Disqus - Latest Comments for joshklein

Re: WATable - a pretty decent jQuery plugin

Josh Klein — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:55:38 -0000

Great plugin Andreas. A feature suggestion: it would be useful if we could do filtering with a range, writing 10-20 instead of >9 <21.

Thanks for all the great work!

Re: What Is Going On?

Josh Klein — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:10:38 -0000

Thanks for sharing this article, I had missed it. I don't want to start a political debate, so I'll keep my points very specific.

- The postal service hasn't received tax dollars since the 1980's. Although that does not preclude it being an "entitlement", it isn't a tax burden. A better comparison would be to that of an ailing business that fails to adjust to its customers' needs.

- I still find it borderline jaw-dropping that one can send a letter to any remote addressable corner of the American wilderness - a vast expanse of land - for 42 cents, and have been able to for over 200 years. To me, it is understandable why this institution is not on the cutting edge, and it clearly needs modernization, but it demonstrates a fairly high level of logistical sophistication.

- The postal service is the second largest civilian employer in the US (after Walmart), another component that makes change so difficult.

Re: Molehill’s Founder: Aim For Lifestyle, Not A Jackpot – with Tom Rossi

Josh Klein — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:15:19 -0000

Andrew, just so you're aware: if more of your interviews were with "lifestyle" entrepreneurs (SaaS or otherwise), I would become a paid member of Mixergy to access the content. Not only do I find the content more compelling, but I believe it is actually something I can learn from and execute on in a realistic way, such that I would pay for the information. The interviews with "gurus", while interesting and worth spending time to consume, are not - to me - worth paying money for. I can get that kind of advice elsewhere; this kind is much harder to find.

Re: The MBA Mondays Curriculum

Josh Klein — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:09:07 -0000

Moodle is a little heavy for what you have. I think the questions is: what's the vision for this? Will there be multimedia content? Will it be structured into linear courses? Will others be able to add their content? Should it be flexible enough that these answers don't need to be definite at the outset?

I don't think you can go wrong with a MediaWiki, but from personal experience I can tell you that a set of pages of content without curation - both of the content and of meta content - makes it a mostly useless tool. The beauty of a Wikipedia is both in the specific page content AND the constant back and forth of how they should be linked together, aggregated, formed into new units of "topics", and so on.

The question to me is - will this be more than a weekly addition of (extremely useful) information? Will there really be a community of experts curating it? If not, then my vote would be just a simple "MBA Lectures" page on your site that sorts your posts into a useful course path.

Re: Giving Every Person A Voice

Josh Klein — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 10:42:09 -0000

What's scary to me is not so much the noise of the masses, but rather the ability for people to only listen to ideas they already like. As media fragments and we have to choose what to listen to, read, and watch... we naturally gravitate towards things we already like and away from things that push our boundaries. How do we combat the echo chamber effect?

Re: On Life

Josh Klein — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 09:49:43 -0000

Good stuff, Matt. Aaron, Josh, and the rest at UC are smart folks. Looking forward to hearing about your successes!

Re: Scripting News: Ben Slivka and backyards vs city parks

Josh Klein — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:12:26 -0000

Well said. I loved that PBS documentary. For those who don't know just how crowded Central Park gets, this has some clips that demonstrate it:

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: What fantasy sports addicts really know

Josh Klein — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:01:15 -0000

Interesting angle :) I like it!

Re: The one key mechanic to making a social campaign work

Josh Klein — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:50:11 -0000

To clarify: I assumed dollars from the word "campaign". The leave-britney-alone guy/girl wasn't running a campaign.

Re: The one key mechanic to making a social campaign work

Josh Klein — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:47:08 -0000

I'm not a hater I just crush a lot.

You're right on about the tactical mechanic, but when I hear "the one key [anything] to make a social campaign work", my head instantly starts pounding as I anticipate someone talking about spreading their "viral web youtubes".

I know we're on the same page. I just feel like every comment ever made about how to run a social campaign needs to be prefaced with "assuming you've already figured out WHY you're running one..."

Re: The one key mechanic to making a social campaign work

Josh Klein — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:15:08 -0000

This may be the key to making the social campaign "work" by getting eyeballs, but its still lacking that one key mechanic to make it succeed at your (presumably business) goal.

Step 1: social display
Step 2: ???
Step 3: profit!

Eyeballs-to-dollars ain't what it used to be.

Re: My Favorite Money Manager

Josh Klein — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 10:16:24 -0000

I don't mean to be rude, but I think it's really dangerous to endorse this kind of investing. First, in full disclosure, I discussed this article with a "professional" recently because I wanted his opinion, and he certainly had some vested interest in disputing this type of investing. Still...

One must be incredibly suspicious of survivorship bias. If you throw a few thousand amateur investors onto a website, one of them is going to show astronomical returns. That doesn't mean you will be able to capture those returns if you shift your strategy to match his. How likely is this amateur to repeat his performance?

Historical performance is not predictive of future performance. See Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Black Swan.

But I disagreed with my professional financier friend in that I don't invest my money in equities, period. Mark Cuban has a decent rant ("The Stock Market is for Suckers") about my reasoning here: http://blogmaverick.com/200...

If I want to put my money to good use enriching myself, I'll do it one of 3 ways:

1 - Investing in businesses that I have some sort of actual directional impact on; Fred here does more than "his homework" on companies he's investing in as a VC. He can actually help make these businesses succeed. Ditto for investors like Mark Cuban or Warren Buffet. Day traders are just passive investors.

2 - Investing in my government; bonds may not be literally risk free, but if that investment blows up, it's not like money is going to be the biggest of my problems. I'll probably need to learn how to hunt for food and defend myself from post-apocalyptic gangs :)

3 - Investing in myself; spending my money to increase my personal ability to make more money later (i.e. education, networking, starting-and-failing at a business).

Look, don't take these points as the advice of a professional. I got through a decent amount of economics, but I'm no financial expert. I'm just smart enough to know I'm not smart enough.

But then, neither is anyone else. That's the point.

Re: Natural-born blogger. (Scripting News)

Josh Klein — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:58:02 -0000

Who else? Alexander Hamilton. I'm reading the biography by Ron Chernow right now, and you wouldn't believe the sheer quantity of written material this guy produced. He was writing The Federalist Papers, which many game-changing Supreme Court decisions have relied on over the years, at an insane clip, pumping them out in newspapers multiple times per week.

And the subject matter ranged from what he knew best - the military and finance - all the way to more esoteric topics of politics (with Madison's help of course).

Really, if you're into NBBs, you have to read this book.

Re: Give your blog exposure and get visitors and readers – Revisited

Josh Klein — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:51:44 -0000

Just to add my anecdotal thoughts:

Guest posting seems to be far and away the best use of my time. It does so many things at the same time: putting your content in front of a new audience, building relationships with other bloggers, building blogosphere karma, links back to your own blog, and practicing your best writing.

But I'd suggest you take it a step further and not restrict yourself to "blogs". You'd be surprised how easy it is to be a guest contributor to so-called "real" magazines, online and off.

Re: When marketing brilliance fails

Josh Klein — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:15:33 -0000

It seems to me Microsoft was trying to scratch an itch nobody had. I don't think there are really people out there saying, "damn, I wish my smartphone was focused on social networking!" Maybe it was a good phone, but if people don't really have the problem you're solving... ka-splat.

Re: Of all the marketing bullshit, what actually works?

Josh Klein — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:52:07 -0000

I think the answer to these questions you ask is always "it depends", and that's why we marketers are so comfortable pontificating (or perhaps bloviating) endlessly for free; you can't just take these ideas and whip up some magic potion. Marketers make actual valuable contributions when a client says, "we want to hire you to develop our digital strategy." At that point it stops being an exercise in hypotheticals and we Get Shit Done as it pertains to a specific industry, a specific client, and a specific competitive set. At least, that's how I roll!

Re: http://oldjewstellingjokes.com/post/428699864

Josh Klein — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:05:53 -0000

This is really great; reminds me of family events. Loved it. Thank you!

Re: 7 Free or Cheap Ways to Effectively Promote Your Business Online

Josh Klein — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:31:25 -0000

Nice article! I'm glad you find my 10 Rules helpful.

I've got to give a "hell yeah" of support to your LinkedIn section. It gets way less coverage than the other social networks, but for business, it's great.

Re: Where does social media fit in a marketing plan?

Josh Klein — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:40:00 -0000

You got it chick!

Re: Where does social media fit in a marketing plan?

Josh Klein — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:39:47 -0000

Thanks for your thoughts, Lisa.

Re: Quitters

Josh Klein — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:23:14 -0000

An interesting take, and I do think you're right that the importance of quitter numbers are overblown. But I also came across an interesting post today called "Back to Digital Reality" that cites some other numbers from Forrester & comScore, and helped bring me back to the current landscape.

Search is, of course, still dominating, both in attention and in spend. But more interesting to me was the realization that Myspace is more popular than Twitter. I had to do a double take there. I suppose it's hard for those of us in silicon alley (or valley) to see on a day to day basis, but Myspace is still quite the force from an attention standpoint, even if not a technology standpoint.

We're still in the expansion phase of social media, where people are discovering it for the first time every day. At some point, that has to end, and social media becomes a mature concept, where every new visitor to Twitter, Facebook, or whatever, is already familiar with the idea of creating a profile and connecting with like-minded individuals.

The real question is: at that point, what happens?

Does the fragmentation of online persona persist, does a Twitter or Facebook win, does openID or an alternative gain momentum, and does subscriber attrition -- quitters -- overwhelm new member rates?

Back to Digital Reality: http://www.kenburbary.com/2...

Re: Back to Digital Reality

Josh Klein — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:04:58 -0000

I think your point about Myspace is of particular interest to the digital marketing crowd. We tend to assume -- especially in agency-land -- that people are using the same tools as us; that Myspace went the way of Friendster (or that no one watches Nascar). It's always important to take a step back, put down the iPhone, and look at the actual numbers. Of course, having that vision of the future of digital ain't bad either.

Re: Preview: Saving Magazines

Josh Klein — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 13:56:13 -0000

Thanks Jason, nice thoughts here. That question was not intended to be in closing -- well, only closing for the preview. The real meat of the manifesto is going to be in answering that question.

You're absolutely right that some specific examples are in order. I'd love to use a Fortune 500 example, but I don't think there really are any in the sense I'm talking about, although there are great lessons to be learned from the "direct response" businesses.

In terms of smaller companies, I should go to my old example of Wine Library / Gary Vaynerchuk, the wine retailer turned internet video superstar.

What about examples on the other end of the spectrum - do we know any magazines that are already doing it right?

Re: Gary Vaynerchuk - Twitter Brings the Thunder with…Search Twitter...

Josh Klein — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:37:28 -0000

Hey Gary, I don't mind the commercials before your videos, but this one was for "Holidate", a new series on Soapnet. I think it'd be fair to say your audience for these posts is the business community, so reality television and soap operas are a poorly targeted fit.

I know you can crush it and do better! You must have some ad sales people over there?

Re: Don't go to business school?

Josh Klein — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:29:50 -0000

No they don't, but it's probably true. Good point! And also a good point that the need for an MBA in the 80's was probably quite different.