Benjamin Bloom - thoughts and analysis of digital strategy, cloud based marketing solutions, and consumer experiences.
I thought it was kind of fun for things to be a little
happy for a minute. Hugo saves the day
with the van. Actually I can't figure
out why there was beer left in it- I though Jin and Sawyer drank it all?
My last thought has to do with Ben being right about
Naomi not being who she says she is. She
had the pic of penny and Desmond, and we know that penny is looking for
Desmond, but what the hell was Naomi really doing? Who was the guy on the other end of the phone?
At NextMadisonAve Michael Hurt from Microsoft suggested that people take a look at Porter's Strategy, which is largely viewed as a definitive work on corporate strategy. For a really interesting look at why some strategies succeed and others fail, especially when it comes to new technologies, I would suggest folks check out Michael Raynor's The Strategy Paradox, which includes in particular a discussion of why Microsoft has been so successful over the years.
Mr. Hurt admitted that Microsoft has to struggle with the idea of whether it is a software company or an internet company. He also used the term "audience company" but I think one still needs to account for the idea of where one thinks the audience is, and many strategy scholars would see successful strategies as being built on a bet about where the audience is: the desktop or the internet, for example. Raynor points out that the beauty of Microsoft has been that senior management (C-level and above) has created opportunities for developing businesses on both online, desktop, (and mobile, and video game consoles) so that they are not betting one one future shift. A classic hedge.
See Raynor's book for more detail on how creating strategic options at the highest levels of an organization allows individual business units to focus on committing to a strategy and executing their bold ideas.
Raynor's work deserves more coverage; look for more summaries of his insights in future posts.
From today's WSJ:
[W]hen Ms. Wilson, now 32, was pregnant with her first child, she ran every baby name she and her husband, Justin, considered through Google to make sure her baby wouldn't be born unsearchable. Her top choice: Kohler, an old family name that had the key, rare distinction of being uncommon on the Web when paired with Wilson. "Justin and I wanted our son's name to be as special as he is," she explains.
So that's what we've been reduced to, is it? SEO for baby names?
What is the essence of interconnection? At NextNY's BizDev 2.0 in November 06 there was a great deal of discussion surrounding the ease with which data from one web service can rapidly be incorporated and leveraged into another- the widgetsphere and RSS are great enablers of this- without the need for "slow" business development activity.
When this is successful it adds value. Players with market power/lawyers often see this as disruptive "theft"- see myspace/photobucket or the recent "re-peering" of some major Belgian newspapers with Google (which I think we will come to see as just a passing fad in the protectionism of content, but who knows?)
I wrote a few days ago about the similarity of the myspace/photobucket issue to the peering battles between backbone providers. "Peering" between sites on the internet
is something we take for granted in our web2.0 world, but I think we need to look at it the way backbone providers do, as an exchange of traffic (visitors instead of bits). Peering may be free, in the end, only for dominant providers. At the same time, "dominant" may turn out to not mean much over the long run, and the market power of sites like myspace may be nicely balanced by user backlash when appropriate. I'm going to call all my posts about this "TheNetwork" as I examine the interaction between peering and web2.0.
Helpful tip: when you forget to change the time zone on your laptop upon returning from a trip, you may be tempted to change the system time after Outlook has opened. You'll be very surprised (not) to find that this makes Outlook very unhappy, and you will start to receive reminders for a future event as though it has already happened.
Don't worry, dear reader- there is hope. That's why Microsoft created the Task Manager and the ability to end processes (though, properly, this is not an innovative featuire so much as a duplication of other OS's behavior). Sigh. Imagine a world where things just work...er, my MacBook Pro, actually.
Yet another story today in the NYT about kids not getting in to Harvard. The piece includes the datum that "Several Ivies, including Harvard, rejected a record number of applicants this year" but hedges our assumed revulsion a few paragraphs later by reminding us that kids today "look around and see lots of avenues to success." He makes some interesting observations about the use of test prep materials and classes.
This is the real story. A few weeks ago I railed about college admission "numbers" and said that "high test scores don't make you interesting." Perhaps Mr. Winerip would argue instead that plenty of interesting kids are not accepted to Harvard. Probably that's the case, but I would love to see the data on the number of students who applied to more than one college. I would bet that as that number rises, schools will have to reject more and more students. Not to mention the importance of being "exclusive" by showcasing a low admit rate, or the effect of higher tuition on perceived selectivity and value.
When I applied to college, electronic application materials were kludgy at best, and a recie for losing an afetrnoon's work on an essay at worse. I took a decent number of AP courses and had good SATs, but I didn't even bother with Harvard. I didn't have the perfect grades or test scores I KNEW would be required for Harvard. I applied to ten schools (two Ivies) and was admitted to seven and waitlisted at one. I survived, and got a great education. I think Mr. Winerip comes to the same conclusion for his son and the legions of folks he interviewed over the years as a Harvard alumnus- being interesting is its own reward.
CNN is reporting that Wal-Mart will open 400 in-store medical clinics within 3 years and that a survey indicated to Wal-Mart that uninsured Americans would go get routine medical treatments if they had a much better idea of how much the care would cost. Perhaps Wal-Mart asked some of their 700,000 uninsured employees about that.
I read that "MySpace Unblocks User-Generated Videos Hosted on Photobucket" and couldn't help but recall a meeting I sat in on in 2001 when I was working at the FCC's Office of Plans and Policy. Cable and Wireless was talking about some really cool fiber multiplexing technologies, and also addressed their decision to de-peer PSINet.
It occurred to me that another sign of the 'net evolution is that interconnection of web services has replaced the interconnection of backbone networks. MySpace flexing its pageview-driven market power doesn't seem so different.
There is a great working paper on peering agreements in the OPP white paper library [pdf link].
It took a friend's invitation to join Dodgeball for me to realize that text messaging on my blackberry had gone horribly, horribly wrong! I have had a dodgeball account for a year or so....and password forgetfulness had set in. All of my attempts to find my password failed. I finally gave them my mobile number and the system tried to send me a text message with my password....I never received it.
After an excruciating phone call with T-Mobile, where they asked me for my company's Tax ID No. (like I have that lying around- even during tax season, that is a ridiculous piece of information for me to carry around). I went into my files, found my W2, and gave it to them- wrong number, he said. So how am I supposed to keep track of information like this? What if I worked for a company with a complicated ownership structure- who can keep ticker symbols straight, much less tax ID numbers at some companies. The rep even had the gall to explain to me what a tax ID number is.
After they were "unable to verify my account" the rep said we could proceed with troubleshooting, though he was not "200% sure they could fix my problem without verifying what phone you are using." Leaving out the idea that I would have settled for 100% sure (is that 50% as sure as they are about their own names?), I was disappointed to hear that we could continue only if they could call me on a landline. Yeah, right- who has a landline anymore? So 5 years ago (that's about the last time I had a landline). Game over on that call.
I ended up remembering that the IM client on my phone was doing weird things, (even though I never, ever use it) and so I went into the application permissions settings and denied all of its privileges. One system reset later, and I have text messaging again (though I suspect this is not the elegant solution to this problem).
I was just thinking about the Don Imus firestorm and all of the people who are dirtecting their resposnes right back at the african american music community, which does plenty of references to "hos" and their hairdos, and certainly regulartly profits from doing so.
Is this what we are about now? If this ushers in a new wave of censorship of any kind of media, whatever the race of the performer, we all lose. More to follow as my mind wraps around this. See also books by George Orwell.
I'm proud of my Sweep the Leg t-shirt. So, I imagine, would the band No More Kings whose video for "Sweep The Leg" I have embedded below. Nice use of the original castmembers of The Karate Kid plus, I think, Mr. Belding from Saved By The Bell.
Can you believe this? I read a quick announcement in the FierceMobile newsletter that Microsoft was in talks to allow labels to sell DRM-free music for use on the Zune. Never mind that if you share such tracks with another Zune user they expire in three days. This PCPro article is pretty light on details also, but does include the following gem:
'Consumers have made it clear that unprotected music is something they want,' Microsoft spokeswoman Katy Asher said. 'We plan on offering it to them as soon as our label partners are comfortable with it.'
So let me understand this: no consumers were making it clear that DRM-free music was something they wanted a year ago? Way to do your research. Microsoft is trailing the indicators big time. Microsoft is trailing every sentient person on the Internet who ever said- "but I bought it- how come it won't work on my XX device?" Poseurs.
This NYT piece was an interesting description of Avenue A|Razorfish's consolidated NYC offices, which I have found to be great space for doing fun work.
“The open floor plan allows people to get to know each other informally and helps the motivation process,” said Bob Lord, who is president, East region, for the company, which is based in Seattle and is a division of aQuantive Inc. “Everyone’s productivity skyrocketed.”
While I never worked in the offices the company previously held on Beach St., in TriBeCa, I think our space is great!
Someone asked me, rhetorically, what exit strategy Vonage could possibly have. At the time, I thought the worst of it was probably worthless stock as a result of selling a commoditized product, competing with vertically integrated operators, who have a better link to customers and more downward pricing flexibility than Vonage.
It's worse than that.
"A judge has effectively barred Internet phone carrier Vonage from signing up new customers as punishment for infringing on patents held by Verizon, though the company will be allowed to continue servicing existing customers. Vonage is planning to appeal."-WSJ
Dear Vonage Shareholders and customers,
Oops.
Sincerely,
Jeff Citron
I went to an Ivy League School, and there were plenty of people who were just devastated that they did not get into Harvard (a smaller number for Yale and Princeton, I think; see also "We Didn't Go To Harvard"). Cornell has a reputation as the easiest Ivy to get into and the hardest to get out of, and to a certain extent maybe the numbers bear that out. It's accept rate is higher than many of the Ivies, around 20%.
The stories in the New York times in the last several days (For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too and A Great Year for Ivy League Schools, but Not So Good for Applicants to Them ) have been interesting, but send conflicting messages about what may really be going on.
The article about how in order to secure admission to the best colleges, especially liberal arts colleges, suggest that these high school girls feel pressured to excel in all subjects, play a sport, do community service, and be perfect perfect perfect (sorry, I just keep thinking of Empire Records). I wish I could feel sorry for them. Is there a lot riding on the college you choose, and which options you'll have in April of your senior year of high school/after graduation? Hell yes. Is it worth sacrificing your own personality just to look like the perfect applicant? Hell NO.
One student at my high school was reportedly admitted to a state school just for being able to play a particular instrument- this may or may not be true, but it was disturbing to me then because I had real qualms about gaming the system- I thought it was questionable. Upon reflection, it would just be a sad compromise of one's integrity.
But as to the claims that students with perfect SATs and grades might still be rejected by Harvard:
Did I miss anything?
There was a great case study about Starbucks and their corporate real estate planning in the NYT over the weekend. Today I read something interesting about "the genius of Starbucks" in the context of teh supposed "benefits" of green tea:
"Thus weak studies pointing to weight loss – and the fact that the Japanese seem thin – allow green tea to be sold as a psychic cancellation stamp on foods we love and know to be bad for us. The large version of Starbucks’ Green Tea Frappuccino has 560 calories not counting whipped cream. (The unappreciated business genius of Starbucks is not charging $4 for a latte, but rather giving adults the permission to drink milkshakes, on the pretext that they are merely tea or coffee.) This is exceeded by the 640 calories in the “power” version of Matcha Green Tea Blast at Jamba Juice, a franchise chasing Howard Schultz’s caffeinated footsteps."-Green tea, the elixir of false virtue [Jacob Weisberg, FT.com, April 4 2007 ]
This eMarketer article "Is DRM Doomed" arrived the same day as this smart and interesting article by UC Berkeley information economics guru Hal Varian.
In fashion, the
It occurred to me as I was cancelling the recording of an episode of the Daily Show (thank you, TiVo, for your overzealous efforts to record any and all episodes of this brilliant show, even the twelfth re-run the day after; in fact thank you to Comedy Central for running episodes of The Daily Show as bumpers between other random shows during the day) why appearances on the show are so helpful for politicians.
The rest of the news media is so utterly fake. It takes a comedy show to make an impression of reality on
