See, there is a rule in marketing that goes like this:

If your product is bad, awesome marketing will only kill your business that much faster.

Pinterest is among the Top Ten social media sites now. It may be so popular right now that they can afford to float for a bit and not worry about the criticisms and issues. Maybe they grew far faster than they intended to and are having growing pains. These things happen.

In the few days that I have been very active on Pinterest, I have noticed these issues, and had other pointed out by folks (i.e. women) far more active than I. If these are not addressed soon, Pinterest may find its market share sinking sooner than later.

1. Frequent 503 Errors

I had heard about them before I saw them. Apparently, they are well-known enough that Pinterest‘s competitors are making hay about hem and attracting away subscribers. 503 errors indicate that a server is down for maintenance or is overloaded.

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2. That miserable iOS app.

With a 2/5 star rating and comments like these, the app is a major hurdle that Pinterest needs to clear:

Pinterest App Review” class=”aligncenter” width=”400″ height=”600″ />

I have noticed that Pinterest is currently advertising for an iOS Engineer. With the kind of venture capital that poured into their company, that job search should be short. And it should be priority. Maybe someone out there wants to apply?

3. Embedding bugs

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As a blogger, I think the embed function on Pinterest would be a great tool. Except… it is buggy. I have to go into the embed code and remove extraneous stuff, insert line breaks, etc.

Also, the embed code screen purports to allow you to change height and width of your embed to suit your blogs layout. But, it doesn’t work if you need to go bigger than the image Pinterest has. I understand that they don’t want images blown up so big as to look bad, possibly reflecting poorly on Pinterest. But, I’m not going to use a poor image. Pinterest doesn’t seem to want to give me a choice. You can go figure the proper ratios yourself with simple math or a ratio calculator. But, we shouldn’t have to. YouTube allows ratio editing. Pinterest should too.

4. Privacy

It is an oft-heard complaint when researching Pinterest that you can not make private boards. If Pinterest is to be attractive to a wide audience, that needs to happen fast. People should not be subject by default to scrutiny by family and friends who have followed their pins. And, this doesn’t just apply to porn – which I can understand Pinterest wanting to curtail. What about articles on AIDS, cancer or miscarriages? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to research and collect items, sharing that space with whom you choose, but not worrying about all eyes seeing it?

Pinterest is on the verge of something big. They need to plug these leaks before heading into even deeper water.

“The function that you are currently trying to use is disabled and will be back shortly,” states one message, which Laughing Squid encountered while trying to sign in.  “We are making some minor changes to this section so please bear with us until we can get it back online.  Please do NOT email me about this.  Just wait it out.”  And sure enough, Tom’s name is signed (and/or typed) to it.

I know, I know – there are important developments taking place involving stem cells, sabotage, and the Middle East, and we’re talking about an error message on a social networking site.  It’s just that kind of week, though – a story about Facebook’s use of the word “is” made the rounds yesterday.

Also, MySpace really isn’t going to win any fans with this sort of thing; while it’s funny (MG Siegler, to whom I owe a hat tip, calls it “just hilarious”), the humor is obviously unintentional. 

Ah, well.  Maybe Tom – or whoever wrote the message on his behalf – will have a good Thanksgiving and return in a better mood.

This isn’t a fact, or even a rumor, so much as speculation (X People = Y Costs and so on).  Still, the idea of layoffs comes from Henry Blodget, and given the trends we’ve seen, is worth noting.

Not a whole lot is going well for Yahoo – there are Site Explorer errors, the shutdown of Yahoo 360, and its complete absence from the Google-Microsoft-Facebook competition to consider.  So Blodget writes, “We think Yahoo should get its margin back at least to where it was in the September quarter last year–30%–which will require about $240 million in annual cost cuts.  Most of these cuts should be made in the U.S., because it is the U.S. operating margin that has deteriorated.”

He then hits upon one possible fix: “Yahoo could achieve these cuts immediately by cutting $120 million of non-human-expenses and laying off about 1,200 people . . . ”

Again, this is by no means a sure thing – a trusted source even weighed in following Blodget’s article to state that such drastic cost-saving measures probably won’t be necessary.  Yet if things continue to tank, Yahoo’s employees might do well to have a Plan B on hand.

Royal Pingdom posted the top seven problems webmasters and site visitors alike may have encountered. Pingdom’s data comes from their monitoring of thousands of websites; this particular sample comes from 160 million test results over a 30-day period leading up to October 19.

‘Unable to connect to server’ occurred 62.4 percent of the time, where visitors simply could not reach the online resource. That was the most common problem, which Pingdom noted could happen due to network outages, server downtime, or possibly firewall issues.

‘DNS lookup problems’ only popped up about 9.71 percent of the time. Problematic DNS configuration usually causes this error, but in the case of the CA.gov domain, Federal domain admins at GSA in Washington inflicted the DNS problems for that domain.

Following these two top errors were ‘connection refused by server’, ‘timeout while trying to load the web page’, ’503 Service unavailable’, ’500 Internal server error’, and ’502 Bad gateway’. As Pingdom noted, some 80 percent of webserver problems were unreachable servers, DNS errors, and server load conditions.

With content that you freely distribute you are primarily trying to build relationships with people who don’t know you and have never bought from you. Since attention is limited you have to make your content accessible to gain market attention.

Highbrow = Low Readership

Most potential buyers can not distinguish between great information and average information, but most people…

• can distinguish between well formatted information that is easy to read and information that appears too complex Formatting plays a big roll in selling content.
• follow the crowd and look for signs of trust from others (recommendations, on site comments, etc.)
• care about enthusiasm and topic selection (why read a site that is not unique and/or too negative?)

Some of My Errors

One of my biggest problems from a conversion standpoint is that I often write copy that does not sell…content that speaks well to some, but not to the buying market. Many posts exhibit the following traits:

• are focused on big picture ideas and broader market relationships
• are seen as being negative for being too blunt & honest
• offer too much information for people to get through
• try to convey too many different ideas

People want to feel the comfort and accessibility of reading a for dummies guide one page at a time while being told they are becoming gurus / experts in the process. Which creates an interesting problem for anyone trying to sell how to information. Do you aim to make it as accessible as possible? Or do you aim further along the learning cycle and write at a higher level?

Where to Aim if You Are Looking for Profit

There are more people at the bottom of the pyramid, and if you capture their attention that will likely make you considered an expert to most outsiders looking to your field. As the online experience improves hobbiests use the web much more frequently. Yahoo! and MediaVest have done research about hobbyists, calling them Passionistas:

Passionistas heavily engage with communities of like-minded consumers who use email, text messaging, and instant messaging significantly more than typical users, and are more likely to create and share user-generated content online such as photos, blog posts or videos about their passions.

Because of their intense engagement around sharing information, Passionistas are 52% more likely than typical users to recommend or influence others about brands aligning with them.

In the SEO market (and probably most business related markets) it seems passionate hobbyists new to a field are much more likely to exuberantly promote brands than those who have been in the field for a great deal of time. I am not sure how well that translates to other fields though.

How Can I Use This Post to Help Market My Site?

Become a Platform for Passion

If top rated competing sites lack passion you can own your market in well under a year. If they are passionate then to stay competitive you have to raise your game and become a platform for passion.

Microsoft recently held a search event for SEOs to show they are serious about search. Google gives passionate charities free services to promote YouTube and Google Checkout. Cater to the passionate and create purpose driven media – use the same marketing techniques that Microsoft and Google use.

Make Your Site Look Alive

You can always add interactive features to build community interest. When you do so people are more likely to participate (fueling more people to participate) and they are more likely to market your site because they feel a sense of ownership.

My designer place the recent comments and this week top 5 sections on this site before I ever saw it. And I love it because it gives the sense that the site is dynamic, alive, and active. If you receive awards or have many feed subscribers publishing those signs of validation help improve your credibility and bring in new visitors.

Virtual Demand is Becoming Real Demand

Amazon tapped some of their top reviewers to review transcripts for a book publishing contest. How long until publishers are no longer required? You can look at the success of shows like American Idol to see how much people want to be engaged with what they consume. Also look to the stats about how often passionate hobbyists turn to the web to fulfill their wants. Deep profit margins exist in deep pools of passion.

Eventually consumers will go from hell to create the markets THEY want. The businesses with passionate communities will grow while the remaining businesses go to hell. Look for new ways to track demand and get feedback to create what people want. You don’t even need a product off the start…just an audience willing to give you honest feedback.

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The study revealed that adoption of ePrescribing could save the federal government $29 billion and prevent 2 million medication errors over the next 10 years if doctors were required to use the technology in caring for Medicare patients.

Currently, less than 10 percent of physicians are estimated to be using electronic prescribing which keeps patients, providers and taxpayers from seeing the benefits and cost savings of ePrescribing.

"This study further substantiates the necessity to provide physicians with immediate access to patient medication histories, preferred drug options, and pharmacy choices so that they can better counsel patients on safe and affordable choices before prescriptions are electronically transmitted to the pharmacy," stated JP Little, Chief Operating Officer for RxHub.

"The study indicated that approximately 70% of the safety and savings advantages of ePrescribing result from this information being provided to the physician at the point of care."

RxHub has access to medication-related information for 160 million patients in the U.S. Access to this information is for authorized physicians and is only available from patients who have given consent.

"The growth in ePrescribing transactions through RxHub is due to the early adopters of ePrescribing technology," noted COO Little. "RxHub is ready to facilitate and process an increased volume of ePrescribing transactions nationwide."

“In postings on internal mailing groups, users of Wikipedia have described obvious mistakes in the design, a globelike jigsaw puzzle with characters from various languages on the pieces,” reports Noam Cohen for the New York Times.  “Two of the characters – one in Japanese and one in Devanagari, the script used in Sanskrit and several modern Indian languages – are meaningless because of minor slips.”

This is likely going to become yet another embarrassing incident for Wikipedia – it’s been noted in the NYT, after all – though it may not be as bad as the fake expert or the frisky elephants.  Still . . . not good.

In addition to highlighting the existence of errors in Wikipedia, the situation has shown the mettle of (some of) the site’s user base; hold on for a slightly long explanation.

When the basic design was first introduced in 2003, David Friedland “set out to improve the design,” begins Cohen.  “But in the process, Mr. Friedland, who has a degree in computer science and linguistics, introduced the errors. . . .  The Devanagari error was caused by a computer glitch, he said, which swapped the order of two parts of the character; the Japanese error was simply carelessness.”

All right – mistakes happen.  The real problem, however, is that “[t]hough the errors have been discussed among cognoscenti for more than two years, they have not been fixed, mainly because Mr. Friedland says he lost the original computer file and is too busy to start from scratch.”

Right.  I like Wikipedia as much as (or more than) the next person, but again . . . not good.

Here are some more examples of mode errors:

• You hit “paste” but didn’t focus the input field, so nothing will be pasted.
• You hit Ctrl+Z on Windows (the “undo” short-cut) but the application doesn’t keep a history, and thus doesn’t support undo’s.
• You want to paint some pixels on a photo but you selected the “lasso” tool; the mode was indicated by a different cursor, but you didn’t notice.
• You sub-consciously “think” Ctrl+Z when you make an error writing with a pen on paper (hands up, who had this happen to them?).

As application developer, you know your interface needs optimization if users commit too many modal errors! For example, your mode indicator may be too subtle (e.g. the title bar of your application’s window turns from light gray to dark gray when it’s activated, a color change that’s easily missed). Or you’re introducing unnecessary modes: the “enter something into field 1” mode which uses different short-cuts from the “enter something into field 2” mode, even when field 1 and 2 seem to be related! (This is often a problem with Flash applications on the web, as they only emulate the OS modes up to a point, but don’t get things – like short-cuts or scroll behavior – completely right.)

But that doesn’t mean modes are always bad. If the system you’re working with can make an educated guess about what it is you may want to do at the moment, it can help you with your input to speed up the task. To list something annoying from Windows Mobile again: when you’re in your contacts list and you want to input a number into the phone number field, you’re offered the standard stylus keyboard. Now to enter a number, you need to hit the tiny keys emulating the top number row on a keyboard – these are so tiny because the whole keyboard, including letters from A-Z, are represented on the screen. But actually, you don’t need to enter A-Z in a phone number field, so it would make some sense for this application to switch into a “number optimized” input mode, displaying larger fields to click on.

As you can see with the Windows Mobile examples, in the first case the application makers delivered one mode too many: a read/ write distinction where it’s not crucial to have such (you can read a note while also being able to directly edit it). In the second case, the app makers did not provide a worthwhile mode distinction between number input and letter input (you can enter the letters A-Z into a phone field though you don’t need to, at least not in common circumstances).

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There are different types of mistakes, and some are more damaging than others. There are even good mistakes. In any case, it’s important that every business owner, manager, or staffer admit their errors and use the result as a learning tool.

It’s natural for a person to want to distance themselves from problems caused by actions gone terribly wrong. Everyone has experienced that desire to have the ground swallow them up at one time or another. Many people hide from their mistakes, while others deny them entirely. Some people will even claim the error was the proper course of action and defend it like a stone wall.

Not all companies have the same tolerance levels for mistakes. Some organizations are so error averse that the entire company is paralyzed for fear of doing the wrong thing. Heads are kept down, and little innovation ever takes place. Other businesses welcome and embrace failure as a stepping stone to future success. Most companies fall somewhere in the middle, and lean one way or the other.

On a personal level, it’s always the best idea to admit your mistake. Even in an organization that frowns on errors and innovative ideas. The personal energy consumed by denial, stonewalling, bluffing, and even lying is not worth it.

Admission of an error is liberating to the mind, and lets you move on to finding a solution. Time and money are saved in both the short and longer term. If admission is not good enough for those in charge, then an employee should seek different surroundings.

Business owners often make mistakes in the course of operating their business. As with employees and managers, it is essential to admit that an error was made and that the entrepreneur is not infallible.

Failure to admit an error, and to even defend it as the proper course of action despite all evidence to the contrary, may even doom the company itself. Instead of seeking solutions, many business owners have the need to be right all of the time. That stonewalling effect can very often bankrupt the business.

If you are a business owner or manager, develop and nurture a company culture that is not afraid to stumble and make a few miscues. Admit your own mistakes, and use the result as a springboard to an even better solution.

The sooner that an entrepreneur stops wasting enrgy and time on denial and stonewalling, the faster an alternative idea can be put into place. At the same time, empower your employees to take risks without fear of reprisal in the event things go wrong. It’s better to make mistakes than to take no action at all.

Develop a company that understands errors will happen. Start by admitting that you are not perfect in your decision making. Welcome ideas from staff members at all levels. By empowering people to make decisions, and to contribute new ideas, your business can move to the next level. There will be mistakes made along the way, but that is how every company grows to new heights.

Admit your mistakes. Welcome errors from everyone in the organization. They are the gifts that make a business successful.

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Plugins are useful bits of code that add new or improve the existing functionality of your WordPress blog.

New plugins, and updates to existing ones, have been appearing thick and fast in recent weeks. So yesterday, I visited my list of installed plugins and updated a couple of essential ones. I’ve downloaded a lengthy queue of others which I’ll do when I have another spare moment.

I also added a new one which, as I subseqently discovered, caused havoc with the blog resulting in the blog being unavailable for about half an hour until I was able to fix the problem. I commented about it in a discussion thread on the WordPress Support Forum.

This is the first time I’ve installed any WordPress plugin that caused such a major problem. Having your blog vanish and be replaced by an alarming error text would give anyone a major headache.

In such situations, you have to employ a logical approach to troubleshooting:

1. Study the error message, if there is one, for clues as to where in your WordPress installation the error might be.

2. Think about what you were doing in your blog immediately before the error occurred. This is the first next step, so to speak, if any error message leaves you clueless.

3. If you just installed a new plugin, or upgraded an existing one, deactivate it and try and access your blog again. If the error ends, you’ve found the culprit. You then need to troubleshoot the specific plugin.

4. The same goes for themes – if you’re trying a new one, or installed an upgrade to an exisiting one, switch to the default Kubrick theme that ships with WordPress and try and access your blog. If the problem goes away, you’ve found the culprit and you’ll need to investigate the particular theme.

5. If you still can’t fix the problem, re-upload the core WordPress files again from the original files on your computer (you did keep them, didn’t you?), paying special attention to how your FTP program treats the files. For instance PHP files shoud be uploaded as text files not binary files. If your server uses Apache, check your .htaccess file to see if there’s any entry in there that might offer a clue as to the cause of the problem.

6. If any error message mentioned PHP anywhere, look for some help (and hopefully answers) from the hosting company from which you rent the space for your blog.

7. If all your troubleshooting steps fail, it’s time to ask the community for help by posting a help request in the WordPress Support Forum. You’ll need to be as specific as possible re the error including explaining all the troubleshooting steps you’ve taken to find a solution.

What’s your experience with troubleshooting WordPress errors? Are there any other steps that should be added here?

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Neville Hobson is the author of the popular NevilleHobson.com blog which focuses on business communication and technology.

Neville is currentlly the VP of New Marketing at Crayon. Visit Neville Hobson’s blog: NevilleHobson.com.