MySQL today launched their newest marketing effort, “The 12 Days of Scale-Out“, which is quite timely to our most recent discussions. Zack Urlocker has been busy plugging it onto Planet MySQL. Day one is about Booking.com, “Europe’s largest online hotel travel reservations agency”. Sounds exciting! This could be really interesting!
Only one problem: There is no actual content in their stories. Maybe I missed some link that says “Click here to read the full story”, but I don’t think so.
In summary, we’ve got:
- Headline blurb with plug for “MySQL Enterprise Unlimited”
- Small marketing blurb from Booking.com about what they do
- Big headline text about the site’s Alexa ranking showing solid growth
- Lead-in paragraph with blurb for MySQL’s consulting, er, “professional services” group
- One buzzword-heavy paragraph, containing a single run-on sentence which is somewhat technical
- One longer paragraph touting MySQL Enterprise’s benefits
- A big list of all 12 days
- A remarkably silly looking “sticker” to contact MySQL about MySQL Enterprise Unlimited
- A buzzword-heavy blurb about what scale-out is
- A couple of links for forums and a webinar
- A picture of a “reference” implementation of scale-out (NOT Booking.com’s implementation)
- Eleven sales links
So, to count that up, we have a single, quite small paragraph containing a single run-on sentence, which is unique to Booking.com and relates to scale out.
Wait, what? Why do we care to wait 12 days to get a single sentence about each scale-out story? Let’s hope that days two through twelve are more meaty, but if so, day one is an awfully sad way to start things out. I’m not hopeful. But heck, maybe this entry can convince some writers over at MySQL to spend a few long nights. Maybe.
Jeremy Cole 
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing .. actually it might be an elaborate trick for people to scan the entire page. I looked at every link thinking: “hey there must be some content on this page .. I mean why publish and plug this like crazy if there is nothing on there.” Then again I am beginning to think it was not actually created for people that are actual able to handle real content.
Next time they should maybe refrain from plugging this on planetmysql, which I think is mostly read by people interested in content rather than marketing fluff.
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