by Rodney on December 24, 2009
More like the season of buying stuff that you don’t want in order to appear charitable. But is it generosity, guilt or something else that drives this giving? Did you really need that 3lb tub of cookie dough or gallon size tin of kettle corn that your coworkers were selling for their kid’s school fundraiser? Did you buy out of obligation or to invest social capital which you’ll redeem for your kid’s soccer team’s candy bar sale next month?
This and NPR’s story, ‘Selfish’ Giving: Does It Count If You Get In Return?, are the impetus for this post.
I would love to help your kid’s school buy new textbooks, offset the costs of a trip to Washington, DC or provide the soccer team with new uniforms. Since I don’t want anything in return, I am not willing to buy something that I don’t want. I’d be happier to just give you the portion of the proceeds of the purchase designated to the cause. What could it be, $1, $2, or even $3? I have a better idea.
Affiliate Aggregation
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by Rodney on December 18, 2009
Group buying has been all the rage for quite some time. Evidenced by the $250 million valuation for “Collective Buying Site”, Groupon. If you are still one of the uninitiated, like I was this past spring, the idea behind group buying sites is quite simple. Each day the site presents an unbeatable offer if you and a few hundred of your closest friends go in on the deal. OK, you don’t even need to know these people as long as the minimum threshold is reached. Brilliant idea, in fact. I love it. However, I have yet to find anything that tickles my fancy. Spa treatments are nice but don’t qualify for my lax list of needs. I don’t necessarily care how much I’m saving if it’s for something that I wasn’t necessarily looking for in the first place.
Which brings me to something that I am passionate about, buy often and frequently share my purchases with friends.
Wine!
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by Rodney on December 16, 2009
Over the summer, I read Seth Godin’s latest book Tribes. Tribes makes the case that it has never been easier to create and lead a tribe around a product, a cause, or in the case that I would like to make here, music. In it, Mr Godin references Kevin Kelly’s blog post on The Technium, 1,000 True Fans, where Mr Kelly argues that an individual artist only needs 1,000 fans to make a living as a full time musician. He cites strategies musicians like Jill Sobule employ to “underwrite” their music production. This is analogous to technology startups conducting market research before spending millions creating a product that nobody wants.
But, what if you’re name is not Jill Sobule and you haven’t invested years (with the aid of the old establishment) building your brand? This begs more to Mr Godin’s premise that with social media this becomes a much easier task than ever before. However true this is, every musician would need to employ the same, or largely similar, tactics. And then convert casual admirers into “true fans” that will presumably plunk down $100 a year for whatever they produce. Let’s hope that they are prolific creators because a $100 is not exactly milk money. And, an effective social media (self-promotion) strategy demands a considerable time investment leaving little time for the plethora of content that I’ll expect for my $100.
This model is very difficult to sustain and to scale for an individual artist.
Idea: Coopetition
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by Rodney on November 24, 2009
I was a nervous twitch away from pushing the Barnes and Noble Nook pre-order button today when I was interrupted with Daniel Pink’s tweet referencing Farhad Manjoo’s “Black Friday Is For Sucker’s” post, building the argument for why I shouldn’t buy an e-book reader.
In an instant, he deprived me of my instant gratification but also perhaps spared me next month’s buyer’s remorse. Basically, his main points were:
- E-readers are still too expensive,
- Service provider catalog limitations, and
- Early-adopter pitfalls (eg, HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, and on and on and on)
Valid points, all. However, I still want one. It looks like a sexy product and I’m all about sexy. I mean sexy products, not me. I can’t help Timberlake “Bring Sexy Back”. I really mean good design. I’m an Apple zealot after all. Needless to say, comparing the Nook to a Kindle is like comparing a thong to granny panties. And that’s my last sexually charged comment, I promise!
So, I stared at my over-crowded library of dusty books and pondered a way to justify my purchase, dismiss Farhad’s conjecture and rejoin the herd of suckers.
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by Rodney on November 7, 2009
How long do you think it will take until human communication devolves into yoda-speak?
Texting has become our preferred form of communication (statistics). Blogging, at best, has been reduced to re-posting other’s original content and, at worst, either re-tweeting Twitter messages or updating the status of our banal lives on Facebook. Oh, and let’s not forget about Google Wave’s mission to kill email (Which I am actually fine with).
The real victim here is the Art of Letter Writing. (… and maybe my handwriting)
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