Damn. Boing! Boing! certainly took down David Pescovitz’s marketing survey request in a hurry. It’s too bad, because I would have loved to have seen the comment thread there.
The actual survey is still up here, and its pretty basic market droid stuff. What’s your household income, how much time do you spend online, do you pledge allegiance for Boing! Boing! in the ongoing slime war against Violet Blue (okay, I made that last one up).
For a site like Boing! Boing! that’s all over other people’s failures in this area, there’s not a goddamned word about privacy or how the data will be treated beyond what you read above (for example, will they log my IP when I fill out the form? I don’t know — the survey doesn’t bother to say anything either way).
At this point, I’d recommend replacing the “Get Illuminated” text in the Boing! Boing! logo graphic to “You Are A Target Market”, but that’s just me. This could be good info for Douglas Rushkoff to have the next time he runs his infomercials — er guest blogs — for Boing! Boing!
Post Revisions:
- 4 March, 2009 @ 22:37 [Current Revision] by Brian Carnell
- 4 March, 2009 @ 22:35 by Brian Carnell
- 4 March, 2009 @ 22:32 by Brian Carnell
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Please, Brian! Remember – Boing Boing is a private weblog.
We’d have to do emergency vowel airlifts to the site if they left that up. Although TNH could sharpen up her holier-than-thou knives. Er, I’m sorry, “wit”.
Privacy is an important issue when dealing with this kind of information.
It’s back. Looks like some sort of technical problem? http://www.boingboing.net/2009/03/10/please-take-the-boin.html
@Mark Morgan: Interesting. Thanks for posting that. I guess I’ll have to update the post, but I’m really surprised they really went ahead with that. I assumed Pescovitz had posted it and then someone thought better of it.
Looking the survey over, it reminds me of nothing more than those “free” tech magazines that you get (or used to get) if you work anywhere in IT. They’re free, of course, in part because they’re mostly one long ad, and in part because they want you to fill out reader surveys so they can better market to you. Typically these would be large prepaid low-weight cardboard asking you all about your company, position, etc. etc.
I always wondered about people who actually filled those out (but then I wondered about people who would have grocery store ‘discount’ program cards until I realized my wife had one), and I have to wonder about someone who would “help out” Boing! Boing! by handing over marketing data.
It is a private blog after all, but that sort of survey is one step away from free perfume samples. How long until we see Obsession for Mutants and handbags (they’ve already had those ridiculous designer jackets or whatever they were).
It’s also interesting how they’re trying to monetize things with the spinoffs. So they link to RPS for awhile about games but then OMG “we could monetize that better in-house” and suddenly we’ve got Offworld (which sucks compared to RPS — though I do have to say I like BB Gadgets only because Joel Johnson has turned it into something that’s a lot closer to what BB used to be like in my completely bogus memories of halcyon days of yore, when the Internet was still young).
Hey! I got started in the phone business selling those stupid ad “magazines”. (And didn’t that job last all of a month. I should take pride in the fact that I was fired from my only telemarketing job. Apparently I couldn’t GIVE things away. All I had to do is get them to confirm their address so we could keep spamming them with dead trees.)
Boing Boing is a private blog blah blah blah blah blah. Nonsense. It’s a business run by individuals who don’t believe they should have to provide any sort of customer service for their readers. Or at least that’s what Antonious likes to tell people all the time when they wonder why he’s being a total prick to them. I remain astonished at how much I actually still enjoy the site but can’t stand the smugness of their moderators, who they apparently all love. That is a bizarre disconnect, isn’t it? I have the site in my RSS feed and I enjoy it quite a bit, but I am putting together a moderation guideline for Unreason which is essentially “Boing Boing? Don’t do that. Here, let’s look at Metafilter for guidance”.
Speaking of magazines that are ads, Jason Scott posted a fantastic paean to Computer Shopper end of last month. I had a roommate who subscribe to it back when it could blockade a tank regiment.
Good points, Mark.
You know, I don’t really mind commerce, I’ve just always thought those sort of surveys were silly invasive on the one hand, and probably produce junk results. I mean, there are times I end up *having* to fill them out or it’s easier to fill them out than figure out what fields are really optional, and I always lie on them. Told Adobe the other day that I make $150k/year as a farmer because they made me give them that to download some trial version of something or other.
What I did find even more bizarre was how TNH described the survey in response to someone who wondered what would happen if they took the survey more than once:
#79 posted by Teresa Nielsen Hayden / Community Manager Author Profile Page, March 11, 2009 1:52 PM
Troofseeker, I have no idea what will happen if you take the survey more than once. I suspect it would just mean your demographics and opinions would be overrepresented by that amount.
Personally, I like having my tastes and opinions pandered to.
Now I’m close to about as hypercapitalist as you can get without being a full blown anarchist, and even I wouldn’t make the silly claim that filling out a survey for advertisers involves “having my tastes and opinions pandered to” (though certainly this gives a lot of insight into her bizarre behavior as a moderator). I can’t believe a grown adult who is not a marketer would say something so naive and stupid.
Also, maybe this isn’t new but I never noticed the “Community Manager” title next to TNH’s name before. I’m expecting executive VP’s and an org chart any day!
Hi, Brian!
We still love RPS! Offworld was on the drawing board for a long time before Offworld came to be: the “gadgets ‘n’ games” blogging two-punch is, as you’ll doubtless know, a Joel Johnson special.
The problem with the mutual links was old-fashioned incompetence on my part — there was always something else to do, and I got lazy.
Rob, Boing Boing Gadgets