Ulises I. Orozco | Social Architecture & Entrepreneurship

I was hacked! – Kinda, sorta, perhaps

In: Consumer Reports| Social Media| Tech

23 Feb 2010

So much for a new years resolution about writing blog posts more often. I don’t even have a good excuse! So feel free to scold me, call me names and slap me around a bit – I deserve it. But at the same time, where the hell are YOUR resolutions? Yeah.. thought so.

So what brings me back to the blog you say? Glad you asked! This blog was hacked/hijacked/pwned! Or at least my theme was. It was kinda nuts actually …

*dream sequence*

I was being a productive member of society, working diligently on jCompare and contributing to the GDP when I got an instant message from Pozo (aka Manny), of Pikchur.com fame. “Hey noticed something on ur blog .. it keeps redirecting me to ads” he said. At first I thought he was flicking my rocks. You see, for all of you who DON’T know Manny, he’s a freakin’ character. The dude is hilarious. His sense of humor is ALMOST as twisted as mine and his comedic timing is pretty spot on. So messing with me at any given time is not out of the question. But he was actually serious .. I was infected. “F my life” I thought.

What to do? Well, I loged on to my WordPress admin panel and looked around. Everything looked normal. Nothing different at all. So I did what any other reasonable 20 something with internet access would do – I tweeted.

No kidding, within 10 minutes a twitter friend, Igor Guerrero Fonseca (@igorgue), got back to me and told me that It was probably the theme and that I should disable it and do some diagnostics. BRILLIANT, it WAS the theme. Igor went on to guide me as to how I might possibly find out what was wrong. Eventually I figured it out but a HUGE thanks to Igor! Thanks man, you’re a freaking rock star.

So what was wrong? Well SOMEHOW, there was some rouge javascript inserted in the header tag of the theme’s header.php file. Yeah, I brought techie back! For those of you who DON’T know what I just said, basically someone messed with my junk so I had to regulate. Ok, that is all.

Thanks again Manny and Igor

(1) Comment
Tags: hacked, wordpress

Oh Poor little Tweetup how they hurt you!

In: Business| Networking| Public Relations| Social Media

4 Nov 2009

Let me start of with a disclaimer:

I am NOT a “Social Media Guru”, nor do I really care to be. If you consider yourself a “Social Media Guru” then please proceed to lift your right hand and run it across your face in a repetitive motion – shoot for somewhere in between full blown concussion and common sense.

Last month Maria De Los Angeles (@vicegueenmaria) wrote a piece on her Miami New Times blog (SiliconBeach) about Tweetups. That blog post kept me thinking…and thinking… and , yea, thinking. The term “Tweetup” is being bastardize by all of the people that just don’t get the central premise behind a Tweetup – community.

There are too many so-called Tweetups that first put personal or corporate ambitions/goals before the community. Don’t get me wrong people, I’m all about product/promotion/placement/price – I’m a business person after all. But as marketers we need to understand the tools that we use – their limitations and expectations.

We’re REALLY good at knowing this for traditional marketing methods but are pretty clueless, by in large, when it comes to social media. We tend to just treat it like another distribution channel and apply traditional strategies to a very dynamic ecosystem. It’s a very mechanical, in genuine and inorganic approach that yields very little engagement and a lot of noise.

So, enough of the Textbook talk! Here are a couple of things that I noticed that, to be honest with you, make me want to donkey punch myself in the jugular.

A Tweetup isn’t about YOU

A Tweetup isn’t about you or your product/service. A Tweetup is about the community and a certain commonality amongst those people attending.
A great example is Koa PR’s “SexyShoeup”. Theres no hidden agenda or products being pitched. Its just done because there is an innate human need to congregate around other people that are similar. Now, that’s not to say that there isn’t corporate involvement in the event. HER Energy Drink ended up sponsoring the event. But the premise was born out of a NEED/WANT in the community, not a desire to pitch. So if anything, the business in this case is supplementing to the event and are strategically aligning their products/services with an event that caters to their demographic.

Whats the takeaway? If you have a business, you’re better off either a) helping/sponsoring a Tweetup that caters to your target market or b) having a Tweetup about something that your target market cares about or has in common – NOT your product.

A Tweeup has a low barrier to entry

Seriously people, I shouldn’t have to PAY to attend a Tweetup. If you’re a company and in order to participate in your Tweetup I have to jump through hoops or pay to attend you’re in for a huge disappointment. Make it DIRT simple for people to participate. If you have the right cause/reason for a Tweetup, you don’t even have to give us anything (though free stuff is always cool) we’ll just for the sake of meeting new and interesting like-minded people.

Wow, this is a long post, I’ll spare you guys any further pain… just the three and a half cents.

(1) Comment
Tags: Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Tweetup

Tweetie – Beautiful Inefficiencies

In: Business| Mac| Reviews

7 Oct 2009

Tweetie Mac App Oh Tweetie how hot you are!

Your beautiful gradients and sexy smooth glazed interface make me want to rub cocoa butter all over your glossy-ness while gently typing tweet-nothings into your popups. Your color palette makes me want to play an acoustic version of Enrique Iglesias’ “Hero” in slow motion complete with broken English for added sexiness. You even have an equally hot twin sister! And you let me hang out with her and take her places with me and you don’t give me any grief for it.

You’re sexy, its a fact, all the cool kids in school know it. We all brag about how beautiful you are and how your smooth transitions work their way into our day dreams, but enough is enough! I’ve gotten to know you, and the hotness wears off – looks can only take you so far babe.

I think you just might be too much looks and not enough brains for me. Plus, you HIDE things from me, whats up with that? It took me forever to figure out where you want me to send a new tweet from, a tiny icon on the lower left hand corner, really? Is that what it’s come down to? It’s like I had to PRY it out of you! Same thing with retweeting! Wait, what do you call it? “Reposting” it’s almost like we aren’t even speaking the same language, why change things on me? Do you do this to taunt me? You’re not helpful to me, you don’t even help me when I forget my followers/friends twitter handles – or maybe I’m JUST a bad speller and always misspell my friends handles, it would help if you threw me a bone every now and then and suggested a name or two (even the ugly apps do that!). And what’s up with all this clicking? It’s like you take pleasure in watching me chase your little blue dots from icon to icon as you watch me drop to the ground with a bad case of vertigo caused by the dam scrolling effect that you put me through. You don’t even play nice with my multiple personalities! Why can’t you just accept me for the complex individual that I am and help me be me and me and my company all at once? Why must I toggle myself and my other self on and off, I just want to be all of me and me at once (that might be a problem beyond you but don’t you judge me!) .

Look you’re hot, I get it and I hear that you have been working on yourself and plan on coming back stronger than ever – that’s great. But up to this point, I’m OVER how miserable and inefficient you’ve made me. Hopefully we can work out again sometime soon, but for now I’m over you.

No Comments
Tags: Business, Mac Apps, Tweetie, User Experiance

A long time coming…

In: Business| Entrepreneurship| Time Management| jCompare

6 Oct 2009

So its been a while since I’ve given you guys something to read. It would be kinda sweet if I could give you an exciting explanation for my sudden disappearance – backpacking through South East Asia, leading an indigenous anthropological study in the Amazon, or studying the martial arts in a mountain-side temple of secret ninja monks in hopes of avenging the untimely death of my philanthropic billionaire father all while simultaneously overcoming my childhood fear of bats – but no, alas I’ve let you down. It’s actually been pretty simple, I’ve been up to my neck with work on jCompare. For those of you who have NO idea what I’m talking about, jCompare is my latest business venture; a user-centric social shopping website (AKA wicked awesome website). The bugs have been plenty but we’ve gotten great feedback on the initial private Alpha (let me know if you want to participate in the comments, I’ll hook you up).

Either way, enough shameless plugging. I’ll be posting A LOT more in the next hours/days so stay tuned people!

(2) Comments
Tags: Business, Entrepreneurship, jCompare, Time Management

What REALLY matters – an introspective

In: Life

29 Jun 2009

It all started with Ed McMahon on June 23rd. Two days later we lost Farrah Fawcett and the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson. And now I come to find out that famous pitchman Billy Mays is gone too? What’s happening? What’s going on? I mean, death is a natural and inevitable part of the human condition, but (to site popular vernacular) WTF?!

I don’t know if this is a byproduct of age (I’m turning 26 in a few days) and the natural development of a sense of ones own mortality or if it’s the instantaneous nature of our news distribution or both but it feels like life has become that much more fragile to me. More precious, and as such, more deserving of my everything, my 150%. That’s not to say that I haven’t given my life as much as I could have – I have. I’ve loved, I’ve cried and I’ve laughed. But I’ve also hurt, I’ve lied, I’ve misled and I’ve missed out.

It would be easy to blame my missteps on circumstance or immaturity or ignorance or anyone else. It would be much harder and much more genuine to blame it on myself – these are the choices that I’ve made and here is where I am today. At this point in time, if my lungs stopped drawing breath and my heart stopped nourishing my body, this is my legacy…. I can do better. I can love harder, I can laugh louder, I can dance longer, I can be honest and I can lead instead of mislead. I can be a better son, a better friend and a better boyfriend. It’s never too late to be better, its never too late to give my all, to give my everything.

(3) Comments
Tags: 100%, introspective, Life, living, my everything

Hasbro Strikes Back! A follow up

In: Business| Marketing| Public Relations

29 May 2009

Mr. Potato Wars

So those of you that read my last post titled “Marketing Fail: Hasbro, how you disappoint me!” know how disappointed I was with my experience on the Monopoly.com website. If you didn’t read it you missed out, so go here, here OR here.

Well wouldn’t you know it, Hasbro also read the blog post and this is what Hasbro said (in human form, as “Kriss” from Consumer Affairs)

Dear Mr. Orozco:

I saw your blog posting about Hasbro’s advertisement for Monopoly DEAL and looked into your concerns immediately. We appreciate and value your feedback as we are continuously looking for means in which we can build the best website possible.

What I found was that Monopoly DEAL is displayed in a three game rotation on the home page of Monopoly.com. As it takes several seconds for this rotation to complete itself, it is possible that you might have missed the information about the product on the home page, if you clicked through very quickly. I also found that Monopoly DEAL is the second item displayed when using the option to “browse all games” — and there is an added feature on the bottom left of the home page of Monopoly.com where you can “try it now” to learn more about how the game is played. My sincere apologies if you did not find any of these three means easy to navigate.

I would like to invite you to return to Monopoly.com and let us know if you still have any trouble finding information about Monopoly DEAL by contacting us directly @ 888-***-****. Please note that I have escalated your concerns to our marketing teams for further observation.

Thanks very much for your interest in Monopoly DEAL and I hope you’ll let me know if you have any further concerns.

Kriss
Hasbro Consumer Affairs

Well FIRST of all “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs (if that really is your name) , my father was Mr. Orozco. You may address me as Ulises, Uli and/or Ninja/Jedi/Pirate/Vampire or any other super-wicked mythical creature; that would not only be appropriate but an extension of my very own reality.

SECOND of all “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs, although my inner man-child is very much biased towards Hasbro – given the hundreds of hours that I spent enjoying the games and toys manufactured by Hasbro, Hasbro subsidiaries and companies that Hasbro acquired through good-old-fashioned American Capitalism – I still feel like a few things could have been done better with your response. Don’t get me wrong “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs, I’m very impressed that Hasbro EVEN HAS a Consumer Affairs department that looks for dissatisfaction where dissatisfaction dwells (blogs, New Jersey and in the hearts of young hollywood celebs, of course). MOREOVER, I’m further impressed that a remedy was implemented in an expeditious manner. So I guess you could say that OVERALL, not too bad.

HOWEVER, seriously, a few things:

Corporate Silo’s

“Kriss” from Consumer Affairs, sorry, you’re in a silo my friend. Allow me to explain. The “three game rotation” that you referred to in the second paragraph is on THIS page: http://www.hasbro.com/games/kid-games/monopoly/ which has now become the monopoly.com homepage. When I first saw the Monopoly DEAL commercial, typing in monopoly.com into the browser took me to the Hasbro homepage (http://www.hasbro.com/). Did you know that? Did Marketing know that? Did Web Development/Tech tell Marketing that the redirect wasn’t done before they ran the commercial? Questions to ask yourself and your cohort because ,you tell me, where on the Hasbro homepage would ANYONE find find ANY information on Monopoly DEAL. You wouldn’t, the homepage has the top products (which makes complete sense). The point that I’m trying to get across here is that the consumer (for at least a time) was being forwarded to the wrong page and no one noticed it. How many potential sales, leads and cross selling opportunities do you think might have been missed Hasbro?

Give me solutions not excuses

With the exception of the last sentence, the second paragraph just annoyed me. Let me tell you why Hasbro – it sounds like a bunch of excuses. It’s littered with a bunch of “if you WOULD have done this” kind of things, which I SHOULDN’T have to do! If a commercial SPECIFICALLY tells me to go to monopoly.com for more information then when I get to monopoly.com I expect “more information”. If the commercial would have told me to go to monopoly.com and go on an online scavenger hunt then I would have not even bothered. As a consumer I don’t care if Marketing didn’t know that monopoly.com was redirecting to the wrong page – I was sent to what I THOUGHT was the right landing page (Hasbro.com) and it was a horrible mistake/decision. So just admit the mistake and be on with it, don’t give me excuses.

Hopefully this was a learning experience, for you Hasbro and your human form “Kriss” from Hasbro Consumer Affairs. I mean that in the most sincere way, even though you didn’t offer me any free stuff given that my copy of Cranium has seen better days, my copy of Clue is none existent (and missing a Homer), I’m getting way Smarter than a 5th Grader and my Monopoly still has no DEAL!

I’m keeping my eyes on you Hasbro *squint*

(1) Comment
Tags: Fail, Hasbro, Monopoly, PR, Public Relations, User Experiance

Marketing Fail: Hasbro, how you disappoint me!

In: Business| Marketing| Operations

27 May 2009

Mr. Potato Fail

It’s absolutely amazing to me when I see a large established company drop the ball on things that should be common sense. Its as though some companies stopped operating like human-beings selling widgets to other human-begins and just transformed into a blob of under achievement wrapped in corporate red tape (Oh snap, yeah, I went there!).

Today’s case study comes from Hasbro. You know, the same company that littered our childhood with G.I Joes, Transformers, Mr. Potato Head, Monopoly and the borderline mind numbingly auditory-ly sadistic board game Operation. That’s the one with the dude that looks like a clown that squeaks in agonizing pain every time that you erroneously remove a bone from his body.

ANYWAY, I digress. I was watching TV and a commercial came on for what looks like a new version of *Monopoly called Monopoly DEAL. The commercial was pretty good; a simple black screen with a dark box with the Monopoly DEAL logo on it and some voice prompting you to log on to www.monopoly.com for more information. Ok, simple enough. Short and sweet, clear call to action – so far so good.

I get to the site ready to be educated and perhaps even purchase myself a $19.95 reminder of more innocent times and I see it. Or rather, I DON’T see it. I look left, I look right, I scroll up AND I scroll down and nothing. No Monopoly DEAL ANYWHERE on the page that I was SPECIFICALLY asked to go to by a very expensive commercial. The only reference that I see to anything Monopoly is a small box with an image of Monopoly World Edition on it – and God knows I’m not going to buy that! Not because I have anything against the world; but because I already have trouble collecting rent on my house on Boardwalk let alone attempting to manage multi-national properties – the tax implications alone… lets not get into it.

Enough jokes, I’m not properly communicating my rage and disappointment.

So there I am, looking for a place, ANYWHERE, to get more info on Monopoly Deal so that I could maybe buy it. After a frustrating 3, no, 4 minutes I FINALLY figure out that I might have to use the top navigation, so I look around and click on “Play” and I find something! “Monopoly Games” it tells me. YES! Score! I click on it and it sends me to a freaking flash game! I DON’T want a freakin’ flash game! I want to give you my money Hasbro!! I want to buy your product! Can I please buy your product? That would be freakin marvelous Hasbro.

It turns out that I have to go to http://www.hasbro.com/games/kid-games/monopoly/default.cfm?page=Products/Detail&product_id=23453 in order to get ANY information on Monopoly deal. And wouldn’t you know it, when I FINALLY get there I get a 4 sentence general description. Now it’s on Hasbro!

A Lesson learned

This is a classic case of what I like to call “corporate silo” mentality (I’m trade marking that).

Essentially you have a large company that has so many levels in so many departments that they stop talking to each other in any kind of meaningful way. This disconnect within the corporate culture not only creates, in my opinion, instances like the one that I mentioned above but also spreads a general sense of complacency and disenfranchisement while further disconnecting the employee from the overall goals of the organization.

See, a nail is always going to be a nail to a hammer right? So Marketing is ONLY concerned with the Marketing of the product and could care less about the implications that certain decisions can have on the major goals of the company. They just care about meeting their respective numbers to keep the person that can fire them happy.

So in the example above, if you had a company with an strong and open communication culture, Marketing would have spoken to IT/Web Development and asked: “hey, what’s the BEST way for us to get this product moving online?” And IT/Web Development would have said “well, you can start off by having a good landing page!”. See, that’s pretty simple. But nope!

Over complicated by poor communication, enjoy your silo’s Hasbro while the dudes that make Bratz keep kicking your ass! Oh yeah, you just got served! Bring it

*If you don’t know what Monopoly is consult with your inner child and/or Wikipedia

(2) Comments
Tags: Fail, Hasbro, Monopoly, User Experiance

South Park Economy 101

In: Finance

19 May 2009

I was working late on jCompare a few nights ago and had Comedy Central on in the background. I usually just leave the TV on while I work for the sake of comfort; I guess the sounds of other voices in the background (aside from the ones in my head) make me feel like I’m not alone in the world at 3am when all the Tweets and Facebook Statuses have gone silent. I don’t pay much attention to the sounds, but this particular night the familiar sound of South Park drew my attention. It was an episode titled “Margaritaville”, and it was freakin’ AWESOME. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading this right NOW and go to this link here . Seriously if you don’t I will never talk to you again, your children will resent you and your boss will never stop hating you.

Ok, fine you don’t HAVE to click on the link, I guess I can just walk you through it being that you’re already here, right? Ok get ready…

The episode beings with Randy taking his son Stan to the bank to open up his first savings account in hopes of teaching him about financial responsibility. As soon as Stan opens his account he loses his money. Others follow and also lose their money immediately after visiting the bank. As you can imagine, with no money people can’t spend and soon all of the residents of South Park have lots their jobs.

Randy steps up and blames the hard economic times on frivolous spending on useless material goods (that he himself owns) and that said irresponsibility has “angered the economy”. Randy turns his economic views into what closely resembles a religious movement and demands that everyone stop spending as to not anger the economy.

A parallel story runs throughout the episode as Stan attempts to return a Margarita mixer that his dad (Randy) bought out of carelessness during better economic times. Stan is bounced around from the small business where the mixer was first purchased all the way up to U.S. Treasury progressively being educated on the macro-economic principles that led to the economic distress.

Cartman, as always, maliciously uses the opportunity to blame the hardship on “the jews”. Cartman’s mischievous efforts and Randy’s overzealous fiscal policies are soon undermined by Kyle (the jewish character) as he preaches economic disciplines and doctrines a-la-Jesus. Cartman pulls a Judas and betrays Kyle in exchange for Grand Theft Auto IV: Chinatown Wars. Before much can be done to silence Kyle, he sacrifices his financial future for the sake of the economic well-being of South Park (hint of Jesus?)

Wow, that was long! You know I did that in just one breath? Yeah, seriously, no kidding.

So what makes this episode “freakin’ AWSOME” ? Well pull up a chair, and if you’re already sitting then stand up! Not only was the episode funny, but it also solidified the trend that I’ve been noticing in episodes for a few seasons now – they have a freakin’ point! Trey Parker and Matt Stone have really stepped it up the past few years and have been producing funny programming that also touches on socially relevant topics. Unlike other shows *cough – family guy* , that give you a laugh or two but are completely irrelevant and dated (God I hate those flashbacks), South Park has managed to stay funny and utilize the punch-lines to drive important social and educational messages home.

Now, if you agree with their views or not is another thing for another blog post, but at the end of the day at least they’re trying to parlay the strength of their viewership to do something positive.

Your move Seth MacFarlane, your move *squints*

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Post Credits – Wolverine

In: Movies

7 May 2009

This isn’t a review about Wolverine – if you’ve seen it you know that it’s the best movie on the face of PLANET at the moment and if you haven’t seen it, then you suck. This is a post about patience and what happens when you’re not patient.

See, I’m the kind of person that waits until after the majority of the people in the movie theater leave before I bother to get up. I’m in no rush. I have no where else to be. I sure as hell don’t want to be fighting traffic to squeeze out of a pair of double doors just so that I can get to my car a whole 3 minutes earlier. No thank you, sir!

My laid-back movie-watching philosophy at times rewards me in the form of post credits footage, alternative endings even! But no, when you go to the movies with a group of people you can’t always get your way and although my gut told me to stay, I felt bad holding everyone up. So I took a deep breath and reluctantly got up and slowly made my way out of the theater. Looking back as I took my final steps beyond the soft glow of the screen I saw nothing, just credits, and for a time I felt safe, I felt OK.

The bombshell

A few days later I’m spending some time with the family and during a break from a volleyball game (which I completely owned, by the way) my cousin, Richard lets me have it “Did you see Wolverine? Did you see the alternative endings after the credits?” said Richard through a satisfied smile as though acknowledging the fact that the alternatives were wicked bad-ass. “What the!?” I responded, in disbelief as I continue to replay my final moments in the theater in the form of an 80’s video montage complete with Air Supply’s rendition of Badfinger’s “Without You” as musical accompaniment. Sadness draped over me…

I missed it! Apparently there were two alternative endings. One with Wolverine sitting in a Japanese bar getting dog-face plastered off of some crazy sake to “help him remember” or something (yeah ‘cause that always helps, you know) and the other one has to do with Deadpool, the Ryan Reynolds character.

Failure! I tried to look around the web but all I can find are grainy hidden hand-held videos with unnecessarily watered down/childish/retarded commentary above the dialogue. Let me know if you have better luck. In the mean time, gonna have to sneak into the credits of this one!