Bloggers beware! Here is an email conversation i had over the last week, with yet another agency trying to hit on Quebec bloggers to freely advertise and test a product.
This is not the first time, and not the last time it happens, but this one was a little to much to keep for myself.
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Mail 1. Names have been hidden on purpose.
From: S.
Sent: December 20, 2006 3:00 PM
Subject: Invitation: Looking for Feedback on new site to Broadcast Live on Internet
Importance: High
Hi Marie-Chantale,
(…) is looking for a select group of influential bloggers to join its advisory board for xxx. Basically, xxx is similar to YouTube, only it is exclusively Canadian content, it is broadcast in real time and none of the content is archived. We thought you might be interested because you are really in tune with the Web 2.0 movement, and this would be a really cool project for you to get involved in.
We want to find out what you like, what we could do better, differently, etc., and what new functionality you would like to see. If you’re interested, this is how it would work:
Visit www.xxx.ca and register yourself for an account to broadcast your show. Send me your username and your contact information, and we’ll send you a web cam to get started. We will touch base sometime in January to get your feedback on the site.
If you want to get involved, just let me know. Any questions, you can call or email me. My details are below.
Cheers,
S.
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Mail 2.
Hi Marie-Chantale,
I wanted to know if you were interested in participating in our advisory council. I realize that you may not be interested in video broadcasting but if you are curious, let me know. We would really love to know what you think about the site and how we could make it better.
Best,
S.
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My answer.
Hello S.,
i did not answer your previous mail, but yes i received it.
Here are the reasons why i did not answer, you can forward my email to the person who got the brilliant idea to contact bloggers for your project :
1- bloggers are not free workers, testing web product for free. We’ve got a life.
2- i guess the goal here was to have people talking about your new product over the blogosphere – bloggers are unfortunately not free advertising boards…
and 3, when saying ‘…i realize that you may not be interested in video broadcasting‘… you cannot blindly contact people asking them to do free work for you, not even getting to know who are these people you are contacting. We have a video broadcasting platform online since a year, the first one in Canada, probably your team even got inspired by it.
Sorry about the rudeness of my email, but i had to speak my mind.
m-c
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I got an apologies email which i wont publish.
Bravo!
Salut! Just curious, why won’t you publish their reply?
ah, because its not really needed… she just apologies saying she sent the mail confusing me with another person…
and its a well known agency – i was about to publish the name but this could be a little too mean i thought…
So basically it was a mistake on her part but you are flexing your e-muscles to the world ? SOunds very professionnal on both sides…
the mistake on their side was that they did not care about the people they asked for to, at no cost, test and help improve their platform, randomly emailing bloggers like if we would be dumb nolife geeks.
I don’t know, that is the problem with e-mails, people tend to project feelings on requests. Personnally, from the transcript, I do not see anyone ”not caring” or thinking that you were a ”dumb nolife geek”. C’est aussi ce que j’observe beaucoup quand je vois une francophile répondre à un e-mail anglophone. Perso, je trouve que tu beurres épais mais c’est ton blogue ma chère. It’s all your, even the geeky looking videos of eye balls…