Vivid Curiosity

I’m borrowing the term focal point from game theory. But my point is web 2.0 companies don’t become interesting until their community becomes a focal point for an important segment of society.

It’s like being a watering hole. You’re the place to be, a gathering point. People can gather anywhere, but around the watering hole seems to be a natural place. And once that trend starts, it self perpetuates for a while.

Now watering holes are pretty good focal points, especially if:
1. They are the only source of water around
2. They are communal/public property
3.  Water remains highly useful

Now point 3 seems a little silly but bear with me. I think that successful Web 2.0 websites are a lot like watering holes. They just need to monetize. The water is still free, but they try to make money off of numerous side benefits to being a watering hole. Often they try advertising, sponsorships or other ideas. Some even let people set up shop near their watering hole (think of the iPhone app store).

You can see that MySpace lost on point 1 when Facebook got big. But I’m surprised at how little resources some Web 2.0 companies use to try and remain a focal point in society.

I’m also surprised at how often people with large bankrolls, venture capitalists, investment banks etc assume that something will remain a focal point. Sometimes these things just come and go. Think about all the clubs that used to be hot, but now aren’t.

I think bars and clubs are another interesting case study of focal points involving social status. “The place to be and be seen” is an aura some Web 2.0 sites have as well. But that’s a post for another day.

So Project Natal sounds sorta cool, being able to play video games without a controller. But I mean, you really look a spaz in front of your TV. Plus I imagine hurting people and things everywhere. I think Wii might be cooler still.

My favorite part of video though is the Chuck Norris question around the 3:03 mark. How many push ups can Chuck Norris do? I love how they don’t give away the answer. Personally, I think it’s a trick question. Chuck Norris doesn’t push himself up, he pushes the Earth down.

I’ve seen a few people creating or asking for a “list” of social media destintaions to upload their content. And while I always am happy to add SlideShare to the list, I really fee like there shouldn’t be a list. It should maybe be a handful of places you name, if the list is more companies than you can remember, it’s clearly too big of a list. 

In social media you want your content in one authoratative place. Sure you can try a few places and see what works best, but please don’t try to upload it everywhere. You want to promote that place, send it links, build up a reputation. It’s much better to have one place with 10,000 views than 10 places with 1,000 views. I can’t imagine there being much extra traffic from each additional social media platform.

Even if all you care about is the total view count, who wants to spend their day uploading content and re-entering meta data? Doesn’t that just like a bad day?

What’d you do today? “Oh, I uploaded my slideshow/document/video to 10 different sites today, I hope I get a lot of views. ” Doesn’ t that just sound spammy?

So the Adamo By Dell micro-site is pretty cool. I definitely like the positioning. I like the high fashion models, the black & white look and feel. I even like the navigation bars: Discover, Admire, Commit. When was the last time a nav-bar alone made me want to click on the buy page? Though I wish you could order right on the page rather than having to go to dell.com. I like how the main co-branding is Adamo by Dell. Because in this case, Adamo is sexy and has some social currency to it. Dell is just along for the ride.

The story behind the product is nice (according to the marketing video), it definitely defines its own space. It seems to scoff at being compared with a MacBook Air. They’ve strayed away from Apple’s all white, smooth finished look and gone with different textures and patterns. But they definitely have some subtle direct hits against other premium laptops.

Adamo has enough ports to be productive, it isn’t flimsy or ‘too light’. (or ‘like a toy’ as they put it). They call the materials honest, and say they have a temperature to them. All in all, this laptop has soul. I liked the m1330 (yes I have one, so perhaps I’m biased) and this is a great follow up. I’ve been wondering who was going to step up to Apple. I think Dell is hitting its stride in both this design and marketing campaign. Now where are some sexy commercials…

If you flip a fair coin and it comes up heads twelve times, what is the probability of it coming up heads the thirteenth time? 

Well, you’d tell me, it’s fifty fifty just like the previous twelve flips. And as statistics teachers say all the time, “the coin doesn’t remember that it came up heads twelve times before.” They say each flip is “independent” from one another, and from there on out we base a buttload of the statistics world. (Probably more than a single butt at that). 

But what if the coin remembers?

Meaning what if there isn’t independence? What if each time the coin comes up heads the next time it is more likely to come up heads again? So if it comes up heads 99 times, it is very very likely to come up heads for the 100th flip. Doesn’t that change all the rules? And what if when the streak is broken, it goes back to 50-50? It means we can see huge streaks that simply flatten out and die. Or worse we can see several big streaks move in one direction and then precipitously drop. And all this volatility would be normal.

So, moving towards my point, one of the many buttloads reliant on ‘independence’ include to many “real world” situations such as finance, stock prices, economics and forecasting. And what happens to our models when things aren’t independent? 

What happens when we have herding? What about network externalities? What about something being cool? For some period of place and time, for every person who buys an iPhone, the next person is slightly more likely to buy an iPhone?

It’s a good idea to diversify when you invest. But exactly how much diversification is there when Asia’s economy is largely dependent on the US economy? It’s really nice that everything is online and it makes life easier. So you keep betting heads and put everything you can online. But what happens when the internet is down or there is a power outage? Is it worth the everyday convenience only to be uber-screwed once in a while? Don’t we get lulled into this false sense of security? Yes, if the coin actually remembers, then every once in a while we get to be unpredicably uber-screwed.

Sounds a bit like what might be what might have happened before this market crash right? False sense of security and prosperity? 

**I’m not suggesting this is the sole cause, but I do think a lot of people took hidden risks, or weren’t fully accountable for the risks they were taking.

And they say advertising is dead. So not true. Thank you to my friend Sarah Dryden for finding and sharing this. It’s one of those live ads that are just so cool. Not sure if they sold any new phones that day, but it was some major brand building and drove tons of traffic to their youtube page and probably other campaign pages. As Sarah put it “Thank you T-Mobile, and Saatchi & Saatchi for making life joyous, even when you’re trying to sell something”

I also really enjoyed the “Making Of…”

My thoughts:
I love how it starts with just one person and slowly spreads. Out of the 400 hired dancers, I would say 100 more joined in spontaneously. And like most things in life, what seems to natural and graceful involved a lot of practice, patience and hard work. I also love the documentary style it was shot in. Very different feel than the xbox commercial I posted a in Sept. I hope Saatchi & Saatchi have a good campaign to back up this great piece.

Many internet companies, especially content driven companies that are free services monetized through advertising, tend to subsidize third world users. These users can make up a bulk of a site’s traffic, but create very few monetization opportunities. Friendster for example is huge in the Philippines, and their plan for US & European advertising dollars has gone out the window. There’s also Orkut, which is big in Brazil.

This subsidization is espeecially true if a site has just enough US & European traffic (or traffic that comes with high paying advertising dollars) that the users from the developing world are overlooked. Because if you’re friendster you have to make a tough decision on hatching a plan to either attract more traffic from US & others, or how to monetize with traffic from the Philippines. If you’re scraping by already, it’s tempting to overlook the stream of traffic that doesn’t pay for itself.

Flying into work yesterday morning I was surprised to see Zappos at the airport. More specifically, in the shoe/stuff tray at the security line. I snapped a photo on my phone after I got through security, yes the officer looked at me a little funny.

I really like this, it fits into Zappos’ brand personality. It’s fun and a little quirky. Also perfect for the holiday season.

So what’s the best thing to do during a global economic depression? Oh I know, you could launch an ad campaign where the lone calorie in your diet soft drink commits suicide. Not only it sound morbid, the ads depict the single calorie trying to off itself in multiple ways at a time. 

Blech