February 2009
42 posts
“In my mind, the concept of an “attention subscription” is most...”
– Entertainment-as-a-Service « SnowBlog
Happy to pass along some more music/entertainment focused learning. If you read my comments here (and this is a must-read piece/conversation for artists), I hope the folks reading this here blog will see a more direct connection b/w the business of being...
WatchAll you need to know about the future of everything is implicit in this video.
Ta-da!
“I feel like the addictiveness of games and social applications is still a mostly...”
– What I’ve Learned from Hacker News
“We need a new rationale for our biggest private and public sector...”
– Why Do Companies Exist? - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org
WatchThis is about the only piece on “viral marketing” I’ve ever seen that has any explicit, useful information.
WatchHere’s the slides I used at a recent talk I gave at the USC Annenberg online communities program. Main sources are Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks, Hagel/Brown, The Only Sustainable Edge, and a variety of Umair Haque’s essays and white papers.
“Have fun…We’re not saving lives”
– - CEO of Rubicon Project (an ad inventory arbitrage blah blah blah) in LA Weekly.
Isn’t this symptomatic of the problem?
Sigh.
In related news, a company that transcribes conference calls wins the Twiistup “Judge’s Choice” award.
Double sigh!
(Although, to be fair, it...
“Randy Smythe, a blogger and former eBay seller, sums up the sentiment by saying...”
– Former eBay Executive Tries a New Bid. This One Is Political. - NYTimes.com
A perfectly articulated reason (with many levels of meaning) to vote against this clown.
“Our job is no longer to sell folks things they want to hear. They want an...”
– hypebot: Indie Label Asthmatic Kitty Shares “What Is Working?”
I love this quote. It’s from the indie label behind Sufjan Stevens & I Heart Lung.
(via bijan)
…Bruce Houghton FTW
The Responsiveness Scorecard →
“The cynical will argue that the future will lie in “believable...”
– McKinsey - 6 Lessons for making good use of Web 2.0 - broadstuff
Genius irony there…
How to Seed Your Own Stimulus →
WatchProbably your best use of 70 minutes today (and yes, I know it’s Valentine’s day…it’s that good ;-)
Price Sensitivity
thegongshow:
I’m a fan of the freemium business model, but it’s rare that I encounter a company that has done a proper analysis of price sensitivity. If you’re going to charge a customer for your service, you need empirical evidence to prove you’ve got the right pricing model.
If you could model your customers’ responses to changes in price via a reliable function (linear or otherwise) then you...
Doomed: why Wikipedia will fail - Ars Technica →
Wikipedia is nothing if not a platform for a ton of other businesses to be built on top.
I can imagine a great business that’s more or less the “VeriSign mark for Wikpedia articles”. Would be an easy way for volunteer editors to make a buck, too, if they peer produce the business ;-)
New Tweetdeck Out Tomorrow, Here's What It Will... →
By far the most interesting thing about this to me is what it means for future software M&A deals. Tweetdeck is funded by betaworks, which is also an investor in Twitter. Betaworks also sold Summize to Twitter, which became known as Twitter Search.
I’m sure the geniuses at USV and betaworks have been brewing these strategies for a while, but it’s very cool to see an M&A...
Contextual Truth
There’s an intersection around here with the world of art criticism, but I’m not sure where it is. Duke Ellington said, “there’s only two kinds of music: good and bad”. I tend to agree, and (circa 2/2009) I think what delineates good and bad is largely: “intent”. More generally, I think the word is “context”. I’m interested in the...
When Greed Is Good →
More From the Now Web: The Blog Post That Keeps...
I agree completely that the Now Web represents a fundamental shift in network dynamics from the (relatively) static page-based web, and that opens an opportunity to replace the legacy infrastructure that is incapable of extracting the full value from the Now Web. And while I also agree that the public Twitter stream is an effective proxy for the public Now Web, I wonder about the vast majority of...
“This site is powered by Cisco Eos™ where music, media, and members meet. Your...”
– Laura Izibor Community - LauraIzibor.com
I had some meetings with the team working on this a few months ago…a really interesting play to watch.
The Geography of Now
This NOW has always been and will always be the defining feature of true status. Yet, now that we have the tools to broadcast our now in real time, the sky is no longer the limit for how we collectively want to make this NOW the most incredible and lasting status for our brave new world.
Originally posted as a comment by danielle lanyard on A VC using Disqus. Between Google Latitude,...
“The truth of the matter is all these slapstick animal ads matter less and less...”
– @bmorrissey: Decline and fall of advertising
“The single most fundamental challenge facing the media industry is reinventing...”
– Havas Media Lab
Creative destruction … Google slayed by the... →
Real-time search, social context, and disrupting Google: ignore this link at your own peril!
(This is a truly awesome piece from John Borthwick, an ex-AOL guy who is CEO of betaworks, a great VC-ish company that has invested in twitter, summize, songkick, outside.in, covestor, tumblr, and a number of other really great companies.)
Graffiti Map →
“If there were any lingering doubts about the competition between Facebook...”
– Welcoming Facebook to the OpenID Foundation | FactoryCity
Great news!
“Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with...”
– About Add-Art | Add-Art
via @gregorylent
“Consumers don’t want to pay for anything, the web lets you target your...”
– 2009 SXSW Interactive Panel Picker - Avoiding Advertising in Business Model Design
SXSW wasn’t hearing me on this panel idea back in July 2008.
I can only imagine there would be more interest in this now.
Ya?
“In response to the current economic climate, advertising budgets are being...”
– Crispin Porter + Bogusky to Lay Off 60 Employees - Adrants
Oops!
I think what they meant to say was, “we are not immune to the reality that the vast majority of money spent on paid media is a total waste.”
Hopefully they’ll at least get 6 free Whoppers out of this.
...
Dissecting Honeyshed: An Excercise In...
Below you’ll find a comment I left on Brian Morrissey’s [extremely awesome] blog, regarding the death of Honeyshed.
Honeyshed was one of the funniest marketing programs ever created, especially in context of how serious the producers were about it.
As some have noticed, I’m feeling a little rant-y the last few days, so please move along if you’re not in touch with your...
“Everyone knows intelligence is sexy. Which, I guess, makes intellectual...”
– The sexiness of TED and its dangers - TED Fellows 2009
Now, I was just going to leave the “TED, is this really the best we can do?” thread alone, but this was linked to on the front page of TED.com this morning.
C’mon.
“And that’s exactly why, though TED is sexy, it’s also kind of...”
– Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab
At least there’s ted.com.
Even still, it smells like a missed opportunity:
TED isn’t part of the answer - it’s part of the problem. It’s a negative equilibrium: all that great thinking is directed to the place where it’s least...
“Kids, the world is upside down.
The more I read, the more I am convinced that...”
– Howard Lindzon » Twitter Files for an IPO….‘TWEET’ as the Ticker Symbol?
Howard Lindzon is on. FIRE. Watch out!
“Once dominated by the sell-side, the majority of research consumed by the buy...”
– Information Arbitrage: Key Themes in Financial Services 2009-10
This is a massive opportunity in communications that has been completely ignored by ALL the “social media” wankers.
I plan on making a killing in this space.
“In a fully instrumented world of “smart growth,” you don’t...”
– The Smart Planet eco-patent commons and the Smart Growth Manifesto | Beyond the Beyond from Wired.com
Two of my all time favorites (Bruce Sterling and Umair Haque) get down with some asynchronous mind melding.
REQUIRED READING! And hilarious, to boot ;-)
“Paula Drum of H&R Block defines ROI in Social Media as “risk of...”
– Twitter / Social Media News: Paula Drum of H&R Block de …
I just picked up this Twitter feed and will probably regret it because it seems like they’re posting about once every 4 seconds. But, this quote is good because it gets at the “returns” question in negative terms...
“NMS provides consultation and assistance for clients who increasingly find their...”
– Wikipedia Management | Capabilities | New Media Strategies
NMS’s new website, worth a perusal by social media geeks.
“Something you can’t download. Something special and personal. Live...”
– Live 2.0
Check this out. STR8 outta TED.