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May 13th, 2008, 06:19pm
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The New York Times recently ran a great story / interview with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark in which he addresses some of the issues arising from eBay’s lawsuit against the company. eBay bought a 28% stake in the online classifieds site back in August 2004, a purchase that seemed to line-up much better with the online auctioneers core strategy compared to the ill-timed purchase of Skype. But eBay wasn’t content to stop with Craigslist and bought Marktplaats.nl later that year, launched Kijiji in March 2005, and rounded it all off with the purchase of Gumtree a few months later.
And while these latter three acquisitions all focused on the European market, in July of 2007 eBay decided to extend Kijiji into the US and Canadian markets, thus representing a direct challenge to Craigslist. The move was a bit strange given the dominance of Craigslist in the US and has led to a rather acrimonious relationship between the two companies. As a result Craigslist is trying to buy back its shares from eBay, and in a recent lawsuit filed against it, is accused of trying to minimize eBay’s influence on the company. Newmark’s response: “Sadly, we have an uncomfortably conflicted shareholder in our midst, one that is obsessed with dominating online classifieds for the purpose of maximizing its own profits.”
And therein lies the perceived disconnect between the MO held by the folks at Craigslist and the profit-seeking orientation of eBay. Read More »
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May 13th, 2008, 05:14pm
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Despite the hype around government agencies that have begun blogging, I’m not a huge fan. Quite a few government agencies (especially in the US) have started them but, in my opinion, very few do a good job at creating something other than a new medium for press releases. A blog that doesn’t acknowledge the responses or comments that it attracts is doomed for irrelevance. Luckily there’s a couple of government agencies are using blogs to open up real, two-way communication channels between their staff and the citizens they serve. The best of the bunch being the Transportation Safety Authority’s Evolution of Security blog.
I made these same comments last week at a presentation I did for the 2008 Government Web Managers conference and made specific reference to the blog hosted by the US Office of Citizen Services and Communications, Gov Gab. It’s a good first step in terms of providing reliable tips on service-related issues but I noted that what they might want to do is take a page from the TSA and ask their readers what the big ticket items they should be addressing are.
Low and behold they’ve listened (!) and today they’ve asked US citizens to tell them what they want their blog to address. So here’s your chance to get them to listen and focus on your ideas, complaints and concerns - so join the conversation here.
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May 13th, 2008, 01:19pm
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I just wanted to provide a heads up to wikinomics readers about a great resource on the web they might not know about - the “Interviews with Innovators” series by Jon Udell, available on the ITConversations Network. I must first note that all of the interviews are in audio file format, which I generally find annoying (I greatly prefer text files that I can scan through), but this is one of those cases where the content can be worth the time commitment. To quote the site itself, Udell uses the conversations to explore:
a wide range of issues at the intersection of technology and society. These conversations are sometimes deeply technical, sometimes broadly social, and frequently both. They always aim to connect the dots.
As of today, the most recent (and the one I’m listening to right now) is an interview with Lucas Gonze reflecting on how we all discover, share, and experience music in the digital age. Others of interest include Deepak Singh (co-founder of Bioscreencast.com) discussing the Web 2.0 in science, Tim Spalding (founder of LibraryThing.com) on a social catalog for book lovers, Carl Malamud (a 4.5/5 star rating!) discussing online access to Public Information, and particularly Adrian Holovaty, who recently launched a site modelled after ChicagoCrime.org called Everyblock.com- hyperlocal news and data across a variety of cities.
Read More »
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May 13th, 2008, 11:27am
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For those that might have missed it, I just wanted to give a heads up on a Wall Street Journal article posted yesterday by L. Gordon Crovitz: From Wikinomics to the Government 2.0. This is a very exciting area of development, and we hope to collaborate with all of you in the future to revolutionize the way that government works. While you’re at it, you may want to read about five of the things I have learned about collaboration.
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May 13th, 2008, 10:08am
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Let me preface this post with a warning - rockets are dangerous. Please be extra careful if you even think about experimenting with them. Now onto the fun stuff…
With the exception of solid fuel model rockets, actual rocket engines have been out of the reach (and budget) of most DIY’s. However, there’s an older rocket technology called a pulse jet engine which is making a comeback amongst do it yourselvers. It was first invented by Germany and used in their notorious V-1 rockets (buzz bombs) in WWII. One reason they’re popular today is that they can be built with no moving parts. Here’s more info on how they work.
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May 13th, 2008, 08:07am
Yesterday, The Globe and Mail had a piece about a new company that’s trying to change the way we search online:
SAN FRANCISCO — Powerset on Sunday unveiled tools for searching Wikipedia that use conversational phrasing instead of keywords, marking the first step of its challenge to established Web search services such as Google.
Powerset’s technology breaks down the meaning of words and sentences into related concepts, freeing users from always needing to type the exact words they want to find. Read More »
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May 13th, 2008, 07:59am
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Click on the Dilbert tag below to see past mash ups on this site… or go to Dilbert.com to see the original and all the other mash ups that have been done.
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May 12th, 2008, 04:42pm
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The latest addition to the Grand Theft Auto series hit store shelves just about 2 weeks ago and has enjoyed enormous success. The game smashed previous sales records set only a few months ago by Halo 3 and has recorded well over half a billion dollars revenue. “Official figures released yesterday by publisher Take-Two Interactive show the game blew past already-high industry analyst expectations, bringing in some $500 million dollars in first-week sales.”
In the GTA game players navigate around a ‘fictional’ city (based on NY in the latest edition) and complete a variety of tasks. In the past the one of the challenges of GTA, outside of the traditional story line, has been discovering all of the little tricks and secret missions in the game. For GTA IV however the latter has become infinitely easier. The reason being there has been an an explosion of activity on the GTA IV “google powered wiki mashup” or Grand Theft Auto Hood. IGN has created a site that allows gamers to do a number of things which include navigate Liberty City using google maps, tag points of interest, missions, vehicles, secrets etc…, collaboratively develop a gaming guide in a wiki and interact with other gamers in the forums. Top contributers are identified by the number of edits the make to the site and the number of things they ‘discover’ in the game.
Read More »
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May 12th, 2008, 03:20pm
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Ad Week had a great article by Brian Morrissey go up today called “These Brands Build Community: How these web 2.0 companies build good relationships to build their brands.” Here a few choice quotes from the piece (the one from Kalmikoff is my favorite - just managing parameters is a great way to think about wikinomics strategy):
“We think our brand is going to be different because we want people to feel there’s a real person they’re connecting with, whether it’s when they call us or through Twitter or any way they come in contact with us” - Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and probably the only CEO who gave away shoes via Twitter this week.
“All we do is try to respond to what users are asking for. That’s how we set our priorities. Users aren’t asking us to run ads, so it doesn’t come onto our radar.” - Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist
“By choosing to invest in consumers over advertising, Google is a living example of a deeper truth: The future of communications as advantage lies in talking less and listening more.” - Umair Haque, Havas Media Lab Director. Check out the bubblegeneration blog.
Read More »
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May 12th, 2008, 11:34am
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As part of my research on next generation customer experiences, I was re-reading a great book by Pine and Gilmore called The Experience Economy. It was chapter seven that particularly piqued my interest, notably the section on the four forms of theatre - platform, matching, street and improv as they laid out in figure 7.1 (I have quickly re-created it in the link below).
four-forms-of-theatre.ppt
The basic idea I am building towards is that wikinomics and collaborative experiences is about moving more and more of the business away from platform theatre and into improv - with street and matching theatre being steps along the way. But before getting there, some background on each is required.
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May 12th, 2008, 09:54am
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Last week I gave a keynote at Case Western Reserve University, as part of the President’s Symposium on Collaborative Technology and the Future of Education. I’ve posted my slides on slideshare.com and I’m working with the event organizers to make the video of my talk available here on wikinomics.com.
The event was organized by Lev Gonick, Case Western’s CIO and a trailblazer in educational innovation. Check out Lev’s blog for an amazing compendium of breakthrough projects. Among other things, Lev and his team are introducing the use of QR codes across the campus — to the best of my knowledge they are the first North American college or university to do so. According to Lev, “The codes are found everywhere from transit stops, where students can scan them to see when the next bus would arrive, to applications on Facebook and MySpace, to the student newspaper where QVC recently began rolling out its own marketing campaign with Mobile Discovery.”
Read More »
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May 12th, 2008, 09:24am
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You might have to read Ian’s post on the Dumbest Generation to understand this, but it’s like jerk store - everyone except Mike gets it. As always, you can see the original on the Dilbert home page.
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May 11th, 2008, 05:26pm
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I must first acknowledge my personal bias on this topic…
As a member of the Net Generation research team at nGenera (and a member of said generation myself), I am a firm believer in the tremendous accomplishments and potential of the Net Generation (those born between 1977 and 1997). So, I must say that when I first heard of the upcoming launch of Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein’s book: The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30), I was quite intrigued.
While I cannot yet comment in-depth on the quality of Bauerlein’s research or the content of his book, I want to highlight the book’s launch this Thursday (I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy), and I also want to give our Wikinomics readers the opportunity to weigh-in with their opinions on Bauerlein’s thesis here. Bauerlein will also be addressing your questions here, this Wednesday at noon. Read More »
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May 10th, 2008, 10:25pm
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Next week, I’m delighted to moderate a panel that includes some of my favourite bloggers…and Denis. Also featured on the panel are Mathew Ingram, Anastasia Goodstein, Leigh Himel, and Sean Moffitt. I’ve added all the links to the blogroll on the bottom right of this page.
Here are some interesting recent posts from each. Mathew teaches us an important lesson about “accepting changes” before sending your business plan to a VC. You know, to avoid the people you want money from to read stuff like:
- “Segal used to work for Microsoft so skip the name dropping, save it for the afternoon meeting, they are clueless about Redmond.”
- “When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them”
- “I’d delete this section since we don’t have these features on the roadmap and haven’t figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won’t catch this.”
- “VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard.”
Read More »
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May 10th, 2008, 09:46am
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May 9th, 2008, 05:46pm
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Ok, personal banking information is about as private as it gets right? Wrong. Turns out, bloggers like this, this, this, this , this, this, this, and this are sharing their personal finances and net worth with anyone who cares to read about it. For example, the author of the The Money Blog posts a bar chart of their net worth on every page of their site ($257,939 as of May 9th, 2009 in case anyone was curious).
It’s one thing to share information about what music you’re listening to via a widget, but would people really use a widget to display financial information? Well, 23% of people are apparently interested in having a widget that could display the current balance from their bank account.
Read More »
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May 9th, 2008, 01:15pm
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A few of the places where wikinomics is popping up in the blogosphere:
Would you hire a social media strategist? Part 3. This is a really great report from Kevin Lim, a doctoral student at the University of Buffalo. Just take a trip around his site, it’s worth it.
Are behind the firewall social networks doomed? by Gia Lyons.
PBS, Higher Education, and Museums on the TellHistory weblog.
Time to wake up by the Real Estate Zealot.
Connecting wikinomics and Buddhism by Jeff Zeiders.
Facebook and hooking up by Tullian Tchividjian.
Some things I’ve learned this year by Derek Sivers.
It’s getting crowded by Bob Sprankle.
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May 8th, 2008, 02:49pm
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Hagai mentioned the new Dilbert Mash up tool a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d take a shot at one along the lines of wikinomics+Dilbert. Here goes…
Notably, there’s a 92% chance your life will improve if you go to the Dilbert site and vote for it… the original is on the main page (May 8th).
(Note: I’m becoming addicted to this thing. Here’s a go at May 9th)
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May 8th, 2008, 02:21pm
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A while ago I wrote a blog post on Wal-Mart and its failed social networking endeavours. Many comments I’ve received regarding that post pointed out that Wal-Mart, in general, is not a very well liked brand. Therefore, regardless of what they do, they would never succeed in that type of open environment.
Although I understand that point and agree with it to a certain extent, I do not believe that it’s impossible for companies who don’t have the best reputation offline to do well in an online environment such as social networking. Through my research I’ve come across a surprising example of one company that has done incredibly well online; a company whose success is quite unexpected.
Read More »
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May 8th, 2008, 12:57pm
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When looking at traditional economic models, there is perfect competition at one end of the spectrum and monopoly at the other. Many economists love the idea of perfect competition, and consider it to enable the efficient allocation of resources and the maximization of social welfare. The rub is that in the perfectly competitive model it is impossible for firms to earn abnormal profits in the long-run - everyone ends up with zero economic profit (or “normal” profit if you prefer). In turn, the strategic objective of many leaders is to get their organization as close to being a monopoly provider as possible without going to jail within the boundaries of a healthy, competitive marketplace (i.e. leverage differentation, economies of scale, barriers to entry, etc.).
This can make the concept of wikinomics a scary thing, as it is far more closely associated with abundance than scarcity, and by extension far more with perfect competition than monopoly. Rather than seeing an opportunity for expansion, many business leaders simply see an explosion of potential competition and margin erosion as new technology (among other things) erodes pillars that have traditionally held barriers to entry in place - so they fight it tooth and nail. But there is definitely an alternative perspective. To quote a good read recently posted on the long tail blog:
Every abundance creates a new scarcity.
Read More »
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