For about the last three years various Internet-based Pied Pipers have been preaching, Tweeting, and Facebooking that the key to online business success is customer delight and caring.
Really? That’s all it takes?
What happened to product?
You can give me the world’s biggest warm and fuzzy hug for hours a day, making me feel like your only customer, but unless you have a product or service that improves my life in a measurable way versus the real cost of doing business with you, well, you’re wasting my time.
It isn’t just about money. Entertain me. Advise me. Inspire me. Educate me. Help me in some tangible way.
Having the right glasses on your face, the right hat on your head, the right apps on your phone, the right stickers on your laptop, and the right membership in the right social networks was a fun, yet empty, game we just finished playing. At least I hope that this year’s SXSWi gathering proved that to many of you who really get it.
Serious times need serious people with real solutions and opportunities.
Cool clothes, funky hair, and a business card declaring you’re a “Community Facilitator” is not a business model.
What have you got for me? I mean, you know, really have for me?
If you’re serious… I promise… I’ll listen.
Tags: business
I’m on the inside this time around on the latest generation’s efforts to turn the Internet into sometiming more than a time sink.
In the late ’90s, as most remember, all you had to do is go public with an idea to market a product online and it seemed you would be a paper billionare by morning.
Selling cat food on the Internet? Brilliant! Where can I invest? Only $11 per share? Sweet!
Wait… What? Shipping costs? Delayed satisfaction? Inventory? Easily available in grocery stores? Cat owners don’t use the Internet yet?!?
And before you knew it those $11 shares were worth $.22 if you were lucky.
Sadly for most the reality of an idea and a real business model often failed to connect profitably and the Internet boom died dramatically around the turn of the 21st Century.
Assuming you know your history, fast forward a decade to this year’s gathering in Austin Texas called South by Southwest; better known as SXSW.
The next generation of Internet dreamers, many of whom were left behind or crushed during the previous gold rush, are gathering in Austin this weekend to party in the name of business development.
“See you @ SWSX” is being blasted all over Twitter and Facebook. People fear whether AT&T will be able to handle the demand on their bandwidth as everyone in Austin posts their latest location via FourSquare, Twitter, Facebook, and Gowalla. The “must attend” event of the weekend appears to be the taping of a drunken comedy podcast at one of Austin’s more popular beer and BBQ shacks.
This is 21st Century business?
I’m not so out of it that I don’t see the value in building a personal brand, shaking some hands, and putting faces together with online avatars.
I get that SXSW represents the modern spin on the 1950’s trade convention in Vegas. Party together, shake a few hands, make a few deals…
The problem, as I see it, is that too many in the space still believe that having a strong public personna at SWSX, a popular personal brand, is actually the end game.
Where are the deals?
Your tweets may make me smile. Your drunken stories from SXSW may remind me of my college days, but, seriously, how can you help me make money?
If you can’t answer that question in about 30 seconds then you’re likely in my way and just another wanna-be full of good BBQ and cheap beer.
F1 – I love you so much even though you are on life support! I love that your drivers know that , while sexy and part of the package, they are little more than drones getting the factory cars around the track as fast as possible.
The driver isn’t perfect? His FAIL. Car not perfect? $$$ in gross sales lost for luxury builders like Ferrari, Mercedes, and, well, others…
It came early this year NASCAR, but, bye bye for 2010. Four races in and I’ve already lost my respect for you and your teams thanks to your worthless response to the Carl Edwards issue.
This from a guy that paid list to come down for your Daytona 500 showcase including your over-priced “Fan Zone” add-on.
I hope Kyle Busch kicks your ass and you are forced to deal with a solidly unpopolar champion.
I’ll check in from time to time out of curiousity, but, seriously…. A 3 race “probation” for a driver that nearly killed another driver and dozens of fans in the stands???
At what point does law enforcement need to get involved?
Your leadership has once again proven themselves to be idiots.
P.S. Dear Kyle, USF1 needs you… Name your price! The best in the world, not the best still using 1950’s sudo-tech, need you badly.
I’ll buy the hat… Honest.
People are idiots. They mold their lives to be able to own fancy cars. They mold their lives to be able to buy fancy homes. They mold their lives to be able to earn the next promotion in their fancy job. They worry about whether the coffee they made themselves this morning in their fancy home while watching their fancy television and drank in their fancy car on their way to their fancy job was as good as it could possibly be. And when it isn’t, they drive to the fancy coffee house in their fancy car on their way to their fancy job and pay someone else with their fancy money to give it to them as long as it comes in a branded cup so everyone else can tell they are living the fancy life.
Me? Oh, I am an idiot. I’m mostly because I’m not fancy enough yet. Thus the birthplace of stress.
Life is easy once you learn to feel fancy with what you have.
Tags: consumerism, Midlife crisis
A bit off topic for this blog, but they say letting you in on who I really am is good so…
Don’t hurry back Tiger. Believe it or not the sport of golf was just fine before you arrived and will continue on long after you become just a memory.
The Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA will be played without you and a champion for the ages will emerge just fine in each.
Your place in the history of the sport of golf is, well, interesting to say the least at this point. You’re in that magical world of “what might still be” that so many great mid-career sportsman find themselves.
At this point, despite all you’ve done, you’re no greater than about a dozen special athletes I could name: Kobe… LeBron… Brady… Manning… Jeter… And I’m a stupid American which means I just left out some amazing soccer, rugby, and cricket players.
You were great. You dominated your sport like few others ever have. Not since Watson, Nicklaus, Palmer, Hogan, Snead… You were special but had work to do.
Sadly, you also played your sport in a time where you were both expected to be perfect and yet exposed to the temptations of a weak moral core more intensely than anyone that came before you.
You were both blessed and cursed to be Tiger Woods and you failed.
Like so many others, you were proven to be human. Vulnerable to the temptations that fame and wealth bring you were revealed to be just a man. A sad, lost, sorry little man.
If nothing else, and I hope you recover from the hole in which you now live, you have provided a great service.
You are yet another lesson reminding us that we are all, yes, all, human.
That those that came before you were more successful and yet did not fail as you have speaks well to the history of the sport. I’ve never respected Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, or Arnold Palmer more than I do now thanks to your weakness.
Get well Tiger. Play again soon. Or don’t… The game lives on either way.
Tags: Golf