A VC - Latest Comments in The Fedex Takeover

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:33:20 -0000

What an awesome display that must be

Re: The Fedex Takeover

Dave Chase — Sat, 30 May 2009 08:53:02 -0000

A bit off topic but coincidentally just got back from Memphis yesterday where I spoke at a conference by The Memphis News and was on a panel with the lead on Social Media for FedEx. Great guy and the main point of this comment is if you ever get to Memphis, try to finagle your way into a "hub tour" (it helps to know an employee and have some advance notice). FedEx does tours at 11pm & 1am which is the busiest time of day for them at their Memphis hub.

I was struck by the fact that their hub is a rough physical world equivalent of the Internet in terms of routing pack ets/ages all over the world. During this "normal" day, it moved well over a million packages from that one hub (their largest). While I was there, planes were landing about every 90 seconds. I believe they told me that there's 300 miles of conveyor belts and 150-200 planes landing and taking off per night.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

Geoff — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:11:14 -0000

absolutely hate the full screen subliminal >FedEx flash as the pages turn.

Fred Ex what a cool idea - I remember getting real angry once with them in the UK and riinging their head office asking to speak to Fred - unbelievably he answered the phone and was very sympathetic with the problems they were having in the UK.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

ktroia — Wed, 20 May 2009 04:52:12 -0000

Glad I made you laugh, Fred. I actually don't think this concept is bad - but I think there are a few dots that need to be better connected. What does F/X have in common with you or with your charity? Quite honestly, I would expect something a bit more clever. It's early, so I'm not coming up with any miraculous idea but it's something along the lines of you all sharing the same interest in the charity; or them providing you all your overnight mail services; or perhaps it's copy services for a year for the first person that names the most recent F/X location.

Just some thoughts.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

samfjacobs — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:55:18 -0000

Fred- you really helped me out today sir. Thank you. Its good kharma
and I really really appreciate it. Thank you for being so generous.
That's your earned media that you just opted to share. Thank you.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:20:13 -0000

Hi Lindsay

It's nice to hear from you

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:19:24 -0000

Hi back

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:35 -0000

I just tweeted it out to over 20,000 ppl

I am sure you'll have a few new fans by the end of the day!

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:32 -0000

This comment cracked me up, particularly the bit about the picture frame

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:30 -0000

I know scott

But it allowed me to give out over 250 donors choose gift cards yesterday and I feel great about that

Of course, I could have done that without Fedex taking over this blog

But sometimes life gives you lemons and you can turn them into lemonade

I like doing that

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:28 -0000

I started seeing tweets last night that the gift cards had been sent out

I didn't have to do a thing!

Totally awesome

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:26 -0000

There was something a few years back but I didn't really turn into anything

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:23 -0000

Wait 'till you get the feedback messages from the teacher and kids

That's the best part of donors choose

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:07:21 -0000

I knew that which is why I added the "good cause" component

I turn down campaigns all the time for this blog

But I felt this one could be redeemed and so I did it

Re: The Fedex Takeover

obscurelyfamous — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:43:06 -0000

This has nothing to do with the article. Just saying hi with the crew at Wired.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

lindsaycampbell — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:33:20 -0000

This is awesome, really awesome, Fred. And you're so right about big companies. Celebrate the small victories, of which this is definitely one.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

samfjacobs — Tue, 19 May 2009 09:04:57 -0000

Well, because it's the release date, I'm giving away free copies for people
via Twitter, etc.
You can use this URL: http://bit.ly/10asKT
Hashtag: #painisareliablesignal

Thanks, Fred! The support is greatly appreciated!

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:54:20 -0000

Its a great record sam. Is there a link to it I should use when posting/tweeting about it?

Re: The Fedex Takeover

fredwilson — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:50:39 -0000

Well then I'll have to change my banner ad set up

Re: The Fedex Takeover

Joe — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:27:36 -0000

disqus comment testing

Re: The Fedex Takeover

ktroia — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:35:43 -0000

What's the point (business value) to F/X taking over the site? Is it just so ppl talk about it? So, if there's 44 of us with comments, do they consider that success? This doesn't inspire me to ... oh, wait I just remembered I have a picture frame in the back of my closet I really need to ship to my mom.

Thank heaven I saw this takeover. I would have completely forgotten and she never would have received that picture frame that absolutely positively had to be there overnight (or 2 day or 3 day)...

(I know, I know - it's a branding ad. Just seems a bit pointless to me)

Re: The Fedex Takeover

heif — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:16:32 -0000

as andrew mason (founder of thepoint & groupon) recently said: "I'm amazed how willing nytimes.com is to let and advertiser (Apple) shit all over their website" ( http://twitter.com/andrewma... )

fred, fedex is shitting on your website.

harmless, yes.
annoying, no.
but makes your site ugly and less credible to those don't know how credible you are.

turns avc from something google/craigslist/twitter-like (not brand-bastardized) to something more yahoo/msn/classmates.com-like

Re: The Fedex Takeover

Alex — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:23:31 -0000

Thank you for letting me place some of the proceeds from this campaign. I've recently graduated and recently started a fairly well paying job. I've been thinking of all the things I can do and buy with my new found income. Its been my plan to give a share of my income up, but it was on the back-burner to all my fantastic, egocentric ideas. This reminded me of my promise of giving back and brought up an even more interesting question; who can I give to?

Re: The Fedex Takeover

daryn — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:21:35 -0000

Equally cool would be if Fedex & FM matched all the donations :)

The DonorsChoose GivingCards are a great idea that I didn't know existed! I'm going to suggest we use them for all of our TeachStreet incentives (for user research, surveys, etc..); they are a perfect fit for our core values.

Re: The Fedex Takeover

Shurtleff — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:10:47 -0000

Fred, does anyone provide a general widget capability to connect blogs to charities. I serve on one non profit board i would like to plug / market / direct voluntary contributions from the blogs i work on to this charity. Seen any technology or solution providers that takes Donor Choose and morfs it into a generic capability?