The Big in Japan team develops intellectual property to allow brands to create unique interactions with their customers.  Our clients include FOX Television, LEGO, TechData, The United States Postal Service and The Federal Reserve to name a few.

Our latest development, ServiceGuy, utilizes patent pending technology to allow for ‘live connections’ between homeowners and service providers.  ServiceGuy is a real world example (visit http://serviceguy.org) of the type of interaction that is possible utilizing our technology.  Our team is prepared to implement our technology within your brand’s internet presence, allowing for a private label experience for your customers.

Typical referral systems focus on demographic matching, while ServiceGuy allows for ‘availability matching.’  Combined with your existing referral system (or a new system we implement), the underlying ServiceGuy technology will allow you to provide immediate ‘live connections’ between homeowners (users) and contractors (service providers).  In many cases an immediate connection is more valuable than a perfect connection.  What if you could offer users the ability immediately talk to a service provider 24/7?  The ServiceGuy call engine can call 25-250 service providers at the same time, ensuring at least one provider is available to take the user’s call.  For example:

Each service provider who accepts the call from the ServiceGuy call engine is prompted to press a key to indicate their availability.  The first provider to do so is given answering instructions and is connected to the user.  The call is recorded for the service provider’s records.

The system can call the user at a later date (1 day, 1 week or 1 month) and request feedback about the service provider.  Feedback can then be used to increase or decrease a providers position in the call queue.

For more information please contact:

Alexander Muse
amuse@biggu.com
1+214.558.1079

Last week I wrote a post titled, “Timothy Ferriss: ruining lives four hours at a time” where I was critical of Timothy’s book.  I have never received more legit comments on a single post that I wasn’t willing to moderate.  OMG, evidently there are lots of fans of Timothy’s idea that a four hour work week is a good idea.  They get VERY pissed if you say anything negative about the book, so pissed that they cannot help but use vulgarity to express their views.  My question: Should I redact the vulgarity and post the comments or simply delete them?  I have been deleted them so far, but started to wonder if I was making a mistake.  Thoughts?

The eSport Partners situation is a great case study for any company who is interested in what NOT to do when you find yourself the target of former employees who make random comments on blog posts. Sometimes the best response to negative feedback is no response. Other times it makes sense to respond. Let me know what you think about this situation:

Almost eight months ago we wrote a post titled, “The eSports Partners Comment Debacle.” The post detailed how I had written a short post indicating that eSports had raised money (actually debt). The post was short and positive. Several disgruntled employees (former I assume) commented on the post indicating linking to lawsuits filed by various governmental organizations. According to the suits, the company didn’t seem to treat their workers fairly. Truth be told, the comments seemed a little like sour grapes and I didn’t really give them a second thought.

Almost a year later lawyers from eSports Partners contacted me and demanded that I remove the post and comments as well as provide the identities of the employees who made the comments. After a few conversations I decided to comply with their request and remove the post and comments, but I replaced it with a scanned copy of the demand letter. The lawyers contacted me once again and threatened to sue me if I didn’t remove their letter. I refused.

So what is new? If you Google eSport Partners the third result is my post containing the letter from their lawyers. So what? Almost monthly I get emails from potential employees asking for more information about the company. Here is an example message (some details changed to protect the identity of the person):

> —– Original Message —–
> From: /redacted /
> To: /redacted/
> Sent: August 3, 2007 4:49:44 PM GMT-0600
> Subject: ESports Partners
>
> Hey Alex,
> I saw your retracted post on Esports and I’m going in
> there on Thursday for an interview. Can’t find any
> web history on the posting you had on them and was
> hoping you would fill me in on any information that would
> be helpful to me.
>
> I have a kid and a husband, so I take my career
> considerations seriously. Any way you could fill me
> in on what the context was on the post?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> /redacted/

Of course I can’t say much, other than explain the situation because I don’t know much. I do know that the company really mishandled the response. In this case I believe eSports Partners should have left well enough alone and ignored the comments.

I started playing with YouTube back in 2005 and didn’t really get it.  I posted a couple of videos, but I wasn’t a consumer (i.e. I didn’t watch other people’s videos unless someone blogged about one).  Fast forward to this year and add the Apple TV to the mix.  I bought Apple TVs for the office and the house and found myself showing off the Apple TV by playing videos from YouTube.

Soon we started turning on YouTube (via Apple TV) any time we had a few people over.  We would each pick a couple of ‘funny’ videos to play and let the system rip.  It wasn’t like watching traditional TV, something we would never consider doing with guests, instead it was a different experience.  The clips are short.  The content is kitsch. The experience in a word is casual.  It didn’t hamper our conversation, it enriched the content.  YouTube + AppleTV = Great for Small Parties.

Now with my iPhone I find myself doing the same thing.  People want to see how it works and after I show them the visual voice mail I show off YouTube.  People are amazed.  YouTube finally makes sense for me.  Will I watch hours of YouTube?  Never.  Will I watch 2-3 three minute clips per week?  Definitely.