What I hear you saying is...

Loads of fun for the whole family. BeachWorld

Yes, Cupertino has followed the same trend that apparently all of these franchises (?) follow -- which is namely to "boot-up" with a limited menu. Limited to cream puffs. Which are vanilla.

That is all.

So rejoice, fellow South Bay brethren, for creamy goodness is upon us. It will just take a few more weeks until the truly good stuff arrives. Until then, you can always drop in if you happen to be in the Wolfe & Stevens Creek area. But don't make a special trip for "B+" puffs.

Example: I'm writing a virus for the iphone.

We see this pattern time and again: Sites desperate for traffic resort to pandering users with cash and prizes:

Poor JudysBook tried to encourage a higher post-rate by offering their users free Starbucks cards for writing reviews. But users were confused by the rules (e.g. restaurant reviews didn't count! ) and soon the forums on JB were inundated with irate folk demanding their coffee cards. Now JB is in the deadpool.

Jason Calcanis tried to breathe life back into Netscape by cloning Digg and paying the top posters. Although it garnered some early PR, it was also met with derision, since (1) it was seen as a direct assault on the Digg faithful ("You can't buy us, man!") and (2) the payouts were so meager. Just after Calcanis' departure, AOL renamed the site "Propeller" and buried it.

And don't even get me started on models like Pay-per-Post or the latest AllAdvantage reintardnation, "Agloco".

The Lesson?

Compensating users is a recipe for failure

Why?

1. It's a distraction.
There are lots of sites out there that inspire great UGC without payouts -- Just take the story yesterday about the gentleman from Amazon that has written over 2,500 product reviews. Reviews, mind you, not "OMGs" and "LOL" comments. And apparently they are high quality too, as he's amassed over 17,000 'positive' votes from his fellow Amazonians. And Amazon has never paid this guy a dime. If you're tempted by the easy lure of cash incentives, it's probably better to concentrate on your failing product instead.

2. It's usually temporary.
Eventually, you'll probably have to stop paying people (as MSFT did). When the compensation goes away, users are going to disappear as quickly as they arrived. Worse, they're going to be upset because you've taken away the primary reason they were on your site in the first place.

3. It brings out the worst in a community
Look at any burgeoning social network that uses a "currency" to influence results (cash, prizes, votes, badges, etc), and you'll find a shadow-land of cheats, hacks, and otherwise deviant behavior.

4. It's not scalable Yes, you could pay users $40K a year to write reviews or posts for your site, but there's no way that model can scale to the average user. So the more users you try to encourage using funds, the less compelling the compensation becomes.

5. It actually demotivates people.
Sounds counter-intuitive. I mean, most of us work for a living, and certainly payday has got to be some kind of motivator, right? Actually, no. I won't try to rehash it all here, but Skrenta turned me on to this book that changed the way I think about human motivational factors, and I highly recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject. To summarize one of the main tenets, however: Passion is its own reward. How can one explain the motivations of a woman that has over 19,000 comments on a forums board? Easy - she's obviously passionate about discussion. All she needed is a vehicle of expression. As soon as you introduce a reward, the focus is diffused, the passion gone, and it's game over.

Now, having said all this, WIHYSI.com is excited to announce a new giveaway that's sure to start driving traffic in hordes. That's right! We're giving away one miniature commemorative medallion of Abraham Lincoln to each reader that subscribes to our RSS feed. Each medallion is painstakingly crafted from copper and zinc alloy and includes the date and location of its minting. Act now, while supplies last!

From Wikipedia:

The yellow Pee Chee Folder was a very common American school item in the second half of the 20th century. It was first released in 1943 by the Western Tablet and Stationery Company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Pee Chees were later produced by the Mead Corporation. They are not currently being produced.

These relatively inexpenisive folders were made of card stock and had two internal pockets for the storage of loose leaf paper. The pockets were printed with a variety of reference information including factors for converting between English and metric measurement units, and a multiplication table. The folders had fallen out of general use by the 2000s.

The illustrations on Pee Chee folders changed occasionally over the years, but usually depicted high school age students engaged in sports or other activities.

"Other activities". Gotta luv that. Every year we'd get new Pee-Chees, and by the end of the first week, we'd doodled and caricatured the highest-level of grade-school wit we could muster -- embellishing the retro-photo line-art with props, and adding thought bubbles to each character:

The guys in track suits were always running from a class pariah or evil teacher. The football players were usually expressing discomfort over some type of... er, "compromising" positions. The smiling tennis player usually frying up bacon and eggs in her racquet.

Pee-chees were the pallete of grade-school america.

But as I learned the other day, several folks from the south and east coast seem never to have heard of these. If you're one of these unfortunate souls, all is not lost. Apparently there's a mint-condition Pee-Chee for sale on eBay right now -- current bid is a paltry $21.50.

If you've never spent an afternoon drawing on a Pee-Chee, well then it's time to get 'cher doodle on.

So the best commercial ever - literally, the best commercial ever - shows up with Ridley Scott as the director, and half the folks who see it, including Apple's board, want to give the time back to the network rather than run it.

Who isn't a fan of this ad? It's got a great director, great message, and it's really entertaining. So much so that it transcends that hazy strata between commercial and 'content'. It's clever.

But what were MSNBC's criteria for judging this as the best ad ever? Did it sell more Macs? While it's certainly an incredibly cool ad for you and me, I wonder if it was such an early winner for Apple (granted, now that their products have achieved cult-status, this ad (and the HAL ad) only feed this branding, so in the long run it was a great call).

And Apple is a special case by almost any standard -- their product line exudes hipness and differentation. That's why this ad works. But how often do these 'clever' ads fall flat on their face in returning marketshare, branding awareness, and revenues to the advertiser?

One that comes immediately is this ad:

Pretty funny, huh? Quick, who was the advertiser? Yeah that's what I thought. And even if you remember the name, did you catch what they do?

I saw this ad during a Super Bowl a couple of years back and was talking about it around the water cooler the next day, when it dawned on me that among the five of us talking, we had each seen as many as three ads from this series of very clever, funny commercials -- yet none of us had any idea which company had sponsored it.

Did Ameriquest - the advertiser - not catch this when they screened the ads with a test market? Or were they too busy judging whether the ad was clever enough. I've gotta say that as much as I love these Ameriquest ads, if I was on their board, I'd nix them from a Super Bowl spot, too. From the MSNBC article Skrenta referenced, one of the critical elements for success:

Brand recognition is vital. Even if Carmen Electra agrees to appear half-naked, McG is directing and the ad has a $2 million special effects budget, it doesn’t matter if nobody knows what the product is.

Now go back to the MSNBC article and read the "results" section for each of their ads. I count one or two at most from these top-ten that point to any remotely measurable results in delivering on brand, market, and/or revenue.

Armchair Quarterback
They say that you need to hear a brand five times before you remember it. What a neat experiment it would be to take a 30-second spot in the super bowl for some unknown company, and simply repeat a six-second ad five times. Just a guy in a suit standing in a white room: "Ameriquest: We're a mortgage company that doesn't judge you too quickly." Fade out. Rinse Repeat.

Ok, I admit it sounds annoying, and I'd imagine that the rapid-fire repetition would not really count towards five encounters with the brand in different contetxts and times.

But I bet you'd at least remember the name.

Looks like I can put off that iPhone purchase until 3G is available next year.