The Costs of Bookmarking. Cool data released by Maciej from Pinboard about how much it costs to keep the bookmarking service running. It’s really awesome to see information like this made public.
The Costs of Bookmarking
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Tag Archives: business
What is going on?
The US Postal Service story is not a unique situation. It is the situation. And we are going to be living with this situation for many years to come. We are crossing a huge chasm from an industrial society to an information society. And there is immense pain in that transformation. Obama can’t solve the problem nor can any of his opponents. Time will solve this problem as new industries get built, people learn new skills and new jobs, and we dismantle entitlement systems that are not sustainable.
That is what is going on. I’d love to hear Obama tell the country that. But I doubt he will. But someone should.
Fred Wilson – What is going on?.
Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code
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Customers don’t patronize companies on the basis of the difficulty of the code or the unit test coverage percentage or whether you used Bodoni instead of Times New Roman on the home page. In fact I’ve made millions of dollars on companies with hideously ugly websites and buggy code. Those things are actually not the most important things. Real life is a startup contest too.
Jason Cohen – Startup Weekend pep talk: It ain’t the code.
Just a myth
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The key word, I think, is spiritual. Mythological brands make a spiritual connection with the user, delivering something that we can’t find on our own… or, at the very least, giving us a slate we can use to write our own spirituality on.
People use a Dell. They are an Apple.
Seth Godin – Just a myth.
Leading by Omission
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Leading by Omission. A talk about management and what’s wrong with taking a traditional business approach by Ricardo Semler. The beginning has some wonderful examples of industry malaise and lack of innovative problem solving.
Ways to acquire users for free
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Ways to acquire users for free. Cool tips on different strategies for attracting users to your product. The right data makes these decisions easier.
The right way to ask users for help
I haven’t ever used MLKSHK but their appeal for people to help fund product development makes me want to contribute.
For $24 a year you get a site and service run by people who care about their community. We’re people who care about delivering a good product and who are committed to building out the site for as long as there’s a community that cares about MLKSHK. We have an amazing list of places we want to take the site but we won’t be able to do it if we can’t devote all our time to it. And to be clear, we’re not against getting money or funding from the right people; we just want to be able to do MLKSHK the right way.
Just a bit of time spent poking around the product shows that they really get it. The founders have put a lot of time, creativity, and personality into things and it shows.
There’s nothing wrong with asking your community to help support you and they’ve done it in a wonderfully thoughtful way. Great stuff.
(via Gruber)
The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
As we’ve made it easier for ideas to spread digitally, we’ve actually amplified the gap between free and paid. It turns out that there’s a huge cohort that’s just not going to pay for anything if they can possibly avoid it.
Seth Godin – The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap
Fail Bigger Cheaper: A Three Word Manifesto
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Fail Bigger Cheaper: A Three Word Manifesto. By insulating businesses, particularly the large ones, from failure we’re limiting our future opportunities. If we let things fail we can learn how to make them better.
A good factory
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A good factory is not necessarily the one that makes the most money, but the one that is most responsible for improving the quality of life for its workers and its customers. And the true function of politics is not to make people more affluent, safe, or powerful, but to let as many as possible enjoy an increasingly complex existence.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
