Ideas
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A simple market-based solution to Apple Maps vs. Google Maps
Charge for them. Let users be customers and not just consumers. Let demand engage supply the old fashioned way: by paying for goods and services, and making the sellers directly accountable to buyers in a truly competitive marketplace. Here’s the thing. We, the customers of Apple and the consumers of both Apple’s and Google’s free… Continue reading
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The only issue that matters
Geologists have an informal name for the history of human influence on the Earth. They call it the Anthropocene. It makes sense. We have been raiding the earth for its contents, and polluting its atmosphere, land and oceans for as long as we’ve been here, and it shows. By any objective perspective other than our… Continue reading
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Kidding around
Just discovered YouReputation while checking on what Drazen Pantic has been up to. (I met Drazen a decade ago while researching public Wi-Fi in New York for Linux Journal.) YouReputation is Drazen’s “viral search” engine. Here is the top result in a search for “John Hagel”: Thu Aug 23 06:33:50 2012 Viral Probability: 0.7092 Sentiment: 31%… Continue reading
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The final demographic
I worked in retailing, wholesaling, journalism and radio when I was 18-24. I co-founded an advertising agency when I was 25-34. Among the things I studied while working in that age bracket were Nielsen and Arbitron ratings for radio and TV. Everything those companies had to say was fractioned into age brackets. The radio station… Continue reading
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Adaptive myopia
When I was a kid I had near-perfect vision. I remember being able to read street signs and license plates at a distance, and feeling good about that. But I don’t think that was exceptional. Unless we are damaged in some way, the eyes we are born with tend to be optically correct. Until… what?… Continue reading
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Why we have Silicon Valley
My son remembers what I say better than I do. One example is this: I uttered it in some context while wheezing my way up a slope somewhere in the Great Blue Hill Reservation. Except it wasn’t there. Also I didn’t say that. Exactly. Or alone. He tells me it came up while we were… Continue reading
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Missing Elinor Ostrom
Through my work over the years I have often been directed to the worlds of Elinor Ostrom, and toward speaking to her in person. Alas, the latter choice is now off the table. She died yesterday, at 78, of pancreatic cancer. On Monday evening, in the Q&A during my talk, I was asked about the… Continue reading
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The absent market for personal data
I was interviewed for a story recently. (It’s still in the mill.) In the correspondence that followed, the reporter asked me to clarify a statement: “that the idea of selling your data is nuts.” I didn’t remember exactly what I said, so I responded, I think what I meant was this: 1) The use value… Continue reading
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After Facebook fails
Making the rounds is The Facebook Fallacy, a killer essay by Michael Wolff in MIT Technology Review. The gist: At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium… Continue reading
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An AR treat
Enticed by Maarten Lens-Fitzgerald (aka @DutchCowboy) in this tweet, I fired up Layar (an AR — Augmented Reality — browser from the company by that name, which he co-founded), and aimed it at the cover of my new book. What followed is chronicled in this Flickr set. Start here, then follow the links at the… Continue reading
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Off to a good start
Today is the official release date for The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge, my new book from Harvard Business Review Press. It’s been available from Amazon for the last couple of weeks, and is already doing well. There are two reviews there so far (both 5 stars), and yesterday Oliver Marks gave the book… Continue reading
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Edging toward the fully licensed world
I own a lot of books and music CDs — enough to fill many shelves. Here’s just one: They are relatively uncomplicated possessions. There are no limits (other than mine) on who can read my books, or what else I can do with them, shy of abusing fairly obvious copyright laws. (For example, I can’t… Continue reading
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For personal data, use value beats sale value
Should you manage your personal data just so you can sell it to marketers? (And just because somebody’s already buying it anyway, why not?) Those are the barely-challenged assumptions in Start-Ups Seek to Help Users Put a Price on Their Personal Data, by Joshua Brustein in The New York Times. He writes, People have been willing to give… Continue reading
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Discovering Raditaz
Read here about Raditaz, which I hadn’t heard about before. It’s a competitor to Pandora. Some differences: unlmited skips, no ads, geo-location. I started out by setting up three “stations,” based on three artists: Lowell George, Seldom Scene and Mike Auldridge. I’m on the Mike Auldridge station now, and guess what comes up? Dig: Not… Continue reading
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What I’d like to say on the subway
When I was young, New York subways were dirty, noisy and with little risk of improvement. But, even if the maps weren’t readable (as with this 1972 example), there were lots of them. Now the subways are much nicer, on the whole, and being improved. But there is now a paucity of maps. In fact,… Continue reading
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No 2 SOPA
Today I’m in solidarity with Web publishers everywhere joining the fight against new laws that are bad for business — and everything else — on the Internet. I made my case in If you hate big government, fight SOPA. A vigorous dialog followed in the comments under that. Here’s the opening paragraph: Nobody who opposes… Continue reading
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Remembering Judith
I got to know Judith Burton when she was still Judith Clarke and Senior VP Corporate Marketing for Novell, in 1987. Novell had just bought a company called CXI, which had been a client of Hodskins Simone & Searls, the Palo Alto advertising agency in which I was a partner. By that time HS&S had… Continue reading
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What could be more social than a real marketplace?
When we say “social” these days, we mostly mean the sites and services of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare and other commercial entities. Not talking on the phone or in person. Not meeting at a café. Not blogging, or emailing or even texting. Those things are all retro and passé. Worse, they’re not what marketers get… Continue reading