Even the most durable competitive advantages fade with time if you don’t replace them with new advantages.
Jeff Bezos
Truth about business. The full interview is worth a read.
Commentary
NYT: Grads squeezed by student loan burden – Business – U.S. business – The New York Times – msnbc.com
While many economists say student debt should be seen in a more favorable light, the rising loan bills nevertheless mean that many graduates will be paying them for a longer time.
What about the people that don’t graduate and have student loan debt?
IDEA – Business Week iPad App + Print
Was just reading a post on Tech Crunch about the new Business Week iPad app. One of the complaints was that the content of the app is updated once per week, just like a real magazine.
IDEA
Post all the writings of their talent in the app as it is completed. Then, based on the user data and feedback from the users of the iPad app, adjust what stories are featured in the magazine. This could be done with the top five articles that readers have rated highest. This could be highlighted in a page that explains what the stories are and where readers can find them in the magazine. Magazine readers may find this curation by the crowd to be of considerable value.
Notes
The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have a similar feature in what published articles were most emailed, read or shared. Example links are below.
People Loved The Flip
Earlier today Cisco announced it was shutting down their Flip division and that 550 people would be out of a job. Normally this would not be big enough news to generate the volume of conversation I’m seeing on Twitter. There must be something that the Flip really tapped into regarding people and their relationship with the Flip. Perhaps it has to do with strong branding, built on making a great product that was simple to use.
An Interesting Way To Follow Twitter?
Try watching @ replies to people that interest you. Some of them have a large number of people following and their tweets get some responses. This is probably similar to blog comments, but less spammy.
TweetGrid! screen shot
Amazon Kindle Social Network?
Public Notes – See image above. 4 people have this feature enabled
People can share their highlighted passages and written notes in the Kindle version of the book. This might be part of a reading club / social network.
- Read book together.
- Meet with other readers (people in your organized or not organized book club)
- Discuss meaningful passages, notes and lessons.
There is a webpage where one can see all the highlighting one made in the book. There is also a page where some of the top highlighted passages are available. Here is the page for the book Content Rules. NOTE: This is an https URL. You might need to be logged in to Amazon to see it.
Jobs Report Signals Improving Economy – WSJ.com
Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Narayana Kocherlakota said in an interview Thursday that he would be surprised if it were below 8.5% at the end of 2011. Even so, he suggested the Fed may need to raise interest rates late in the year to keep inflation under control.
via Jobs Report Signals Improving Economy – WSJ.com.
Looks like the Fed is signaling interest rate increases.
Attention Grabbing Ad
Talk about an interruption ad. This one interrupts before you even have a chance to start reading the paper.
- It got noticed
- First reaction, this looks dumb, who would put an ad right on the product?
- It was super simple to remove. +1
- Whoever made the actual peal sticker marketing product seems to have done a good job.
- Fast and easy removal is critical to not make the customer angry
Metro Detroit Volvo Dealers Spell Detroit Wrong in a Google Ad
We spell it D. E. T. R. O. I. T!
Clicking on the ad link leads to a site representing METRO DETROIT AREA VOLVO RETAILERS
The PayPal Opportunity: Tax Refund + Direct Deposit = Big Win
in regards to how people get their tax refund checks from the government. If PayPal created a system that is nearly 100% safe in regards to setting up direct deposits, they could get a ton of assets in user accounts. Once the money is in those accounts, people will generate more transactions, which in turn, will generate more income for PayPal.
If PayPal was smart, they would create a program that has the attributes below.
- Peace of mind for the account holder
- Ease of use for the account holder
- Easy to understand for the account holder
- Safe for the account holder
Suggestion
PayPal should generate an account number that can only be used to move money into an account, but cannot be exploited in a way to move money out.
Questions:
- How many tax refund checks are issued per year?
- Including people that had direct deposit set up previously?
- These people may find PayPal to be an easier and safer way to get their money back this year.
- Including people that had direct deposit set up previously?
- How many PayPal users are there?
- Assuming that this market is mature and that increasing business and value delivered to current customers is more important than new customer acquisition.
- Does PayPal effectively communicate with their users?
- Mail (USPS)
- Digital ads
- Blog
Note: Perhaps I am playing it too safe, but sharing my banking info with too many entities seems increasingly risky that a someone may exploit my account.
D.L. Damore 