TechF*cked

Now, I may not be one to talk, because I don’t even have a logo for this site, but no logo at all is surely better than the one Check Point security software has come up with. The CEO of Check Point reportedly allowed his 6 year old daughter to come up with a logo for the company, and this is the result.

Notice to Investors: if you have any money whatsoever in this company, pull it out now! If the CEO is making poor basic decisions like this, how is he going to operate in the future, when he must make a multi million dollar decision.

Before anyone says "It’s just a logo", please realize, it is more than a logo, it is a corporate brand, and if all I had at my disposal were logos of companies when attempting to figure out which company to go with, I would vomit as I passed this logo by. But like they say, any publicity is good publicity, so here are your 15 minutes Check Point. Use them wisely.

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If you are a major player in any facet of the media (either network or cable TV, or the print media), please heed to my advice:

DON’T ATTEMPT SOCIAL NETWORKING!

It’s simply a recipe for disaster. If we have learned anything from the NBC’s poor attempt at a social network aimed at comical videos, AOL and Netscape’s attempt compete with Digg, and the various other giants who have attempted to compete with the Web 2.0 successors, it’s that they don’t work, plain and simple.

The USAToday launched what they considered a social network for news, and since that time they have had a 29% drop off in unique visitors (from 14 million to 10 million) per month. Obviously, this is not a direct result from the newly created website, but the site obviously didn’t help business at all. Sometimes companies need to realize they have a certain audience for a certain reason, and any changes may lead to the business’ demise.

THe USAToday will rebound, but it’s going to be difficult to compete with the NetVibes of the web.

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This one has been a couple weeks coming… Bolt.com has officially announced it is ceasing operations. After copyright lawsuit debts amounting to $10 million, and the news on August 1st that GoFish.com was not longer in the hunt for Bolt, it’s over.

I’m just not understanding the economics behind this one. If anyone has any financial states, I would love to see them. I don’t put much faith in silly website rankings, but there’s no joking around with a Compete rank of 112. I’m assuming the copyright lawsuits also included cease and desist judgment for much of the content on the site. But still, with all the money being thrown around right now, it seems as if someone could’ve turned such a high trafficked site down a new path. Oh well, I guess that’s just more traffic that has now become available for the rest of us, right? :-\

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