Advertising & Media Community - Sharing Information - Creating Friends
Crowdspring Founders Say Sorry
Woke up to an email from the founders of Crowdspring.com this morning saying sorry for the problems the site has been experiencing this last week. Quite refreshing to hear a sorry. The site is a great idea to put creative work and ideas out to tender, so I hope it all gets better soon.
Dear friends,
As you've probably noticed, we've run into a series of technical problems over the past 7-10 days. Because of that, we wanted to take a break from our normal newsletter to bring you a personal message from both of us. So let us start by stating it as plainly as we can: we're sorry.
There's no way to sugar coat it - the site's performance as of late has been poor. We've failed to provide you the crowdSPRING experience you've learned to love and we are both disappointed and humbled as a result. Please rest assured that we're aware of these problems, and we are doing our very best to fix them promptly. Everyone at crowdSPRING is focused on these issues and we won't rest until we have them resolved. Period.
We'll spare you the technical explanation of the problems we're having but, in the end, they're almost entirely related to the increased usage that the site is experiencing and they've had a cascading effect, touching everything from our database servers all the way down to our email notifications. We should have foreseen this possibility and built things with more flexibility in the event that we needed to scale more quickly than we anticipated. We were so focused on our refactoring project (which will have us roll out completely new code in the coming weeks) that we underestimated the extent of our growth. As you know, we've added more hardware servers, but this didn't address all of the issues with which we are now dealing. And we're now paying the price. This is undeniably a lesson hard learned and one we do NOT intend to repeat or ever forget. And most importantly we're embarrassed that we've put our credibility on the line with you.
We'll give you an update within the next 48 hours on where things stand and, in the mean time, we're certain that many of you may have questions about these issues and how they affect your projects. We encourage you to talk to us - we'll do everything we reasonably can to make sure that our failure does not impact you, so don't hesitate to reply to this email, write us personally, or contact us through the site. We consider everyone who has supported us this first year a friend and it's never fun to disappoint your friends. You have our personal promise, and the promise of every person who works at crowdSPRING, that we will work tirelessly to make things right and to regain your trust.
Ross and Mike
co-Founders
Dear friends,
As you've probably noticed, we've run into a series of technical problems over the past 7-10 days. Because of that, we wanted to take a break from our normal newsletter to bring you a personal message from both of us. So let us start by stating it as plainly as we can: we're sorry.
There's no way to sugar coat it - the site's performance as of late has been poor. We've failed to provide you the crowdSPRING experience you've learned to love and we are both disappointed and humbled as a result. Please rest assured that we're aware of these problems, and we are doing our very best to fix them promptly. Everyone at crowdSPRING is focused on these issues and we won't rest until we have them resolved. Period.
We'll spare you the technical explanation of the problems we're having but, in the end, they're almost entirely related to the increased usage that the site is experiencing and they've had a cascading effect, touching everything from our database servers all the way down to our email notifications. We should have foreseen this possibility and built things with more flexibility in the event that we needed to scale more quickly than we anticipated. We were so focused on our refactoring project (which will have us roll out completely new code in the coming weeks) that we underestimated the extent of our growth. As you know, we've added more hardware servers, but this didn't address all of the issues with which we are now dealing. And we're now paying the price. This is undeniably a lesson hard learned and one we do NOT intend to repeat or ever forget. And most importantly we're embarrassed that we've put our credibility on the line with you.
We'll give you an update within the next 48 hours on where things stand and, in the mean time, we're certain that many of you may have questions about these issues and how they affect your projects. We encourage you to talk to us - we'll do everything we reasonably can to make sure that our failure does not impact you, so don't hesitate to reply to this email, write us personally, or contact us through the site. We consider everyone who has supported us this first year a friend and it's never fun to disappoint your friends. You have our personal promise, and the promise of every person who works at crowdSPRING, that we will work tirelessly to make things right and to regain your trust.
Ross and Mike
co-Founders
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Captain Kick-Back
Watch This Space Issue 43!!
Free As StandardHopefully all those of you with no direct interest in the London market will forgive me for kicking off with one of the most significant media stories of recent months: on the 12th of October the Evening Standard went from paid to free distribution, increasing its print run by more than double, to 600,000 copies. Distribution is still handled by the existing staff of sales people as well as through pick up bins at train and tube stations, in WHSmiths and supermarkets across London. In terms of setting a precedent this piece of news has implications for all of us: as they've been so keen to point out, the Standard is "the first quality paper in the world to go free", and publishers everywhere will no doubt be following events in the capital closely.
Captain Kickback says: "Given that the Standard has sacrificed its paper sales revenue and incurred extra print and distribution charges in order to increase its sales revenue, it's reasonable to assume that rate increases are in the offing but, as you'd expect, the team at Space and Time Towers will be working to ensure that the paper remains an affordable option."
Morning Time in North WestThe Evening Leader group, covering Wrexham, Chester and Flintshire, has announced plans to rename itself The Leader and move to morning distribution. Following a period of circulation decline the shift in publication time will accompany a general revamp of the group's titles. This change represents the latest in a string of regional papers shifting from evening to morning publication, including the Brighton Argus, Lancs Telegraph, Southend Echo, Derby Telegraph, Plymouth Herald and Portsmouth News.
Change Afoot in Birmingham
A raft of changes to Trinity Mirror's presence in the west midlands has been unveiled, including a move from paid daily to paid weekly distribution for the Birmingham Post, and the Birmingham Evening Mail dropping the "Evening" from its title as it switches to morning distribution.
Metro
In a move that threatens to limit the local relevance of various editions of Metro around the country, the commuter freesheet has closed five of its regional editorial offices, namely Manchester, Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol. The centralisation of the editorial process will primarily have an impact on the local arts, entertainment and food sections of the paper.
Captain Kickback says: "This is one of the unfortunate effects of the recession- where publishers are being forced to cut costs and consolidate roles, it is inevitable that content will be rolled out from a central source and that the local media consumer will miss out. We can see the same thing happening with the rise in syndicated content across the new Heart radio network as well as in Manchester where the likes of the Rochdale Observer, Salford Advertiser and the Macclesfield Express are now all written from the centre of Manchester following the closure of the firm's satellite offices."
How do Online and Offline Media Work Together?Some research undertaken at Space and Time demonstrates rather aptly how advertising in the local press drives increases in web traffic and changes the nature of the terms searched for on Google. By overlaying press schedules with Google Adwords reports, it's possible to see how site-specific press ads increase the number of searches carried out for that site's marketing name ("The Towers Reigate" for example), while during periods with no other advertising activity the site-specific searches decline and the most common relevant search terms refer instead to the development's location (such as "New Homes in Reigate").
Captain Kickback says: "At a time when Online ad spend has overtaken TV's advertising revenue, it's important to remember that for all its strength, online media is only a part of the ideal media mix and doesn't necessarily represent a campaign in its entirety. Although online is an extremely hardworking medium and PPC is ultimately accountable, this shows how there's still a space for press advertising on the average schedule. It also provides a useful lesson that your last point of contact with a new lead before they visit the showroom wasn't necessarily the same medium through which they first heard about your site."
Property Factoids
1 in 97 - proportion of UK homes valued at more than £1m at the height of the housing boom in 2007 according to website Zoopla
1 in 150 - proportion of UK homes valued at over £1m today
Print 2.0The ridiculously long-memoried among you will remember a story from August 07 (yes, that's issue 34 for all you Kickback aficionados, a rather lovely epistle you'll remember, with a delicate turn of phrase, black body text and a striking blue title font) about "reverse published" titles in the North East composed entirely from editorial already published on hyper local websites. Now a similar idea has reached London, with the launch of The Blogpaper (no, I said "BLOGpaper", "BLOG", oh nevermind), which is, as you may have guessed, a print version of the best the blogosphere has to offer. The composition of the paper is dictated by the result of online votes at theblogpaper.co.uk. The bloggers work for free, but the publication will carry paid-for advertising, so someone's doing well somewhere.
Local Papers Save the DayHow do you stay in touch with local community news when there's no power, your router's soggy and the broadband exchange is 3 feet under the swollen eddies of the river Cocker? Local Press of course! The awful events seen in Cumbria over recent days have demonstrated that there's life in the old dog yet, as the Times and Star, the weekly title covering Workington and Cockermouth, overcame supply, power and transport difficulties to publish three issues in one week, keeping the local people up to date with vital information about their community.
That's your lot for another issue. If you'd like any more information on any of these stories, you can either reply to this email or contact your Space and Time team.
See you next time!!
Captain Kickback
OggsBlog
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