Cool story, but I hope permission was received first to divulge those account usage details.
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What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#12Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#13Cool story, but I hope permission was received first to divulge those account usage details.
Yes. Having hosted debates/etc for the white house (I used to run Google Moderator), I can say they will likely be awfully annoyed if this PR was not run by them.
Screw 'em. A London based company is under no obligations to kowtow to the PR wishes of the whitehouse, or the president's pet organization.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. Having hosted debates/etc for the white house (I used to run Google Moderator), I can say they will likely be awfully annoyed if this PR was not run by them.
Screw 'em. A London based company is under no obligations to kowtow to the PR wishes of the whitehouse, or the president's pet organization.
"Screw our highest profile customer! That'll teach 'em! Heh heh"
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#15Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#16I think Greg is too close to the events: I still mostly don't know what happened when Obama used Mixlr. Can anyone help out? Some specific questions:
>Unfortunately the call was marketed and promoted as a “conference call” ... which does happen to be what Mixlr is intended for
Okay, so what is Mixlr for? I poked around and found out briefly, but I'm still curious what Mixlr allows that they didn't use and could have. What did you mean by "nor to the extent of what Mixlr allows"?
>This led to some pretty mis-set expectations and disappointed users which wasn’t a great tone to recover from.
How do you know users were disappointed? Do you have any data, or at least anecdotes, that you could show? Do users rate their experience, for example? How did you recover? And how did you decide that you recovered already?
>Even 10 trolls are a lot louder than 30,000 supporters
What actually happened? What features enabled a few people to effect the experience of the other listeners?
>Note to self... disable comments
I gather that disabling comments is not a feature available to the broadcaster? Maybe it should be; are you considering adding it? What other changes will you be making as a result of this experience? How will you "do better next time"?
>the press are now all over the OFA team
The write up makes it sound like the whole event went smoothly, yet you're also saying that there are negative reports in the press. I read the DailyMail article, and it sounds possible that they are exaggerating by citing the minority of users who couldn't connect. What is your takeaway here? Do you have to be perfect in such high profile situations? Or are a few errors expected? Are you getting flak or losing credibility because of the press, or is it all falling on the OFA team?
> the call was flawless for the vast majority of those listeners for more than 99% of the call
Are more details available? Maybe it's just me, but this sounds wishy-washy (99% always sounds to me like "a lot, we swear!")
> we think we can do even better next time
Great! Is there going to be a next time? And, more generally, have you noticed any effect on the call on your user base?
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#17I think Greg is too close to the events: I still mostly don't know what happened when Obama used Mixlr. Can anyone help out? Some specific questions: >Unfortunately the call was marketed and promoted as a “conference call” ... which does happen to be what Mixlr is intended for Okay, so what is Mixlr for? I poked around and found out briefly, but I'm still curious what Mixlr allows that they didn't use and could have.…
It allows for multiple screens to be broadcasted and the screens to be sent to everybody. Everybody can also chime in. Apparently, it was a one way feed from the President to everyone else. Nobody could chime in. How is that a conference call.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
what account details?
> has been a paying Mixlr subscriber for the last 4 months and broadcast more than 20 times > On Friday, one of their representatives dropped us an email
At least the number of broadcasts and their account status as a "Broadcaster" are publicly visible:
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#19$9.99? This is why most people offer an enterprise plan.
I'm surprised OFA thought it'd work at their scale at that price point. I'd definitely be cautious and offer to pay more if I was their procurement officer. It could definitely ruin your night.
Re: What happens when the U.S. President uses your startup for a conference call
#20$9.99? This is why most people offer an enterprise plan.
I'm surprised OFA thought it'd work at their scale at that price point. I'd definitely be cautious and offer to pay more if I was their procurement officer. It could definitely ruin your night.
The blogpost says that OFA contacted them and forewarned about the size of the call. I guess that's the point where Mixlr could have asked an extra to handle the scale, while it sounds like they just said "no problems, go ahead".