3-Minute Roast, Vol. 2, No. 4

A Poke in the Eye of the Online/Multimedia Industrial Complex

[scientifically tested to take no more than 3 minutes to read, unless you're experiencing ISP interference]

Sprint's "Get Connected Guarantee" Hits an Iceberg

When you advertise things like "a car that never breaks down," "an unsinkable ship," or "Internet service with no disruptions," you're looking for trouble.

The good folks at Sprint have had a jolly good time running print and online ads that poke fun at other online service providers. The ads show a coffee machine or a TV set with a "failed to connect" dialog box superimposed. The tagline basically says, "you wouldn't expect this device to fail, so why put up with failure from your Internet service provider?" Sprint then touts its fiber optic lines and offers a guarantee: you'll get connected, or you get a week free.

Suckers like us at 3MR decided that Sprint was making an offer we couldn't refuse. Goodbye AOL and the "You Have Mail" guy; hello Sprint and the Rolling Stones. It didn't take long for Sprint to become our "Beast of Burden." In late November, right on our editorial deadline, Sprint's servers went down, its 800 line failed, and the help lines were swamped with people demanding free service. When we finally got through to the help line, the guy sheepishly admitted the outage had lasted an entire workday.

About two days later, the ads kept coming, barely missing a beat. Lessons learned:
* Don't guarantee something that can't be guaranteed. Internet service is not even close to turning on a TV or running a coffee machine. The telephone business is much more mature, and has fewer breakdowns.
Don't get confused and think ISPs are there yet.
* Beware the AOL-bashing jinx. CompuServe ran ads during last year's Super Bowl making fun of AOL, and now they're a subsidiary. Sprint employees wouldn't want Steve Case as a boss, now, would they?
* Offer less guarantees rather than more. AOL now runs TV ads telling people to join. During the ad, a line pops up on the screen for about 2 seconds: "Service not always available during peak hours."

Can you even call AOL 24-hour access? How about a sporadic crap-shoot? One thing Sprint did get right is backing up its "guarantee" with...nothing. A free week? Customers are fed up they can't get through, so they get a week more of being fed up? Nice reward. Just wait till Candace Bergen hears about this...

**********

Palling Around with Pentium Pete...

Reuters just came out with survey results about computer use in America. One interesting stat: 46 percent of kids prefer spending time with computers than with friends. Does this mean that kids are turning into geeks, cyberporn is easier to get than we thought, or that Microsoft Bob has become more fun to hang out with than Eddie Haskell?

********** DeathRace 2000(tm)

[Each week, we'll highlight the lowlights among three online ventures that are struggling: Slate, HotWired, and Snap!]

Slate Not Required Reading on Bill's Throne

Slate editor Michael Kinsley found out that boss Bill Gates gave a speech at Cambridge saying that he preferred reading magazines that came in the mail vs. online zines. Gates said he couldn't read anything more than three pages long on a computer screen. Kinsley comments: "Whoa. These words came as quite a shock to those of us who have spent the past year and a half trying to develop, on behalf of the Microsoft Corp., a magazine whose distinguishing characteristic is that it does not come in the mail."

Kinsley has decided to keep his column under three pages long from now on, and has been touting regurgitated features like "In Today's Papers" and "In Other Magazines." No word on plans for Kinsley to rename his column "In My Dear Old Print Life," which will compile his old editorials from the New Republic.

"3-Minute Roast" is a weekly, advertisement-free, opinionated rip on anything that strikes our fancy in the online world.

Max Schlickting - Editor-in-Chief
Barbara Yalpsid - Online Editor
Lefty Periwinkle - First Amendment Expert
Mark Glaser - Unpaid Editorial Intern

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