Category: business and economics

Things about management and business on a smaller scale, and economics on a larger one.

What people want

“2 Drink Minimum” by 500hats
You’ll have to read until the end to find out why I included this photo.

Holly wrote recently that your most passionate users don’t necessarily build the best products. It’s really worth a read.

I think the problem comes from the fact that there is often a large difference between what people say they want, and what people really want.

Forgetting that this difference exists and being insensitive to a customer’s true desires is the source of many mistakes I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned.

What follows is an example of each of those things two things: a mistake and a lesson.

[Michael and me after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 9

A social network stream of conciousness

Someone else asked me a question whose answer turned out to be Gaia Online.

According to the data in the hints of the question, Gaia needs a serious revision upward in Alexa traffic rankings. I’m still wondering how revenue is going to keep up with costs though.

This company had a booth at ZendCon which was practically the only booth I missed even though they had a totally smokin’ boothbabe there—ZendCon isn’t CES. I guess missing out doesn’t matter much, becauser the lead engineers at the company visited Plaxo before they closed their insane round. All I recall from then was that Gaia Online was like Cyworld meets Second Life for 12 year olds. It’s a pretty cool website for those of you who aren’t Korean and worth a looksie if only to get a hint of what your kids will be doing online when they reach 10.

Speaking of Second Life, Dave was talking to me the other day about someone plunking down $50k for Amsterdam and for some reason it made me think of this. I don’t know why.

Posted on by tychay 3

Complete my album

Complete My Album

It’s (almost) finally safe to make a single song purchase in iTunes Music Store. A new feature called Complete My Album will count your single song purchases to the purchase of the entire album.

Nice.

It’s currently a limited time offer. My guess is they’re going to see the conversion rate before deciding to make it permanent. That’s clever but annoying.Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

Another Search Startup

A friend sent me the homepage of yet another stealth search startup. This company plans on using NLP.

My comment:

“Hmm, I should send [the URL] to Dave. He loves it when a bunch of braniacs get together to make an ASS [Another Search Startup] of themselves.”

New term I just invented. I hope it catches on. 🙂

Posted on by tychay 4

YASNS privacy

Andrei pointed me to this article trying to find the next MySpace.

Look at the sidebar: the numbers are pretty impressive when you consider what ad revenue that represents.

Multiply was an analyst pick because it has “strict privacy controls and lets people set up networks that can only be viewed by people invited to their group.” Having worked at a company with the strictest privacy policy in the universe, I’ll disagree with the pick.

In light of my recent Haiku fun:

Network Privacy?
Live quiet desperation
in obscurity.

Posted on by tychay 3

A mile wide, an inch deep

When my brother was just starting out as an economist, he told me that economics was easy because it was “a mile wide and an inch deep” meaning that it was everywhere in social sciences, but analytical tools were so poorly applied and misused that you could strike gold anywhere you stuck them.

Books like Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything show that analytical tools are still misused: that book is a circular indictment on itself.

Nothing has changed in economics.

I read this today:

PHP Seen as a Popular Hacker Target

Looking at other e-commerce security trends for 2007, the report also expects the wildly popular PHP programming language to continue to provide a bounty of opportunities for hackers. PHP was invented more than a decade ago and has been used to create every type of software program needed to operate an online store, including shopping carts, payment systems, CRM and newsletter applications. Unfortunately, PHP developers to date have all too frequently emphasized functionality over security, according to ScanAlert, who reported that its security researchers had uncovered critical security flaws in several PHP programs.

<sarcasm>I bet that was a challenge to find all those security holes!</sarcasm>

PHP application-level security: a mile wide and an inch deep.
Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 0

True Trucker

Toyota ultimately decided to pursue customers it calls “true truckers.” True truckers aren’t ordinary pickup owners; rather, these men are the Platonic ideal of truck-driving authenticity. They might work on the ranch or the construction site; they might fish for bass every weekend. “They’re the taste makers, the influentials,” Ernest Bastien, a vice president of vehicle operations, told me in San Antonio. “I think all consumers are influenced by professionals. The professional uses a certain tool, and then they want it, too.”
—Jon Gertner, “From 0 to 60 to World Domination, The New York Times

Posted on by tychay 0

Costco camera thought of the day

I noticed recently at Costco that they’re selling the Canon Rebel XTi with 18-55mm and the Nikon D80 with two lenses kit.

That’s silly. The D80 + 2 lenses (28-70 and 70-300) cannot compete against the Rebel XTi (+ 18-55) in a store like that. For one thing, they’re the same 10 megapixels. The D80 kit works out to be much more expensive (around $1200 vs $900). Sure there are differences, but the lenses aren’t even connected to the cameras so who is going to notice the larger and brighter viewfinder or better construction? And really, is this market going to care about those things? All your typical Costco buyer is going to see is that the D80 looks to be the same camera for a lot more, breaking the $1000 barrier is a big deal nowadays

It should come as no surprise that last time I passed by, the XTi was sold out.

Continue reading about A better strategy after the jump

Posted on by tychay 8