Social Media in the 90s

Courtesy of one of my colleagues who sent this around today: Social Media always existed in one or the other form. Sometimes the means of communication were a little complicated or indirect, but there was no excuse for not having been able to communicate the way you can today.

Well, I am still happy to have the tools of today, even though I sometimes feel like they can turn me into an adult ADD…

Joost focuses on the US.

Just a quick one: Joost shuts down its global operations and focuses on the US only. Shame, I liked the idea of Joost. But in the end, it was brought down by two main factors that even a technologically smart way of streaming videos can’t solve: first: trying to buy global rights for content that studios could probably sell much more profitable on a country-by-country basis. second: having exclusive, compelling content that users won’t find anywhere else (nevermind that they’re overloaded with too much online video anyway.

And for me: I always felt like the joost interface just wasn’t right somehow. I don’t watch fullscreen video on my PC. Still, I was always hoping for it to evolve (globally), so that one day I could enjoy watching videos via joost. But not any more, I guess.

Let other sites „be your website“

This is a strange but rather interesting idea: Modernista, an ad agency, doesn’t actually have a real website. Instead, the just provide a navigation layer that sits on top of various websites that have the relevant content, i.e. a flickr gallery of their work, a google news page with news of the agency, a wikipedia page (or facebook profile) with the descriptive info of what the agency did in the past and offers for their clients.

(via online spin.)

Google and Apple and the no compromise for bucks philosophy.

Just the other day I posted this graphic at my german blog:

applegoogle.jpg

The graphic is from this place here. Just today I found the ‚corresponding article‘ about ‚how google and apple dominate‚ whatever field they are moving into. Written by Umair Haque, this article goes into the „no compromise for bucks“ philosophy that is at the core of their DNA – Goople’s DNA, as he calls the two companies:

The ends they’re working towards are similar: Goople aspires to – with laserlike intensity – change the world for the better. And where most of their competitors will sell out everything they believe in for a few bucks and a latte, Goople is deeply, radically purposive: they won’t compromise much, if anything, to achieve the goal of changing the world for the better.

Go read that and remember the graphic above. And then keep this in mind whenever you’re thinking of a company’s strategy.

AdAge digital issue

Adage published a „digital issue“, which seems to be completely accessible online. (Why wouldn’t it, anyway?) I haven’t read through the entire set of articles just yet, however there seem to be some interesting thoughts. Things like the 70/20/10 rule for marketing budgets, a short article about what the h*** are widgets, and a little crystal ball 2.0 outlook (still need to finish that one).