Why Cherp is a Bad Idea

August 28, 2008

It’s usu­ally not a good idea to base a busi­ness model on a com­pany or ser­vice that has no busi­ness model. Unfortunately, this is exactly what’s been done with Cherp, a mar­ket­ing com­pany that spe­cial­izes in help­ing brands com­mu­ni­cate via Twit­ter. Now, beside the fact that I don’t really want “my brands” talk­ing to me online, what hap­pens when Twit­ter becomes yesterday’s news? It’s pop­u­lar now, but will it still be relevant in two or three years? Given the volatile nature of most web star­tups and the will­ing­ness for people to jump on the next big thing, this could be a recipe for disaster.

More impor­tantly, I also noticed that Cherp’s web­site looks surprisingly similar to a NET­TUTS tuto­r­ial (you can view the com­pleted site here) about turn­ing Pho­to­shop comps into usable HTML and CSS. Now I’m not sure if the source files for that tuto­r­ial are Cre­ative Com­mons, Public Domain or some other open license—but that’s not the point. This shows a com­plete lack of cre­ativ­ity, com­pe­tence as a web designer and respect for the work of others. Not only that, but Cherp has the balls to put a copy­right footer in the same place where they should be giving credit to the actual designer or the fact that it came from NETTUTS.

If you have seen Twit­ter as a viable mar­ket­ing medium, by all means, let me know, but I still don’t think Cherp is the com­pany to make it happen.

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4 Comments

  • Matt

    First, thanks for the com­ments - that you took inter­est is great. Your com­ment about build­ing a busi­ness on a com­pany that cur­rently has no busi­ness model is inter­est­ing (to be clear, they don’t have a pub­li­cized mon­e­ti­za­tion strat­egy. For any com­pany to get $20M they have to have a busi­ness model.) First, Twit­ter is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form with fan­tas­tic growth. It needs a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem to become yes­ter­days news. But more specif­i­cally, the point of Cherp is to find rea­sons to get more people to use it so it won’t die. I love Twit­ter, I want it to stick around.

    Lastly, I’m con­fused by the sub­stan­tial anger about the NET­TUTS tuto­r­ial tem­plate. Why does this matter? Here’s why we have a tem­plate web­site. I wanted to code it myself. I’m not a pro­gram­mer, and my HTML skills have gotten rusty so, despite the fact that I’m work­ing with people more tech­ni­cally com­pe­tent in this area I went through the NET­TUTS process and liked the design, so I didn’t devi­ate much. Noth­ing on our web­site says web design. I really hope that wasn’t the main thing that both­ered you. At the bottom of the source files NET­TUTS included a com­ment from Collis Ta’eed to do what you like with the files. I would never inten­tion­ally reuse some­one else’ work. That would be uncon­scionable.

    Hope­fully you’ll keep an eye on Cherp, because I believe the work we do will wind up impress­ing you.

  • Allie Osmar

    Matt - a few things con­cern me about the tem­plate design. The web­site pro­vides the first impres­sion to many as a part of your over­all com­pany brand. A tem­plate site says, “This com­pany has no tech­ni­cal or design experience,” which is a prob­lem if you are trying to sell ser­vices that will involve both. I’m also curi­ous as to why you chose not to use this inte­gra­tion with your own web­site.

    I see the value in Twit­ter - there are a number of com­pa­nies using it quite well, but you can’t force-​fit it. Do you plan to manage com­pany accounts your­self or take a more edu­ca­tional angle on this?

    Finally, I have to ask how you chose the com­pany exam­ple on your home­page. It leaves the impres­sion that you did this work for them. If you did not, this is mis­lead­ing.

  • Jeff Siarto

    @Matt

    I dis­agree that com­pa­nies need to have a busi­ness model to secure VC fund­ing. In lieu of a such a model, VCs are look­ing for that crit­i­cal mass—a user base so large that tra­di­tional web adver­tis­ing and shear impres­sions could sus­tain the busi­ness. Twit­ter has a large user base, but it’s no where near crit­i­cal mass and most people out­side media/technology/publishing cir­cles have never even heard of it. Don’t get me wrong, Twit­ter is an amaz­ingly cool ser­vice and I read and use it obses­sively every day. I just don’t think build­ing a busi­ness solely on that plat­form makes sense.

    @Allie Osmar

    You make a great point about using site tem­plates for your busi­ness home­page. Over­all it just makes Cherp looked “thrown together” and lack­ing in the tech­ni­cal depart­ment—a per­cep­tion they can’t afford to have.

  • Matt

    Jeff and Allie, I don’t com­pletely dis­agree about the design - we’re work­ing on it. I never thought this was the long term web image for our brand. That said, we’re also putting our energy into the work more than the site.

    See, i’ve seen a number of people coming out and saying, “everyone should use social media. It will make you hugely suc­cess­ful with lots of money. Buy our blueprint..” and it was just dri­ving me crazy. It was like SEO scams all over again and I wanted to do some­thing. Simply post­ing to Twit­ter is not a strat­egy and there is no blue­print that will work for every­one. I couldn’t agree more Allie that you can’t force it. My research over the last 24 months sug­gests that busi­nesses aren’t sure how to lever­age these net­works, and con­sumers aren’t sure they want busi­nesses to figure it out. :)

    I’ve been work­ing on some ideas that could be a win-​win (and a win for twit­ter.)

    Anyway, have a great hol­i­day week­end and I’ll let you know next week when we have some new mate­ri­als up on the site (rather than “coming soon”).

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