Facebook is Running Scared
April 25, 2012
There’s an excellent article in the London Financial Times that’s the best I’ve yet seen describing the real challenge facing Facebook and by simple extension the Internet, as it exists today. (more…)
How Would You Save Barnes & Noble?
March 30, 2012
What is it about the anonymity of the web that turns us instantly into triumphalist armchair critics? Best Buy today announced another disappointing quarter and we-who-know-all proclaim that the company is doomed, as are all retailers, and Amazon will be the only company left on the planet. (more…)
Amazon.com Continues to Flow
October 25, 2011
If you run a $50 billion company and announce that your sales are up 44% going into the holiday season shouldn’t Wall Street give you a standing ovation? Not if you’re Amazon and your profit margins are, once again, taking a short-term hit for the long-term gain.
What part of this 2009 message from Jeff Bezos did Wall Street fail to understand? (more…)
Airbnb and the Comfort of Strangers
July 31, 2011
“Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
— Cesare Pavese, quoted in The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan
The moral of my Airbnb saga is simple: this company is still using training wheels while it’s being funded like a mature adult. (more…)
Required Reading on the Future of Journalism
May 10, 2011
With little fanfare the Columbia Journalism Review yesterday released the most intelligent and insightful report I’ve yet read on the business of digital journalism. The Story So Far: What We Know About the Business of Digital Journalism is the understated title of the must-read new report on the news business. Implicit in the report is a call to action: as Thich Nhat Hanh has observed, “Once there is seeing, there must be acting. Otherwise, what is the use of seeing?”
I’ve only read three chapters and if that’s all there was I’d still be crowing: start reading, NOW. (The full 143-page report is available for free download. What a gift.) (more…)