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May 2007

The Archives

• 05.31.07
  Theory Week: Mahalo Principle
  Brands and Marketing, Great Thinkers, Social Media

  I have been reading a lot of Duncan Watts recently and I’ve been getting into network analysis theory. Duncan wrote Six Degrees, a book I will review at a later date, and he also penned a recent article in the New York Times discussing ’cumulative advantage,’ or the idea of the rich getting richer. The point of this post is to suggest renaming this concept the ’Mahalo Principle.’ Here is why’ Undoubtedly you have heard someone allude to the ’rich keep getting richer’ - It sure seems that way. Turns out that there is a factual basis for this relating ...
  
  
• 05.30.07
  Just a Test
  Pop Culture, Social Media

  So what do all these words have in common? How powerful are they? hidden palms, the heartbreak kid, leap castle, the next best thing, brooke marks, google gears, nathan sawaya, benji schwimmer, taylor handley, museum near san francisco california united states, blue moon, lisa ann walter, brian Hargrove, ufl, united football league, so you think you can dance judges, dirtyscottsdale.com, kobe Bryant, cynthia Rodriguez, wade robson, craft in America, sam maloof, alex Rodriguez, fred Thompson, dirty Scottsdale, sid and nancy, caroline lyders, stray rod, spelling bee, stanley hotel, waverley street palo alto ca 94306, amber heard, brookemarks.com, look who’s talking now, ...
  
  
• 05.30.07
  Theory Week: The Peter Principle
  Great Thinkers

  The Peter Principle, formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter, states "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence." The gist is that employees of a business or organization are normally promoted to their highest level of competence, after which further promotion raises them to a level at which they may become incompetent A key concept is that an employee's incompetence is not necessarily a result of a higher-ranking position being "more difficult." Instead, the cause may be that the new position is sufficiently different to require separate skill sets, which the employee may not possess. A common ...
  
  
• 05.30.07
  Google Gears Announced: Download it Here
  Social Media

  Oh those innovators at Google ’“ and you were thinking of shorting the stock! Google will be announcing tomorrow its launch of Google Gears, an open source technology for building Web applications that can work offline. The technology will allow users of computers, phones and other devices to use Web services like e-mail, online calendars or news readers while intermittently connected to the Web, or even completely offline. Google hopes to use its platform to create standards that would provide developers with APIs for building offline functionality into web (online) based applications. According to Google the Gears tool will work with ...
  
  
• 05.29.07
  Theory Week: Girls Are Evil
  Pop Culture

  Here is proof for the entire male species that girls (women) are evil: This is all meant in good fun of course! Thanks to Theo for letting me steal this
  
  
• 05.28.07
  Theory Week: Say’s Law
  Entrepreneurship, Great Thinkers

  This week I plan to talk about some theories I have come across recently and that I think are worth mentioning. The first one that comes to mind is Say's Law, which states ’Demand cannot exist without Supply.’ I was thinking of Say’s Law in the context of an encounter my best friend had with someone just the other day. When the two met and started talking shop, my friend introduced himself as an 'entrepreneur' whereas this individual introduced himself as an 'inventor.' What’s the difference? To me an entrepreneur is someone who sees a void or an opportunity that currently exists in ...
  
  
• 05.25.07
  Advertising’s New Landscape
  Social Media, Venture Capital

  Really interesting article in today's Wall Street Journal called Advertising's Brave New World. The best quote of the article states: ’The agency of the future will be half software company and half entertainment company because that’s the new landscape.’ I couldn’t agree more. It also occurred to me today that there is a decent amount of crossover between what some interactive advertising execs do and the role of VCs. To remain competitive both need to understand the current technology landscape, network like crazy, work with risky upstarts to gain competitive advantage and need to be able to blend communications and technology skills. I ...
  
  
• 05.23.07
  The Day StumbleUpon Decided to Become Lame
  Business Models, Social Media, Social Networking

  I used to really enjoy using StumbleUpon as a means for social book-marking, learning about new sites and helping to drive traffic to my blog. Around April 17th, StumbleUpon removed the audience feature. Pronet Advertising has a nice write up about all this. The reason cited for the move was that Audience apparently had an adverse effect on SEO. Lame. Shortly after April 17th I realized that the only reason I had previously chosen StumbleUpon over del.icio.us was because StumbleUpon gave me incentive for using it. One a given day 15-25% of my blog’s traffic came from StumbleUpon and the amount ...
  
  
• 05.23.07
  Materialism Deficiency: Not Necessarily All Good.
  My Experiences, Pop Culture

  I blogged a while back about how for my generation, furniture has become a commodity good. Furniture now has liquidity, in contrast to generations’ past. Furniture can be purchased cheaply at Ikea or bought used over services like Craigslist. Something else occurred to me today and I am not sure how I feel about it. Back in grade school one of the favorite questions teachers would ask is ’If your house was burning down and you could only take one possession, what would it be?’ For as long as I can remember my answer was, family photos (I don’t think pets ...
  
  
• 05.22.07
  Spyware’s Savior: Rep. Zoe Lofgren
  Business Models, Social Media

  Today the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation cracking down on the fraudulent use of spyware, setting a five year sentence for anyone caught using the subversive software "in furtherance" of a federal criminal offense. See legislation here. However, notably absent from the Internet Spyware (I-SPY) Prevention Act (sponsored by Silicon Valley Rep. Zoe Lofgren) is legislation allowing the government to regulate software companies. Why is this important? Lawmakers were hoping to force software manufacturers to get consent before uploading programs onto the computers of unsuspecting internet users (you and me). In swooped Zoe Lofgren like the Silver Surfer, and successfully ...
  
  

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