Daily Success

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Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:58:35 -0500

"Flirting is the gentle art of making someone feel attractive."

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:52:37 -0400

“Flirting is the gentle art of making someone feel attractive.”

Daily Overview for October 2, 2009 (Today) Quickie If you take a more impersonal point of view now,...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:37:28 -0400

Daily Overview for October 2, 2009 (Today)

Quickie

If you take a more impersonal point of view now, you’ll learn a lesson in maturity.

Overview

Your job is more demanding than usual right now but that’s not the worst thing in the world. In fact, if you play your cards right, you might end up with a promotion, raise or commendation

Marketing

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:35:13 -0400

Marketing

"Brands are the people that work on them."

Mon, 04 May 2009 14:46:36 -0400

“Brands are the people that work on them.”

- via tim armstrong interview - ad age http://adage.com/brightcove/lineup.php?lineup=21520198001

"Winners make commitments, losers make promises."

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 02:40:18 -0400

“Winners make commitments, losers make promises.””

"There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine."

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:53:18 -0400

“There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine.”

- Logan Pearsall Smith

That's a little too real.

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 03:15:01 -0400

So weird, I just started watching The Wire too. Hammered out first season earlier this week, and spent or wasted my weekend with season two. 8 episodes in a row today…

baxterp:

So…. my brother and I decided we no longer wanted to be the last two people to see The Wire and have been sitting here watching the first couple episodes. I just got on facebook for a second, only to see a status message from my next door neighbor posted a few minutes ago that two people in the building OD’d — and he overheard a police officer say to another, “What a mess…”

"Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself."

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 23:57:14 -0500

“Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself.”

- Good Will Hunting - Robin Williams

"Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:17:04 -0500

“Virtue and vice are not the same, even if they undergo the same torment.”

- Saint Augustine (via whokilled)

lebren: Automakers Seek $14 Billion More in Aid -...

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:16:31 -0500

lebren:

Automakers Seek $14 Billion More in Aid - NYTimes.com

Graham and I once had a conversation in which we imagined a vacant Renaissance Center (the irony of such a name now!) being transformed into high-rise, low-income housing. But really if GM goes under, what will become of the Renaissance Center? Multi-tenant office space? With many former car factories being transformed into cheap movie production sites, could the Renaissance center become the respective corporate office location for the expanding Michigan film industry? The thing pretty much is the Detroit skyline.

kenyatta: bradofarrell: GPOAGW

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:11:05 -0500

kenyatta:

bradofarrell:

GPOAGW

lebren: abbyjean: “The constant paranoia that women are made to...

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:09:29 -0500

lebren:

abbyjean:

“The constant paranoia that women are made to feel for having a period is ridiculous. Is the world really going to come to an end if there is a little bit of blood on our clothing, or our sheets? Will it cause people to go running down the street screaming bleeding woman. bleeding woman, lock up your first born there is a bleeding woman? It seems the only time I hear about menstruation is when someone is pointing out the best way to hide all evidence of its existence as though it is not a perfectly natural occurrence. What is it about my monthly bleeding that is so vile, that the only thing I can read, see, or hear about it, involves stuffing something in my vagina . It makes me just want to tell the world, I’m on my period deal with it.” (womanist musings)

"The Brand Collective. It’s the new secret sauce."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:08:34 -0500

“The Brand Collective. It’s the new secret sauce.”

- Adam Hanft, Millions Downloaded vs. Billions Sold: Apple’s New Brand Collective Changes the McDonald’s Game — Huff Po, 2/18/09

Great piece from my friend Adam Hanft on the importance of open platforms, from a marketer’s perspective. I’m left dreaming of the possibilities of an open oatmeal platform…
(via mokoyfman)

Want Content? "Pick One"

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:07:42 -0500

rickyv:

A meeting with the super smart Avner Ronen of Boxee yesterday, combined with reading coverage of the Pirate Bay trial and the 30 Rock “McFlurrygate” has got me thinking on overdrive about the future of video content.

In a conversation last night with my buddy Aaron, we came up with a simple rule called “Pick One.” While certainly not groundbreaking, it’s an easy way to think about the future of entertainment.

I’ve seen a lot of folks living inside the insular tech world develop the attitude that they deserve their content free of:

- cost
- time/focus consuming advertising
- product placement

This led to the “pick one” theory. For a sustainable content production model, the consumer has to pick one of those. I hate to play the old media asshole here, but an episode of Lost isn’t going to get made with none of the above.

"In essence, the nation’s biggest employers of unskilled labor often leave workers having to feed..."

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:03:56 -0500

“In essence, the nation’s biggest employers of unskilled labor often leave workers having to feed from the public trough. In 2004, a year in which Wal-Mart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer’s California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. Other studies have revealed widespread use of publicly funded health care by Wal-Mart employees in numerous states. In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Wal-Mart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children.”

- America on $195 a Week | Mother Jones (via lebren)

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:02:11 -0500

Yelp and the Business of Extortion 2.0:

kenyatta:

“Hi, this is Mike from Yelp,” the voice would say. “You’ve had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You’ve had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those.”

This wasn’t your average sales pitch. At least, not the kind that John, an East Bay restaurateur, was used to. He was familiar with Yelp.com, the popular San Francisco-based web site in which any person can write a review about nearly any business. John’s restaurant has more than one hundred reviews, and averages a healthy 3.5-star rating. But when John asked Mike what he could do about his bad reviews, he recalls the sales rep responding: “We can move them. Well, for $299 a month.” John couldn’t believe what the guy was offering. It seemed wrong.

Yelp officials deny that they move negative reviews, although such allegations have surfaced many times before. The issue is even addressed on the web site’s Frequently Asked Questions page. Chief Operating Officer Geoff Donaker said advertisers and sales representatives don’t have the ability to move or remove negative reviews. “We wouldn’t be in business very long if we started duping customers,” he said.

But Donaker’s denials are challenged by nine local business owners and also by a former contract employee who worked with Yelp in its early days. That person, who is still close to some Yelp employees and only agreed to be interviewed if granted anonymity, said several sales reps have told him they promised to move reviews to get businesses to advertise. “It’s not illegal or unethical,” he said they told him. “We’re just helping the little guy. It doesn’t hurt them, it benefits them.”

Why being a hit on iTunes (and Hulu) doesn’t matter yet

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:57:19 -0500

Why being a hit on iTunes (and Hulu) doesn’t matter yet:

fredseibert:

I must say I really do not understand the obsession about “real” TV over the internet. Who really gives a crap? Though it happened back in the day when cable TV was new too. I could care less as to whether network TV shows are ever profitable on the internet.

New mediums demand NEW brands, not recycled ones.

moth:

Good if obvious article regarding “Dollhouse” and the economics of TV — despite hitting the top of the charts in iTunes and Hulu, what matters still for an expensive network show is still ratings, ratings, ratings. See also: 30 Rock, Gossip Girl. Here’s the key part:

I estimate that it took somewhere around 25,000 downloads for Dollhouse to hit the number one spot on iTunes in just over two days time. There is a lot of data, particularly from NBC, but from other sources I’ve seen as well, to corroborate that estimate. It’s not precise, of course, but it’s not a wild assed guess either. It’s in the right zip code, and the right neighborhood, and if not on the right block, it isn’t far away.

Let’s say that a traditional TV broadcast network strives to have a $25 CPM for its commercial spots in prime time. In other words, it wants to sell its advertising at a rate of $25 per 1,000 people. Obviously scale matters, so in this 50,000 foot view example, if 10 million people watch a show, that means the network can sell each commercial spot for $250,000.

In a typical one hour show there are 16 minutes worth of commercials or 32 or so thirty second spots. By this simple 50,000 foot view, a show with 5 million viewers can sell each commercial for $125,000. Keep in mind, that with rare exception scripted shows with less than 5 million viewers on a broadcast network would get cancelled (though those same 5 million viewers on a cable network would make it a hit show!).

Because there is such a difference in scale, we can discount the price of commercial advertising down to even $100,000 per commercial for that show with 5 million viewers just to have a nice round number. With 32 commercial spots, it would generate around $3.2 million dollars in revenue.

If 25,000 downloaded a show from iTunes at $2.00 per download, that’s $50,000 in total revenue. Or one half of what the show would make for a single thirty second spot even at only 5 million viewers. And that assumes that all of the money goes back to the network, which of course isn’t the case — iTunes (Apple) gets a cut. Again, I’ve deliberately ignored many nuances and disclaimers here just for the purposes of keeping it simple. Adding all of that discussion and explanation back in just confuses things and doesn’t change the end result much. And the end result right now is simple. Watching television on television makes a lot more money — and I mean a lot more money — than Internet viewing of those same shows.

Many people will say, “C’mon, iTunes schmiTunes! WAY, WAY more people will watch it on Hulu because it is FREE!”

I completely agree. But even if 10x as many people watching, or say 250,000 people, it’s still not a big deal to the television networks, at least outside their PR departments. In fact, even if it’s a million people, it’s not that big of a deal. With a $25 CPM if one person were to watch ALL 32 commercial spots of a one hour show, that peson is worth about $.80 total to the network ($25×32/1000=value of 1 viewer)

But Hulu only has about four spots, or about 1/8th the number of television spots. Even if you doubled the fees of those ads on Hulu compared to TV, that would represent about $.20 per user. So 250,000 viewers on Hulu would generate about $50,000 in revenue in that example. Nothing to get very excited about yet for the networks. Both iTunes and Hulu could increase by TEN times and while it would then be something that was definitely very interesting to the networks, it still wouldn’t yet be a huge deal.

[full article]

Brian Stelter also wrote an interesting article in this vein in the past week related to FOX’s experiments with limited commercial interruption with “Fringe” and “Dollhouse.”

3 Boston Startups I Like

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:55:20 -0500

fredseibert:

robgo:

Over the past several months, I’ve met a number of people who are new to Boston or completing graduate school and are looking to join an exciting startup in the technology or media space. I’ve found that a couple companies keep coming up, and I thought I’d share 3 that I particularly like.

Because I know VC’s are horrible self-promoters (myself included), I am excluding any company that I have been involved with either as an investor at Spark or as an employee or in any other formal capacity. I’m also biasing this towards startups that are a little further along than your typical series A company.

These are companies that I am whole heartedly rooting for, because we need more local success stories. So, in no particular order:

1. Visible Measures: We are big believers in the online video space, and Visible Measures is quickly becoming the standard tool to help publishers and advertisers understand audience behavior. Very cool company, and I am a big fan of their CEO Brian Shin who is a smart, down to earth, and all-around great guy.

2. Sermo: I must say I was pretty skeptical about this company when I first heard about it. Is there really a need for a social network for doctors? But I admit I completely missed the value in this one. Harnessing the insight of physicians about difficult cases, clinical studies, medical technology, and healthcare policy is a big deal. And from what I hear, adoption has been impressive and is growing.

3. Kiva Systems: This is a non-obvious one. The summer before business school, I decided to try something completely off-beat. So I joined an organic pet food company that was recently purchased by a PE firm I had done some work for in the past. What I got was a very quick education to supply chain logistics and a realization of how much could be lost and gained in this area. Kiva systems uses the best of robotics to optimize the productivity and accuracy of fulfillment in distribution centers. It’s not sexy, but those robots are pretty darn cool.

I know I’m missing others, but these are the three that come to mind, and also don’t get as much press as some of the other “hot” companies in Boston. Know any others that should be on this list?

OK, so can I hype one of your investments?

ben franklin and pennies

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:22:27 -0500

a penny saved is a penny earned… when was the penny created?