18 Jan
2007
18 Jan
'07
5:51 p.m.
On Thu, 2007-01-18 at 07:09 -0800, Sellam Ismail wrote:
[ Large sections of rant removed in the interest of public safety. ]
I thought I'd weigh in on the latest policy change
on eBay.
. . .
But first I want to take the time to congratulate the
community for the big fuck you they gave to the VCM.
. . .
But quite frankly, why the fuck should I even bother?
You guys don't use it anyway.
. . .
So tell me, seriously, why should I bother moving forward
with the VCM?
. . .
Is there a reason you don't use it? Is there something
about the interface you don't like? Is there one or two
or three or five reasons why you don't like it or don't
want to use it? If so, why didn't you say so?
Perhaps, (and I'm just guessing here) you haven't insulted your
potential customer base enough yet. In my one use of the system, I put
together a bunch of Marvin's items I was interested in buying, and wrote
to him, only to find, apparently, that the items had already sold. Had
I seen THIS rant before I went there, I probably would not have gone in
the first place.
Running a consumer-based business is a lot like a relationship.
Judging strictly by THIS e-mail, in this case it is like a relationship
in which the female has decided to terminate the relationship, and the
male is going to beat her until she tells him WHY she is leaving. You
seem to have developed the opinion that potential customers owe you
something; as long as that is true, it cannot possibly succeed.
Let's take another example. Let's say I want to form a company to
produce an operating system, because Microsoft does, in my opinion, a
terrible job, releasing crappy, buggy code, and I feel that my friends
and I can do a better job. (True, incidentally...) Even assuming I was
correct in that feeling, do you have any idea how DAUNTING such a task
would be? I don't mean writing the operating system, I mean going up
against one of the most competent and ruthless marketing organizations
on the planet; it may well be impossible, and certainly has a Olympic
"difficulty" rating of at least three digits on a one-to-ten scale.
eBay may not be as ruthless as Microsoft, but they, like Microsoft, have
a market share position that even big competitors (Bidz, Yahoo!, etc.)
cannot touch. Their name has become synonymous with sales on the 'net,
and that is likely to be true for many years in any case.
If I start my O/S company, I am almost certainly going down in
flames. My sending of a foul-mouthed and insulting post to a list to
which I do not subscribe (and what does THAT isolated little fact say?)
to berate people, and essentially taunt them with "ALL of my bug
reports have been completed, and all bugs repaired, so why are you JERKS
still using that ridiculous Windows trash?" is the only way to simply
GUARANTEE failure.
Peace,
Warren E. Wolfe
wizard at voyager.net