I love this survey question that TechCrunch asked their readers, undoubtedly prepping a proposal for their advertisers (you have to answer ONE of those, at least, to get to the next question, btw). I think we’ll have to add it to our own list (substitute our pubs for TechCrunch in the appropriate places). Q.15 Why [...]
It’s clear that traditional publishers seem to be headed the way of the dinosaur, between declining readership, loss of advertisers, and an unwieldy cost structure. But, they aren’t helping much on their online efforts. In some bizarre logic, I’ve seen more and more newspapers, industry publications (CNET seems particularly bad in this regard), and magazines [...]
As publisher of news and information on high tech companies here in Southern California, it seems like among the folks you get to hear from most are the PR folks. There’s always a love/hate relationship between editors and PR, but as we’re a very professional, tight knit community here in Southern California it ends up [...]
Overheard at one of the local networking groups last night, when I introduced a social media marketer to another, social-media savvy entrepreneur: “Really? How many followers do you have?” It might have just replaced “Oh, how many uniques do you get a month?” as the first question to ask a fellow entrepreneur…
Here’s a fascinating one. Jason Calacanis — founder of Santa Monica-based Mahalo (and Internet celebrity)–just pointed out that a user on Mahalo has asked someone to figure out the correlation of BMI (body mass index) of startup founders versus startup outcome. Sounds to me like the old statistical game of trying to correlate women’s hemlines [...]
This post, from the BBC (via ZDNet), is great. A teacher in Los Angeles ran a little experiment weaning her students off technology–cell phones/iPods/TV/Internet/etc. for a week. My favorite quote: “..and when I was outside, I heard the birds and trees…” Aside from the usual comments about the value of disconnecting for awhile and actually [...]
For a random (and perhaps, pointless) Friday thought, I was just thinking about the media and blogging world’s obsession with covering certain technology companies. There are certain companies who are essentially guaranteed today to get a massive amount of interest and coverage, solely by their “brand” power: Twitter Google Facebook iPhone Craiglist Steve Jobs Apple [...]
Remember that famous New Yorker Cartoon, i.e. “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” ? The cartoon, published in 1993, showed two dogs sitting at a computer with one at the keyboard, illustrating how–at least back then–it didn’t really matter who you were, you could be anyone you wanted online. I think there’s a [...]
I had to wonder today, reading this Wall Street Journal article about the latest foreclosure prevention plan creating an opening for scammers, if maybe requiring home owners to take a course in “reading the fine print” might be a better strategy to prevent this kind of mess in the future. Firms that charge big fees [...]
It’s clear to me that we’re all bootstrappers now — not in the sense that you can’t find funding (good companies are still getting funded) — but in the sense that there’s a clear view in this economy that the hallmarks of bootstrapping are now (once again) in vogue. Some of those traits: 1. Frugality [...]
Thoughts and commentary from Benjamin F. Kuo, publisher of socalTECH.com.
