A Flame War Does Some Good For A Change

A strange and delightful thing happened this past week that's helps restore a bit of my faith in humanity. Some background: I'm on the Board of Directors for Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, a fantastic community center in the Near West Side area of Milwaukee close to Marquette University. A couple of years ago, I helped them by designing and building a completely new website. I had wanted to integrate on-site donations, but didn't have the bandwidth at the time. On Monday, April 29, I finally finished integrating on-site donations. And just in time too, as the system was about to get a big workout!

On Friday, May 3, my contact at Neighborhood House sent me the following email:

It seems all of a sudden Neighborhood House started receiving numerous donations out of the blue. Most from Massachusetts, but many other states as well. What was going on? It'd be a very strange scam that began with scammers giving us money first!

My first stop was looking at Google Analytics. I started in the Acquisition section of Google Analytics as I wanted to see where these visits were coming from. In the Treemaps section, I could plainly see that the site traffic driving donations was coming from the social media channel.

But which channel specifically? I drilled down to view the details for the social channel.

Ah ha! My first big lead. The traffic and donations were coming from Twitter. What on earth was going on?

Next, I decided to do a search on Twitter for "Neighborhood House of Milwaukee" to see if we were being mentioned. After a few minutes of digging, this tweet stood out:

After backtracking and looking at the tweets that led up to this one, it appears there was a bit of a flame war happening on Twitter between Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics fans during the NBA Semi-Finals. The argument was over which team had the worst fans. Instead of letting the conversation devolve any further, @SteveMerkle9 decided a better path was encouraging his fellow Celtics fans to take the high road and give to a worthy cause instead. That cause, of course, being Neighborhood House of Milwaukee!

When the dust had settled at the end of the day, 57 individuals donated nearly $1500! While I wouldn't exactly say that donations to Neighborhood House went viral, it was a truly impressive display of generosity facilitated by some very big-hearted Boston Celtics fans. Donations like these are so important to organizations like Neighborhood House and they are very appreciated.

If you're inspired to give to Neighborhood House of Milwaukee, I know they will put it to good use in the community. To donate, go to http://neighborhoodhousemke.org/donate.

Interview with Appleton Post Crescent - Shopko Closures

Shoppers check out the going-out-of-business sale at Appleton's Shopko on Northland Avenue. (Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

I did an interview with Maureen Wallenfang from the Appleton Post Cresent on Shopko's recent decision to close all of its remaining stores. I discuss the impact this might have on other area retailers.

Apple Unveils Its Core Service Principles

Apple rolled out four new service offerings in an unprecedented event at the Steve Jobs Theatre on its new campus in Cupertino March 25th. Two were entirely new offerings (Apple Arcade and Apple Card), while the other two built on existing efforts (Apple TV+ and Apple News+).

What was most interesting about the event to me is the core service principles Apple unveiled as part of the event. I cannot recall a firm explicitly stating how it intends to design and market all of its future service products. In fact, Apple was very explicit about this. For three of the four new service offerings it debuted, the slide above was shown to the audience. 

Easy to use and Attention to detail should come as no surprise. These principles have been in Apple's DNA from the very beginning. Private and secure, though nonchalantly placed in the middle of the list, is a philosophical differentiator that Apple has been repeating over and over again. Expert curation is a more recent trend in Apple service products. It's News app bucks the machine learning trend and features articles actually chosen by real-live human beings. Personalized, of course, recalls the intimacy we enjoy with the customized experiences of products like iPhone. Finally, Family Sharing, builds on Apple's earlier innovation of allowing family members to share access to apps, music, movies, and books.

So why did Apple only share the slide during three of the product announcements and not all four? The slide may not necessarily have been conspicuously absent, but there were good reasons why the presenters couldn't show it. The slide was not shown during the Apple Card announcement because at least two of Apple's principles are missing from the product (for now): Expert curation and Family sharing. This begs the question: could Apple add them?

Family sharing seems an easy one for Apple to address. As of now, the Apple Card is intended for single users. You get the card and only you can use it. It may not necessarily need to be this way though. Based on all of the innovative features Apple is bringing to the credit card experience, having functionality where you could share your card with other family members would be an interesting addition. Imagine your daughter is attending a concert with friends and you wanted to give her some spending money for the show. You could share your card and put a spending cap on her purchases for the evening and she could also request more funds a la Screen Time. At the very least, sharing a card between spouses should be a no-brainer.

Expert curation is more difficult to envision. But if Apple branched out from its current plans to offer immediate Apple Cash percentage rebates for purchases and instead offered rewards that were custom tailored, er curated, for the card holder, that could be an interesting development in the credit card industry.

Apple's four new service offerings seem interesting, but I'm most impressed with how Apple has articulated its vision for its service products.