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Uncategorized

What is Web 2.0?

 That’s what I’m aiming to find out. I’ve been asked to moderate a panel for NYSIA (blurb below) on Web 2.0 in NY on 1/23/06. Please come and see what we all can learn together. I’ll be blogging some thoughts in preparation for the panel in the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 – Wave of the Future

What is Web 2.0? The catch phrase is meant to describe the current generation of hot Internet growth companies. Google is the icon, but many others products and services have arisen: Flckr, the various blogging tools, Wikipedia and do-it-yourself Wikis, and innovative social software companies like Del.icio.us. The watchwords are user participation, Web as a platform, and lightweight programming models.

New York has emerged as a center of this movement! Web 1.0 pioneer Howard Greenstein will moderate NYSIA’s first monthly meeting in 2006, and help you “jump the chasm” into the Web 2.0 space.

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Uncategorized

Transit Strike A Nuisance for Me

Well, NY City Transit is on strike. Lucky for me I take NJ Transit and PATH, and was basically just inconvenienced by late running trains and crowds.

Colleagues have walked to work from Brooklyn, or have gotten into cars with friends of neighbor’s brother-in-law’s cousin’s once removed to get here. Quite difficult for them, and I’m sorry everyone has to deal with this.

 

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Uncategorized

Insert Snow Joke Here



IMG_4460.JPG

Originally uploaded by HowardGr.

8 inches on the back table. That’s why I’m home today.

Categories
marketing

Brand Sluts, Consumers and Attention

As “consumers” or CUSTOMERS (thanks Jerry), we’ve been targets to be advertised at, our eyeballs have been made ‘sticky’ to keep us viewing pages, and we’ve been positioned, demographically skewed, psychographically sliced and surveyed until it hurts.

Now, my fellow Clue-train riders, we’re being accused of being “Brand Sluts.” No more august publication than the NY Post has noted in yesterday’s paper, (gracefully left for me on my seat by a fellow commuter who thought I would find the article important):

Consumers are showing little or no loyalty when it comes to sticking with a company or product, and they’re increasingly prone to hopping from one brand to another when they feel bored or get a better offer.

The problem is so widespread — and of such concern to marketers — that ad agency JWT has popularized a “half-joking” term to describe it: brand sluts. The whole notion is heartbreaking for advertisers, who talk endlessly about estalishing a “relationship” that will keep consumers coming back.

Ah. I think I’ve found the problem. See, consumers just consume. So, if you put out more attractive food, they’ll go elsewhere. Ironic that the JWT folks who are responsible for creating ads for companies in order to pull customers away from the attention and brands of their competitors are bawling now that these tactics of advertisting AT CONSUMERS and not talking TO CUSTOMERS makes us disloyal. That might lead to (gasp) new and different ad campaigns that would win us back! More spending. Better CPMs. Better targeted executions. I was also shocked, shocked, to find gambling at RIck’s as well.

Hearing Dave Winer on the Attentiontech podcast last week say that advertising was so “20th century” and that there was no room for ads in RSS feeds made me choke a little. But, upon further considering his more expanded-upon thoughts, and those of Steve Gillmor around Attention Trust, I’m beginning to see that not only is the ad model completely broken, but that there really is no mending it.

I never see ads on TV, unless I choose to (thanks Tivo!). I tune them out on web pages too. But I seek out commerical information all the time. Will some combination of search, social networks, Attention “gestures” as Gillmor likes to say, and companies like Seth Goldstein’s “Root.net” allow us CUSTOMERS to offer our attentioon, ask for what we want and get it?

Sounds a lot more like dating with intent to marry than acting like a slut. And in our society, isn’t it much more important to value the sanctity of marriage? (Ironic insert here).

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Random Thought

From the TNL Home office…

Tristan Louis, from the home office in New York, New York, with the (very intelligent and not-at-all-Dave-Letterman-like) Signs of a Bubble.
Required reading for the intelligent, post-dot-com-bubble investor, job-seeker, trend watcher.

Example:

At the bottom of the list is the belief that the poster child for a particular bubble can do no wrong. This is generally a feeling that starts within a company, as it starts believing its own slogans and press. As the bubble starts to inflate, the poster child traditionally starts receiving more coverage from the mainstream media and being presented as a new type of company that can do no wrong.

Hmmm, now who could he be talking about? Let’s Google it and find out…