Friday, 04 April 2008

  • Merry Go Rounds & Forced Subscriptions


    Our weekly family dinner was at the Irvine Spectrum tonight.  The kids had a nice time.  Here a few shots.  I'm still experimenting with the new camera.



























    This is funny...Tommy overheard the adults talking and picked up on the term "Brother from another mother".  He made a song about it, and after I filmed it, he wanted me to film it again while JUST keeping the camera on him and not moving it around to see all of our reactions.  LOL


    Complaint Department

    Is anyone else as annoyed about this as I am?  Maybe I'm being too hard on the good folks at Xanga.  They've been trying really hard this year.  I can be a bitch.  Is it just me??

    As you read this, keep in mind, it could be worse.  I like Xanga.  I didn't like efax:


    Carey Anthony 
    Please advise
    5 messages
    From: Carey Anthony Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 8:56 AM
    To: Natalia - Xanga Support Team
    Natalia,

     Is there a way to disable the "Subscribe to get updates from this site" pop-up that appears for non-members who come to my site?  It's deceptively annoying!  Why not let people subscribe to the RSS or Atom feeds like Blogger does?  95% of the time people don't want to be forced to sign up for something just to read or receive updates on a blog.  If you simply allowed them to enter their email addresses to receive updates, and be done with it, that would be fine.  But if they do enter their email address, they're brought to a Xanga sign up page which is EXTREMELY annoying and presumptive.



    If you're not the person I should be bugging about this, let me know.  I can send it to Chris or John or whomever you tell me to.  Thanks

    Thanks,

    Carey
    From: Natalia - Xanga Support Team
    Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 12:15 PM
    To: Carey Anthony

    Hola. Hope the new year is finding you well – haven't heard from you in a while.

    The pop-up is IP based, so it shouldn't show up as long as your visitors aren't clearing their cookies each day. It is deceptively annoying, yes, but it takes two seconds to register and we're hoping that more people will take advantage of doing exactly what you said – receiving updates by email, even if that means they don't update their own personal blog. So far, it's actually been very effective, so . . . yes.

    And by the way, I almost didn't email you back because I saw your "goodbye Xanga" post today – [faceplant].

    Have a good one.

    Can you drop Ben a line?

    From: Carey Anthony
    Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 8:50 AM
    To: Natalia - Xanga Support Team
    Cc: Ben - Xanga

    Will do.  Thanks.

    Sorry to be a pest about this, but I don't think Premium members should have to pay for a site that's basically unusable until people choose to sign up or not.  Again, the way it's done is very deceptive and shady.  If you just allowed people to enter their email addresses in for updates, that would be one thing, but to then trick them into signing up for something they have no intention of ever using, is entirely another. 

    Ben, please advise.

    Thanks
    From: Ben Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 10:18 AM
    To: Carey Anthony

    Hi Carey,

    I’m sorry that you are experiencing so many problems. Let me try and help you (or at least provide some answers).

    Is there a way to disable the “subscribe to this blog to receive updates” popup?

    The popup is meant to display only ONCE to users that are not signed in. The way we ‘remember’ if we’ve shown the popup to a particular user is by using Browser Cookies. If the cookies are deleted, then our memory of having shown the popup is erased and the system displays it again upon the user’s next visit.

    Under normal circumstances, users WILL NOT see the popup if either of these two criteria are met: (1) user is signed into Xanga, (2) user has seen popup once before.

    You mentioned that your computer at work does not store cookies. Are you able to sign into Xanga from work? If so, then your computer’s browser should be able to store cookies since we also set cookies when users sign in.

    Hope this helps,

    Ben

    From: Carey Anthony Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 6:56 PM
    To: Ben
    Hi Ben,

    Thanks for the quick response.  As you know I'm a huge Xanga advocate, but this issue is really bothering me.  Let me try to articulate why.  I understand that the "subscribe" pop-up is based on cookies on the user's computer.  I understand how this works and why you did it that way.  I must heartily disagree with its methodology though. 

    First of all it's deceptive.  I would almost be OK with it if it simply allowed you to put in your email address to get email updates whenever I updated my blog, but even then I would want the option to turn it off.  As it stands now, once you put in your email address, you are then taken to a Xanga sign up page. This is a very tricky way of enticing people who simply wanted to get an email update about their favorite blog to sign up for a blogging service that they don't want.  How do I know they don't want it?  Because they have not signed up in the past!  Blog readers are not all blog writers.  I frequented many Xanga blogs for years before I decided to make the leap and create my own blog.  Before that, I signed up for Xanga simply in order to leave comments on other blogs (this was before you added the ability to let outsiders comment).  I think you need to ask yourself what the true intent of this feature is?  Natalia, after admitting it was deceptive, told me that it was indeed working to get new people to sign up.  I would be curious to know how many people that signed up as a result of that pop-up, actually started blogs.  And of those who did, how many became paying customers?

    As a loyal, paying customer, I find it extremely annoying that your are paralyzing (the screen is literally locked by this pop-up) my readers until this decision is made.  Yes, most people only see this once (until they clear their cookies).  But once is too much in my opinion.  I pay you to REMOVE pop-ups and advertising from my blog not create them.  I do not need Xanga deceptively recruiting my readers.  Why not let them poke around as I did, and decide for themselves?  As far as the cookies go, many advanced computer users choose to not allow cookies on many websites.  They are intrusive and sneaky.  I understand that under "normal" circumstances most people see the pop-up once.  What's normal though?  I clear my cookies regularly as most people should.  Corporate users may have no control over whether or not cookies are allowed on certain sites (that's the case at my company).  Yes, you can view Xanga from within the company's network, but the cookies are blocked.  In addition, on a slow computer, the pop-up really impacts performance.  I had one person tell me that it took so long to clear that they closed their browser and gave up.  That should NOT be happening.  I looked at her computer today, and sure enough, because she doesn't have enough RAM, my page loads and then it goes gray (see attached screen shot, grey.jpg), and then it takes about 90 seconds to be able to say "no thanks" to the pop-up and then, because she's not able to accept the Xanga cookie due to company restrictions, the whole thing happens the next time she tries to go to my site.  Long story short, she can't read my site, and since she doesn't have a computer at home, her lunch hour is the only time she can do it.  She likes my site, but she just can't read it!

    You guys have been very good about adding new features and functionality this year.  In nearly every case though, you asked your user base about it before implementation and welcomed comments and feedback.  This feature seems to have been introduced with no input from the user base and no controls whatsoever.  While I appreciate your corporation endeavoring to build its clientèle, I can assure you that my elderly relatives and some computer illiterate friends will NEVER start a blog.  I can also assure you that I will not be allowing cookies I don't need on my work laptop, because well, I don't need them!

    I'll end where I began.  The bottom line is that this feature is intrusive and deceptive.  It's only goal is to get people to sign up for a service that they might not otherwise sign up for.  It does not work well for advanced users who choose to control the cookies their computer receives and for those who practice good computer maintenance by clearing their cookies.  It is confusing to less computer literate people and causes performance problems on older systems.  Why would a company with such a good reputation persist in this kind of trickery?  I humbly request that you reconsider this policy or at least provide  an opt-out. 

    Thanks for reading my rant.  Hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say here.  I enjoy working with you guys and only want the site to be better for everyone.  Customers and non  customers alike.  Thanks for your time.

    Carey
    http://xanga.com/careygly

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