Monthly Archives: May 2010

Seth Godin has written about not letting the tail wag the dog. In lots and lots of words he says that all this social media is useless without a good product. Seth is absolutely correct.

On a social media level I think Zappos fails. I hate that they say their CEO reads everything, yet any idiot knows he’s not reading it all. Here’s how every email starts:

Hello, Thank you for emailing Tony. Although Tony receives over 2,000 emails a day and doesn’t have time to respond to all of them himself, rest assured that he reads EVERY email he receives. We are currently working on the implementation of a chip in Tony’s brain that automatically responds to emails with the response he would give but it’s going to take some time. But have no fear, Tony has developed a small team to address the issues for him.

I hate that they hired the meanest PR firm to ever invade the blogosphere. I hate that they try and sell Tony’s dumb book on every email they send you. Here’s how every email ends:

PS. In September of last year, Tony locked himself in a cabin at Lake Tahoe. He was working on a book titled “Delivering Happiness” that’s now due to be published on June 7! You can pre-order it on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/deliveringhappinessTake a look inside Zappos!

http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs

Follow Tony on Twitter!

http://twitter.com/zappos

So yeah, their social media sucks, but they carry good shoes. I like that I can order Alexander four pair of shoes in three sizes each, and then return all but two pair with no shipping fees. I really do like that. I like that I can shop by size, by brand or by color and not leave my house. I like not being at the shoe store with an eight year old boy. Soon he will be nine, and in a blink he will be ten, and I’m pretty sure shopping will change.

I absolutely detest Zappos social media. I get really angry when I think that just a year ago they invited to me to follow Tony around Las Vegas HQ for a few days, and then they hired an angry woman that would use her entire PR Firm (do not underestimate the power of a PR firm) to bully a mom blogger while she asserts that, “PR agencies are hired by clients to do many things, but most importantly, they are hired to secure positive, free coverage across all media — TV, print, radio, internet, social and blogosphere.” Which (according to well respected PR pros) is not exactly accurate.

The bottom line? I love Zappos. I love them so much that when they launched their couture selection they would call me at home to make sure all my needs were met. I had direct lines for sales people there. I’m fairly certain that I’ve spent five figures with Zappos (shut UP and don’t tell Mr. G.).

I’ll keep spending money at Zappos, because they have have great products and great service. See, PR really doesn’t matter much, and apparently blogging matters even less.

We all want more, we want the best for our kids. Defining the best can be problematic.

For the past month of so I’ve been actively house hunting. My husband wants a change of neighborhood, a larger lawn , and I would like a smaller house. We live in a neighborhood where we can walk to shopping, we would like to move to another neighborhood where we can also walk to shopping. We will not move into the hills, nor will we move further from the children’s school. The homes we are looking for are priced about the same as the one we will be selling, this is a lateral move. We are looking forward to an unchanged budget.

My kids are in a K-8 school, Jane will be entering the 6th grade in the fall, and Alexander will enter the 4th grade. It’s a good school. Like any school it is imperfect, it’s not inexpensive, but it is not expensive by Los Angeles private school standards.

We were a public school family. Alexander went to an SRLDP program instead of a private kindergarten. It was a wonderful choice for him. He thrived in an academic setting, and we both loved the shortness of the day. Unfortunately our public school was not a match for us, and we moved the kids to the private school they currently attend.

While house hunting I realized that a significant portion of our budget is going to tuition expenses. I love that we can give our children a great education, it’s my job as their mother to provide them with every opportunity, what they do with it is up to them. I don’t often feel burdened by the tuition, it’s enough money to change our lifestyle, but I’m grateful that we have it to spend.

While driving through Beverly Hills a few weeks ago, I realized that we could afford a small house on the south end of town. We could afford Beverly Hills and we could send our children to public school. Case closed. Right? I’ve looked online, and driven past a number of homes in the pocket of Beverly Hills that we could afford to live in, and then the real epiphany came.

We moved into this neighborhood so that we could be with families like ourselves. Our children have access to everything, in part because we live in Los Angeles, and in part because everyone we know is in Sports, TV or Film production. Our children will struggle with excess, why add more? We’ve chosen a part of Los Angeles where children grow up a little slower, and this is good. I like that my kids wear a uniform to school each day. Today was a free dress day, and it reinforced for me that we have made the right decision.

I remember growing up in Manhattan Beach, and how it had the best schools in the country, but still we went to private school. I know how you plan for one thing, and end up with another. I don’t want to be house poor and find out that the Beverly Hills School District isn’t a match.

So we won’t be looking at homes in Beverly Hills, not in the next ten years at least. Sometimes wanting more for your family looks like you’re being modest, but in reality you’re reaching for the stars.

I spent the day with the folks from Ford today. My friend Michelle and I were lucky enough to zoom around the Los Angeles in a bright green Fiesta. The car handled cheerfully, and our day was fun.

Another day I’ll write specifically about Ford, but I wanted to know what your car story is.

I grew up in a car family. Los Angeles is home to the car culture, and my family embraced it. I was driving by age eleven, and my brother and I only liked vacations where we were allowed to get behind the wheel. By the time I graduated college I’d owned a Ford, two Hondas and a Mercury. My family had everything from classics (a ’57 vette, a ’67 speedster a Chevy Bel Air from gawd knows when…) to Jeeps. I’ve never enjoyed keeping a car longer than about a year, and if I had my druthers I’d be switching cars every week. (more…)

As parents and as social media enthusiasts we have different needs for privacy. As a social media enthusiast you do want your name out there, and maybe even your business address, but certainly not your home address. Right? Jason Calcanis doesn’t trust Facebook, and Jason is kind of a big deal.

Not everything can be controlled, but as Peter Shankman so aptly points out, we are the ones adding the content, so we do have the ability to control some of it. This is a good thing. Here are five easy ways you can begin to safeguard your privacy online.

1. Do not enter your private information online. Really, not for anything, not for Classmates.com, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, resume building sites… everywhere. Either make up an address, don’t enter one, or use a business address. No one really needs your address, they aren’t sending you gifts in the mail.

2. Remove your information from WhitePages.com. Unfortunately WhitePages.com doesn’t follow best practices, it is opt out, as opposed to opt in. You’ll need to search for your name, and then click on each search result to remove yourself from their directory. The very bad news is that both my children were listed at WhitePages.com with our correct address and phone number, the good news is that removal was almost instantaneous. Here’s an example with my friend Lolita’s data. Click here to watch the how to video.

3. Remove your information from Intellius.com. According to Intellius this is how:

In order for us to suppress or opt out your personal information from appearing on our Website, we need to verify your identity. To do this, we require faxed proof of identity. Proof of identity can be a state issued ID card or driver’s license. If you are faxing a copy of your driver’s license, cross out the photo and the driver’s license number. We only need to see the name, address and date of birth. We will only use this information to process your opt out request. Please fax to 425-974-6194 and allow 4 to 6 weeks to process your request. We will only process opt out requests received by fax and no request will be processed without complete information (i.e., name, address and date of birth). Requests for opt out will not be processed over the phone or via email.

4. Use Private registration for your websites. Anyone can go to WhoIs and search for the registered domain owner of any site. When you buy a domain name, you must enter a name, address and phone number, for an extra couple of dollars each year you can hide this information. If you don’t want to make the registration information private, then I suggest a PO Box and a cell phone number.

5. Remove or modify your profile at MyLife.com and Classmates.com. No one is going to find you at either of these places, there’s no social networking to speak of, and they’re just giant data mills.

For the most part we have overshared our own data. Taking it back bit by bit is difficult, but worth doing.

Holy crap, I think I love them again.

Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz tells Michael Arrington to Fuck off… and boy, does she enunciate.

I don’t know much about Mom Blogging that you don’t already know. You’re a mom, you’ve got a kid or two, maybe three, and talk about your new life as Mom, and, if you’re lucky, a community will form around you.

Every day more moms are throwing their hats in the ring. I understand why, too. Publicists are falling all over themselves to toss free things at any mom with a blog. I’m not saying that this is a bad thing, I’m simply stating that there’s little quality control involved. Diana is swimming in pitches, and here are some of the stats on her site from Website Grader.

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