Weekend rants: Box IPO, engagement, Facebook freebooting and Apple Watch
- Summary:
- We had one heck of a week for nauseous stories. Here are four and why we think they stink. Get your Rennies or Gavilast ready.
It's the weekend so in the spirit of compiling stuff that while important - at least in my view - and which often gets conveniently shoveled under the digital carpet, I thought I'd give you all a giant case of indigestion. Have your Rennies, Gavilast or whatever to hand. Here goes.
Box just got royally screwed
We've had plenty to say about the Box IPO but one aspect of it really sux. The pop in the share price. Given the way investment bankers play out this particular game there was no way that Box could flounder. It might not have done great but it couldn't flounder. So while I said anything less than a 20% pop would be considered a fail - others thought 30% - when the stock opened for trading at $20.20 or at a 44% premium, my jaw hit the office desk. And this is where it gets interesting.
Some commenters talked about the stock settling at 15% above the opening as a satisfying end to the day's trading. Note - at one point, the stock briefly spiked at $26. A number noted that Box finished the day trading at a 65% premium above the offer price and at a market cap of $2.77bn, well above the $2.4 bn touted as Box's value before the latest price was struck. All of which stinks. It reeks. Check this out:
Oof, Box IPO pops 65%? Looks positive but that's tons of $ to hand bankers that could have funded hiring/acquisitions http://t.co/XJZnM2G8V2
— Josh Constine (@JoshConstine) January 23, 2015
Exactly, a point that Aaron Levie, CEO Box alluded to some time back:
IPOs: If your stock shoots up, you left money on the table. If it drops, you screwed investors. If it's flat, you're boring. — Aaron Levie (@levie) November 7, 2013
His tune changed in a Fortune interview from yesterday:
I can’t comment on the dynamics of the pricing process, but there are certain tweets that that won’t make as much sense anymore… We have a business model that requires you to understand the disruption going on in enterprise IT, and are very happy to have brought on strong investors who are committed to the re-platforming of the enterprise.
OK - so since that Tweet, Levie has been schooled in the fine art of financial PR aka say nothing of substance to a tough question, even if you end up looking stupid. Can't hurt the investors, bro.
I am betting that in private moments the reality of just how much Box got screwed is starting to sink in. My sense is that despite claims to genius by others, Levie didn't have the balls to insist on the inherent value of Box's claimed positioning which saw so many investors confused. Or maybe even he doesn't believe the claimed differentiation is enough? Or maybe the investment bankers persuaded him to be grateful to get $175 million in new float money while they stole the short term value out the back door, ably assisted by Jim Cramer? (Hint: there's a reason his show is called Mad Money.)
We'll see how that goes in the coming months.
Creepy customer engagement
Tom Foremski took a very polite swipe at Charlene Li, Altimeter's CEO on the topic of customer engagement etc in a story entitled: Charlene Li: Engaged Leaders And Intimate Customer Relationships. He says:
When Charlene speaks about the importance of creating strong, even "intimate" relationships between brands and customers, I shudder.
It's challenging enough for me to maintain my relationships with my kids, my friends, my colleagues. I can't handle anymore relationships and especially not from brands.
It seems almost unethical for marketers to demand metrics of engagement such as Facebook likes, or social shares from their customers. It takes attention away from their lives and real relationships with the people who support them everyday.
A brand is a label that's attached to something you own. People know it's not a relationship because relationships are personal.
A relationship is a friendship and friends ask favors of each other. Will a brand help me pack my things and move apartments? Will it look after my kids for a few hours in an emergency?
Tom's timely reminder of the fact there is a real world out there got me thinking. In a world where we are asked to co-mingle private and public lives, where the work-life balance is becoming a battleground for any 'life' and where companies like Google, Apple, Facebook and others are building cult like environments, someone has to take a stand. I'm glad that Tom's out there doing it. It reminds me that things can always be replaced. Valuable relationships are much harder to come by and are way more precious. Or, as the New Clues might say:
61. When personalizing something is creepy, it's a pretty good indication that you don't understand what it means to be a person.
62. Personal is human. Personalized isn't.
63. The more machines sound human, the more they slide down into the uncanny valley where everything is a creep show.
The problem is that brands like listening to analysts who create an appealing agenda. It adds a halo of gravitas to a macabre dance where everyone (except YOU as the consumer) gets paid - handsomely. You have been warned.
Freebooting on Facebook
Woah - talking about creepy, this video floated across my screen.
Do you know what Facebook Freebooting is? I sure as heck didn't until I saw the above video which has now been viewed a tad under 150,000 times in 3 days (as at the time of writing.) Here's an explanation from Joe Hansen:
“Freebooting” is a silly but oddly appropriate word invented by YouTubers CGP Grey and Brady Haran that means “taking online media and re-hosting it on your website without permission.” This is not the same as sharing or linking or embedding it from its original source. Freebooting means downloading it without permission from the creator or copyright holder and redistributing it for your own use, often for your own monetary gain. When it comes to video piracy in 2015, Facebook is ground zero...
Ok - so what? you might think. Hang on. Facebook no longer allows you to share YouTube videos so the only way that content can get to Facebook is by theft. Facebook for its part is now selling ads against the more popular videos it freeboots and doesn't share any of the revenue with anyone. And, unless you complain bitterly and loudly about it then Facebook ignores you. Think that's a stretch?
Check this video from Destin Sandlin, creator of the YouTube channel Smarter Every Day which has been viewed more than 240,000 times in four days, and talks to a pirated video that Facebook was able to monetize to the tune of 17 million views. That's a lot of moolah. Sandlin tries to be nice about the whole thing but c'mon - this is Evil and almost no-one is paying attention.
As a side note - I occasionally get asked if someone can embed one of our videos. The answer is always yes because they're providing us with fresh viewers and in any event, our material is published under a creative commons license which allows re-use. We don't even mind if people want to refactor some of the content but...not for blatant commercial use. That's our IP I'm talking about. That cost us time and money to produce. It's our choice to give it to the community but it ain't anyone else's choice to rip it off. And that's the point.
Brands? You need to know this stuff and have a well prepared position on what happens when Facebook - or anyone else for that matters - freeboots or fracks your stuff or freeboots on your fan pages.
Apple Watch battery is a dud?
Reports are emerging that under heavy use, the Apple Watch battery will last under three hours. WTF? That's on par with my unpowered MacBook Pro. Other reports say Apple is targeting 19 hours under normal use. So what's heavy and what's normal? It doesn't matter because the moment this puppy hits the market you can be sure that users will have their faces glued to the thing - until it runs out of steam. And then, they'll be screaming blue murder. Or will they?
I was amazed at the apologetic manner in which the Silicon Valley based tech media gives Apple the equivalent of a pass on this. If it had been any other brand I'm willing to bet my last dollar (and I still have a few) that it would have been vilified, excoriated and generally humiliated in a competition to find who could write the most douchebaggy story about it. But it's Apple. Check how the folk at TechCrunch declared: Why The Apple Watch Doesn’t Need More Than A Few Hours Of Active Use Time:
The point is that consumer expectation is primed for lower active use times, and daily charging. Battery life [compared to Android] is a metric that Apple will have to match, or improve upon with each successive generation, but it can start where consumer expectation for wearables already is, so long as it delivers a superior experience in other regards.
OK - I can buy that but what about this:
Which leads to the next point working in Apple’s favor: The original iPhone promised only five hours of “talk, video and browsing” time, which was meagre compared to the luxurious long life of competing smartphone devices from the likes of BlackBerry. The Apple Watch, as described in this report, won’t be that far off, and it’s intended for use sessions that should be far shorter and less taxing on its internal powerhouse.
Yeah - and look how people continue to complain to this day about battery life on iPhones. But what's worse is that this author thinks it's OK to make a comparison with a device that came to market years ago and conveniently ignores that expectations have changed. It's the classic case of suspended disbelief. Only in the Apple world.
My mate Tom Raftery saw no problem on Facebook, arguing he only glances at his FitBit 5-10 times a day. What Tom has forgotten is that the Apple Watch is a totally different animal with numerous apps and functions available to it. The comparison is as meritorious as comparing chalk and cheese but again, typical of the apologia in the Apple reality distortion field. I wonder how long it will be before Tom eats his own words? Or...before our own resident Apple fanboy Stuart Lauchlan starts gnashing and wailing?
In the meantime, I am slobbering over the Leatherman Tread QM1, a totally analog device that's coming soon which I reckon could be used to fix a 747, it opens beer bottles AND tells the time. Jon will have more to say on this puppy but me? Want.
Image credit: Charlene Li - Tom Foremski