Marqui is paying people to test drive and blog about their content management system.
From Marc Canter on the origins of the idea:
When I first came up with the idea – the question was poised “what if they blog something negative?”
My answer was “that’s a good thing! Can you imagine how powerful it will be for us to listen to and react to that criticism and show that we responded in a timely manner by actually fixing the problems?”
That’ll be worth its weight on gold.
Exactly. People are going to criticize your company’s offerings whether you allows them to or not. By listening to your harshest critics – i.e. most passionate customers – you’ll learn more about what the world expects from you.
I’ll be tracking the Marqui program.
On a related note, we launched the MNteractive Directory earlier this week. The MNteractive Directory is a wiki containing the Minnesota’s interactive design talent.
Wikis, by their very nature, are editable by anyone. Like Cantor, one of the first questions poised was, “What if someone changes something of mine?”
My response is two-fold:
- Everything is backed up, so an unnecessary change can be easily reverted.
- It’s your responsibility to not put up information that needs to be changed and not change things unnecessarily.
The world is becoming more and more transparent. Therefore we are need to be more responsible and open to criticism and praise. For that is the order – 1. criticism 2. praise.