April 18, 2008

OAuth Hackathon

Get Satisfaction is organizing a meet-up — next Saturday — to help app developers wrap their heads around and implement the OAuth protocol. If you haven’t heard of it, OAuth is how users can give access to their information on one application on a second app without sharing all of their identity. If you’ve ever used an app that requested permission to access your Flickr account you know what it’s all about. Get Satisfaction is excited to provide OAuth support in its API.

Maybe you’ll be fired up about OAuth after attending the Web 2.0 conference next week. Maybe you’ve been meaning to figure out OAuth for awhile now. Maybe you started an OAuth project but didn’t get very far. Either way you should join us.

Here are some reasons to add OAuth to your app:

  • You want to link to a third-party app (like Get Satisfaction!) but you don’t want your users to have to create a wholly new account. With OAuth you can pass-through their credentials for a seamless, single sign-in experience
  • You want your app to be able to access user accounts on third-party OAuth-enabled apps. Use OAuth if you want to give users access to their existing Get Satisfaction accounts and functionality from within your app.
  • You want to give third-party developers the same benefits we mention above. It will increase your accessibility in the broader ecosystem of other apps.

Cameron will be emceeing this hackathon, from 2 p.m. - 8 p.m., next Saturday, April 26th, and there’ll be numerous OAuth experts on hand to help you make quick work of your implementation. Since we don’t have a massive office here at Get Satisfaction (you’d probably also get distracted by our Rock Band set-up), the folks at Six Apart have generously donated their space for this event.

You can RSVP and find out all the details here.

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By Eric Suesz | Posted in open source, Tips and tricks, appearances, development, Satisfaction | Comments (0)
April 17, 2008

Web 2.0 Conference: We’re Speaking

Web 2.0 is next week. We will be there. You bet we will. In fact, we’ve got a bunch of speaking engagements lined up. Come visit us as we expound on these topics:

Start-up funding: Thor speaks in a workshop setting with Rob Hayes (First Round Capital), Jeff Clavier (Softtech VC), and Ted Rheingold (Dogster/Catster) about getting early funding for your start-up venture. The official title: Starting Up: Strategies for Financing & Growing Your Web 2.0 Startup. Topics will include financing, marketing, team, revenue models, and managing all the other hats every startup entrepreneur needs to wear. Start it up on Tuesday! 9 a.m. (Moscone West 2022)

Data portability: Leslie will be talking about user interface and data portability. In an as-yet-untitled roundtable, the focus will be on hopping from one social network to another. What can we do to make that easier? How should these kinds of interfaces be designed so that users can clearly understand how all this passing-through and jumping over works? Get on that UI on Wednesday! 10:50 a.m.

Community Management: Amy will be whispering into the ears of trolls. Not the kind that you may have read about in fairy-tale books, but the more destructive kind who try to disrupt, grief, and kill online communites. Come learn some strategies for dealing with that guy on your Web site who seems to have a wealth of time on his hands and a whole lot of ire to share with the world. Trolls on Wednesday! 1:30 - 2:20 p.m. [Note: This one is part of Web 2.0pen — a free event (you can register for a free pass).]

Customer Service: Thor and Lane’s Customer Service is the New Marketing presentation is for those folks who are into fanatical devotion. No, not the religious kind; the kind that people feel toward their favorite companies and products. If your organization needs to get religion and fix your customer service problems, get thee to a seat early for this one. Customer Care Thursday! 2:40 - 3:30 p.m.

OAuth: Scott’s The How of OAuth will get you up and running with OAuth. What is it? How does it work? How do you get started? Scott shows you why it’s not the big wrestling match you might think, provided you take a simple, measured, Zen-like approach. OAuth on Friday! 2:40 - 3:30 p.m.

… More Web 2.0 news as it happens.

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By Eric Suesz | Posted in customer service, community, Tips and tricks, conferences, appearances, development | Comments (0)
April 16, 2008

The Get Satisfaction API is here!

Our shiny, shiny API, previously announced and much-discussed and anticipated, is ready for the prime time! Check out the extensive documentation for it on our brand spankin’ new developer’s site, powered by our pals over at Mashery.

Our goal with the API is to expose every part of the Get Satisfaction service, so that companies and customers alike who have clever ideas about how to integrate, build on top of, and/or extend the Get Satisfaction service can just do that. All sorts of possibilities await: Recreate your company’s area in Get Satisfaction entirely on your own site. Or recreate Get Satisfaction for more than just one company — do it for a whole class of products and services, and prove your expertise across an entire category. Maybe you don’t like the way our posting or topic listing page works? Make your own! Dig in deep and integrate relevant topics right into your online product catalog, or mash our topics up with your already existing discussion or comment groups. Built a couple of widgets to show off your answers on your own blog. Or create some clever visualizations that help you better understand what your customers are saying (I hear Google can help with that.)

In other words, do whatever seems like it’ll be fun, interesting, stunning, and/or useful. And while you’re doing that, we’re going to keep working to make it better, faster, and easier to use our API. To that end, we’ve got a couple of things going on:

  • We’ve put together both Ruby and PHP libraries for the API, to help you get up and running quicker.
  • We’ve fully embraced OAuth as our third party identification protocol of choice, to ensure seamless, user-friendly, and secure account integration between Get Satisfaction and all the companies that choose to work with us. No need to create Yet Another Account to use Get Satisfaction — now you can pass your customers directly into our system and auto-create/link accounts together (with their permission, of course.) You can read more about how to work with our OAuth implementation, and we’ll be talking more about the benefits of OAuth right on this here blog in the next couple of days.
  • And just to be coy and teasing: we’ve got a few more API-related tricks up our sleeve in the coming weeks and months, so keep an eye out for those.

Of course, we’re ready to discuss all your API-related questions, problems, ideas, likes, and dislikes right here in Get Satisfaction. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating: We can’t wait to see what you come up with! So once your creation has made it out into the world, please be sure to let everybody know.

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By Lane Becker | Posted in rails, development, applications, co-creation | Comments (1)
April 14, 2008

Craigslist Eyes Navel. What Will It See?

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Craig Newmark is a customer service rep. No, for real.

I stumbled upon Craig Newmark’s business card on Flickr, and he lists himself as “customer service rep & founder” on that card. (Note that “founder” is second in that title.) It’s always refreshing to see the person in charge of a large organization embrace customer service instead of just pay lip service to it.

This customer service bent is not actually a new development. Craig has been slowly transitioning away from being the head of Craigslist and more toward being an ambassador of the ideas behind Craigslist. But it’s still telling that he chose to redefine his role as one that is devoted to customer service.

The reason I’ve been stuck on Craigslist lately — the reason I found myself on Flickr and found Craig’s business card — is that they’ve finally decided to write a blog. It’s about time. I’ve spent countless hours howling with laughter at the Best of Craigslist and wondering why they don’t take the wealth of interestingness that exists on Craigslist and spotlight it in some way. I was always flummoxed when I went searching for the inside scoop or some kind of commentary about what they were up to. I always wondered why there wasn’t a blog.

Although, I’m not sure if spotlighting amusing content is what they’ll do with the new Craigslist blog. I’m not really sure if they have a plan. The blog doesn’t appear to have a name. At least, it doesn’t have a catchy name. It seems to just be called “craigslist blog.” Like the Craigslist site itself, it lacks panache and style and, well, formatting of any kind. It’s under-designed, you might say. It can’t be subscribed to via RSS, so you’ll just have to check back whenever you think there might be something new to read. I think it still needs some work. This blog is clearly in its infancy, but I wish it great success because I know that I — like countless others in this world — have gotten a lot out of Craigslist. I wouldn’t mind giving back.

Which brings me to my real thought: Craig Newmark has an amazingly healthy and giving community that could write an award-winning community blog. I bet they would love the opportunity. I know I’d contribute.

Would you? If you have ideas about Craigslist’s new blog — or any other ideas about what Craigslist should or shouldn’t do as it tamps the dirt down on the grave of newspaper classified ads — share them with us.

[Craigslist is on Get Satisfaction.]

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By Eric Suesz | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (2)
April 14, 2008

Bad Apples Stealing Pints of Milk

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“Apl.itunes has taken money from my account and I never ordered anything.”

That’s the title of a problem on Get Satisfaction started by a frustrated user who got swindled by someone pretending to be Apple. The number of people who have this problem keeps growing.

In researching the details, I’ve found out that this may be an updated version of what used to be called the “pint of milk” scam. The way that one worked: a thief would use a stolen debit or credit card to make a really tiny purchase — a pint of milk. Once that test transaction went through, they knew the card was open for business, so to speak. At least, that’s the urban legend I’ve heard (or the metaphor someone at some point assigned to this scam).

The iTunes Store works great for this kind of scam because people (me included, I just bought a song on iTunes this morning) get used to the idea of numerous $1 purchases winding their way through their stream of financial activity. Once you start buying songs like this, you just don’t pay attention to every single transaction that shows up in your records, if you pay attention at all.

What responsibility does Apple have in this matter? Any? Simply put: none. But that hasn’t stopped a deluge of people with this problem from blaming Apple for this scam on Get Satisfaction.

This is a public relations quandary that many companies have had to deal with. Even though Apple is just as much a victim in this case, staying silent about it won’t make it go away (in fact, this scam seems to be growing, and quickly). I would argue that Apple, just like any company with a very strong brand, would do well to publicize this kind of consumer fraud. Why? First and foremost, being seen as a champion of consumers is always good. You’ll always be rewarded for that. Second, you can’t control how your customers (or potential customers) talk about you online, but you can react to what they are saying — and you should. There are lots of other reasons I could list that recommend and support engaging with customers on this level, but there’s one paramount reason Apple should address this problem: Ignoring it will only encourage negative assumptions about iTunes to fester.

Like Thor, our CEO at Get Satisfaction, put it in a great blog post about defending your online reputation:

“It’s amazing how often people let spurious charges go unanswered in a public forum. It seems that most people and organizations have two modes online, silent or litigious. There’s another approach: responsiveness. The trick is to not respond in a reactionary style, which can create a destructive blowback effect, but rather in the measured and calming tone of someone who is better informed. Your job is to correct facts, provide the missing context, clarify the intentions.”

I’m a huge (huge!) Apple fan, but that does sound like Apple: either silent or litigious. I sent some friendly messages to Apple PR reps about this problem, but I’ve yet to get a response. I hate to see Get Satisfaction users having these kinds of problems. I bet even a sympathetic nod would do the trick.

If you have knowledge or experience with this particular scam — or want to offer your own sympathetic nod — join the conversation here.

[Apple is on Get Satisfaction.]

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By Eric Suesz | Posted in company, philosophy, customer service | Comments (0)
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