So an interesting thing just happened …
I was reading about PulpFiction on Erik J. Barzeski’s blog and asked a question about the demo terms in a comment. He responded and we had a brief dialog until another reply of his came with some seemingly unprovoked attitude.
Jay Allen actually responded to it before I did. He and I are essentially on the same page with the thinking that a more full demo might be helpful rather than limiting the app to 10 feeds. All the decisions are Erik’s to make as it’s his product but the feedback Jay and I were providing seemed to represent a different user based opinion. Erik was clearly against a time based demo, but is also seemingly against any discussions about options or even hearing feedback on the decision.
Since comments were open it seemed that Erik actually wanted feedback on the post he made…However, a later comment I posted confirming my view with Jay’s and questioning Erik’s attitude a bit was deleted. I’m sure my last comment will also be deleted.
What you do on your blog is your call, and what I do on mine is my call. Though in this case Erik’s blog represents not personal matters but a pending commercial product. Based on the way in which I was handled by Erik, I am infinitely less likely to try, write about and certainly not buy any products that he represents. I am also now much more likely to tell others about the bad customer experience as I am now. Freshly Squeezed Software, might be developing the best newsreader for the Mac ever, but I plan to stick my my trusty copy of NetNewsWire. A basic sense of respect and understanding is all it takes to build customer loyalty. It’s quite easy to shift that in the other direction and build up a wave of shit against your products or company.
PulpFiction Lite and the time-based demo (instead of the feature-limited demo) are a direct result of feedback received. The comments received on the post you’re referring to – which were rather off-topic for that entry – were followed up in a later post specifically dealing with demo limitations. The comments made there were challenged, yet in the end we (FSS) were convinced and made the appropriate changes to our product’s demo (and free) version.
Fair enough…glad to hear you decided to listen to any users and potential paying customers. However… bridge burned.
Perhaps one day you’ll realize that you are always selling / marketing yourself as a developer and owner (I presume) of a company when you engage in dialogues with people publicly like you did. The fact that you shut me down when it was not off topic, but on the topic of the post itself got right to me and let me know exactly how you felt about my view… nothing, which is exactly what you’ll be getting from me.