Tag: conversation

The conversation will take place with or without you

conversation I don’t often make “reactive” posts, but I did on Friday when I posted about local radio station Big Earl 96.3 switching formats and becoming Capital FM. I had noticed a lot of incoming traffic to an old post of mine about Big Earl, and decided I’d figure out why. I learned that the radio station “flipped the switch” on the new format that afternoon, and as a result, hundreds of listeners took the web to find out what happened. I posted about it so that others would learn the answer as well.

Now both posts are getting lots of traffic, and the new one has received a bunch of comments too. There are two questions to be asked here: why are people coming to these posts, and once they arrive, why do they comment?

My old post is the #1 result for the “what happened to big earl” search query, and my new post is #2 when you search for “96.3 capital fm“. Until today, it was actually #1, ahead of the radio station’s own website. The top five search queries that people used to find the posts yesterday were “capital fm edmonton”, “96.3 capital fm”, “big earl 96.3”, “big earl fm”, and “big earl”. In the last 24 hours alone, those two posts have been viewed more than 300 times.

So the reason that my two posts are getting lots of traffic is that they are ranked very highly in Google, and the reason people are searching is that they were given no notice about the switch. I guess that’s the way the radio industry works, you can’t really prepare people for a complete 180. As a result, lots of people were curious.

Once they arrived, why did they comment? I think the answer is very simple – Newcap Broadcasting simply isn’t participating in the conversation. Some listeners are happy about the switch, and they want to let the station know. Others are very unhappy, and they too want to voice their opinions. Aside from a very cumbersome “Members Club” section of their website, Capital FM doesn’t make it easy for their listeners to communicate. I think it’s a shame, really.

Like newspapers, radio stations are on the decline. Listeners are abandoning the airwaves for the web and iPods. And companies like Newcap aren’t doing much to reverse the trend. Which would you prefer – a radio station that suddenly starts playing completely different music than what you’re used to and basically says “tough luck”, or a radio station that changes its tune and also tells you to “have your say on our Facebook page?” It’s a no-brainer (even if your opinion won’t change anything, you’ll feel better about being able to share it).

CKRA has changed formats so many times now that you’d think they’d be better at it than they are.

It’s a different world than it used to be. Fifteen years ago, if a radio station switched formats, an article in the local paper would probably be about the only coverage it would get. Today, the web makes it easy for anyone to chime in.

As the comments on my post illustrate, the conversation will happen anyway. Newcap would be wise to join in.

UPDATE (4/1/2008): They’ve created a Facebook group! You can check it out here.

Google is missing that human side

Post ImageTough times for Google right now. They were called out in BusinessWeek recently for creating lots of hype with few results. Scoble noted that they were completely missing from Gnomedex. Even I’ve made mention in the past that Google seems confused about themselves. And despite the fact that they only have one revenue stream, have grown too big too fast, and have dozens of other problems, I think a really important one is that Google seems to entirely lack a human side. An email I got from Google Checkout’s support team today really confirmed it for me.

I have read many a blog post citing Google’s complete inability to respond to emails or support requests, but I figured I’d try my luck and send one anyway. I emailed Google Checkout support, asking when Canadian merchants would be able to use the service (as we’re currently unable to). I wasn’t asking if, but rather when. This is the response I got:

At this time, only merchants with a United States address and bank account can integrate and process transactions through Google Checkout. We look forward to making the service more widely available in the near future.

Compare that with the help page on their website that I had already read:

At this time, only merchants with a U.S. address and bank account can process transactions through Google Checkout. We look forward to offering more options in the future.

Thanks Google, but I can read! Now to be honest, I wasn’t expecting a date or anything, but that’s not the point. This response could very well have come from an automated system (and who knows, maybe it was) as only the last sentence has been changed. And that is what is wrong with Google.

Google needs a human side. They need someone to maintain a regular blog, talking about everything, not just Google (a la Scoble). They need support people who can type a human response, something like “Hey, we love Canada, and oh btw, Happy Canada Day! We’re doing our best to bring you Google Checkout, so stay tuned!” They need real people to help launch and talk about new products. They need to become part of the community, they need to join the conversation, they need to act like humans instead of robots.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are so much better at this than Google. With all those smart people at Google, you’d think they would realize it’s better to participate?