Stories, software and strategies to help nonprofits do the social web
AlpacaDirect.com, always offered a page full of cherry-picked customer comments raving about the site's alpaca sweaters, socks and yarn. But recently Hobart, [the owner,] decided to take the idea a step further: He hired PowerReviews, whose software lets shoppers write their own product reviews directly on the retailer's Web site. It was a risky move for the four-year-old company, based in Brentwood, Calif. Hobart was effectively paying to host bad press -- such as posts by customers who described AlpacaDirect's...
September, 30 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value (if the real conversation about WWGD? had occurred on Google instead of at Buzzmachine, how does that help me?). On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and...
September, 23 2009 • 1 Comment • 0 Faves
We spent a generation believing certain parts of our business needed to be scarce and that advertising and other interruption should be abundant. Part of the pitch of free is that when advertising goes away, you need to make something else abundant in order to gain attention. Then, and only then, will you be able to sell something that's naturally scarce. via sethgodin.typepad.com
September, 12 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
From knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. We are moving from a world where the source of strategic advantage was in protecting and efficiently extracting value from a given set of knowledge stocks – what we know at any point in time. As knowledge stocks depreciate in value at an accelerating pace, the focus of economic value creation shifts to effective and privileged participation in knowledge flows. Finding ways to connect with people and institutions possessing new knowledge becomes increasingly important. Since...
August, 31 2009 • 0 Comments • 0 Faves
Michael H. Goldhaber writes on the emerging attention economy. Now, the pursuit of attention "more and more fully comes to occupy most people’s efforts." Contrast traditional economics' preoccupation with industrial manufacture of standardized goods: One of the first such standardized manufactured goods was money itself (in the form of coins). Now, increasingly, money tracks attention. Those with a great deal of attention can easily obtain money, should they want it. Those with little attention will have a much...
August, 21 2009 • 0 Comments • 2 Faves
Startup thinking for the social sector. Code to help nonprofits do the social web. Plus photography.
(And reading aloud.)
More about Eric Johnson.
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