chating with your competition

Does anyone do this?

[ganderla]

Do any of you talk with your competition?
I am pondering talking with mine, I only have 2, about teaming up or thinking of way to make all of us better.
Is this bad?

[Mardi_Gras]

>Is this bad?

If you are in the US, it could well be illegal. Tread carefully.

[satanclaus]

Not a bad thing but you're highly unlikely to just freely trade information. May be bad in that it could be unproductive

[sun818]

I tell them if a link isn't working or a graphic doesn't load.

[too much information]

It's not bad, you may actually make some friends, but you have to remember that they may not be as willing to share with you as you are with them.

We talk to our competition all of the time, but not about how we promote, just about how they *think* we promote.

It's good to make friends in your business, but you have to remember that they are not your "partners" they are still your competition.

We ran into a problem recently where one of our competators were trying to use us as a subcontractor so that they could take more market share while paying us only 10% of what they collected. We originally thought it was a 'favor' type situation until they started calling on a regular basis.

The problem is that they were trying to be so cheap that they made us both look bad in the process. Luckily we were able to control the damage because it was their name on the product.

[jim_w]

I did once, some BOZO was selling a copy of their software on eBay and copied our product description, verbatim. So we sent them email so we both could jump on eBay's case.

[PatrickDeese]

One of my competitors came to my office drunk and started trying to fish for information (but his questions revealed more than he got out of me).

The funny thing is that I had never heard of him before and when I asked him "Who are you, anyway?", he got indignant and said "I'm 'Company X'." and I said, "Oh... I am sorry, should I know who you are?"

My secretary said he looked like he was going to burst into tears when he left.

Poor guy, had he come to me directly and honestly (and sober), I might have been able to give him a job.

[mep00]

If you are in the US, it could well be illegal.

Not the case. There might be some things you can't discuss, but it would take a ammendment to the Constitution to prevent conversation.
Ammendment #1: "Congress shall make no law...[limiting freedom of assembly]."
Restraint of trade is another matter.

[Mardi_Gras]

I certainly wasn't suggesting you can't have coffee with a competitor. But if the purpose of the conversation is to "thinking of way to make all of us better," I still say - better tread carefully.

[eWhisper]

If you couldn't chat with your competition, then how would mergers ever happen?

We talk with several of our competitors quite often. We don't give them many details, but we're always looking to see how we can help each other out (or gain an insight that the other didn't want to occur) by creating joint sites or merging sites and companies.

There is a lot to gain and lose by chatting with competition, just be careful not to give details away that if they decided not to work with you, they could use to their benefit and your detriment.

[danieljean]

There are plenty of projects on which you can co-operate. Look at the big boys: they write standards together, then duke it out in the marketplace.

Many trade associations do other lobbying and compiling resources. When I worked in publishing, we could get a list of writers that review books, the topics they covered, etc...

I've heard people refer to this as "co-opetition", but it's been going on for a long time.

In my case, I don't really believe I have competition- I build e-commerce websites to different criteria than anyone else in my locale, with a unique target market. If I go talk to someone in a similar line of business, there's no way we could be price fixing or engaging in anti-competitive behaviour.

[mep00]

Think about this for a moment...

What is everyone here at Webmaster World doing, but "chating with [our] competition."

[figment88]

Well since I consider every website I do not own as a competitor, and I "chat" with website owners on this forum, I would have to say it is a good idea.

[Mardi_Gras]

I'll give you an example. A regular poster here posted about how his/her company got together with a few selected competitors to avoid paying too much for PPC terms - by deciding how much they would each bid. And in this person's words, "if an interloper shows up, we have a plan to deal with them."

I suggest that you do not have those types of conversations with your competitors. And if you do, don't post about them here ;)

[eWhisper]

On that subject of price fixing, is price fixing advertising costs actually illegal or good business sense?

If I called my competition and said, ok, toay I'm going to bid $0.06 for the top position in a PPC, and tomorrow I'll bid $0.05 and you bid $0.06 and we'll just keep swapping like this - would that actually be illegal?

[Mardi_Gras]

In my opinion - and I deal with antitrust issues, but am NOT an attorney - under this scenario you would be conspiring to limit what you pay to a third party for services. And again, in my opinion, that would be illegal in the US.

[andy_boyd]

I started a new site and was contacted by my competitor with a very friendly email warning me about the rogue who destroyed his own site. He gave me his name, alias, tactics ... everything he knew so I wouldn't slip up. Talk about impressed, and humbled by his thoughtfulness and generosity.

[mep00]

eWisper--
Price fixing involves setting what's charged for something, not how much you'll pay.

[Mardi_Gras]

>Price fixing involves setting what's charged for something, not how much you'll pay.

There are lots of activities that are illegal under anti-trust laws that are not technically "price-fixing."

[eWhisper]

I find this topic enough times, and find it quite interesting. I just forward the info to a friend who's a 2nd year IT law student, and should have some info from a prof in a week or two.

Although, the initial response was 'it's questionable and could open you up to litigation, therefore not a good idea even if it's not illegal'.

The other point is, for PPC, it's probably against the TOS, so even if it were legal, they could boot you from their system if they discovered such a practice was occuring.

[pmac]

I was in Boston for Pubcon and was enjoying a drink with a fellow member who asked what I did. I told him that I sold wigets. "Thats strange" he said. "I just met someone a few minutes ago who sells the exact same thing."

Sure enough, it turned out that one of my competitors in a fairly niche business was attending. We were able to hook up and shared a drink and went out to dinner. It was nice, I knew that he was a talented SEO and talking with him reinforced that.

London pubcon rolled around and we did the same, (this time I think we shared several drinks)

We have a bit of an odd little relationship, with both of us a bit cautiuous as to what we say, but also enjoying each others company and the small amount that we actually do share with each other.

[mep00]

My father used to own a pharmacy. Sometime, when he was out of a drug he needed, he would call one of the other local pharacies to get what was needed for his customer. There's a big difference between competition and being "out for blood." I remember when I used to play in chess tournements; how you acted torward someone else while over the board and otherwise was always civil, but it wasn't the same. Most normal people, while most interested in thier own success, don't mind if someone else also succeeds at the same time.

[Mardi_Gras]

And when we are sold out we refer leads to one of our competitors - and they do the same for us. Nothing wrong with that.

[eWhisper]

Sat in an LLM IT class last night, (LLM is a JD Masters basically) as they were going over PPC and net advertising.

This is not legal advice, just the opinion of some people qualified to give opinions.

According to the profs and speakers, agreeing with the competition to limit max ad prices or even how much to advertise would be considerd illegal.

However, unless you left a paper trail of talks, just by how the bidding goes, they said that an advertising resource would have an almost impossible time proving it.

It was more likely that the advertiser resource in question would just ban you from advertising over trying to prove what was going on - but that's whats usual - not what everyone would do.

Next week is trademark infringement and going over active G cases - think I'm going to have to sit in another class...