Its been awhile since I’ve posted here. I’ve been busy with some other, pressing endevours. (I still am busy, but thought I should at least finish up with the Cinch review that I started.)
First, let me begin by saying that I think that this Dubli thing is a really great idea and I think it will take off. (Not as fast as you and I hoped or even expected, maybe, but still, its gonna work and its gonna make those of us that got in early very happy.) I saw Michael Hansen in person a little while ago and I have to say he is an impressive man. He says that he gets ideas almost every minute of every day, and I believe him.
I also have a lot of respect for Tom Ashlock, the creator of Cinch. He is one of the first two Vice Presidents in Dubli, and, I think, a genuine good guy.
But, I don’t like Cinch.
I understand the vision: get Dubli customers to use dubli through a different channel and then use that channel for any number of other things – advertisements, communication, interaction. It really would be great for Dubli and for Dubli business associates.
But, there isn’t enough of an attraction to customers to make them anything but annoyed. In my opinion.
My experiences: Our team has been successful in attracting customers. We’ve sold quite a few credits and had some good feedback from them. I sent 6 of my customers, some of my closet friends who aren’t dubli business associates, Cinch. Only one person installed it and he has since removed it.
Two friends said that they would install it at home, but really only access dubli at work. and their work will not let them install a program like cinch. (Then they never did install it. I quit asking.) The one who did install it had similar issues to me.
1) It often crashed. It would lose connection with the dubli site or something and gray out. Sometimes it seemed that my whole computer would slow down when this happened.
2) It starts up everytime you turn on the computer. This is how dubli and dubli business associates need it to work so that its always on the customer desktop. But, it takes time and its a bit annoying when you have no intention of looking at dubli at the moment.
3) It doesn’t really do anyting from a customer stand point.
4) Its old technology. We don’t install programs anymore – we go out to the internet. Facebook doesn’t require a fat program on your desktop. Twitter doesn’t need anything but a browser – even the myriad of applications that work with Facebook and Twitter don’t need you to download and install them. At my place of business, we are moving to ‘thin client’ where applications and needs are met through applications hosted elsewhere – not on the desktop.
Now, Dubli’s stated goal is to move to mobile phones. I have an iPhone, and this is actually a place that I do install programs. A program like cinch would work well on phones, I think.
And of course, this is only my opinion. I could be wrong. But, I am not trying to get my customers to install cinch anymore. (I might try again once Connect is free to use.)
Please post your experiences with Cinch in the comments. Let me know if I’m wrong. Does anyone have somre great positive feedback? I’d love to know.
