I’m a talker online. In the old days, it was via manually-updated websites and forums. These days, I’ve got multiple long-form blogs, and dabble with all the short-form tools. I like to talk about many different topics, but that’s where I get frustrated. With Twitter, I end up restricting my content because most of my followers are there to hear …
Hashable, the future of business relationships?
I’ve been playing around with Hashable since August, and have become a pretty regular user. Why? Relationships are the lifeblood of business. LinkedIn took a first step, and then stopped innovating in a meaningful way. From my perspective, they treat relationships as a commodity, and they are anything but! Hashable is taking the next step forward, with an appreciation of …
Gap, Tropicana versus Apple: Conviction versus the Mob
Gap has completely fumbled their logo change, but not because of the design. I am not going to comment on the design. I am going to share how appalled I am at Gap’s lack of conviction and leadership. Completely abdicating your own vision is just as bad as never talking to your customers at all! Sometimes truly inane branding decisions …
You Won’t Find Letter.ly Here
A surprising number of NYC “startup” bloggers have started to adopt Letter.ly, a subscription email newsletter service. The root might simply be friendship with the creator, Sam Lessin, but I really do not understand or particularly like the trend. I have no problem with publishers charging for content, but if you don’t make your living as a publisher, why would …
Enthusiasts vs Normals
First Chris Dixon tweeted, “Does anyone really want to have a “conversation with brands”? I I want my relationship to Starbucks limited to buying coffee.” Roger Ehrenberg then responded with a great post on authenticity in brand conversations. I would argue that they are both right, they are just talking about two different people. Just as Dixon once wrote about …
Mo’ Better Feedback
I write this blog for many reasons. Sometimes I want to work through a topic, sometimes I want to give back to the startup community, and sometimes I just need to be vocal in reaction to something I have read. There are a lot of internal motivations, but I am also interested in knowing what you like and dislike about …
A product I would love to see: professional networking via Facebook
Last Fall, I was thinking about a few things: people are increasingly trying to do professional networking via Facebook, but support for such a task is awful my LinkedIn network does not really overlap with my Facebook network my FB network has tons of successful, smart people who know other successful, smart people if a friend of mine recommended someone …
Facebook, Crappy Business, & A Wee Li’l Thing
Bo Peabody wrote a thought-provoking article for Business Insider called “Facebook And Twitter Will Always Be Crappy Businesses“. I had to respond to a few things: It is still too early to tell what brand managers are going to do, particularly on Facebook. You’re talking about a group of businesses (brands and agencies) with highly engrained habits and beliefs after …
Tale of Two Twitters: Information vs Social
I was reading Dave Hornik’s latest post over at VentureBlog and stopped at this sentence: “To P&G, Twitter is a great broadcast medium — it is best for one to many communications that are short bursts of timely information.” I’ve heard others call Twitter an “information network, not a social network” and gather that Twitter itself likes the former term. …
What is your customer acquisition strategy? (startup marketing tactics)
“What is your growth strategy?” It is a classic question from VCs to early-stage consumer Internet companies, and one often difficult to answer at such an early point in a company’s life cycle because you have not yet seen which specific tactics work best. There is usually no silver bullet answer, just a lot of hard work ahead. This post, …
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