Business Week Calls Ooma A Headache

I really like Olga Kharif's no nonsense style. I like it so much that based on her review this morning I'm thinking seriously about shipping the ooma box that showed up yesterday back. Unopened. They offered me a non-invassive version, one that won't make any changes to my existing phone service.

Given how much I'm traveling this month I'd rather spend the next weekend I'm home working with the new T-Mobile @ Home box and phone that changes how things are versus an over-hyped platform that is getting attention from media and VC's due to what I am calling pedigree marketing.

Pedigree marketing is where the past company associations or the investors track records make a product attractive enough to cause attention and garner accolades from media, analysts and bloggers before they really see or use the product in real world conditions.

A pedigree approach is what used to apply to getting into the better schools in the USA. I'm sure you heard the line "He will follow in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather and great grandfather. We were all ____________ men." It didn't matter that the son wanted to be a painter, or a poet.

Well here it doesn't matter if the offspring is of the company has nothing to do with where the executives hailed from, or even just had something to do with a success, but were not intrinsic to the success.

If I do try ooma, and my experience mirrors Olga, there may be 27 million reasons to not go ooma...