MikeOnBlog

Last week I got to relearn the valuable lesson of the importance of giving context to a decision that can affect how people work. Alot of Flock users had been posting that they were having issues using Flock with Shadow’s favorites sharing service. At one point their site was down for several days and we had heard rumours that they were de-emphasizing the service. After several attempts at contacting Shadows at all levels we basically got radio silence.

In the interest of our users we wanted to get the message out that we could not support a service that was this unreliable. After discussing with Geoffrey on what to say, to be fair to Shadows we decided not to comment on the site’s reliability, or lack there of, before we had a chance to talk to them but we also wanted to ge the message out to the community. Late in the evening I posted a terse entry to Flock’s general blog …and got creamed over the next couple of days.

Naturally, the day after I made the post Geoffrey got a call from the Pluck Corporation that owns Shadows with the information we expected to be true, that they have decided to de-emphasize Shadows. That evening Geoffrey was able formally announce what we had suspected, but with every good intention, decided not to mention in the initial announcement that I had made.

Here are the take aways and silver linings from this little experience:

1. Try to provide as much information as possible when ever possible. If that can’t be done, be prepared for the backlash.

2. While myself coming off as dictorial and uncaring towards the Flock community (100% untrue I assure you), I gave Geoffrey the opportunity to save the day. Maybe he’ll stop throwing the 10 pound medicine ball at me in the office while shouting “Think Fast!” — OK. He doesn’t do that but now that I’ve mentioned it….

3. I even got mentioned in TechCrunch.

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