A holiday wish for Tivo
Tivo sucks.
I used to love Tivo. I use one constantly, but the company has pissed me off more than once over the years and it keeps coming back to the same problem--they don't know what business they're in.
This is a fatal error, as legendary for taking down consumer tech companies as Russia is at stopping European hegemonial expansion.
Tivo is in the time-shifting, time-saving business, enabling customers to watch television shows when it's convenient for them to do so and expending a minimum amount of time in the process. Customers will and do pay Tivo for this service.
Tivo thinks that they're in the advertising facilitation business. Rather than treating a loyal customer base as the longterm bucolic livestock that we are, rewarding the company with eggs and milk; they are slaughtering us as soon as we're warm, serving up our jerking carcasses to advertisers.
The case in point that brought this to mind is a new announcement from Tivo that when a user deletes a show, they will be presented with a choice to watch an advertiser's commercial, completely unrelated to the content that they're expunging. Well, that makes sense--clearly when the user is busily deleting shows,they're really begging to watch more commercials.
We. Don't. Want. To. Watch. Commercials...That's why we bought the Tivo in the first place.
As we begin the holiday season, my fervent wish this year is for Tivo to sicken and die, their consumer-unfriendly policies creating service-oriented competitors that will hound the predatory company, kill it and pick the company's carcass clean, leaving the whitening bones in Silicon Valley as a reminder that what creates can kill and consumers are not dogs, blindly loyal even after being kicked.
Posted on November 29, 2006
