I’ll mark this down as one of those when-I-find-the-time projects, but I want to write a feature story about the failure of iFulfill.com, an order fulfillment company that was undercapitalized and, some say, mismanaged.

Former owner Paul Purdue caught a lot of heat for blogging about the abrupt closure instead of spending time helping clients retrieve their inventory from his soon-to-be-closed warehouses. I was engrossed with the story itself, the comments on Purdue’s blog, and posts on a Yahoo! community forum.

Other fulfillment companies swooped down like Superman, rescuing Purdue’s desperate clients by offering to pick up and deliver inventory languishing in his warehouses. Angry and heartbroken clients, some close to financial ruin, had to break the bad news to their customers. It seems that most items were recovered and returned to worried clients, but the ensuing financial loss is still mounting, I’m sure. At least one company or person has filed suit against Purdue.

This BusinessWeek article (also see the magazine’s blog for more information) angered Purdue’s clients even more. A seemingly nonchalant Purdue is photographed smiling. A subplot in the drama is the role of Purdue’s blog consultant. Clients and others place some of the blame for their predicament on the consultant. They say Purdue’s blogging (a waste of time?) contributed to his business’s failure, although the consultant was not aware that his company was failing.

Implications and questions abound, particularly for blog consultants: Should we bear some of the blame for advice that may not be in the best interest of the client? Is it prudent to blog the failure of a business? As blog consultants evangelizing about “transparency” and “honesty,” how transparent and honest are we when it comes to our businesses? Are we exempt? If so, why?

Blogger.com is the reason blogging exploded in the past few years. A tech novice with little more than a desire to rant can sign up for an account, create a blog and start blogging in five minutes or less, literally.

The quickness and ease of use makes the platform a target for anonymous types up to no good or others trying to game the system by setting up automated blogs that are nothing more than spam sites. It’s only a matter of time, I predict, that search engines will begin excluding Blogger blogs.

This may not seem serious to non-bloggers, but it’s very important to legitimate businesses shelling out money to optimize their blogs for search engines. Unscrupulous blog-spam practices are becoming so widespread that Google, Yahoo!, and the other search engines will have little choice but to exclude certain domains ripe for exploitation, and “blogspot.com” will likely be the first to go. The good must suffer with the bad, as my mother used to say.

(Hat tip: Blogspotting)

I love cake. In fact, I love cake so much, I look at people who hate cake as if they’re Martians.

“You don’t like cake?” I exclaim. “What kind of human being doesn’t like cake? Cake is so good.”

After scenes like that, I’m usually worked up enough to stop by CakeLove or Love Cafe, two stores owned and operated by Warren Brown. I secretly hope he’ll be there on days I go in to scan a myriad of choices. Will it be a $7 slice of chocolate or cheese cake, or a $3 vanilla cupcake with lemon frosting? Man, just thinking about it…but it’s only 8:30 in morning. The store’s probably not open yet anyway.

Brown has been in the store during most of my visits, but he’s usually behind the counter with a plastic cap on his head mixing dough. One time I saw him in Love Cafe sitting on one of the couches.

(more…)

But is that really him? Comments are being moderated, so the one I just left hasn’t appeared yet. Trump writes:

Recently former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski was convicted for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the company. It was his second go-round in court — the first one ended in a mistrial. You may remember Mr. Kozlowski from the original trial. A video of his lavish party on an Italian island, allegedly paid for with company funds, was last year’s scandal du jour. The retrial was a more low-key affair, but it served to remind us of how much business corruption there has been over the past few years.

The people at the forefront of these squalid affairs give business a bad name. Maybe they’re greedy, maybe they’re “ethically challenged,” but ultimately they’re incompetent. If you have to lie, cheat, and steal, you’re just not doing it right. My career is a model of tough, fair dealing and fantastic success–without shortcuts, without breaking the law.

Well, if that’s really Donald Trump blogging over there and accepting comments, I look forward to reading what he and his readers have to say.

Update (8/12): It’s been 24 hours, and my comment and trackback still haven’t been posted! My comment was benign, definitely not troll material. Advice for bloggers old and new moderating comments: if you can’t or won’t approve comments in a timely manner, don’t enable them at all.

Business blogger B.L. Ochman says to Trump: “You’re fired!”

Radical idea. Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion writes:

As blogging and other forms of consumer generated media surge, people will begin to expect the same tone of voice from all the sources they “consume.” What’s more, they will also expect to have a say in what media covers and the ability to give transparent feedback. The Cluetrain is going to hit big media just as hard as it hits corporate communications.

As a result, it is my belief that media companies that are heavily invested online need to consider going to an all-blog format. Social media is not an add-on. It’s not a feature. It’s a way of life that evolves journalism from monologue to dialogue.

Music to a blog consultant’s ears. I have vague recollections of the massive resistance of businesses to even put up web sites. These days, just as the business world is finally recognizing the importance of online communication, they have to deal with a brand new niche medium called a blog. And I’m more than happy to assist.

Learn how to build traffic.

Annoying web sites. Something I can sink my teeth into.

E-Commerce News has obtained a soon-to-be-released survey on what people hate about web sites. Top pet peeves:

• Pop-up advertising
• Registration log-on pages
• Software installation (especially without obtaining the user’s permission)
• Slow-loading pages

Those cover a lot of territory, but I must list a few of my own web site pet peeves:

• “About” and “Contact” information are difficult to find
• Created-in-the-80s-looking sites. (I can’t link to examples because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
• Broken links
• Sites where music plays upon page loading
• Counter-intuitive navigation

See Web Pages That Suck

The blogosphere has grown large enough to justify having its own search engines dedicated to mining the prolific output of blogs of all topics and genres, and not just engines like Technorati. The new medium has become so pervasive so quickly, traditional media, the corporate world, and fortune-hunters of all stripes will spend years trying to catch up.

Business Week has the story:

No, if you’re looking for today’s buzz, the first place to click is a Web log search engine such as Technorati, Feedster, or Blogdigger. By picking up the latest posts, minute by minute, from some 12 million blogs, these sites showcase an ever-changing mosaic of what is on the world’s mind.

TRAFFIC DRIVER. From politicos to ad execs and plaintiff’s lawyers, lots of people are hungry for just that.

Now a surge of traffic to blog search sites has raised expectations that giants Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft’s MSN may soon plunge into blog search.

Blogs would give them yet another vehicle for the search-based ads they sell. Just as vital, blog search promises to be a big traffic driver as more surfers — some 40,000 to 50,000 a day — take up blogging.

CRAWLING ALONG. The time looks ripe. Industry incumbents appear vulnerable as they struggle to sort through the avalanche of new data pouring into their servers. Adam Hertz, Technorati’s chief engineer, says the company handles 850,000 daily blog postings, up 70% in three months. Adding servers is a snap, Hertz says. But revamping systems to digest all the data “is like changing a flat tire on a moving car.”

What all this portends for search engines like Google and Yahoo! and for businesses in general is anyone’s guess.

Tags: technorati, search engines, and technology.