Today I heard of the passing of a friend of mine, Anthony Sloan.Anthony’s passing during his sleep was a shock because he was young and healthy and it came without warning.
Anthony was an avid and accomplished mountain biker.He was an equally avid photographer; although quite modest about his talent, his skill behind the lens was truly – I am not exaggerating – unequalled.These two passions, combined with his life-long love of the outdoors – in particular the American Southwest – leave a huge and unparalleled legacy of images of stunning beauty of some of the most remarkable vistas in America.If you happen to share any of these same passions that energized Anthony, do yourself a favor and spend some time perusing his work.
As much as I’m impressed by Anthony’s photography, I was more inspired by his personality. Anthony was one of the kindest souls I have ever met.I count myself fortunate for the times I got to ride with him, and I’m saddened that there won’t be many more.
The brief article (and its references) cite:
- An anecdotal example of a company leaving the US for a more stable economic, political, and regulatory environment;
- Obama’s attempted strong-arming of legitimate debtholders to Chrysler to forego their claim, while irrationally awarding 55% of Chrysler to the UAW;
- Obama’s denial of a bona fide offer by the creditors that would have kept the company from being nationalized, in favor of an inferior (to stakeholders) result wherein the government owns 50%.
I understand that “it’s politics, stupid!”, but the modern capability for demagoguery to destroy our country’s ability to create economic value is just astounding.
Andrew Hyde has a great post today about how non-internet business can (and should) use Twitter for cheap and effective marketing. Andrew is an expert at community building/marketing, and his points are spot on:
From docs submitted in bankruptcy court, Chrysler claims it will be profitable in 2012.
This, after losing $17B in 2008.
No way.
Chrysler, you have products that nobody wants, that are obsolete, and are not price-competitive. The auto industry in general is broadly over-supplied. There is nothing out there that leads me to believe that you can or will be able to establish a profitable competitive niche again.
OK, we’ve all ridden a bike before…but even if you haven’t, this video is awesome. For me, it is a manifestation of excellence, and of the joy and playfulness that can accompany being excellent.
Yesterday I had the good fortune to see Sam Zell talk. His wisdom, intelligence, and incisiveness, delivered more directly than most are capable of, is refreshing and inspiring.
I liked his comments on what makes a good entrepreneur:
The ability to identify problems and come up with a solution. It’s an “innate gene”: it’s an unescapable, always-present way of life.
Failure cannot be part of an entrepreneur’s vocabulary; even when it is unjustified, entrepreneurs are always confident.
Subsequently, Mr. Zell identified what separates good entrepreneurs from bad: the ability to execute. He called the ability to execute the most “underrated driver” of successful businesses.
Twitter’s buzz is approaching the same stratosphere as Facebooks’;
Bloggers’ number one pastime these days is pontificating what Twitter’s business model is/will/should be;
The optimal business model for Twitter remains unclear;
Growth is exploding and that Twitter is rapidly becoming mainstream, wherein both people and companies are relying on it every day as an integral part of their commercial communications;
It is hard to imagine a more fun and challenging job! The stakes are big, the way uncertain…this is such cool opportunity that I couldn’t help but spend my lunch hour thinking about what I think Twitter BizDev should do.
If I were Twitter BizDev, here is how I would start:
Explore charging for commercial use of the service. For example, charge Dell to use the service; perhaps fixed costs for reserving a name, and variable costs for each tweet sent or read by followers. This is the most obvious revenue source, but it is also filled with landmines: introducing the friction of not being a costless system is hazardous to the explosive growth of Twitter and its “information wants to be free” culture, so such commercialization must be done cautiously and subtly.
Continue to develop paid placement. What Twitter has done to date (recommend paid-placement followees) is perhaps just proof of concept. I can imagine very sophisticated follow recommendations, which usually would need to be voluntarily pulled by the user from Twitter, but could also very occasionally be pushed by Twitter. For example, if I ever tweet about pasta, Twitter has the opportunity to make me aware of time-sensitive and geo-proximal restaurant tweeters and tweets.
Continue developing and offering free non-commercial use of a comprehensive API. Do everything possible to continue the explosive growth of the use of the API. Selectively begin to charge for commercial use of the API: extract only a small portion of the rent for a few of the most profitable users of the API. Do this slowly and un-aggressively as per above.
Explore partnerships with anybody who realizes revenue from text messages. The adoption of Twitter increases those firms’ revenue, and there is no reason why Twitter shouldn’t attempt to capture some of that. I recognize that in many of those situations, Twitter has little leverage, so even though it is creating revenue for these companies, it will have a tough time capturing any portion of it. Perhaps there are ways to create leverage?
Search, baby! Twitter is rapidly becoming the ultimate source of data for real time searches, and it is this data which is which is the most exciting and begets Twitter being used in the same sentence as Google. It is why Google and Microsoft are going head-to-head in their rumored fight over acquiring Twitter. Assuming Twitter chooses not to sell just yet, there are 2 tactics for monetizing search that should start to be developed:
Facilitate commercial 3rd party exploitation of the crown jewels, by allowing Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, OneRiot, Lijit, et al to fully index tweets, and charge them for use.
Develop an enterprise market awareness subscription business: for example, Dell could subscribe to a daily Dell report.
All of these directions must be explored with a light touch, learning as much as possible with each deal. This is because, as mentioned above, it is paramount that nothing is done to dampen Twitter’s explosive growth. Secondly, the perspective must be one of a very thin haircut across a broad audience: the network effects are so dominant for Twitter that pricing any entity out of the market really diminishes the value of the entire ecosphere (as well as enables competitors). There is a lot of organizational learning that must happen not just around how to maximize revenue, but also about what the optimal mix of revenue and resulting friction is.
“…the key is to get up in the that batter’s box and take a swing. And all you have to do is hit one single, a couple of doubles, and an occasional homerun out of every 10 at-bats and you’re going to be the best hitter or best leader around.” – John Donahoe, CEO eBay
Musically, I’m not a huge NIN fan. From an internet entrepreneur’s perspective, however, it appears as if Trent Reznor has an outsized dollop of business acumen. I admire his approach and learning process, and the results speak for themselves. Frank Rose’s review is a very interesting read about a man on the forefront of understanding how bands can make money in the internet era.
