by Walter Naeslund on October 22, 2009
Those stubborn bastards! It took me hours in the live chat with several different support people, a bunch of emails, and even flashing a bit of the famous Walter rage to get the USA-based web hosting service Host Gator to listen. But finally they did. Here’s the story:
I was working on a Wordpress Thesis site that was going to be hosted in two versions (Swedish and English) in two different countries (Sweden and the US) and couldn’t get one of the scripts (TimThumb.php) built in to Thesis to function properly on the American server. The Swedish version, which is hosted on Binero worked just fine. After digging through some documentation and forums, I deduced that the error must be that the mod_security settings on Host Gator were set to tight.
I wrote about this to the people at Host Gator and simply asked them to whitelist these rules for the domain in question. They said that they would love to do that, but not if they hadn’t seen the error triggered in their logs. In other words – they refused. I got a bunch of answers from them, here is one:
(5:36:34 AM) Nathan Mo: I’m sorry but I’m unable to confirm this issue for you. We do not provide support for third party scripts.
After a few hours of fruitless nagging I got a bit pissed and wrote this:
With one install (at Binero.se in this case, but it works equally well at other hosts) we get the desired results. At Hostgator we do not. To me, having spent 8 years in an institute of technology, this is an equation with one (1) unknown. Just because we can’t see the unknown (that’s why we call it an unknown) doesn’t mean we cant deduce it from said equation. I can’t help you with your methods of debugging, but I CAN help you with deduction.
(Ok. I really “only” spent 4,5 years at LiTH, but exaggerated for effect).
Finally I get this answer:
I whilsted your domain for those three mod_security rules. That should not make any change because I can see from the logs that the domain has never triggered those rules.
So… finally I got them to do what I asked them to do from the beginning. Did it work? Drumroll…
…BOOM. Everything fallls into place and works perfectly. Only with about a day down the drain because of the stubbornness of Host Gator support staff. In the end, courage to try things will prevail.
(Ps. If reading this as a tutorial, don’t forget to set cache permission to 775).
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by Walter Naeslund on October 15, 2009
Suddenly my Twitscoop-window started screaming at me with two huge keywords: “Finland” and “Broadband”. What the… I thought and started investigating. Turns out Finland, as the first country in the world, has made broadband access each citizens right by law, and suddenly, BOOM, Finland is on the map as the most progressive country in the world. It’s actually part of my 25 year prediction for the future:
…we retain the symmetry of the internet. We treat it like infrastructure in place to make markets and information flow efficient. Like a great system of streets and water pipes.
Meanwhile in other countries, legislation is passed allowing suspension from the internet as a good and fair punishment for passing along “propriatary” information. Make a projection from these two scenarios to see where they’ll end up in terms of innovation and growth, and also compare them to the 25-year prediction post above. In Sweden we just passed the FRA-law, which also leads us in the wrong direction, even if I personally don’t think it’s remotely as dagerous as the IPRED and IPRED2 laws.
Anyway, hats of for Finland, who have now proven themselves as forerunners in the online world! Congratulations!
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by Walter Naeslund on September 24, 2009
Here comes a short story on how not to answer customer complaints, a story that I’ve had the benefit to study closely over the past couple of months.
Long story short, my wonderful girlfriend got what we in Sweden call “värdelös service” (worthless service in English) from Elgiganten, a chain of stores selling consumer electronics. She had bought a MacBook there with an expensive insurance program, which Elgiganten didn’t want to honor when the computer died in an accident involving a glass of water. You can read the whole Elgiganten story on her blog. (It’s in Swedish, but hey, that’s why we have Google translate).
Anyway, after being met by rude people all over the place, and finally receiving an SMS where they try to make her pay more than the price of a new computer (!) for the failed repairs…
…she eventually loses her temper and writes the blog post above. But she also tweets about it…
Recently, I’ve had very good experiences with Twitter as a traffic driver. Retweeting of juicy content just works really well to boost a story. And nothing says juicy gossip like bad service. I don’t know why, but this stuff really pisses people off, and makes them really help out with RTs.
And Elgiganten are not there to answer. The closest thing I could find to Elgitanten is this…
…which doesn’t look so good (or genuine) to say the least.
Within a couple of hours, this thing has grown so big that Elgiganten’s head of service posts a comment on my girlfriend’s blog, personally taking responsibility for settling this affair and sorting out what has happened – complete with his phone number (again, foreigners, use Google Translate):
Hej Katja,
Mitt namn är Robert Jensen och jag arbetar som servicechef för Elgiganten. Jag blir uppriktigt sagt ledsen och besviken över att du som kund hos oss har fått en sådan dålig upplevelse. Detta går helt emot våra principer och policy om kundvård inom bolaget. Om du ringer 08-580 866 00 och söker mig och lämnar dina kontaktuppgifter kommer jag att kontakta dig under morgondagen för att hjälpa dig få ett avslut på serviceärendet. Det ska själklart inte behöva gå till såhär, varför jag också kommer att följa upp detta intert så snart jag har all information om ärendet.
Jag beklagar det inträffade.
Mvh
Robert Jensen
Servicechef
Elgiganten
Great response I would say, with one major problem: Being reactive is not a good and sustainable way of working with customer relations. What you (yes, I’m talking to you now Robert Jensen) are experiencing right now is just the beginning. You need to figure out a way to manage how you participate in the discussion about your brand, and you’re among the lucky ones to get an early heads up here. Take advantage of that.
Who did you say your agency was? 
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by Walter Naeslund on September 24, 2009
I‘ve done quite a bit of thinking about how the social web will make the world a better place. I’ve written about it, and also lectured about the social web, good, and evil.
So when a talk by Evgeny Morozov popped on TED on the topic of how the net aids dictatorships, I was naturally interested. Was somebody going to put up a good argument against my theories?
The answer is yes. And no. Evgeny argues beautifully for the ideas, but simultaneously shows how the dictatorships actually start using the web to reach out and communicate, much like I think companies should. They are proactive, the contribute, they engage, and they are present. They DON’T try to cencor stuff, because they have realized that participation is more effective. And I tell you – if dictatorships do this successfully, companies should too!
Then, of course, these dictatorships abuse their power to flood the system with government biased comments and spam, and commit evil acts, but I’m not as sure as Evgeny is about how effective this is. Compare it for example to this example from the very well designed guidelines at Intel for how to effectively use the social web:
Be transparent. Your honesty—or dishonesty—will be quickly noticed in the social media environment. If you are blogging about your work at Intel, use your real name, identify that you work for Intel, and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, be the first to point it out.
This is not a guideline that the dictatorships exactly follow. On the other hand, perhaps other commenters don’t dare use their real name either for fear of physical abuse, so this way It may actually work for government agents to blend into the anonymous crowd. Again – we see an example of how anonymity leads to evil and abuse.
Incidently, the campaign led by The Cartel to hunt down file sharers also leads to anonymization of the web, making laws like HADOPI and IPRED all the more troublesome – and also promoters of more serious evil.
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by Walter Naeslund on September 21, 2009
It was more than eleven years ago that I started my academic career at the M.Sc.-program for media technology at Linköping Institute of Technology. Way back then, the web was completely different, Google didn’t exist (it was actually founded the same year), and ICQ was the name of the game for communication.
But it wasn’t too long ago that I went to ad school, and now that I think of it, I find a few things about my education there quite strange. While I was there I did a bunch of interesting stuff. Formally, I was a copywriter student at Berghs School of Communication, but in reality I was more into strategy, and I also did one of my internships as an art director at BBH New York (who also have an SEO-questionable big Flash-behemoth as their site by the way). I have always loved trying different things, and this was certainly a great opportunity to do that.
Oh, nostalgia. My desk at BBH New York.
But the copywriting education itself was flawed in one key way – whoever put it together didn’t seem to be aware of something called “the internet”. I never once in two years heard anyone talk about web copy, much less give a lecture on SEO. I’m not sure how it is there today, but if they don’t dedicate time to that, I think it is very strange.
But the problem isn’t just in the schools. I read an article recently in the Swedish advertising magazine Resumé by a young and successful copywriter who said that web copy doesn’t differ very much from traditional copy. This is what he said:
“Jag ställer mig också ibland frågande till definitionen av webbcopy. Skillnaden är inte så stor, det är bara de dramaturgiska förutsättningarna som är lite annorlunda. Men i grunden handlar det om att kunna skriva intresseväckande”.
or in my own humble English translation:
“I sometimes question the definition of web copy. The difference isn’t that big, it’s just the dramaturgical premises that are somewhat different. But basically, it’s all about writing to awaken interest”.
Assuming he was quoted correctly, I find this strange. We can of course have different perspectives on what constitutes a big difference, but I would say that the difference is definitely significant! And more importantly, most copywriters don’t have any knowledge of, or experience from writing for search engines.
Google isn’t like your normal target audience. For one, Google doesn’t read between the lines. Humans understand that a passage like “…the dark mysterious pulse of the the night…” refers to, say, dance or sex, but can Google understand that? Google does, on the other hand, read around the lines, takes context into account, weighs remote links, clusters and evaluates what others have written – stuff that humans have a harder time doing.
I tell copywriters “to write for the hearts of men and the mind of Google”, and that is much harder than just doing one or the other. Good copywriters will need two sets of skills, and will be harder to find, harder to educate, and much more expensive to buy, simply because of the upcoming imbalance between supply and demand of this skill combo.
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by Walter Naeslund on September 15, 2009
Last week I wrote about how Forsman & Bodenfors don’t understand how the internet works. In absolute terms, the description was fair, but in relative terms, they are not worse than most of the advertising business. Yesterday we got another painfull piece of evidence to that effect.
I’m talking about the brand new website of Lowe Brindfors. But to discuss the site we need to separate two things: Design and communications efficiency.
Design
It’s a matter of taste of course, but I think this page is very well designed from a print designers point of view. It’s excellent print design, but awful interactive design. Because it is not interactive. It’s like designing a very pretty car with only passenger seats. And just like such a beautiful but useless car, this site belongs in a museum. Which leads me into point 2:
Communications Efficiency
This thing is a very pretty printed catalogue in digital format. It’s what websites were in the late 90’s. The entire thing is a big Flash-page, with text that you cannot copy, films you cannot share, posters that you can download as PDFs (!) but not share with anyone, and invisible coworkers that you can only reach via email or telephone. No wonder they have this disclaimer on the site:
Apparently they think that the elusive internet out there is about technology and gadgets, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Because really, these new technologies are VEHICLES of ideas. Nothing else. But the ideas have to be made for a world of transparency, not to fill expensive media plans. And for you to come up with such ideas, you have to know how this transparent world functions.
Search and SEO is ONE important aspect to understand in order to get people “to spend time with the brand” (to use Lowe Brindfors’ own terminology), and this is what the brand new Lowe Brindfors site looks like to Google:
According to Google, what’s most interesting about the new Lowe Brindfors site seems to be their webmail (!), followed by pages from their old site, and a PDF press-release from August 2008.
Disclaiming your way out of obvious lack of knowledge about the psychology and behavior on the internet with something general like a “Hey, boy slow it down”-disclaimer becomes embarrassing when confronted with clients who know the internet – something that becomes more and more common every day thanks to knowledgeable rebels and speakers on the topic like Johan Ronnestam, Simon Sundén, and Björn Alberts, just to name a few. [Edit: + Jesper Åström]
Things don’t improve when I read what Peter Willebrand our Swedish ad-business press Resumé has to say about the new site:
“Resume.se thankfully notes that the trend is the same as in other digital communication: simpler, faster, and more head on”.
This statement is very general, and also wrong. The site isn’t fast. It’s a heavy Flash film with a loader from hell. The trend of the internet is not “simpler, faster, and more head on”. The trend, or rather the permanent shift, is to social participation in dynamically coordinated institution-less groups, which means that a site needs to support that behavior. You need to love people, not just say you love them. The new thing about the internet is not that people can now talk back to you, it is that everybody can talk to everybody and coordinate discussions and topics without necessarily involving you. If anything, this is more complex, not simpler. Grasping the entire strategy for this more complex system requires a more diverse skill set ranging from behavioral psychology to technology.
The bottom line is that you can have the prettiest house in the world, but to make friends, you have to meet them. Or else you’ll end up being very lonely.
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by Walter Naeslund on August 6, 2009
Today the “Sweden’s most swedish job”-campaign that I was involved in with Syrup Sthlm and Bizkit earlier this year came to an end. Calle Engström, who has been traveling around Sweden blogging, filming and tweeting about his experience, arrived to Stockholm and the STF hostel Af Chapman after posting 82 YouTube-films, 371 blog posts and 762 tweets.
In the early stages we received a lot of comments, both positive and critical, about the project. Most comments have been about the “plagiarizing” of Cumming Nitro’s “Best Job in The World”-campaign. And like I’ve said earlier, you can all start by removing the quotes around “plagiarizing”. Because even though the campaign in itself is perhaps not so similar, honestly tagging on to the very successful “BJITW”-campaign has been crucial in powering the campaign. We actually needed to make it sound more similar than it actually was. And we did. Those of you who have seen my lectures on social media strategy has heard me talking about 7 different techniques, of which one is referred to by me as “Sailing”. And well – this is exactly what sailing is about. Find a good gust of wind and tag along with it.
Anyway – today we can evaluate and look at the sheer numbers. First off we’ve had major media coverage in basically all media of significance in Sweden. From the big ones to the local press. But more interestingly the traffic to the STF website has increased by 70%. And for a client where the website is so absolutely crucial, this is not bad.
Check out Calle in the clip below or on his STF-site.
Read the full article →
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by Walter Naeslund on April 18, 2009
I encourage everyone to cut out and frame today’s editorial in DN. It’s one of the strangest editorials I have read in a newspaper of a democratic country, and it will probably be worth money some day. Since it was an editorial, I actually considered cancelling my subscription. But then I read this article, which is more balanced and actually shows quite clearly a couple of interesting points.
Henrik Pontén’s quote is, for example, really entertaining. Especially when he claims that this verdict will lead to “reasonable content” on the web. 
We can see in this article how this is a war between conservatives and innovators. Researchers are sceptical to these controlling behaviors, while corporations making money off of the old system want to retain the status quo. I guess one can’t blaim them. Humans are inherently afraid of change.
More interestingly, Viasat’s CEO Hans Skarplöth, whom I have discussed here earlier, is in this article as well, calling the false sense of security derived from this verdict and the IPRED-law “naive”. Brand-wise we can now start to see one of the big winners, and I think that Viasat’s moral courage will be in the marketing textbooks and lectures of the future. As will the ruined brand name Metallica.
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by Walter Naeslund on April 17, 2009
Henrik Pontén of Antipiratbyrån (The Anti Pirate Agency) is quoted saying the following in SvD:
“Naturally this [the verdict in the Pirate Bay trial] is a success for all rights owners and creatives…”
This quote makes me think of the one where Ines Uusman said (in 1996) that “the Internet is a fad that will blow over” – one of the most embarrassing quotes ever. And since Ines didn’t actually say that, Henrik is now a good candidate for the most embarrassing quote ever.
You’ve got it all backwards I believe. The big losers today are the creatives. And the innovators. And all of us who want to create a better and richer cultural future.
Anyway. Now, Henrik, that you have your sugar rush moment, why don’t you comment on this post and explain it to me?
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by Walter Naeslund on April 5, 2009
We are now starting to see the effects of the Swedish IPRED-law, which states that copyright holders can go after individuals downloading protected content. Apparently, Swedish internet traffic has now dropped by nearly half. And since when is that a good thing? I thought traffic was valuable?
I believe that you can never be quite certain when you make predictions about the future, but in this case I think that the case is quite clear, and that we can now see the evidence emerging.
But first off, I want to be very clear that I am on the side of artists and other creators of value. I have strong opinions about this subject, but they are all about realism. Not about anarchism.
What the IPRED-law is doing is to protect an outdated business model for music, motion pictures, and other content. It’s implementation will remove incentives for product- and business model development like for example Spotify.
What’s worse, however, is that it directs valuable resources to evil forces, such as terrorists and criminals. Why? Well, a lot of people care about music and film. Much more people, in fact, than are criminals and terrorists. And thus there is a broad base for recruiting creatives to help keep music, film and other content free. If we go after file sharing individuals using the IPRED-law, there will be strong incentives to develop stealth file sharing software, and a large and powerful community engaging in it. We will quickly see increasingly sofisticated software of this type appearing and being deployed. With file sharing, we’ll be back to where we started, but criminals and terrorists will have brand new fast stealth tools which they would never have had the resources to develop themselves. And even if this if perhaps an exagerrated fear (there is after all already great stealth services out there, as well as bad guys using them), it clearly shows that this law will be completely useless very soon because of people learning to use these stealth services.
And what about open wireless networks? Will they all disappear now? That will not make brands trying to utilize IPRED very popular, and will actually damage the country’s progress towards connectedness. Read on.
Because another angle is the branding angle. And here it becomes very interesting when opening todays newspaper DN (unfortunately not linkable yet). In one article you can read about how people are boycotting the film- and music industries. Here are some examples of quotes from the public cited in the article:
“I’m completely going to boycott the music- and film industry now. Earlier, I’ve spent an average of 1000kr (ca $100) per month on cinema, DVDs, concerts and CDs. That will now end. All this will be cancelled”.
Or this one from a middle age person:
“I’ve never file shared in my life, but now I have to if only to show them that they can’t scare us. Let’s fight to protect our last rights. I have just downloaded file sharing software and figured out how it works. This will be fun”.
Or this interesting one:
“Let’s demand a seal for artists entirely without association with the major labels”. Now wouldn’t that be interesting.
Like I wrote the other day, we can already see smart companies, like Viasat for example, taking advantage of this, publicly promising NEVER to have anything to do with the IPRED-law, and thereby end up in the same future oriented category as for example Spotify.
If I were a copyright holder today I would think once, twice, and three times before even thinking about using this law. It may very well cost you your brand.
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