reviews as they built up public credibility and traffic, an alternative to this site would simply outstrip the communistic, essentially anti-corporate nature of Godin's enterprise. (The model of these seeming capitalists is always "no business but my business," and they are usually in the business of disrupting and putting others out of business for their own gain).

Where I come from, we'd call this a "shakedown." But that's just me.

In all seriousness, this reminds me of how when you stop at a light and a guy jumps at your windshield, washes it, then tells you to pay for services rendered. A) what if I didn't want the service in the first place? B) what if the person didn't do such a good job at the service, why should I pay what he's asking for?

Terrific comments here. The most compelling thought, at least to me, is this: is Squidoo relevant? In my world, it is not. In the worlds of my clients, it is not. Who cares what Godin does - if Squidoo is not relevant, it is no one's radar screen anyway. But, I do think this is not a good move. I am finding that in today's world, consumers want connection. Transparency rules. They loathe being played and refuse to be broadcast to any longer. If brands want to spend their money advertising on Squidoo because Seth tells them to, then they do so at their own risk.

Great thinking everyone - thanks for sharing such insightful commentary.

The copy is well written and thought provoking. But I have to be honest here, I have never been a Seth fan so I am not surprised by his latest "dust raising" it seems that's all I have seen from the marketing minds of our time. I have to agree with Shelly Kramer "is Squidoo relevant?" meh I think not. Thanks for keeping the conversation going.

The copy is well written and thought provoking. But I have to be honest here, I have never been a Seth fan so I am not surprised by his latest "dust raising" it seems that's all I have seen from the marketing minds of our time. I have to agree with Shelly Kramer "is Squidoo relevant?" meh I think not. Thanks for keeping the conversation going.

I'm surprised by the backlash, especially since one of Seth's main truisms is the willingness to try and fail (so let him fail, if he must!), but I still think there's value in the concept.

Social media as a whole is very scattered when it comes to having "official" brand presence. Sure, you can track down the odd representative like @ScottMonty from Ford, or complain about your blender on GetSatisfaction.com, but it's hard to keep track of everything that's going on related to the brands you love.

Similarly, companies are finding it hard to 1) tune out the noise, and if they're successful with 1), then 2) engage positively and proactively with the community/tribe that remains. Aggregating the content and putting an official stamp on it is a step toward having a more directed and authentic conversation.

Finally, if companies are willing to pay exorbitant amounts to PR firms so they can release PR clips that nobody reads (and are unidirectional), why shouldn't they pay at least a paltry sum for quality, two-way conversations with customers who care?

For another example of something like BrandsinPublic, check out www.Companiesandme.com. I think all this is just a hint of what's to come...

Makes sense to me.

Wow, great comments. Not surprised I agree with @Andreasduess and @shelleykramer (Hi guys!).

I love Seth–he's an awesome book marketer.

And I liked the concept behind Squidoo–a platform that can act as a beacon. I tried it when they started and dropped for the next shiny thing. And that's the problem, there are plenty more shiny things out there that are easier to use and that have bigger communities.

Felix Desroches beat me to the punch–www.companiesandme.com, www.gigpark.com, www.judysbook.com/ and the like, as well as trusted micro filters like www.dpreview.com seem like more organic indications of where we're turning for influence these days.

I have no problem with Seth blackmailing organizations with crappy products and lacklustre customer service. Just like the recent Dooce-gate Maytag dustup, a platform that gives a brand a chance to respond provides free market research, insight into what people want fixed, a chance to turn a high-profile detractor into an advocate, and a reputable forum to archive the discussion so the search engines can index and serve it up later.

Oh, now Seth Godin is in the business of extorting companies. Nice. Very American.

Good post.

WATCH Seth Godin work his magic. He's a good role model for how to actually DO stuff with social media. (True, he flipped off the Twitter community, but that's for another day.)

What he DID in this case is take action he thought would be valuable, shared with people what he was doing and why, and then (this is the really cool part) he LISTENED to the deafening feedback and CHANGED what he was doing.

So he had one of the Purple Cow ideas that was "stupid," and he adjusted when he got new knowledge.

Here's what I'm talking about: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/09/adjusting-as-we-go.html

Trey, that's all fake. He doesn't LISTEN, he pre-calculates, does something deliberately provocactive to see if he can get away with it, cocks an ear to see how bad the damage might be, and adjusts according to a pre-fabricated plan. It's manipulative and sinister, yet people fall for it every timeb because it's called "Purple Cow" which sounds like something fun.