Music, Technology, Art, Economy

I had a very stimulating discussion with a group of grad students from USC Anneberg’s Online Communities program today here at M80.

The topics were wide-ranging but of course things came to a head when we started parsing the utility/meaning of Twitter.

(and it has enormous utility for companies and entrepreneurs of all sizes)

While trying to explain Twitter’s role in some marketing campaigns I’m working on, one thought really resonated with me:

Twitter is particularly useful as a marketing/customer service tool because every microchunk of communication is inherently on-topic (because 140 characters ain’t much).

That counts for a lot when you’re trying to listen to a lot of customers (e.g. the market for “shoes” or even “data centers”).

Drop a comment w/ some contact info if you were in the room at the time…I’ve got extra special goodies to share ;-)

(photo via mallix)

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» App Store is a Solution to The Penny Gap at The Gong Show by Andrew Parker

Incredible post by Andrew, recommended for students of Business Model Design for Web Services.

Here’s my comment (click over for full context):

I especially enjoyed naveen’s point (and your response) re: intention.

In communities/networks, you have to be more creative with how you use payments; a corollary to (or inversion of) Josh’s “penny gap” would be using payment as a firewall to create value for users (see: craigslist charging landlords to post “for rent” classified ads to reduce duplicate postings).

Frankly I thought that this was one area where Twitter would use payment to create value for users (e.g. as your following:follower ratio >1, you have to pony up $.

Thanks for posting on this Andrew; as a non-iPhone user it’s something I’ve been curious about ;-)

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“ Between 1990 and 2006, Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9% while enjoying real economic growth of 44%

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Green business: Scandinavia’s lateral thinkers | Business | guardian.co.uk

Really inspiring story. Interesting takeaways about how governments make decisions here. The U.S. is so much larger and heterogenous than these countries that the process just needs to be reinvented ;-)

[via Umair]

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“ The financial sector, everyone whose business is essentially lending money is now a ward of the state. They could lend to each other but they don’t trust each other. They can’t raise money in the equity market. There is nowhere else to turn

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Banks Borrow Record Sum from Fed Window - Mergers, Acquisitions, Venture Capital, Hedge Funds — DealBook - New York Times

Any further questions about why I left my job at the trading desk (in 2002)?

EPIC lol

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» Beach Bauley

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» New Twitter Anti-Spam Bot Causes Chaos - ReadWriteWeb

I’m using Twitter for some Very Big Companies to do customer service (oops I meant “marketing”) and research and every single person I’ve followed/contacted has been thrilled.

I maintained an EXACTLY 1:1 FOLLOW/FOLLOWER RATIO. What do I get?

These dudes dropped 1/2 of my contacts yesterday, purportedly because of some “anti spam algorithm” goof.

CHARGE ME FOR THE ABILITY TO FOLLOW MORE PEOPLE if that’s what you need to do. It’s easier than writing an anti-spam algorithm

Looks like they’ll have this cleaned up sometime so I’ll reserve final judgement, but seriously, here’s Business Model Design For Web Services lesson 1038464732982: use payment as a firewall against spam.

UPDATE

Looks like things are back to normal. Still, the above thought on business models holds ;-)

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Go Big Always - The big Marketing mess

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“ Scripted narratives erode like sand castles in the fluid dynamics of networks. ‘What I want to happen’ collapses under relentless waves of ‘What is actually happening.’

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Mike Bonifer: Campaigning in the Networked World

I re-read most of Mike’s book over the honeymoon. It really brings the art to 21st century business/entrepreneurship/strategic thinking. And it’s insanely fun to read.

For those that don’t hold advanced degrees in Fine Arts like me, while I continue to brush up on my network econ, GameChangers [the book] is strongly, STRONGLY recommended reading.

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Offline again for a week…honeymoon in Tulum, Mexico ;-)

(photo via sisack)

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» Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers? - ReadWriteWeb

Great article from Marshall K, with some really bizarre points made by some of the people he quoted. (Some great ones, too).

I really like how he structured the article (by laying out the opinions of others without too much editorial; the socratic method of journalism)

My point is:

Community management is really really important because the ROI is way higher than for PR or advertising.

Customer service is the new marketing.

Community management is scalable, high-touch, proactive customer service. If you have a good service, and people like it, the best thing you can do is make sure those people go up Kathy Sierra’s curve and become rockstar users. They need help in this, usually. And your company definitely needs someone listening and paying attention to them, all the time.

Online customer service (yes let’s just call it that) is the easiest and cheapest way to have a great relationship with your customers. You know, the people who pay you?

Now, if you’re in the business of selling ads, your customer is the advertiser, and you probably think of your users as “eyeballs” with demographic info attached. Best of luck to you, because you’re probably going to fail.

My suggestion is to instead make something useful that enables companies (or the individuals that work at companies…hi twitter.zappos.com) and individuals tocommunicate and create value WITH each other.

It’s actually really easy to do; it just requires not thinking about display ads as a revenue stream.

I mean seriously, if you have a group of people that find your service useful, they’ll want to share it with their friends, especially if they have a personal relationship with someone at your company. The conversion rate is going to be SO MUCH higher than you can buy w/ PR or advertising. That’s just a fact.

If you have a strong product, $50k+ for 12 months of community manager beats $50k of ad budget every time.

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» Techdirt: You Don't Build Communities, You Enable Them

Paging Scott Karp…

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“ Professor Wermers says his advice has evolved significantly as a result of this study. Until now, he says, he wouldn’t have tried to discourage a sophisticated investor from trying to pick a mutual fund that would outperform the market. Now, he says, “it seems almost hopeless.

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Strategies - The Prescient Are Few - NYTimes.com

Buy Vanguard and call it a day…

Interesting, final, conclusive chapter for market efficiency theorists.

Gee, what other markets will an explosion of information and context make incredibly more efficient?

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“ When I was at Apple, one the competitive team’s central goals was to goad Microsoft and Intel into targeting us in public. We used all sorts of tactics to irritate them.

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Mobile Opportunity: Hypenotized by Apple

This tactic really puts into relief all the context that Mac freaks have been egging MSFT with over the years.

A great article, new find, recommended!

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» Dropbox: The Online Storage Solution We’ve Been Waiting For?

This is truly a great, great product.

(Sync/backup files to the web from multiple computers seamlessly from the desktop…i.e. Finder or Windows Explorer)

I have 5 invites…if you want one leave a comment below or drop an email.

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“ If you sound like Elvis Costello, how do we get you in front of Elvis Costello fans?” Rogers asks. “Those are the kinds of things we’ll be addressing.

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THE INDIES ISSUE: THE VISIONARIES

I’m so glad that someone is doing this…all the people who read my various business plans from the last ~3 years already know that ;-)

This step (demand gen) is the most important next step. In my work promoting Kneebody, it’s always frustrated me that there wasn’t a simple way to go out and just make sure that people that are into Mahavishnu or MMW listen to Kneebody; it’s obvious that they would like it.

(you can go out and network with people on iLike or whatever, but that’s not very scalable)

We ran some experiments with Last.fm’s PowerPlay service, which was great. But it can get expensive. It’ll be interesting to see if Topspin gives the demand gen-part away for free. I hope they do, because it is such a powerful complement (in a “network externality” kind of way) that it would really increase the value of their service w/o much cost.

Or so it seems…

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