Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Yahoo! back to 2005?

    Back to 2005

    Events at Yahoo! this week took me back to 2005 – the halcyon days web 2.0 days before popular social networks. If you are vaguely interested in the online sector, you will have noticed that Summly has been acquired by Yahoo!. The acquisition is interesting for a number of reasons:

    • It is a statement of Yahoo!’s mobile aspirations. Yahoo! has been in mobile for a good while, back to 2005 at least. Yahoo! Go tried to pull all the of the Yahoo! portal properties into an app-like experience and Yahoo! ZoneTag was an early experiment of attributing location to smartphone pictures well before the iPhone. Upload to Flickr was integrated into many SonyEricsson and Nokia phones (notably the bestselling Nokia N73) But none of these pioneering efforts were rewarded with market share
    • Yahoo! is looking to buy cool, like it did back in 2005 and 2006, acquiring web 2.0 businesses. Summly has had about one million downloads, mostly by early adopters of its news reader. It is not the mass-market audience that Yahoo! usually targets. Like Flickr and Delicious before it this is about cool. Whilst most of the focus has been on the media, Yahoo! has historically made these purchases to try and infuse some of the start-up get up and go DNA into the larger organisation
    • Summly makes some interesting technological choices that would appeal to Yahoo!. Firstly, surfacing content that consumers would find of interest; particularly interesting given that Google has abandoned RSS. Secondly, using analytical techniques to create abridged version of content could also be a differentiator in search in terms of both presentation and as a technique to improve relevance (if the abridged rather than full versions were indexed). However, Summly doesn’t own the technology itself, but is a mashup of underlying services
    • The 30 million dollar acquisition figure being bandied around mirrors the rumoured costs of buying both Flickr and Delicious back in 2005 and 2006. One of the key differences between Flickr and Delicious with Summly is the technology benefit that was brought to the table by the web 2.0 pioneers and in Flickr’s case the quality of the business on offer. Prior to being acquired Flickr was pretty close to breaking even with its freemium model
    • Summly is an interesting focus away from the traditional Silicon  and Bay Area stomping grounds of Yahoo!

    More information
    Yahoo! to acquire Summly | Yodel Anecdotal

  • Siberian meteor burst + more

    Siberian meteor burst

    I know that there have been 500 people with minor injuries, but  the Siberian meteor burst felt like I was living in a Jerry Bruckheimer film. The best observation I saw about it was in Vice magazine’s email newsletter which asked why so many drivers in Russia had managed to film the asteroid rather than keeping both hands on the wheel? The reason for the multiple recordings of the Siberian meteor burst is driver cams used to help with car accident disputes. The Siberian meteor burst brought back memories of the Tunguska event in 1908 which levelled large swathes of Siberian forest.

    Business

    “Physically Together”: Here’s the Internal YHOO No-Work-From-Home Memo | AllThingsD – I could see a post coming on from Becky McMichael about the benefits of remote working and flexible hours etc etc

    PrivCo | LIVINGSOCIAL $110M Debt Infusion From Existing Investors With Oppressive Terms – I wonder what implications this will have for GroupOn

    Consumer behaviour

    HBO: The Weight of the Nation interesting site on obesity in the US

    Culture

    So there has been extensive character redesigns and different actors will be voicing some of the main protagonists, but I am super-excited that Production I.G are returning with another installment in the Ghost In the Shell series of anime. Arise looks amazing judging by the trailer footage now available on YouTube. More Japan related content can be found here.