The problem is that morality comes into competition with money in this situation. The more legitimate and official and connected to the company Get Satisfaction makes their pages look, the more customers are going to use them as a way to try to get official-ish support. The more users use them as a way to get support, the more pressure there is on the company to use it as a support mechanism - whether they want to or not.
Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying.
There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second.
EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.
This situations reminds me a bit of yelp, where there are rumors of yelp accepting money to remove negative reviews.
I think this will start to become a trend. Anonymous feedback can be overly hostile and ruin companies. However, feedback moderated by the company in question might as well be a sales page. In the middle there are companies who try to play both sides, giving the appearance of openness while also being willing to take money to moderate the feedback.
As I said in a comment just posted, the user who wanted satisfaction, no pun intended, created that page on GetSatisfaction forums. If anything, the failure was technical, since GS did not notify 37Signals that a page has been created for their company.
Matter of fact, same can be said for any third-party service that lets users create pages/forums for companies they have beef with.
See, but most third-party services aren't also trying to sell themselves as a legitimate, official thing too. Sure, I can post links to Amazon releases here, but HN isn't trying to offer itself to Amazon as "pay $X and you'll have your press releases up here" at the same time. The difference is that anyone can post things on here and there's nothing any company can do about it. I could post, "Amazon's new MapReduce is a plot to steal my data" and people could vote it up. Likewise, I could post that on GS, but it's different: GS then has this option for Amazon to stop comments/posts they don't like (for a fee). That's the difference. Most third party sites have this: "we'll let users post bad things about you". GS has this: "we'll let people post bad things about you. . .unless you pay us." That's morally hazardous.
Yes, but had they not had their pages looking semi-official, there would be no reason to use GS, now would there?
As I've said somewhere lower in the comments, two things would have made a world of difference here.
1. GS should have had an e-mail notification system in place. They should notify any company, much less 37Signals, that there's been a question posted on their forums. Same can be said for UserVoice and any other third-party site who wants to get into this game. Had they notified the support people at 37Signals, none of this would have come to bear.
2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately. Had he talked to GS's admins/support through e-mail privately, there'd be no need for this hubbub. If the e-mail route did not work, then I agree with denouncing GS publicly.
All I'm alluding to here is maturity. There are good ways of handling issues and then there are bad ones. Even if Jason has a good point about GS's business conduct, it's lost, not just on me, based solely on his approach to it.
If the only way to make your product work is to co-opt the branding and identity of another company, you have a business model problem. Are you sure you're really advocating for GS here?
No, they can advocate for themselves. I'm advocating for maturity in the resolution of such problems.
I've never denied that what GS was at best misleading, however, I don't think that going public without trying to resolve matters privately is very mature. In this case, GS has responded positively, but things could have shaped differently had there been another Jason Fried on the other side.
Just a guess, but I think if GS had a Jason Fried, the "conversation" would look more like this:
37s: The Get Satisfaction business model is dangerously close to extortion.
GS: We didn't realize it, but you're right. We're doing X, Y, and Z to fix it right now. We're sorry.
37s: Also there's 10x more 37s branding on your pages than GS branding, which is misleading.
GS: You know what? You're right about that too. We thought the branding would help our users, but it's turning out to be misleading. We're doing X, Y, and Z to rebadge the pages, and we're sorry.
37s: ...
Peanut Gallery 1: GS misled the whole Internet?
Peanut Gallery 2: Yeah, and they apologized. That all you got?
Peanut Gallery 1: ...
Peanut Gallery 2: ...
Instead, because GS apparently doesn't know how to concede a point cleanly and end the discussion, they're going to remain the center of attention for awhile. And while all publicity is in a sense good publicity, the people they make money from are hearing nothing except "trademark infringement" and "customer service horror story".
The guys behind GS are not stupid... the sheer volume of evidence against them would suggest that much of this was intentional.
The initial reply from GS that promised to change the phrasing on their site seemed, to me at least, disingenuous, like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
I don't that that's how it'd go, for the simple reason that if Jason Fried was so outraged at the GS's behaviour, it only stands to reason that had there been another JF on the other side, he'd be outraged by the 37S's one that he'd flame him back.
You know what this is just getting too complicated.
Assuming no ill intent and simple (if major) ignorance being GS's problem, having someone around like Fried with an understanding of trademark and branding would have probably prevented the whole issue.
> they're going to remain the center of attention for awhile.
Everyone on the Internet has a soapbox. Jason Fried/37S has a much bigger soapbox than the average disgruntled blogger/user because of their huge reader base.
Thank God. If this had happened to me, I'd have no recourse. Keep in mind, even a public flogging didn't work for GS. This is the second post. Will this work? We'll see.
That's just not scalable. You can't politely contact every company that's screwing you over and ask nicely for them to stop. It's a bit naive to think that a blog post was the nuclear option - this very well could have been a lawsuit.
That doesn't make much sense. I've written a lot of blog posts and a lot of email and I can't say that the latter takes longer than the former.
The irony in the "this could have been a lawsuit" is that their reply could have been too, since I suspect they'd have a pretty good case for a defamation suit.
Of course one blog post doesn't take longer than one email. But one blog post that nips things like this in the bud going forward is a hell of a lot shorter than emails+waiting for action+follow up for however many n companies try to pull this nonsense.
For GS. Maybe. Then rinse and repeat for other companies that pull the same thing in the future.
Plus a private email does nothing for the little guys that have no clout, who would be completely ignored if they made the same complaints. 37s helped far more people than themselves by doing this.
The latter however is a separate (and valid) point. I'm not against them being pressured; I think that was the right thing to do and I'd not have backed down until they made the change more generally, but I think that could have been done just as quickly and easily (with this specific company, not some other one that we're not talking about) in private.
I'm a founder too, so I'm mostly imagining myself in their shoes and how angry I'd be if somebody took a very public swing at my company without giving me a chance to make it right. I'm sure the 37s guys are as protective of "their baby". ;-)
I wouldn't like GS's chances if they'd tried a slap-suit against 37S, even if they hadn't publicly admitted every factual point, apologized, and blamed every "misinterpretation" of their motives on their own poor communication skills.
I'm not disputing the trademark issue. I think 37s would have a pretty good case there. But 37s went beyond there to call them extortionists and other implications of illegal activity (not connected to trademark infringement), which is where they crossed the (legal) line.
I think that if you carefully re-read Fried's original post, you'll note that he at no point accused them of actually engaging in any other illegal activities. His remarks were carefully worded; I wouldn't be terribly surprised if a lawyer had looked at it at some point.
(This is why I've been left wondering at people who saw the post as a tossed-off rant. It was a detailed, edited, and thoughtful complaint.)
They can reasonably say they were referring to the casual meaning of the term and not accusing the GS guys of showing up at their office and making a coy speech about how "accidents" and "fires" can just happen.
You mean right after they compared them to a mafioso protection scheme?
Amusingly, if you click on the wikipedia link above, and follow the reference to the bit on per se defamation, the example given is claiming that someone extorted money that did not.
If you really believe your assertion that Fried's post was legally defamatory instead of harsh criticism, why not find a lawyer and show him/her the text of that post?
GS certainly don't seem to think they would have a case.
A trademark lawsuit would have actually made more sense. The blog post was intended to embarrass GS and therefore diminish their status in the Internet world, while at the same time airing your grievance.
That can be especially said for this follow-up post. If there was no need for the original one, there's absolutely no need for this one. If Jason thought that there are design considerations GS needed to think about, this whole post should have then gone privately.
However, opting to blog about it publicly so that one of GS's founders can go and say "Right, we got it. We will include it in our redesign" is, at best, pulling rank.
Sarah Hatter had said that she answers thousands of support e-mails every year. Saying it's not scalable to send an e-mail to a company you have a grievance with is childish.
There is a delicious irony in your post. GS whole reason for being is open and honest discussion about products and services. Throughout their marketing materials they talk about how airing things out in a public way is better than doing it privately.
So it seems like Jason is simply playing by their rules no?
A trademark lawsuit would have made 37s look bad and would have taken forever to be resolved, while they were still getting damaged. A lawsuit wouldn't have been better, it just would have been justified.
The need was: their business was being hurt by the presence of the GS page that looked official but wasn't. If that doesn't count as a need, wtf does?
Your neighbour trespasses on your farm. Moreover, he builds a small store on it with no permits and when he gets tagged for it by the inspector, he points to you as it's your farm. Do you:
a) Find him, take him to the town square and publicly whip him in front of the whole town?
b) Take him to court for trespassing?
Saying that someone is trying to extort money from you and that their behaviour is "mafia-like" and tantamount to "blackmail" is very heavy-handed criticism, especially on a public forum. It is intended to injure, if only their reputation.
Publicly whipping someone in a town square will cause more mental anguish than physical pain. It's intended to embarrass that person, as well as scare anyone else watching. Please point out where I have gone wrong with the drawing of these parallels.
Publicly criticizing someone, even outright denouncing them in stern but entirely truthful terms, is not even in the same league as publicly whipping someone.
This public criticism elicited awareness of the behavior for people who might have gone to GS unaware of their practices. It elicited GS to amend at least some of their practices. The only observers plausibly "scared" by this are people who want to build a business that involves impersonating other companies.
Had the phrases referring to Mafia, blackmail and extortion been left out of the piece, I'd totally agree with you.
Including such words, however, is not "publicly criticizing" someone nor "outright denouncing them in stern but entirely truthful terms". They're meant to incite the other side. They're there to show righteous anger and having as many readers as 37Signals does, it's completely out of bounds.
Combine that with the complete and utter lack of professionalism displayed by Jason and that post can, and will be, taken as public shaming of GS.
Public shaming is not criticism nor denouncement. But yes, you're right. The only companies scared will be the ones who want to follow a similar model.
Of course, I'd have preferred to have the technical issues pointed out so that those up-and-coming companies can learn from this debacle, but I guess appealing to people's fears is much better. After all, that's what most of the world's governments have been doing to their people, so why expect more from our technical leaders.
"2. Jason, no matter how angry he is/was, should have NOT used a public forum for dealing with this issue immediately."
The funny thing is, the same could be said for people using GS for airing their grievances. A company that hosts a public forum that solicits features/changes/complaints from people can't seriously expect someone to use a private channel to suggest features/changes/complaints, can they?
They can, if they respond to those complaints/support requests in a timely manner.
The only way GS makes sense is if you've tried to contact a company in order to register a complaint and were not successful:
1) You got a generic e-mail back, knowing that your issue will never be looked at.
2) The company does not have any sort of contact information available on their site.
If users of GS register complaints there, GS should forward those complaints to the company in question. That makes sense to me. If GS does not do that, then that's a problem.
However, that does not mean that you can air your grievance with them publicly until all other means have failed. It's logical, no?
I think that 37signals did the right thing. This issue doesn't just affect 37signals, it affects a lot of other companies.
In my opinion, 37signals were obliged to talk about this publicly. If they sent some private mails, a lot of people and companies would still be in the dark regarding the issue. They had a responsibility to call bullshit.
I really don't think that's the motivation at all-- but, of course, the Internet mob loves a villain, so pour on the hyperbole. Jesus, did you just make a 1984 reference aimed at a site that's trying to encourage businesses to have public support conversations!? Do you REALLY think it's Orwellian for forum software to allow the admin to delete threads?
It's not extortion to build a channel for discussion and have that channel get used enough that the company really oughta start paying attention. If it was, Twitter would be guilty. Let's bring our torches and pitchforks to all of the other forums out there that focus on technical issues with specific products.
The officialness of non-sanctioned forums (<20% of their signups nowadays, apparently) is clearly a problem which they agreed to and are addressing-- and I honestly think they need to do more than they did (notably: they need to fix how they appear in search engines when they are non-sanctioned forums).
I think you're taking a short view of profits. GS might be able to make a few bucks by faking people out on purpose and trying to extort companies. They stand to make a lot more if they do the right thing. And, if you actually take the time to read about the founders and the company, it seems like they are trying to do that.
There is a huge difference between people talking about company X on blogs, forums, or Twitter, and some other company seeking to own X's relationship with its customers. That relationship is a critical part of most businesses. If that's what GS are doing, then I hope they fail because I don't want anyone else to ever be in that position.
Of course I don't know what GS's intentions really are. I'm more skeptical than you, though. If the deceptiveness of their website were truly unintentional, I would have expected a more unequivocal response from them in both words and actions. Or maybe tptacek is right and it's just crappy PR.
Even beyond that, Get Satisfaction is essentially operating an unofficial forum that a company can pay to co-opt. Their paid plans specifically say that you get to shape the conversation. How Orwellian! So, you'll let users post bad things about my company on your service unless I start paying you in which case I get to decide what gets posted? That's just gross on both sides. And, of course, the more official it looks, the more it matters when people are posting bad things. Plus, once a company starts endorsing it, more customers will use it meaning that they can never stop paying.
There's a huge moral hazard there. If their business plan were to offer an unofficial support system for all companies, that would be great. If their business plan were to offer a product companies could sign up for to outsource their support IT infrastructure, that would be great. But their business plan is to offer the first in the hopes that companies will feel pressure to do the second.
EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't think Get Satisfaction is maliciously plotting in this way. I'm guessing that their plotting is to give customers the best support channels possible - in cases that they can be official, that means being official, but in other cases, it means giving customers the chance to unofficially talk about the company/products. However, it also means that their profits become tied to whether companies feel pressure to make Get Satisfaction an official support mechanism and the more people that use it because it looks official-ish, the more their profits are likely to be.