March 31, 2006
ama-zone: since when does wage-slave cowardice count as brains?
[Inspired by Amazon CTO, Werner Vogel's recent post. More backstory from Shel and Rick.]
[Update:] Scoble pipes in.
Where I gave them stuff like "blogging doubled sales at Stormhoek winery, according to its CEO." Or "Munjal Shah, CEO of Riya, says blogging is very important to his new company." Or "Axosoft raised more than $14,000 in just a few days with nothing more than a few links on some blogs." Or "Foldera got more than one million signups for its service in 17 days by doing nothing more than talking to six bloggers." Or, a tailor in the UK saw his sales go up by 10x by doing a blog. That probably wasn't well enough communicated, or it wasn't the kind of answer that would convince Werner. That means I need to go back and do some more homework.
And this is really rich: Here's some anonymous Amazon folk in the comments bragging about how smart they are. OK, if they're so smart, [l.] Why are they working for somebody else? [2.] Why are they posting anonymously? Since when does wage-slave cowardice count as brains?
Sure, Amazon offers a great product for us online shopping folk. And I'm sure Werner's not a bad fellow, just a guy with strong opinions who likes a robust debate. But this episode [the anonymous commenters, more so than Werner's opinions] made me very glad I don't work for them.
[UPDTE:] Dennis Howlett pipes in here:
* First it is about ROi (little i is deliberate here.)
* Next it is not about predicting outcomes in the way Werner wants. It’s about getting involved with people who have influence on your business. Your customers. Your staff. Your partners.
* Then it’s about deepening and leveraging those relationships in a manner that helps you and your ecosystem to grow in what becomes a win-win situation.
* But mostly it is about change.
[Bonus Link:] Classic sparring between Dennis and I on the ROI of blogging, when we first crossed paths. And more here from Dennis:
I smell a rat. You don't know what you can't measure and you can't talk meaingfully about campaign effectiveness without telling about the numbers. Don't be so coy Hugh - it doesn't suit you![Final Link:] Old gapingvoid cartoon: "What's blogging's ROI?"
March 30, 2006
swiss watches
An article in the Int. Herald Tribune about Swiss watches:
Cellini, an exclusive watch retailer in the Waldorf- Astoria Hotel here, waited nearly two years for its first Jean Dunand Grande Complication, a complex mechanical toy worth $775,000 to any number of collectors.Yes, the parallels between them and English Cut are many.
The watch, a display model, arrived at the end of February and "will be gone by the end of the month," Philip Duffell, Cellini's manager said.
In the highest reaches of the luxury universe the mere suggestion that something is unavailable seems to trigger a Pavlovian urge to own it.
It'll be interesting to see what happens to English Cut over the next half decade, as the number of top-drawer Savile Row tailors dwindles into single digits.
Meanwhile, our new line of $300 bespoke shirts is doing very well, so far. I know it's still early days for the shirts, but I'm finding it all very exciting.
[Thanks to Boss Report for the IHT link.]
winecast blogs the geek dinner:
Over the past year, I have been following the Stormhoek meme over that gapingvoid (where the drawing to the left comes from). The winery is now entering the U.S. market and has an ambitious plan to supply their wines for 100 (wine) geek dinners across the country. I have volunteered to host one here in the Twin Cities on May 4, 2006 at 7:00 p.m. From my Frappr listener map, I see there are several local listeners who might be up for a nice evening of wine, food and conversation.[Stormhoek Geek Dinner info here.]
[P.S. We've now added a Frappr map to the proceedings. If you're signed up for the dinners, please add your name to it, Thanks.]
sprint
Like Tara Hunt, Sprint also offered me one of their freebie uber-phones this morning. Very nice of them etc.
Sadly, they offered it without realizing I live in the United Kingdom, not the USA, ergo not eligible for this offer.
Better luck next time, Guys. But thanks for asking.
sunshine facelift
The Sunshine movie blog has had a major facelift. Kudos to Gia etc.
About three years ago, I had this idea that a blog would be a great marketing tool for films. Later, based on what I learned from writing about Young Adam, I wrote the "10 Rules for Professional Movie Blogging."
Two years later, it's stood up rather well.
I think the most important rule is Number Seven:
7. Start early. To build awareness of the movie properly needs at least least a year, preferably two. It's not about telling millions of people at once. You talk to a few thousand at a time. Let the word spread gradually. Give it time to seep into the Zeitgeist, like absinthe on a sugar cube.
March 29, 2006
dennis comes clean
Yes, blogging does make me money.As I'm fond of saying, the more people who make money via bogging, the happier I am.Hugh MacLeod’s been privately urging me to say whether my blog based business model works. It’s time to come clean.
* Yes, I do make money directly from blogging activities. It comes in a variety of forms but I’m not revealing what those forms are or how it works.
* Yes, the amounts I’m earning and the frequency with which they are generated is preferable to the feast and famine of freelance journalism.
* Yes, I do worry about whether the model is sustainable and now I can develop it.
* Yes I do get other, indirect work from my blogging activities and these are more financially rewarding than the direct income.
* No, it’s not a fortune but it’s enough to allow me to live the life I want for myself and my partner Jude. And it’s better than what I was trying to do before because now I’m engaged in conversations throughout the world with people I might never otherwise find.
* Yes, it is a lot of fun, even if at times it can be very tiring and stressful.
* And finally, yes, I regret I didn’t get into this medium a lot earlier.
This commercial agenda makes some people squeamish, but... nobody cares.
we need a new word to replace "luxury"
[115m "Pelorus"]
Luxury, luxury, LUXURY ....aaarrrrghFrom gapingvoid, April 2005:What an over-abused word these days!! We need the marketing genii of the world (no, I am not including myself in that little group) to come up with something a little less obtuse and more interesting to describe our amazing products. Considering it is blantantly used in the yachting industry for anything from 65 feet to 65 metres and upwards, there is an obvious need for a more discerning vocabulary.
One of the most unpleasant jobs I ever had was writing a 10,000 word brochure for a luxury 60-foot yacht.The agency thought because the product was "upscale", the writing style had to be pretentious and fake. "Imagine yourself surrounded in the sumptuous, princely luxury that only the discerning few will have the rare priveledge to experience yak yak yak..."
It was 6 weeks of hell, writing that. Utterly dreadful.
March 28, 2006
how's your strategic vision, fred?
[You really need to read the comments in this post to fully understand the story behind this cartoon. Utterly bizarre.]
[BONUS LINK:] Interesting thought from Ed Byrne:
How to de-commoditise your product.People who work in traditional advertising, please take note.Why do people buy branded premium (eg. Apple) products? Why do people stay as ‘label’ (eg. Apple) customers?
Answer: It’s not the product they buy - it’s the promise of new + exciting products in the future.This is how to de-commoditise your product! This is how to move your business UP the value chain and stop having to compete on price in an un-differentiated market!
Your job is not to sell. Your job is to de-commoditise.
Amen.
"s.a.p. killer"?
Last Thursday Sigurd Rinde gave me a virtual demonstration of Thingamy, his workflow application. I mean business modeling application. Err, database. No, reporting tool. Maybe an “enterprise app”? A web service back-end? No, not that either. And at the same time, all of these.As one of my best friends is one of the top SAP consultants on the planet, I am very reluctant to nail my colors to the "SAP is dead, long live Thingamy" mast [nor am I technically qualified to do so, besides], but it's interesting to see this whole Thingamy conversation evolve.Scalable from a system you would build in 30 minutes (or less, really) to make something silly, such as manage your favorite restaurants, to being a potential SAP killer. And I’m not so much talking about technical scalability as conceptual scalability. As Sig prefers to put it, it’s like Lego (or what Lego used to be before they lost the plot). From the few different building blocks you can build anything from a toy car to a city.
[Disclosure: Sigurd and I work together.]
March 27, 2006
big web 2.0 story
Newsweek cover story: "A new wave of start-ups are cashing in on the next stage of the Internet. And this time, it's all about... you."
Flickr was a good business, too, as many users chose to pay the $25-a-year fee for unlimited photo storage and relief from advertising on the site. But that's not why Yahoo bought it for an estimated $35 million. "With less than 10 people on the payroll, they had millions of users generating content, millions of users organizing that content for them, tens of thousands of users distributing that across the Internet, and thousands of people not on the payroll actually building the thing," says Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz. "That's a neat trick. If we could do that same thing with Yahoo, and take our half-billion user base and achieve the same kind of effect, we knew we were on to something."
March 26, 2006
all aboard
[More pics of Tom and me on the yacht are here.]
Robert Scoble listed his top ten favorite blogs here.
gapingvoid is on the list. Very cool. Thanks, Robert. That's a serious honor.
I'm still in Antibes, which I love. Yesterday I visited Monte Carlo for the first time, which I didn't care for AT ALL. I found it utterly fake and prententious. Antibes is far more low key.
March 25, 2006
so you can't afford a superyacht...
These superyachts are pretty expensive to buy.
Luckily, if money's a bit tight this month, you can just rent one [known in the trade as "charter"], instead of having to buy it outright.
For example, the "New Century" [pictured above] is a steal at only around €135,000 [US $156,000] per week. Rock on.
billable-hour consultant's hampster wheel of death
Thingamy is almost ready for its next phase of testing. Says Sigurd:
Doing some finishing touches to a works-nicely with-a-little-list-of-missing-features version of the thingamy (you'll never hear me say pre this or that, and no alpha, no beta) that will go out to a few IT consultants and system integrators for some real life playing.Because consultants can build their own, unique stuff with it, they'll have something other than billable hours to sell to their clients. Which should be music to the ears to anyone who's ever spent time on the billable-hour consultant's hampster wheel of death.
[MEANWHILE:] Congrats to Tara for Riyah launching etc. A million pictures uploaded in 24 hours? Intense.
March 24, 2006
still in antibes...
Thomas, his mother and myself were checking out yachts today.
Thanks to Lars and everybody at BCR for showing us around.
Hopefully should have more photos to show you on Flickr this weekend.
[PS: Details of the boat we're standing in front of can be found here. I was particularly impressed with the massive sunroof, for some reason.]
"the more geeked-out your blog, the more frickin' yachts you will sell."
[NB: I'm in Yacht Mode today.]
[Bonus Link:] From James Governor:
Hugh is seemingly shooting to create a 21st century LVMH on steroids, a stable of super-luxury brands with post-ironic vulgarity, or should that be post vulgaric irony as a masthead... If you have to ask - you're not invited. Beyond the blog A-list and into the world of the super-rich. Hughtrain as luxury juggernaut.
March 23, 2006
fenderkicker.com
[NB: A "fender kicker" is a term for people who spend a lot of time shopping for yachts, without ever buying. Not unlike "tyre kicker" in the car business.]
I'm writing this from Antibes, deep in the heart of the French Riviera.
Regular readers will know I've been spending a wee bit of time in Antibes lately [1]. Pourquoi?
Well, besides the obvious reasons- wonderful weather, superb local food and drink, and hanging out with my friend Sigurd- I'm here on business:
Fenderkicker is the company blog of BCR Yachts, a yachting sales and charter company in Antibes, Cote d'Azur, France.
As of today, it seems I'm in the yacht business. Rock on.
[Disclosure: Sig is also involved in this enterprise.]
designer labels
Thomas is in Men's Health [US Edition]... April issue, Page 72. As Dave Parmet, our PR guy explains:
Thomas Mahon is quoted on how to spot a cheap suit in the current issue of Men’s Health. The ‘interview’ such as it was consisted of me pointing a journalist to appropriate quotes on the English Cut blog. There’s yet another reason you should all be encouraging your clients to blog, it saves us all time.
March 22, 2006
March 21, 2006
"top 10 SEO lies told by ad agencies"
1.You really need metatags. …if this was 1999. Now you need social bookmarking, press releases, content syndication, a blog and someone to run it, some viral content as linkbait, and about 500 more good sites linking to yours with your targeted anchor text, but we don’t actually DO any of that yet.2. We shouldn’t have a problem ranking you for “home loans”.
Actually, we could probably buy your way in on PPC if you can afford $5 clicks. Even if you had 100k budget to spend just on ranking for that phrase you’re probably screwed, but you’ll be fine just ranking for “low rate home refinancing loans in detroit” instead right?3. Links aren’t really that important.
Don’t worry, our crappy corporate-speak content should attract them naturally. If it doesn’t we’ll just continue to charge you until we get so fed up with each other that we’ll just outsource your project to someone else.
March 20, 2006
this is utterly appalling:
Kinderstart sues Google over lower page ranking.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 18 (Reuters) - A parental advice Internet site has sued Google Inc., charging it unfairly deprived the company of customers by downgrading its search-result ranking without reason or warning.So people have a constitutional right to Googlejuice? So Googlejuice = Free Speech? That to me seems an insult to the notion of Liberty.The civil lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, on Friday by KinderStart.com seeks financial damages along with information on how Google ranks Internet sites when users conduct a Web-based search.
KinderStart charges that Google without warning in March 2005 penalized the site in its search rankings, sparking a "cataclysmic" 70 percent fall in its audience- and a resulting 80 percent decline in revenue.
Can somebody more consitution-savvy than me help me out with this? I'm confused.
[From Talkshop:] "That said, I also think it's fair to say that if an 80% revenue decline can be attributed solely to your Google rank, you've pretty much lost control of your business."
triple whammy: tom in the times [and the guardian], hugh in the guardian
Today we had a double whammy in the national press. First, Thomas was quoted in The Times (of London):
“If ever there was a street that deserved an award for exporting then it’s Savile Row,” said Thomas Mahon a Savile Row-trained tailor who now runs English Cut. “If the bespoke businesses were driven out by crappy retail stores selling poor quality clothes, then Savile Row’s name would be irreparably damaged.”I'm quoted in Media Guardian, on a completely different topic:
How big business barged in on the bloggers.Scoble and Rubel are also mentioned in the article. Rock on.Companies once saw them as a nuisance. Now they are trying to get the bloggers onside, realising that they can reach consumers better than any PR company ever could.
...
"The trick is not to try too hard to sell," says Hugh Macleod of gapingvoid.com. "You need to respect the people reading it, they're coming to you. Blogs are a great way to make things happen indirectly. It is different from creating a controlled mechanism that tries to change people's behaviour, which traditional advertising tries to do."
[UPDATE- TRIPLE WHAMMY:] Tom gets another 500 words in Media Guardian:
What I like about the blog is that I get to set the tone of the conversation. I can make the discourse as intelligent as I want, there's no "lowest common denominator" governing the discourse. Unlike most fashion sites, it's not about dressing up models and parading them up and down the catwalk. It's about love of craft. Savile Row suits don't cost as much as they do because of hype and celebrity spin, they cost as much as they do because they're expensive and tricky to make.
"the list"
All Things Web 2.0 - "THE LIST"
AUDIO 2.0Goes on for PAGES.*
Bebop - Compare music calendar against your iTunes catalogue. http://www.bebopular.com/
*
Clickcaster - Record, license, publish & promote your radio show. http://www.clickcaster.com/
*
Difm - Radio community. http://www.di.fm/
*
Dottunes - Share your iTunes. http://www.dottunes.net/
*
Enablr - Transcribe podcasts, Text2Snailmail, ... http://www.enablr.com/
*
Fluctu8 - Create & share your sourcelists. http://fluctu8.com/
