Webkinz: Ceti Eels for Kids

In the Star Trek movie "The Wrath of Khan", the bad guy Khan uses something called a Ceti eel to control the Captain and First Officer of a starship. A horrid looking thing, it crawls in through the ear, wraps around your brain stem, and takes control of your mind. Lovely. The fine marketeers of the toy company Ganz have created the kids equivalent of this mind controlling horror and have called it a Webkinz.

On the surface, a Webkinz looks pretty harmless. It is a stuffed animal. As a stuffed animal, it does what all stuffed animals do - it lays there waiting to be picked up and hugged. Pretty benign so far. Do not be fooled. A Webkinz is an insidious creature, lurking about, waiting to strike.

And strike it does. When your kid gets their Webkinz, they are instructed to go to a website where they can create an online version of their cuddly little friend. The online version, unlike the stuffed one, is a more demanding master. You have to feed it and take care of it or, to quote my daughter, "IT WILL DIE DADDY!" Feeding it is not free.

They give you some of whatever currency you need to buy things for your Webkinz. As is the case in real life, when that runs out you have to use real money to get more of the local currency so that you can continue to care for your online pet. Or "IT WILL DIE".

Simply feeding the damn thing is not enough. You have to buy things to make it happy. Since, all of your kids' friends have these, yours cannot be the only Webkinz who doesn't get the right trinkets. There's a lot of tween jonesin going on here.

What I especially hate is that they draw kids into this by playing on emotions that are especially heightened at this age. The need to belong and to nurture. The need to have nice things and, like all kids, the desire for pets. Webkinz plays off of these primal needs to draw kids in and then make their unsuspecting parents pay. Otherwise, your kid is humiliated and their little online friend "WILL DIE DADDY!" Did I mention that the Webkinz will "DIE!"

This type of bald faced manipulation is one of the least desirable aspects of marketing. When you do it to kids, it's truly awful. It is a misuse of technology and one of the worst aspects of capitalism. To make a child care about something that is not real and is designed solely to separate parents from their hard earned dollars (money better saved on college) is inexcusable.

So, with all the other challenges of parenthood, we now have to deal with these greedy bastards using the Internet to manipulate our own kids to get at our wallet. In the meantime, my child will just have to learn that on the Internet, as in real life, things die. That's the fate of this Webkinz, harsh as it is. At least I don't have to pay the vet to do it or bury something in the backyard afterwards.

Thanks a bunch Ganz. I hope your kids put you in a home someday and refuse to visit.

Save Me The Schadenfreude

For those who don't know, schadenfreude is when you take pleasure in someone else's misery. There is probably a lot of that going on in the storage industry today after the conviction of Greg Reyes, former CEO of Brocade, in federal court. Reyes was not always liked and not just because he was successful.

I don't feel any pleasure in his conviction though. For whatever faults he may have had, to be looking at possible decades in jail for something like options backdating is crazy. People commit rape and murder and don't spend as much time in the hoosegow.

What is even more nuts is that he didn't make any money on it himself. That's right. Reyes backdated options for other people but not himself. That suggests to me that he really didn't think it was illegal. Did he think it was scummy? That's between him and his confessor. You don't put people in jail because they do lousy things only illegal ones.

I'm sure this is scaring the heck out of others who sit on corporate boards or are corporate executives in public companies. It's one thing to make an accounting mistake - or even to bend the rules a bit - and have to pay fines to make it go away. It is something else entirely to find yourself a character in HBO's OZ. Okay, make them resign in disgrace if they were caught trying to game the system. Make them pay back the ill gotten gains. But send them up the river? That's not "sending a message that corporate malfeasance won't be tolerated!" It's going after rich people because they're rich and sending them to reeducation camps. Where's the Gang of Four when you need them.

So, if any of you are feeling smug and thinking that Greg got his comeuppance, don't tell me about it. He doesn't deserve this and everyone knows it. This should be a civil not a criminal issue. If he was a bad boy and made an accounting boo-boo, then take away his piggy bank. Don't lock him up in the slammer. That's not justice. It's vengeance and we should be better then that.

Sunrocket Drives a Stake Into The Heart of VoIP

If the instability with Vonage wasn't enough, now Sunrocket has gone ahead and done a world of hurt to VoIP as a consumer product. For those who have not heard (such as people living in a cave with a goat somewhere in central Asia), Sunrocket has abruptly shut down. The consumer VoIP service sent out a message a couple of weeks ago saying it would cease operations. Another one arrived a few days ago declaring that all service will be off-line by August 5^th at the latest. In the meantime, expect service disruptions. Nice.

Now keep in mind, they took my renewal in April. Late April at that. There is no way that they did not know that they were having severe financial troubles. I admit, businesses on the downward spiral will often delude themselves into thinking that they will somehow survive when it's not possible. However, to make a year long commitment at a time like that is unconscionable.

This will hurt the nascent VoIP industry because it will literally crush confidence in the very idea of VoIP. People will say “First Vonage runs into trouble. Now Sunrocket does a meltdown. No way am I putting my money into that.” It is for exactly this reason that early phone companies were allowed to be monopolies for awhile. It was necessary that they have the time to build their infrastructure and create critical mass in the marketplace before having to compete on price. Without that luxury, it will be very hard for any VoIP company to succeed.

Here's the big problem: though it costs less to deploy a VoIP system then a traditional land line or cellular system, the costs aren't zero. The capital costs can still be significant even if future operating costs are lower.

Even that assertion is unproved. In a consumer business, technology costs can often pale in comparison with marketing and customer service costs. So, even if the cost of deploying and maintaining the system is less, the cost of acquiring and maintaining the customers is not that different. In order to maintain their organizations and make money, VoIP companies will have to charge nearly as much money as a traditional provider such as Verizon. Yet, they can't begin to offer the service Verizon offers.

The Sunrocket implosion will drive a stake into the heart of VoIP. The cost differential for most VoIP services is not enough to put up with the uncertainty, difficult installations, poor service, and relatively lousy call quality. VoIP is a technology, not a business. As a technology, it will continue to exist within major providers' or corporate networks. It may eventually lead to the elimination of long distance in North America. As a business, it's doomed to die.

So, what's in store for consumer VoIP? First, the dozen or so standalone VoIP phone companies won't survive. All the clever advertising won't restore consumer confidence. Second, some of the better companies will sell their networks to traditional phone companies as a way of providing cheaper service than a land line. Finally, the only service to have that wonderful combination of critical mass, low cost, and marketing cachet, namely Skype, will evolve into a more important and ubiquitous utility. That is assuming they can get a cheap Skype phone out.

Other than that, I think that Sunrocket is striking the death knell for consumer VoIP services.