I joked on Facebook the other day that telecom and tech companies are like your boy/girlfriend – you love what they bring to your life, but on some level you are always kind of annoyed by them.

It may be interesting to draw that analogy out a bit further.  It occurs to me that your ISP (and most other companies, frankly) are very much like your significant other.  And on a certain level, that has serious implications for consumer satisfaction.

When you are dating, most of your friends will never hear about how great your bf is on a daily basis.  When he screw ups, however, you’ll tell all your friends.  You’ll tell just about anyone who asks.

That’s actually very similar to your ISP.  Typically, most ISPs have tremendously reliable service. When that service fails – on the voice, video, or data side – you’ll tell everyone.  If the repair guy is late or doesn’t show, you’ll tell everyone you were stood up.  If he tracks mud on the floor, you’ll tell everyone he was a slob.  If it isn’t resolved when he leaves, you will tell everyone he left you unsatisfied.

Since everyone has similar experiences, they’ll commiserate, tell you that guy is just no good for you, you deserve better, it’s just a shame that there are no decent guys is no competition in the ISP marketplace.

A week later when you are browsing freely, cuddled up watching TV, or talking to your mom back home, will you mention that they’re taking care of you today? Will you talk about all the great things they do for you? All the great places they take you?  Probably not.

Most of your friends will eventually grow to think your boyfriend is a big douche who’s always running around and never makes you happy.  How many of them have ever heard you say anything good about your ISP?

The fact is, like relationships, telecom can be messy.  You may not always get what you want.  You may feel you just can’t count on them.  You might think you’re putting a lot of yourself your money into the relationship, and they just take you for granted.

But like relationships, we’ll get through this together.  Let’s just get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, browse the web, or just settle down to watch Sleepless in Seattle OnDemand.

After the lastest round of the “25 things” style questionnaire (in this case called, Don’t You Dare Lie), I decided to create the Facebook questionnaire I’d like to see. You see, I really don’t care what the last thing you ate was, and frankly I have zero interest in knowing what song is stuck in your head. The song that my 4 year old has permanently wedged in my brain is bad enough. I also have a problem with the fact that many of these questions don’t also include the obvious follow up.

So without further ado, I’ll throw out the 26 questions I’d really like to ask, but would be unlikely to actually answer myself.

1. Have you ever been arrested?
2. Were you guilty or innocent and what were the charges?
3. Will you ever drink that much again?
4. How much do you hate your job?
5. How many times per day do you pray for an earthquake just to break up the boredom?
6. How many times per day to you hope for the sweet release that only death will bring?
7. Where did you lose your virginity?
8. How much did it suck?
9. If you could go back in time and give that person pointers, would you?
10. If you could go back in time and not be such a whore (or manwhore), would you?
11. Speaking of sex, how many kids do you have?
12. How many did you have on purpose?
13. How many times have you wished you had that vasectomy you joked about in college?
14. If you could have any celebrity killed, which would it be?
15. Would you make it painful or quick and easy?
16. Would anyone miss Lindsay Lohan?
17. Have you ever done drugs?
18. Are you still in contact with the person who sold/gave them to you?
19. Can I have their number?
20. Do you like Internet porn?
21. Ya, me either. How many times per day do you look at some just to make sure you still don’t?
22. Really? That’s a lot! You’re very thorough in your “research” aren’t you?
23. How many drinks does it take before you make really bad decisions?
24. Want to go out tonight for drinks?
25. How much time have you spent answering Facebook questionnaires/quizzes in a desperate attempt to regain some semblance of a connection with another human being?
26. How’s that working out for you?

Answer these questions then send this to or tag 20 of your closest friends then prepare for them to be terrified by your answers. Be sure to tag me so I’ll be able to keep track of the implosion of your career for my own twisted pleasure.

Since the day job launched a blog on telecom issues, I have confined my rants about such topics to that forum. This is a “gray area” kind of post. It’s not really policy related, but it touches on the Internet and video. I’m writing it here because it is not, in any way, the view of my employer.

At issue is a column by the Washington Post’s Rob Pegoraro about the recently announced TV Everywhere plan cable companies are pursuing. In his column Rob writes:

Yes, you read that right: To watch this new batch of TV shows online, you’d have to sign up for a traditional pay-TV plan.

The TV Everywhere idea has been a dream of some media people for the last few years; see, for instance, Mark Cuban’s defense of the idea. But I don’t get it. At all.

Well, my immediate thought is, “You’re right. You don’t get it.” But after that, words fail me.

First, Rob, this isn’t “a new batch of TV shows”. This is the content you’re already paying for, but you’re now allowed to view it online. In order to view Pay-TV online, you need to pay for Pay-TV. That’s sort of the whole point.

Pegoraro suggests that this is like requiring people to pay for a subscription to the Washington Post in order to take a college prep test course. Ummm… No. That’s not at all the same thing. TV everywhere is, however, the equivalent of saying, “If you want to eat your McDonald’s Happy Meal in the park, you still have to pay for the McDonald’s happy meal.”

Next, Pegoraro asserts that incredibly complicated things like “authentication” are way to difficult to comprehend or apply:

Set aside such operational issues as authentication (how do you verify that one person’s a Comcast/DirecTV/Fios/etc. customer and another is not?)…

Ummm… How do you know if someone is a Gmail user or not? Well, Rob, they’re called “accounts”. When you subscribe, they create one. They come with something called an “account number” or a “user name” and a “password”. When you want to access your service online, you type (that big flat thing in front of your monitor is called a keyboard) those pieces of information into a form, click “submit” and voila! You are authenticated.

Pegoraro, again:

If somebody wants to watch video online, let ‘em: Charge them a fee, make money off their attention through advertising–better yet, give people a choice between watching ads or paying for an ad-free experience. But don’t force them to sign up for an unrelated, non-Internet service.

Sure, because the “ad-supported” model is working so well for broadcasters and newspapers. Even YouTube (ad supported video) is projected to lose between $175 million and $470 million this year. Even TV advertising is a failing venture because people are skipping the commercials. Hollywood has begun writing the commercials directly into the script to stave off that practice. NBC recently announced that Jay Leno’s show in the fall will be “DVR-proof” to force advertising on the public.

Do such actions seem like the tactics of a business model that works?

So let’s take a business model that works (a hybrid ad/subscriber model) and force it to pursue a failing business model because you want content for free – content that may cost millions per episode to produce.

As for the comment that you are forcing someone “to sign up for an unrelated, non-Internet service”, that’s still ridiculous no matter how many times you repeat it. This isn’t a non-Internet service. It’s the same service you already subscribe to, you just have more ways to consume it now. However, if you want to consume it, you have to subscribe.

Finally, Pegoraro suggests that media companies should simply give up and make all their media available for free:

Repeat after me: Trying to introduce an artificial scarcity of easily-duplicated content on the Internet does not work. If you set up boundaries that make no sense to your customers, you will simply cede the field to bootleg redistribution of your work. Fighting this principle is like trying to push water uphill–with a broom.

Well, actually, Rob. Most cable content isn’t available online for free – even through bootleg. Some of the most popular shows on cable are HGTV’s design programs. I challenege you to go find a readily available bootleg source of them. Go ahead, I’ll wait…

…

…

Back yet? What about ESPN sporting events? They’re all available for free elsewhere, right? No? What about NFL games? Surely the satellite guys give those away for free and you don’t need to subscribe to get the Sunday ticket, right? No? Hmmm… Well what about HBO’s programming. You can get Entourage episodes for free all over the net, right? Really? Only the old ones that have been released for sale well after the air date?

How can that be? How can people control such things? How can they possibly defeat the bootleg distribution of their work? Because they don’t make them available online for free? Perhaps.

The fact is, despite Rob’s characterization of Pay-TV as “easily-duplicated content”, it’s simply not true. Look at YouTube. The most popular video sharing site will disable the soundtrack to your video if the audio patterns in the file match copyrighted content. Sure. You could cruise BitTorrents looking for content. And many do. Those sites are constantly defending against their copyright violations and go out of business regardless of the legitimacy they claim (AllOfMP3.com, anyone?).

You can also find websites that show grainy, handicam captured versions of first-run films – often before they appear in theaters. But the quality sucks. Under Pegoraro’s theory, movie theaters should simply give up the fight and make all movies (regardless of the cost to produce and market them) open to the public at no cost on day one. Better yet, just close all the theaters and let people download the movies for free? Heck, the studio could easily make up those $30 million salaries and production budgets by displaying an ad for mortgage caluclators right along side the film, right?

Recently I have been troubled by something and I was having a hard time putting a finger on what it was. As I was scanning RSS feeds and Google Alerts this morning a number of articles with similar headlines jumped out at me. They all shared a common theme about the dangers of social media “experts” and “silos” within companies. Reading them helped crystallize some of my own shifting thoughts on the proper role of social media, and even the Internet more broadly, within an organization or campaign.

An AdAge article by Jonah Bloom titled Dedicated Social-Media Silos? That’s the Last Thing We Need caught my eye and I took a read. Bloom thesis is pretty sound – when a “new way” appears, people split into two camps. The adherents or adopters of the new way begin to see it as a critical component of future planning and separate from those who do not adapt.

Every time an apparently foreign object is identified… the inhabitants split, roughly speaking, into two parties — those who fear the foreign body and those who are excited by it. The excited annex the object and create their own nation around it. The fearful homelanders breathe a sigh of relief and go back to doing whatever it was they were doing — albeit with just a few nagging fears about the ambitions of the fledgling country being built next door.

I have, myself, led the march of adherents in several instances and find I am still doing so today. I have, for much of my career, seen the “nagging fears“. I sense the derision and skepticism every time my fellow blogger and I walk the halls at our office and hear the “there go the ‘bloggers’ with their ‘Twitters’ and their ‘FaceySpaces”‘.” He and I often wonder if the first media guy at the association heard, “there goes the ‘TV’ guy with his ’saturation buy’ and his ‘gross rating points’.”

When people sense change, but fear or don’t understand it, they mock it. They make it different.

But the adherents to the new way are no different. Look at my old blog post that I linked above. I sound like a cokcy prick. Only my way can save us.

At the RNC I led the creation of a new Internet division charged with overseeing all things digital. It was, to say the least, a mistake in retrospect. The problem was not one of divisional boundaries. As Bloom argues:

By dedicating resources and attention to the new medium, discipline or, in social media’s case, idea, those who work in the field are able to quickly advance it and ensure that it prospers.

The problem, however, is that the new and old states cannot exist successfully without the other, a fact they realize after they have set up separate and often competitive fiefdoms that barely speak the same language.

Elevating the importance of the eCampaign division at the RNC was beneficial as it made people think differently about the role of the Internet. Over the long term, however, I believe it has ultimately proved harmful because it has created a new layer of bureaucracy. Further, the focus on how to be tech-savvy has, I believe, detracted from the larger mission of how to be savvy.

I am hereby reversing my earlier position that the Internet be given special prominence in your organization or campaign.

The RNC dodesn’t need a division for the Internet, they need people (not a person) in Communications that recognize the Internet’s role as a channel for multiple types of communications. That could be blog outreach, banner advertising, SEO, social media, or countless other ways to move a message or have a conversation.

The RNC needs people in political that understand how these tools can be used for organizing, and more importantly, how the people can be empowered via these tools to organize themselves.

The RNC needs people in finance that understand the difference between revised direct mail copy and good e-mail. They need people who understand SocNets and the way to leverage them to make small dollars add up to big bucks.

Your online media is no more, and no less important than anything else you do. The fact that you can use new media to more quickly attract and reach customers or voters has little relevance if you have no idea what to say to them and no idea what you want them to do.

Before I became “an Internet guru” (not my word choice, but one that I hear when I’m introduced), I was simply a political operative. I did statistical analysis to determine voting patterns and I focused on things like voter files, turnout models, and coalition building.

When I listen to twenty-something consultants taking about the Internet and what it will do, most of that is gone. There is much discussion of the long tail and the crowdsourcing, but little discussion of the offline mechanics of politics – as if every conversation in every diner in America has been supplanted with Twitter.

Now don’t get me wrong. I strongly believe that every conversation taking place at every diner in America is currently taking place online. But for most people, the real world is still their playground of choice. We cannot become so focused on our love of innovation that we lose sight of the core technology at the heart of politics – people.

Just as books changed the way we told stories, radio changed the number of people to whom we could tell them, and video changed the richness of our narrative, the Internet will empower us all to be both story teller and audience. The story, however, is still the same, and no media can claim supremacy. Before we act high and mighty, we must, as Bloom says, look at what we are leaving behind.

About a month ago I received an invite from a friend to try out a social network called “Naymz”. I’m always one to take a look at such things, especially if recommended by a friend. So I clicked through and signed up. That was mistake number one.

Mistake number two (and ultimately a bigger mistake than actually signing up) came in the form of clicking the “See who you know on Naymz” link.

Under normal circumstances, the “who do you know” phase of social netowrk sign up goes something like this:

1. I select the form of my address book (Gmail, Yahoo, etc) and it searches my contacts.
2. It shows me a list of the contacts who are currently members and asks me if I would like to become “friends” or whatever the nomenclature they use may be
3. It then shows me a lit of all the unmatched addresses and asks if I would like to mail them an invite (to which I universally say no)
4. If I say yes, it e-mails my friends an invite (ONCE!)

This is where Naymz does things a little differently.

Naymz will let you connect to other social networks to find connections. I chose LinkedIn. It scanned my contacts and presented a list, just like the others do.

Naymz, however, actually combines step two and step three above. It presents the list, and lets you send your messages. Since I have signed up for dozens of these networks to test them out, and I have never seen anyone stray too far from the steps I outlined, I clicked ok. I failed to notice that Naymz includes a small icon and disclaimer that says only those people identified with the icon are users (very few of the people I know are – even now). It also says you should remove anyone you don’t want to mail. The icon and disclaimer are small enough that I missed it completely the first time through and only found it after I became aware of my original mistake.

Now, I had expected to see a list of unmatched addresses after clicking that button. What I saw instaed was an immediate inflow of e-mail that had subject lines like, “What the hell is Naymz?”

I spent the better part of a day apologizing to people for the Naymz spam and told them they should not take that as an endorsement of Naymz. I told everyone that I was simply testing it out to see what I thought.

Since that fateful day, I have recieved many more messages asking the same question. Until today, I had always assumed that was because they had just opened the original message.

However, upon actually logging in to Naymz today (I was looking for a way to turn off or limit their WAY too frequent messages to me), I discovered Naymz has been e-mailing constant reminders (a la Plaxo) to those who had not replied. It hadn’t simply used my name to spam them once, it was following up with mupltiple requests.

So now my Naymz account is cancelled. If you received a request from me to sign up, I apologize profusely. If you said yes to that request, doubly so. If you didn’t say yes, and have been bombarded by further appeals since, even more so.

I had told some people that I would let them know my thoughts when I got done with my evaluation. So here it is:

I would avoid Naymz like it’s the plague. It combines all the annoying characteristics of Plaxo with the disregard for informed consent typically reserved for malware.

I have deleted my account. That is a rare step for a guy who has littered the Internet with unused SocNet accounts. But I am not stopping there.

I hereby hope and pray that the good people at Naymz suffer the karmic ass kicking which they have rightly earned. They’ll go down with Plaxo and Gator as yet another Internet scourge.