Blackberry (blog) FAIL

Now I'll admit that before I made the switch to the iPhone, I was a crackberry addict and never understood why Apple fans looked down on the rest of us. After I made the switch, I got it. In terms of usability and user experience, the Blackberry just didn't measure up against the iPhone.

Sure, I've already talked about Blackberry's shortcomings on this blog already, but when you do more than one thing poorly, it warrants additional posts. After falling off the face of the planet and becoming irrelevant outside of certain business circles, Blackberry is trying to stage a comeback with the release of the Z10, in hopes that it can steal away some market share from Apple and Android users. The company is pouring massive marketing resources behind this product, with national broadcast and print ad campaigns, as well as online advertising in such prominent placements as the banners atop the homepage of the New York Times.

While the ad campaign makes sense, given the audience, they are failing miserably (in my opinion, at least) with the company blog. This site is everything a brand's blog shouldn't be - a text-heavy appendix to the product's user guide, rather than an engaging, experiential site. The content is bland and boastful, focusing on the company and its products, rather than the audience.

It does very little to pull people in, let alone keep them there. Yes, it does display some of the new product's more appealing ads, as well as links to other social media platforms...but the content is not what you would expect for a product that is being positioned as a game-changer.

Rather than talk about the benefits through the eyes of the company, tell stories through the eyes of the user. If this product is so great, let the blog readers see its benefits from a video diary of a person using it, not Blackberry writing 100 words about a new great app. Instead of post after post about Blackberry does this and Blackberry does that, how about a post about how End User X accomplishes this and that with the help of the Z10.

That would certainly be more appealing than "hey, we're awesome, buy our stuff" but maybe that's just me.

Internet Policy - Access

In an earlier post, I covered the issue of online piracy, which is its own online policy issue that many countries worldwide are trying to handle. Today, I'm going to focus on one issue that the US Congress and our own Ed Markey are trying to tackle, though the issue seems to end up on the backburner - highspeed access.

While this may come off as a pompous first world problem-type rant, simply getting online is no longer a luxury, but a necessity in so many industries, not to mention to succeed in school at any level (example: I'm currently writing a blog for a graduate course at Suffolk University. Can't exactly do that w/out being able to get online). Oh, and I've had 14.4 modem...and it was the pits.

Anyway, with Internet providers like Comcast and Fios controlling fees and Internet speeds, not to mention an essential duopoly on the market, Americans have pretty much been totally screwed. In 2010, the FCC finally decided to do something with the creation of the National Broadband Plan. One of the goals of the plan was to ensure that every American has access to broadband capability that is affordable. This is certainly a very lofty goal, but also a very necessary one. As a current Comcast customer, I'm very curious to know how they define "affordable." To Comcast, the word either doesn't exist, or is synonymous with bleeding customers dry, but maybe that's just me.

Another goal was to have the US lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation. At the launch of the National Broadband Plan, the US ranked 12th, according to data from Akamai. Pretty pathetic for a global super power. If the US is truly going to lead the world in innovation, it must provide its citizens with the best tools necessary, not the least of which is access to affordable highspeed internet.

So much business today is done online. We can't lead the world in much of anything when we're wasting time waiting for GoToMeeting to load because the connection is terrible. I'm highly skeptical that the FCC's plan will be a success, but at least it's something.