“Responsive design and Agile have forced us to re-evaluate our methods, and we’re finding there are simply no tactical short-cuts for cross-channel and service design: the entire company itself must be” —
A changing tide : Cennydd Bowles
Great thoughts on the digital design industry’s shift away from role specialization and towards in-house product/service driven teams. Im kind of biased here, but it’s still worth a read.
“Founders tend to pride themselves on being action-oriented and optimistic—necessary traits, indeed. A founder’s passion is essential to launching a startup, but it can become deadly at almost every step. Likewise, founders’ natural biases—toward optimism over realism, toward instinct over systematic planning, toward strong attachment to their ideas, their startups, and their employees over dispassionate reasoning—often turn on them.” —
Noam Wasserman: The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (via Findings.com)
I think everyone who is thinking about even working for a startup should read this book.
(via buzz)
“As Josh Clark eloquently put it, we need to think of our content like water, and get our content ready to go anywhere because it’s going to go everywhere. It’s bigger than the web, native, Facebook, etc. We need to put our content and functionality in front of users wherever they may be… Too often redesigns are like slapping a new coat of paint on an otherwise-condemned building. Content is the foundation with which everything else stands. That means creating context-agnostic APIs and more robust, flexible content management systems that lend themselves to adaptation.” —
[For a Future-Friendly Web: Mobilism 2012 | bradfrostweb.com]
I would LOVE to see some tools for accomplishing the kind of content infrastructures Brad is describing. Less fussing over jazzed up blog templates and more tools for creating taxonomies, CVs and ontologies that can power stocks of documents easily moldable to different contexts.
“DIY is seeking to be like a Boy Scout troop for the modern day. Instead of teaching children how to tie a clove hitch that seems fit for teenagers in the 1920s, DIY, a Web site and mobile app, will encourage children to build things, document them with an iPhone or iPod, and then receive rewards for their work.” —
Disruptions: DIY, a Site for Children, Is Instructive for Start-Ups - NYTimes.com
When I was a kid a few of my biggest DIY triumphs were a rather large ninja turtles sewer play set (with real water), and an elaborate cardboard Nintendo with different hand drawn screens for different games. I really wanted a Nintendo. My dad made a lot of toys for me as well. Fun memories. I hope DIY takes off.
“Using the traditional purchase funnel, I think you still have a gap between awareness and intent. Once someone knows about your brand or product, how do you create need? One really good way of doing that is to remind them you exist (a large portion of CPG ad spend is used for just this). The way to remind people you exist is to create content they’ll see. To create content they’ll see on Facebook you need to a) be engaging enough that it builds organic activity and pushes beyond the base distribution you get through EdgeRank or b) buy Reach Generator. The two big goals (awareness and intent creation) have paid actions associated with them in Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. If these companies continue to build on these ideas and find better ways to target users based on their interests they will be solving a real problem for advertisers, something that hasn’t really been done on the web since paid search in the early 2000s.” —
On Facebook, Intent and Marketing | Noah Brier dot Com
Noah is right. Good content and the ability to target based on interest will be THE strategy for moving folks down the funnel. We just need a better way to gather and act on taste/interest data. I am rooting for Tumblr because they are closest to the content.
“While we as humans are incredibly complicated organisms, there are a few simple rules to how we behave. We sort ourselves based on cultural similarities, and these in turn are related to how we choose to move from place to place, and even with whom we communicate. A lot of these boundaries are porous and messy, allowing for a rich diversity of cultural flow.” — The Invisible Borders That Define American Culture
(Source: bit.ly)
“I think the Banner has a bright future. They’re awesome. First, they’re cheap. Second, they’re everywhere. Third, they’re cheap to build. What’s not to like? Did billboards disappear? Print ads? We were sold a barrel of goods when the banner first came out about direct tracking, ROI and whatnot. That future is dying. But the banner is still an impeccable branding vehicle.” — Rick Webb the-great-banner-ad-debate
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“These companies are simply being founded to be bought. With the exception of a select few, Silicon Valley has spawned no real companies over the past decade. Even now, as the value of eyeballs has gone down, people are buying concepts, not companies.” —
Disruptions: With No Revenue, an Illusion of Value
My dad asked me why Facebook bought Instagram and I told him why. He then asked me how Facebook would recoup its billion bucks it just spent if Instagram didn’t make any money. Its not apples to apples but my best response was a link to this article.
Pictured above in grey is my neighborhood as represented by Livehoods. The most interesting part of the app is its uncanny ability to segment the neighborhoods within neighborhoods. For example the four Quadrants of the Mission, or the east and west sections of Lowe Haight. Distinctions you rarely see made on real-estate sites or places like Yelp.
“Livehoods offer a new way to conceptualize the dynamics, structure, and character of a city by analyzing the social media its residents generate. By looking at people’s checkin patterns at places across the city, we create a mapping of the different dynamic areas that comprise it. Each Livehood tells a different story of the people and places that shape it.”
A couple SXSWs ago I got hooked on a group messaging app called Beluga. It did one thing really well, and it had a great personality. In Beluga you created group chats called “pods” which fit perfectly into their whale based personality. I don’t know if it was my childhood of pirate stories or sailing trips but the whole beluga wale thing really did it for me. Just as I began to get my friends on Beluga they were acquired by Facebook. Facebook shut Beluga down and turned it into their mobile messaging app (with no whales to be found). A great outcome for a startup like Beluga.
But Beluga was no longer an app that did one thing really well with a lot of personality, it was a tentacle of Facebook, polluting my little ocean of whale pods. I was forced to get all my Facebook messages along with my Beluga group messages. Unfortunately for me, Facebook messages are mostly crap I have no interest in. This killed off all of the remaining love that had been built with Beluga. Facebook did the transition quickly, and despite my gripes, the Messages app is a pretty good app.
I loved Beluga for the same reasons I love Instagram. My fear is that the Facebook/Instagram deal will go the same route as the Beluga acquisition over a longer period of time. When a “stack” (amazon, google, apple, facebook) acquires a small app, strips it of its brand and pollutes it with exhaust from its network it should forever be called “getting beluga’d”. What is so precious about these apps are their personalities and the unique networks they create. I am happy for Instagram and Facebook. It was the right thing for both parties. I just don’t see a scenario where the Instagram experience and brand stays in tact a year from now. Hats off to Facebook if they can pull it off. I know a lot of smart people working there so I am optimistic. Watching this acquisition play out will be one for the text books good or bad.
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Three of my fav things. Raw wood tables. Eames side chairs. Tight logos. If the shells were fiberglass I may have fainted. (Taken with Instagram at Rdio Office)
Explore fortune 500 ranking data going back to 1955. By Ben Fry. (Hint: Click and drag)
Love the new UI. Loads of great new features. A nice middle finger :) to Safari’s “reading list.”
(via Introducing Instapaper 4.0 for iPad and iPhone – Marco.org)
Posted with Percolate