People will not adopt a technical solution that serves to replace a manual task, if that solution is less efficient than the manual task it replaces.

We’re dealing with something interestingly elusive here: Playboy merchandise sells well, but we’re not sure what the brand means, and hardly anyone admits to buying it, or not any more, or not in certain contexts (like schools and focus groups…). And the products are ‘chavvy’ and ‘tarty’; terms also applied to people, especially to (white) working class women.

15-tab spreadsheet to help authors get organized (and stay sane!) around their book promotion. Tabs include: online promo, offline promo, advance copy distribution, book tour, etc.

50 scientifically proven ways constitute 50 chapters of the book, longest of which take 7 pages. The authors take the position that persuasion is a science, not art, hence with the right approach anybody can become the master in the skill of persuasion. So, what are the 50 ways?

But Bart Simpson the character and Bart Simpson the hit television show character are two different animals, and in the first few years of The Simpsons, the latter threatened to take over. The marketing focus of the show fell almost entirely on Bart (or, at least, Homer reacting to Bart). “Eat my shorts!” became a catchphrase on the level of “Yeah, baby!”

“I think that ‘Designed by Apple in California’ is the most brilliant thing to ever appear on a package,” I wrote on the application-site that was mentioned in yesterday’s post on sites that landed jobs at 37signals. SvN reader Michael P. Mills asked:

Forget squeezing millions from a few megahits at the top of the charts. The future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.

Our last project is about simplicity and we try to find alternate simple versions for some package samples of the international brands. We think almost every product needs some review for minimal feeling.

Lore and Bharara did about $180 million in revenue in 2009 and expect to bring in about $300 million in 2010. Just five years old, Quidsi (the name means "what if?" in Latin) is already breaking even in a category that wasn't supposed to work on the internet: Quickly shipping bulky, low-margin commodities. The partners don't make money on diapers, and never planned to. Diapers are the draw that brings in loyal customers who order over and over. The money comes when a shopper throws in one of the other 25,000 SKUs, or Stock Keeping Units, that Diapers.com lists on its site—higher-margin items like brand-name baby shampoo, wipes, and formula.

This blog post is a starter guide that outlines the steps I personally undertake most commonly when handed the keys to the data for a website. 
I want to share where in your web analytics data you can find valuable starting points, even without any context about the site / business / priorities. Reports to look at, KPIs to evaluate, inferences to make.
I hope you'll benefit from my humble experience. Let's go!

sigur rós - homage or fromage?: http://bit.ly/dBFuCf

Red Cross Social Media Strategy

As some people here don’t care about making their living from the internet, I understand that this post will not be for everybody. However, if you’ve just made the leap to working for yourself, currently run your own business, or you’re looking to make your money online in the future, this article may be just what you need. Over the last 18 months of working for myself, I’ve learned a ton of things on my journey. Not every piece of advice I took on board has helped, with many ideas quickly being discarded. From reading dozens of books, speaking with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and living this life myself for a year and a half, there are a few lessons I would like to share.

From Apple’s point of view, iPhone OS and web technologies share equal footing. When you visit their developer site, the Safari Dev Center is prominently displayed. The iPhone gets all the press, but when you click on Safari Dev Center, there’s a ton of great information that explains how to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on an iPhone.

Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs and his powerhouse company. It's not as easy as it looks.

I thought I was a decent member of the literary community. I read a local writers; I buy books at local bookstores; I go to at least one literary event a week. Then my own novel came out. Mountains crashed; music rang out; and I was flooded with the awareness that I’ve been doing a whole lot wrong.

A common occurrence: you or someone you know wants to create content and have it published online. A slightly less common occurrence? Having that same someone articulate high aspirations for their content. For those select few, instead of creating content destined for some digital landfill, their content is special; it’s going places and it’s taking them, their brand, and their experience with it.

Nice. http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com/

RT @tcarmody: Was sure this was an Onion headline; it isn't. RT @stribs Cisco Fails With Old Spice Copycat Campaign http://j.mp/b2XUUa

"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living."

The most alarming thing about this excellent article isn't the fact that he is more executive producer than writer these days, working with some young jobbing author who works up Patterson's ideas before passing them back to the old master for a spit and polish. It's that it seems so normal to him, a productivity booster; that it isn't cheating himself and his audience. A scary read, in many ways.

"Having accurate information about competitors is vital to your company's ability to maintain its competitive advantage. With a structured way to manage competitive knowledge, your company can maximize opportunity in your market while minimizing the threat of current and potential competitors. Competitious is an easy, confidential way to discover and share competitive information collaboratively across your organization, and keep your company competitive."

"On October 9, 2000, AmIHotOrNot went live. Hong emailed 42 friends: "Here's a website that Jim and I made - be nice," he wrote, and inserted a link to their own pictures. The visitors pinging the site quickly grew well beyond Hong's 42 friends. It didn't take an epidemiologist to recognise a viral spread. By the end of the first day, 37,000 visitors had found the site; by its eighth day the site had 1.8 million daily page views. Hong, who had slept only eight hours in those eight days, was shaking."

"Being able to express yourself, clearly and forcefully, in less than the 140 characters allowed by Twitter (and SMS) is no small thing!"

The wonderful Steve Albini: "Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit."

"We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign."

Guide to Google Analytics from Smashing Magazine.

All kinds of useful stats about social web usage.

"In November, I posted about an alternative MBA program that I was going to launch. Unaccredited, residential, free and six months long. A new way to learn about a new way of doing business. We’re almost done, and it has exceeded every expectation I had for it, and I think there are some broader lessons worth sharing."

A lot of organizations are struggling with what to do with a host of costly, high-maintenance technologies that they have introduced in the last decade, hoping these technologies would produce (a) improved internal productivity, and (b) better relationships with customers. They have achieved neither objective. Dave Pollard considers why, and suggests some simple 'web 2.0' tools your organisation might consider.

It's both, and that's the problem.

Media is something you can advertise in, in most cases. While you can advertise in social networks, that is the least interesting use for them.