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Jason Fried: Get Satisfaction is "awfully close to blackmail"

291 points by ionfish 18y ago

lsb 18y ago
It sounds more like fraud and misrepresentation.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- oldwesley 18y ago
  An enterprising lawyer could put together a compelling class action case if only GetSatisfaction's pockets weren't so shallow. I'd like to see them get their asses handed to them for this shit.
  - chris11 18y ago
    You are not the only one. Supposedly someone is offering to pay 25k to a fund in support of a class action lawsuit. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else#comment_41944 http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-...
ryanwaggoner 18y ago
For what it's worth, Thor Muller (Cofounder of Get Satisfaction) responded in the comments and said the wording was a mistake and would be changed immediately: "Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all. The idea is to encourage openness, and provide a badge for companies that want to be associated with it. This was just unfortunate phrasing (one small part of an ongoing redesign effort), and doesn’t reflect our values, as I think many, many people and companies who’ve used our service can attest."
- JoelSutherland 18y ago
  The text in the badge is/was: 37signals has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services. Encourage them to join and support the Company-Customer Pact. I really have a hard time believing that this was an oversight. It is at the top of almost every page. When you consider GetSatisfaction's strategy it is even well written.
  - scott_s 18y ago
    I agree. The language was simple and clear. I have difficulty believing language that straight-forward was an accident.
    - webwright 18y ago
      They don't mean accident in that they fell on a keyboard and that came out. They mean accident in that someone wrote it as placeholder (or supposed final) copy and it didn't get reviewed/agreed to by the team before it got launched. Clearly some writer was overzealous and the higher-ups didn't get a chance to read it. Happens all the time at small startups.
      - scott_s 18y ago
        That badge is/was on every page for companies that haven't set up an account with them - which I assume is a lot. And according to what other commenters here have said, it's been worded as such since launch. I have a hard time believing that the "higher-ups" hadn't read something as ubiquitous as this on their own site. Also, at a small startup, shouldn't there be very little distance from the writers and the "higher-ups"? In a truly small startup, I would assume the descion-makers are the ones to write the copy.
        olefoo 18y ago
        > That badge is/was on every page for companies that haven't set up an account with them Yeah, the badge itself is an include in a template, good tools give you great leverage but they amplify your mistakes as much as they magnify your successes. I could see that being a mistake of the "We didn't think through the consequences of what we were saying.", type. OTOH I think 37signals is on the right tack by responding publicly because a private conversation would have had to start with a C&D over the use of their trademark in a manner likely to cause confusion.
ivankirigin 18y ago
We switched to UserVoice because GetSatisfaction is often simply broken. Way too many links have just failed. Try to count the steps for a new user to leave feedback. There must be at least 10. Our UserVoice widget (http://tipjoy.com/feedback http://tipjoy.com/feedback ), also has a really easy email form.
- sachinag 18y ago
  I just logged into our GetSatisfaction account to see if I could direct people to our UserVoice. Nope, can't do it. Until today, we encouraged people who visited our UserVoice page to go to GS with complaints (the idea was that UserVoice would be for feature requests only). I'm trying to remove that language as a result of today's brouhaha. EDIT: couldn't figure out how to change it on http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com but at least we're sending people to UV at http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/ http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/ .
periferral 18y ago
sue them
thorax 18y ago
I don't have any strong feelings about Get Satisfaction (or any of the other sites like this), but we made http://featurelist.org http://featurelist.org available for free to anyone who wants a lighter approach to that sort of thing. It focuses a bit more on the feature request side than the technical support pieces, but it might be interesting to some of you. Once we catch our breath from our other sites, we're going to provide featurelist.org as open source (PHP/CodeIgniter) in case people are hesitant to host their user feedback on someone else's site. For our own usage, we really just needed a way to track feature requests and have YC-inspired feedback widgets for our own sites. So we opened that service up for everyone to use.
- metachris 18y ago
  sorry to say, but featurelist.org has a horrible look and feel, although the idea is quite nice. i'd guess you're a couple of coders -- get a graphic designer on board! (and keep up the work :)
  - thorax 18y ago
    Thanks for commenting. Featurelist won't appeal to everyone visually, though, neither does Reddit or HN. A lot of our users have liked the simplicity of the site, but it might not be for you. We're not focusing on the visual aspects (not to the extent we have for bug.gd or yumbunny), so no one should expect a facelift or for it to win any awards. I'm just sharing it here so people know they have other alternatives floating around. To each their own, of course. Thanks for your feedback.
jseifer 18y ago
To prefix all this: I've never really looked in to Get Satisfaction for anything except a couple of random posts on other companies pages there. I can see where 37 Signals is coming from with the whole not being committed to an open conversation thing but I think the whole article is a bit sensational. A guy from Get Satisfaction even jumps in and says they messed up with that badge. They do need to make money some how and targeted ads seem like a good idea for that. It really strikes me as a young company that's just making a couple of mistakes and I don't think they deserved this PR. I wonder if anyone at 37S tried to contact GS before making this post. If they did then it was deserved but if not I'm not so sure.
- scott_s 18y ago
  I think having ads and being paid not to have ads is fundamentally different. The latter reminds me of protection payment. As pointed out above, I have difficulty believing the badge wording is a mistake.
- warfangle 18y ago
  My issue with the whole thing would be the fact that they use branding, logos, and so forth from a company that they have no business relationship with. Doing so devalues the brand, and should cease immediately. It would be like going into a storefront that has a UPS Package Store sign, and finding out it's just a counter with a guy that claims to be UPS customer support, but doesn't actually help you out with anything. And then find out it's a different company entirely.
  - oldwesley 18y ago
    Sounds like fraudulent misrepresentation/impersonation. Good luck if you try to do that with a brand like UPS. They would be down your neck in a second. A cell phone store in my neighborhood got busted by TMobile for misrepresenting themselves as official TMobile resellers. This is no different. Should be grounds for legal action.
    - andr 18y ago
tom_rath 18y ago
Is that really Get Satisfaction's doing, or was it a 37signals fanboy who put that together without permission? Snagging the look-and-feel (graphics, colours, etc.) of a target's site is particularly sleazy and it seems very odd if Get Satisfaction has chosen to go that route for their business. Unless Get Satisfaction provides a prominent "request this forum be deleted" link, and actually removes a forum on request, I wouldn't touch these guys with the proverbial 10' pole if site mimicking has become their standard practice.
- bobbyi 18y ago
  Why should companies be able to "delete" 3rd party forums where people discuss their products and help each other? If someone asks a question on Stack Overflow about using Visual Studio, should Microsoft be able to delete it? Should they be able to sue SO? Should SO not be able to run ads for products that compete with VS?
  - tom_rath 18y ago
    I don't think there's any problem with third-parties putting together support forums, Q&A pages or the like. It's when they snatch the look-and-feel of a company's site to try and pass themselves off as an official part of that company (without permission!) which sends my alarm bells ringing.
    - oldwesley 18y ago
      Yep, look-and-feel is protected as part of a company's intellectual property. As it should be.
      - RWilson 18y ago
        You're technically right. For reference, look and feel fall under "trade dress" [http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html]. In brief, the relevant case law is: "To recover for trade dress infringement ... a plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence: (1) that its trade dress has obtained “secondary meaning” in the marketplace; (2) that the trade dress of the two competing products is confusingly similar; and (3) that the appropriated features of the trade dress are primarily nonfunctional." Continuing ... "Strength of ... trade dress depends upon the interplay of two elements, the uniqueness of the trade dress and the investment in imbuing a trade dress with secondary meaning." ... which makes trade dress difficult to prove, even to only a preponderance of the evidence.
swombat 18y ago
I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first. I see no indication that there was any communication between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction prior to this very public post. I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention. It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well. Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?
- axod 18y ago
  Agreed. Pretty bad form to not email first with concerns/questions etc. But as you say, if they had resolved it privately, people wouldn't be reading about it on their blog.
- markh 18y ago
  I'm in the camp that says 37Signals have a valid point. Let's assume their intention is not about traffic but is to pressure GetSatisfaction into rectifying the situation as quickly as possible (and not just for 37Signals) then as harsh as the post may have been: 1) 37Signals have used their considerable influence to achieve change on behalf of many sites who have far less influence 2) 37Signals used the open model of putting pressure on a company publicly that GetSatisfaction have built their business on 3) They've effected change and created open discussion Could they have been 'nicer'? Perhaps. But more effective, I'm not so sure...
  - swombat 18y ago
    That they have a valid point is not in question. GS themselves have acknowledged it and immediately fixed the offending badges and pages. My point is, the way they handled conveying that point to GetSatisfaction was nasty, brutish, and totally unwarranted.
mr_justin 18y ago
Garrett Dimon's comments are the only voice of reason on that page. Posts like that are useless, yet I'm sure Jason will use all the "I agree, GS is lame" comments from his fan club to validate his reasons for posting.
Mistone 18y ago
Get Satisfaction got Customer Service Served by 37Signals, ouch!
oldwesley 18y ago
We need someone to start up a site that provides user feedback on GetSatisfaction, using GetSatisfaction's look-and-feel. Taste of their own medicine.
Gibbon 18y ago
So GetSatisfaction mildy misrepresents their association with 37Signals and uses their IP without authorization.. and 37Signals counters with a potentially slanderous letter in a public forum? Not exactly a great way to start a dialogue or build a legal case. Most any other company would first engage with a civil, private, discussion, followed by legal action before firing off a public lambasting as a last resort (a rare event at that.) There may be some valid points in the post, but whining in public makes you like a fool, to customers, to other businesses and to the public at large. Totally unprofessional.
- Semiapies 18y ago
  What was slanderous (or, since it was written, libelous) about anything in the blog post? Very simply, GS set up web pages where they appeared to represent another company in a detrimental way. That is <i>not</i> something the other company is obligated to quietly request them to stop - they are well within their rights to open up with a cease & desist order, not an annoyed blog post.
  - Gibbon 18y ago
    For starters he implied (and borderline accused) GetSatisfaction of blackmail and extortionist practices.
    - rimantas 18y ago
      For startes GetSatisfaction accused 37s of not caring for their customers. Publicly.
    - Semiapies 18y ago
      Libel has to be a lie. Someone harshly laying out their opinion on a business's practices and saying those practices resemble extortion isn't even in the running for libel unless s/he says something factually untrue about those practices. Opinions aren't libelous.
      - Gibbon 18y ago
imgabe 18y ago
The site also hosts, without permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies. They’ll use your logo, title the page “Customer service & support for [COMPANY NAME HERE]” and generally make it feel like an officially sanctioned place to get official support from the company in question. If they're using your company's logo and name, and those are a registered trademark, isn't that grounds for a lawsuit? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that trademark law is supposed to prevent? (One company purporting to be associated with another when it isn't) I know there's a reason a I can't make my own cola, slap a Pepsi logo on it and sell it out of the back of my truck. I thought this was it.
- Semiapies 18y ago
  Or operate a "Pepsi Helpline", for that matter. I'm amused at all the "gee, he should have just emailed them" responses. The fact that 37Signals didn't lawyer up to start with was an act of restraint.
- sachinag 18y ago
  The whole point of trademark law is consumer confusion. GetSatisfaction has exposed themselves to an insane amount of legal liability by setting up pages for companies without their permission.
tptacek 18y ago
It's funny that Thor@GS, in the comments, points out that they're continuing to use non-free logo images, on the auspices that they're using them the same way a Wiki would. It is in fact not easy to use non-free company logo images on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos The tests you have to meet on WP to avoid copyvio include: * Demonstrable encyclopedic merit (you can't just upload and tag a logo) * Noncommercial use of the mark * No dilution of the trademark --- ie, you can't make it appear that the company sanctioned your use of the logo. Doesn't GS flunk all three of these tests?
- olefoo 18y ago
  Yes they do. Which is unfortunate, because in some cases they are providing a valuable service. This is one of those challenges that can make or break a company.
- philwelch 18y ago
  Wikipedia's content policies are a fair deal more strict and paranoid about intellectual property law than the law itself is.
Semiapies 18y ago
I'm a bit amazed by a lot of these responses. I sympathize with the idea that problems should be worked out with friendliness and civility, but this sort of thing is not a question of etiquette that Fried mishandled. These are actions by Get Satisfaction that could easily lead to serious lawsuits. I suggest that folks in web businesses who look at this and see the major concern here as the tone of an aggrieved blog post should make sure they have good lawyers to run their ideas by.
jrockway 18y ago
What's the difference between something like this and Yelp? (Why is this bad, and Yelp's not? Is it because people here all have online businesses, and don't want a forum where people could say something bad about them?)
- Semiapies 18y ago
  Because when I go to Yelp and look up Morton's Steakhouse in Atlanta GA, I see clearly marked reviews, not "Complaint Department and Feedback for Morton's Steakhouse". I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money. Seriously, you might find the linked blog post interesting.
  - nkurz 18y ago
    "I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money." Actually, this seems to be exactly what Yelp does: Here's what advertisers receive, according to an e-mailed sales pitch that a local business owner sent to this newspaper. They can highlight a favorite review to appear at the top of the page about their business. They also show up first in search results for similar businesses in their region (for example "coffee" near "Alameda, CA"). Ads for that business appear on the page of local competitors, while competitors' ads do not appear on their page. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491&showFullText=true http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business...
    - Semiapies 18y ago
      Hmm, then maybe it is as sleazy as GS in that aspect. Still, I couldn't reasonably end up on a Yelp page and mistake it for a Morton's Steakhouse feedback page. That's the bigger offense.
- blasdel 18y ago
  Yelp is even worse on the extortion front, they have sales guys that make shakedown calls: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html
shiranaihito 18y ago
Thor Muller 31 Mar 09 Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all. According to this DoucheWeasel, GS tried to say that their page about 37signals is not sanctioned/approved by 37signals, but failed. Instead they ended up implying that 37signals doesn't care about their customers. Whoops. Have you ever tried to type "This space is not officially sanctioned by 37signals" but made a few typos and ended up typing "37signals is not committed to open an conversation" instead? Gosh, that mistake could happen to anyone!
- Semiapies 18y ago
  The GS guys are doing an amazing combination of groveling and passive-aggressive whining about being caught at the same time.
  - shiranaihito 18y ago
    You nailed it. That was just about what I wanted to say, but couldn't. In any case, last time I checked, they had most of HN fooled with their douchery too, which is quite surprising. Seriously.. If their "wording" was explicitly meant to state that the "space" was not officially sanctioned by 37signals, well then, why not just freaking go ahead and explicitly state exactly that? It's obvious that GS is a shady company, and after Jason's blog post, what exactly do people think they'd do? "Why yes, we are full of shit. You got us."?
Semiapies 18y ago
Thor Muller posts an open letter to Jason Fried: http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-jason-fried/ http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-ja... ...and negates 95% of the "he should have been nicer about it" complaints about the original post by saying "And while I would have preferred you sending us a note, or even posting it somewhere less trafficked than your popular blog, the fact is that Get Satisfaction is a huge proponent of public airing of grievances. You were right to bring it to our attention any way you saw fit."
mroman 18y ago
Those "getsatisfaction" people need to be eradicated. TOTAL rats in suits - I wish I could tell you all who and what, but a person I know (former client) has enough on them to get them thrown in the bighouse.

291 points by ionfish 18y ago

lsb 18y ago

It sounds more like fraud and misrepresentation.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
oldwesley 18y ago
An enterprising lawyer could put together a compelling class action case if only GetSatisfaction's pockets weren't so shallow. I'd like to see them get their asses handed to them for this shit.
- chris11 18y ago
  You are not the only one. Supposedly someone is offering to pay 25k to a fund in support of a class action lawsuit. http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-else#comment_41944 http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1650-get-satisfaction-or-...

ryanwaggoner 18y ago

For what it's worth, Thor Muller (Cofounder of Get Satisfaction) responded in the comments and said the wording was a mistake and would be changed immediately: "Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all. The idea is to encourage openness, and provide a badge for companies that want to be associated with it. This was just unfortunate phrasing (one small part of an ongoing redesign effort), and doesn’t reflect our values, as I think many, many people and companies who’ve used our service can attest."

JoelSutherland 18y ago
The text in the badge is/was: 37signals has not yet committed to open conversation about its products and services. Encourage them to join and support the Company-Customer Pact. I really have a hard time believing that this was an oversight. It is at the top of almost every page. When you consider GetSatisfaction's strategy it is even well written.
- scott_s 18y ago
  I agree. The language was simple and clear. I have difficulty believing language that straight-forward was an accident.
  - webwright 18y ago
    They don't mean accident in that they fell on a keyboard and that came out. They mean accident in that someone wrote it as placeholder (or supposed final) copy and it didn't get reviewed/agreed to by the team before it got launched. Clearly some writer was overzealous and the higher-ups didn't get a chance to read it. Happens all the time at small startups.
    - scott_s 18y ago
      That badge is/was on every page for companies that haven't set up an account with them - which I assume is a lot. And according to what other commenters here have said, it's been worded as such since launch. I have a hard time believing that the "higher-ups" hadn't read something as ubiquitous as this on their own site. Also, at a small startup, shouldn't there be very little distance from the writers and the "higher-ups"? In a truly small startup, I would assume the descion-makers are the ones to write the copy.
      - olefoo 18y ago
        > That badge is/was on every page for companies that haven't set up an account with them Yeah, the badge itself is an include in a template, good tools give you great leverage but they amplify your mistakes as much as they magnify your successes. I could see that being a mistake of the "We didn't think through the consequences of what we were saying.", type. OTOH I think 37signals is on the right tack by responding publicly because a private conversation would have had to start with a C&D over the use of their trademark in a manner likely to cause confusion.

ivankirigin 18y ago

We switched to UserVoice because GetSatisfaction is often simply broken. Way too many links have just failed. Try to count the steps for a new user to leave feedback. There must be at least 10. Our UserVoice widget (http://tipjoy.com/feedback http://tipjoy.com/feedback ), also has a really easy email form.

sachinag 18y ago
I just logged into our GetSatisfaction account to see if I could direct people to our UserVoice. Nope, can't do it. Until today, we encouraged people who visited our UserVoice page to go to GS with complaints (the idea was that UserVoice would be for feature requests only). I'm trying to remove that language as a result of today's brouhaha. EDIT: couldn't figure out how to change it on http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com http://dawdledotcom.uservoice.com but at least we're sending people to UV at http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/ http://getsatisfaction.com/dawdle/ .

periferral 18y ago

sue them

thorax 18y ago

I don't have any strong feelings about Get Satisfaction (or any of the other sites like this), but we made http://featurelist.org http://featurelist.org available for free to anyone who wants a lighter approach to that sort of thing. It focuses a bit more on the feature request side than the technical support pieces, but it might be interesting to some of you. Once we catch our breath from our other sites, we're going to provide featurelist.org as open source (PHP/CodeIgniter) in case people are hesitant to host their user feedback on someone else's site. For our own usage, we really just needed a way to track feature requests and have YC-inspired feedback widgets for our own sites. So we opened that service up for everyone to use.

metachris 18y ago
sorry to say, but featurelist.org has a horrible look and feel, although the idea is quite nice. i'd guess you're a couple of coders -- get a graphic designer on board! (and keep up the work :)
- thorax 18y ago
  Thanks for commenting. Featurelist won't appeal to everyone visually, though, neither does Reddit or HN. A lot of our users have liked the simplicity of the site, but it might not be for you. We're not focusing on the visual aspects (not to the extent we have for bug.gd or yumbunny), so no one should expect a facelift or for it to win any awards. I'm just sharing it here so people know they have other alternatives floating around. To each their own, of course. Thanks for your feedback.

jseifer 18y ago

To prefix all this: I've never really looked in to Get Satisfaction for anything except a couple of random posts on other companies pages there. I can see where 37 Signals is coming from with the whole not being committed to an open conversation thing but I think the whole article is a bit sensational. A guy from Get Satisfaction even jumps in and says they messed up with that badge. They do need to make money some how and targeted ads seem like a good idea for that. It really strikes me as a young company that's just making a couple of mistakes and I don't think they deserved this PR. I wonder if anyone at 37S tried to contact GS before making this post. If they did then it was deserved but if not I'm not so sure.

scott_s 18y ago
I think having ads and being paid not to have ads is fundamentally different. The latter reminds me of protection payment. As pointed out above, I have difficulty believing the badge wording is a mistake.
warfangle 18y ago
My issue with the whole thing would be the fact that they use branding, logos, and so forth from a company that they have no business relationship with. Doing so devalues the brand, and should cease immediately. It would be like going into a storefront that has a UPS Package Store sign, and finding out it's just a counter with a guy that claims to be UPS customer support, but doesn't actually help you out with anything. And then find out it's a different company entirely.
- oldwesley 18y ago
  Sounds like fraudulent misrepresentation/impersonation. Good luck if you try to do that with a brand like UPS. They would be down your neck in a second. A cell phone store in my neighborhood got busted by TMobile for misrepresenting themselves as official TMobile resellers. This is no different. Should be grounds for legal action.
  - andr 18y ago

tom_rath 18y ago

Is that really Get Satisfaction's doing, or was it a 37signals fanboy who put that together without permission? Snagging the look-and-feel (graphics, colours, etc.) of a target's site is particularly sleazy and it seems very odd if Get Satisfaction has chosen to go that route for their business. Unless Get Satisfaction provides a prominent "request this forum be deleted" link, and actually removes a forum on request, I wouldn't touch these guys with the proverbial 10' pole if site mimicking has become their standard practice.

bobbyi 18y ago
Why should companies be able to "delete" 3rd party forums where people discuss their products and help each other? If someone asks a question on Stack Overflow about using Visual Studio, should Microsoft be able to delete it? Should they be able to sue SO? Should SO not be able to run ads for products that compete with VS?
- tom_rath 18y ago
  I don't think there's any problem with third-parties putting together support forums, Q&A pages or the like. It's when they snatch the look-and-feel of a company's site to try and pass themselves off as an official part of that company (without permission!) which sends my alarm bells ringing.
  - oldwesley 18y ago
    Yep, look-and-feel is protected as part of a company's intellectual property. As it should be.
    - RWilson 18y ago
      You're technically right. For reference, look and feel fall under "trade dress" [http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html http://www.ivanhoffman.com/tradedress.html]. In brief, the relevant case law is: "To recover for trade dress infringement ... a plaintiff must prove by a preponderance of the evidence: (1) that its trade dress has obtained “secondary meaning” in the marketplace; (2) that the trade dress of the two competing products is confusingly similar; and (3) that the appropriated features of the trade dress are primarily nonfunctional." Continuing ... "Strength of ... trade dress depends upon the interplay of two elements, the uniqueness of the trade dress and the investment in imbuing a trade dress with secondary meaning." ... which makes trade dress difficult to prove, even to only a preponderance of the evidence.

swombat 18y ago

I think it's quite bad form to publicly attack another company like this without discussing it in private first. I see no indication that there was any communication between 37Signals and GetSatisfaction prior to this very public post. I've had this kind of thing done to me before, and I think it's really out of order. Essentially, 37Signals have decided, in this case, to trade politeness and "being good" for making a big noise and getting some page views and attention. It's easy to criticise people publicly without trying to understand what's going on first. I'd love to say that I expected better from 37-Signals, but considering that their blog has been so focused on generating page views through negative disagreement, I'm not all that surprised that they do this as well. Here's a challenge for 37-signals: Why not try to do positive things, rather than frame everything as a confrontational disagreement? Yes, being an arse generates page views, but so do other undesirable behaviour. Is that really the way you want to go in the long term?

axod 18y ago
Agreed. Pretty bad form to not email first with concerns/questions etc. But as you say, if they had resolved it privately, people wouldn't be reading about it on their blog.
markh 18y ago
I'm in the camp that says 37Signals have a valid point. Let's assume their intention is not about traffic but is to pressure GetSatisfaction into rectifying the situation as quickly as possible (and not just for 37Signals) then as harsh as the post may have been: 1) 37Signals have used their considerable influence to achieve change on behalf of many sites who have far less influence 2) 37Signals used the open model of putting pressure on a company publicly that GetSatisfaction have built their business on 3) They've effected change and created open discussion Could they have been 'nicer'? Perhaps. But more effective, I'm not so sure...
- swombat 18y ago
  That they have a valid point is not in question. GS themselves have acknowledged it and immediately fixed the offending badges and pages. My point is, the way they handled conveying that point to GetSatisfaction was nasty, brutish, and totally unwarranted.

mr_justin 18y ago

Garrett Dimon's comments are the only voice of reason on that page. Posts like that are useless, yet I'm sure Jason will use all the "I agree, GS is lame" comments from his fan club to validate his reasons for posting.

Mistone 18y ago

Get Satisfaction got Customer Service Served by 37Signals, ouch!

oldwesley 18y ago

We need someone to start up a site that provides user feedback on GetSatisfaction, using GetSatisfaction's look-and-feel. Taste of their own medicine.

Gibbon 18y ago

So GetSatisfaction mildy misrepresents their association with 37Signals and uses their IP without authorization.. and 37Signals counters with a potentially slanderous letter in a public forum? Not exactly a great way to start a dialogue or build a legal case. Most any other company would first engage with a civil, private, discussion, followed by legal action before firing off a public lambasting as a last resort (a rare event at that.) There may be some valid points in the post, but whining in public makes you like a fool, to customers, to other businesses and to the public at large. Totally unprofessional.

Semiapies 18y ago
What was slanderous (or, since it was written, libelous) about anything in the blog post? Very simply, GS set up web pages where they appeared to represent another company in a detrimental way. That is <i>not</i> something the other company is obligated to quietly request them to stop - they are well within their rights to open up with a cease & desist order, not an annoyed blog post.
- Gibbon 18y ago
  For starters he implied (and borderline accused) GetSatisfaction of blackmail and extortionist practices.
  - rimantas 18y ago
    For startes GetSatisfaction accused 37s of not caring for their customers. Publicly.
  - Semiapies 18y ago
    Libel has to be a lie. Someone harshly laying out their opinion on a business's practices and saying those practices resemble extortion isn't even in the running for libel unless s/he says something factually untrue about those practices. Opinions aren't libelous.
    - Gibbon 18y ago

imgabe 18y ago

The site also hosts, without permission, company support pages for over 14,000 companies. They’ll use your logo, title the page “Customer service & support for [COMPANY NAME HERE]” and generally make it feel like an officially sanctioned place to get official support from the company in question. If they're using your company's logo and name, and those are a registered trademark, isn't that grounds for a lawsuit? Isn't this exactly the sort of thing that trademark law is supposed to prevent? (One company purporting to be associated with another when it isn't) I know there's a reason a I can't make my own cola, slap a Pepsi logo on it and sell it out of the back of my truck. I thought this was it.

Semiapies 18y ago
Or operate a "Pepsi Helpline", for that matter. I'm amused at all the "gee, he should have just emailed them" responses. The fact that 37Signals didn't lawyer up to start with was an act of restraint.
sachinag 18y ago
The whole point of trademark law is consumer confusion. GetSatisfaction has exposed themselves to an insane amount of legal liability by setting up pages for companies without their permission.

tptacek 18y ago

It's funny that Thor@GS, in the comments, points out that they're continuing to use non-free logo images, on the auspices that they're using them the same way a Wiki would. It is in fact not easy to use non-free company logo images on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Logos The tests you have to meet on WP to avoid copyvio include: * Demonstrable encyclopedic merit (you can't just upload and tag a logo) * Noncommercial use of the mark * No dilution of the trademark --- ie, you can't make it appear that the company sanctioned your use of the logo. Doesn't GS flunk all three of these tests?

olefoo 18y ago
Yes they do. Which is unfortunate, because in some cases they are providing a valuable service. This is one of those challenges that can make or break a company.
philwelch 18y ago
Wikipedia's content policies are a fair deal more strict and paranoid about intellectual property law than the law itself is.

Semiapies 18y ago

I'm a bit amazed by a lot of these responses. I sympathize with the idea that problems should be worked out with friendliness and civility, but this sort of thing is not a question of etiquette that Fried mishandled. These are actions by Get Satisfaction that could easily lead to serious lawsuits. I suggest that folks in web businesses who look at this and see the major concern here as the tone of an aggrieved blog post should make sure they have good lawyers to run their ideas by.

jrockway 18y ago

What's the difference between something like this and Yelp? (Why is this bad, and Yelp's not? Is it because people here all have online businesses, and don't want a forum where people could say something bad about them?)

Semiapies 18y ago
Because when I go to Yelp and look up Morton's Steakhouse in Atlanta GA, I see clearly marked reviews, not "Complaint Department and Feedback for Morton's Steakhouse". I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money. Seriously, you might find the linked blog post interesting.
- nkurz 18y ago
  "I don't see ads for Morton's competitors that only go away if Morton's sends Yelp money." Actually, this seems to be exactly what Yelp does: Here's what advertisers receive, according to an e-mailed sales pitch that a local business owner sent to this newspaper. They can highlight a favorite review to appear at the top of the page about their business. They also show up first in search results for similar businesses in their region (for example "coffee" near "Alameda, CA"). Ads for that business appear on the page of local competitors, while competitors' ads do not appear on their page. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business_of_extortion_2_0/Content?oid=927491&showFullText=true http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/yelp_and_the_business...
  - Semiapies 18y ago
    Hmm, then maybe it is as sleazy as GS in that aspect. Still, I couldn't reasonably end up on a Yelp page and mistake it for a Morton's Steakhouse feedback page. That's the bigger offense.
blasdel 18y ago
Yelp is even worse on the extortion front, they have sales guys that make shakedown calls: http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html http://jwz.livejournal.com/1002269.html

shiranaihito 18y ago

Thor Muller 31 Mar 09 Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The wording on that badge was actually intended to explicitly state that the space was NOT OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED by the company, but that doesn’t come off at all. According to this DoucheWeasel, GS tried to say that their page about 37signals is not sanctioned/approved by 37signals, but failed. Instead they ended up implying that 37signals doesn't care about their customers. Whoops. Have you ever tried to type "This space is not officially sanctioned by 37signals" but made a few typos and ended up typing "37signals is not committed to open an conversation" instead? Gosh, that mistake could happen to anyone!

Semiapies 18y ago
The GS guys are doing an amazing combination of groveling and passive-aggressive whining about being caught at the same time.
- shiranaihito 18y ago
  You nailed it. That was just about what I wanted to say, but couldn't. In any case, last time I checked, they had most of HN fooled with their douchery too, which is quite surprising. Seriously.. If their "wording" was explicitly meant to state that the "space" was not officially sanctioned by 37signals, well then, why not just freaking go ahead and explicitly state exactly that? It's obvious that GS is a shady company, and after Jason's blog post, what exactly do people think they'd do? "Why yes, we are full of shit. You got us."?

Semiapies 18y ago

Thor Muller posts an open letter to Jason Fried: http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-jason-fried/ http://blog.getsatisfaction.com/2009/03/31/open-letter-to-ja... ...and negates 95% of the "he should have been nicer about it" complaints about the original post by saying "And while I would have preferred you sending us a note, or even posting it somewhere less trafficked than your popular blog, the fact is that Get Satisfaction is a huge proponent of public airing of grievances. You were right to bring it to our attention any way you saw fit."

mroman 18y ago

Those "getsatisfaction" people need to be eradicated. TOTAL rats in suits - I wish I could tell you all who and what, but a person I know (former client) has enough on them to get them thrown in the bighouse.