Tag - business

Why do people leave their jobs?

July 26, 2006
John Koetsier
news

This is a little off-topic for bizhack, but I thought it was insightful and important enough to post:

After reviewing extensive research from the Saratoga Institute, Leigh Branham determined that people leave their employers because the employer is not meeting one or more basic human needs. In his book The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, Branham identifies these four needs: the need for trust, the need to have hope, the need to feel a sense of worth, and the need to feel competent.

When employees don’t have the information and resources to do the job right, their sense of competence is compromised, they become discouraged, and ultimately they’re more likely to leave. Having the right tools—that is, the information and resources to do the job right, is fundamental to a sense of competence, which is, in turn, fundamental to retention and productivity.

Check out more of the same on Pig Wisdom … and the book that the blog is promoting, The Wisdom of the Flying Pig.

(What a great book title, by the way!)

Business and social media: building a case

July 25, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’m working on a social media (blogs, podcasts, and wikis) presentation for a business. While I’m still in the initial stages, here are some links, quotes, and perspectives that have been helpful so far.

Let me know if there’s something else I should be looking at as well …

Research
A Cymfony study on business blogging:

  • The majority of companies surveyed (76 percent) indicated that they have noticed an increase in media attention and/or website traffic as a result of their blog(s)
  • 75 percent of respondents reported that the initial goals of their blogs have been met
  • Three-fifths of corporations have guidelines in place which outline the company’s responsibility for posting and maintaining their blogs, yet nearly two-thirds do not review content prior to posting
  • 42 percent of respondents said that specific blog posts have affected the company or a brand and in the vast majority of cases it has had a positive affect

And a Forrester study:

  • companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists
  • Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies

Quotable quotes

  • Entrepreneur (on blogs)
    – they also can be used as a unique, informal way to establish a company or individual’s reputation or brand
    – They improve branding by presenting a more authentic and distinctive voice for a business than canned PR or MarCom messaging.
    – “for many companies, blogs have become a business staple”

  • CNN
    – “A blog is the perfect platform for someone who really is trying to establish themselves as a thought leader,” said Web analyst Rick Bruner.
    – “The blog provides a very human side to the corporate face beyond press releases, or a Web page or a corporate brochure,” said Tom Murphy of CapeClear Software.

  • Inc.
    – “Blogs are a way for you to tell your story over and over again, and do it in a personable way. If you are blogging and your competitor down the street is not, then it can be a competitive advantage,”
    – they can be an excellent tool to build relationships and create brand equity as more Internet users see them as viable sources of information.

  • BusinessWeek
    – Companies over the past few centuries have gotten used to shaping their message. Now they’re losing control of it.
    – Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later

  • Also BusinessWeek
    – Customers can be your best evangelists
    – Viewers, listeners, and readers are smart— often smarter than your own employees—so let them improve your products and services.

  • And BusinessWeek again, this time on Nike
    – A strong relationship is created when someone joins a Nike community or invites Nike into their community.” Which is the point of brand marketing, isn’t it?
    – Last fall, Nike started feeding video clips that spotlight Nike-sponsored soccer players onto popular video sharing sites, including YouTube and Google. It created JogaTV, a virtual soccer TV station, where it releases a new video clip every few days and fans can upload their own clips.

  • eMarketer
    – “A year ago eMarketer looked at the business of blogging and said that blogs were a one-to-few medium, and they were not practical for most businesses,” says James Belcher, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new report, The Business of Blogging: A Review. “But over the past year many things have changed, including our opinion.”

  • Web Ink Now (on something you can put on your blog: e-books)
    E-books directly contribute to an organization’s positive reputation by showing thought leadership in the marketplace of ideas. This form of content brands a company, a consultant, or a non-profit as an expert and as a trusted resource to turn to again and again.

Corporate bloggers, sites I check frequently

Business blogs

There’s more, but that’s all I have time for tonight …

(And yes, the presentation is all about trying to persuade this company that social media is a very, very good thing to invest in – right now. After all, marketing is about ideas, and there has never been a more powerful way to spread ideas than the internet, and the most powerful idea-spreading forces on the internet right now are social media.)

[tags] womma, TED, business, social media, blogging, podcasts, guy kawasaki, seth godin, tara hunt, Hugh Macleod, john koetsier [/tags]

Let your clients speak for you

July 24, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Sometimes people who buy from you can communicate what you do far better than you can yourself.

Case in point:

Notice how it’s fairly hard, if not impossible, to understand what the company does if you just read the letters in black? And how easy it is when you just read the letters in white?

(And that’s probably a fake customer quote – so even starting to think like a client will help you communicate better.)

Somehow, we just get too close to the companies we work for, the products we build. And then when we try to talk about them, we say too much. We talk down. We use too many adjectives. Our verbs are hifalutin, like integrate and facilitate. And our in our fear to leave anything out, we make it way too complicated.

Let your clients speak for you!

(This post inspired by Kathy Sierra.)

[tags] voice of the customer, verbosity, PR, advertising, kathy sierra, john koetsier [/tags]

Why big companies miss important changes

July 23, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Robert Scoble does a better job than most explaining why big companies miss the cluetrain:

Which would you rather have? $100,000 today or a penny doubled every day for a month? Well, the penny doubled will be a lot more money. But, if your cash runs out before the 20th of the month you would have been better off taking the $100,000. Markets build by doubling. That’s why big companies miss important things when they are small (they only see things after the metaphorical 20th day when the numbers start to get really interesting). But keeping your company going until that metaphorical 20th day is a terrifying game of chicken between your cash going down and waiting for that doubling effect to really kick in (and that’s assuming you have a product or service that’ll keep doubling — like blogging turned out to be).

They take the $100,000 and run.

[tags] scoble, innovator’s dilemma, scobleizer, john koetsier [/tags]

Techies of the future: business generalists?

July 19, 2006
John Koetsier
news

ComputerWorld is saying that techies of the future may be generalists with good business sense, not propellor-heads:

The most sought-after corporate IT workers in 2010 may be those with no deep-seated technical skills at all. The nuts-and-bolts programming and easy-to-document support jobs will have all gone to third-party providers in the U.S. or abroad. Instead, IT departments will be populated with “versatilists” — those with a technology background who also know the business sector inside and out, can architect and carry out IT plans that will add business value, and can cultivate relationships both inside and outside the company.

Well worth a read, whether you agree or not.

Personally, I find this particularly interesting since I am a technology generalist who has been successful leading large technology projects. On the other hand, I don’t think you can be successful in the long term without people on the core project team to grok every single minute detail of the application that you’re building.

There are plenty of examples of MBA knumbskulls who drove dotcoms into the ground. And there are plenty of examples of hard-core techies who ignored marketplace realities. I think the critical thing is to be passionate and smart, but also have an ability to seek out, understand, and evaluate perspectives that differ from your own.

Hearing what you don’t want to hear may just make the difference between success and failure on a given project.

[tags] technology, career, IT, generalist, business, john koetsier [/tags]

Zooomr: free photo-sharing accounts for bloggers

July 17, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Though a fairly committed pro member at Flickr, I’ve been getting interested in Zooomr lately.

It’s one of a lengthy series of Flickr competitors out there, and right now, it’s mostly notable for a Very. Lengthy. Delay. In. Getting. Beta. 2.0. Launched.

(The delay is not their fault – it’s due to a some black-hats who were implementing a denial-of-service attack – probably trying to extort money. I wonder if it’s the person who snapped up Zoomr … which some domain squatter is sitting on.)

But they do seem to have some cool tech, including geo-location of photos (my next camera must have integral GPS) and lots of information about who, how, and when people are looking at your photos.

Perhaps most interesting (to bloggers) is that they are now offering free accounts (to bloggers).

Sounds good. Sounds like it’s worth a try.

Zazzle: custom schwag, CafePress competitor

July 15, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Looks like Zazzle is going to be giving CafePress a run for its money.

Make your own T-shirts, mugs, cards, postage, and prints, and sell it right from Zazzle’s site:

It’s fast, simple, and Zazzle will pay you up to 17% of the the sales you generate.

Very cool … look for more on Zazzle here in the next week or so.

[tags] zazzle, custom t-shirts, custom manufacturing, cafepress, john koetsier [/tags]

Apple: set .Mac free (you’ll make more money!)

July 13, 2006
John Koetsier
news

There’s been a lot of discussion in the Mac community about .Mac lately.

.Mac is Apple’s $99/year online service that is basically the online publishing component of the iLife application suite. It incorporates:

  • webmail
  • iPhoto publishing and sharing
  • easy website publishing from iWeb
  • online file storage
  • syncing of bookmarks and calendars between multiple Macs
  • groups

Much of the talk in the Mac community has been around price: is it really worth it? After all, Google gives you Gmail with 2+ GB (free), there are other sources of online file storage such as Yahoo’s Backpack (free), and $99 would easily buy you your own domain name and server space at a lot of web hosting companies … in fact, it could easily be a lot cheaper.

There’s no question that Apple’s integration of the tools with iLife, and the quality of the presentation is worth something. But the number of Mac owners actually using .Mac has to be minimal, even tiny.

So my question is: would Apple make more money if they made .Mac free, and slapped Google AdWords on it?

How much do they make?
Well, even if the percentage of Mac owners paying for .Mac is not high, there’s still a lot of money in it.

If 500,000 people were paying for .Mac, Apple would gross $50 million a year. I think that number would be very high. There’s a story at C|Net from 2002 claiming that Apple had almost 200,000 subscribers, but I seriously doubt that it’s grown immensely, even though pageviews on Alexa have grown somewhat over the past few years. Most of that increased page viewing is likely due to visitors, not subscribers.

Let’s say there are 300,000 subscribers today, and Apple makes $30 million/year from them. Could they do better?

Plentyoffish
Well, let’s take a look at an AdWords example: PlentyofFish. It’s an online dating site, it is entirely free and AdWords supported, and its owner just cashed a million-dollar check. Well, almost a million.

He says his CPM (cost per thousand) pageviews is under $1. Well, let’s do some math:

– $500,000 for a month
– CPM of about $1

He must have gotten about 500 million pageviews. Adjust the number up or down a bit, depending on your inputs, but that’s about where it stands.

A free .Mac: show me the money
Let’s assume, given that .Mac is a fairly good service and it’s tightly integrated into iLife, many, many Mac owners would be users of .Mac if it was free. I think a conservative guess would be that 10 times more owners would use .Mac … meaning that you’d have 3 million people instead of 300,000.

Well, if you compare .Mac and PlentyOfFish pageviews at Alexa, you’ll find that today, they’re almost neck-and-neck.

In other words, .Mac should have about 500 million pageviews a month.

Multiply that by 10, and you’re at a whopping 5 billion pageviews a month. Apply the same CPM metrics of PlentyOfFish, and a back-of-the-envelope analysis would tell you that a free .Mac would make Apple about $5 million each and every month.

Apple, set .Mac free: you’ll make more
Which means, that at $60 million/year, Apple would double its revenue by reducing the price of .Mac to free. Which would seem to be a great idea …

Plus …

A free .Mac would also be an excellent selling point for new Macs. And don’t forget: a wonderful marketing tool for all the non-Mac-owning relatives of Mac users who would visit .Mac to see their cool relations’ funky digital creations.

.Mac is already free as in speech. Maybe it’s time for Apple to make it free as in beer.

. . .
. . .

Some thoughts on the argument above:

  1. Would CPM on a non-dating site be lower, equal, or higher than a dating site? I don’t know, but obviously the answer is important. I could argue .Mac would have a lower CPM (people searching for dates are pretty focused, and if they see ads related to it, will probably click one or two) and I could argure more (there would be lots of profitable niches in .Mac sites, such as vacations, parties, special occasions, etc. … all the things that people take pictures of and blog about).
  2. Would Apple feel that putting advertising from Google on a Mac product adversely affect the Apple brand … even if the online product is full of user-generated content?
  3. Is a figure of 10x the number of Mac users using .Mac if it was free low? I know I’d be using photocasting in a second!
  4. What other tie-ins between iLife and .Mac could Apple make if there was a clear revenue model based on Mac users actually using .Mac? Video from iMovie? Syncing of your .Mac mail and your Mail.app mail?
  5. As Fred has commented below, you could easily have a user-option: pay and get an ad-free .Mac, or get it free and have an ad-supported .Mac.

And whatever else I might be missing …

[ update ]

A quick note spurred by one of the comments below: I did pay for and use .Mac for two years … so I do have some clue as to what the service is. However, if you think I’m missing the real point of it, or a large part of the value of it, please, please do enlighten me (and everyone else) in the comments. Thanks!

[tags] apple, .Mac, web 2.0, iLife, free, CPM, google, adwords, adsense, john koetsier [/tags]

Emurse: resumes improved

July 12, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Need a job?

Emily Chang’s eHub featured Emurse a couple of days ago and I thought I’d check it out. Emurse is a new resume-building, sharing, and possibly, job-finding site that is currently in public beta.

Emurse, of course, is an anagram for resume, and, as the site tells you when you visit, “emurse means resume, improved.”

Emurse helps you build a resume with a nice web 2-ish interface:

It doesn’t, however, give you any tips on the ingredients of a great resume, or on what kind of resume to create for which kinds of jobs. Basically, you select a section, click Add, and enter your text.

The service was easy, but frankly, I don’t think it really lent itself to creating a powerful resume as much as it might to extracting structure data from a resume … which can then, presumably, be used in interesting ways to exchange data with major employment sites, or to match you up with jobs from the Indeed job search engine:

Also, once you’ve created a resume, you can send it out directly from Emurse, keeping track of where you send it, and the result. That’s fairly interesting for job seekers, I would think, though only for a very limited time (unless, of course, you’re unemployed for months and months and months).

The site is simple and easy to use, but the real question is: are any employers looking at it? Or are they making the right moves to integrated with the major employment sites. There is some mention of a sync feature that would synchronize your resumes across a variety of sites, but it does not seem to be in the beta.

In any case, here am I on Emurse.

[tags] emily chang, emurse, resume, monster, career, job search, john koetsier [/tags]

Marketing genius: 50 site (re)designs

July 10, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Web Designs from Scratch, a small British web design/consultancy firm, has hit on an amazingly bright idea to promote their firm, build their brand, bring in business, and just simply do something really cool: 50 Redesigns from Scratch.

It reminds me of One Thousand Paintings: the painter who is painting a thousand paintings (naturally), of the numbers 1 to 1000.

50 Redesigns from Scratch is genius. They’ll take 50 sites, redesign them, blog about them, write about them in a PDF book which will be available for download, and also write about them in an actual book which can be purchased. They’ve already got a mention on Digg with more than 1100 Diggs (including one from me), and other links are sure to follow.

The real genius is that this project, which is from a “company” which is so non-corporate as to have a Paypal donate button on their home page, is also going to be a money-maker. That’s right: this is not just a publicity stunt or a goodwill gesture:

We can only include a limited number of sites in the book. If you would like your site to be included, we’d love to hear from you.

– A one-off fee of just £725 (US$1,250) gets you:

– A professional redesign of your site’s home page by Ben Hunt

– Your site included in the book, and featured on this site, where it will be seen by like half a million people – guaranteeing great exposure

– All graphics files of the new design you need to help you implement your new design

At one and the same time, they’ve:

  • made this an artificially limited opportunity – hence making it more attractive in some intangibly human way
  • made this an event – which makes it much more interesting for companies or bloggers to buy in
  • promised clients something Joe’s Graphics down the corner (or even a top-flight $150/hour downtown agency) can’t offer: publicity
  • plus, as you can see by their first design, a simply great re-design for their website

What a concept – great marketing/branding/business development coup, all in one. Not to mention how much fun this should be!

[tags] marketing, buzz, viral, web2.0, webdesign, scratchmedia, web design from scratch, john koetsier [/tags]

Real Simple: corporation 2.0

July 10, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I ran into some Real Simple products today at Target as part of the browsing I’m always doing for new/innovative types of calendars, planners, and organizers.

After picking up a couple of their notebooks and journals, I noticed the RealSimple.com address on the back and checked them out.

How out in the woods have I been not to have noticed this company? They have a very interesting brand/identity. Real Simple is a:

  • TV show
  • magazine
  • website (which is mostly a for-pay walled garden)
  • and, not least, a products company that is making innovative and cool (if cheap) stuff that sells in Target, among other stores

    • I like it! Real Simple appears to be the iMac of companies … everything you need, in a nice wrapped-with-a bow all-in-one package.

    Corporation 2.0: branding, products, identity, media, relationship.

    Wow.

    [tags] real simple, branding, john koetsier [/tags]

Don’t miss

July 9, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Stories that I saw today that you should not miss:

How your product can inspire The Nod
Ever seen someone using something cool/good/funky that you use and had a little thrill of shared experience, a little sense of there’s another member of the club? Kathy Sierra lists 17 ways to put that secret sauce in your product or marketing.

The trend to “best available”
Most customers choose, according to Seth Godin, between “good enough” and “best available.” Being in one of those categories is good – though there are problems in each camp. Being somewhere in the middle is really, really bad.

And one that smells: Paying for links
Jakob Lodwick is paying for links. Or bookmarks on del.icio.us. Same thing, maybe. Brings up all kinds of questions: what if you did that same sort of contest on your blog, but instead did it for links? Is this ethical? Is it cheating? Or is it just a modified version of AdWords. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I like it.

Maybe I’ll try it next week on my blog. Then it will smell just fine.

Creative brief (or not)

July 7, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Anyone who does a lot of projects has experience with project overviews, plans, schedules, and strategies.

Most organizations try to put those together in some kind of document called a creative brief, which then goes to a decision-making body for a go, no-go, or yes-but.

Unfortunately most creative briefs are anything but:

From Hallmark’s great little Hoops and Yoyo.

[tags] work, creative brief, projects, hoops & yoyo, john koetsier [/tags]

.Net Passport is .Annoying

July 6, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I wanted to comment on a MSN Spaces blog posting today. Unfortunately, it requires a .Net Passport.

Like many other Mac and Linux types, I’ve always resisted getting one … Microsoft and security and all that. But the thought struck me: I have an account at just about every other web service on the planet. Get over your prejudices and go get that Passport account.

Well. Somebody pinch me and wake me up. Identity management shouldn’t be this hard. .Net Passport is a Microsoft trademarked name that bears significant resemblance to Plug & Play: both are oxymorons.

The first stage (and yes, there are many) starts with way too much information (I don’t want to give Microsoft my email address, or create one with Microsoft) and ends with way too little: the now-ubiquitous prove-you’re-human guess what the squiggly lines mean step:

This is my second chance; I failed the first one. Wonder if I’d pass the Turing test.

That’s minor, though, compared to the next step. It’s titled personal information, and contrary to the name of this whole identity management service, it means what it says. Emphasis on the personal.

Birth date. Gender (they mean sex; there are 3 genders and 2 sexes … well, mostly). OK, I can kind of swallow those.

But occupation? Industry? Job title? Marital status? Children in home?

It seems to me that these questions have a lot more to do with Microsoft’s (or someone’s) ability to classify me as a consumer – a particular level of consumer – and market specifically to me. Sorry, not interested.

I had to cancel – and all I wanted was to post a single comment on an MSN Spaces blog.

I think this is what happens when you have MBAs designing web services. Please, please take a lesson from 37 Signals: only ask for the information you need, when you need it. You can always get more later: if it makes sense. If it’s tied to something your client wants to do.

But if you ask too much, you may not get anything at all.

[tags] microsoft, .Net, Passport, identity, Sxip, MSN, Spaces, john koetsier [/tags]

Rocketboom: maybe the blogosphere IS high school, after all

July 6, 2006
John Koetsier
news

As I was shaking up my blog look and construction about half a year ago, I remember reading Jakob Nielsen’s alertbox on blog usability.

One of the things that stuck with me is Jakob’s insistence that the internet is not high school:

A related mistake in this category is to use insider shorthand, such as using first names when you reference other writers or weblogs. Unless you’re writing only for your friends, don’t alienate new visitors by appearing to be part of a closed clique. The Web is not high school.

Hrm. The whole RocketBoom breakup episode has me thinking. What if the blogosphere really is high school after all?

Think about it:

The top of the heap
You’ve got high status bloggers – A-list, B-list, whatever-list: they exist. They are the jocks or preppies or whatever the jargon-du-jour is.

Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon are among those elite. So are others who are blogging about the high-profile spat: Michael Arrington and Dave Winer.

First names, please
Dave apparently didn’t get Jakob’s memo; he’s still on a first-name-only basis:

What we know and don’t know about Amanda, Andrew and Rocketboom:

Nowhere in Amanda’s video does she say she was fired.

High profile break-up, lots of rumors
Isn’t it so high school … the cheerleader prom queen and the football quarterback break up and everybody starts talking about it.

I mean everybody. No, e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e.

Sheesh. There’s even lousy pictures drawn on bathroom walls about it.

And, of course, the other really cool guy on campus has just muscled in and started sweet-talking the now-lonely and bereft cheerleader.

Staying at mom and dad’s
And naturally, since this is high school, everyone is still living at home – even though they wish they were moving to L.A. and making it big in movies. Sure sucks to be at home:

I’m presently living with my parents in Connecticut until I can get back on my feet.

World-famous in Poughkeepsie
The world may be an oyster, or an oyster the world. In high school, it’s high school. Apparently in the blogosphere it is no different.

Earth to blogosphere: no one else knows. No one else cares.

It will end, won’t it?
Ahhh … enough of the dirty laundry.

The best thing about high school is that like all school, indeed all things, it ends.

And so, hopefully, will this far-too-public childish spat.

Please!

[tags] rocketboom, amanda congdon, andrew baron, unboomed, techcrunch, scripting news, high school, blogosphere, john koetsier [/tags]

AdWords newbie

July 1, 2006
John Koetsier
news

My wife and I are thinking of redoing our roof, so I naturally turned to the web as my first place to research the project.

But why did on earth did an Australian home improvement site come up in the adwords section? I happen to live near Vancouver, Canada.

Someone is an AdWords newbie. Someone needs to learn about restricting your ads by country and region. Someone just wasted 50 cents or a buck.

[tags] adwords, geotargeting, google, marketing, john koetsier [/tags]

New Netscape: Doomed

June 30, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say the New Netscape is doomed.

It won’t be successful, people won’t do what Netscape wants them to do, and Netscape will revert back to something more like what it used to be within 6 months.

Netscape is not a Digg-ish site: people can “vote” for their favorite stories. OK, that’s not a horrible idea, even if they are copying Digg and others, and trying to cash in on the whole social web meme.

But any site that starts its first page like this is doomed (see below). Instructions on how to use a web site? What were they thinking!

That in itself is the kiss of death: if it’s so non-obvious they have to put step 1, step 2, all the way to step 5 on the page, they’re toast.

Richard McManus has covered this on Read/Write Web.

[tags] netscape, digg, social media, doomed, john koetsier [/tags]

Free iPod even AFTER Mac purchase

June 16, 2006
John Koetsier
news

On Wednesday this week I bought a iMac. On Thursday, Apple Canada finally started the promotion that Apple USA has been doing for a week or more: free iPod Nano with the purchase of a Mac.

Oh sh*t, I thought.

Apple never, never bends the rules to let you get a discount or advertised bennie after the fact. But, hoping against hope, I called Apple last night.

And yes, wonder of wonders, songs bursting amongst the heavens, joy to the masses, they let me do it.

So. My new 30 GB iPod video is coming soon (I chose to apply the $275 Nano credit to the bigger, dare I say better, model).

If you’ve just bought too
I do not know if this will work for you. The iMac I ordered had not yet shipped, and so the customer support guy I talked to – a really professional and pleasant individual, by the way – was able to stick it on the same order, the same invoice.

If your iMac/MacBook/PowerMac has already shipped, Apple may not allow you to do this. But if you’ve just ordered, it’s definitely worth a shot. Apple is doing this in more than just my case, because I specifically asked the sales rep about it, and he confirmed that they are allowing some customers who purchased very recently to participate.

Sales up
Sales seem to be trending very nicely up for Apple as a result of this program, too. The rep I talked to mistakenly called my iPod the 30 GB Nano – not because he’s ignorant or anything, but, as he explained, because he’s been talking about the Nano all day long, adding them to orders for people who are purchasing computers.

That should mean that the promotion is successful and that Apple is generating significant additional sales because of it.

. . .
. . .

FYI, I qualify for the promotion because I’m taking a Masters degree at UBC.

Star bloggers getting traded: consequences?

June 15, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Nicholas Carr recently posted an article about corporate bloggers and risk. If high-profile people like Robert Scoble leave, what does that do to the company?

(His comments on Roughtype are screwed up, so I’m posting this here.)

Among other things, he said:

So Microsoft’s self-styled human face is now some other company’s human face. This must be the first corporate human face transplant ever attempted. Will it take? Or will the new body reject the used puss?

… and …

A company should probably be a little nervous about letting some blogger set up shop as its human face. The earnings the blogger pulls in through the attention economy may accrue more to his own bottom line than the firm’s.

My reply, which I would have posted in his comments, but Typepad thinks I’m logged in but won’t post my comment, and then won’t let me log in, because I’m already logged in, even after I log out. Yay.

Agree it’s a problem. but …

What’s the alternative? Same old same old mass media we talk you listen approach? Won’t last long.

The better way is in good old-fashioned business logic: never put all your eggs in one basket. Encourage many employees to blog, rather than just one superstar.

And that is indeed the revolution that Scoble led at Microsoft.

Fix your comments, Nicholas!

[tags] nicholas carr, robert scoble, blogging, corporate, john koetsier [/tags]

Doing the unexpected

June 8, 2006
John Koetsier
news

If you’re involved in any kind of product development or marketing (and who isn’t in one or the other or both), don’t miss this post on the delight and magic of the familiar transposed into unexpected environments.

Wondering how to apply it to stuff I’m working on …

[tags] kathy sierra, passionate users, unexpected, marketing, product development, john koetsier [/tags]

Open source product design: hotfrosty

June 6, 2006
John Koetsier
news

OK, this is too cool to keep secret.

Remember that hotfrosty thing I’ve been talking about a bit lately?

Well, tomorrow I’ll be meeting two fashion design classes: one grade 11, one grade 12. And we’ll be having a little design contest.

It’s focused on one of the hotfrosty core products.

I think this is going to be good …

. . .
. . .

(Incidentally, some of the best product ideas, enhancements, and refinements lately have been coming from my wife, Teresa, who has been pounding out prototypes and dreaming up innovations. Thanks!)

[tags] hotfrosty, open source, design, innovation, creativity, product development, john koetsier [/tags]

Butchering cash cows

June 5, 2006
John Koetsier
news

If you have any sort of existing business at all, you will always have tactical reasons to NOT make strategic changes.

Sublimate strategy in favor of tactics too often and you will find yourself right at home in the museum of business stupidity … right along with buggy whip manufacturers, record player companies, and GM.

Milk those cash cows for all they’re worth – but don’t let your existing revenue streams divert you from following the strategy that you know you need to adopt.

If you don’t want to ignore existing revenue and clients: great! But create a separate entrepreneurial division of your company to pursue the next big opportunity with undivided focus.

That’s all.

[tags] cash cows, tactics, strategy, business, john koetsier [/tags]

Gatorade: catch the cluetrain

June 4, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Did you hear about the MIT students who built a raft out of Gatorade bottles and paddled it across the Charles river in Boston?

Jonathan, one of the students who built the raft, has been trying to get Gatorade’s attention, and finally succeeded. Here’s the response from the marketing people at Gatorade:

Jonathan: It sounds like you and your roommate are very ingenious. Making a raft out of Gatorade bottles and rowing it across the Charles River is certainly an accomplishment. Although we would not be able to use your pictures we would certainly love to see your work. You can send them to this email address as an attachment. Also, please respond with your complete mailing address sot that we can send both you and your roommate some coupons via US Mail.

Maybe it doesn’t matter so much when you sell $2 billion worth of your product yearly and can pay Michael Jordan $10 million to pump up your image. But companies would kill to get this kind of real-world exposure and attention.

I mean, the kids even have charts of their yearly Gatorade consumption, and Jonathan proclaims:

I’m the winner of Gatorade consumption!! I’m the one on the right. 47.8 gallons baby!
This totally crushes my last year’s grand total of 13 gallons, lol.

In a time when half of all young people online are writing their own stories, publishing their own photos, and contributing to the diversity and richness of web culture … and in the post-Cluetrain years … I’m going to suggest an ad based on this type of fan (fanatic) actions would be better than another generic celebrity endorsement.

I don’t care what Michael Jordan drinks: I know he’s been paid millions to have the right opinions and say the right things. But I am interested in what some ordinary everyday but funky/cool/ingenious college nerds with ideas do.

It’s different. It’s unboring. It’s real. It’s remarkable. It deserves something more than a couple of coupons in the mail.

I wonder if someone at Gatorade is smart enough to clue into that?

[tags] gatorade, cluetrain, marketing, MIT, charles river, john koetsier [/tags]

$717,450,284.88

June 2, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I saw this story on Digg about Google insider trading going off the charts, literally, and was a little interested.

You can, if you want, click to see just CEO Eric Schmidt’s results … which is even more interesting. And you can even, if you choose, copy and past the tables directly into Excel … which is most interesting of all.

Mad Money
Turns out, Eric Schmidt has sold a quarter billion dollars worth of Google shares this year alone. Yup, since January 1, he’s sold $250,285,406 (and 44 cents) worth of Google shares.

And over the past three years, he’s sold more than $717,450,284.88 of shares, almost all of them Google shares (an insignificant $3 million were Siebel shares).

Obviously, I don’t know what his strike price was on those shares – what he paid for them before selling them. But he’s definitely above water and not doing too badly at all.

Gotta love capitalism!

[tags] eric schmidt, google, money, shares, insider trading, john koetsier [/tags]

Digg: Digg this here

Custom iPod skins by iFrogz

June 1, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I bought the coolest iPod skin today … at the coolest store.

It’s iFrogz, and they sell iPod cases. But not just any iPod cases – custom iPod cases.

First you pick your iPod, then you pick your “wrap” color. The wrap color will be on the front and back of your iPod. You pick a band, which will go around your iPod, and, if you want, you pick a “screen.” The site is heavily Ajax-ed, so it’s fast and all happens on the same page.

Here’s the site:

See that iPod with the custom skin? That’s my custom skin, and here’s a close-up:

Did I mention this was fairly cool?

Here’s the best part: even though it’s custom, it’s still less than a standard 1-color iPod skin … about $30 versus $34.

[tags] apple, ipod, ifrogz, ipod skin, cool, design, john koetsier [/tags]

The future belongs

May 31, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Eleanor Roosevelt said that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

Do you dream?

Do you believe?

I think that dreaming is an essential survival skill in business, in work, in life.

I’ve just come through a month without dreams. A month of projects, tasks, requests, work. Basically, stuff.

The problem with stuff is that stuff happens. Stuff accumulates. And then stuff obliterates.

Passion dies. Enthusiasm fades. Curiosity subsides. Joy flees: stuff has conquered. We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us.

In case the problem for business, for work, is not perfectly clear, here it is: creativity depends on all those good things I’ve just mentioned. Just try to be creative without passion, enthusisasm, curiosity, joy.

Good luck.

Without creativity, nothing new and exciting happens. Without creativity, you are just one more drone in the faceless masses. Without creativity, your business is just one more me-too nothing-new ho-hum big stinking deal.

You need dreams.

You need big beautiful dreams.

And then you need to believe.

When a company has no dreams, there is no belief. Without belief – in something, anything – the company has no soul. Without a soul, it’s a dead man walking, an empty automaton … a skeleton that’s still, somehow, stubbornly, moving.

But don’t expect anyone get excited about it. Not the people who work there – to them the company is a payment on a car, on a mortgage. And if not the people who work there, why the wider world?

You must have a dream. They must be beautiful dreams. And then you must believe. Otherwise, what’s the point? Go flip burgers, and ask would you like fries with that.

This morning, at 6:07, I found a dream. It is beautiful.

And I believe.

Making business beautiful

May 29, 2006
John Koetsier
news

Is your business beautiful?

That sounds like a strange question – mostly because it is. But it’s a good question. It’s a question more people should ask of their business, processes, strategies, marketing, and products.

Why?

Well, think about it: what is beauty?

Beauty is the marriage of structure and function. It’s elements in careful but dynamic balance. It’s symmetry and simplicity. And above all, beauty is memorable.

Structure and function

Structure is only present where it is functional. All that is not functional is not structural. It has been abstracted out. All that is functional grows out of the structure. There are no missing pieces, and nothing is glued on as an afterthought.

Functions that are structural are solid; they are embedded in physical reality or organization. Structures that are functional are needed; they are not waste or empires or holdovers from a previous age. Are all the structures in your business functional? Are all the functions in your processes structural?

Balance

Is your business in balance? Example: your product portfolio. Do you have a mix of products at varying stages in their life cycles? Some that are new and still incurring product development costs. Some that are in young and still growing, finding their feet. Some that are in middle age: cash cows that will must be milked to the fullest before they dry up. Some that are tottering around on crutches that need to be put out to pasture.

Symmetry

Symmetry is an attribute of processes. If you mapped your workflow, would you find dangling loops? Winding paths? Dead ends?

The more symmetry, the better flow. The more loops, the more cost you’re building into your model.

Simplicity

Simplicity is as much as needed and no more than what is required. Simplicity is as simple as possible and complex as necessary. Are all your moving parts radically simple? If your company is more than two years old, and if you are not married to continuous process improvement, the answer is no: stuff happens.

Stuff accumulates. Over time, stuff overwhelms. Stuff is money, because stuff burns time. Which means that stuff is also lost opportunity. Getting rid of stuff is giving yourself the gift of focus.

Memorability

Is your business, marketing plan, product, division, whatever, memorable? Memorable things make an impression on people. Things that make an impression on people have a chance to matter. Things that do not make an impression on people do not, by definition, matter.

You want to matter. You want your business to matter. The only way to matter is to do something remarkable. What do you do that is remarkable?

. . .
. . .

Making your business beautiful is making your business lean. And focused. And proportioned.

Is your business beautiful?

If not, surgery is the only option.

[tags] business, process, improvement, beautiful, simplicity, john koetsier [/tags]

Ideavirus penicillin

May 29, 2006
John Koetsier
news

I’ve been following Seth Godin’s blog lately.

He’s the extremely clueful author of Ideavirus, among other books.

So in a recent post on cargo-cult marketing I found it pleasantly surprising that he states “we have no idea why some ideas spread and others don’t.”

The post is about copying things you see successful companies doing, just like Pacific Islander cargo cults blindly copied US Army procedures like making an airstrip, creating a air traffic control hut, etc. The problem?

… just because you copy the elements that apparently made something work before doesn’t mean that you’re going to be guaranteed that it will work again.

Good point.

More interesting, though, is his admission that we just don’t know why some ideas spread and others don’t. I mean, he’s the expert.

We know something about how ideas spread, through Godin’s work, as well as Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.

But why?

Some things catch. Some things don’t. Perhaps the best explanation is a Biblical one:

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.

Which is not to say, as Damon Runyon observed, that you shouldn’t bet that way.

Just don’t expect to win every hand.

[tags] seth godin, ideavirus, marketing, innovation, ideas, malcolm gladwell, john koetsier [/tags]

Strawberry Frog

May 29, 2006
John Koetsier
news

A company with a conference table this cool:

And one that is still bold enough to put a Flash movie as the first thing you see on their site (remember skipintro?):

… must be a pretty cool company. And indeed, if you check out their guiding principles (aka ‘frogism’), they are:

1. StrawberryFrog means working SmarterFaster.
2. We are humans – everyone is entitled to fun in their lives.
3. No one is big enough to be independent of others; none of us are as wise as all of us.
4. Ideas can come from anywhere.
5. Ideas need time and space to grow.
6. We spend other people’s money as if it were our own.
7. The best research is subjective, creative, informs and inspires.
8. Be honest.
9. Don’t mistake comfort for good work.
10. When we develop work we ask ourselves: is it wonderful? Does it move you? Does it make you curious? Is it a simple idea? Is it culturally authentic?
11. Keep it simple, not simplistic.
12. Trust your instincts.
13. Take chances.
14. We don’t have to be big; we have to be good and profitable.
15. No excuses.
16. Smile.

I think I would like to work at a company like that. Wouldn’t you?

[tags] strawberry frog, advertising, business 2.0, netherlands, john koetsier [/tags]

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