Link: Joho the Blog: Artificial buzz.
To me the principle is straightforward: Intentionally giving people extrinsic reasons to hawk your products frays the trust that enables conversation to proceed. It’s worse if the hawkers don’t disclose their extrinsic motivations, but even when they do, this type of buzz marketing makes life just a little bit worse.
A long time friend, Brian, and I were discussing how some folks fail with great ideas because they end up making products based on the ideas so complex that they lose folks who would otherwise use a similar and simpler product (we were comparing some things which are big once more now, but failed miserably 5-6 years ago).
In science, we always try to find the simplest solution – the simplest explanation is thought to be the most correct, usually stated as Occam’s Razor.
But, some organizations seem to always seek out the most complex solution to a problem. Brian and I characterized that as Macco’s Sledgehammer – the most complex solution should be chosen.
Eh. We had a few laughs over that thought.
UPDATE: Here’s Brian’s post as well.
How can we serve our customers if we aren’t sharing their lifestyle?
I am thinking of the fusion of mobile and Internet. If you’re not a customer yourself, then how can you understand?
I think I now know how to introduce myself.
Link: creativegeneralist.com.
Creative Generalist is an outpost for curious divergent thinkers who appreciate
new ideas from a wide mix of sources. Completely random and updated regularly, inspiration drawn from –
and relevant to – the larger creative world.
Me to a T. I’m not a confused and scattered soul, I am a Creative Generalist.
Link: MobHappy: The Stats Are In….
There’s been a boatload of studies and statistics released this week, the biggest being the annual Mobinet study from AT Kearney and the Judge Business School at Cambridge. I like this study quite a bit; it’s a pretty unbiased source, it’s pretty comprehensive in scope and depth and they’ve been doing it for six years now, so they’ve got historical data. The findings are in an easy-to-get-through PDF that I highly recommend you check out. But I’ve gone through it, and I’ll summarize some of the key findings and their implications here:
Sheesh.
Link: New Scientist: Kansas backs intelligent design in science lessons.
The US state of Kansas has ruled that science classes in public schools should include the teaching of intelligent design and the doubts it casts on Darwinian evolution. The move has dismayed the nation’s scientific community.
