No more "me too" posts.

[Bart Silverstrim]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> Charlie has a point and if the developers cannot be bothered to trawl
>> through the mailing list then maybe Canonical should assign a few people to.
>>
> 
> Should they trawl blogs too? 

Seems as Dell learned that, and I think they do now...I think it was 
mentioned in the book "Satisfied Customers tell Three Friends, Angry 
Customers Tell 3,000".

There are a number of cases where businesses saw sales dip and blip 
because of consumers at online sites complaining. Even MS astroturfs on 
blogs and sites now to help their image and disparage competitors.

So I do believe it would be a wise business decision to see what your 
customers are saying, and to do that, you have to do it on their terms. 
If they want to twitter about you, monitor twitter (Dell has sales 
announced via twitter too now). If they blog, you search blogs for 
information.

If you're looking for sales penetration, new product ideas, etc...you 
get sales by giving the consumer what they want, not what you want. 
Afraid that means ya' might have to come down from the mountain and 
speak to the serfs rather than call them morons for not coming up and 
submitting a formal request.

>How about shopping malls, in case someone
> makes an Ubuntu-related comment?

The guy that invented corn-based grocery bags...plastic made from corn 
so it's biodegradeable yet affordable...got the ideas in part from doing 
mall surveys.

Lots of news stories on TV are filled with interviews from "the man on 
the street" contributing.

Like it or not it is one way to gauge penetration of ideas and 
markets...do I think they should? Probably not. But it doesn't hurt to 
promote the idea with people you sound like you'd rather not deal with.