Funny
If you have $35 to drop on a gag gift, spend it on this remote control.
With giant buttons, this extra-large remote is easy to use and impossible to lose.
Sorry, it’s not social or media or biz … just geek chic. I had to post it. Just imagine giving that gift.
(Saw it first on Signal vs. Noise.)
Tags: remote, control, funny, tv, john koetsier
Great business cards - Flock
I’m jealous …
It helps, of course, to have great corporate identity/branding.
Update: perhaps this card from Garrett Dimon is even better …
Tags: business, cards, flock, will pate, john koetsier
Fall in British Columbia
Tags: fall, BC, trees, leaves, john koetsier
Books, books, books
Recently read …
- Cusp, by Robert A Metzger
Wow. Mind-altering. Awesome. Couldn’t put it down. - Belgarath the Sorcerer by David and Leigh Eddings
Yawn. Shouldn’t have picked it up - Eddings is for 12-year olds - but I have this silly thing about finishing books I start. - The Guns of Normandy by George G Blackburn
Sobering - a personal, real, dirty account of life as a gunner with the Canadian artillery in WWII.
Halloween and too much candyâ„¢
Back from trick-or-treating with the kids.
Ethan counted his candy, and he’s got 135 chocolate bars, bags of chips, and assorted other candies. The other kids have about the same.
We didn’t go to that many homes …. many just give out 6 or 7 candies at a time.
Sheesh - when I was a kid we had to work for our candy!
Tags: halloween, kids, trick-or-treating, john koetsier
You will be assimilated: Google buys Jotspot
The juggernaut continues: Jotspot is now owned by Google.
Wow.
Purely from an individual perspective, this is really, really cool. Jotspot has been focused on building specialized wiki applications for specific purposes like wedding planning or class reunions. They were cool when they cost money, and they’ll be even better when they’re free, as the big G will undoubtedly make them.
(As stated in the FAQ, which was amusingly posted at the same time as the post on Google’s blog … before there was time for any questions to be asked, never mind frequently.)
As per usual Google acquisition strategy, Jotspot is now closed to further sign-ups until they migrate to Google’s platform.
Steve Rubel has his take (how will Google monetize?) and, of course, the Google blog has a post from Jotspot founder Joe Kraus.
AMA webcast: mining the blogosphere
The American Marketing Association has an upcoming webcast titled Mining the Blogosphere: It’s a Whole New World of Marketing.
The title is a little ominous … I have never viewed myself as a resource to be mined. I’m sure most other bloggers concur. However, the content appears to be fairly good:
Mining the blogosphere gives you a unique opportunity to:
- Listen to what you’ve been missing
- Act faster because you’ll be the first to understand
- Win with customers and market share
What you will learn:
- How to listen and understand the needs of customers and prospects
- How they talk about you, your products, and your competitors, in their own words
- How to tailor messages and product development to suit different customer types
- How to measure the effectiveness, momentum and engagement of your marketing initiatives/programs.
- How these lessons were used to launch one of the most successful word of mouth movements in recent memory and a great example of a company empowering a community of kindred spirits.
If you are a CMO, a brand manager, a product manager, advertising agency or marketing strategist, you won’t want to miss this informative webinar.
If you’re reading this blog, you probably don’t need to join in. It’s always interesting to see what traditional marketers are doing, however.
Tags: marketing, marketing2.0, AMA, john koetsier
The problem(s) with Shutterfly
Shutterfly is a well-funded, well-run, well-executed company in the online photo printing space. Why then is it just barely breaking even?
This post in the Tabblo blog got me thinking. Tabblo’s saying that Shutterfly is competing against nonconsumption … i.e., not printing your photos. And they’re right.
The other reason Shutterfly having a tough time is they’re in the bloody printing industry, which traditionally has margins of around 6% when things are good, and massive capital costs in the form of printing presses.
What a depressing industry to be in. Sure, there’s a ton of printing going on right now, and will be for the foreseeable future. But, printing is a commodity business, there are lots of printers, and printers compete on price and turnaround speed. Quality is assumed - you ante up quality to get in the game.
Shutterfly probably looked like a great technology start-up at the beginning. It must have seemed that way to the founders and investors. However, Wall Street seems to know better and is valuing it as a manufacturing company.
Shutterfly’s shares had a brief run-up after their market debut on Sept. 29, but since then they have dropped to $13.35, or 11 percent below the offering price of $15.
Realistically, the only technology piece to Shutterfly is how the photos come in, and how the products are created by clients online. Everything else is traditional manufacturing/printing/shipping … even if they are using the most modern PDF-x1A to paper printing workflow.
What’s worse, its competitors are similar companies who are owned by major, well-heeled giants.
Shutterfly’s two main competitors in online photo printing, Ofoto and Snapfish, have been acquired by Kodak and Hewlett-Packard, respectively.
But even that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that those parent companies, HP and Kodak, both build digital presses that are used by all three companies, Shutterfly, Ofoto, and Snapfish to print photos and assorted photo products.
HP builds Indigo presses - which Shutterfly has 20-30 of - and Kodak builds several lines of digital presses. In other words, Shutterfly’s competitors own the very machines that Shutterfly runs on.
Who do you think can buy them cheaper? Don’t answer, it’s a rhetorical question. And it explains this:
Early last year, the standard price of a 4-by-6 print was around 29 cents. Today, they cost 19 cents at Shutterfly, 15 cents at Kodak and 12 cents at Snapfish, though volume discounts are available.
Sucks to be in a commodity industry. ‘Specially when you’re competing against the people who built the playing field.
Tags: shutterfly, ofoto, snapfish, photo, printing, commoditization, john koetsier
web 2.0 blast from the past
This just in … from 2005:
Click the pic to go to Flickr and check out the many, many notes.
Tags: web2.0, flickr, social media, john koetsier
Machiavellian isn’t the half of it
Want to get an insider’s view of the YouTube/Google deal? Check out Mark Cuban’s blog: Some intimate details on the Google YouTube Deal.
Includes such gems as:
The media companies had their typical challenges. Specifically, how to
get money from Youtube without being required to give any to the talent (musicians and actors)? If monies were received as part of a license to Youtube then they would contractually obligated to share a substantial portion of the proceeds with others. For example most record label contracts call for artists to get 50% of all license deals. It was decided the media companies would receive an equity position as an investor in Youtube which Google would buy from them. This shelters all the up front monies from any royalty demands by allowing them to classify it as gains from an investment position. A few savvy agents might complain about receiving nothing and get a token amount, but most will be unaware of what transpired.
Cuban doesn’t know if it’s true or not, but it sure appears to be.
Tags: google, youtube, gootube, tv, tv2.0, mark cuban, collusion, antitrust, john koetsier
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About
Sparkplug 9 is John Koetsier's blog on life, the universe, and everything,
but mostly the stuff you see big in the tags to the left.
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