mostly research stuff
recently, i made a very painful and personal decision to never go to hotbot again (or in boston, ‘neh-vah’)…lamentably, i believe that it’s time to move this tool from assisted living to a full time nursing home, along with lycos if possible… in the famous mental-reference-handbook “on death and dying” by elisabeth kubler ross (who is like the aretha franklin of thanatology), we living folk were introduced to the concept of ’stages of dying’ (aka ’stages of grief’)….the truncated cocktail party version of this: there are five stages that a dying person goes through when they are told that they have a terminal illness…stages go in progression through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
what’s this got to do with hotbot? lemme quickly walk you through this scenario: hotbot was cool once, a long time ago, like in 1996 when it was launched by wired (wired digital)…in ‘98, lycos gobbled it up (Denial: “yeah, so what? lycos is great! and so we’re still great, even with hotbot dammit!”)…then that drove lycos’ top technical mind in search out the front door (Anger: “i’m outta here!” - dr. john mauldin, inventor of the original lycos search in 1994 while at cmu)…skip to 2000, and lycos is being gobbled up by spanish terra networks at the height of the boom (Bargaining: “i’ll only put terra in the name if you lick my shoe” - bob davis, then running lycos)…then a year later, lycos is all over their “FAST” search and technology investment from earlier…by 2001, fast is all that’s powering lycos…plus those stupid dog ads (Depression: “shit, we can’t do anything right, let’s try FAST instead..plus bigger ads!”)…so time goes by, stock keeps slipping, revenue keeps on fallin’ and fallin’ until at last you’ve got crap like this: “lycos posts first positive EBITDA in its life history in late 2003″ (Acceptance: “oh, yeah, you’re right, we are old news! bob got out just in time, ’cause we’re basically dead.”)…
and what happened to hotbot along the way? well, for starters, it’s Read the rest of this entry »
so i’m reading this guy andrew leonard’s quasi-seminal article (about as long as the iliad) called, “you are who you know” and it appears that he kinda missed the point, took readers in the wrong direction regarding social networking, and generally was like 3,000 words too long. to be specific, he’s talking a lot about social networking on sites like friendster and orkut…but what he really means is ‘online community’ (only spoke offers an enterprise variation for additional network modeling and analysis from the co’s on his list).
he hits some of the key points regarding general uselessness, user stupidity (as in, lack of common sense when it comes to private information), impact on behavior - but then he loses me when it becomes obvious that he’s really trying to write about two things that have very similar names but very different meanings (like ‘angina’ and ‘vagina’)… this is likely a function of some kind of salon.com-pay-per-word agreement that’s going on…
social networking analysis is a discipline that goes back to a time before computers, though he claims that it ‘wasn’t really possible’ until large computers were around. this is wrong: sociograms have been used for a long, long time by sociologists, anthropologists, the military and others. modeling a network by leveraging (for example) Read the rest of this entry »
when you gotta do some market research in the world where consumers shop - from clothing to groceries to electronics - it’s always important to understand exactly who owns those top brands… a long time ago, specialty beer devotees learned this the hard way by discovering that just about every nascent microbrew was really just the bastard brother of pabst or schlitz…or up for adoption.
just as i was suprised to hear that walt disney’s ‘family friendly’ empire was behind abc’s production of the upcoming television show “wife swap,” so too was i aghast when i learned that mars inc, makers of snickers (breakfast of champions), skittles (great for spitting), m&m’s (got a serious problem with these) and twix (candy and a kid’s school snack!) also makes massive amounts of dog and cat food …that’s what one will learn by doing some very basic brand research at a site like transnationale, which covers over 21 thousand brands, replete with market share data….this is a wonderful free resource (oh, and if you ever hear me actually say the word ‘wonderful’ out loud, please kick my ass)
the alternative to this? well, one might consider Read the rest of this entry »
“A word to the wise ain’t necessary…it’s the stupid ones who need the advice.” - Bill Cosby
according to wired news, friendster has completely sold out… when the site first launched, the laity were putting up bogus accounts for pets, politicians or often completely made-up people. friendster was perturbed, and quickly pumped in new rules and purged the system (oh btw, almost all 12 thousand of those fakesters now live on at pretendster…but now, in a bold and avaricious attempt to prove that these sites might one day earn play money, friendster has sold spots to dreamworks to promote the will ferrell movie ‘anchorman.’ users can link to the movie characters (e.g. ron burgundy, registration required to look at this) …and their logic? because dreamworks owns the characters, they are not fictitious. (is that fustian? is it even logic?)
here’s the bullshit that came out of friendster’s mouth, courtesy of the wired piece, “What Friendster is doing with these movie-character profiles is actually a brand-new paradigm in media promotion,” Friendster spokeswoman Lisa Kopp said. “We are working directly with a number of production houses and movie studio partners to create film-character profiles, or ‘fan’ profiles, that allow our users to share their enthusiasm about the film with their friends.”
i’m sorry - you’re doing what? this is, in my estimation, the most egregious violation of user trust that i’ve seen to date on any of these sites. Read the rest of this entry »
okay, we all remember what happened to kentucky fried chicken when they broke 600 outlets in china back in 2002, right? when their slogan “finger lickin’ good’” was first translated into chinese, it came out as “eat your fingers off.” even as a child, i was always given to spells of deference for the great colonel sanders, facial hair savant that he is… only as a man-child had i begun to sense a darker world, one in which not all corporate information is true…and now, prone to wanton bursts of useless research as i am, i’ve lifted the veil to discover that (gasp) he was not a real colonel…(i’m kinda choked up as i write this)…it was governor ruby laffoon who got so hot about his chicken that he made him an honorary colonel in the state militia….it’s going to take me years to work this out. here’s the skinny:
(oh, and this is the short version, you can read a long arse history at kfc)….”Harland Sanders, Born September 9, 1890, died December 16, 1980 (leukemia btw, not clogged arteries)….first restaurant, Sanders’ Cafe in 1929 in Corbin, Kentucky….made an honorary colonel by the governor of Kentucky in 1935, and by 1964 he had over 600 Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants…sold the company in 1964 for $2,000,000, a lifetime salary of $40,000 and a seat on the board of directors…remained an active spokesman until his death.”
…and in case - like me - you ever want to impress the hell out of somebody with colonel sanders knowledge (perhaps on a date, or at one of your support group meetings) here’s some more of his story…all of which is certain to make you cry a river (sigh)… Read the rest of this entry »
this blog is mostly safe for work, though i sometimes throw around a 'fuck' or two. you'll find a bunch of my articles from CI Magazine, SCIP online, other research pieces and some other crap. enjoy. there's lost of content here related to getting information about, around, from and through people and organizations...