Six Common Steps to Disruption

1. Disruptive innovation is first developed at an established firm.
2. The established firm elicits feedback from its customer base. More often than not, customers will not recognize the disruptive innovation’s actual value.
3. The management team at the established firm chooses to ignore the disruptive innovation.
4. New companies, often founded by ex-employees of the established firm, are created to make use of the disruptive innovation.
5. Through trial and error, the newer companies find product-market fit. 
6. The established firm belatedly tries to defend itself against a fleeing customer base. It is usually too late.

There is a distinction between disruptive innovation and sustained innovation. Sustained innovation brings about sustained success. Disruptive innovation brings about cannibalization. Management teams loathe disruptive innovation for this very reason. A good management team is expected to lead its firm toward sustained success. Disruptive innovation steals from this goal by eating into profits that get generated by a sustained innovation.

Disruptive innovation often overshoots market demand, but over time market demand catches up with technological capability. Each sustained technology has a certain purchase threshold. Once the threshold has been passed the market is said to have become overserviced. In economics, one would say that supply had outpaced demand. Such markets are ripe for disruption.

TheBite.com: P2P Food Delivery

I am a struggling entrepreneur that loves cook. I wish for a service that would let me sell my cooking to people who live in the area. It would be a way for me to make a little extra money on the side. 

A peer-to-peer food delivery service is an appealing idea. The margins on food are small, but even so I think I would be able to undercut local restaurants. So my customers would enjoy saving money when they decide to order delivery service. The selection of food would be diverse. For instance, I would offer authentic Cuban cuisine (I’m Cuban). I imagine that other hard-to-find international cuisines would also get listed on the service.

Bring the food truck movement to the web. Lower the overhead costs for the not-so-professional chef. That’s the idea. However, state laws restrict such a business from incorporating. Sellers would have to pass multiple health inspections and meet all applicable FDA regulations.

Food safety laws are generally a good thing, but I really wish that someone would build this. A long time ago I went fishing on a boat called The Bite. That’s what I would call this service. TheBite.com

Fireside Chat with Vinod Khosla from Khosla Ventures

Vinod Khosla: 

My willingness to fail gives me the ability to succeed.

To be an entrepreneur you have to be an optimist. A good entrepreneur is unreasonably optimistic, maybe even a little bit irrational. You have to be able to ignore failure until you achieve success. Who remembers a successful person’s failures? No one. Failure can become irrelevant if the entrepreneur takes the right attitude towards failing. It is okay to fail as long as you fail quickly. Trying to not fail is a self-fulfilling prophecy to mediocrity. Failure is the key to success. 

If you don’t have a vision you are unlikely to succeed. If you have a vision, then keep trying until you succeed. How do you decide when to stop thinking about an idea and start building it? Passion. If you are passionate about an idea you will not stop trying to implement it until you achieve product/market fit. Passionate people do not give up easily. The iterative process for a passionate person is seemingly endless. This is something that VCs look for.

If you are going to pitch a VC, first figure out 3-4 things that appeal to them. Pitch to that. In other words, give the VC 3-4 things to talk to his partners about.

An entrepreneur should always be trying to answer the question, “Why should a VC invest in me?” Investors only have two feelings: greed and fear. Use this knowledge to help you answer the question.

E.g.

1. Here are 3-4 reasons why an investor should invest in me.
2. Here are the risks. 
3. Here’s how my company will address those risks.

The single biggest task you will face as an entrepreneur is managing risk. Everything an entrepreneur does increases some risks while decreasing others. A successful entrepreneur knows how to successfully manage his company’s exposure to risk. Deciding whose opinion to trust is another major hurdle that every entrepreneur must face. Vinod Khosla’s best practice is to narrow your choices down to 2-3 people, hear their opinions, then make a decision on who is most trustworthy. After you make a decision, it is important to list the Top 5 reasons as to why the decision you made was wrong. People often spend more time justifying decisions than inspecting them for errors.

Be sure to check out Vinod Khosla’s 15-page essay on Gene Pool Engineering. He cited the paper on multiple occasions throughout the night.

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Material sourced from a fireside chat with Vinod Kholsa at RocketSpace SF.

Like Enron, Groupon Is Firing The Worst 10 Percent of Its Sales Staff

Reuters:

Daily deals site Groupon is replacing the worst 10 percent of its sales staff as it pushes to win stronger deals from merchants and ensure it can keep growing, the company’s chief executive told potential IPO investors on Wednesday.

Andrew Mason is fostering a culture of corruption at Groupon. The pressure is on. The bottom 10 percent of employees will be fired. This is as cut-throat as it gets. Employees must be willing to do whatever it takes to get on top. Some will even cheat.

Enron perfected this model. Each year Enron’s management would hold employee reviews, where managers would fire the worst 10 percent of their employees. This led many employees to do things that they otherwise would not have. Some broke the law, others misrepresented their trades. Eventually Enron imploded. The company’s President and CEO, Jeff Skilling, along with its CFO, Anthony Fastow, were sent to jail for committing fraud.

A company’s culture is set by its management. I am not a fan of what Andrew Mason has chosen to do. This is business ethics 101. It is not smart to breed an overly competitive corporate culture.

Ethics.org:

Corporations are composed of cultures. Take a good close look at your culture. What are the norms of behavior? What is valued? Are employees rewarded for succeeding at any cost or are they urged to be shepherds of the corporation’s reputation as well as its assets? What pressures do they face to commit misconduct? What systemic problems exist that could encourage good people to make bad decisions?

Some Thoughts on Quora: Where Are All The Academics?

Up until now Quora has received raging reviews, but these reviews have stemmed largely from the tech industry. By and large, mainstream news outlets (like the NY Times) have yet to embrace the service like TechCrunch or Mashable have.

For now this is okay. Despite it’s recent surge in users Quora can still be considered a fledgling startup, and like any startup Quora has its eyes on expansion. 

I must warn you before we start, I do not regard myself as an authority on Quora nor do I consider myself an authority on the tech industry. Just trying to get some thoughts out on paper and would love some feedback. (Hey, this is sort of like a blog!)

What can Quora do to add diversity to its userbase?

If Quora wants to take intelligent Q&A mainstream it will have to start appealing directly to people outside of the tech industry. As it stands, both Quora and StackOverflow’s userbases are eerily similar in that there is little diversity amongst their members. The only difference is that Quora is compromised of techies while StackOverflow is compromised of hacker types.

I thought long and hard about which group Quora should target next (remember: they have already targeted the tech industry). Ultimately, I concluded that this theoretical group of people should meet the following criteria:

1. The average level of intelligence amongst this group’s members must be above the national average. This new community should be well-educated.
2. This new group of people should be well-versed in a multitude of different topics. This would allow for them to answer a diverse selection of questions.

After laying out these two guidelines, it became apparent that Quora needs to try and recruit users from upper-level Academia. Upper-level Academia is filled with intelligent minds who are collectively working towards one goal: the advancement of human intelligence within their respective fields.

This is similar to Quora’s mission statement, which is “to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”

One of my roommates is a hopeful neuroscience phd candidate. I do not have the slightest idea what his research pertains to as it is way over my head, which is exactly the point I am trying to address. Tech people like me should not be answering questions under the ‘Neuroscience’ category. I might have read a book or two on the subject, but I am no expert. It is people like my phd roommate who should be the ones answering neuroscience-related questions.

At the same time, I have an economics professor who has dedicated his life towards researching Behavioral Economics. The other day in class he turned to his students looking for a unique answer to a problem he had been facing with regards to his research. It occurred to me that this solution was ineffective. Why is my professor limited to asking only his students for help? Is there no way for him to brainstorm with grad students from other institutions?

In a lot of ways Quora has the potential fill this void as they are nothing more than a social network where users go to leverage each other’s knowledge (through Q&A collaboration). Grad students, phd students, professors and researchers are the primary sources that Quora loves to talk about.

Any thoughts on how Quora could specifically target this industry?

Would love to hear an answer from you. The official Q&A page for this post is available here: How could Quora specifically target and recruit users from upper-level Academia?

Quantity vs. Quality: Aol’s Big Move To The Center

Demand Media is a content factory that specializes in producing articles and videos ‘at scale.’ In other words, they take a quantity over quality approach to content.

Two weeks ago Demand Media IPO’ed for $1.5 billion, a sum rivaling the New York Times’ $1.6 billion market capitalization.

Demand Media’s successful IPO has shown us all that there is considerable money to be made in search engine optimization (SEO). Presumably, all of Demand Media’s traffic is derived from simple Google searches. Such queries include “How to brine a turkey?” and “How to use a microwave?”

Though it can be argued that the New York Times’ archives are more valuable than Demand Media’s, the numbers don’t lie. The New York Times and Demand Media’s market capitalizations are nearly identical ($1.58 billion versus $1.57 billion). According to Wall Street, breaking stories on Wikileaks and the Pentagon Papers is no more valuable than producing content which explains how to tie your shoelace.

How in the hell does this make sense?

Unlike Demand Media, the New York Times specializes in a quality over quantity approach to content. If we were able to assign a unique dollar value to all content produced by these companies we would find that on average the New York Times’ articles are more valuable than Demand Media’s.

Though the New York Times might not appear at the top of Google when you search for either ‘Wikileaks’ or ‘Pentagon Papers,’ they were indeed the first to break both stories. Quality journalism is what keeps the company afloat. Granted, the New York Times does put out a ton of crap, but for the most part they can be labeled as a reputable news source.

Here is a graphic that demonstrates this principle:

So, there is a debate brewing - quantity or quality ­- which offers a greater return to investors? Well, Aol’s Tim Armstrong believes in having a healthy balance of both.

Over the weekend, Aol finalized a merger between themselves and the Huffington Post. In terms of what we have discussed, this makes perfect sense. Aol already owns several quality content powerhouses (TechCrunch, Engadget, Popeater). These subsidiaries, some of which come from past acquisitions, place Aol closer to the New York Times in terms of quality versus quantity.

On the other hand, Arianna’s Huffington Post represents a mirror image of Aol’s current business model. By and large, the Huffington Post produces mediocre content. Though their content is superior to Demand Media’s, it is nowhere near the New York Times in terms of quality.

In making Arianna Huffington editor-in-chief, Aol now represents the perfect marriage between quantity and quality. Arianna’s focus will be on SEO, and Armstrong’s focus will be on producing quality content. As a result of Arianna’s influence, Aol will move towards the center of our model.

Only time can tell if this strategy will work itself out. One thing is for certain though, having a strategy is better than not having a strategy.

__________

Addendum: For those with a technical background, the model I have used is an adaption of the famous Hotelling-Downs model. More information can be found here.

Unrelated: It will be interesting to see if Arianna turns Aol into a raging leftist News Corp clone or if she leaves politics out of it. In the 90s she was a staunch conservative whereas now she labels herself a ‘liberal activist.’ This is a woman who is willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. She is going to make an exceptional editor-in-chief!

Unrelated x 2: Fred Wilson once remarked that the Huffington Post’s greatest asset is its commenting system. It will be interesting to see how Arianna sparks engagement amongst Aol’s userbase.

HP’s New Reclining PC Is A Flop, I’m Waiting For Apple’s Response

HP just launched the first reclining touchscreen PC and it sucks. Such a half-assed attempt at creating a new market sector. On the other hand, why has Apple rarely failed in their multiple attempts to redefine different sectors of the market?

Don’t call me a fanboy, but I believe in Apple as a company. They have established themselves in several markets over the last few years. Their laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets each deserve a best-in-class award. Sure, Apple’s products do come at a premium price, but market research has shown that people are willing to pay a premium price for premium products.

At this point, I am not sure how you could possibly argue that Apple will not venture into the touchscreen desktop and touchscreen laptop markets. As touchscreen technology improves and the supply of touchscreens becomes less costly, computer manufacturers will find a way to incorporate them.

If the technology is readily available, why would you NOT want touch incorporated into your computer? I am not saying that we need to get rid of keyboards and mice just yet, but we should definitely add touch.

It is not hard to believe that Apple will come along and redefine the touchscreen desktop and touchscreen laptop markets as they did with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Bullshit if you believe Microsoft or Google will set the bar for either of these markets. Apple has shown that they are unwilling to release an inferior product into a new market segment. In other words, Apple likely already has a touchscreen laptop and touchscreen desktop in the works. They may not be the first on scene, but they will certainly retain the top spot.

Here are some of Apple’s patents courtesy of Patently Apple:

Downloading is dead. Long live the cloud!

The transition to Chrome OS won’t be nearly as difficult as you had originally imagined. 

Chrome OS will be nothing more than Dropbox with a rock solid web interface. It will allow you to not only access your files remotely as Dropbox does, but also open those files without ever having to leave your web browser. Aside from maintaining a locally stored backup, or “cache”, the downloading of files will be useless.

If you are a Dropbox user, you have already begun your transition to Chrome OS. A Dropbox user’s files and folders are already stored in the cloud on Dropbox’s servers. This allows unvetted access to all of your files via ANY browser. In addition, not having internet access is no longer a problem as Dropbox ensures that your files remain backed up locally. When internet access is not available, you access your files as you routinely do – on your harddrive. As soon as you reconnect to the web, Dropbox will sync the changes you made on your harddrive with its servers. All of this is carried out seamlessly, without any user intervention.

It is my understanding that Chrome OS will operate in a similar fashion. However, in addition to providing seamless remote access to all of your files, Chrome OS will also offer a slew of different web apps. With these web apps, you will be able to open all of your files from within the web browser. 

In Chrome OS, downloading is dead.

Newly opened tabs will no longer offer access to your internet history and favorited websites, rather they will offer direct links to your files, folders and web apps. In theory, “about:blank” will be your desktop. Double-clicking any file on your “about:blank” desktop will open it in the browser. The downloading of files is no longer necessary.

Check out the image of Chrome’s new PDF reader below. Due to its shere convenience, Chrome’s in-browser PDF reader is far superior to any native PDF reader. As the PDF reader now resides within the browser, you no longer need to download a PDF to your harddrive before vewing it. This has long been the case with images, text and video. There is simply no need to download this sort of stuff to your harddrive when you can simply view, or “stream”, it natively within the browser.

Smartphones, Tablets, Televisions, and Mac OSX

A note on the soon to be released Mac App Store. Contrary to what has been hypothesized, the Mac App Store will flop. The act of downloading apps greatly contrasts with the current trend towards cloud computing. We must be careful to not compare the potential success of the Mac App Store with the current succes of the iOS App Store.

It is no secret that the iOS app store, Android app store and other non-desktop app stores are kicking butt right now. When it comes to non-desktop computing environments, native apps are far superior to web apps [1]. This is exactly how the personal computer market used to be. Web apps used to suck in comparison to desktop apps, but the current trend seems to have reversed itself and is now pointing towards web apps versus away from them [2]. This comes as the result of better technology coupled with a more reliable internet connection. 

Of the 28 non-native apps that I have installed on my iPhone, 23 require an internet connection. This comes as no surprise. Nowadays it’s common to ask how much time one spends on the internet, versus how much time they spend on their computer.

Apple, Android, Blackberry, et al. have not acknowledged this. These platforms have willingly chosen to support native apps versus their web app counterparts. While there are several pros to this approach – elongated battery life, less bandwidth consumption, etc. – one massive con remains: the need to download and install apps prior to enjoying content [3].

Maturity matters in the technology industry. There is a constant need for innovation. Incumbents are constantly being surpassed. Naturally, an older platform will have gone through more innovation cycles than a younger one. 

In sum, the current trend of these new platforms is towards the downloading of native apps. This is in agreement with the trend that existed several years ago in the desktop computing market. These new platforms are incapable of fully supporting a transition to the cloud. In due time, however, these new platforms will shift away from native apps and towards cloud computing, as is the current case with desktop computer systems.

__________

This post inpsired by my previous response to Robert Scoble’s “Do you +really+ use all those mobile apps?”

[1] See Dion Almaer’s “Native apps are always better than Web apps; Psst, the new way has an escape chute.”

[2] As an example, Jason Kincaid’s “More Details On Skype’s Big Move To The Web.”

[3] See Robert Scoble’s “Do you +really+ use all those mobile apps?”

“Public” vs. “Private” Social Networking And How It Relates To Path and Instagram

Path and Instagram differ in one regard – privacy. While Instagram demonstrates little to no regard towards your privacy, Path is determined to keep your photo uploads private. The method that they use to achieve this may be laughable, but it is highly effective. With Path your privacy is all but guaranteed as you are only allowed to share your photo uploads with your 50 closest friends.

The current competition between the two companies reminds me of the early competition that took place between MySpace and Facebook. As they were first to launch, MySpace was able to secure an early lead on Facebook.

In due time, however, MySpace users discovered that the sharing of one’s personal life with the rest of the world often led to undesired consequences (job loss, separation from spouse, etc.). Gradually, consumers gained an incentive to migrate from a public social network to a private, more secure one. As a result, Facebook began to gain traction on (and eventually overtook) MySpace.

There are a striking number of similarities between the aforemented Facebook/Myspace scenario and the current Path/Instagram scenario. Early adopters often find that an public social network is more fun. Because of this, early adopters have chosen to adopt Instagram over Path. [1]

Sharing is fun, until it gets you into trouble. Path will begin gaining ground on Instagram once Instagram’s early adopters realize that the act of publicly sharing photos has negative consequences. My argument is that, in the long run, a private social networking system will always trump a public one. In other words, a user greatly values their own privacy; it just takes them a while to realize it.

Instagram may be big now, but Path presents a far superior long-term opportunity for potential investors. Why make a trillion when you can make… billions?

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This post was inspired by MG Sielger’s “Path Update Allows You To Upload Any Photo — With An Honest Twist.”

[1] I’m certain Instagram’s launch-date lead on Path helps, but let’s not forget that MySpace also launched before Facebook. As it happens, we assume that a product’s launch date is not a deciding factor in the long-run.

Do you *really* use all those mobile apps?

Robert Scoble writes:

I have [downloaded] 359 apps on my iPhone…

So, I’ve switched to searching for apps. Need Instagram? I swipe to the left, to get to Apple’s search screen. Then I start typing “I..N..S..T” by the time I get to the fifth character, or usually sooner, the app comes up and I can click on it and use it.

…

So, I search for apps by name and what they do. Typing “L..E..V..E..L” brings up the level app. And so on, and so forth.

Here are my thoughts on Scoble’s approach:

Why must Scoble download all 359 apps in the first place? 

It would be much more convenient if he could swipe left, search “level” or “flashlight” and then be able to instantly use the app (without having to have downloaded it in the first place!).

Downloading is such a trivial step in the App Store process. At this point, I’m not certain that we have the technological capabilities to eradicate this step, though I believe Apple and others are working towards this sort of cloud computing.

Until then I’ll stick to my OCD ways - only 27 apps for me!

Was Apple coerced into heavily marketing the Beatles’ iTunes launch?

Yesterday was a day that EMI will never forget. All 17 Beatles albums found themselves in iTunes coveted Top 50 list less than 12 hours after first appearing in the iTunes Store. The Beatles’ digital launch was a stunning success, but this all of this comes as no surprise.

Apple heavily marketed the launch. The fact is, Apple’s internal PR firm is far superior to that of any record company.

Here’s some food for thought — EMI gave Apple the rights to the Beatles collection on the condition that Apple took care of the launch’s promotion.

Up until now, promotion of an artist’s music on iTunes has traditionally been handled by the record companies themselves, never by Apple. This is because record companies only get paid when their artists sell. Apple, on the other hand, doesn’t care which artists are selling well. Their chief concern is overall sales. 

Why then would Apple spend hundreds-of-thousands of dollars to promote the Beatles’ iTunes launch? It doesn’t make economic sense.

And I’m not the only one left wondering. Devin Foley tweets:

Maybe making a big deal out of The Beatles’ availability on iTunes was a part of the deal?

So what exactly were the terms of that Apple-EMI deal?

The Value of An MBA

(Cross-posted from my Posterous)

Critics have long argued that the limited utility one receives from a Master of Business Administration (MBA) does not warrant its total cost. However, having someone around with a sense for business often is useful. The question then becomes, must one receive an MBA to acquire a formidable sense for business?

Several years back I hired a private coach to help me improve my golf game. Spending an outrageous sum of money for a somewhat overpaid instructor to sit there and watch me hit ball after ball taught me an important lesson. The only way to improve your game is to get out on the driving range and practice. Let me repeat, the only way to improve your game is to get out on the driving range and practice.

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen Tiger nail that perfect shot. No one gets good at a sport through studying it. If that was the case then each of the 720,000 fans that attended the last year’s U.S. Open would be better off quitting their day job to pursue a career in tennis.

Likewise, studying business never did anyone any good. You don’t go to business school to learn business. There is no secret, magical knowledge that they lay down on you at Wharton, Kellogg, Harvard or Sloan. In fact, you could pick up all of the technical material that they teach you at those schools from books. If you want to learn business then get to work. Literally, get to work!

MBA As A Signal of Intelligence

So why on earth would anyone ever spend both their time and money on business school? Let’s look at this question another way. Why on earth would anyone ever want a driver’s license?

This isn’t a trick question. You can’t drive a car without a license. It doesn’t matter how good of a driver you are. The law says that without a license you cannot drive. That piece of plastic that every teenager yearns for? It doesn’t teach them how to drive, it just gives them the right to do so.

From an economic standpoint, a driver’s license serves as a signal of a person’s ability to operate a motor vehicle. Signaling is the idea that one party (the driver) conveys some meaningful information about itself (that he is qualified to drive) to another party via the signal (the driver’s license).1

Back to our initial question, so why on earth would anyone ever spend both their time and money on business school? An MBA from a top tier school, just like a driver’s license, serves as a signal. It’s the degree and school name that an MBA candidate is paying for, not so much the knowledge attained in the process. The degree is what will signal potential employers of their inherent intelligence, which in turn will translate into a salary raise, promotion, and sometimes even a better job.

Now let’s say that you plan on sticking it to the man. You don’t want to be just another employee at some major corporation. You want purpose. You want meaning. You want to build something. You are an entrepreneur.

So then, how much value does a signal of intelligence offer someone who plans on starting their own business? To be honest, not much. It’s a good thing then that business school provides a graduate with more than just a piece of paper that signals his intelligence to potential employers.

B-School As A Tool To Network

Business school is a great place to meet new people, build new relationships and broaden your network. In other words, business school is a great place to network.

Networking is another reason of why it’s necessary to go to a top tier school versus enrolling in your local college’s night program. You can’t expect to network with top tier individuals unless you are at a top tier program.

We often forget how valuable a strong network is. Time and time again the phrase “it’s not about what you know, but about who you know” is repeated in our heads. At business school the classmate sitting next to you could quite possibly be your next business partner. It is a huge advantage to be pooled together with a few hundred well-connected, like-minded individuals. That business idea that you have been wanting to pursue, but haven’t had the resources to do so? Your friends from business school might be able to help.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the amount of value derived from an MBA varies from student to student. Should you get your MBA? It’s a personal choice. Yes there is value in an MBA, but will that value be of use to you? It all depends on what you want to do once you receive your MBA. Guy Kawasaki puts it best, “[It] depends on what you want to do. If you want to work for an established company, then maybe getting an MBA is a good idea. If you want to be an entrepreneur, then be an entrepreneur.”

Sunday Funnies: How To Become The Most Popular Twitterer Evah

Alex Blagg dishes out his not-so-secret formula:

1. Read EVERY Tweet. If you let even one Tweet slip through the cracks, you could miss the secret of the whole universe.

2. Keep track of everyone you retweet because they owe you a favor now.

3. Check to see if your email address book contacts are on Twitter. If they’re not, harass them unmercifully until they sign up and follow you.

4. Submit ALL of your tweets to Digg/Reddit/StumbleUpon.

5. If you get Tweeter’s block, just provide a literal answer to Twitter’s persistent “What’s Happening?” question, even if your whole stream just becomes an endless series of “Trying to think of something to Tweet” tweets. Nothing is worse than NOT Tweeting.

6. If you really want to succeed at Twitter, you should be a famous person. If you can’t manage that, just act like one.

7. If you just make shit up on Twitter, it’s not lying. It’s a sitcom.

8. For every 99 Tweets about how cool you are, throw in one Tweet with a self-deprecating joke about how you’re actually a total dork, but in a way that also makes you seem cool.

9. Not very many people seem to Livetweet embarrassing diarrhea situations. Could be an opportunity there.

10. But don’t over-do it. You shouldn’t make EVERY Tweet about pooping your pants.

11. Make sure your Tweets plug into your Facebook plug into your Tumblr plug into your Foursquare plug into your other social nets, like a neverending Human Centipede of Social Media Coolness.

12. Don’t forget to keep the Twitter conversation going in real life. People’s ears perk up when they hear any sentence that begins, “So I saw this thing on Twitter…”

13. You only get 276 DM’s in your whole life, so use them wisely.

14. Pick a great username when you create a Twitter account, because if you don’t, you’ll automatically be assigned the name “Rodney” followed by a series of numbers.

15. Only follow people with more followers than you (unless they’re exceptionally hot).

16. Only retweet people with more followers than you (unless they’re exceptionally hot).

17. Only @-reply people with more followers than you (unless they’re exceptionally hot).

18. If someone unfollows you on Twitter, find them and burn their fucking house to the ground in front of everyone.

19. “Twitter is powerful tool for acting like a powerful tool.” - Einstein

20. To succeed on Twitter, you have to either be funny, clever, informative or Ashton Kutcher.

Read More

GrubHub Nails Customer Retention

Last night I went to order some dinner off of the food delivery search engine GrubHub.

I was blown away by a UX feature that they utilize. Here it is:

I was asked to login in order to complete my order. Not sure of whether or not I had created a GrubHub account in the past I inputed an email/password combination that I commonly use.

Poof!

GrubHub alerts me that no password is associated with that email address, so a temporary one has been emailed to me.

So what just happened?

I’m rather certain that GrubHub automatically created an account for me when I typed in my email address. I had already told myself that I was not willing to go through the hassle of signing up for a new account. I would have much rather called the restaurant.

But since my account was automatically created for me I had no choice but to use the service. In other words, this feature worked. Lesson learned: even the tiniest UX feature can dramatically increase customer retention.

Thoughts on Instagr.am and Bestc.am

Visual social networking is going to be the next big thing:

Use of the service is exploding, just like:

Forget updating your friends in 140 characters or less. Forget sharing with them where you are at. Instead, why not share an image of the event itself?

That’s right, a picture. Up-and-coming services Instagr.am and Bestc.am allow users to do just that.

Everyone is saying that Quora is going to be the next big thing, but I disagree. Not that’s not to say that Quora won’t be big in its own right, but I can’t see its potential for major mainstream adoption as Yahoo Answers has already covered that domain.

Major mainstream adoption?

The other day I was sitting in class. Looking around I noted that students who had their laptops out were either on Facebook or Twitter trying to figure out what their friends were up to.

In order for major mainstream adoption to occur you have to give the masses what they want. The masses want to know what their friends are up to. What better way to do this than through a picture?