This comment was posted by an anonymous person on a MIR post earlier (“SpinVox Management: Rubbish, rubbish and thrice rubbish“). Have a read, do you think it’s a good summary of what’s occurred?
SpinGate. Like the original WaterGate, it appears that the cover-up may be worse than the original bad acts. In this case, there may not have even been any bad acts at all… it may just have been that the coverup, aka THE SPIN, itself got out of control … big time
Not really. The terrible PR response (ie, dumping it all on James) hasn't helped, but let's not forget: if what we're suspecting is true, SpinVox has deceived – possibly criminally – its users and the mobile networks it has agreements with. Do we really think that's less 'bad' than incompetent or non-existent PR?
Is it not more spin than deceiving? Is it anything more than what a Government department would do when they emit some specifics in order to garner particular headlines? In the case of SpinVox, suggest/hint/allow folk to believe that it's all more or less the technology doing the work?
Where's James Whatley? According to his blog everything at SpinVox is just fine and all the media hype about them not having some amazing technology which does what they say is bull$@#£
http://blog.spinvox.com/
Have you and James fallen out 🙁 …….. Oh dear!
Not at all, I respect the chap greatly John. As for the SpinVox management, absolutely not.
Just read on pc:UK (see http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-industry-m…
“
Former Google UK PR Ema Linaker [http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ema-linaker/7/41a/585] has left under-fire voice-to-text firm SpinVox to be global head of online engagement at computer security firm AVG
“
Perhaps that explains why SpinVox's “social media” guy is the stand-in flack who's taking the flak? Surely they must have some other (real) PRs (no offence to “social media” guy)?…
Good news for Ema!
There are other PRs there — Jane Henry is Global Head of PR and I understand there's another chap by the name of Jonathan there too. Not to mention James Scroggs.
James is taking flak because absolutely nobody else is speaking.
So what exactly is Jame's position at SpinVox? I guess not technical, I have seen many non technical people bang on about how great their product is only to end up with egg on their face. Another example of why, if you're going to represent a technical company or product, you should make sure you're down with the nuts and bolts first!
On the SpinVox blog he's marked as: Digital & Social Media
JW is a handset and mobile guy, not a speech reco expert. To be the public face of speech reco, and to lend cred in the US on the subject, SpinVox hired industry vet David Thompson a few months back…
http://www.spinvox.com/spinvox-appoints-david-t…
what ever happened to him. he can talk about what's under the hood, or is he constrained by an NDA gag too?
Its a simple case of put up or shut up for all at SpinVox, if they have the technical ability to do what they say then show us. The fact that they haven't already speaks for itself.
It's a real shame that greedy people do this, make money on half baked claims. This whole SpinVox saga reminds me of these muppets –
http://www.steorn.com/
I hope James W sees sense and gets out as fast as possible, $hit sticks!
SpinGate: An accurate summary of why SpinVox is screwed? | Mobile … http://tr.im/uTxE
SpinGate: An accurate summary of why SpinVox is screwed? | Mobile … http://tr.im/uTxE
You can find my SpinGate hyothesis about SpinVox here http://www.nuxnix.com/home/spingate-a-hypothesi…
Sorry gang, but there are a series of bold-faced lies that have been documented throughout the coverage. They range from Ms. Domecq lying about her business background and the failure of her first company, to the true nature SpinVox's technology and impossibility of full automation, to the current financial status of the business, to their misleading data protection filings. I don't know whether these are criminal or not, but they speak volumes about the people running this enterprise. The shear arrogance of this crew is astounding. I feel bad for the 260 employees (down from 425) like Whatley who will suffer while the SpinVox elite are off to their seaside villas to ride out the storm.
Not been invited to the Spinvox inspection Ewan 🙂
I hope Milo asks some really searching questions on our behalf!!
Continuing the conversation on the SpinGate aspect of this SpinVox story…
(Unsubstantiated) Rumors that James Whatley is leaving SpinVox:
http://siliconangle.com/ver2/2009/08/02/apparen…
Followed by an apology from TechCrunch (which was the unintentional source of the rumor:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/an-apology-…
If Whatley does bail – and who could blame him if he did decide to – then perhaps, and finally, a real PR officer (and, again, no offense to Whatley intended by this) will appear to handle the comms battle.
Continuing the conversation on the SpinGate aspect of this SpinVox story…
(Unsubstantiated) Rumors that James Whatley is leaving SpinVox:
http://siliconangle.com/ver2/2009/08/02/apparen…
Followed by an apology from TechCrunch (which was the unintentional source of the rumor:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/an-apology-…
If Whatley does bail – and who could blame him if he did decide to – then perhaps, and finally, a real PR officer (and, again, no offense to Whatley intended by this) will appear to handle the comms battle.