By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email
I don't know why I'm surprised. I leaned long ago that anything free or inexpensive that works great will get wrecked by whomever owns that which was "almost perfect". Anyone remember the "Gillette Good News MicroTrac razor"? It was the perfect disposable razor. Gillette just discontinued it one day about five years ago. Who remember "the sponge"? Senseless wreckage! Well today add a new "wreck" and a soon-to-be-wreck.
Yesterday Facebook changed their "Fan Pages" to "Like Pages". That was dumb. Here I've been telling clients that in addition to corporate blogs they need a "Facebook Fan Page" now I guess I mean, "Oh you should have a 'Facebook Like Page'" It doesn't even make sense.
To see what I'm talking about go to TA's home page at www.TelecomAssociation.com. In the far right hand column you see we have images of what used to be our "Facebook Fans". Now I guess they are our "Likers". Of course since Facebook doesn't charge businesses for creating a "Fan Page" the busness can not turn around and dictate how they want their Fan Page to work, I guess it serves us right for using something we're being given but not being charged for.
The next train wreck in my marketing life? Salesforce buys JigSaw. Here we go again. JigSaw is such an incredibly great sales and marketing tool that I don't usually even tell other people about it because I want to keep it special for myself.
(For those of you who don't know about JigSaw, it's the world's coolest free tool for sales people where you can basically trade email addresses and phone numbers. Trying to find out the direct phone number or email address for a prospect so you can get around a pesky "gatekeeper"? JigSaw lets you do it for free by just inputting into JigSaw email addresses, job titles and phone numbers for people you already know that JigSaw does not have.)
The press release JigSaw sent out said, in effect, "Don't worry everything you like will stay the same!" Yeah, right! Take notice of the second part or the name "SalesForce". I'm pretty sure SalesForce will do whatever the hell they want with our favorite free prospecting tool.
I think I'll go find some kittens to kick!
