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Despite reports to the contrary — and not trying to sound pompous — it was me that broke the story to the Internet, based on the closest thing to an official statement as I could get (my editor at Tech Digest Skyped me after having just found out himself).

This was later backed up by tweets from co-founder Katie Lee and, finally, by email message from Chris Price.

You can read how the Internet has covered the story (Guardian, Inquisitr, Real Business, Digital Journal, New Media Age, Paid Content UK) so I won’t rehash it all here.

This is a summary of my feelings on the matter, for those who are interested or care, or simply want to add it to the increasing pile of commentary on the matter.

1. I’m a freelancer who has lost little

Compared to some with a greater stake (financial and emotional) in Shiny Media, who in fact have generally handled things extremely gracefully (online and in public at least) I know where I fit in the pecking order.

I always knew that the freelancers’ life was a somewhat risky path to tread, and in fact I’ve been very fortunate to have worked pretty much full-time with Shiny Media over the past three years.

I’ll probably end up out of pocket and I’m a little frustrated that the last month’s worth of work (when I could have been investing time in other projects) is unlikely to be remunerated, but that’s life.

2. I saw it coming (or at least, I wasn’t surprised)

Yes, it’s easy to say this with the benefit of hindsight, but unfortunately I can’t say I’m surprised at all this.

In fact, I thought it might happen sooner (maybe six months to one year ago).

I realise that I don’t have insider knowledge, and I can only speak based on seeing things from the outside, but Shiny Media always felt like it had problems. I believe this ultimately led to its downfall.

Firstly we have…

3. Communication (or lack thereof)

Communication, certainly between management and freelancers at least — I don’t know exactly what it was like for permanent staff — was patchy, and sometimes non-existent.

In the early days of Shiny Media we had a lot of resources, guidelines, an internal staff forum, and more to help us to deliver what the company expected from us.

Now, editor-to-writer relationships have, as far as I’ve seen, been very good. This is testament to the overall high quality of staff at Shiny Media. On personal and individual site levels, it all worked quite well, but the overall vision seemed disjointed.

Again, as a freelancer, I don’t expect to be kept ‘in the loop’ about everything. Even after signing a NDA I realise there are some things I can’t know about. Having said that, more regular filtering down of important information — things that have an impact on how writers write — would really have helped.

I effectively edited two Shiny blogs, also as the sole writer, with no managerial input, for at least six months. That can’t be right.

We move on to…

4. Choice of partners

I have been called out before for publicly slating the company Shiny Media chose to use for its web hosting and “consultancy” services.

While I won’t go into great detail about it now, I still stand by my belief that Shiny Media could have got a much better deal, and indeed service, by working with a dedicated web hosting company. Unfortunately, the financial debts had already set in far enough to make switching very difficult.

5. Staff Support

Let me make it very clear that I think all the staff (and certainly the ones I met) past and present, in various departments, were excellent, quality people.

The trouble it seems — and it’s probably linked with my earlier point about communication — is that they weren’t given the resources required to excel at their tasks, be that technical, ad sales, or whatever else.

Again, let me say that the staff were excellent, but the systems probably weren’t.

6. My defence of Shiny Media may have to cease

I have been a strong defender of Shiny Media — odd, you might think, given that I have no vested interest in the company except that it paid me to write.

When the TechCrunch furore broke out, I strongly defended Shiny Media.

I’ve pushed through, trying to deliver much even when the company couldn’t afford to pay its freelancers an amount closer to what they were worth.

I’d even be happy (in a strange kind of way) to shake the hand of the dying company — metaphorically speaking — and let everything rest.

What irks me, though (and this is as much a fault of UK business law, which I don’t profess to understand) is that another company, owned by Chris Price — possibly even with input from the original venture capital company — is able to buy the derelict Shiny Media, wipe the debts (which includes a lot of unpaid wages and fees) and start again.

Start again?

Of course I don’t mind start-ups restarting, but if I discover in a couple of months time that it’s “business as usual” for Shiny Media, or Shiny Digital, or whatever it’ll now be called, I’m going to be just a little peeved.

Then again, I’ve got other opportunities bubbling, so I’m not going to get bitter about it.

Finally…

7. Would you want to work with someone who uses underhand tactics because they don’t agree with a business decision?

I don’t know the identity of the “minority shareholder” who (allegedly) cut off/hacked the email and mobile phone of Chris Price, but given that it potentially made it extremely difficult for him to communicate with staff and freelancers, I ask whether anyone would really trust said person working for their business, lest something goes wrong and the same dirty tactics are used again?

Yes, I’m posting a fairly personal piece here, and yes I’ve tweeted some annoyed tweets in the past, but deliberately breaking systems because your minority stake is under threat? I don’t think so.

Conclusion

Anyway, there’s not much more to say on the Shiny Media situation. We’ll see what pans out. In the meantime, there are a few more journos and bloggers on the look out for new opportunities.

Be nice to them

Last week I received a press release from UK-based discount electronics retailer Buy It Direct.

It heralded a massive free giveaway of stock from their Huddersfield warehouse, in order to make way for new stock. That’s the story, anyway:

Buyitdirect.co.uk are holding The Great Giveaway, for one day only starting 1am Monday 4th May 2009. Thousands of high value products will be exclusively available online for FREE on a strictly first come first serve basis.

So what’s the catch? There isn’t one – buyitdirect.co.uk are expanding and need the space in the warehouse to make room for some new products. Rather than disposing of the products or sending them back to the manufacturers they decided to give Credit Crunch Consumers the chance to get their hands on some amazing products for FREE. Smeg fridges, Sony LCD TV’s, Laptops and Miele washing machines are just some of the branded products included in the promotion. The only cost the customer pays is the shipping charge of £4.95.

Staying up until 1am on a bank holiday Monday seemed a small price to pay for the possibility of bagging a bargain…

A few things didn’t sit right, though:

• At first viewing, there were only around 220 products listed, many with only one unit left in stock.
• Despite the premise that this is supposed to be a give away of old stock, an article at This Is Money suggests that the company has “also added more products to the offer to give everyone a chance of getting something.” How is that possible if this is strictly clearance?
• It felt like a hyped-up promotion simply to get attention and inbound links from major online news outlets (which they got)

Now, I’m not naive enough to think that this wasn’t primarily a marketing stunt, and in fact I don’t have a problem with that.

It’s the execution that totally sucks.

Those who registered and didn’t receive promotional codes are, ironically, the lucky ones.

• The rest of us (possibly millions?) tried desperately to access the web site with no luck. From 11pm on Sunday 3rd May (probably earlier) the web site was unreachable.
• At around 12.55am on Monday morning a “this site is experiencing heavy load, please try again in a few minutes” message appeared.
• Those who reported being able to access the site at 1am (I wasn’t one of them) said that the “good stuff” (laptops, TVs, etc) had gone within minutes.
• The company may have paid for additional bandwidth, but either this still wasn’t enough or (more likely) there was a huge bottleneck in trying to serve up pages. (Note that the site is running Windows Server 2003 and is hosted in the US)
• The FAQs said that the offer was open to anyone, not just those in the UK. That not only seems unfair but also means many more people probably tried to access the site.

When will web companies learn that they need to have infrastructure in place before trying to run these types of promotions?

“Buy It Direct” must be hoping that its reputation improves, but from what I’ve read on Twitter so far, I’m not convinced.

It’s pointless trying to appease millions of people hitting a web site and trying to purchase a couple of hundred products. Pointless.

What would have worked far better:

• Set up a simple “lucky dip” system. Given that it felt like a lottery even trying to access the site, a purely random draw would have worked better, and those who didn’t “win” anything would probably not feel so bad.
• Users would still have to visit the site to register (hence virtual footfall / linking to the site) to pick up a code and to leave their email address (marketing, see?), mailing address and credit card details (not initially charged).
• After the entry closing time, a random (automated?) draw could take place, matching each available product to a unique registration number.
• Each person is then emailed and their credit card is charged for delivery (though I’d waive that charge altogether for this kind of promotion). It’s a stipulation of entry that if you’re successful, you get what’s drawn for you and you pay. If the card is declined, another registration number is drawn instead.

Why would this work?

In a perfect, unconstrained world, the existing method chosen might seem better because you have more people browsing the site.

However, In this imperfect world (with bandwidth and server capacity constraints) very few people get a reliable, pleasing experience, which tarnishes the company’s reputation and leads to a bad taste all round. The company has to pay for tons of bandwidth, but even those who manage to view the site aren’t guaranteed to get anything. The company might get a few days worth of interest on all those £4.95 delivery charges, but that’s about the only minor monetary benefit, and even that feels rather underhanded.

Staying local

Additionally, if you are a British company, it would be much better if the promotion was only available to UK residents. I don’t have a problem with the company selling overseas, but this was a one-off promotion and it would have been better to limit the geographical scope.

Finally, on the infrastructure front, you must ensure that your server is of a decent specification and, ideally, your web hosting is based in the same country that the majority of your visitors come from. Hosting a UK-targeted site with a US ISP may make little different during normal business operations, but those extra transatlantic milliseconds all add up when the server is under strain.

Conclusions

I shudder to think how many people have been charged for delivery multiple times because they managed to get through to the order page but then the web site fell over. It doesn’t appear as if the company has a separate, robust server for handling credit card orders. Yes, they’ll get a refund (hopefully) but it’s been handled very badly indeed.

This sort of thing has happened far too many times. Companies need to assess the physical limits of their infrastructure and business before running promotions like this. Running something simpler and less server intensive would have worked far better.

Good luck to those who did manage to get the decent equipment at 1am last night. For the rest of you, I hope you didn’t spend too much of your holiday time trying to bag a bargain. Your time is more important.

Update: Just received an email from Buy It Direct:

Hi,

We’d like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone who took part in our Great Giveaway Promotion yesterday.

The response was so overwhelming that our servers struggled to keep up with demand even after some early morning tweaks from our IT guys! As a result, despite the best efforts of our support team, we know quite a few visitors experienced difficulties browsing the site and completing their orders.

Thousands of customers managed to grab a freebie and we’re now in the process of going through all the orders and allocating the stock.

Once again a huge thank you to everyone who took part. Don’t worry if you didn’t manage to managed to grab a giveaway item, there will be more special offers coming over the next few months!

Anna James
BuyitDirect

Hands up who is going to be signing up for future promotions/deals? Anyone?

Two years ago, Micro Bill Systems appeared on the scene and started causing trouble. So much, in fact, that I helped set up a forum and got myself in the Guardian as a result.

A company name change (to Platte Media), some legal threats and hassles later, it does appear as if the infamous pay-for-porn company has ceased trading in the UK.

Hiwat said in an email to Michael Pollitt, the reporter who has uncovered story after story about Platte, that “Our reasons for this decision and our further intentions are simply related to our original marketing and business model.” He added: “Obviously, and just like any other business should and would do, I am making sure that stopping our marketing to the UK Market, is done in such a sensible and orderly manner, that will best preserve the interests of our customers and of our own.”

It could, however, be something to do with the Office of Fair Trading, or HM Revenue and Customs, both of whom have expressed interest in the company’s activities.

Is it too soon for celebration?

We still don’t know what Oriel, Platte’s appointed debt collection agency, will do with the “debts” it has had passed to it. We also don’t know whether Platte International will continue to run its rather dubious sites (Get Films Now, for example) in other countries. The global reach of the Internet means that access by UK computer users and minors could still be just a mouse click away.

It will also be interesting to see what Platte UK’s directors move on to. I find it hard to believe that they won’t set up another business in due course – one that could have very similar properties (and problems) as Platte and MBS had.

Watch this space.

In truth, I’ve not done anything since I heard that the company had run out of money, but today, as one of the company’s minor creditors, I received a big pack of legal documents from the US. To be perfectly honest, it’s all rather confusing, and would need to be filled in and then faxed or posted back to the States. Even then, I’d stand little if any chance of receiving any money at all, and if I did, it might just cover the cost of faxing the documents back, and the time I could have spent working on other projects.

I’m just going to email the team handling this company’s affairs (from courtesy) letting them know not to bother with me.

Fortunately, I’d only written one “pilot” feature. If it had worked out, it would have turned into a series of posts which would have been pretty interesting to write – not bad remuneration for a fair amount of autonomy. Still, it wasn’t to be.

It’s not as if I’m sat here with nothing to do, anyway.

I do still work for Shiny Media!

Unbelievable!

Let me start with a hypothetical question: if you read an erroneous piece of information about you in The Guardian, would you (a) contact the author directly, (b) contact the editor, or (c) send an email to everyone who writes for the publication?

If you answered (c), shame on you.

Yet, that’s exactly what Leapfrog Computers did about a recent article (now removed) at Tech Digest.

Instead of contacting the writer directly (the name of the author of each article is stated quite clearly at the bottom of each page), the Sales Manager at Leapfrog Computers decided to email everyone.

I’ve had my share of companies who have been annoyed by things I’ve written. Sometimes their annoyance is justified, in which case I remove the offending material, and sometimes it’s just because I’ve made them sound bad, but without actually defaming them.

At least the complaints were (in the main) directed at the right person.

I don’t have a problem if the person or company who feels aggrieved contacts both me and my editor, but I think I have the right to feel cross if everyone else who works at a publication gets to find out about it.

Actually, I think I have the right to be peed off if I get a threatening email in my inbox (albeit a legally threatening one with strong tone, don’t misread me here, I don’t want my own lawsuit looming) that has nothing to do with me.

And Leapfrog Computers are annoyed because the author in question allegedly didn’t do their research properly, or badly worded something.

Hypocrisy!

No-one at Tech Digest — as far as I’m aware — ever writes anything deliberately malicious or untrue. If there’s an issue with an article, we do our best to sort it out as soon as possible.

Sending a heavy-handed email to everyone concerned threatening legal action within 24 hours is baffling.

One thing is certain — I won’t be publicising products from Leapfrog Computers again. Look, ma, no link.

Please, companies, yet again I urge you to think like human beings rather than corporate monsters.

Here’s the complete email transcript to date. I don’t usually publish these kinds of things, but this makes me very cross:

Original email sent to NINE people:

Please can you delete or correct the above article as the story is incorrect. I have posted a comment on the article but the story needs sorting out ASAP otherwise legal action will be taken against the website.

Lee Bevan is the Managing Director of Leapfrog Computers. He was the one who reported the finding of the disk after a unamed consumer brought in a laptop for repair. The writer of the article has obviously not taken their time to gather the correct data which is freely available on many websites like BBC News, ITV, Sky News, Channel M, The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The New York Times! Also, Lee has been interviewed on several news programs which were broadcast yesterday.

I would appreciate confirmation that this error has been corrected ASAP. If no action is taken within the next 24 hours and a full apology is not written then I am afraid we will contact our lawyers who will be instructed to take procedings against the site.

Yours

—
J
Sales Manager
Leapfrog Computers

My response:

Hello J,

Please note that the article in question was written by —, as it states quite clearly at the footer of the article. Would you write to every columnist at a newspaper if there was an error with one journalist’s article?

I personally don’t appreciate the threatening tone of your misdirected email. I have no access to other people’s articles, however I do know that the server is undergoing maintenance this weekend, so your 24 hour (well, 22.5 hour now, I presume) warning will be impossible to rectify.

I would suggest that any errors with the story can be amended on Monday morning. I apologise if this is unsatisfactory, but blanket spamming every writer on the publication is simply no more acceptable than the grievance you hold against the allegedly inaccurate article (I wouldn’t want to comment on that, naturally, given that I should not have been brought into this in the first place)

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ll be removing the few personal articles that I wrote about Leapfrog Computers (on other sites), as I don’t publicise companies who threaten me, particularly erroneously.

Yours

Andy Merrett

Ever more threatening response to my direct but non-threatening email, also sent to “the boss” (his, not mine):

I personally think this reply is absolutely disgusting considering that this article on your site is complete deformation (sic) of charachter (sic). You are responsible for what goes on on (sic) your website regardless of what you say. If I contacted a solicitor over this then we would have a strong case. If this had happened on any other site, regardless of what it was then my reaction would be exactly the same.

Before you reply to comments with such an agressive and unreasonable manner I suggest you check the accuracy of the dispute and put it right rather than acting in this way. I personally couldn’t care less about what articles you retract on any site. It is more important that this totally incorrect article is retracted and my bosses (sic) good name is not tarnished by some idiot who doesn’t know what he is talking about.

I still stand by what I said earlier. Get the article retracted or changed within 24 hours (or 22.5 now) and an apology written about the mistake, otherwise we will seek legal action!

OK, Tech Digest is not MY site. It belongs to Shiny Media. I’m an independent, freelance writer. I have no jurisdiction over the works of others, or over how Shiny Media run their site. Furthermore, I was DIRECT, not AGGRESSIVE, given the nature of the original misdirected threat.

But J is obviously happy to call some of the people who write on my site “idiots”, though I never used that word about anyone at Leapfrog.

My response (now I’m cross):

Sorry, do you mean defamation of character? Please note that I have not defamed anyone’s character.

The web site QUITE CLEARLY says WHO WROTE EACH ARTICLE. The article has already gone (not that you’ve bothered to check)

I still stand by what I said earlier. I DO NOT appreciate being falsely accused. I am NOT —, neither do I have ultimate control for the web site.

As you obviously won’t apologise, I do not wish to hear from you again.

Good day.

Ignoring my request not to hear from him again, he wrote this:

One of youryour (sic) more reasonable colleagues has actually removed the article. So the matter has ended. I couldn’t care less who you are! DO not email me with that crap when your site has false accusations on it. Whatever you say, its (sic) your site and you are responsible for the content. You have shown yourself to be a complete fool who doesn’t care about inaccuracy about articles. I am sure you would have something to say if your name (be it good or bad) was mentioned on a site with a false accusation.

Anyway matter is closed. I do not expect your pointless crap littering my inbox either, but I thank your colleague for sorting this matter out. He obviously realised the importance of the matter!

–
Wow, and this is how the sales director for a “large” company behaves?

OK, you might argue that I aggravated the situation, but the fact is that I DO care about both accuracy and my own name.

If the article had been mine, and someone had emailed me politely and non-threateningly about it, I’d have retracted and apologised forthwith. Like I said above, none of us at TD are malicious, but this level of response is laughable.

Though I was obviously cross about this situation, I didn’t descend into personal name calling. I merely stated the FACTS and my FEELINGS.

The amusing thing is that J obviously did care who I was enough to send the email in the first place, but now that I’ve challenged his overreaction, I’m just a worthless piece of crap that’s bothered him. I suppose at least I’m not the “idiot” who wrote it (I’m just a “complete fool”)

I won’t be responding to anyone at LC any more, unless they persist in hassling me.

A couple of weeks ago, I was invited to attend Sony’s latest BRAVIA ad photo shoot in Miami. I must admit, I was a little bemused to have been “chosen”, given that — at that time — only a handful of bloggers had been invited, but given my work on Tech Digest and HDTV UK, it was justified enough.

For an expenses-paid to trip to Miami, I’d be able to report to close-on half-a-million monthly visitors to both sites about the photo shoot, and some of Sony’s latest camcorders.

However, today I was informed — most apologetically — by one of Sony’s PR companies that I’d been dropped from the trip, due to a change in filming dates, “logistical issues”, and… because “Sony is only keen to get US based bloggers”.

OUCH!

It seems that, despite Sony being happy enough to use a tower block in Scotland for their exploding paint ad (perhaps an exploding high rise in America wouldn’t have gone down so well?), when it comes to filming an ad in the US, and despite the likelihood that it will be used worldwide, Sony only wants US bloggers to cover it.

Now, I must make it clear that I’m not particularly bothered about the trip. Yes, it would have been an interesting thing to do, and I’ll happily accept the offer of free travel and accommodation, but the “logistics” of planning a trip away when there are still the same number of targets and deadlines to achieve is no small task.

It wouldn’t have been a holiday.

However, the supposed snub is rather unfortunate. As a freelancer and a blogger — even for a relatively large UK new media company — I would never expect to be invited on these kinds of trips.

So, to be invited — I thought — showed some forward thinking on behalf of a company that should already be forward thinking — technology, after all, is nothing less than shaping the future.

What should have happened? Sony should have been more organised, and decided exactly what they wanted before trying to entice bloggers out to their PR event.

Filming dates rearranged? Flights do that too.

Apparently, I’m on the list for “next time” — whatever and whenever that might be. Thing is, I’m not sure I’m particularly interested now.

Companies, listen up — bloggers tend not to like being used as pawns in your PR games. Actually, I reckon most media professionals don’t, either, though I’d imagine (perhaps wrongly) that the most established media gets slightly better treatment.

Seeing an option to “Remind me the next time I log in. (You must accept the above Terms and Conditions by 25 May 2008, or you will no longer be able to login to AdSense and make changes to your Account.)” I plump for that so I can check some stats before going to bed.

Cycles back to the log in screen and then reloads the Terms and Conditions.

Well, I’m not going to click on “No, I do not accept the above Terms and Conditions.” just in case I’m frozen out.

So I take a cursory look at the T&Cs, hoping that Google isn’t going to do something nasty because I haven’t read all the small print, and submit again.

Still locked in a loop.

Maybe because AdSense tends to log me in automatically, there’s some part of the acceptance process that’s not being completed. Whatever the problem, I can’t get past the Terms and Conditions page.

Hopefully it’ll get fixed soon enough.

Update: Oh well, that was quick!

With Fairtrade, as with many things, it’s very much about companies following the “minimum standard”. Some companies choose to do more, but that can’t be relied upon as the average.

For example, four out of five consumers surveyed thought that brands carrying the Fairtrade logo work directly with growers, build long-term partnerships, and reinvest in grower training and development, whereas that’s not a requirement.

The Fairtrade mark guarantees a fair and stable price for farmers and an extra premium to help improve their lives, but only a few companies do more than that. That doesn’t make it bad, but is worth being aware of.

Similarly, nearly half of shoppers believe that the same amount of money goes back to, say, coffee growers regardless of which Fairtrade coffee product they buy. In reality, companies that buy raw materials from the Fairtrade register are required to pay the minimum Fairtrade price, which covers growersÂ’ costs of production and provides a social premium for investment in community projects.

Zachary Dominitz, Head of Corporate Affairs, Cafédirect said, ““We are proud of, and guided by, the direct, personal, long-term relationships weÂ’ve nurtured with our grower partners over the last 17 years. In addition to paying above market prices, over the last three years we have invested on average 60% of our profits into training and development programmes for our growers, to help build their expertise. Fairtrade gives millions of small-scale farmers disadvantaged by the conventional trading system an opportunity to earn a decent living, but that is just a starting point, not an answer. We believe that we have raised the bar for Fairtrade, and urge other brands to follow our lead and help guarantee a sustainable future for growers and communities around the world.””

87% of those surveyed said that they bought Fairtrade products each week or month. The Fairtrade Foundation reports that sales of Fairtrade products have increased by 40% or more each year, to an estimated £430 million in 2007.

86% said they’d be happy to pay a few pence more for Fairtrade products.