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Re: Influence isn’t all-or-nothing

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 19:14:25 -0000

I'm still trying to absorb the article about Watts's research, plus the commentary across the Web, but I think some important points could get lost:

(1) Influencers do have an impact on spreadings trends, rumors, and ideas, but it was a mistake to think they were the only way to sell stuff.
(2) The point made about Madonna's rise to fame being random back in the 1980s ignores the fact that her rise was probably due as much (or even more) to music videos and her persona than her music. She strongly influenced the clothing, hair and make-up of teenage girls for a couple of years. In other words, the music experiment where different social groups picked different top songs seems to have been based on the merits of the music alone, which ignores the "star power" aspect of an influencer. In fact, Madonna is a better example of the success of an influencer.
3) I haven't seen a better explanation than Gladwell's for the massive increase in Hush Puppy sales in the mid-1990s. He may have read too much into it, but it doesn't mean he was completely wrong.

Having said that, I think Watt's "forest fire" analogy is excellent and an important addition to these theories.

Re: McGuinness: ISPs should fix my business

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:14:41 -0000

I'm playing the world's tiniest violin for McGuinness, can you hear it?

Re: Video interlude: Tom Cruise parody

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:16:42 -0000

Jerry's come a long way since Stand By Me and My Secret Identity...

Re: Digg: portable data is good, so is OpenID

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:20:55 -0000

If Digg has 3 million members, now I don't feel so bad about not having cracked the top 1000 :)

Seriously, Open ID is a great and convenient concept.

Re: Barcodes: Really clever or really dumb?

Mark Dykeman — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 19:34:14 -0000

In order for this to work, you'd think that the deals available through these barcodes would be stunningly good or else they wouldn't be available by any other means. Otherwise, you're fighting an uphill battle to train consumers do change their behavior (i.e. scanning using cell phone)

Meanwhile, most people who have web surfing capabilities on their phone are probably more likely to get their news online rather than in print.

Re: Jeff Zucker: All of our TV pilots suck

Mark Dykeman — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:57:35 -0000

You can add big pharma to that list of industries pouring billions of dollars into R&D, looking for that "pipeline" of wonder drugs. If you look at pilots as samples or prototypes of new products (which makes me very sad, but nonetheless I think it's a valid comparison), the success rate of new product introduction is usually quite low when compared to all of the tries.

Your idea about quick-and-dirty pilots is worth considering, especially since webisodes and YouTube vids have done so well. Viewers are becoming used to shorter videos.

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:32:49 -0000

Wouldn't you say that Twitter is making the chatroom obsolete?

Re: Meebo: Chat rooms are so 1998

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:13:03 -0000

Ironically, as I read your comment, your Twitter word balloon at the right says "Sorry, cannot load messages"...

Re: The big deal: My link-o-rama

Mark Dykeman — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:10:14 -0000

Maybe Oracle or SAP will put in a counter offer for Yahoo :)

Re: New York Times vs. blogs: wrong question

Mark Dykeman — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 21:55:18 -0000

Mainstream media, blogs, and social news/social bookmarking (or any other user generated content) are co-dependent.

Re: Kevin Kelly: What can’t be copied?

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:27:30 -0000

Kevin Kelly has some excellent points, but I keep having visions of going to a restaurant and the waiter telling me, "Your food is free, but it will cost you to have it cooked and delivered to your table."

It's not the same thing, I know, but it seems to me that it's just repackaging some old concepts when the end result is the same: the consumer will still pay because the generic "free" product is inferior. Assuming that they will still want the product.

I need to think about this. I'm probably missing something.

Re: The Industry Standard: A metaphor

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:58:00 -0000

My quick glance leads me to believe that there's going to be a lot of potential for collaboration and user involvement with the new Standard, which appeals to me.

Re: Does “crowdsourcing” work for investing?

Mark Dykeman — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:37:59 -0000

I agree that it doesn't seem likely that REALLY valuable tips and hints would get submitted to Wikinvest, for precisely the reasons that you've described.

On the other hand, look how many blogs out there are in the "make money online" niche, giving out hints, tips, and advice. I have a feeling that at least one person won't be able to keep themself from bragging about their success.

Re: OpenID: Still not quite there yet

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:07:16 -0000

Baby steps forward, but Google's commitment should carry a lot of weight.

Re: Books 2.0: Neil Gaiman goes free

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 09:54:07 -0000

If nothing else, this will be a fascinating experiment. There aren't a lot of authors who could afford to do this, though. Maybe Stephen King could - he experimented with micropayments (?) for an online book a couple of years ago.

Re: Books 2.0: Neil Gaiman goes free

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:18:41 -0000

At the same time, at some point I thought King said he made over $400 K (which was at least $500K Canadian back then) from sales to date. Perhaps it wasn't what he was accustomed to making. :)

It will be interesting to see if Gaiman and co. attempt to monetize after the fact.

Re: Seesmic: Still don’t really get it

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:03:18 -0000

I see Seesmic as a potential replacement for video conferencing in a business context. A number of people put a lot of value in face-to-face interaction both from a comfort level as well as providing the ability to monitor body language.

However, I see it as being overkill for blogging. I can't image commenting on a blog using Seesmic UNLESS I absolutely need to show a picture. Plain audio comments might be just as valuable.

Re: Toronto’s GigPark launches in open beta

Mark Dykeman — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:20:58 -0000

Clever idea, but it's really going to be dependent upon the richness of the community. This might well be a case where more is better.

Re: Updated: Like, Facebook is so over, dude

Mark Dykeman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 11:27:45 -0000

I think that Rory Cellan-Jones (and Sebastien Provencher here in the comment section) are probably right in that it's Generation X and older generations who are the cause for the drop in Facebook usage (assuming seasonality isn't a factor). I know that my Facebook usage is a fraction of what it used to be since I migrated out of the exploratory phase.

On the other hand, I'm using Twitter more and more.

In short, Facebook's core market will be the cohort that's been using it since their teenage years and I'm sure that will continue to grow over time as younger kids hit the age when they'd be interested in using it.

Re: Facebook - As Dreams May Come (They Also Go)

Mark Dykeman — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:48:13 -0000

You are right on the mark, Steve.

Re: NAA to newspapers: advertise this

Mark Dykeman — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:00:26 -0000

Could this decline in advertising also be a symptom of the fact that over the years so much print news has shifted from a local to national focus, as conglomerates have consolidated operations? Reading one newspaper is like reading another newspaper, etc.

Re: Virgin volunteers to be Big Brother

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:18:50 -0000

Maybe he sees this as a stepping stone to expanding his brand further. Perhaps in a few years he'll convince enough people to rebrand the Web as Virgin Web or Virgin Internet. Instead of the familiar IE or Firefox icons in the corner of your browser, it'll have Virgin there instead. Or Branson's face.

That's too horrible. Stopping now.

P.S. Nothing against Branson, but I wouldn't want to see his face on a daily basis.

Re: Virgin volunteers to be Big Brother

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:46:54 -0000

B-I-G B-R-O T-H-E-R-E (I needed an extra letter to make the rhyme work)

Re: New York Times: blog trolling 101

Mark Dykeman — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 10:13:44 -0000

It feels a bit odd to know that my own blog contributed to something hitting the front page of Techmeme. Actually, I never knew how Techmeme worked before reading this article - I had never taken the time.

Re: What is a blogger worth - what are my words worth?

Mark Dykeman — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:34:34 -0000

The blessing and curse of this digital age is that it's free to publish content and it's very easy to lose sight of who started (or continued) the conversation.

One thing to consider, though: unless your identity and authority permeate through to the scrapers and the aggregators, what value does their copy have? Sure, it may snipe some traffic, and this probably does have more impact when a large portion of your traffic comes via search engines than via subscriptions, but will it really have a lasting impact?