Bloomberg reports that Mattel’s market cap, “helped by rising sales of Matchbox and Hot Wheels toy cars,” is now larger than GM’s. [Tags: mattel gm toys cars business economics ]

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The Microsoft Internet Explorer team sent a nice cake yesterday to the Mozilla Firefox team, congratulating them on the shipping of version 3.0, as they did when Firefox 2.0 shipped. Nice. Seriously.

Here’s an idea from one of the comments that’s funny but would be unnecessarily not-nice to actually do:

I reiterate what someone said when the last cake appeared - Mozilla should send a cake back, include the recipe, and ask for advice on how to improve it. ;)

: )

[Tags: firefox mozilla microsoft internet_explorer competition business ]

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Scott Kirsner has a nice profile of Craig of Craigslist in the Boston Globe today.

One more fun fact about Craig: His company of 25 has never held a meeting. At least I think I heard him say that once.

I am a fan, needless to say.

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At the Enterprise 2.0 conference (which I didn’t attend), Don Burke and Sean Dennehey from the CIA gave a talk on Intellipedia, the CIA’s internal wikipedia. As part of their talk, they cited a manual, including, I’m told, this from page 28:

(1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
(2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of per­sonal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate “patriotic” comments.
(3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and considera­tion.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.
(4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
(5) Haggle over precise wordings of com­munications, minutes, resolutions.
(6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
(7) Advocate “caution.” Be “reasonable” and urge your fellow-conferees to be “reason­able” and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
(8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision — raise the question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within the juris­ diction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.

Their point was that these instructions come from a 1944 manual on how to sabotage a business.

The session’s Web page points to the entire, amazing, declassified manual of simple sabotage. [Tags: cia sabotage enterprise_2.0 intellipedia wikipedia ]

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John Yunker telling points out — and documents with screen captures — that global corporations often marked their Chinese home pages with signs of mourning for those lose in the recent earthquake, while their non-Chinese pages remained dressed in their business-as-usual designs. (He has some more screen captures here.)

[Tags: china earthquake globalism provincialism business ]

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BuyItLikeYouMeanIt.org is having a luanch party on Tues., June 3. BILYMI lets people review products and companies, and then publishes a score based on which of the factors matter to you as an individual — how green, how well they treat their employees, etc. According to the press release:

Starting with the chocolate industry, students and volunteers are already reviewing harvesting, mining, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping practices. Shoppers will soon be able to access a single digit product score that summarizes all the information available about a product. This score will be based on a shopper’s unique “portfolio of interests” and will be accessible through: phones, text messages, supermarket shelf labels, and web browsers. Buy It Like You Mean It plans to have over 200 reviews and 1000 ratings by August.

I like the ability to decide for yourself which of the factors matters to you. Very miscellaneous!

The launch party is at 7pm, June 3, at the Taza Chocolate Factory at 561 Windsor Street in Somerville, MA.

[Tags: csr everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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I wanted to find out what Microsoft Expression Media — or, as Microsoft puts it, Microsoft® Expression® Media — is, so I did what any red-blooded Netizen would do: I googled it. The top hit is Microsoft’s home page for it. It wants to show me videos, but I don’t want to sit around while being slowly pummeled with Microsoft’s marketing messages. If I’m going to be marketed to, at least let me skim. So, I clicked on the “Why Buy?” link, thinking I’d get a features list. I just want to know what the product does.

Nope. That loads a popup that asks me to install Silverlight (oops, I mean Microsoft® Silverlight®)The popup conscientiously informs me that once installed, Silverlight “updates automatically,” where “update” means I am giving Microsoft the right to load stuff onto my computer without asking or informing me. In addition, the privacy statement says Microsoft will only transfer information it gathers about me and my computer to third parties if it really wants to. (The privacy statement puts it a little more formally than that.)

So, here I am, trying to find out about a Microsoft product, yet I’m being required to install software I don’t want in the first place, and that has the right to mutate itself without my knowledge. And to get this authorized virus, I have to agree to a privacy-violation agreement that scares me.

Can you imagine the snorting that would occur if a start-up company insisted on this?

So, take this as an example of either inept marketing or implicit bullying by a dominant force. Or both. [Tags: microsoft marketing silverlight ]

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WorldBlu has put forward its 2008 list of the 25 world’s most democratic organizations…

[Tags: democracy work business ]

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Francois Gossieaux reports on experiments described in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational that show just how influential our expectations are: People who paid more for an energy drink were more refreshed by it and even solved more puzzles. Francois concludes: (1) “We are doomed,” and (2) “…who said that messaging was dead? The things you say about your product may indeed be more important that the product itself…”

Almost from the day the Cluetrain site went up, I regretted point #74: “We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.” We are so not immune. Branding works. We think of Volvos as safe and the Ford Fiesta as a car for young folks. We think of Coke as the original and Pepsi as the copy. We can characterize someone as a “wearer of Birkenstocks.” Branding and advertising in some important sense work.

Now, we certainly can undo some of the cognitive damage advertising and branding do. Market conversations in fact often are about the ways in which a product’s promises and sloganeering don’t live up to its reality. But that’s a lot different than saying we’re immune to advertising. We’re not.

I’d still urge companies to move their marketing away from messaging, however. Assuming the studies Francois cites are correct, our reactions to products do seem shaped by what we’re told about them. No surprise there, although it’s always depressing to find out what big dopes we humans are through no fault of our own. But, customers (= all of us) are going to increasingly resist and resent marketing that focuses narrowly on messaging — that is, on finding the simple idea they can pound into our heads over and over. Telling us your drink will make us refreshed or more alert may indeed make us more refreshed or alert, but treating us like freaking morons by droning the same words at us over and over will make your product less interesting to us. The real challenge marketers face in a world of online conversations is how to help us find what’s interesting about their products.

(By the way, although Francois an I have been friends and colleagues for many years, I just this morning realized that his last name uses each of the vowels just once.) [Tags: francois_gossieaux marketing branding advertising cluetrain ]

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The Media Re:Public group at Berkmanhas announced a breakthrough technology that promises to take the “conference” out of “un-conference.”

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Lisa Williams, who was great in the previous session on the world of media in 103 (which I didn’t blog because I’m so damn tired) is moderating a panel on “viable models.” [I'm live blogging, missing stuff, getting it wrong. I'm posting this before I've proofread it because I have to get to the next session. Reader beware.]

Mark Ranalli from Helium gives a quick talk about Helium, a site where people compete to create the highest-rated content on a topic. They share the money they make with the writers. Only peers can evaluate. They do head to head evaluations of two articles and use that to rank what may be dozens of articles on a topic. Helium also flogs its content to publishers in their “freelance marketplace.” And it integrates content into mainstream media. E.g., Boston Now invites readers to write articles and sends them to Helium. A PBS show uses Helium to run a weekly essay contest. [Ah PBS and its essay contests!]

John Sawyer from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting reports from tough areas. They create content and place it all over, from MSM to YouTube. All the reporters blog.

Doc Searls is talking about “a new business model for free media” (= VRM). Marketers have a split in their heads, he says, that allows them to talk about “targeting” consumers even though they themselves are members of markets too. We no longer have to be put into silos, as if we were owned by businesses. We need Vendor Relationship Management. “With VRM I can inquite and relate to markets on the fly.” Express global preferences without having to give all the same info. He’s willing to pay money to reach a human in under 60 seconds. We should be able to manage our own health care data.VRM’s first use case is paying for public media. VRM is introducing the “relbutton” which you can put anywhere you want; press it and you can remember the site and relate to the site in the way you want. It has four visible states: Intention to relate, an existing relationship, an existing relationship, or an intention to sell.

Q: Why isn’t this the same as a PayPal button?
Doc: Because that’s take it or leave it.
Q: Sites have lots of ways of interacting with viewers. What’s different here?
Doc: There’s no one way to interact with them. And they’re not under you’re control. Public radio’s tip system takes too long to pay.
Q: This is not a micropayment system…
Joe Andrieu: It’s an invitation to relate in any number of ways. It’s a generalized approach.
Q: is this supposed to replace the pledge system?
Doc: It’s not intended to replace them. But 90% don’t pledge, and everyone hates the pledge drives.
Q: So how does the RelButton generate money?
Doc: It’s uniform and efficient.

Q: Can you give an example of something that’s approached solving a problem in this way? Letting people take control of a transaction?
Doc: For transactions, no. It’s like an old-fashioned marketplace.
Joe: An example are the old proprietary email systems.

Q: Could you explain how Helium makes money?
A: 1. We have about 700,000 articles, attracting 3M visitors/month. Ad revenue, which we share with the writers. 2. We take part of the fees publishers pay our writers. And, no, we’re not profitable yet but we hope to be soon.

Why do people write for you?
Mark: Individuals building a portfolio. Non-profits have been sending people to us. I’ve stopped trying to guess why people write.

Lisa: You’ve all presented transactional models. That’s where many people are going, but they require huge volumes to work. How do you get to the volume you need?
Mark: Advertisers and publishers.
Doc: We’re not burdened by a business model…
Lisa: You still have to get users…
Doc: You make it available. A Firefox download, etc.
Q: Any partners integrating the button yet?
Doc: It’s a barn raising. A few dozen are highly active on a list. [Tags: media mediarepublic lisa_williams doc_searls helium pulitzer_crisis ]

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I am so disappointed that I had to miss Lisa Stone’s Berkman talk. She’s blogged a transcript here, and pretty soon the video will be up here. Sounds like a great talk…

[Tags: lisa_stone ]

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I’ve been at Euroblog 2008 yesterday and today, and will be tomorrow as well. It’s a mix of academics and practitioners talking about marketing and public relations in the age of the Web.

The conference seems to assume that we agree that the Web has changed the marketing landscape, that customers are not mere consumers, that marketing has to change right down to its skivvies. The academics at the conference have generally backed this up with actual research. What marketing can and should be, however, is a matter of more controversy here. As it should be. [Tags: euroblog2008 marketing public_relations]

* * *

Catharine Taylor has a new blog about social media as a marketing platform. Yes, it’s a problematic formulation — which is one of the points of Euroblog — but Catharine is skeptical about the importance of social media, albeit not yet expressing much skepticism about the propriety and effectiveness of using them for marketing.

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From a presentation I heard this morning. I didn’t catch the attributions:

2.1% of worldwide power is used by data centers

The power consumed by Google’s servers could power Chicago for a year, and equals the carbon sequestering of 250,000 trees.

Apparently, Dole puts a code on its produce that you can enter into a Web page to see a Google Earth image of the farm that produced it

[Tags: global_warming ecology data_centers organic_pineapple ]

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Harvard Business Review this month is running a “case study” (pure fiction) I wrote about whether companies can and should be authentic. The case study is intended to be even-handed in its presentation; it’s followed by expert commentary. They’ve posted the case on their Web site and have opened it up to readers for discussion. There’s also a video of Julia Kirby (one of the editors) interviewing me on the topic, on that same page. FWIW, I am not at all convinced that the term “authenticity” is helpful — or maybe even meaningful — when applied to business.

[Tags: marketing authenticity hbr ]

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Given Wal-Mart’s size and its heavy-handed approach to so much of life, the fact that it’s letting its buyers blog freely is welcome news. (Disclosure: I consult to Edelman PR, which has Wal-Mart as a client. But all I know about this is what I read in the linked article; I assume but don’t know that Edelman was involved. And, yes, this disclosure is now longer than the post.)

[Tags: wal-mart blogs cluetrain ]

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1995-6 I was VP of strategic marketing at Open Text, right when it went from search engines to intranet collaboration software. I’m at a CIO ass’n meeting in Waterloo, Ontario, where Open Text’s exec chair, and my old boss (and current friend), Tom Jenkins is giving a talk on Enterprise 2.0. Also, last year I did a paid consulting day at Open Text. So, I am biased in just about every way a person can be biased, from sentimental memories to the possibility of future consulting. With that in mind, here goes:

Tom begins by pointing to the Obama campaign. “2.0 is here,” he says, pointing at Obama’s “community blogs” page. Politicians are breaking out of the confines of the media. But, of course, not just politicians, he says.

Web 2.0 really points to two facts: We have bandwidth and an enormous volume of users. (Web 2.0 was always with us in some ways, says Tom, as I nod vigorously.) In 2.0, everyone gets to talk and everyone gets to listen.

He points to the dangers of a 2.0 world. E.g., a Canadian passport control person blogged about the secret marks on passports. The blog site had been intended to increase productivity, but because it was a public site, a secret was blown. Nevertheless, says Tom, “You can’t bury your head in the sand. In the long term, you’ll be at a competitive disadvantage with companies that do embrace these productivity tools.” Not to mention, you won’t be able to hire and keep under-30s (Tom says).

Tom calls Web 1.5 what happened around 2000. Also around then, the lawyers started getting nervous.

Tom contrasts Web 1.0 and Web 2.0: from inform to engage, from few authors to many, from few contributors to many. In Web 2.0, treats the Web as a platform with “desktop-level bandwidth” (or so).

Tom places metadata at the center of content management [and literally points to me in the audience <blush>]

“Social networking is shaping the minds of our employees,” his slide says. Yahoo, Google, etc., are “pre-training our employees.”

We’re starting to map the business processes to the social and human processes, Tom says. This requires getting past technology lock-ins.

Some random facts from Tom:
We have produced 32 M books in our history. That’s about 600 TeraBytes
100,000 films cumulative history= 20TB
4M songs cumulative history = 8TB
300TB of email per year.
100TB Web pages = 100

Alp Hug from Open Text takes up the talk, to explain how to take advantage of 2.0 technology in the organization while avoiding the dangers, which — what a shock! — happens to map to Open Text’s software and services. [It's good to see Open Text embracing this social software stuff.] [Tags: open_text web_2.0 ]

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This Mon, Feb 11, at 7pm, there will be a Very Special Web of Ideas: A concert by and conversation with Brad Sucks (AKA Brad Turcotte), the webbiest musician on the Web. We’ll listen to some songs performed live and talk with Brad about what the battle over “business models” means to someone making music.

Note that we’re not holding this one in the Berkman Center. It’ll be in Griswold Hall Room 110 at Harvard Law. It’s free and open to all; rsvp to rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu.

[Tags: berkman brad_sucks brad_turcotte music RIAA ]

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There are lots of reasons Google is not only the most important single company on the Internet, it is in many ways the defining Internet company. Among the most significant reasons: It’s got the creative rhythm of a BS session among the five funniest people you know. Think it, say it, top it, move on. Except with code, not jokes.

Want to slow this process down? Acquire another company. Especially a really, really big company. Especially a really, really big company that is in strategic disarray.

I’d say that I don’t know what Microsoft is thinking, but I actually think I do. Microsoft is thinking about the economics of consumers. Google is in an economy of creators.

We all want healthy competition for Google. But it now feels more like we’re watching evolution than competition.

[Tags: google microsoft yahoo ]

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Gov. Deval Patrick plans on funding necessary and humane projects in Massachusetts by licensing three casinos. I’m not crazy about that idea, in part because casinos stack the odds against customers. The house always wins. That’s unfair, even though casinos are transparent it.

If we’re going to finance public programs on the backs of the desperate, we at least ought to give our local pigeons fair odds. So, why not require Massachusetts casinos to pay out at odds that factor in no cut for the house? If there’s a 1:38 chance your number will come up at the roulette table, your winning number would be paid at 38:1, not 36:1. Even without their edge (5.26% in roulette), the casinos would make money selling food, liquor, lodging, parking, pay-per-porn in-room tv, and tickets to entertainers you thought died fifteen years ago.

Not only would this keep the state from profiting from an industry predicated on unfairness, it would also give Massachusetts casinos a competitive edge against the casinos in those other states. Why would you gamble in a place where the odds are stacked against you if you could instead “A mass more wealth in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts…the Fair Play State.”

[Tags: massachusetts gambling ]

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Doris Obermair interviewed me at the Picnic conference in spring 2007, and now has posted an edited version in which I talk about the effect of the miscellaneous on business. (With Spanish subtitles.) (By the way, I list videos here.) [Tags: doris_obermair everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Control doesn’t scale. That seems to me to say it all. Or, it at least says some of it.

Now, here are some of the people who came up with that phrase, some well before I did:

David Friedman (economics)
Steve Manning (technical writing)
Jonathan Feldman (remote application controls)
Curtis Yanko (CruiseControl, a build management tool)
Steven Riley (MAC-based access control)
Uwe Doering (a packet filter for access control)

I hereby claim that phrase in the name of Her Highness, Queen Generality.

[Tags: control aphorisms ]

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Some time in the early evening of February 11, I’ll be conducting a very special (as they say in the entertainment biz) Web of Ideas session about how the new business models for music are affecting music…by interviewing BradSucks, who will also favor us with some songs.

I’m a big fan of Brad’s, so I’m quite excited about this.

[Tags: bradsucks music ]

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The Harvard Business Review blog ConversationStarter asked a bunch of people what they think the issues for managers will be in 2008. Sean Silverthorne has compiled a list.

I wrote about the need to deal with a world in which customers, information and relationships have all scaled.

(Note to self: In 2008, try to use the phrase “got big” rather than “scale.”) [Tags: hbr 2008 business management ]

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Great op-ed by Tim O’Reilly, holding out the greed stick to the cellphone companies to induce them to open their networks.

[Tags: tim_oreilly open_networks wireless cellphones telcom net_neutrality ]

Stephen Baker has an excellent, provocative article on “cloud” computing, where “cloud” means gigaclusters like Google’s and not the great amorphous mashup of information known as the Internet.

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Alitalia lost my luggage. It happens. It’s been two days and they still haven’t delivered it. It happens.

But here’s what shouldn’t happen. When you’re at the airport registering the lostness of your luggage, the last step before they send you home to live in the clothes you arrived in is the Bestowing of the Toiletries. The little bag contains the cheapest possible bathroom utensils the airline can find: A toothbrush as rigorous as a cotton swab, a chunk of deodorant floating loose in its container, a razor blade fashioned from the sharp edge of a tuna can. But the last straw was the one piece of clothing included: A white undershirt on to which they’ve printed their logo. Not only does this render it useless if you happen to be wearing a shirt of any translucency, why do they think I want to advertise their business for them? What part of “I’m pissed off” don’t they understand?

Likewise, when you’re put on hold by a business, why would they think you’re in a mood to listen to their ads…especially if you’re put on hold while trying to get technical help? What are they thinking?

If you have an emotional IQ above than that of your average rattlesnake, you can figure out that marketing to customers when they’re pissed off at you requires apologies, extra care, patience, and humility, not happy jingles and cheery logos.

Grrrr…

[Tags: marketing business pissed_off ]

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On Wednesday at 6:30pm, I’m leading a discussion of whether leadership on the Web is different from leadership off the Web, especially business leadership. In fact, I’m gong to run through my 20 minute presentation for Le Web 3 on this topic. I’ve gotten pretty interested in the nature of the leadership of big collaborative projects, and I’m looking forward to a chance to have my inklings bashed around.

Plus, we serve pizza.

The session is open to all. It’s at the Berkman Center [map]. [Tags: berkman leadership]