MessageClick’s big-time wakeup call

Is MessageClick the latest roadkill on the information highway?

That’s what it looked like last week for the New York unified messaging services provider. I’d gotten an e-mail on Friday from Bill McCue, the site’s publicist, asking if I wanted to write a column about the company.

Sure, I said.

McCue then sent me a password. I tried to access the site with it, to no avail. “The username/login doesn’t seem to work,” I e-mailed him back.

“Christopher, it’s a crazy world we live in,” McCue responded. “I just received news that MessageClick has gone belly-up. Oh well, thanks for your interest. Guess this explains the difficulty below.”

I pondered the apparent demise of MessageClick over the weekend. While I felt sorry for McCue, who described the event as a “big-time wakeup call,” I was more concerned about how the company’s failure might affect the thousands of business travelers who relied on it.

On Monday morning I called MessageClick to get the details. I expected no one to pick the phone up at its corporate headquarters, but much to my surprise, a receptionist answered.

“Is it true,” I asked her. “Have you gone belly-up?”

The assistant answered without skipping a beat. She said there had been “massive cutbacks” but that MessageClick remained in business. “But don’t take my word for it. Let me transfer you to someone who can speak for the company,” she said.

My call was routed to Karen Verelley, MessageClick’s director of marketing. I told her that I’d heard the company had shut down. “Not true, we’re still here. Nothing has changed,” she insisted.

“That’s impossible,” I replied. “Bill said you had gone ‘belly-up.’ Even your receptionist said you’d laid people off.”

Verelley seemed frustrated. “We’re restructuring,” she finally admitted, and promised to get back to me with details.

Minutes later, McCue called to say that things appeared to have changed, and that he may have been “misinformed” about MessageClick’s death. “Give me some time and I’ll get you the details,” he promised.

Turns out that there were layoffs on Friday – about five percent of MessageClick’s workforce, or a total of about five employees, according to Joe Covey, the vice president of marketing. “There were rumors flying around late last week,” he said, sounding somewhat exasperated.

What about the restructuring?

“Restructuring is probably not the right term,” he answered. “We’d been selling our product to both enterprise and wholesale customers, and now we ‘re refocusing our efforts on the wholesale companies. This has affected none of our customers. We’re still well-funded and strong.”

Covey admits that when a small company such as MessageClick “refocuses” it is more troubling than when a company like AT&T or Verizon overhauls its unified messaging products. But he remains confident in the MessageClick product and believes that it will prevail.

This column wasn’t supposed to end up like this. It was meant to review MessageClick’s many useful functions, such as its ability to receive faxes and voice mail from a PC, the way it allows you to send faxes directly from the Web, or how it checks e-mail by phone.

Alas, what it’s become is something of a cautionary tale about the state of technology start-ups in general and unified messaging services in particular.

What does a business traveler do when the application that he or she relies on to communicate suddenly stops working? (There’s no evidence that, apart from my nonfunctioning password, anyone with a MessageClick account has been inconvenienced in that way – yet.)

Do we rely too much on technology? Should road warriors, as a precaution, set up double- or triple-redundant systems so that if an all-in-one unified messaging service goes offline, they’ll still be in business?

This much can safely be said: There are too many Web-based unified messaging systems, all vying for the same customers. Sooner or later, market forces will weed out the weak ones. It’s inevitable.

For the sake of MessageClick’s clients, I hope that the company is able to regroup, restructure and prosper. Even without having access to its features, I can conclude that it’s avoided many of the mistakes that its competitors have. Its Web site is fast and intuitive, and its features are in high demand by the business traveler.

But the Web is an unforgiving place that’s littered with the carcasses of poorly executed good ideas. Each of their deaths, no doubt, was a big-time wakeup call.

What kinds of precautions do you take? What do you think other travelers should do? Do you think technology start-ups are up-front enough about their prospects for survival?

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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