Buzz About The Buzz

Sprint’s last trials with outreach to the online community were a dismal failure. From the quid-pro-quo free phones to bloggers, to the Sprint Podcast for Dummies, to Sprint VP blogs that said a lot… yet at the same time said nothing at all. We don’t need to keep going with this. (Note to David, shoot me an email, the podcast can actually be salvaged…)

Now, they’re at it again, this time taking a page right from our book. In fact, they took the software right out of our playbook. Sprint’s new community outreach site, Buzz About Wireless, uses exactly the same software as PhoneNews.com, right down to the add-ons.

This doesn’t tick us off, hardly. We’re certainly not rival with Sprint community outreach, we just wish they did a good job of it. Nobody’s going to stop tuning into us to check out their site. If we were still the Sprint PCS Info of years ago, you might be able to make such a case.

That said, my confidence level is not high here. Their rival to our Phones Section looks nice, and is similar to what we said our new phones section would look like. However, it’s devoid of information. Is this because they’re new? Maybe, but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that not a single user will be wooed by it… certainly not after we launch our next generation. Let users edit their phone pages? Not going to happen, and yes, that is a dare.

Their forums are a joke… which we really didn’t want to see. We miss the AT&T Wireless forums of old. Sprint’s new forums are powered by Lithium, a paid forum administrator and software company. I suspect you’ll see over-moderation, and you’ll see short on answers. If Sprint wants to fix that, they need to hire, well, their own employees (and not the ones in India) to tackle things. Pay some store employees to surf your forum while the tumbleweeds roll outside… they’re doing that with ours anyways.

Finally, stand out. I don’t need to say any more on that one. Good luck Sprint, you’ll need it… again…