May 2008
55 posts
WatchTechdirt: Stephen Colbert Takes On MLB’s Attempt To Bully Little Leaguers With Trademarks
Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » The Zappos Story →
This is my favorite Lefsetz’s meme of the last 18 months: “Why is [dorky thing X] SO much cooler than the music business right now?”
Laserlike →
“Free Ideas: Just Add Execution”
This guy is REALLY on it! Smartest play for a VC blog yet…
Watch Android Is Out For iPhone Blood - ReadWriteWeb
HOLY MACARONI
TV Ads 'a Waste of Money' for the Back-in-Black... →
“most people don’t know what they want unless
they see it in context.”
– Predictably / Irrational » Excerpted from Chapter 1 – The Truth About Relativity
I didn’t get the genius of this marketing tactic until I got to the final paragraph.
Hilarious.
“Quadir says, “You don’t make money on the poor, but with the...”
– Kevin Kelly — The Technium “Technologies That Connect”
“it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president’s...”
– Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq - washingtonpost.com
o hai…meet networked media. i’m in ur politicz, eatin ur strategy.
“A rifflet is a piece of a song—a bass line, a guitar riff, a drum beat or...”
– What is a rifflet? | rifflet.com
Very cool, and smart. See my “Alice…” post below ;-)
Aloha, Mr. Hands: What I would do with EMI’s new... →
[re posting my comment on the original article]:
I think Ian’s point about label brand equity is much deeper than a backwards look at “remember when you could rely on label X for Y genre”. The argument that the main differentiator for labels is their ability to market (production and distribution being commodities) is right on. However, the main issue is EMI’s ability to...
twistori →
“Now it’s about listening and, in turn, engaging influencers and stakeholders on...”
– PR Secrets for Startups
Agreed. But what is the best way to connect? SpimeCo…
“it could be much more profitable and successful by partnering with #1 than by...”
– MicroHoo: corporate penis envy? - O’Reilly Radar
Amazing strategy piece by Tim O’Reilly; more great examples on my thesis (which is just a translation of JSB/Hagel): “most desired collaboration partner = the new ‘competitive advantage’”
Techdirt: Inside Craigslist's Increasingly... →
So sad. Craigslist is one of the most important businesses in the history of, um, business…
“The Bush-McCain saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It...”
– Republicans and Our Enemies - WSJ.com
Amazing editorial from Joe Biden…
“Balancing the short versus the long term is the biggest challenge we have. How...”
– chief strategy officers role - chief strategy officers think about their role - Strategy - Strategy in Practice - The McKinsey Quarterly
One response deeper in the article is to build capacity in the plan and then reinvest in areas that will be longer-term growth areas. A business then has a...
Watch[ paul isakson ]: The Future of Marketing + Advertising
Some very strong explanations of productive marketing tactics here…
“As interaction explodes, the costs of evil are starting to outweigh the...”
– BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » @Facebook @Shark: jump?
“In his brilliant book Shaping Things Bruce Sterling talks about a possible...”
– databeautiful » About
Just found this feed from Lev Manovich via the amazing Mike Bonifer. Yikes! Exciting…
“Selling is for Lemons
Q: Can better advertising save Microsoft from strategic...”
– Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab
YES
“I will ask Congress,” said the presumptive Republican nominee, “to...”
– John McCain wants to bring British-style political grillings to Capitol Hill. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
I’m sure Obama would entertain this notion as well. I wonder, though, if this kind of thing would result in some real progress or if it would just be posturing…
“The fast-growing company, which works hard to recruit people to join, says to...”
– Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too - Harvard Business Online’s Bill Taylor
Now THAT is strategy…
“Through the newsfeed and my social network, interesting stuff now comes to me; I...”
– Why Facebook Is Even Bigger than You Think | Fast Company
Right, but the first two paragraphs are somewhat at odds with each other.
Yet another duality (paradox?) that rings true…
“Benkler pointed out that our economic system is designed around the notion of...”
– Yochai Benkler, others at Harvard map current and future Internet - O’Reilly Radar
“Mutually-assured destruction is inherent in Wikipedia. People who want to push...”
– Deconstructing Wikipedia at the Berkman Center | Outside the Lines - CNET News.com
Who Controls the Social Graph?
continuations: As I had suggested in a post earlier this week on Google’s Friend Connect, there is a fight brewing over control of the social graph. Much of the discussion of FaceBook’s reaction has focused on the explicit social graph as declared by people via a ‘friend’ type mechanism. But there is also the implicit graph based on interactions such as email or commenting. That graph is a lot...
jam band fan or taliban? →
enjoy your weekend, readerfriends…
“Evolution trumps design. Many interesting unsolved problems in computer science,...”
– Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends
I think he’s talking about creating algorithms and processes that evolve of their own volition…I’ll have to x-ref this with Ray Kurzweil…
“Vinod Knosla: The mobile phone will be a mainstream personal computer. With...”
– Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : At The Churchill Club: The Top 10 Tech Trends
The surprising popularity of Bach's complex,... →
I cannot recommend the writing of Jan Swafford highly enough. He is one of the only people who writes about music that is a) a practitioner, b) extremely knowledgeable in an academic way, and c) never falls into the trap of “dancing about architecture.”
On top of all that, he single handedly got me back into classical music (which I flirted with for a while in high school). His...
Here Come the Geo-Smart Apps: Yahoo! Opens... →
“Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling...”
– Racist Incidents Give Some Obama Campaigners Pause - washingtonpost.com
A quick reality check [especially for my friends that are native Californians]…
“brands thrived on how difficult it was for people to get information. Logos,...”
– These Brands Build Community
The Ultimate Twitter Revenue Model - ReadWriteWeb →
This is so wrong, it’s painful.
As I have written here ad nauseam, communications tools like Twitter are reinventing the media ether that connects producers and consumers (or services and users). Twitter is revolutionary because it drives down interaction costs (nee “transaction costs”) and accelerates serendipity.
Interstitial advertising increases interaction costs and kills...
“what Twitter does for us all of the time: it accelerates serendipity.”
– ::HorsePigCow:: marketing uncommon — a blog by Tara Hunt
Best explanation of Twitter yet. Much more exciting than the inevitable mundanity of “what are you doing”
;-)
New Music Economy - Wikipedia, the free... →
Who are the clowns that are writing this entry?
FAIL
Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare →
Xobni: Our Path from ‘Wrong Product’ to Killer... →
John Hagel tells you everything you need to know...
“It’s everything music used to be. A hip cult that the movers and shakers, the...”
– Lefsetz Letter
Double dose of Lefsetz today, it’s too good…
“all you indie store geeks are gonna e-mail me… Tell me about Record Store Day or...”
– Lefsetz Letter