I have sent XING two messages to cancel my account, I don’t want to be a member.

I would like to take advantage of XING’s unique potential to bring people together, until they cancel my account, to help homeless children and elders.

WTF! This was supposed to be a business related group. If anybody and their aunt will spam all 15k members; thank you, but no, thank you. So I did what any responsible user would do and used the report spam thingy.

Here is what I had hoped to happen; my report is stored somewhere. Other people flags this as well. When a critical number is reached a moderator reviews if the message is really spam and takes the appropriate action.

Here is what happened; an hour later or so I got an e-mail. It said “if you don’t want to receive messages from this person do yak yak yak”. King-size WTF.

1. First of all I had already done that. He should have checked if I did before writing an e-mail.
2. More importantly, he should have checked my profile for a second. It says programmer. So, if I’m a programmer I am supposed to know a thing or two about these computer thingies, right? Clicking, double-clicking, expertise on check boxes and stuff. Telling me how to block a user is the same thing as saying “hey muhuk, you’re an idiot”. Even if we suppose there are such morons¹, you still don’t have to tell it to their face. If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say nothing.

As a result, I got pissed of and sent this tweet:

XING Türkiye Support is clueless. Make sure you know who you’re e-mailing + take a moment to check if your advice has already been applied.

This is not the end of the story though. I received an e-mail from XING Community Manager yesterday. It was a very polite message containing the acknowledgement of both issues². Nothing out of the ordinary at first sight. But wait, the message mentioned my tweet. In the very beginning. Actually the first word was “Twitter”. And it was concluded with something along the lines of “keep sharing your comments”.

Well, of course my comments and ideas are worthless. Especially since I’m not a very active XING user. But don’t miss the important point here: XING basically, via it’s community representative, says “you tweeted a negative tweet about us, but we are cool with that”. Why is it so important?

1. They seem to be really cool about that. That means they understand social web. Conventional thinking is “I’d prefer you told this to me directly”, “we could have solved it between you and me”, “why do you shout, you make me look bad”. I have seen supposedly social media aware brands do this. It doesn’t look good. Trying to silence people is a horrible idea.
2. You can win people easily. Beautiful thing about Internet (and online services in particular) is that no party has too much power over the other. You can’t intimidate someone because she doesn’t like your services and writes about it. On the other hand she can’t do much damage³. So instead of freaking out, try to be nice and convert naysayers to evangelists.

Most of the time complaining customers want to know there is someone who can see things from the right perspective. Someone reasonable, agreeable, fair. Most of the time that’s all that is needed to turn “<your brand> sucks” to “sh*t happens, no big deal”. My perception changed from “clueless” to “hmm, I guess that was a misstep of an individual” to “wow, appereantly XING Türkiye knows social web very well”. And all it took was a simple e-mail⁴. It’s not that difficult.

Kudos to XING for being a good web2.0 citizen.⁵

1: I mean programmers who couldn’t figure out how to use a web GUI. People from other professions might not know these and that’s not necessarily their problem.

2: What more could a user/customer hope other than acknowledgement? The message also contained an apology. But, I personally don’t think brands should apologize to their customers. Especially regarding to freemium services.

3: This is true even for big players like TechCrunch.

4: I bet it’s instantiated from a draft, everybody gets more or less the same message. This makes it even cooler though.

5: And special thanks for making me feel like a jerk. Just kidding, feelings are for losers.

Related posts:

1. Sad State of Web Development Industry in Türkiye
2. CVyolla.com: It’s Not OK To SPAM!
3. Top 5 Untrends According To Me

An Internet startup however is a completely different story. If you are doing business online you are supposed to know what you can and can not do. You can’t SPAM for instance. You just can’t. There’s no excuse for such an act from Internet companies. Correcting such mistakes is marginally harder than correcting technical mistakes. Once people mark you evil, it is painful to fix.

Here’s a summary what happened between a Turkish startup CVyolla.com and me last week. They are service that send your CV’s to companies.

1. I Receive A CV From CVyolla.com

This may not sound extraordinary, since that’s what they do. But I don’t have a corporate account with them, or any other kind of membership. I might have visited their homepage a couple of times, that doesn’t count as a sign up, does it? So CVyolla.com is SPAMming people.

I noticed a username (my email address) and a login address at the bottom of this message. So I thought I should check it out¹.

2. CVyolla.com Might Be Stealing Your Identity Too

Before I could log in, I had to request my password via forgot my password link. I couldn’t possibly remember a password that I have never created, could I? It became clear once I logged in (see image below). Company name Muhuk, WTF? CVyolla.com is creating accounts on your behalf to inflate their company portfolio. This is not just uncool, this is immoral. Shame on you CVyolla.com.

CVyolla.com Stealing My Identity

I have never signed up in your service, I have never accepted your terms of service. How impudent of you to think you can just create a mock account on my behalf and start sending stuff to my personal e-mail!

3. When Will Companies Learn Not To Reply With Stupid Anonymous E-mails

Despite things being clear enough, I wanted to hear the story from their side. Maybe there has been a mistake of some sort. Or maybe they would understand what they have been doing is wrong. I would be writing a completely different post today if they had just accepted both SPAMming and identity theft were wrong and assured me that they’d stop doing it. But, no. Instead they have sent me some nonsense reply. Before I get into the contents of this reply, there’s one very important issue with this reply.

Just as many other Internet companies, CVyolla.com was lacking the decency to reply my message with a real name and a real e-mail address. See, I am sending you with my real name, as a person, naturally I expect to communicate with a person. It is simply rude to reply your visitors/customers with a faceless nameless e-mail. If you are having difficulty to figure out how to configure your e-mails, drop me a line and I’ll try to help, seriously. Show some respect to your correspondents.

OK, back to the contents of CVyolla.com’s reply to my inquiry, faceless representative says:

1. They have taken my e-mail address from my webpage² or from a job listing³ or a public source such as an union or trade chamber⁴.
2. They have sent me an e-mail telling me that I can opt-out before they started sending me SPAM.. erm, notifications.
3. Since I haven’t opt out, they have decided that they can send their SPAM. But now upon my request they have frozen my account.

Let’s see;

1. You probably found my e-mail address in an illegally collected list that you have bought. I seriously doubt you’d ever come read my blog and collect my e-mail address then. Anyway, regardless of how you found my e-mail address, you have no right to SPAM me.
2. “Oh, we have given you an opt-out option” is just such a miserable, lame excuse it makes me throw up. Hell with your opt-out, where have you been the last eight years? It’s probably marked as SPAM instantly, and you would find that convenient, wouldn’t you?
3. What account? I never signed up! It’s you deceiving yourself and those who entrusted their CV’s to you.

I wish CVyolla.com handled this a little better. If you don’t manage your online conversations professionally, or if you try the same management strategy with offline customer relations, you fail. If you SPAM, you fail. If you tell people crap like opt-out, you fail. If you make up accounts on other people/entities without their consent, you fail big time. I hope they correct these wrongs soon.

PS: Just as I was preparing to submit this post, I got another CV from CVyolla.com. So much from freezing my account upon my request, eh! Mega-fail, if you ask me.

1: Having a terrible memory, I though for a second, maybe I had signed up once and then I forgot about it. But that’s not the case, read on.

2: I don’t display this e-mail in my work site, it is only displayed in my personal site. Where there is no mention to work related stuff.

3: This e-mail is not mentioned in any job listing.

4: Again, it’s not listed in such places.

Related posts:

1. Sad State of Web Development Industry in Türkiye
2. XING Türkiye Social Media Win
3. Top 5 Untrends According To Me

I have edited and edited and edited… Finally, last section; proficiencies. Huh, which proficiencies could a new graduate possibly have? Let’s make it the last part.¹ I scrolled through the dropdown of options to find Python and Django. No Python! Unsurprisingly no Django. But wait, the list doesn’t have Ruby, RoR, LISP either. But they included some programming languages I have never heard of; like HTML. What is this HTML programming language?

Basically I was left with the choices of Java and C. I couldn’t select them because neither is my main programming language. I can only select them after I select Python. So I left that section blank and sent them a contact form thing. It’s not cool not having an e-mail in your contact us section guys. If you are concerned about SPAM there are ways to evade e-mail harvesting bots. Please don’t be afraid of people who prefer using e-mail. I got a timely reply. From a nobody. Again, not cool. I am person and I’d like to communicate with another person. It’s OK to publish a generic e-mail on the site. But the reply should come from a employee e-mail and contain the employees name. I give you my name and e-mail when I contact you, right? You should have the decency to do the same when you reply.

Anyway, the reply I got was brief. In short it said “OK, we’ll do it.” Nice. Except they didn’t. I checked yesterday and they still had HTML programming language and not Python. Oh, well. So much for the orange ties. I deleted my account for the reason of being totally useless. It could be useful feedback if you asked why, when your users delete their accounts, you know?

In fact kariyerGENÇ is not doing it wrong. They’re just taking a picture of The Industry. The picture is correct, The Industry is doing it wrong. But that’s another topic for discussion². What was disappointing for me was the lack of agile in kariyerGENÇ. I don’t mean agile methodology here, I mean agile technology. Technology and infrastructure that changes and adopts fast. For instance; how long would it take to make the change in a Django project? Yes, Django. The framework most people ignore or haven’t even heard of. You would just log-in the admin, add a new proficiency, save, optionally run a custom management command. 10 minutes at most.

It doesn’t matter much even if they add new proficiencies now. First of all a fixed list of options doesn’t work well where there are virtually unlimited possibilities. Second of all that dropdown is hideous, and increasing the number of options will only make it worse. Instead they should just let people tag themselves, WordPress style. Django-tagging does that automagically. You know, Django, the framework you don’t list in your proficiencies.

What Most People Agree On Is Not Necessarily The Best

The language for web development in Türkiye is PHP. Java is on the rise, in a couple of years it will be as popular as PHP. I am not kidding myself; these two and that horrible propriety thing that I don’t even want to name are industry standart in the world. But they also use other technologies. At least they experiment. At least they know that other alternatives exist. Here those minorities doesn’t even exist.

I frequently hear people saying “Python is a toy language“. Because for them there are serious, proper programming languages for grown-ups and serious, proper frameworks for grown-ups as Cal Henderson said …and everything else is a toy. You can’t use Python/Django for anything professional. Well, Markafoni did, with much success.

Think about it for a second; if what the majority have generally chosen the best, wouldn’t we live in a better society & environment than this? Just think about it.

Meanwhile I’ll be playing with my toys.

1: Actually kariyerGENÇ got it right here; in reality most of the new graduates have no proficiency. So, they’ll pick I know Word and Excel here even though they aren’t really proficient.

2: …and flame wars.

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2. XING Türkiye Social Media Win
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The Womb Method

Before we get into the details of the box method, I should mention about the womb method. It was implemented quite successfully in the gym before the previous one. The gym was run by a group of young Sports Academy graduates. The manager was the oldest of them. He converted a not much used space into an office for himself (this is the womb). The door of the office was towards the main entrance, and the back and side walls were (frosted) glass bricks seperating from the main studio. So he sat in his office his face to the door and his back to the gym. When I say he sat there, I mean he sat in that office all the time. He was spatially in the gym, but actually he was never there (hence the womb). The music would stop and he wouldn’t notice (or care?) until I walk over there and tell him to turn it on again. I don’t know what he was doing there, but I guess he was doing something (on his laptop) more important than finding out what was happening in his gym.

I witnessed the conditions degrading over a period of time. There were less and less people working out. At one point only regulars were (me and) a bunch of students living there. Then the so-called instructors’ mocking those young members became more disturbing for me. And did I mention about the music. The music was horrible. I guess they had made a management decision on building new offices instead of investing on an MP3 player. Load a CD with grandmother music, endure tracks sequentially, go remind the manager the CD is finished. This is the womb method for you.

One day I was in his office, we used to get along well actually, chatting about how my business goes and then the ever shrinking member count. I asked him “are you really doing all you can to prevent it?”¹, he said “yes, of course”. Two days later I had a new gym membership.²

Is The Box Method Applicable For You?

If you have an hierarchical organization, you can let the information flow from the bottom up to you. This way you get the aggregated information from every branch under your management. Like a birds eye view. This doesn’t necessarily imply lack of detail. But it definitely implies lack of objectivity. If you have the means to measure the performance of a branch accurately, this upwards flow of information in the hierarchy is not a bad thing. For example, a sales branch can’t safely lie about the inventory. Or an advertisement team’s performance can be determined with the help of an expert advisor.

If you are running a gym. The single quantitative indicator is the number of members. More new members doesn’t necessarily mean you are doing good, but not renewed memberships is conclusive that you suck. Therefore it is stupid to try the information flow described above; it will simply be too late when you find out something is wrong. This is where the box method comes to rescue.

The box method in a nutshell is delegating management to a box³. A good manager should know how to delegate, right? But forget about good management. The most powerful selling point of the box method is that it not only doesn’t require good managers, it encourages bad management.

My current gym implements the box method successfully. Whenever something goes wrong, or you have a question you are told to write it down and put it in the box. How well does it work? I haven’t tried it yet. But I am convinced that the results are quite consistent. Pretty much everybody, members and employees alike, tells me they have tried without any results and I should also give it a try. Now, isn’t this a mighty example of how efficiently the box’s capabilites are utilized.

Advantages Of The Box Method Is Numerous

I would like to share a little incident, which happened before I learned about the box method at all. There is this huge machine, one of those total body workout promising complete fitness systems. I think it is called Kinesis or something. Anyway, the point is this thing has a huge wooden frame. So they decided to put it right in the middle of the weight room. In front of the mirrors in the middle, where it will block most the daylight. And it did create a really depressing environment successfully. So, one day so stressed up that I couldn’t contain myself, I stormed upstairs to the customer represantative lady who has taken my registration. I am neither polite nor subtle, especially when I’m pissed of. So I directly said:

"Whoever decied to put that thing in the middle of the weight room, can
not be possibly working out here. Otherwise he would have realized that is
a horrible placement."

She gave me a quick horrified look and then turned to the table at the opposite side. Apparently, that moron, who made the decision was sitting there. I’ll keep what happened afterwards short. I basically took both of them, no I actually only wanted her to see the situation but the instructor come along anyway, and explained why that was a very very bad idea to put a huge wooden frame in front of the main mirrors⁴ in a room without tall windows. And what happened? The customer represantative lady kept looking at me like a lobotomized monkey and let the instructor defend (well, at least that’s what he would have called it) his decision and find solid arguments (like “oh, there are mats there”, MATS?! Can’t you just MOVE them somewhere else!) against the alternative position I offered for the machine. And the most pathetic thing was he kept on assuring me once the thing is assembled completely, they’ll push it all the way to the mirror so it won’t take that much space. Putting aside the question not being the space but being the concealment of the mirror, it was obvious that it would never ever fit between those two columns. I have seen this with my eyes in a second. How can they possibly fail to realize that it won’t fit with tools and days to work it out. And it didn’t fit of course. Anyway that is not the point. The point is I have learned that my so-called customer representative was just too incompetent and inexperienced to even lie to me saying “OK, I have listened your complaint, I will relay it to management.” The machine is still there. And they turn the lights on even midday, because it is dark. If you have a problem with that, write a letter to the box.

Yes, the box takes care of it all. You can get away with anything! Customer representatives who only know how to say hi very enthusiastically, so-called instructors who can’t even crank out a solid set with proper form themselves, even with tinyier weights, cleaning people who call the person 50 m away (and there is a whole changing room in between with doors closed) yelling and swearing… It all works harmoniously. I hear some people complain. They complain about reception people giving them adjacent lockers where most of them are empty. Fixing all these little problems and keeping track of what is going on in the gym is quite some work. It probably means increased expenses (hiring competent people?) at the same time. The box method alleviates all this burden acting like a filter for customer complaints. Have a complaint? Write a letter and throw it in the box. Very effective.

Does It Really Work

Enough satire for one post I think. Yes, it does work. My current gym is really using the box method. The non-existance of a proper management is so obvious that you, as a member, can’t help notice it. It sucks, period.

What do I do when I have a suggestion or a complaint? I can’t go to the customer representative who is not equipped to carry on an intelligent discussion. Telling the instructors doesn’t produce much better results. In the best case they tell me “we have been trying tell this and that for long time to the management, but nothing happened yet” and encourage me to write to the box. Some of the resons I can come up with for not writing to the box:

• There is no guarantee the letters are read. I make a consious effort in my life to make sure what I say is heard every time.
• If they are read; I have no idea who reads them. It might as well be the janitor. Believe me I wouldn’t be surprised at all in that case. If I am going to write a letter seriously, I’d like to know someone who can make decisions read them.
• Let’s assume someone with the authority to fix things is reading these letters. And she is reading them because she wants to improve conditions of her facility. Then, why can’t she simply show up, see things with her own eyes and maybe talk to people? Why the hell do I have to sit down and write a stupid letter to put in a stupid box? Why do I have to do her job?

This narrows my options to; do nothing or blog about it. I prefer the latter. Writing always helps seeing things in a different point of view. And I would like to hear what you think about this as well.

Both the earlier (womb) gym and this one are still in the business. They are probably getting less memberships than they would if they operated well. But they don’t close up shop. People keep coming. This is one half of the real problem. Because there is no real community, you don’t get to learn, before you sign-up, that this place is not a good choice.

The other half is more dramatic; people don’t know what to expect. This is so sad. Everybody can complain when they blow cold air from outside in (this is called the air conditioning here, it blows instead of sucking). But you should actually complain when they tell you to do side bends with weights, if you are trying to reduce your waist. We don’t know what to expect, therefore we get what we deserve. Maybe this is the perfect management for us. After all a box can’t tell that you will never be able to achieve your goals⁵ with your current level of determination. But this is a subject for another entry.

1: No, it didn’t tip him up. Yes, they are still in business.

2: Which was a short, but great experience for me. Actually I just went there did my workout. After all that torture at that previous gym, just doing you thing feels great though.

3: Yes, box. As in tip box.

4: What I mean is that almost 70% of the light contributing the room reflects from that single mirror.

5: That you so ambiguously define, yet fail to hide.

Related posts:

1. Sad State of Web Development Industry in Türkiye
2. CVyolla.com: It’s Not OK To SPAM!
3. XING Türkiye Social Media Win

I would, first of all, ask for ease of deployment. What good is a software if you can’t run it? Ease of deployment for both the clients and the server. But clients here are more important for two reasons; they will be many, and they will be installed on desktop computers in the wild. As opposed to one server, which is (hopefully) maintained by professionals. So I would like my new software to be easily installed, uninstalled and upgraded on any computer connected to my network.

I would also like to be able to access the software through any client connected. It is a bad bad security model to rely on authentication against a client installation. Each and every client should be identical and the authentication should be done against some form of credentials¹.

As a user I would also like to know that the client software will not mess with the rest of my system. Software breaking² other software, or the entire operating system is useless, no matter how much utility it has otherwise.

I guess you have realized by now where I am going with this. The system I have described above is unlikely a big over-burdened application that radiates seriousness from your screen and clings itself into the bowels of your Operating System. I am actually talking about a volatile client and server architecture. Where the client almost doesn’t exist. It exists of course. It resides on the server until you connect with your browser³, then get downloaded and run. This model is called Rich Internet Application, RIA for short.

The key characteristics of RIA are;

• No install or uninstall⁴.
• Automatic remote upgrades.
• [Sandboxed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandbox(computersecurity))

Rich Internet Applications are powerful and considerably easier to deploy. They do have one drawback; the platform (HTML+CSS+JavaScript) they run on is not designed for applications from the beginning. It is initially designed for documents and then extended to support for applications. The main practical problem is that the JavaScript implementations are not as fast and reliable (on high loads) as native code or other popular interpreted languages. But we have started to see a new breed of browsers specifically built for applications. I am sure JavaScript virtual machines will be improved significantly in the near future.

On the other hand benchmarking and measuring performance by actually using and application typically yields different results. In our example, business applications do not involve heavy operations that require a lot of processing power. Non-linear video editing does, image synthesis does, desktop publishing does, business applications doesn’t. So the RIA would still be my first choice even with the possible performance problems mentioned above.

More on this later.

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1. Using Layouts In Qooxdoo – Part 1
2. Using Layouts In Qooxdoo – Part 2: VBox Layout
3. Using Layouts In Qooxdoo – Part 3: HBox Layout

I am business illiterate, I won’t even pretend I know the first thing about sales. But inevitably, just like everybody else I am a customer, I try hard to get it right. So I try to understand what happens behind the counter. I don’t think it is as simple as I have the good you have the money let’s trade.

The common business model or sales model looks just like that from the outside. Me Tarzan, you Jane simplicity. But first of all you should notice that the sales person doesn’t have an emotional relationship with the product. I am not talking about romance here, maybe just a strong feeling of the product being really useful, or some personal experience. The reason might just be that the sales person doesn’t try hard enough, or it might be that the product is not really cool anyway. So they either fake it or they enlighthen you with “uhm, I don’t know actually. But…”s.

Another characteristic of the conventional model is that you don’t get proper service after sales. This is mostly because the product is crap and therefore the service costs are higher. Or more dramatically because the seller thinks that the market is a set of buyers. And a subset of those buyers will buy her product. And a subset of that subset of buyers will be dissatisfied. Now if that dissatisfied group is not effective enough to reduce the potential buyers that’s fine. Whether they are satisfied or not she has cashed in. Once this market is saturated, there are other crappy products and new markets for them. I am not making this up, I was explained this and I was assured that it works. Furthermore I have seen it in action personally.

The other, brave model of making it right is rarely seen. Let us be honest here, financially it is not as rewarding as the conventional model. It is difficult to implement and even more difficult to keep alive. But from my point of view this model should be the only one. I don’t care if the seller has earned ten times her investment. As a customer I only care if the product is as good as it was advertised and if I will get proper customer service after the purchase.

When I find a supplier for a certain product that does business the right way, I stop looking around. This prevents you from learning what is new, but it also saves you time otherwise wasted. For some things you just don’t get much from being an expert.

I used to move from one hosting company to another, but for several years I am using Webfaction (formerly python-hosting.com). I am 100% satisfied with their services, and it is not expensive as some of you might think. I don’t know much about the competition now, for the reason I have explained above, but I know there are too many cheap, as in cheap imitation, hosting companies you just regret you have ever known them. Webfaction does it right. And they are still alive and probably growing up[1].

So what do they do right;

• Their plans are no BS. They give you shell access (for shared hosting too) and all the tools you need. They have installers for popular programs for quick and painless setup. If you need a library the server doesn’t have they kindly install it for you. Finally you can install and run your custom application.
• They are open and proactive; when a server goes down it is immediately posted to status blog. And posts are updated when the problem is fixed, usually with detailed information about the problem and/or solution. I think being open is huge on customer satisfaction.
• Their technical support is great. I don’t remember a single issue when my problem isn’t solved somehow. Response times are very good, support people really know their stuff[2] and they are always kind. I have asked many stupid and/or irrelevant questions but they have never disdained or told me to search the forums. This is the biggest reason why I don’t keep an eye out for hosting companies.

Webfaction has started showcasing sites they are hosting. This is a simple, easy way to strenghten the community. Why do I care? Because Webfaction users are like-minded. So there is a community to begin with. Maybe the most important consequence of the do it right model is that you end up creating a community around your product. Let me re-phrase it; a community with you in the center.

Before I sign off I would like to mention another company that know how to shut their customers up, in a good sense. Neosante is an online store for supplements. I have purchased from them many times. They do nothing extraordinary, they just do it right. Everytime. Even when there are many bigger stores selling a wide range of products, this niche store does near-perfect compared to all of them.

I used to work for a price comparison site so I have a rough idea about the market. But those figures shouldn’t mean anything to customers at all. We should have a different set of heuristics for the success of a seller. Take Neosante; I give my orders, they ship it, they ship it right, they ship it on time, I get what I have ordered, I am offered a satisfactory solution if I have a problem, I say this is successfull. Anything else, I stay away.

1: This is because they are smart people.

2: No “have tried turning it off and then on again?” stunts.

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