From Valleywag: How is it that major retailers aren't prepared for black friday and cyber monday? Sears.com went down after having "high volume," but that's just sad, considering that this weekend was huge for sales.

Not only should they be prepared for a huge traffic spike, but they definitely should embrace internet sales more. Brian Solis suggested that internet retailers make huge sales that happen from midnight until 5AM on "Cyber Monday" - only problem being, major retailers are scared that it'll take away from their retail sales. While the excuse is to be expected and somewhat understandable, there are plenty of people like me (and Brian) who wouldn't bother waiting on line at such an early time Friday morning just to save some money. If we could buy from the comfort of our own homes, that would be amazing. Not to mention, I'm much more compelled to add things to my shopping cart if all I need to do is click.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.

AT&T made the fake and *smart* move to allow everyone in Southern California free Wi-Fi access. Kieran Nolan, AT&T vice president and general manager wants to help the community during this rough time and recovery. If for whatever reason you don't know, Southern Cali was affected by pretty bad fires.

Everybody hates AT&T, including three unnamed employees I've spoken to who work there. The obvious thing to do is for me to question their true motives behind offering free Wi-Fi to SoCal. First off, their brand image has been terrible in the recent years. They gobbled up Cingular (which for some reason, people liked better) and decided to drop the name in favor of AT&T. There's been a management change, logo change, marketing attitude change, and it seems to be working... sorta.

AT&T gets a new logo. PayPal recently changed the graphics on their website too. Why? To help eliminate the bad rap associated with their old (and current) brand. Notice the change in graphic and shift to lowercase letters...

Then the move to work with Apple's iPhone. All of a sudden, AT&T is associated with iPhone. iPhone = Cool, AT&T = Still lame.

Recently, AT&T started posting up internet ads and city billboards advertising how their cell service works in more places than before. Notice the advertisement I saw on Gizmodo the other day:

Fail. And now, they're trying to be nice by offering SoCal residents free Wi-Fi. Does it make them look like a kind and caring company? To be honest, to me, it came off as being a fake way to gain more loyal customers for when things settled down and Wi-Fi costs money again.

I'll give these AT&T people some credit. The change in branding is good. The change in management still sucks, but better than before. The agreement with Apple was brilliant. The advertisement campaign was a pathetic attempt to look like a cool, young, hip company. The decision to allow SoCal residents free Wi-Fi was also a smart move.

All in all, AT&T is improving. Their numbers are up. (probably because of the Apple agreement) However, I still thing they have a lot they need to improve on. Inner-company efficiency is terrible. Their branding still looks lame. I'll continue to critique them until they get it right.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Update 10/3/07 9:50PM PST: Chris Tsakalakis, President of Stubhub replies to my email:

Jessica,

Thanks for your message. I don't know why our ad appeared to you on facebook. Different publishers use different methods to target consumers, but I have no insight as to how facebook does it with relation to our ads. I will ask my online advertising folks to look into this. While we try to make sure our ads only get to the right consumers, that doesn't always happen.

Interesting.... very very interesting that not even these company execs know where their ad spendings are going towards! Is this simply a problem with bureaucracy and responsibility, or is this Facebook's error?

Original Post:I had an awesome meeting with Chris Tsakalakis, President of Stubhub and eBay Tickets back in June. [Blog post here] We talked about the acquisition by eBay, his new tactics for marketing, etc... He made it very clear to me that radio and TV were ineffective and that Stubhub was doing everything it could to target the right demographic. For example, they have targeted Google advertisements and large billboards next to major sport stadiums. (I remember spotting one by AT&T Park in San Francisco)

I don't understand what Stubhub is doing with their advertising campaign on Facebook. The advertising is terribly targeted... I'm a 17 year girl going to college in the middle of nowhere and I don't mention sports of any kind in my activities list, yet I see a Stubhub banner on the bottom of my Facebook page?

I'll be sure to send him an email and see if he can justify his advertising spending. Will keep you posted! [Update: Reply is posted above]

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

I love my readers, but sometimes, no matter what I say, I'll get criticized. I'll post my opinion about something and I'll get emails from people telling me what an arrogant piece of shit I am. I don't want to be like Disney (below) and write conservative posts that prevent myself from being interesting, but there are some posts that I've gotten so much crap for. Same with business. If I decide to concentrate focus on one thing versus another, I'll get shit for not taking on a great opportunity. Co-founders supposedly help with this problem.

A few months ago, I wrote a long post on how Elance.com failed and oDesk.com succeeded. oDesk loved it, Elance obviously hated it, and some readers thought I was being racist by mentioning "cheap indians." I'm in very friendly terms with the readers who pointed me out on that, but it's difficult to entertain and satisfy all.

I feel like this is what happens to the President on a daily basis. No, I don't like George Bush. But I do have sympathy (sorta) for him. For example, if he decides to ban gay marriage, people on both coasts will be pissed at him. Now lets say that he decides to be awesome and allow gay marriage. His fellow republicans and conservative middle america hillbillies won't be pleased. (and yes, I'll probably get nasty emails or comments for writing that last sentence)

My favorite favorite example of how leaders are always criticized is in 9/11 conspiracy theories. *sensitive topic ahead* - Nobody wanted planes to crash into the twin towers. Remember flight 93, the flight that crashed in the middle of nowhere? Supposedly, the people on the plane were heroes. In the conspiracy theories, the US Air Force shot down the plane in some way. Now here's where it gets interesting: Americans were bashing George Bush and the government for having shot down the plane with the idea that it was headed towards another important building of some sort. Yet other Americans were bashing George Bush and the government for not shooting down the planes that went into the World Trade Center. This comes to show that no matter what Gerogie poo does, he's screwed. Thank god I'm not the president!

Now for the counter argument. The common opinion is, if a leader sucks, he and his (company, government, group) will be criticized for the bad move. Google is a great company thats done so many incredible things. They don't get a lot of press. But recently, they've gotten a lot of bad press for not refunding moneys paid for Google Videos and for changing Grand Central phone numbers. Whether or not this is true, I haven't a clue. But the point is, everybody is out to get a leader or a big company on one bad step.

The next time we criticize someone, we should look at their reasoning and viewpoint to understand why they decided to do something in a certain way.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.

Most of you have probably seen me link to my new blog, Startupism, in the past few blog posts. I'm proud to say that it's finally up and running to full capacity and has about 1,000 visits in only a week online! Not too shabby for a fresh blog.

I decided that from now on, JessicaMah.com will dedicate itself to providing MY opinions on various topics and Startupism will be much more informative and include a wide collaboration of writers and editors. So you ask, what is Startupism and why does Jessica need to manage more than one blog?

Startupism was first thought of by Christian Perry - he and his roomates don't have active blogs but wanted to share one, so they started talking about it and needed someone to get it off the ground and manage it, so I happily took that role. The purpose has shifted: It's now a blog with tens of startup founders and people on the forefront of the web 2.0 world, sharing their many opinions and perspectives. Most of these active community members and business execs have little time to blog, so Startupism allows them to make a submission as often as they'd like. No self-promoting posts allowed, of course.

Here are some cool blog posts we've made in recent days:

- Startups in Silicon Valley Causing a STIRR

- LuckyOliver Party at Ace Auto

- Through the looking glass

- Facebook users' Collective Buying Power

- Ideas come a dime a dozen!

- Bootstrapping in SF: Housing and Transportation

Of course, there's plenty more to come! If you're interested in writing for startupism, just send me an email at jessica@startupism.com and we'll chat more!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com and Jessicamah.com. Oh, she forgot to mention that she's currently a HAPPY Apple Iphone Owner and UNHAPPY AT&T subscriber!

It's very difficult to bootstrap a startup. It's even more difficult to work or partner with a large company. When I chat with CEOs and marketing guys of any startup, I ask how much of their marketing is attributed to working with other partners. The answers have ranged from 5%-85%. All startups agree that its often difficult and painstakingly slow working with these big companies, but it's a necessary part of their marketing plan. The upcoming event, "Partering with Gorillas" by Dealmaker Media brings together influential people from several startups and large companies. (Google, Microsoft, SAP, etc...)

Most conference and event tickets range from $400-$3,500. This two hour event is pretty fairly priced at $60 for non-members. Hope to see you there!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com and Jessicamah.com.