The Reluctant Blogger

A big thank-you to Steve Wartenberg for his article entitled Cyber Venting. Steve, and the experts he cites make the point that comments on sites such as JobVent.com should be strongly considered by executives and managers within the organizations about which people are writing. They also urge people who read these sites to take the comments they read with “a grain of salt” due to the fact that you do not really know who is writing these reviews and whether their opinions should actually sway your opinion about a company.

I see examples of this a lot on JobVent.com. Someone gets fired from a job, and decides to write an extremely negative review. They have every right to express their opinion, but people reading the review really should consider the context in which this person was motivated to write it. Why were they fired? Unless the company or other people within the organization decide to respond to this review, readers of the recently terminated employee’s review will only be reading half of the story, and they need to keep that in mind. We have no idea if the employee was not performing their job well enough to justify their continued employment, or if there were any number of unmentioned issues that the other side could have had with this employee.

Always consider both sides of the story, even when you’ve only been handed one of them.

So, there’s a company listed on JobVent.com called First Investors Corporation. It seems to be (from the comments) one of these investment companies that gets people to register for their series 6 or 7, and then puts them on a mostly commission based salary to sell investments. Some people are great salesmen and are into that sort of thing. Others, clearly, are not. And the reviews reflect both sides of the story, and it has remained, at least in my opinion, fairly balanced.

Of course, like many other companies on JobVent.com, reviews have been removed because they violated any number of our policies. The same applies to comments about those reviews. There’s no explicit policy against it, but comments that threaten to expose users of JobVent.com have to be removed. Some of the comments stated that identities would be exposed. And based on how JobVent.com is built, that’s simply an impossibility. Any “Exposing” of user identities would simply be conjecture.

Anyhow, this one particular person making threats kept doing it. So they had to have their account blocked. This is the email I received for my troubles:

Hello Venter (another name for Complainer),
So you decided to block me because I did to you what you do to others.  You really are a pathetic loser.  Guess what?  In just 40 or so short days, I will be launching a site that will expose all of those complaining losers on your site.  Know what else? I will be advertising on your site and there is nothing you can do about it.  That’s right……hire an army because you will need it.  I will be worming my way around LoserVent.com.  In the mean time, I will just create unique e-mail accounts and toy with you.
James

After the laugher subsided, I tried to come up with an adequate response, but failed. This guy references a site called LoserVent.com. That’s an unregistered domain name. I was tempted to register it myself, but this guy isn’t really worth my $10. Besides, he’s apparently going to advertise on JobVent.com, which if he goes about it properly will net JobVent.com at least $100 or so. Otherwise, his claim that he is going to advertise on JobVent.com and “there is nothing you can do about it” holds no merit whatsoever. The best he can do is post a review or comment with a new account referencing his site. And those, of course, will be summarily removed. Why, exactly do I need to “hire an army”?

Since his email was received, 20 or so accounts have been created. None of them by him.

This is one the rare cases where an email to Venter@JobVent.com is not going to get a response. This email doesn’t deserve one.

Ah, the egomaniacal CEO. They’re so much fun. I got the following email today, but the best part was not the email. It was the attachments. Was I supposed to be impressed that you can use Google and find my resume? Yes. He sent me my own resume.

The email: (my comments and edits are italicized)

Mr. XXXX XXXXX (Me)

XXXXXXX (here he goes on to list an address for me that is out of date by several years)

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

www.arlingtondev.com

CC. Arlington Development, LLC

Although we are in agreement with freedom of speech and a place where people can vent their frustrations, we take great offence to Arlington Development, LLC (XXXX XXXXXXX (me again)) for allowing damaging defamatory accusations to be posted about XXXXXX. We are preparing to take immediate legal action in the courts of Arlington, Massachusetts against XXXXXX XXXXXXXX (me, yet again)
and Arlington Development for posting the following blogs:

• Mention names such as my name (XXXXX (his name)), an employee’s name (XXXXX) and my wife’s name (XXXXXX) which is against your own rules as you know this is simply illegal.
  
• Defamatory comments about an individual that includes name calling – “XXXXX is a BIG TOOL”
  
• Statements that XXXXXX (Company name) is committing illegal software pirating – “Pirated software: Yup. XXXXX ran pirated software, and they installed it on customers machines. One not mentioned already, XXXXXX. It was used extensively, without license, to image just about every computer that went out the door.”
  
• Accusations about possible illegal drug problems with XXXXX – “It could be drug related but who knows”
  
• Accusations about Tax Fraud – “Tax Fraud: Oh yeah baby. Lets buy a brand new TV for the office, deliver it to XXXXXs home, and claim it as a business expense.”
  

To prevent any further damage, XXXXXXX demands that all blogs about XXXXXXX be immediately removed from your website by the end of Thursday January 10^th, 2008.

We also demand that all of the names or email addresses of all persons who have posted these blogs be immediately released to us so we can pursue legal action against those persons. In preparation that Arlington Development claims that PIPIDA prevents the release of these names, we are preparing an affidavit to the courts of Arlington, Massachusetts to obtain a court order to force Arlington Development, LLC to release the names of individuals who have posted these blogs.  

It is our legal opinion that Arlington Development has not taken the necessary steps to review, filter or ensure that the information posted in the blogs on your website are not defamatory, untrue or harmful to a third party. Arlington Development has also not collected sufficient information about your users to ensure your user’s accountability which in turn causes Arlington Development, LLC to be liable for all third party damages.

We have sustained considerable provable damage directly from our clients reading these untrue blogs and we are currently preparing our statement of claim against XXXXXXXX and Arlington Development, LLC which will further outline in detail the damages that XXXXXXX has incurred.

Regards,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

CEO

(additional address info removed)

So, this CEO makes several mistakes. First of all, he sent me my resume. So right from the start, he has no credibility. It’s like shouting “I found you! I found you!” and expecting me to be shocked. I’m a software engineer. I’m all over the internet.

Arlington Development, while the office used to be in Arlington, MA, is actually incorporated as a Delaware LLC. He goes on to list a very out of date mailing address for Arlington Development, LLC, and tells me about the affidavit that they’re preparing to force Arlington Development to release the names of people who posted on JobVent. Its anonymous. When will people get it? We don’t have that information. Perhaps I should be clearer about that on the site.

He says it is his “legal opinion” that we haven’t adequately filtered and reviewed content that gets posted. Are you a lawyer? If not, I’m not interested in your legal opinion. Plus, we have no obligation to review all the information that comes into the site in real-time. Plus, JobVent.com is not liable for any damages in your “statement of claim” because we acted on the removal of the reviews as soon as we received his email. CDA of ‘96. Read it. Maybe you can get your government to block JobVent.com. Best of luck.

Anyway, what follows is my response to this guy. Again, my edits are italicized.

XXXX,

Normally we do not respond to legal threats of this kind. When a company politely asks us to remove something from our site, we take immediate action to review the content in question, and if we determine it has violated our policies, the content is then archived and removed from public access. We do not have the resources or desire to monitor every review and comment as they come in to our site.

We did however take a look at the reviews about your company after we received your email, and noticed that each and every one of them violated one policy in particular which warranted their removal. The policy that each review about XXXXX violated was that no review should attack anyone personally.

You personally seem to be the subject and target of each review.

The reviews have been removed from public view due to their violation of our policies, but I hope you read and addressed the issues they discussed.

As per your “demand” that we give you the names or email addresses of the people that posted information about your company: It is clear you don’t understand how this site works. It is anonymous. People can post without logging any identifiable information about themselves; no name, no email address. So we don’t have this information that you are demanding.

Why did you send me my own resume? I already have a copy.

Additionally, you have listed a very out of date address for Arlington Development, LLC.  

Please let me know if you continue to have an issue with content that appears on the site.

Good luck, and best wishes, (this was my wife’s touch… brilliant)

XXXXXXXX

JobVent.com

I received the following email today, from the CEO of a company in Australia. I’m pretty sure his claims, espcially where he cites specific Australian law, are invalid, but what I’m interested in is: how would an international lawsuit take place? More specifically: if an Australian company decided to sue Arlington Development, LLC (an American company of a Delaware incorporation), and AD does not comply or respond to the terms of the lawsuit, what are the implications?

The email:

Your email reply has been forwarded to me regarding the ‘review’ of easyflowers.com.au on JobVent.com. I should first of all mention that I am XXXXXXXX, CEO of XXXXXXXX “the boss who has no respect for staff” as referred to in the review of XXXXXXXX on your website.

I would first of all like to thank you for removing the more defamatory comments made about me personally on your website.

Secondly, I would like to ask you to reconsider your decision not to remove the review of XXXXXXX from your website based upon the following reasons.

1. The information contained in the review is false and misleading.
2. Under Australian law, your organization may be making defamatory statements. http://www.artslaw.com.au/LegalInformation/Defamation/DefamationLawsAfterJan06.asp
In particular I refer you to:
“Everyone involved in the publication is potentially liable and each, all, or some can be sued. This means that writers, publishers, editors, artists and gallery owners must all be aware of the potential dangers. This also means that it is no defence to argue that you are only repeating rumours or a comment made by somebody else: you can be liable for a republication”
3. Under Australian law, your organization may be in breach of s52 of The Trade Practices Act 1974 which relates to ‘misleading and deceptive conduct’. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/tpa1974149/s52.html
4. Australia, it would appear is also outside your area of operations with regards to Arlington Development, LLC, hence we see no benefit to your organization for pursuing this matter any further.

While we appreciate that you may be conducting your business in accordance with the laws of the United States, there are substantial differences between the laws of Australia and the US particularly in relation to defamation. We trust that you and your organization will respect the laws of other countries as good business practice and remove the review on your website which is clearly in breach in this instance.

I look forward to your response on this matter.

Kind regards,

No. There is no formal API. JobVent.com is really the only site utilizing the data in JobVent’s database. However, I did receive a request today from the founder of a site that is very similar to JobVent.com. He’d like to forward viewers of his site over to JobVent when they’re looking for a specific company that is not in his own database.

While I’m not prepared to publish a web service to access all of the data in JobVent’s database programmatically, I don’t mind if developers use some of our pre-existing functionality.

JobVent companies can be queried by using a URL formatted as follows:
http://www.jobvent.com/browse.php?searchText=COMPANYNAME&search=true&searchType=company

the above URL, when you replace COMPANYNAME with a urlencoded query string will perform a company name query and direct the user to the results on jobvent.

Alternatively, you can use our XML generator that we use for one or two AJAX calls.
http://www.jobvent.com/include/autocomplete.php?field=CompanyName&input=Verizon

The above url will generate XML which contains an id and a company name for all companies that match the urlencoded input string. It is important to leave the field=CompanyName string in the URL (do not modify this string). In this case, verizon will return two results, verizon, and verizon wireless. The id can be used to redirect to the company specific page… http://www.jobvent.com/companyBrowse.php?CompanyID=900

When I started building JobVent.com several years ago, I hadn’t done so much as a “Hello World” application in PHP. That paired with my lack of knowledge at the time concerning all things CSS led to what was declared by Techcrunch as a site “who’s layout and look screams 1996″.

Well, as much as I did enjoy the late ’90s (college was a blast), it was time to bring JobVent.com forward into the current decade. We’ve got divs, style sheets, even a bit of Ajax for good measure. Don’t worry. We didn’t go overboard. All the data is the same and the surveys haven’t changed. But the site is easier to navigate, read, and just looks better.

We kept the orange theme, despite all the comments against it. Why do people hate orange? It works for Dunkin’ Donuts.

So send any comments you may have about the new design. If you encounter any issues (as a lot of the underlying code changed as well) send them along.

A huge thanks goes to Greg at Raizlabs for help with the new design. Greg is a usability expert and his input on this project has been invaluable.
 

This is what you get when you google JobVent.com (6th link down or so)
http://www.getafreelancer.com/projects/Website-Design-Web-Promotion/quot-Clone-quot-JobVent-com.html

Not cool.

I received a pretty long email from a German freelance journalist today, asking very specific questions about JobVent. I gave her what I thought were succinct responses to each question; hopefully she goes ahead and writes the article. In German. Hey, any press is good press.

My (shortened) response to her follows:

Can you tell me, what was your motivation to do jobvent.com?

I started JobVent.com when I was very unhappy with my job. I regretted the decision I made to work there, and decided that there should be a site where people could read reviews about a company before they take a job.

When did you start running jobvent.com? How many rates and Companies are there till now?

JobVent.com started in the summer of 2004, and so far there are over 3,000 companies listed. Over 11,000 reviews have been written.

Did you ever get into some troubles if companies did not like the rating?

Companies may not like the ratings that appear on JobVent.com, but there are very few things a company can do to prevent people from voicing their opinions. We have been contacted many times by CEOs or other Executives who dispute the ratings and reviews on JobVent.com. Our only advice to them is to listen to what their employees are saying and use the feedback on JobVent.com to help improve their company.

Did you get any feedback of the users? What is their opinion so far?

Almost all of the feedback we get from users is positive: people love to vent their frustrations with their jobs. We get many emails every week thanking us for the service we’re providing.

Do you have an advice for an similar european page? Any no-gos?

Initially we wanted people to register their email before writing a review, so we could try to prevent abuse of the system. Unfortunately, when faced with registration, people are less likely to write a review; people want to remain anonymous, otherwise they feel their jobs are at risk. So my advice would be to leave the system open to anonymous postings.

This past Monday, the first print ads for JobVent.com appeared in the Boston Metro. This ad will run on Mondays for 4 weeks. Print ads are not cheap.

On Monday, when the ad appeared, there was no discernable difference in JobVent.com traffic, and I was a little dissapointed. The rest of the ads will run, but I am not expecting much. However, on Wednesday, traffic to JobVent.com was double what it normally is. It did not appear that traffic was spiking in Boston, so I have no idea if the bump in traffic is somehow related to the print ads in the Metro.

I guess we’ll see if there is the same pattern next week.