How to Avoid Irreparably Destroying Your Reputation Before You Even Have One

http://blogdesignguy.com/how-to-avoid-irreparably-destroying-your-reputation-before-you-even-have-one/

by jdbentley • 15 years ago

36 25 15 years ago

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

This reminds me of why Color flopped. When people hear you've raised a titanic sum of money prelaunch, especially from a VC firm like Sequoia, the expectations for your product are exponentially higher than if you raise a decent A round from angels and small VC firms. Color was a base hit when everyone expected a grand slam. From that moment on, they face an overwhelmingly tough task convincing people their first impressions were wrong.

robin_reala• 15 years ago

Same with Cuil. I think by this point it’s safe to say this isn’t the best way to market your new service.

ivanbernat• 15 years ago

But these guys have webcam, chat, games, classifieds and ... much more! :-)

andrewcooke• 15 years ago

everything is dead. the digg link is dead. the site http://www.socialpog.com is giving an error. the linked video is dead.

at the bottom of the page (the blog design guy link) the site owner appears, apologising. it seems like comments are from about 6 hours ago.

pavel_lishin3• 15 years ago

It comes up for me - half the time. The other half is a 500 error.

Also, their homepage is a screen requiring me to login. What? Why? I don't know anything about you, SocialPog - how about a page that explains what you are before asking me to invest.

Also, why is this required? http://i.imgur.com/avHf3.png And what happened here? http://i.imgur.com/Ou3Uv.png And why do I have to sign in using someone else's system to chat? http://i.imgur.com/td9zr.png

amay00016• 15 years ago

@pavel_lishin Excellent points, thanks for your constructive criticism.

I'll touch on the chat a little. Good idea or not, I'll let you guys be the judge. The chat feature was to connect everyone site wide. Then would be defined to location and friends if needed....Problem was integration. Without signing in through facebook/twitter it allowed users to create fake names which couldn't be allowed for obvious reasons. Plans to design new chat were in the works during this fiasco.

IDK, maybe future UI's for social networks will have this option. Personally I like this option, but understand it may be not for everyone.

kristofferR• 15 years ago

It's ironic that the site is now struggling because of all the traffic it's getting ;)

And guess what, they're using Facebook Connect https://twitter.com/#!/kevinrose/statuses/80809855933353984

wccrawford• 15 years ago

I never really understood why people lie about their site in order to gain users. I mean, you can't fool them for very long, so your opportunity for whatever you plan is has to be very quick.

The only thing I can think is that they expect to earn a lot of money real quick to help fund development... But I really can't see that working.

astine• 15 years ago

Well, I can see it as a phishing opportunity for user logins.

amay00016• 15 years ago

Phishing really? I have no intentions of going to Federal Prison. So I think phishing is absolutely out of any equation. However I know there are lot's of people who would.

amay00016• 15 years ago

Absolutely no money was earned or was expected.

If my intentions were money driven I could have thrown up ads or offers to try and convert (or just a simple lander with one signup offer). 42,200+ unique views yesterday would make most marketers very happy. Those weren't my intentions at any point.

StavrosK• 15 years ago

From their Twitter stream:

> The most epic website launch of all time... The Facebook Competitor may reign supreme,,,, uh oh Zuckerberg

",,,,"? Why do people struggle with their language so much? I mean, all you need to do is get a sentence right, and I'm guessing they'd seen an ellipsis before.

jdbentley2• 15 years ago

It's ironic that you can like "Social Pog - The greatest social network of all time" on Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Social-Pog-The-greatest-social...

mgkimsal• 15 years ago

I guess there's another lesson here - don't let anyone you don't know do promotional work on your behalf. "Anthony" apparently let someone do some promotional efforts for socialpog thinking "what harm can it do?" and then found out it can do a lot of harm. He probably spent money with for that promotional effort too, which makes this all the more tragic.

jdbentley2• 15 years ago

I can relate to Anthony. He seems like a nice guy who fell in love with an idea and let blind ambition get the best of him. When I was new to online entrepreneurship, I did things just as stupid, but they (thankfully) got far less attention.

Hopefully he learns from this and pushes forward with new and better projects.

amay00016• 15 years ago

Thanks JD.

I appreciate your understanding and support.

I have learned a lesson that most won't. Aspirations grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a pile of poop.

rglover• 15 years ago

This is a reason why (to some extent) you should let users dictate your marketing for you. What I mean by that is to avoid touting yourself as this mega awesome site and just sort of go with the flow. Your users, if they exist, will take care of getting the word out. Doing things like this is cheap and not representative of a company that's interested in their own success. Also, the whole "Facebook" killer thing? Why has it become common practice for new social networks to have to "kill" their competitors? If they were truly intelligent, they'd develop some feature as the core of their service that Facebook lacks and then put that at the forefront. This, though, isn't helpful and doesn't draw any interest toward the product.

amay00016• 15 years ago

Thanks @rg

Couldn't agree with your comments more. Marketing and target audience was a bad idea from the beginning.

ltamake2• 15 years ago

I run a web BBS, and we had to deal with my competitor spamming imageboards. It didn't do him much good (because he's finally gone), but he gained infamy because of the incident, thus ruining his real life and causing him much debt.

pavel_lishin3• 15 years ago

What's a web BBS? And can you elaborate more on what happened?

mkr-hn• 15 years ago

It's what a lot of people called web forums early on. UBB (old perl-based forum software) even put it in the software's name.

ltamake2• 15 years ago

Basically, a web forum. It has anonymous posting and a few other features that can't classify it as a forum, so BBS works well.

thestranger• 15 years ago

HUH! I never think in that way!

amay00016• 15 years ago

Hey,

This is "Anthony". Lesson learned absolutely. Not a whole lot to say except for gigantic mistake on my part. Let this be a lesson to all new webmasters. Shortcuts as JD has written are bad ideas. Respect is earned, and I in know way deserve it.

The article JD wrote was absolutely amazing. While reading I was just shaking my head at my self.

How to Avoid Irreparably Destroying Your Reputation Before You Even Have One

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