MOLI Fails at Internet Bingo
31 Jan 2008 | Filed Under: Crankypants + Interpipes + Marketing + Social Networks
Please join me in a BINGO adventure as we score MOLI.com on their PR ability, commitment to transparency, crisis management rating, and customer service skills.
Believe me, even I am getting a bit bored with how shit they are at all of this, and I regret that this post will only be of interest to venture capitalists, DEMO attendees, TechCrunch readers, Valleywag whores, users of Wikipedia, members of social networks, people in PR, people in marketing, people in communications, and those who want to see how MOLI.com finally responded to being caught astroturfing. A small audience, in other words.
Due to the fact that MOLI has racked up quite a few chits on their Bingo card, it’s a bit long. So in honor of Valleywag, who covered this story last night, “more after the jump.”
From an uncomplimentary but hardly scathing review of a social network to discovering an employee astroturfing to Valleywag in 24 hours isn’t bad. Unless, of course, you’re MOLI.com.
The sad thing is that this could all have been avoided if someone from Moli - say, their Director of Customer Services, for example - had left me a comment or sent me an email and simply said:
Hey Sabrina, sorry that happened to you. Drop me a line or give me a call and I’ll be happy to give you a MOLI tour and show you around your privacy setting options. We want your MOLI.com experience to be a good one!
Instead, the person who’s job it is to take care of my issues, who is paid to provide customer service, opted to lie. He pretended to be an average user who wanted me to know he thought MOLI was awesome.
That is not customer care. That is deceit. Points awarded: -1
When busted, Dan still did not come clean. He vaguely acknowledged working there, but did not make anything approaching a full disclosure. We had to track down his identity, name him, drop his trousers and spank him in another post. -1
Dan then fesses up, suddenly discovers the ability to spell, punctuate and capitalize, and posts a comment in his official capacity, apologising and giving his official email address. +1. He also states that his Hawk5721 posts were just an “informal” attempt to correct my “mis-information.” -2.
At this point, MOLI.com has a big problem. A key employee has been caught red-handed, named and shamed for repeatedly doing something the internet does not like on the day of MOLI.com’s public launch and DEMO pitch. What’s a start-up to do?
What they did was nothing. I busted Dan DiFiore at 1:15 AM my time. By the next morning his time, traffic was pouring in from nat0.hq.moli.com. I saw quite a lot of Moli.com, I just didn’t hear anything from them. -1.
I found this quite annoying. I decided to pass the time by sharing my astroturfing experience in the comments section of a few of their top Google results, at a rate of about one per hour.
Unfortunately for MOLI, it wasn’t until 23 hours later that I heard anything from them. -1. This is a PR failure of the highest order. The internet does not close down while you sleep. The internet eats your kittens for breakfast while you sit around holding strategy meetings.
At about midnight my time, right around the time Valleywag was emailing to ask if I had the now-removed photo of Dan doing Jello shots, I finally got an email from Judy Balint, President and COO at Moli.com. +1! Printing Judy’s email to me would be a violation of her privacy, but I can tell you that it is almost identical to her comment at TechCrunch UK.
Almost.
Shockingly, in her email to me, Judy leaves out the part about how I’m “an Irish blog that unintentionally mis-represented how privacy works on MOLI.” Right, Judy, like I wasn’t going to see that. -1.
Given that this whole thing kicked off because of the misrepresentation of one of her employees, her choice of words here is pure comedy gold.
My blog post was a factual account of my brief but spammy user experience at MOLI.com, complete with a screenshot. Judy’s TechCrunch post, however, is a little less fulsome:
I want to extend my personal apology to all your readers for our associate not identifying themselves appropriately as being from our company
Danl DeFiore is not a distant “associate” but Moli.com’s Director of Customer Service. He didn’t fail to identify himself appropriately; he intentionally concealed his identity by setting up an internet alias used almost exclusively for astroturfing.
when they responded to a post on an Irish blog
How about when he “responded” to posts as Hawk5721 on other sites, including a post on TechCrunch in which he shilled for Moli.com? Where is the acknowledgment and apology for that? -1.
As a result, we have issued a policy to all of our associates worldwide to ensure that they include their name and title in all posts about company information going forward to ensure absolute transparency.
Great! Well done, Judy; +1 for that. I’d like to see that policy. In the interests of “absolute transparency” please publish it online so I can evaluate it. Let me know when you do that so I can update your scorecard accordingly.
And for the record, Judy, while there is mis-representation going on here, it isn’t mine and it isn’t unintentional.
Daniel DiFiore’s actions were calculated and long term; his comments began appearing as early as July. The fact that Dan is still employed at MOLI.com (at least according to his Moli profile) makes me wonder what exactly one has to do there to meet the standard for gross misconduct. If for nothing else, Dan should be canned for providing the worst example of Customer Service I’ve ever encountered. And while I’m not a conspriacy theorist, I have to say that I’m beginning to wonder if the reason Dan is still in position is because they can’t fire him. Because they…
Nah.
Still, in light of MOLI’s renewed dedication to absolute transparency and full disclosure, I’d like to know what MOLI.com is doing about Dan. As a MOLI.com member who was targeted for his deceit, I have a vested interest. In fact, I have a very valid customer complaint, and I’d like Customer Service to let me know what actions they are taking to sanction the employee who engaged in deceptive practices while answering a customer experience complaint. I think that’s an entirely reasonable request.
The bigger problem for Moli.com is that the internet is not a 24 hours newscycle. Buzz around their funding and launch will fade very quickly, sure. But Valleywag will live forever. Google searches for Daniel DiFiore are not getting any more flattering. The Wikipedia article on Astroturfing is not getting less popular. Technorati isn’t getting smaller. The Chancer isn’t getting any kinder.
And, from where I’m sitting, MOLI.com’s credibility isn’t getting any better.
Final score: Moli.com fails at internet.
Sabrina Dent says:
Oh by the way, I did reply to Judy’s email. Here is what I said:
Dear Judy:
For the love of God, please get yourself some PR advice that isn’t completely and totally lacking internet savvy. You’re in the business of social networks, yet MOLI.com is displaying no intelligence at all in the way social networking and reputation actually functions outside of your network architecture plan.
While it’s fine to ignore unflattering blog pieces about your company, when your own employee is then caught engaging in duplicitous behaviour in that blog’s comments, leading to the revelation of his true identity and a history of such behaviour, you do not wait 23 hours to deal with it. You get out of bed, you get your PR person out of bed, and you issue a statement immediately. If you PR person is not available at 7PM or 2 AM or whenever you need her for crisis management, you fire her.
When you finally do get around to responding and throw out buzzwords like “absolute transparency” you don’t keep that policy under lock and key; you make it publicly available to establish a baseline for your credibility and public accountability for that promise.
And when you’re committed to running a reputable business, you don’t let astroturfing comments shilling for your company stand uncorrected on Digg, TechCrunch and GetSatisfaction. You post a retraction, in public, on those sites, where the comments appears.
And then you issue a press release apologising to those sites that were duped by your former employee, emphasizing that this is not the way MOLI.com wants to do business or engage with internet users.
On a personal note, I would like to also add that when you finally do make a statement? You do not blame a blogger for publishing “mis-information” when the entire crisis was caused not by a blog piece, but by your own employee’s campaign of mis-information.
Welcome to the internet. Please treat it kindly.
– Sabrina
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 4:54 pmnouns says:
Oh my, where to start?
I’ve already mentioned the need for an ‘Idiot’s guide to anonymity on the Internet’. Do the good people at Moli.com really need a guide to hyperlinks as well? And search engines? And aggregators?
Do I need to explain that continuing on with the dissembling approach detailed above is MASSIVELY damaging to any brand? Far more so for an online brand and, here’s the kicker, potentially fatal for a brand whose key differentiating attribute is supposed to be its robust approach to online privacy.
Using the term ‘associate’ as a distancing tactic is so played out at this stage that it honestly amazed me to see it being attempted here. As Sabrina points out, and I also mentioned in another comment, you have no wriggle room here Judy. The office junior can’t be blamed. 3rd party agencies can’t be blamed.
In that comment I also advised Dan that crediting his customers’ intelligence was always a good thing. Insulting your customers’ intelligence outright is therefore a bad thing, okay? Slipping the snide “unintentional mis-representation” fabrication into your Techcrunch comment and not including it in your direct customer contact speaks volumes about your attitude towards your customers.
Here’s a quote I’m fond of, from Bill Bryson. “Most big companies don’t like you very much, except for hotels, airlines and Microsoft, which don’t like you at all.” Adding your organisation to that list in your launch week is very, very dumb.
I regret not getting odds from a bookmaker when Sabrina first wondered how long it would take for mention of a transparent privacy policy to occur. After all, it is damage limitation step #1 as we’re all well aware here, the corporate equivalent of politicians establishing a committee to investigate the propensity of stable doors to mysteriously swing open in the night. I eagerly await the next instalment in this sorry mess …
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 5:02 pmnouns says:
Damn, “transparent privacy policy” in the last paragraph should be “transparent communications policy”.
Moli, look what you’ve done to me!
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 5:06 pmhonorguard says:
I must say, this is one of the most well written pieces I have seen on the net. I am shocked you are not more widely read. I know I will add your feed today! Thanks
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 5:17 pmSabrina Dent says:
Nouns, I really did want to shout “BINGO!” when I read that. Considering that there are a very limited number of things Moli can do to make this worse, you might want to open a betting pool on “cease and desist” or “takedown notice” and see if you can recoup your losses.
I’m interested in your take on something, while we’re here. In reading back through these posts to, you know, relive the adventure, it occurred to me that Dan’s apology as Dan in the original post shares a great deal of phrasing with Judy’s TechCrunch post. What do you reckon?
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 7:13 pmnouns says:
Ha ha, I’ll play, after all I suppose its worth s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g it out and speaking very slowly for the benefit of your readers originating from a certain domain. After re-reading the apology and the TC comment, a few additional points came to mind.
Hawk - “I will include my name and title in all posts about company information”
Judy - “include their name and title in all posts about company information”
Apart from the astounding similarity, this phrase is very carefully constructed. What is the difference between posts about the company, and posts about “company information”? Quite significant I would say. Can anyone from Moli enlighten me as to what the policy is on posts about the company and its awesomeness?
I’m also unsure about the absolute legal distinctions between posts, comments etc. If we were to be somewhat technical about this, using fairly commonly accepted terms, what Dan published under his nom de plume were comments, not posts.
“Mis-information” - I’d personally think that hyphenating this, whilst correct, is very much a minority usage. May be a US/UK difference though.
I’m surprised I didn’t notice this one earlier - why is Judy apologising to Mike’s readers?
The rest of the comment seems strangely slapdash compared to the first paragraph.
“Our company ‘s global headquarters are actually based in southern Florida were the majority of our 55 associates are based.”
1. “based” x 2
2. “were” should be where
3. first use of based is redundant, unless the global headquarters are mobile in some way.
“show you how are privacy features work”
Bingo bonus points for spotting this one …
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 9:29 pmSabrina Dent says:
The “are” typo appeared in the email she sent me as well. I didn’t point it out because I make mistakes like that all the time, and hell, when someone is doing what Judy’s doing, you don’t need to pick on their spelling to point and laugh.
But considering the bits you compared and the use of “mis-information” by Hawk and “mis-represented” by Judy, I’m thinking both of their comments have been through the same soul-sucking, corporate PR machine. These people really, really need better PR.
And I’m with you on the bit where it bothers me that the president of a social network doesn’t know the difference between a post and a comment. I don’t think they’re obfuscating as much as they’re just, well, not that clued into the internet. You know, the place their business exists?
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 10:08 pmnouns says:
Aww, you had to come out and say it straight up. I thought we could have built up the suspense some more.
Wrap-up from my perspective for the Moli PR folks. It’s been painfully apparent since Dan’s miraculous discovery of spelling and subclauses that you’ve been involved in by-the-book damage limitation on this one. You may feel a little miffed that you had your shortcomings relative to the Internet pointed out to you. You may feel that it was just unlucky that Dan chose this blog to comment on. Maybe he should have looked at the author’s About / Portfolio / Resume pages and withheld comment. Maybe.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. It’s not just people with Sabrina’s background that are au fait with the clunky workings of last century’s PR. Millions of people are.
Ask a savvy marketer and they’ll tell you that their audience is pretty much up to speed with any of the tactics they try and use. They know that there aren’t really any new tricks to be pulled on contemporary consumers, just variations on the classics (astroturfing has been around for quite some time). So the good marketers and advertisers got creative. The rest are still yelling into the void of marketing noise, but that’s another story.
As this happened to marketing communications in general, now it’s happening to PR. The Internet can be a scary place that often doesn’t behave the way a carefully crafted ‘engagement strategy’ would like it to. You need to realise this and figure out what your new role is in this dynamic, where customers can and will speak back in an uncontrolled environment. It certainly isn’t to churn out automaton-speak. If you’re concerned about covering your ass, you can do this and sound human at the same time. It just takes a little practice.
It’s sad that this blew up over a social networking site that had a great pitch combined with fortuitous timing in coming to market. I may have poked fun at some of the more outlandishly silly things that were done over the last few days, but I genuinely hope some lessons are learned. Maybe play a quick word association game with ’social network’ - off the top of my head I get ‘people’, ‘friendly’, ‘communication’, ‘connection’.
Did I really just write that? ;-) I can has moar internetz fightz now pleez?
Thursday, 31 January, 2008, 11:45 pmneuro says:
Sabrina, I love you. Please keep doing stuff like this, astroturfers should be taught their lesson. With some form of repetitive spanking device.
Sunday, 3 February, 2008, 10:18 pmSabrina Dent says:
Neuro, I <3 you too, honey :) Nice to see you around these parts!
Sunday, 3 February, 2008, 11:01 pm