DISQUS

As they say "Nike don't sell shoes, they sell an image". I'm sure you made the same allusion once re. Starbucks, they don't sell coffee they sell lifestyle. Brand imaging - ultimately what this product does for you, over & above the basic product itself which is what the others are pitching.
I was thinking recently re. the great things manufacturers can do with promotion via character creation. Eg. - let's go real ordinary - Felix catfood & the creation of the Felix character - tousled & muddy & always in scrapes & the famous catchphrase "Felix - dirty stop-out". What's this got to do with a list of std. packaged nutrients ?

Chances are yes, has read post, as has read before & took the trouble to send email. Maybe thinking like - what a daft thing I did on the spur of the moment & it was a bad day & all that & now everyone's been discussing it.

The theory is often used to justify the more doctrinaire aspects of religion & politics. Is typically argued with "that's only because". Eg. Statement "Crime is a function of the capitalist state and therefore does not exist in Communist countries." Answer "But Communist countries do have crime." Response "But that's because they're not true Communist countries" - which therefore goes back to prove the first statement. Hence assertions are proven equally by both proof & disproof. "Damned if you do / damned if you don't."

Great you responded to the mail, as most people are inclined to treat these angry communications as "just another weirdo" & bin. That's the sad thing, a sensible & valid point can easily be lost because of the bad style of communication & all you've done is antagonise someone & make a good case appear invalid because of its presentation.
Interesting allusion to Confirmation Bias. A particular version of this generic term is the Self-sealing Hypothesis - the hypothesis is proved by both proof & by disproof - therefore it cannot be disproven. In this example, if you didn't make the requested changes, this proves that you "don't give a hoot". But if you do make them, this was only because you got an angry mail, otherwise you wouldn't have bothered, so it still proves that you "don't give a hoot".
A lot of this angry stuff is really aiming at this, if only subconsciously - the sub-text is to prove the other person wrong - either way.

Great timing for a great idea. The web is becoming an increasingly difficult place to work as congestion is everywhere. Instead of being encouraging the climate has become discouraging. It needs something like this to brighten things up & offer more scope to jaded entrepreneurs, especially to buck the recession. I can see that queue forming already.

Problem is that Steve & both comments to date are each right in their different outlooks. I think the important thing with Bill Gates & Steve Jobs is that they both knew that they were on to something & that a success track lay ahead despite the problems, given enough time. The difficutly comes when you don't know that & you don't have for ever to re-try.

All really interesting stuff. Aside from being informative & "a glimse into a week in the life of", it gets you like a series - you feel you must check up what happens in the next part. Good luck all.

To be honest, dunno. Have had bad, albeit limited, experiences of hiring online. One seemed good & then disappeared 1/2 way thro' the job, which was done badly anyway. I would still suggest it is best if you can hire people locally thro' local contacts & recommendations. Re. social, you can't beat meeting the people, sussing out their interest & going over a brief in person. Question - if the job can be done locally, do we really save by hiring online or do we just think we do ? And if the job can be done within reasonable travel distance, it gives the added boost of supporting your area.

Very apt comment Steve. - Too often people feel like there truly is a 75 mph car heading their way or they're dodging the next body blow again & then fall back exhausted with it all. - They're always at the mercy of the next event/problem coming their way. One possible incentive is that if/when a company becomes bigger, more things tend to run themselves. The smaller the scale the harder things are to run, the larger the easier it becomes. It's not all on you then.

A bit ike "think yourself thin". And all those self development courses come to mind. Become whatever you want to be by pretending.
There's no doubt it can works tho'. And it's exactly the strategy used by the scammers who hit the papers for extracting large sums of money from wealthy people by pretending to be someone they're not. And it's amazing who gets taken in. Seems maybe it's easier than it seems.

To Wilson, the question comes down to scale. Really large amounts of money can bring their own problems, but without a minimum level, people can't function. How do you pay for your computer, eat or just buy coffee ? The paradox is that you have to be rich to really doubt the value of money - the less you have the more it becomes important.
When you're at your runway, how about expanding your business ....
And when you can afford it, how about walking into like a Porsche or similar new car showroom looking penniless, so they're all snooty & off with you & then flash a card & buy a car for the hell of it ?

Good point about piling on the freebies. When I see a list of freebies added on, it makes me doubt the value of the original product if they think they need to add loads of giveaways to sell it.
Price is a difficult one. Remember the old ruling "There is no right or wrong, there is only what a market will take". The problem your blogger & others have is one of "perceived value". People will happily pay large amounts for say an extra flashy stripe or two on their car, but for a book or computer repair they'll count the cents. Service industries, as computer repair, tend to have price problems, because they don't have a product. "For that price I could have a new coffee table & show my friends". All this means is that you may have to work harder on upping the perceived value of the product.
Eg. this book will enable you to ...... this repair will also extend the computer's life / protect against.

Range of big subjects there, from convergence to market expansion.
As example, I'm always saying that Ebay & YouTube have lost their character since they became huge. You're right, we see this pattern all the time. Think it comes down to whether you are pursuing an interest, a niche, a hobby turned business or want to develop into Big Business. If the latter, you have no choice but to go for the mass market. Facebook opening up its doors to all & not just students any more, was a really classic example of this. It's core value was as a students site, now anyone can join so its core users have lost their "own" site & been left behind. Sad but maybe this can form part of a cycle. - Some of the business' core values are carried over, abeit diluted, into the mainstream, while another smaller concern picks up the niche you just left.
By the way, it's not only businesses which follow this pattern. How many bands start out as niche purists & move to commercial/mainstream music as soon as fame & money beckons ?

If I'm right, does it really come down to effective targetted marketing ? The content producer targets the advertiser with matching quality, content & interested users, the advertisers in turn target these sites & the users benefit from both quality content & ads which are usefu to them. What use or inerest have blanket saturation ads ever been to anyone anyway ? You're right, they're a waste of money & space.

Agree motivation is a strange thing. Seems like motivation achieves & the achievement kills motivation. Motivation typically increases up until the point of the big breakthrough & then goes downhill thereafter. Creativity follows the same pattern. Seo's comment about bands seems to apply across the board. The interesting question is why ? Does nature intend us to function in a sharp burst until we achieve whatever & after that it's like it's all used up ? Often wondered that.

Stockmood sounds cool, but maybe too niche. It could fall into a gap - people who are really into stocks don't need it & it's out of league for people who aren't. Liked the idea of iThryv but could only access the site once, ever since it's been down - sad when you get the benefit of this sort of publicity.
But you're bang on, we could do with some really new ideas - as Ophelia has been observing recently, webspace i beginning to get a bit tired & stale without new contributions of real significance.

Interesting that comments on eating rats & pigs have appeared, since I read in today's paper that a scientific expert has advised that we should have one meatless day, ideally more, a week in order to protect the environment from pollution due to mass breeding of livestock. Seems a pretty simple change to make. So by 2028, we are eating less meat of all sorts, but climatic change will be an increased concern due to the build-up from past neglect & the effects by then will be so evident that it will have become impossible for politicians to sideline it.

Sound like one of the most actually useful developments we've had for some time.

HI Ophelia, I especially loved that final para. Your post reeks of boredom & stalenes with (a lot) of the whole internet thing. Sure there are loads of worthy sites out there, but with the excitement of web 2.0 we've overdone it. And most new sites are clones with minor variations. Fact is that we have elevated all this way out of its true importance - so there's some cool new site out every other week - what difference to anything does it really make ?
Just a super highway of ultimately mind numbing new sites & their discarded predecessors.

But it sure was awesome !!!

Dunno that these comments are even vaguely related to tech & certainly not to tech in particular. Which maybe lets us in on an unspoken secret - the humble majority just arent that fussed on tech anyway. For supporting evidence, look at the huge response to Ophelia's blog on well ...... coffee stains & the even bigger response to your blog on .....email. And these are the heady days of tech ! My secret is that I often hear that most people use the internet for email, Google for search & Ebay for selling spare mobiles & all and that's about it. And so now Google's introduced their chrome browser - outside of techies & the 'must have it if it's new lot' - I can't hear any excitement.

Interesting post. Agree with the ruling in principle, but it could open a floodgate & as they say, mud tends to stick & people do think there's no smoke without fire. Difficult ground, I think case law has a way to go here yet. I think you have to watch the particular, eg. in very simplistic terms, if you said something like Nike shoes are rubbish, you'd v. probably get no comebacks, but if you said all Nike shoes fall apart after a month, you could be in trouble if the comment gained a lot of publicity & Nike could claim damages to their product image & sales as a result.

I guess it was showing so much initiative so early which was important, not really what he actually did & also to be fair, maybe not so many could have done the same or even thought of it.

Hi Ophelia,
Seems like everyone's got diverted with coffee stains & spiders, when a classic piece was being asked not to fill out another quiz ever again. To quiz, add surveys & questionnaires especially the telephone ones. Question - has anyone ever got to the last page of Google search for kittens ? That's probably more of a challenge to read than all those stains & things - like getting to another universe - the last page of Google.

Was a great post.& hit on reality very well. Good balance - neither euphoria or gloom & doom. Just a soberingly accurate dose of realism.