Why there’s a Media Temple logo on my site.

I once asked Jason McVearry of Media Temple the same question people now ask me, “Why is there a Media Temple logo on so many tech blogs?”

He told me that Media Temple’s strategy is to help bloggers and startups, and that some of them say thank you with a link. I was too skeptical to fully believe it when he told me, but now I understand.

My site recently got a virus. (That’s why you saw Viagra references when you Google’d “Mixergy.” Sucuri is on top of it now.) While I tried to figure out who I could hire and what I could do about it, I was worried. I emailed Jason for advice. He immediately found someone at Media Temple to go through Chris Pearson’s blog post about the Pharma hack and apply Chris’s solution to my site.

I can’t pay Jason for anything like that. I know because I’ve tried. Frankly, dealing my WordPress issues isn’t even what Media Temple does. It’s kind of like expecting Microsoft to help fix your Skype app because you’re running it on a Windows computer. (Not exactly, I know, but you get the picture.)

I have a TON of stories like that.

Seth Godin once told me that a company’s success isn’t based on the money it spends on marketing. It comes down to what happens when a customer is in trouble and the person at the company has an opportunity to either say, “Not my problem. Not my department” or to do what Seth called, “a generous act.”

Well, Jason has done a bunch of generous acts for me.

Media Temple won’t take my money when they go out of their way for me. When I ask Jason how I can thank him, he says that he’s just happy that I can continue to publish my interviews.

I can’t think of any other way to say “thank you,” so I post his logo on my site.