Over in the Seattle Biznik community, I got into a discussion about Squeezed Pages (see below). And I came up with a particularly clever turn of phrase, even if I do say so myself! Below are my replies from that discussion, edited a little to keep this as small as possible. But the phrase is:
Just goes to prove the Platinum Rule, which is “There is no Platinum Rule.”
It seems like there are all these rules of marketing and management. There is always somebody telling you that you should do X because of some rule. And then somebody else will come along and tell you that doing X will break another rule. I have always found that when people start quoting rules, it is really time to rethink the project. But now I have the the Platinum Rule to quote.
Ok, here is the phrase in context:
--
Squeezed .vs. Non-Squeezed Web Sites
Non-Squeezed world:
1) Visitors can explore your site without joining first
2) When they join, you gather just the name/email visitor information
3) You send out generic mass mailings
Squeezed world:
1) Site visitors must join your site before they can see anything
2) You gather email and as much other information as you think you can get from site visitors
3) You send personalized mailings to individuals.
How do I say this? A squeezed site is considered slimy by many people. Not that slimy is necessarily wrong, but there is a cost to be paid for employing those tactics.
Modern trends suggest implementing this using transparency and reciprocation.
Visitors are able to play around your site and get to know you before you ask them for their information. And when visitors do give you something (their information), you should give them something. So a more polite version of Squeezed Marketing would be an offer to email them one of four eBooks for signing up on the site. You can then make your response back to that user more personal by using something from the book they chose.
- - -
Overnight I thought of two squeezed sites that are good: The New York Times and LA Times are very quick to make visitors join and ask for a lot of information and they send targeted mass mailings. But somehow it's OK coming from them.
Just goes to prove the Platinum Rule, which is "There is no Platinum Rule". :-)
Showing posts with label Crap. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crap. Show all posts
Friday, February 9, 2007
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Spaces and Want Ads
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I’ve been working on something in my mind and it’s taken a lot of thought to figure it out. But first it seems like I need to get this rant off my chest.
I’ve applied for a job at Microsoft Windows Live Spaces. I especially liked the want ad: “Windows Live Spaces is the world’s largest blogging, photo sharing, and social networking service with over 135 million monthly unique visitors and is available in over 30 countries. Despite its size however, Windows Live Spaces has limited brand recognition in most markets and does not have a deep connection with users as of yet. …”
I can’t believe how many job descriptions make my eyes glaze over by the time I’m on the sixth word. I doubt that you can find a more motivated audience than me and yet sometimes they are just so badly written. Here is a real example of an average want ad:
But I really liked how the Spaces one started with obvious passion about the
product and an acknowledgement that not everything is perfect.
The average want ad can be summed up as:
A few weeks ago I was nibbled by a company that basically wanted me to do the same job that I did around 10 years ago. It was a very high prestige start up, but I just couldn’t go there. Yes, I was qualified by their exacting list, but I would have been miserable by the lack of challenge and lack of growth.
In The Macintosh Way, my hero Guy Kawasaki says, “…Experience is frequently a false god. It is better to hire people who can get you to where you want to be than people who profess to have been there before.”
Kawasaki says to hire people that are passionate, have high bandwidth, have the ability to deal with stress and ambiguity and are high energy. That would certainly make for a job description that wouldn’t glaze my eyes over.
OK, now on to the real posts where I will eventually give you my take on the Spaces issue.
I’ve applied for a job at Microsoft Windows Live Spaces. I especially liked the want ad: “Windows Live Spaces is the world’s largest blogging, photo sharing, and social networking service with over 135 million monthly unique visitors and is available in over 30 countries. Despite its size however, Windows Live Spaces has limited brand recognition in most markets and does not have a deep connection with users as of yet. …”
I can’t believe how many job descriptions make my eyes glaze over by the time I’m on the sixth word. I doubt that you can find a more motivated audience than me and yet sometimes they are just so badly written. Here is a real example of an average want ad:
… enterprise customer communication solutions that enable dynamic conversations between companies … Our interactive communication solution is a blend of advanced multi-channel applications built upon enterprise software. It delivers its services through a software service model. Businesses use their technology to leverage their rich enterprise-level customer data to proactively and personally interact with their customers with timely, relevant information.
But I really liked how the Spaces one started with obvious passion about the
product and an acknowledgement that not everything is perfect.
The average want ad can be summed up as:
We are the perfect company. We have the perfect product. Our people are perfect. You must have demonstrated expertise in being perfect and everything this job might ever need and being able to do the bosses’/teams’ jobs for them would be good, too.
A few weeks ago I was nibbled by a company that basically wanted me to do the same job that I did around 10 years ago. It was a very high prestige start up, but I just couldn’t go there. Yes, I was qualified by their exacting list, but I would have been miserable by the lack of challenge and lack of growth.
In The Macintosh Way, my hero Guy Kawasaki says, “…Experience is frequently a false god. It is better to hire people who can get you to where you want to be than people who profess to have been there before.”
Kawasaki says to hire people that are passionate, have high bandwidth, have the ability to deal with stress and ambiguity and are high energy. That would certainly make for a job description that wouldn’t glaze my eyes over.
OK, now on to the real posts where I will eventually give you my take on the Spaces issue.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Open souce OS - You get what you pay for.
The “My father has a barn, let’s all put on a play!!!” of software operating systems. Or one of the places where the t-shirts have it wrong.
I hate how these religious zealots steal the meaning whenever anybody does anything nice. They claim that Ben Franklin was all about Open Source. Just because people want to give something back to the community doesn’t mean they want to give it all. Read Franklin’s autobiography, he was very clever in how he went about making his fortune and doing good things for society at the same time, not in exclusion to each other.
And I absolutely love the “open source software continue to rival the big players.” They can never give me one example. Netscape was a huge before it was Open Source, but now it has a less that 1% market share. If Linux was going to take off it would have already. Linux market share is 0.37%. Yes, that’s right. The software that is “rivaling” the big players has less than a 1% market share after over 15 years of trying. Linux first came out about the same time as Windows 3.1 did. (Market Share Source = http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2.)
Yes, free is a great thing to college students. It’s very cool to hate Microsoft. Apple computers haven’t been that wonderful lately (4.15% market share). And it makes a person feel so empowered to be writing chunks of operating systems before they’ve graduated from college. Our rebellious lost boys need a wonderland; they need to find Open Source Land where everything is free (especially food and rent) and everybody always does good things for each other and all the problems are equally hard and fun to work on and candy grows on trees.
I know people that worry about this while working at Microsoft. They think that Microsoft’s short term prospects are dim because of open source. And it does seem like the one thing that all the open source people all have in common is a deep dislike of Microsoft. I commiserate. It must really hurt to want to be an operating system programmer more than anything else in your life and the only company that really does it won’t hire you. And it has to be awful to be a competitor to Microsoft, especially if your company needs an operating system. Microsoft was pretty much the only game in town until modern Linux. Actually Microsoft still is the only game in town, but you can make up for spurning them by using Linux with zero cost of goods and some PR.
Doing it for free is just a huge chunk of the problem. Yes, it’s nice to give something back, and there are ways that are 95 times (i.e. Windows market share) more effective. They can make the world better and give something back in Windows world, but it just isn’t considered cool enough. How Junior High does that sound?
But did they ever stop and think about who does get paid at a Linux company? The janitor sure does. None of them would volunteer their time and effort cleaning up because of the glory of open source. The guys that market Linux get paid extremely well. We are talking "high end BMWs" well. They are saving companies like IBM millions of dollars. Managers? Yes, paid very well again. Product Support Phone Answerers? Yes, they get paid pretty well. Program Managers? Not needed, any attempt at managing this program would be ignored. Testers? Not needed, there really isn’t such a thing as formal testing going on (and IMHO, this is part of the reason that the market share is stuck under 1%.) Developers? Not paid. Nothing. They are being used to do almost 100% of the real work and I do not understand why people this smart haven’t figured that they're the only ones not getting paid.
To me, real tragedy is that we live in a time in history where t-shirts are probably the most powerful people and they can effect change on a global level with very little effort. There is a window now that is unprecedented and nobody knows how long it will last. A program they write today could be run by a million Chinese people tomorrow. The Chinese government is already taking steps to protect their populace from us. It's pretty cool to be feared by the largest country on earth.
T-shirts are also some of the most idealistic people on earth, espcially the ones I know that are into open source. Most of them really strive to use their powers for good. But because of the open source movement this opportunity is drained away to things that do not count for much. Some of the smartest people in my generation’s life work are only seen by a fraction of people because it's cool to hate Microsoft. Some of the neediest causes will not get donations because the people that would give to them have put their best efforts in to endeavors where they don’t get paid. And rather than doing something about that Chinese thing, they are worrying about which of 8 different desktop mangers is the best this week.
Rather than empowering the world, open source drains it.
Open Source: This is a term that most people are familiar with, but it's worth re-stating. The open source revolution, where information is freely distributed and editable, is already reshaping a number of industries and upsetting traditional economic and intellectual property models. Wikipedia has very quickly become the world's largest repository of encyclopedic information. Linux and other open source software continue to rival the big players. And looking further down the line, there's the potential for open source science, culture, and the disturbing potential for open
source warfare. -- http://sentientdevelopments.blogspot.com/2007/01/must-know-terms-for-21st-century_11.html
I hate how these religious zealots steal the meaning whenever anybody does anything nice. They claim that Ben Franklin was all about Open Source. Just because people want to give something back to the community doesn’t mean they want to give it all. Read Franklin’s autobiography, he was very clever in how he went about making his fortune and doing good things for society at the same time, not in exclusion to each other.
And I absolutely love the “open source software continue to rival the big players.” They can never give me one example. Netscape was a huge before it was Open Source, but now it has a less that 1% market share. If Linux was going to take off it would have already. Linux market share is 0.37%. Yes, that’s right. The software that is “rivaling” the big players has less than a 1% market share after over 15 years of trying. Linux first came out about the same time as Windows 3.1 did. (Market Share Source = http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2.)
Yes, free is a great thing to college students. It’s very cool to hate Microsoft. Apple computers haven’t been that wonderful lately (4.15% market share). And it makes a person feel so empowered to be writing chunks of operating systems before they’ve graduated from college. Our rebellious lost boys need a wonderland; they need to find Open Source Land where everything is free (especially food and rent) and everybody always does good things for each other and all the problems are equally hard and fun to work on and candy grows on trees.
I know people that worry about this while working at Microsoft. They think that Microsoft’s short term prospects are dim because of open source. And it does seem like the one thing that all the open source people all have in common is a deep dislike of Microsoft. I commiserate. It must really hurt to want to be an operating system programmer more than anything else in your life and the only company that really does it won’t hire you. And it has to be awful to be a competitor to Microsoft, especially if your company needs an operating system. Microsoft was pretty much the only game in town until modern Linux. Actually Microsoft still is the only game in town, but you can make up for spurning them by using Linux with zero cost of goods and some PR.
Doing it for free is just a huge chunk of the problem. Yes, it’s nice to give something back, and there are ways that are 95 times (i.e. Windows market share) more effective. They can make the world better and give something back in Windows world, but it just isn’t considered cool enough. How Junior High does that sound?
But did they ever stop and think about who does get paid at a Linux company? The janitor sure does. None of them would volunteer their time and effort cleaning up because of the glory of open source. The guys that market Linux get paid extremely well. We are talking "high end BMWs" well. They are saving companies like IBM millions of dollars. Managers? Yes, paid very well again. Product Support Phone Answerers? Yes, they get paid pretty well. Program Managers? Not needed, any attempt at managing this program would be ignored. Testers? Not needed, there really isn’t such a thing as formal testing going on (and IMHO, this is part of the reason that the market share is stuck under 1%.) Developers? Not paid. Nothing. They are being used to do almost 100% of the real work and I do not understand why people this smart haven’t figured that they're the only ones not getting paid.
To me, real tragedy is that we live in a time in history where t-shirts are probably the most powerful people and they can effect change on a global level with very little effort. There is a window now that is unprecedented and nobody knows how long it will last. A program they write today could be run by a million Chinese people tomorrow. The Chinese government is already taking steps to protect their populace from us. It's pretty cool to be feared by the largest country on earth.
T-shirts are also some of the most idealistic people on earth, espcially the ones I know that are into open source. Most of them really strive to use their powers for good. But because of the open source movement this opportunity is drained away to things that do not count for much. Some of the smartest people in my generation’s life work are only seen by a fraction of people because it's cool to hate Microsoft. Some of the neediest causes will not get donations because the people that would give to them have put their best efforts in to endeavors where they don’t get paid. And rather than doing something about that Chinese thing, they are worrying about which of 8 different desktop mangers is the best this week.
Rather than empowering the world, open source drains it.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Repost: How to be Remarkable -- What Crap!!!
Monday, January 08, 2007
This is such crap, and the tragedy is that some people take it to heart: This is one of the top 20 (or so) blogs in the world.
Seth's Blog: How to be remarkable
some quotes:
I can not express what bullshit this is.
I think he should re-title the article "How to be an Ass." I don't know anybody who ever did even 3 out of the 10 items that was not called an ass behind their back.
So I should measure my life / worth on the quality of the gossip that surrounds me? That anybody who thinks that the people around them are ostriches/losers is ever going to be remarkable in a positive way? That talented / remarkable people don't lose their jobs, get bad bosses, get screwed by the luck of the draw? That the millions of people that prefer the more quiet path are all losers?
If you look at the comments there are lots of bloggers tracking back and quoting with positive glee and taking these lessons to heart.
Well, here is my list:
How to be Remarkable.
1) You are. Just try to get people to shut up about anything.
If you want to be remarkable in a positive way, then try live up to your potential.
If you are not sure what that is, then it's probably wise to go to http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ to take the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire, something that can always make a person feel good about themself.
This is such crap, and the tragedy is that some people take it to heart: This is one of the top 20 (or so) blogs in the world.
Seth's Blog: How to be remarkable
some quotes:
"Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you're average, and average is for losers"
"So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway...."
"But who loses their jobs at the mass layoffs? Who has trouble finding a new gig? Not the remarkable minority, that's for sure."
I can not express what bullshit this is.
I think he should re-title the article "How to be an Ass." I don't know anybody who ever did even 3 out of the 10 items that was not called an ass behind their back.
So I should measure my life / worth on the quality of the gossip that surrounds me? That anybody who thinks that the people around them are ostriches/losers is ever going to be remarkable in a positive way? That talented / remarkable people don't lose their jobs, get bad bosses, get screwed by the luck of the draw? That the millions of people that prefer the more quiet path are all losers?
If you look at the comments there are lots of bloggers tracking back and quoting with positive glee and taking these lessons to heart.
Well, here is my list:
How to be Remarkable.
1) You are. Just try to get people to shut up about anything.
If you want to be remarkable in a positive way, then try live up to your potential.
If you are not sure what that is, then it's probably wise to go to http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/ to take the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire, something that can always make a person feel good about themself.
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