I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine about how she was “leaving” her MySpace account. The only thing left that she liked was the music service but had other sources for that. She also said she was “growing out” of her MySpace persona. I’ve never had a MySpace account and this comment made no sense to me. She then explained that MySpace, for most, was...
In preparation for the ever worsening economy, I was sending out requests for endorsements on LinkedIn this morning and wondered (in the name transparency) if there would ever be a way to allow for negative comments? In recent months LinkedIn has had an explosion in traffic and I’ve received invitations to join former coworkers networks at an astounding rate. People I haven’t seen or...
I saw Guy Kawasaki Tweet about an article entitled Should brands ignore social media criticism?, and I had to read/respond. Overall it’s a good article and worth reading. One highlight from the post: But what if some brands are paying too much attention to social media? Is it possible that the most vocal on Facebook and Twitter and in the blogosphere not only don’t represent the...
In these economically conscious times (aren’t they always?!?!?), I keep hearing; How do I monetize my time on a social network? Well aside from advertising (which is the one obvious answer) there are several ways to ways to think about spending time and effort on social networks. To keep it simple and akin to something that the old guard is familiar with; think of it as a branding exercise...
A couple of days ago, I saw that Twitter is going to begin charging businesses for their Twitter accounts. The industry question around Twitter (and all social networking sites for that matter) has been; how are they going to monetize? Twitter is officially exploding this year and recently raised $35 million in capital. The real question is; who will follow these businesses? When Walmart put a...
I posted in late September (just a few posts down) about the Rugby Tournament in Aspen that I’ve attended for the last 24 years. I mentioned the need for Generational liaisons as partners to help marketers serve a niche. I wanted to expand on the concept of generations with the context of niche. When I started going to Ruggerfest, Aspen was still a relatively small mountain town in...
I recently called T-Mobile customer service to have them switch me over to the Blackberry Curve and had a very interesting experience. Like most people, calling customer service is one of my least favorite things since it usually means something is wrong. I don’t like it because the vanilla version of a human being I usually get is more painful at times than getting no help. “I...
I have been watching Anthony Bourdain‘s, No Reservations since 2005 and love the show. I appreciate his intelligence, eloquence, humor and how I feel a little more worldly after every show. I have always said that you can’t really know someone until you see the place they grew up. Bourdain’s belief is that you can’t really know a culture until you eat what the locals are...
This title of this post comes from a line in Ayn Rand’s 1943 book,The Fountainhead and is from a conversation between a woman and the main character, Howard Roark. Her point was that any attempt to create beauty is futile when compared to the beauty of nature and that we should abandon any desires to create beautiful things. She wanted to rise above nature and create something ugly. Fast...
Last night I got to attend a New Denver Ad Club event at the Oriental Theater with guest speaker Jason Fried (freed) of 37signals. I knew very little about Jason and have heard about 37signals from a friend of mine. 37signals is a group that started out as an agency and created products to support internal processes and then decided productize/sell them. Logical progression given the difficulty...