Under the hood of Pinterest

Hi there (good folks of Pinterest),

the link that you provided to re-open my ticket did not work, hence the email:


Reactivation did not work this time either. Or it did .. until I tried to log in again:

Oops!
Your account has been deactivated, but your pins are safe and sound.
Please contact Support and we'll get you pinning again soon.

1) So please do something to release this burden of my email/username pajaratorio@gmail.com
2) Why on earth "are my pins safe and sound"? I deleted my account to remove them! Why do you keep that information?! Really!!

Negative criticism = Opportunity to engage

While learning about contemporary marketing theories and consumer goods touch points from Hanne, I ran into this video where Avinash Kaushik from Google discusses how seizing negative critisism can be turned into opportunity.

What we have learned is that customer can become even more loyal when errors are corrected promptly and smoothly.  Having a personal presence in social media can be a huge asset.
Instead of being worried about having negative content on the web, one can have negative content AND show how well complaints are taken care of and criticism is used to develop the service.

Use the link for the right spot (1m42s), or watch the whole clip.
Winning the Zero Moment of Truth - Ratings and Reviews: Word of MOT

There is a side track here also. You might remember the Talisker case. -The story took new turns after my post.
It actually makes a good example here, since we you all could already know how things are if their media policy would include the presence in the blogs.. 

And you thought statistics about social media are boring - not this time

If you are interested about the growth of social media, check this.
Socialnomics has made a video about the statistics of social media - and my hands go all goosebumped :P

iTunes - billing errors (and improvements on DRM)

I've enjoyed using iTunes a lot and a happy news is that the music will be finally DRM free!

But I also spotted an annoying problem. If I happen to press Buy -button twice -or three times as I once did - it seems that I also get billed three times!

I'm sure nobody wants to buy same track several times and that the case wouldn't be hard to block. So the conclusion would be that it is left there to gain few dollars more.
Now I'm interested to see if billing really goes like this and will update this entry accordingly. -But anyhow having these doubts and worries in users minds isn't actually the best promotion for any kind of service.
____________
Update 1) 15.1.09
Yes, as I assumed 29,70€ charged instead of 9,90.
I have been Reporting a problem now for two weeks, without UI indicating that reporting feature would be working. -Next step is that I try to find some human contact from www.apple.fi

Update 2) An hour later
I managed to complete reporting after some search after a drop down menu mentioned in Apple support:To report an accidental purchase:
1. Locate the item in your Purchase history
2. Click the "Report a Problem" link
3. Select "I inadvertently purchased this item" from the drop down menu
4. Enter notes explaining the situation in the Comments section
Our support agents will review your request and get back to you as quickly as possible.

Update 3) (16.1.09)
During the same night I had received a corrective email from Apple. That was prompt!
The content was bit of an US. style service jargon, but still it pleaes:
Thank you for being valued iTunes customer and have a wonderful weekend, Perttu____________
Does it come to your mind pushing the Report a problem text here (pic)?! -At least I thought problem was marked already and pushed Done-button. -Well now I'm waiting for somebody to contact..

Flock - a test drive

Earlier I made a brief mention about Flock - a social web browser. This weekend I have been forced to be still due a hard flu, so I was able to test this new browser. -It really feels that this could be my default browser!

For you who are regular visitors might be aware that I'm a user for several social web services like, Flickr, Facebook, Blogger, Google reader, Del.icio.us and Dopplr. Using many different services can be challenging and that's why services tend to collect themselves as clusters (money plays also a major role in this). But like me I have to use several clusters, like Google and Yahoo. And balancing on these services is sometimes quite awkward. Feeling of control is lost on these several services.

The thing about Flock is that now I have all my accounts open on the sidebar of my browser and I constantly receive RSS feed from those all. This means that I skipp the whole mess of opening pages to see my accounts. And for example uploading my photos, I just press the upload button, and after that I can choose to which service I want to upload. Or for this blog entrty I needed a single button. -Me likes..

Blogged with Flock