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Marc Canter is a legend by most people’s standards. He has contributed so much to the industry that few people dont know him or his work. He founded MacroMind – which later became MacroMedia. He is also credited with the first virus distributed in commercial software. He currently CEO of Broadband Mechanics, a 25+ person social network software and solution company with primary offices in Walnut Creek California. |
Marc’s current company provides software, source code download, software as a service, hosted service and any possible other type of solution for creating social communities. Its not very expensive to get up and running since a couple of his enterprise customers have told him “You ought to charge us more for this”. Its starts at $2500 (perpetual license) to a MAX of $40,000 – nothing more to pay ever and YOU GET the source code.
Got me thinking about the multiple choices that are offered by communities for customers to contribute, collaborate and share. Let me tell you a story:
A customer wanted to ensure people send them feedback on a product release, so they put a new discussion board thread, started wiki for entering new bugs, allowed bug submission by customer service calls and also allowed customers to post comments on new feature blog. Turns out managing all these various options to communicate was not all that successful. Some customer feedback was ignored, some was acted upon – “Who shouted the most, got what they wanted”.
Its important to provide options – and in Marc’s case for Broadband Mechanics, it makes a lot of sense. In case when you are expected to fulfill every option offered as if it were the only option – ensure you staff appropriately for it.
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