Jason Dunn

I’ve been on eBay since 1999, and I’ve watched it grow and change from a marketplace of mostly individual sellers dealing with individual buyers, to a huge online industry of professional sellers moving 1000’s of items a month. I’ve seen prices get higher, items get worse in quality, counterfeit items abound, and worst of all, shipping charges go through the roof as sellers abused buyers trust by padding their auctions with grossly inflated shipping and handling charges. It’s not uncommon to pay 300 to 400% more in shipping than the actual cost.

The problem with eBay’s feedback system is that it’s completely binary – the experience is either completely positive, or completely negative according to eBay. The reality is the buying and selling experience is more nuanced than that – so over time I’ve found myself doing things like leaving positive feedback with neutral to negative comments. eBay’s binary system has created a sort of “cold war” where buyers are afraid to leave negative feedback for fear of damaging their own feedback rating – and when an average buyer (less than 100 feedback) is dealing with a power seller (more than 5000 feedback) a single negative feedback rating has much more impact on the “little guy”. I’ve seen power sellers with 30 negative feedback ratings in 30 days, yet they still have 99% positive feedback rating because they’re doing 500 transactions a month.

The new eBay system won’t address the issue of buyers being afraid of leaving negative feedback, but if this new system allows for a more nuanced approach where a buyer can indicate that a seller shipped a good product, but charged too much for shipping or took forever to ship, this new system will be a significant step in the right direction.

clipped from www2.ebay.com Hi… I’m Brian Burke, Director for Global Feedback Policy. As eBay continues to grow, it is important that we continue to evolve the Feedback system to ensure it remains a credible measure of trust. For almost two years, eBay has been working on a new project to enhance our current reputation system. Feedback 2.0, which Bill Cobb announced at the eCommerce forum last January, adds a new dimension to eBay’s premier online reputation system, allowing buyers to better rate and evaluate sellers on important aspects of a transaction. Detailed Seller Ratings – In addition to the current positive, negative or neutral comment, buyers rate their sellers on specific transaction aspects — Item Description, Communication, Shipping time and Shipping & Handling Charges. Scores are based on a conventional 1 to 5 scale, with 1 being the lowest and 5 the being the highest rating. The average score for each rating is displayed on the seller’s Feedback Profile page.

Things are blowing up with Review Me, the site I mentioned in a previous post. It seems that there was some sort of loophole (if you can believe the Review Me spokesperson) that allowed people that didn’t actually own a site to submit said site for whoring out inclusion in Review Me. The full story is on Consumerist; it’s worth checking out. The real deal here is that from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) point of view, this is a new form of “organic content”. Rather than the traditional approach of contacting bloggers/media and asking if they’d like to review the product, the companies involved are opting to simply buy the attention of the bloggers. The bloggers might claim that the actual outcome of the review isn’t tainted by the money, but stop and think about this for a minute: if the blogger writes an honest and scathing review, what are the odds that he’ll be selected by another company to write a review if his last one was anything less than positive? Someone with money to spend is looking to buy good commentary, period.

Because of this story, I spent a minute looking through nine pages of results for the word “thought” just making sure that none of my Web properties were showing up there. None word. Thoughts Media commentary isn’t for sale.

The problem isn’t that people are getting paid to write reviews, the problem is that they’re not disclosing it properly. Look at one of the sample reviews that they show off: there’s no indication that it’s a paid advertisement until the very end, the last sentence. That’s completely unethical, and if I had read that thinking it was the author’s real opinion and saw that at the end, it would make me doubt the sincerity of what I had just read. It would also make me doubt the integrity of the entire blog. Based on the number of blogs that have signed up for Review Me, it seems there’s more than a few people willing to prostrate themselves at the altar of Review Me.

Is it possible to get paid for something and still be objective? Yes. I don’t consider myself a journalist and do not follow the strict code of ethics that journalists are expected to follow – I routinely get invited to events (Mobius, Featured Communities) where my flight/hotel/whatever is covered. The things I write about those events are my honest, un-biased opinions. But I never assume that everyone is going to believe that, so I’m always clear to state up front that I was invited down to those events, and explain what was paid for – that gives the reader the information they need to filter my comments however they wish. I also reveal what I was given at those events. It’s all about the disclosure. Until Review Me requires that bloggers have a statement of disclosure in the very first part of the “review” (and the blogger doesn’t get paid until that happens), this is nothing more than bloggers whoring themselves out to companies looking for publicity and tricking their readers into thinking their “reviews” are something they are not.

I find myself thinking that I can’t trust the opinions of any Web site or blogger that is partnered with Review Me, and I also would think twice about reviewing a product from any company that was playing bloggers to review it – because people might think that my review was paid for like the other reviews. Companies using the services of Review Me may be shooting themselves in the foot with all legitimate media…

Because the blogging boom continues to grow, and because you have things like Pay Per Post and ReviewMe (this is particularly tricky for instance) popping up, disclosure is becoming a popular topic. I think disclosure is a very, very good thing – but like all things, if it’s not done properly it can be a very, very bad thing. I saw this Web site that helps you to create a disclosure policy similar to that of coming up with a Creative Commons License. The problem with wizard-driven output of course is that it often reads as though it were written by a lawyer. I saw this disclosure policy over at ZuneMax, a site we link to frequently from Zune Thoughts, and after reading their disclosure policy I couldn’t help but be left with a negative impression of the site because it essentially says they get paid for every post – which I highly doubt is the case, yet their disclosure policy left me wondering. I’d encourage any blogger concerned about disclosure to simply write their own statement of disclosure rather than using a template-driven tool that makes things sound worse then they really are.

This is one of those posts that most of you can ignore, but if you’re affected by this problem you’ll likely appreciate the solution (which was given to me by my friend Janak Parekh).

Here’s the scenario: some email servers, when configured to serve up IMAP email, will show you the list of folders where everything is listed in the same tree. Meaning you’ll have Inbox, Sent Items, Deleted Items, etc. all on the same level. Other mail servers will have the Inbox be the top level folder and any other folders (including ones you create yourself) are sub-folders under Inbox. They look like this:

Why does that matter? For most people it wouldn’t. But for a “Type A” person like myself, it’s an irritating situation because it forces me to make my Outlook or Windows Mail window wider to compensate for the email folders that are shoved over to the right. And if that window pane is made wider, it means the other, more important ones, have to be made narrower. And that’s no good is it?

Here’s the solution for making having all of your IMAP email folders appear at the same root level as Inbox. It will vary depending on what email program you’re using, but you want to look for the words “Root Folder Path” in the advanced settings under your account configuration. Under Outlook 2007, it’s found under Tools > Account Settings > [Your Email Account] > More Settings > Advanced > Root Folder Path. If you’re using Windows Mail, it’s a bit easier, being found under Tools > Accounts > [Your Email Account] > Properties > IMAP. Look for similar settings under other applications such as Thunderbird, Eudora, etc. Here’s what the setting looks like on Windows Mail:

When you’re done it will look something like this:

I hope this tip helps you get more out of your email client by making it work the way you do, not the other way around.

Regardless of their politics. I respect people that know the art of oratory. People that can deliver a punchy, cutting, effective verbal slice ‘n dice impress me. Dennis Miller is one of the best in the world at this – I should upload some of the rants of his I’ve captured over the years. In this example, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivers a deadly barrage of words against Condi Rice. Regardless of how much of this you agree with, you have to respect Olbermann’s ability to express himself and make his points.

Thanks to Mitch – who’s pretty good at the art of the rant himself – for the heads up on this.

I broke new ground last week: for the first time I was served with an official takedown notice that evoked the DMCA. Aren’t I special? Being a Canadian, I’m of course not subject to the draconian DMCA law, but YouTube, being in the United States, certainly is. I posted about the CTV spot before, so I won’t repeat my thoughts on it here, but I can’t fathom why CTV wouldn’t want someone to share branding material like that TV spot. It only helps make their TV station more well known, even if it’s with people who aren’t within broadcast range. Here’s the YouTube “you got busted” email:

I wonder how many of those YouTube sends out a day? 100? 1000? 10,000? YouTube is still chock-full of copyright materials, but I suspect some companies are smart enough to understand how beneficial it is for them to turn a blind eye (the Daily Show and Colbert Report come to mind).

I just had a thought though: what if Holland & Hart LLP isn’t CTV’s legal firm, but instead represents Natasha Bedingfield, the artist who’s song was used in the CTV spot? I somehow think that’s unlikely though, because the ad spot was taken down within 48 hours of me posting it, and the only way a law firm could have found it that quickly would be if they were doing daily searches for “CTV”.

Anyway, Holland & Hard LLP, along with CTV: I hope you are one day made irrelevant by the changes in online digital media distribution that you can’t hope to stop or control.