Monthly Archives: October 2009

Giving the market what the market wants through testing and feedback

Social media is a different beast than traditional media and it lives and grows in a new way.

Economists have long thought that producers — the people making products and running companies — are naturally the ones coming up with new ideas, Professor von Hippel said. In fact, he said, consumers often come up with ideas for products, and companies wait on the sidelines to see if they have mass appeal.

Looking beyond social media, there are many situations where consumers don’t know what they want but producers try to read between the lines and create a product to address this latent need.  I think that’s a more truer and universal description of innovation.    http://bit.ly/3KVmw6

The plugin platform war that doesn’t often get much media coverage: Flash vs. Silverlight

I’m fascinated by stories of tech companies going head to head.  I could do a better job of condensing this but an advantage that MSFT will lean on is that Silverlight can tap all the C# developers out there.

Even with the increasing adoption of Silverlight, it is surely not going to replace Flash player.

While Flash still remains lucrative for its larger base, technically it is possible to accomplish the same task with either.

http://bit.ly/2UAWc5

When Telecoms Diversify Into Digital Media: The Vuguru investment is part of a strategy to differentiate itself with content.

We’ve seen this movie before– think of all the Asian telecoms (looking for growth) that invested into media:

The Vuguru investment is part of a strategy to differentiate itself with content. The goal, said Claude Galipeau, a senior vice president at Rogers Digital Media, is “to have products that are going to help us distinguish ourselves in the marketplace with our wireless customers, with our cable customers and with our Web audience.”

via Eisner’s Web Video Studio, Vuguru, to Emerge With Backing – NYTimes.com.

There’s a gap that’s not being address…

There’s a gap that’s not being addressed by today’s venture financing structures (which are inherently slow to adjust to market changes) and I enjoy reading others who are thinking about this space too:

dshen.com – The Web and the World of Business “Instead of caring so much about ownership, perhaps we should find a way to get a healthy return on capital invested through cash flow, if the startup monetizes efficiently and does it well.” http://bit.ly/19VnPY