Apparently launching a new portable software solution isn’t that easy: after a major glitch in their software (making it impossible to install on some devices) MojoPac just shut down their forums, citing “an overwhelming number of requests from many of you who asked us to revamp our forums.” Sounds more like a corporate spin doctor at work. As I wrote Thursday, I was very much surprised frustrated with the way RingCube (a start-up company from Mountain View, California) is handling the problems they have after they managed to shoot themselves in foot, by launching a new version of their portable software solution, MojoPac.
Imagine my surprise when the person leading the marketing and business development department at RingCube, the parent company of MojoPac, herself, found time to contact me by email! Talk about 1:1 support…
At first I was impressed, but after a while I felt like she was just dodging bullets: we had a lengthy conversation by email, but in effect I feel she kept just focusing on the part where I doubted the 5% figure RingCube gave for the percentage of USB discs not working with MojoPac after they implemented the serial number check. Also she emphasized on how fast MojoPac responded to emails (which is nice, but I rather have a response that takes longer but has the right answers, than one that actually gives me wrong information) and that they really are redesiging the forum. Also she defended things that I never commented about (like deleting someone’s post in the now non-existing forums), which I found odd…
As someone else commented in his blog:
nevf Says: October 6th, 2006 at 9:50 am
(…)In case you weren’t aware they’ve recently received $US4M in VC funding from New Enterprise Associates (www.nea.com). You would think they’d use some of this to get on top of the forums problems, pronto. I mean that is something that is easily doable, whereas resolving the software problems is more challenging and will no doubt take some time.I have to wonder if the VC folks are at all concerned about the debacle that is unfolding. Likely not as I’m told it is just a numbers game for them. You win some, you loose some.(…)
Don’t get me wrong: I still like the whole MojoPac concept, but I just find RingCube’s way of handling problems really strange. You do not put a gag on an effective way of communicating just because a certain percentage of users (allegedly) doesn’t understand how to use it.
The timing for doing this (just after a major glitch in the software comes up) is just ridiculous.
Anyway, here is the full conversation with some remarks from me. Read how RingCube VP of Business Development, Katya Falakshahi goes into the details of some problems that MojoPac has since they came out with a failing update that introduced a huge glitch in their software and defends their decision to shut down the forums.
*Note:* I started out the whole conversation using on of my alias email addresses I have and that I use to prevent myself from getting spammed like crazy (happens anyway, but I guess it helps), hence the “Fox” name.
Dear Fox,
My name is Katya Falakshahi, and I lead marketing and business development
at RingCube, the parent company of MojoPac.First, I wanted to thank you for all your feedback and comments. We are a
young company, and we do take people’s feedback very seriously. In the last
week, we have been overwhelemed with our company and product launch, and
most of the business team were travelling all over the place, which made us
fall behind responding on the forums. However, any email sent to
support@mojopac.com got response within hours (and I noticed you had sent
several emails, so you can hopefully attest to their responsiveness) — we
have an amazing support team, and I thank them every day. Having said that,
we did read all the forum messages, so even though we did not respond, all
the requests for features and enhacements and bug reports are already in our
system.We are actually and truly redesigning the forums. Many people contacted us
and told us that the current design makes it almost impossible for them to
find what they want, rendering the forums unable to assist new users with
answers to their questions. The new design will have all the important
issues listed right where they can immediately find it, complete with
responses from us (which I know is important to you). Today, you have to
read through 100 messages to find the actual response, and many of our users
simply don’t have the bandwidth.I also wanted to talk about the subject of serial number which has been a
hot topic in the forums. Let me explain what the situation is. We designed
MojoPac to support all USB 2.0 compliant storage products. All iPods, and
many USB drives are USB 2.0 compliant. If you go to the actual standards
website, one of the many requirements of USB 2.0 is having a 12-digit unique
serial number. Unfortunately, some USB hard drive cases from 3rd parties (as
well as Corsair drives) are not compliant with the standards. This has
nothing to do with the hard drive inside (Seagate vs. WD vs. Hitachi), but
with the USB case and the bridge chip used to make it. Unfortunately the
case providers represent their product as USB 2.0, and it is very difficult
for consumers to realize their product are not USB 2.0 compliant. All Apple
iPods are USB 2.0 compliant, so are the majority of USB cases out there. We
have tested 10’s of brands of USB cases and hard drives, and we never saw
the issue in-house prior to our launch. We are actually trying to figure out
if there is a way for us to provide support beyond what is offered in the
standards, we really care about helping out customers have the best
experience.As you can appreciate, developing a software like MojoPac is really complex,
so lack of response on timeline is not due to our effort to hide
information, but our eagerness not to falsly state a date that we are not
100% confident we can meet. Imagine I tell you today that to the best of my
knowledge we will have a release tomorrow, and then we find a last-minute
bug and we fail to meet the deadline — that would create a huge amount of
negativeness. Please try to put yourself in our shoes.If you like to speak with me live, I will be delighted to do so. Please do
not hesitate to contact me directly with questions or concerns.Regards,
Katya Falakshahi
RingCube Technologies, Inc.
And here is my response:
Dear Katya,
Thank you very much for taking the time to respond personally! I appreciate it!
But I have a few issues with the way MojoPac is handling things. I strongly disagree with MojoPac’s current course of action.
First: why take down the forum when there is no alternative yet? That makes no sense whatsoever. You do not take away something – even if it is not optimal – without offering an alternative first. I mean: having nothing is worse then having something “sub-optimal” right? Especially when there is no way of telling when this ‘new and better’ FAQ/design will be up?
Also: I have been on the forums and read most topics there with interest. I never saw *any* post that leads me to believe that there was “an overwhelming” response asking for a) fixing security issues (checking the serial of the drive etc.) and b) an overwhelming question for another way to get info (FAQ etc.)… In fact I haven’t seen 1 post about either subject! Not from users and not from Admins.
Also: forums are such a common way to get help/support and suggestions from one another (community) that I sincerely do not believe people had trouble using it. Especially the kind of computer savvy people (geeks maybe) that would be attracted to a (cutting edge) solution as MojoPac, ie. gamers…
Just have a look how big gaming companies (i.e. EA Games) do this: their forums are a good example that it (forums) does work! And let’s face it: phpBB2 has a simple search option! If you want to establish a community, you do not take away something valuable as forums! Besides: why can’t they just co-exist anyway? A good FAQ tool (maybe a Wiki???) *and* forums.
Really a bad move in my humble opinion and giving a bad signal to people (like me) that do take the time and effort to post messages!
Second: mistakes happen, but why give people the *impression* that you all try to “spindoctor” your way out? It think it shows disrespect to users and you underestimate their ability to grasp things. with this I sincerely mean that it feels like we are not taken seriously and being lied to! The whole encasing issues is understandable, but the official statement (made in the forums) that about 5% would be affected just is not something you can back up! Go do the math: there are literally a couple of hundred (if not thousand) manufacturers of USB devices out there and most of them have at least half a dozen – if not more – different USB products. That makes for literally (tens of) thousands variations. There is no way that MojoPac would be able to tell what percentage would have a valid serial and how many not!
Also: if you say something enhances security for users: tell them why it would do so! I never saw any statement on that!
Third: I do have the beta (probably will time out soon) and when I asked how I could revert back to the old situation (I got caught in an endless install loop and MojoPac would not start up again) I got the answer this was not possible because “You were using a beta version and now you are upgraded to 1.0.”.
That was dead wrong information! First: I never even managed to upgrade because it wouldn’t let me install! And what’s worse: I had to find out myself that the problem in fact could be fixed! I just deleted a file and after that I canceled the upgrade process and I *was* able to start MojoPac again!
I even relayed this information, but I never got any acknowledgment that support omitted this solution!
So yeah: the response was very quick each time, but I rather get a slower response with the *right* information (that solves my problem)! I think it is bad that I myself was able to figure out the problem but support wasn’t. It is like you would not know your own product well enough?
Lastly: I do very much understand how developing software works as I am in the IT-business myself. And looking at MojoPac I can imagine how complex it is!
But here is a tip: if you have an update: present a screen *first* (not afterwards!) that tells *what* it updates, *why* it updates things. This is called a *changelog* and its very common under software developers! Even Microsoft does it with their updates and upgrades. And please make sure to provide a way to at least be able to have a fallback/uninstall scenario!
I was dumb enough to turn on the auto-update feature which downloaded the upgrade on its own and found myself locked out and with no way to reverse it (like someone changed the lock and threw away the key!). Now, I managed to crawl through an open window so to speak and unlock the door again, but I bet many others did not.
Bottomline is: I like MojoPac and the whole concept behind it, but I do not agree with the way MojoPac is handling things and I think MojoPac underestimates the way people (like me) perceive this course of action and information.
So I would like to strongly suggest the following to your company to improve things:
Reinstate the forum until there actually *is* an alternative (better yet: just let it co-exist since you want a strong community anyway!)
Put up a Wiki for the nitty-gritty support/FAQ (millions of people use Wikipedia, so the use of a Wiki is known to many people!)
Put up a corporate Blog in which you can tell people about corporate/development/things going on (or a newsletter maybe?)
Start showing/publish a changelog on your site that at least explains what changed and why
Try not to make the kind of corporate statements that anyone can perceive as the usual spindoctor way to make some sorry excuse (even if you are sincere and stating the truth: perception is key). People will put up with mistakes if they like your product: everyone understands that things can go wrong and will go wrong.
I still am in the loop for buying the product when it is mature and has overcome these glitches! I travel a lot and so far MojoPac is one of the best things I have seen!
I hope you find my suggestions useful and I would like to excuse myself for my obvious frustration (in several posts and emails) with the way things are going: however, I think it shows at least I care about the product enough to take the time to express that frustration 🙂
Kind regards…
I would thinks that I made some good points here – especially about the forum being closed down without having an alternative; which I think makes no sense whatsoever.
Anyway: here is RingCube’s response to it. Notice how the important issues (support not knowing their own product, taking away the forum before the alternative is there) are – once again – being omitted. Furthermore: there is no way I can check the claim on how many emails they got from people asking for better forums. They never defined “overwhelming” anyway…
Dear “Fox”,
I do appreciate your email — here are some answers that I hope are helpful
to shed some light.– The people who were not happy with Forums did not post in forums (you can
imagine why — they did not believe the forums as they were could be of use
to them) — they came straight to us by emailing us at support@mojopac.com,
or even managed a way to find our corporate contact information. We respond
to 100’s of support and feedback questions daily, people contact us not only
with bug reports, but with feature suggestions, etc., and what is amazing
is that there is a lot of similarity between topics asked from us in those
emails vs. the Forum, which is why we are eager to re-do the forums so that
we can address all these FAQ (that are about 25 FAQs right now that we are
finalizing) right there in the beginning of forums (as well as add a link to
that in our support web page). That really helps our support team and
hopefully reduces their loads, since the do receive tons of similar emails.
We do need to streamline the process. I hope when we come out with the new
forums you like the new format.In the meantime, we are sincere about asking people to contact us via
support@mojopac.com. I cannot be happier with the support team we have —
they are hard working, very responsive, and extremely patient (you can
imagine it is not easy to respond to the same type of email over and over.
So please do not hesitate to contact them with any questions you have.– Also, the official response in the forum was not a spin. The reason we are
focusing on USB 2.0 compliant devices is security and reliability.
Non-standard hardware is non-standard 🙂 , so hard to be protected,
secured, or even guaranteed quality (especially in the case of flash devices
— non-standard ones can fail at anytime). And it was based on what our
users asked us to do. The only thing we did not menion in the post was the
USB 2.0 compliancy, and I do regret not having mentioned it. The reason was
that if you go and read the USB 2.0 website on the rules, it is fairly
user-unfriendly and extremely technical, so we were not sure if that would
be helpful. Having said that, we are currently in the process of updating
our website to mention this on top of Mojo Devices.As for the 5%, it is actually an accurate number. As an example,not all WD
drives fail — only the 5% that happen to be in those specific cases. We
have kept the number of every failure (vs. success) in installation, and the
number is actually even lower than 5% (it is less than 1%). Needless to say
we are in conversation with hard drive manufacturers to resolve this issue
longer term, but the big problem has been that the USB 2.0 standards have
been loosely enforced, and many USB cases were made by 3rd parties whithout
much regard for the standards. Even worse, you can get the exact same
Seagate drive with the same box and get different results (since they were
manufactured in a different factory in China).Thank you again for your support and feedback — we do hope to have you as a
customer!Cheers,
Katya
Ok, well let’s assume the 5% claim is right and on target: who gives a ***** ? It was working before without the serial check! So just don’t implement that and try some other protection scheme!
Also: still no answer to the question why for Pete’s sake they would just take down the forums when they do not offer an alternative! And why would they not have a forum for people that *do* understand how they work? What’s the deal there? So, in effect, as I said: they just dodge the bullets!
Anyway: then I send her a link from another blog that I came about and that reveals some other problems:
Ps: just have a look here to see how people react and perceive MojoPac’s actions and the shutting down of the forums…
http://blog.surfulater.com/2006/10/04/mojopac-potentially-great-software-with-serious-flaws/
Then I got two more responses from her:
Dear Fox,
I do appreciate sending the link. One item about Neville — he has been to
several forum over the years, and continuously posts something about his
software (Surfulator). That is considered promotion of his own software so
we had to remove his quote. As you know, we have never removed negative
posts on our forum, but no one is allowed to just post something to promote
his software.I hope this helps.
Regards,
Katya
Uh, the reason I send the link to the blog was not because I wanted to emphasise on the part where someone’s message got deleted, but because of the responses on it, like this one:
James Scherber Says: October 5th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Alas, the folks over at MojoPac aren’t being very honest.
They have shut down their forums, with the lamest excuse I have ever heard in my life. The users overwelmingly requested that the free flow of information be stopped. Very disappointing for a new company to shoot itself in the foot.
You might want to check out www.moca5.com, company started by a Stanford Professor. These folks seem to have their act together.
Best, James Scherber
Just to show you I’m not the only one thinking that is a lame excuse to take the forums down!
Anyway: a little later I received this mail from Katya:
BTW, I am assuming this is your bog:
I wished it were a bit kinder to our team — but such is life.
Regards,
Katya
So today I responded to it like this:
Dear Katya,
That is correct: I am using that email to get rid of spammers, but included my real e-mail for this response: I should have done that before to make things more transparent for you: my apologies for that.
Now, lets’ stop focusing on the 5% question I raised (I think we have been going enough in depth there as it is). I think it is very simple to exclude the serial check feature for now – thus help a lot of people out – and then put it back in later when it actually does work! So in reality an update could have been out in what, 3-4 days?
Anyway: I rather have a response from you on my suggestion that MojoPac should not have taken the forums offline *before* the alternative was there? What was the urgency to do this anyway, other maybe than all the negative response MojoPac suddenly was getting? The timing of it is just too much of a coincidence: there is a major glitch in the software and then you all of the sudden take down the forums?
And what about the fact that a forum can co-exist with a FAQ? A FAQ is one-way information: there is no way of interacting with other users so in fact it is less helpful as you might think (and by the way: there is really good forum software that has a search function etc…)
Also: what about the changelog issue and the fact that you should inform people better why certain changes are being made to the software? is this issue being addressed? Will I see a pop-up telling me what has changed next time I update MojoPac?
Also: will there be an un-install option for an update so I can at least revert to a previous state that *was* working for me?
And lastly, but more important: what about MojoPac support not being able to help me out and giving me wrong information? As I mentioned they told me my problem could not be fixed, but then as it turns out I was able to fix it myself?
I think those are actually the real issues here.
Looking forward for you going into these questions,
Kind regards,
Henk
I am awaiting her response to these questions and will follow up asap!