When the first HTTP Cookie was ever made it had the main objective of making shopping carts more usable therefore converting more sales by giving the users a better experience.

There have been a lot of discussions regarding the privacy issues a cookie implied, but marketers immediatly understood how strong a tool it was and did’nt want to let it go. The real reason for today’s success of the cookie technology is that some major players on the market forced the users to accept cookies in order to be able to access their services.

When a technology is too strong, you simply can’t resist and you forget even when was the time you really allowed it to happen in the first place: Javascript, Flash, CSS…

With a cookie you can track tons of information regarding a user behaviour: where he has been, how many times has he seen wich advertisment, how did he react, what did he do next: basically this is how most of behavioral targeting is done.

But how would you impose such a sneaky object into a paranoid crowd: you give it a cute name! From a marketers perspective it could be more appropriate to call it a “Quicky”…

That a cookie improves user experience there is no doubt, but the tools it gives marketers and the information we gather is unvaluable.

I always was tought that “you CAN’T bake your cake and eat it too” but apparently when it comes to cookies you actually CAN…

Slurp!

Sadok Kohen

Its a dangerous thing to be the biggest, to have no competition, to have too much money: makes you callous towards your business.

Last week Paypal decided to suspend my account without any notice and without any explanation, and worse: as standard procedure towards successful businesses!

So if you are growing too fast, if you show success, if you make Paypal earn more money then the average customer, apparently you should be doing something criminal. So without a call, without a mail, without any verification, they decide to stop the service. Just like that.

Imagine your bank doing the same thing: you go to pay a bill, they tell you “sorry, you are making more money then the average Joe, liberal marketplace is an illusion, you are lucky we don’t arrest you, so until we feel like it, go away, we will call you!”

So I try to call the customer service, and very professionally they tell me they need me to explain to them howcome the success. I wrote them my business description (which is openly available on my website) and call again: they tell me I have to wait for the “qualified people” to check the info and that they have everything they need.

After waiting (and loosing money by the minute) I asked them to put me in contact with the holy “qualified people”, but even they can’t get in contact with them, all they can do is email them the information requested by me, I should wait, there are a lot of people waiting (!)…

My account was put back to normal in 6 days. I still haven’t been told why the account was suspended in the first place.

Even the smallest bank have account representatives. I can’t imagine how anybody could afford to do business like this. I am shocked of how such a great service could afford to have such bad customer care.

I am not the only one having this kind of problems, and it seems I won’t be the last, this is exactly why its healthy to have competition, and I am sure the competition took notice, but why should you be threatened to improve yourself ? Isn’t that the ultimate purpose of business ?

Sadok Kohen