So the Vonage IPO is tanking we are supposed to be surprised? Jumpin's. One look at their marketing spend / efficiency numbers (marketing as a percentage of gross profit) together with the increasing competitiveness in the consumer VOIP space and anyone with half a brain would have questioned the viability of the thing. What's worse, though, is that because they set aside up-to 15% of the IPO for their customers, it is many of Vonage's very expensively-acquired customers who are now left holding the bag. And - gasp! - some of them are ticked.

The New York Times is reporting that there is so much backlash from their customers that Vonage is offering to protect  the brokers who handled the sale in the event that their customers don't pay for the shares. They were issued at US$17 but have already fallen to US$12.50 as of yesterday. As Mark says, this is a nice goodwill gesture, but it says more about the validity of the IPO itself than anything else. Michael Urlocker has a good round-up of the history of this IPO itself. Henry Blodget does his normal yeoman's job here.

You know, this reminds me a lot of when Canada 3000 went public. At the time, there were heavy rumors that they had shopped the company around to all-and-sundry and couldn't get a taker. So, what to do? Is it possible that somebody thought "Hey, let's hoist it on the public, they'll buy anything"? You bet. And buy they did, no doubt many customers and employees among the purchasers.

They were gone in less than 2 years.

Vonage, and investors, take note. Oh, and yes, the ad below *is* ironic.

Tags: vonage, vonageipo, goatrodeo

Amazing how abuzz the mainstream media is today with the WestJet apology story. There's lots, lots more out there if you care to look. All the usual suspects are in with their $0.02. Heck, I don't know if I should feel badly or happy for poor Jacques Kavafian. He just can't seem to shake being the go-to Quote Boy for all things aviation, no matter where he goes. Which means, his services are less in demand of late, so this flurry must feel like old times. And that leads to the key message for me in all this coverage:

The business media really, really misses the  bad-old-days of Canadian aviation.

I mean, there was so much material! First there was AC privatization, then there were the years of AC/CP dogfights, charter airline collapses, the CP acquisition - with it's headline-friendly Quebec-vs.-The West overtones - then more charter airline collapses, some start-ups, some shut-downs, the odd bankruptcy, more start-ups, a little spying, more collapses, a few labour crises...

Phew! What a journalistic buffet! Pages and pages of copy, jillions and jillions of pixels. High fives all round the newsroom, the industry is a complete mess. Yippee!

Not to mention all of the personality stuff. Beddoes vs. Milton to be sure, but there have been plenty of other odd ducks along the way. Anyone remember LeBlanc at Intair and Royal? Obadia at Nationair? Deluce at Air Ontario and Canada 3000 (still in the picture with *yet another* start-up to-be. Sigh)? Kinnear at Canada 3000? What is it about aviation that attracts these folks? And of course there's the general sexiness of the business and the romance of travel that adds an allure. Let's face it: for years, the airline biz was the news story gift that kept on giving.

But now? How sad. Biz is relatively stable. AC is stronger than they have been in a long while, Uncle Miltie is about to ride off into the sunset (complete with Reguly's "gosh, I'm sorry I called you a knob all those years, I really think you're a great guy, now you take care" story ($) a while back), WS continues to do it's golly-we're-nice thing, and we haven't had a major failure in, well, months. In fact, there hasn't been much until this little redux of the already-told spying story fell from the sky to fill a whack of column inches. Call it a quick reminder of remember-when. Fuel prices are a pain of course and AC is still doing stuff to tick people off, but broadly things are pretty good.

Man, those reporters must be pissed.

Update: Further evidence of this in today's Globe and Mail, where reporter Brent Jang has a front page non-story about Clive Beddoes. Why non-story? Well, the premise is to discuss Beddoes' future plans, but given that he tried to exit his role as President in 1999 with the disastrous hiring of multi-former-AC-role-boy Steve Smith, the idea that Clive wants to move on is not exactly news. But hey, he was in town and it fills a nice news hole, so my call is that this week's spying-redux flurry has reminded them of that. Maybe airline news is going to be the New Black. Again.

Tags: aircanada, westjet, spying

It turns out that WestJet was in fact spying on Air Canada, has now admitted to it and formally apologized.

To refresh your memory, the claim was that a co-founder of WS an analyst who used to work at AC, Jeffrey Lafond, took advantage of the fact that AC never turned off his access to the AC online staff booking system, and that he used it to check flight loads. This information was used to help WS adjust pricing in response to how AC was doing on a given route. He The co-founder who used this analyst's access to get the information, Mark Hill, left the company, and Beddoes apologized at the time. AC subsequently filed a $220m lawsuit against WS.

This has now been settled. The whole release is here.

The really good news? Rather than WS paying something in retribution to AC, they will be making a $10m donation to children's charities across the country in the name of both carriers. So rather than AC potentially stirring up more negative PR about "pounds of flesh" or whatever, the kids of the country win. And hopefully the YYC cowboys have learned a lesson about playing by the rules.

Nice.

Tags: aircanada, westjet

There's certainly enough been written on this, and by people far better informed than me (check out Rob's great post, or Mathew's, for more on that) but for the record, I certainly get why O'Reilly's management company would try to protect their mark and agree with the logic of Battelle's response.

Was the way it was handled silly? Yup, a PR disaster waiting to happen. And happen it did. Do they really have a right to these words as they relate to a conference? Heck, I don't know. Didn't we fight this battle years ago with "Xerox"? I mean, these types of things get fought about all the time. That's for the lawyers (and depending what they say, we will likely change how we describe mesh in future).

But in principle, I'm with the theory of protecting the mark, in the context given, if it's theirs. If not, why ever invest in creating something that develops meaning, which is in and of itself valuable?

Tags: web20, oreilly, trademark, bunfight

Farecast, a Seattle-based travel start-up, is in private beta. I was invited to try it out, and I did. On the whole, it's pretty good - but I am fearful that beyond the relatively small amount of whiz-bang buzz their "hook" adds, they are really just another meta-search site. Albeit a clean and well-designed one.

Their "hook" is that they claim to be able to predict what will happen with fares, thereby providing customer value by guiding when someone should buy to maximize their fare savings. Pretty cool on the face of it, and the visual presentation is also pretty neat. But does it really add a lot of value? I think it's a snappy feature and no doubt the algorithm is impressive, but will it pull them in and keep them? I'm unconvinced.

Beyond that, the site is clean, nice and ajax-y and the search display is easy to interpret. But I can't say that it is orders of magnitude better than any other meta-sites, or say Orbitz's grid for instance.

Another unfortunate negative (mentioned by Michael Arrington in his post) is that, despite pulling schedule info from Southwest and JetBlue, they don't pull pricing info into the initial fare display. This is a pity, as it pushes those options to the bottom of the display and potentially skews the prices listed. Said another way, if one of those carriers offered the lowest price, you'd never know it and the prices shown as lowest might be wrong simply because they aren't shown. But Southwest has a longstanding history of not allowing their fares to show in an aggregated display (possibly because head-to-head they frequently don't compare as well as people might expect) so Farecast getting this access would be quite a coup - and one they haven't managed as yet.

Net/net: The predictor is a nice little whiz-bang feature that has some PR value, but essentially Farecast is just another meta-search entry in what is becoming a crowded market.

Update: TechDirt says that if it casts light on airline pricing, it will have value. Maybe at the highest or industry level, but adding stress to travellers lives by telling them to wait before they buy won't necessarily make their lives better. And how are the carriers going to feel about a site that drives them to lower yields?

Update 2: The folks at Farecast gave me 25 invites to share with others who might like to kick the tires, too. If you'd like one, let me know here or at stuart [at] stuartmacdonald [dot] ca.

Thanks Mike - another Expedia alum - for the invite.

Tags: farecast, travel, metasearch

Given that I was born in 1966, I don't really have memories of 1968. But something tells me that if I did, Michael Ignatieff would be bringing those early days of Pierre Elliott Trudeau-mania back to mind.

I was fortunate enough to attend a fundraiser for Michael last night here in Toronto, and then have a brief chat with him and his lovely wife Susanna immediately following. I was connected in to the campaign via Brad Davis, who is running policy and web stuff for Michael and spoke on the political panel at mesh last week. I am really interested in how the web is going to influence politics in Canada, and so I may have provided the odd suggestion to Brad ;-) I should also say that I am not political per se - in fact, I'm not member of any party, and in the past I've voted for everybody from the NDP to the PCs (I don't think I could ever support the nouveau-Reformistas in power today, but anyway...). And, I think that the Liberal Party still faces some serious challenges to overcome the faults of a few in the whole Sponsor-gate thing. But enough about that. That's the past. I went to hear about the future.

So, let me talk about Michael. This is one smokin' smart and passionate dude. He was at the end of a long day, and he still managed to illicit a depth of thoughtfulness, clarity and emotional connection with the topics and the audience that was truly impressive. And what a breath of fresh air from a potential political leader. There were none of the traditional platitudes, the canned delivery of soundbites, or the trying to stay "on message". I mean, here was a guy that actually *knows* this stuff. He can comment on Darfur because he just bloody *knows* it. He can talk about investing in education because he just bloody *knows* it. He can speak to needing to do right by the environment for our families and futures because he just bloody *knows* it.

When is the last time you can remember a serious contender for high political office in this country who was so clearly smart *and* compassionate? Right. It's been awhile, hasn't it.

In fact it last started in 1968, by my estimation.

Go get 'em, Michael.

Tags: michaelignatieff

I have a readership? Who knew! From the emails I'm getting, it looks like some folks are wondering where I went.

No, I haven't stopped writing, no I'm not pulling a "Coyne" (there's a line for you - CC attribution, please :-))

It's just that since mesh I've been freakishly busy with all manner of stuff and barely online - call it all 'berry, all the time - and I've let things slip.

So, consider this a quick "I'm back" post via 'berry, with more regular posts to come starting tomorrow.

Lots of cool stuff going on.

I'm on with Leo and Amber doing "Inside the Net" tonight. It was great. Thanks, you two.

Tags: mesh06

I'm still both tired and buzzed from mesh, but I wanted to put some cogent thoughts out there, while they're still fresh, before coming with a bigger, deeper thing.

I think that the key take away for me is in those four words inside the logo up there. When we sat down and came up with the idea for this thing, and then went through the whole process of deciding what we wanted to "be," those four words best summed it up: mesh, connect, share and inspire. Help shine a light towards the future, and begin to create a platform to showcase the best ideas.And here in Canada, Toronto specifically.

Take a look at that logo and let the words rattle around inside you a bit. Then,  imagine what an event represented by that would look like. Got that picture?

Well, I think if you were there on Monday and Tuesday of this week, you'd say that's what we did. It feels damn good.

Tags: mesh06

Via 'berry from the room again. This morning, if I do say so myself, has been tremendous. Rubel was just great - we talked business, if you will, since that's my thing, and he really locked in. There was an, um, interesting discussion around character blogs, but let's leave that alone :-)

Kedrosky is a rock star. 'Nuff said.

Posting via 'berry, but just had a Queen's student, Alexandra Skey, say "thanks" for the fact that we did a student deal. She is having a wonderful time and getting a lot out of it.

That really means a lot.

Maybe next time, we can offer more student tix (heyyyyy, sponsors :-)).

It's today. Rock 'n' roll :-)

Thanks for your continued interest in snagging a ducat, but we are really, really done. No spots remain, no tickets at the door, no, uh, nothing.

Thanks to all for your incredible support. See those of you who are registered tomorrow.

Tags: mesh06tags, web2.0, conference, toronto

Congrats to Jay, David and Tara for a great BarCampTDot event today. I wish I could have been there longer and participated more, but last minute mesh-prep tied we mesh-ies up all afternoon.

I got there at the end of dinner and there was still a great turn out. There were apparently 130 Camp-ers at the peak - and a beer keg to boot :-). It is so great to see the Toronto tech community really coming together in lots of ways these days, and I am pleased to have been able to support it. Rob, Mike and mesh did, too.

I got there late, what with that last minute mesh stuff, which likely broke the un-rules, but I hope they will forgive me. Nice work, folks.

Tags: barcamp, barcamptdot

We are done, as of a few minutes ago. Thanks to all - sponsors, speakers, suppliers and participants.

Profit fell by 51% and the stock tumbled after hours.

What to say? Well...

1. Not a shocker. Anybody looking at public reach numbers on the US business could tell they did not pull in their typical Q1 "pop". If people don't come, they can't buy.

2. They appear to be spending like drunken sailors.

3. Their recent ad campaign appears to have failed miserably (to wit: their Price Guarantee, which they can't really offer because they don't control the price, and worse yet customers neither believe nor care about). Or they cut spend dramatically, or both.

4. I've heard that something like 50% of Expedia Bellevue employees are new in the past 18 months. Virtually all of the senior team are new.

5. They continue to look at international growth for their future, but suppliers getting smarter and the rise of paid search must be making it harder to stake a claim.

6. Margins must be under serious pressure, as suppliers try to reduce distribution costs and reliance on third parties.

That said, my call is that the Canadian business is likely still doing okay, and I feel good about that.

The rest? Ouch.

Tags: expedia, q1

I just posted a whack of niggly details about mesh, this coming Monday and Tuesday at MaRS in Toronto. Check it out, and if you haven't done so, register now.

The old "book early to avoid disappointment" adage actually applies here. It's selling very quickly, with just a handful of spots remaining - don't miss out.

Tags: mesh06tags, web2.0, conference, toronto

Find out more or apply here, and feel free to ping me with more questions.

Tags: CIRA

I hesitate to write this up given the support Rogers is showing for mesh (and I truly am thankful for that), but given how frustrating this has been and how many people I've told already, I figure I might as well. It's become a bloody dinner party topic already.

What a service disaster I've had with these people. It's especially silly given that I've been ready to pay them for new hardware for about a month, and they have been seemingly unable to take my money. Yes, really. Here's the whole sordid tale of woe:

It started back before Christmas. I received a lovely, expensive direct mail piece from them - well, Rogers "Office of the Chief Marketing Officer" actually. All embossed and lovely, with a stamp and everything. Having spent the odd dollar on marketing (or several hundred million in fact) in past lives, I thought "Hmmm that's an expensive piece...I'm going to open that." Which I do, to read that I am being invited to buy a BlackBerry at a discounted price.

This is great!

Except, of course, for the fact that I have had a BlackBerry, from Rogers, for several years, and had been spending upwards of several hundred dollars a month with them for some time. "Hmmm" I say to myself. "This doesn't feel like a good use of Rogers' scarce ad dollars". So, being the good guy I am - and a little ticked off with the silliness, frankly - *and* given that their CMO has put his name and phone number on the lovely letter, I decide to call him (sidebar: in case you don't know, these things are done by ad agencies - usually ones that specialize in direct mail. In fairness, it is quite possible that the CMO had not even seen the piece). I leave him a voicemail,  including my Rogers phone number, alerting him to the fact that it could be that his agency has messed something up ("I'd expect that 'BlackBerry? Yes/No' would be a basic filter on your data run"). And I get on with my day.

Now, imagine my surprise - and tremendous impressed-ness - when I get an SMS from him later that day, acknowledging my voicemail and thanking me for my call. I respond, thinking "nicely done" and figure that is that.

But no. Several weeks later, what falls through my mailbox? Another lovely letter. From Rogers' CMO guy. Letter goes along the lines of "We recently sent you a letter inviting you to buy a discounted BlackBerry in error - we know you have one already - what we meant to send you was this offer of a new high-speed BlackBerry at a great price." And I think "good on them - they made a mistake, they recognized that they looked silly to a big batch of customers, likely valuable ones, and either they or their agency is making good." I mention it to a few people, decide not to to take them up on it, and move on.

Fast forward to about a month ago. Now, all the cool kids have the new 8700 and I figure "okay, time for me to get one too." So I trundle on down to my local Rogers store (Bloor West Village, Toronto) to buy one. No expectations of  the previous great deal, though I expected that they could see that I spent a bit and might cut me a deal, as tends to happen with these sorts of things. I walk in. Say "Hi. I want to buy a new 8700." Lady goes to the computer and says "it looks like you have a pending hardware upgrade. Yes?" I say "No" and she says "they just upgraded the system and it's acting kind of weird sometimes. I can't do anything else. I need to call and things are so bad right now because of this change that it takes a long time to get through. Can I call you later?" And I'm thinking "this is nuts, but hey, things happen" and say "Sure." Needless to say, she never calls. And when I call her, "the store is busy" and she can't talk. Well. Isn't that super.

Fast forward to yesterday. *Again* I walk to my local Rogers store, this time with my 5 year old in tow. Guess what? Same deal. It's now been *a month*. System is still busted. Still can't take my money. Same question about "pending upgrade". Same "can I call you?" To their credit, this time, she (a different person) does call, to say that whoever in the service department will do whatever and that in 48 hours or so they should - finally - be able to take my money.

Somehow I think we all know how this is going to turn out, don't we? How embarrassing.

Man, if it wasn't for the GSM international coverage thing, I would certainly be taking my business elsewhere.

What a goat rodeo.

UPDATE: Well, ride 'em cowboy, the goat rodeo continues. To their credit, the same woman who called me yesterday called me back late today, and was very pleasant. Sadly, that and apparently no amount of money will get me my new 'Berry. She spoke with their IT people who are apparently quite familiar with my "stuck in a pending upgrade" problem, and have *no way to solve it*. Seriously. They had hoped that whatever fix they have been working on would be in place by now, but gosh no luck. So the option presented to me? Call Rogers Customer Relations (a.k.a. in most companies as The Complaints Department) to have *them* help me figure out how I can give them my money.

Yippee-ki-yay! Goat rodeo, ho!

So parking the whole "this is silly, why should I be stuck fighting to get this done?" question, I have to wonder about a more basic business issue. I mean, I'm just one guy and the 'Berry I have will work just fine so, beyond what is now the humour of this, I'm not busted up about it. But more importantly, I can't possibly be the only person stuck in this holding pattern, can I? How many customers must there be like me, unable to upgrade to a new whatever, because of this unsolvable glitch? What kind of ripples might that be having back into hardware manufacturers, Rogers handset revenue etc.? I sure hope I am wrong, but this is making me go hmmmm...

Goat rodeo indeed.

Tags: rogers, goatrodeo

All great that Google is set to make a bunch of big announcements at their Press Day next week, and there is certainly much chatter about a big Health play. Though in fairness, some like mesh Keynoter Kedrosky are calling for a ban on new Google products until they get the ones they already have in prime-time shape.

But nobody is talking about Travel. I don't get it. Huge category, big dollars, obvious play, and yet zero discussion.

Odd, no?

Tags: google, travel, troogle

For the past 50 or more years, advertising has been based on one basic concept: yelling at people via the television, works. You could get enough of them in one place, nice and passive, and if you delivered the right message enough times you could create awareness. From that (and I simplify) awareness led to trial, trial led to preference, preference led to loyalty. At the heart of this process were the assumptions that (a) you could get enough people in one place to allow for scale and (b) the message was for the marketer to control.

Fast forward to 2006, and that past starts to feel like a trip to Never-never Land. Companies are spending 50% or more of their ad dollars on things like paid search, the money that's left is being cast across extremely fragmented markets, PVRs and Tivo are at long last making commercial-skipping "Me TV" a reality in a way that VCRs never really did.

Clearly, for marketers with a job to do and agencies and networks who would like to keep their jobs, this is a challenge of the first order. So what is the answer?

As we sit here today, I don't think anybody knows. People talk about micro-tactics and multiple small efforts, but how does that work when you need to reach tens-of-millions of people? This is not clear. You hear about "conversations" being important, but how do you control your message in that environment? Feels to me that you just don't. And on top of that, you have an agency and broadcast community that seems to want to wish these changes away and keep doing what they have always done. I've seen *that* movie: travel industry in around 1998, anyone?

At mesh we are tackling these topics with some of the smartest people in the field, and today Mathew, Rob, Mark are joining the discussion, too. I have a bit of a different take on the mesh blog, and Mike has a good post about how we are putting these principles to work promoting the conference.

If you care about this topic, you can't afford not to be at mesh. Register today.

Tags: marketing, media, mesh06tags, web2.0