Incoherent Thought

DSW issued a press release yesterday stating that they were suing Zappos.com, one of the largest online shoe retailers, for copyright infringement. Zappos.com, a company who’s online presence has recently skyrocketed as a result of their adaptation of various social-media endeavors, has yet to be notified directly of this lawsuit (1:30pm EST 5/13/08) other than by the press release.

This strange lack of communication was mentioned by the CEO of Zappos in a twitter comment stating: “Weird, just found out through a PRESS RELEASE that DSW filed a lawsuit against Zappos. Maybe phone call, letter, or email more productive??” (keep in mind you can’t use more than 140 characters on twitter, hence the broken english seen in most twitter comments)

He then later made another twitter comment posted late last night stating that he “Just checked with Zappos legal team and haven’t received any communication (phone call, letter, email) from DSW, just press release. Weird.”

Zappos.com has taken an interesting approach to embracing social media - their online shoe-store features four separate blogs, one of which is maintained by the CEO and COO (who not only blog frequently, but are always replying to consumer questions/remarks/feedback on twitter directly), as well as a twitter feed that lets you see any Zappos related comments/tweets in one collective source. You can check it out for yourself (it’s pretty cool, not to mention that this is the first brand I’ve seen pull this off successfully) by going to http://twitter.zappos.com. They also have a feature that lets you see a collected feed of what Zappos employees are twittering and it looks as if a lot of them are frequent users of twitter.com.

The consumer response to this lawsuit has already been rampant across blogs and other social-networking platforms, all seeming to take the side of Zappos.com and pointing the nasty PR finger at DSW and their recently launched online site. According to the press release, “The suit alleged that the name DSW was being used in multiple URLs, along with DSW store photographs, in an effort to mislead consumers into believing they were on a DSW related website.” DSW recently launched their online site after “numerous” customer requests for a way to shop 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Taken from a BNet article comparing the advertising campaigns used by the two retail shoe giants - “Analysts weren’t expecting DSW.com to open until the second half of 2008, but the $26.3 million project soft-launched April 23. DSW plans no marketing other than promotional flyers and e-mails to its 8.6 million loyalty card holders.” Compare that to their comment saying, “Zappos doesn’t do a lot of advertising, but what it does is brilliant. When you take off your shoes in the TSA line at 15 airports around the country, they go into bins with Zappos ads on the inside.” That may account for how Zappos.com has seen growth from an initial $1.6 million in 2001 to over $800 million last year meanwhile DSW has been facing not only a decline in store-bought purchases but also started off the first quarter of 2008 already down 1.7%. That being said, DSW is still the big-dog in this fight - last year taking in $1.41 billion in revenue.

If you want to see for yourself how a company can use social-media to their advantage, take a look at the Twitter accounts for the top two executives at Zappos and see what they’ve been talking about with their customers/random people on the ‘net:

The CEO - Tony Hsieh - can be found on twitter via: http://twitter.com/zappos
The COO - Alfred Lin - can be found on twitter via http://twitter.com/zappos_alfred

I just came across this over at www.themoth.org/listen/ It’s a collection of some of the most odd as well as some of the most hilarious stories as told by the person who lived through the event.

From Dr. Ari Handel (Ph. D in Neuroscience in 2000) talking about the problems that arise when you fall in love with your monkey to an EMT talking about the time that he was shot, there are some crazy stories to be heard there. Another good one is from Richie DiSalvo talking about “Anthony The Hat.” Richie’s claim to fame is that he is credited as being the inventor of the Baby Calzone as well as the cheese-filled pizza crust. Genius……

So go have an early morning laugh by heading over to www.themoth.org and prepare yourself for story-time with some great storytellers…

image from the flickr collection of flickr.com/photos/gregor_y/

This was taken from a quote by China Miéville from The Believer. I feel that it is a perfect description of the active curiosity that is necessary for any serious Account Planner/Interaction Designer. It all boils down to that natural curious instinct that, at times, has the potential to give you an insight into someone else’s experience who has a completely different/random perspective on life that you. This is something that can’t be achieved by sitting in a round room brainstorming what type of person uses your product. From absorbing yourself in random magazines, books, even to the occasional user group meeting, interacting with people that are passionate about something (and it really can be just about anything) shows you the true nature of your consumer. Anyhow, here’s the quote:

What I love is passion. One of my fascinations is trade magazines. I love picking up specialists’ magazines about subjects I know nothing about. For instance, you pick up a magazine that is the house journal of tropical-fish keepers or model-train builders. I have no interest in model trains; I have no interest in tropical fish, but I love reading the magazines, because you get this insight into this world of debate and passion and argument, and then you get two competing magazines with different platforms who are dissing each other because this is a world where the people involved in it are absolutely in love with what they do. What geeks have, geeks in any field, be it a field like science fiction or a field like tropical fish, is that they are moved to do what they do because of a love and passion for the field above all else.

~ China Miéville

Yes, I am a geek. I have two blogs, am a constant news junkie, my RSS feeders are constantly overflowing, but for some reason….I love it. And half of the sites I subscribe to were found thanks to services like Stumbleupon.com, where it can transport you to a random website based on pre-determined categories…what I did was select just about all of them (there are around 90+ to choose from), so every-time I click on Stumble, I never quite know what I’m in store for.

Regardless, It’s a great tool, even if you’re not as information-obsessed as I might be. There are enough categories where I’m sure it could help you find new resources for whatever it is that YOU’RE into….so go check it out… or better yet…. what hobbies/obsessions do you harbor that others might call you a dork for? I’m interested…. if you want to remain anonymous feel free to use the Contact Me page instead of commenting… Links to related sites would also be appreciated.