I’m Tired of One Night Stands
February 21, 2011 by admin · 6 Comments
At the risk of mixing metaphors, Luke Hohmann recently described Groupon, Living Social and other daily deal sites as enticing businesses into one night stands. At first I laughed but as I thought about my direct experiences with a plethora of group buying sites, I think he may be right. There is no doubt that these daily deal sites can deliver a deluge of coupon-grubbing customers to a small, local business’s door step. But at what cost? Negative margin, stretching service delivery to breaking point, alienation of regular loyal customers, attracting customers who don’t spend more than the deal amount and won’t ever come back are some of the well documented potential pitfalls. (And hopefully not STD’s!)
I often describe Groupon, Living Social and other daily deal sites as providing small businesses a large, fishing drift net to cast broadly into the ocean; the result is you will no doubt collect a lot of sea life, but only some of which will be the targeted species you are actually fishing for. Luke’s metaphor is certainly more colorful and may, in fact, be truer than mine.
Innovation Games | 5 Questions For Luke Hohmann
I’ve been blessed over the course of my 12 years in Silicon Valley working for Netscape, AOL and Apple and consulting for countless software and Internet companies to have met many bright, creative and high-impact people. Today I kick off a new blog series highlighting some of those people. As Jim Barksdale, CEO of Netscape, would explain: “every great list has either 3 or 5 things on it. If you got 4 on your list, you either got 1 too many or need to add 1 more.” I’ve opted for 5 questions on my “list” and blog series!
Luke Hohmann is software product expert, author, coach, entrepreneur, innovator, teacher and friend. He is the author of “Journey of the Software Professional: A Sociology of Software Development”, “Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions”, and “Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play”. He is a former faculty member of the UC Berkeley and Santa Cruz (Extensions). Luke is on the board of the Agile Alliance and is a member of the ACM, IEEE, and PDMA. Luke is the Founder & CEO of Enthiosys, an Agile Product Management Consultancy. I caught up with him recently to talk about his latest venture, Innovation Games Online.
1. What are Innovation Games Online?
Innovation Games® online are web-based versions of some of our most popular games. They provide the same kind rich interaction and collaboration of our in-person versions of the games at a web-scale.
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What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (round-up)
June 16, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Well its been a couple of weeks since the 140 | The Twitter Conference ended. The Twitter Conference (#twrcon) has come and gone. A NYC Twitter conference – 140 Character Conference – is now on (#140conf). And I completed my 8-part round-up of my learnings from my experience at #140tc.
- The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
- I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
What I Learned at 140 | The Twitter Conference (part 5)
“Yahoo! is a great training ground.”
Anamitra Banerji
Product Management
Twitter
I’m not sure Carol Bartz would be thrilled with Anamitra’s (@anamitra) perspective on his time at Yahoo! but hopefully it has prepared him well to take the helm of what is likely the most challenging and exciting product management opportunity in technology today.
When (and how) will Twitter monetize itself?
Anamitra is looking at advertising and other commercial applications of twitter. He gave examples of promotions (coupons), functioning much like advertising, that exist on the site today. He feels site banner advertising is an “uninteresting thing to do” but wouldn’t rule it out as something Twitter would consider.
He would not give a time line as to when monetization of Twitter would occur: ”soon”. He noted that Google launched in 1996 and didn’t monetize itself until 2001. Could a similar lag be in store for Twitter?
What is on Twitter’s product roadmap?
Anamitra disclosed what is not on the roadmap – a tv show! (Met with scattered applause from the audience). Beyond that he offered little but “experimentation with business features.” Noting that 60% of people who sign up for twitter don’t return, Anamitra feels that Twitter’s out-of-the-box experience could be improved but didn’t offer specifics.
I hope this guy has a lot more up his sleeve than he was willing to disclose.
What are the best examples of businesses using Twitter?
Anamitra recognized that as a small team (currently 45 employees, rumored to be doubling to 90 by the end of the year), Twitter “can’t create all the cool stuff.” He felt that businesses have a great opportunity to come up with interesting ways of using twitter to promote themselves. Ironically, he called out United Airlines (not exactly known for its innovative ways) for its special twitter-only airfare special.
He didn’t spend much time on the topic but did point out that perhaps the biggest opportunity that Twitter is sitting on is that of a rich and moderately structured data set. Companies that can figure out how to best tap into this data to create new services will do well.
So there you go Tweeps, consider yourself informed and inspired.
I’m wanting more . . . more later.
- The Power of Presence. Insights from Alex Payne, Twitter API Lead.
- I am a Twitter God(ess) and So Can You! The View From Twitter Stardom with @ijustine, @missrogue and @davepeck.
- Don’t Take the Drive to Manic Feature Explosion. What Makes a Good Twitter App.
- Twitter business start-ups are combination socialist and radical markets. Twitter Strategies: Real-World Success Stories.
- WTF, No Twitter TV!? Direction from Anamitra Banerji, Twitter Product Management.
- Even with a simple hash tag, there is a learning curve. Soren MacBeth, Co-Founder / CEO of StockTwits.
- You can’t own social media. You can only interact with it. Corporate Use of Twitter by @JetBlue.
- Twitter will transform conferences & events. Surprising takeaways from an in-person Twitter conference experience.