DISQUS

Jake, great article. We're covering it in our Best Practices Community, HelpExchange, here:

https://support.helpstream.biz/Discussion.jsp?i...

You may need to request a logon to access it.

Best,

BW

Our problem is equity in the home, no? Everyone has experienced a decline. For some, that decline has wiped out the equity and made them wonder why they should hang in. Depending on how much their house payment is, they may not be able to afford to hang in.

This problem of having equity is not unlike buying options in the market. I can buy Google’s stock, or I can buy options in Google. The stock is unlikely to reach a value of zero, but it’s actually pretty easy for options to do so. Before I can buy those options I have to sign a document with my broker that tells me just how speculative what I’m doing may be.

Regardless of why they did it, those with no equity were a lot more speculative about their house purchase than those that still have equity. You can argue that a house is not the same as an investment, and it isn’t because you live in it, but OTOH, JLM very much says it is most people’s biggest investment asset.

So what is the responsibility of government to help me if my investment goes south? If I buy those Google options, and the market goes south, nobody has much sympathy for me. If I join one of Fred’s startups, and the plug gets pulled, still not a lot of sympathy. Why are these things especially my responsibility, but when I invest in a house that I was overly speculative about, it is everyone else’s responsibility?

Are we really arguing about an ability to find shelter if you kick me out of my house which I have no equity in? I can appreciate the, “It’s not a house it’s a home argument,” and how kids suffer, but really, is that what this is about? I know multiple divorced parents who lost their homes and had to rent before this crisis ever came along. I know other parents who rent because they never got to be able to afford a home. Are all of these people bad parents? Do we owe them a home so they won’t be bad parents? No, surely not.

The only good argument I’ve heard yet is the damping argument. I like that one. Markets need a little damping. Not too much, mind you, but they do need some damping. They also need diversification. When we let economic forces drive too much homogeneity into a market, we eliminate diversification. We let the deregulation of the market and the actions around interest rates and fiscal policy create exactly that situation.

There was too much economic pressure to buy a house because you could do so with no or very little equity and it looked like you'd make a killing while having a great place to live in meanwhile. But the vast majority of those goings on were not about putting roof over head, it was about grabbing your pan and heading to the Yukon, whether the Gold in them thar hills was getting your first house sooner, getting a bigger house than you should, or just out and out enabling ridiculous real estate speculation.

A lot of people didn’t go to the Yukon. Those people have equity still. They’re being asked to pay for that little gold rush. They’re upset about it. I can’t blame them and I have heard no good reason why they shouldn’t be upset, or why they should be punished.

It’s very unclear to me that HASP is good either for damping or diversification, let alone for educating the speculators not to run off to the next Gold Rush they come upon. I do, however, understand why real estate investors would want to prop up the market ASAP. If they’re mostly in cash, that’s the wrong move. Better to let it bottom and buy in. But many of them will be in the position of the rest of the speculators, and so they’re begging to put a floor in that the rest of us must pay for.

This sort of "now you have it", Oops, "now you don't", content game is why the streaming model is ultimately unsatisfactory for a lot of people, why they actually want to own the content so it can't be taken away. Streaming leaves way too much control in the hands of the streamer and not enough control in the hands of the consumer.

Cheers,

BW

A lousy patent system and Sarbanes Oxley are the two most damaging ways our government has hurt innovation by stifling small innovative companies and the ecosystem that feeds them.

More on my blog: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/how-...

Careful, Louis!

You'll wind up like Scoble getting de-listed. Horrors!

Cheers,

Bob Warfield

Kathy, being a gadget geek, I can tell you there may be some correlation between people who care about the and people who care about the , but it's more indirect than you might think.

There is a school that is totally focused on the acquisition of the equipment. They buy far in excess of what they're capable of using, and in many cases, a lot of it goes unused. In the photography world, there are magazines devoted to the equipment, and magazines devoted to the art, and that is no accident.

Talent is hard, buying is easy. And it makes sense to do as Scoble says and go after those who are more intent on the buying. In the end, we often see that where art is concerned, there may be little correlation between your equipment and your art--it's all about the talent.

Louis, for certain things, I'm with you 100% about not needing the bookmarks. But I still use them in two ways.

First, I keep a personalized home page on my web site so that no matter what computer I'm on, I can quickly get to a home page that I like and I'm productive with. It has all my links for Google Reader, web email for all my accounts, and so on, and so forth. Those are my meta-bookmarks. I've used this page from cruise ships, friend's computers, and yes, I have a special version for my iPhone too.

Second, my Google Reader is very much fire and forget. Once I read an article there, I move on from it. That's great, but for some of my interests, there are articles I will want to refer back to at some point for reference purposes. This is typically not material on an RSS feed, it's one-off articles. I like to use Delicious for that purpose, and anything I think I may want to reference again from Google Reader gets shot off to my shared reader log (great feature, BTW!).

Zoli, you should check with your Congressman. Provided you're willing to loan some of your unread emails to others (sorry, I don't need any myself), you may be eligible for TARP money to bail out your email situation.

Cheers,

BW

John, I've been following your blog for ages and found your eBook a good read. I published a review of it on my own blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/free...

I think your readers would benefit from a "Volume 2" in the series and mention what that might be about in my review.

Cheers,

BW

Love the article. I was struck by an odd connection. I read today that PC Magazine is shutting down. I speculate that it is because they weren't doing the "realest" work of keeping the connectors and influencers interested. They let themselves be drawn into a commodity crowd. As Seth Godin would put it, they gave up their tribe for that crowd and it was a mistake.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/11/19/end-...

Don't bust them up, Mash them up. What GM needs is an Executive Mashup. It needs to channel Steve Jobs to build the iCar, much as Mercedes channeled Swatch to build the Smart.

More about the iCar on my blog here:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/stev...

Cheers,

BW

Seems to me Orange County got into deep trouble making derivatives investments not so long ago.

People never learn.

Great post!

It's so hard to avoid the waffle, but so essential to do so. I've seen it work well to draw this public focus and fail miserably to waffle.

I must that after watching John Doerr's video and then reading this, I find yours to be the more insightful advice.

The turnaround will not be lead by fear. It will be led by a little bit of greed and a lot of hope. Those companies that seek to do something different than the conventional wisdom will gain the most advantage. If nothing else, startups have to be different. They're too weak to do anything else. The big guys already have the job of marching to the conventional wisdom.

More on my blog: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/10/30/gree...

Great post and comment thread!

Clearly this one excites a lot of passion, and it's passion that I share.

It's tough being at the beginning of things, but that's where we are. Yes, there are many who have demonstrated real ROI from Web 2.0, but it is not well understood how to go about doing so or how to make sure your project succeeds.

The issues are conflated by a variety of factors. There is huge gulf between those who "get it" and have "experienced it" versus those who "get it" but have so far only "talked about it" and those who just don't "get it" at all. Some of this has to do with early adoption, some has to do with demographics (Susan Scrupski's post that inspired me really shows how Gen-Y view Social Media as a basic part of their lives), and some has to do with the applications themselves which may or may not be constructed and deployed to produce obvious or immediate ROI.

Nevertheless, there are companies, like my own Helpstream, that are measuring immediate ROI and that are working through the problems of more mainstream adoption.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/was-...

Outbound?!??

All your data are be ours!

Cheers,

BW

IPassion is easier if you have perfectly executed a fantastic vision and want to share that with like minded thinkers.

By definition, politics is not about perfectly executing any vision. It's about fooling as many of the people as you can as much of the time as you can, to paraphrase Lincoln. Little wonder that the politicians have a hard time, except when they get a chance to step outside the norm. Obama is doing that, and his followers see it, so I think you're right to say they derive their energy from him.

One of the most interesting things for me watching both conventions was not the speakers, but the occasional crowd shot of some follower in the audience who was absolutely passionately gaga over what the current speaker was saying. Their eyes were lumnious, and clearly it was an emotional moment for them.

Cheers,

BW

Great story, and great timing on the part of your firm. It does feel like the punctuated equilibrium of the current Web 2.0 wave is giving way to a period of consolidation and retrenching. Focusing on deriving more than just attention and on an audience beyond the early adopters is a wonderfully focused way of describing how to succeed during this period.

I've written quite a bit more on this topic on my blog: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-...

Best Regards,

BW

Great story, and great timing on the part of your firm. It does feel like the punctuated equilibrium of the current Web 2.0 wave is giving way to a period of consolidation and retrenching. Focusing on deriving more than just attention and on an audience beyond the early adopters is a wonderfully focused way of describing how to succeed during this period.

I've written quite a bit more on this topic on my blog: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-...

Best Regards,

BW

Pete, I couldn't agree more about the need to have something worth talking about. All companies need to look carefully at what the reason might be for customers to want to strike up a conversation. Not every brand has the cache and interest of Mercedes Benz. But, many companies do have one important on-ramp to community and that's customer service.

I talk about this at greater length on our blog here:

http://corpblog.helpstream.biz/helpstream-blog/...

You've got a good point about the need for people to make a community work. I think another important issue is the need for customers to have a reason to visit the community or even get started with it in the first place. Some business purposes are pretty peripheral to the needs of the customer. Some are destination needs. Customer Service is an important destination need that can really help to jump start a community.

I've blogged about this subject here:

http://corpblog.helpstream.biz/helpstream-blog/...

Cheers,

BW

Pretty!

You gotta love great design.

Cheers,

BW

I agree on the new CEO. What you're describing as that CEO's course of action is exactly on target. What Yahoo needs is another Mark Hurd.

See my blog for more:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/quot...

Cheers,

BW

Great post!

One thing I found conspicuously absent was communities. I can appreciate the perspective of marketing that their role is to get the message out. That's certainly what these media do.

However, customers themselves are a pretty vital part of that process, and they can do that very effectively with communites. They become your ambassadors and they get themselves better educated about your offering so that they can be better customers. The most common community tool is the forum, of course.

Given how long it takes to build an effective community, I would argue tackling it earlier is key. I'd put the forum somewhere between RSS and Social Search.

Cheers,

BW

Oddly, you'd never expect this post to apply, but web companies have this problem all the time. Take Twitter. They've sold more than they can make.

Cheers,

BW