By mid-2000 I'd been in web-based journalism for five years and my job title was V-P Network Programming at Excite@Home, which was a popular portal at the time put together by Kleiner-Perkins, the best-known VC firm in the valley.
During my brief time with the company it acquired a game operator called Pogo.com, also a Kleiner-Perkins venture, which had brought popular board games like Scrabble online and had also created certain new games like Poppit, which involved popping balloons of various colors to claim prizes.
As one of the executives managing content, I was told to supervise our new acquisition, which involved probably one or two conference calls as well as the decision to leave them pretty much alone. (They obviously knew what they were doing.)
It was during that period, however, that in order to properly exercise my supervisory responsibility I felt I should try out their Scrabble and Poppit offerings. Soon, I realized that I should probably exercise my supervisory responsibility in this manner again and again, just to ensure that the games were continuing to remain in good working order.
Alas, the Excite@Home balloon popped within a year, an untimely event but commonplace in that space and time. The entire dot.com bubble had famously burst and there were no prizes left to claim.
Although I didn't know it, Pogo had landed up as the property of Electronic Arts, which in the tiny world of Silicon Valley was headquartered right across the way from yet another technology startup where I was employed a few years later.
In that position, I occasionally took one or more of my youngest kids with me to the office and on one such day I arranged a tour of the EA office for my youngest son, who was transfixed by a workplace where games were being played on all the overhead monitors. (He was used to the cable news channels droning on inside my media company offices.)
Flash forward to present tense and I still tend to sample Scrabble and Poppit from time to time, perhaps out of nostalgia for either simpler or more complicated times.
Anyway these memories all came back to me this weekend when I tried to open Scrabble and Poppit to show my grandchildren when I was met by giant ads that froze the screen, blocking the games from loading at all. My OS is current, so there were no hardware/software issues on my end. I tried over and over during a two-day period but no luck.
So all I can say to the current staff at Pogo as your former supervisor, although none of you has ever heard of me, shame on you for creating such an awful user experience. I get that you are trying to promote subscriptions as an ad-free business model, but you'll never get new users to enter the conversion funnel by treating them this way.
Seriously, the pandemic lockdown has forced many people to explore their online entertainment options and I often recommend Pogo's games as a way to fight isolation and early-stage dementia.
Especially word games -- then again, that will surprise nobody.
***
The news, which is rather light this weekend:
* Iraq’s anti-American militias aren’t just Iranian proxies. That helps explain their troubles. (WaPo)
* Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said Amazon workers voted against forming a union over fear that they might lose their job. (NYT)
* ‘Clear the Capitol,’ Pence pleaded, timeline of riot shows (AP)
* The pandemic is causing another new, yet uniquely American, shortage — ketchup. Heinz says it has to up its production by 25% to meet the demand for the popular condiment. (NPR)
* Ballet directors talk about ‘fitness.’ That’s still code for rail-thin dancers. (WaPo)
* Elon Musk's Neuralink shows monkey with brain-chip playing videogame by thinking (Reuters)
* Nearly 40% of Marines have declined Covid-19 vaccine (CNN)
* Essential, invisible: Covid has 200,000 merchant sailors stuck at sea (WaPo) |
* If Derek Chauvin goes free it will be due, in part, to Graham v. Connor, a 1989 Supreme Court case that gave cops the freedom to murder. (The Nation)
* Democrats and Republicans No Longer Speak the Same Language (NYT)
* Senate filibuster’s racist past fuels arguments for its end (AP)
* Michigan’s Virus Cases Are Out of Control, Putting Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a Bind (DNYUZ)
* Forest fires spread across Indian Himalayan state (Financial Times)
* The newly discovered dinosaur named Llukalkan aliocranianus was a predator with a menacing appearance and the ability to strike fear in its prey. Paleontologists said it roamed the Earth nearly 80 million years ago. (NPR)
* ‘Parent Trap’ Producers Recall Euthanizing Lindsay Lohan Clone After Completing Filming (The Onion)
***
A little time to think things over
I better read between the lines
In case I need it when I'm older
Feels like the world upon my shoulders
But through the clouds, I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder
I don't know if I can face it again
Can't stop now, I've traveled so far
To change this lonely life
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