Good framework posts
Burnham’s Beat: The Walled Garden “Hit List”. The threat from search engines to web services with “walled garden” data can be analysed by looking at 1) Content Availability, 2) Index Affinity and 3) Process Simplicity, according to Bill Burnham. Really, really good post. Appropriate framework to use when trying to understand why traditional media organisations do not have the upper hand on the Internet.
OnlyOnce: New Media Deal, Part II - the We Media Deal. “The We Media Deal has two components to it: (1) the value of the service to you increases in lock-step as you contribute more data to it, and (2) the more transparent the value exchange, the more willing you are to share your data.” When designing new services one should try really hard to incorporate the first part into the basic design of the service.
Dion Hinchcliffe: Notes on Making Good Social Software. The pillars of social software (a.k.a. community sites, forums etc) are 1) Establishment of Handles, 2) Allow for Members in Good Standing, 3) Barriers to Participation and 4) Protect Conversations from Scale. Good reference when trying to understand the failure of most newspapers’ article commentary. Weblogs, Inc’s TV Squad has designed its commentary function in a way that uses the four pillars. Media companies should watch and learn.
BeyondVC: The Arms Race for Talent. “This next phase of ramping up companies is not about how much you spend on marketing as most services today are spread word-of-mouth. It is not about technology spend as it is way cheaper than years past. It is about finding and hiring the key people who know how to scale a back end infrastructure, who can create and deliver innovative product, and who know how to leverage word-of-mouth to create a huge opportunity.” Just because a startup can use commodity hardware and software it doesn’t mean that great people is a commodity.