My HP LaserJet 4L is one incredibly slow laser printer. But I don’t care. I paid $800 for it back in 1994 and I’m going to keep that sucker going till it DIES. When I upgraded my motherboard a few months ago I had to purchase a PCI parallel adapter because it doesn’t support USB!
I went to the Office Depot website to order a new toner cartridge for my 4L. I found it quickly and was about to add it to my cart when I noticed the area called out below by my fancy red arrow.
Is this an example of a company jumping on the social media bandwagon? Why would I want to send details of my toner cartridge purchase to Facebook or Digg? Delicious is along for the ride too, and maybe that makes sense if you want to save a link and either don’t have cookies enabled or are on a pubic computer.
This is an example of a large company trying like crazy to implement the cool new internet technology but not understanding how people currently use it.
But I decided to go ahead and test this cool new social feature from Office Depot. I mean, if someone considers me to be their friend on Facebook then I’m sure they will want to know where I buy my laser printer toner. That’s just how close we are.
I can’t wait to share more items with my Facebook friends. Imagine their excitement when I shop for replacement staples, double A batteries or super glue. I could be spending hours accepting all those friend requests.
But things don’t go as smoothly over at Digg. Check out what happens when I try to Digg the link to my toner of choice.
Digg checks the URL and reports it as SPAM! I wonder if Digg is blocking all incoming links from Office Deport for this reason? Which is sad because I’m sure a many tech savvy Diggers would be thrilled to hear that I paid retail for toner for a 14 year old printer. Tell me that doesn’t make the front page within minutes.
Nice job, Office Depot!
Hilarious! And thanks for pointing it out to me! I can’t wait to add this stuff to my facebook!
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This reminds me of something that happened a year or so ago. I bought tickets online at Fandango for the most recent Rambo movie (the worst movie and pretty much the best movie ever at the same time). The next day, there was a news item on my Facebook page announcing to the world that I had bought tickets online using Fandango for Rambo! I didn’t really care, but imagine if the movie had been Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! Since then, Facebook as tightened up their processes and I don’t think apps can freely post news items without your permission, thank goodness.
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Gee, if it was simply for saving the link or something and you were on a shared computer perhaps, maybe they don’t know yet about stuff like Google Notebook or even better in this case, Google Bookmarks http://www.google.com/bookmarks/
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Holy crap – this is too damn funny! Hey? Are we friends on Facebook? If not we soooo need to be so I can keep up with your crazy weekend shopping sprees!
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