Got Facebook Places to Be

Is this really a good idea? Okay, I’ll admit it might be fun for a while, but this seems like another Pandora’s box being opened to me. There are plenty of people saying this is not a good idea already, but I’m going to go ahead and add my short two cents.

The only reason Facebook is doing this is so that they can better tailor their advertisements. They are now able to collect more data and therefore deliver better ads. If you think Facebook is doing this for any other reason, you are sadly mistaken.

I have no doubt that Facebook wants to add new features to ensure people continue to enjoy it, but that’s not the driving force here. It was when it first started, and everyone was on Myspace, but five years later, with the majority of the internet now officially switched over to Facebook, they have a captive audience. They can give our information away with impunity.

They won’t of course. Not when they can sell it instead. Which is what they intend to do. Do you realize that all of the photos you upload to Facebook are their property? That they get to use even after you terminate your account? Think long and hard on that one.

I’m not implying that Facebook is evil, they’re a company, most successful companies do this kind of stuff. I am saying that everyone should watch out for the content they put there.

The Best Marketing

"Word of Mouth" is sometimes incorrectly traced back to 1980s, when the term seems to have been coined. The truth of course, is that this phenomenon existed and was probably tapped long before it was named.

It all boils down to a simple set of rules, really. if you maintain high customer satisfaction and high customer retention, they will tell their friends good things. If you have high customer turnover instead, you will likely run out of people who want to buy your product or service because unsatisfied customers, tell their friends before their friends have the chance to purchase.

I'll provide an example: I heard about ISP Teksavvy by word of mouth. Satisfied customers told me they offered a great service at a great price, and that I should try them. I signed up for their internet services and have had relatively good service with them. Rogers and Bell are monolithic companies that spend a great deal of money on fairly average advertising. Some of their commercials have been alright, but they do not inspire the same reactions as the Old Spice commercials do. Teksavvy is a smaller provider without the money, size, or clout that Bell or Rogers have; they are a slightly oversized small fish in a pond with two elephants. They piggyback on Bell's RJ-11 DSL infrastructure and have recently also added support over Roger's last-generation coaxial cable infrastructure.

Cutting Through the Haze of Uncertainty

After some initial difficulty, it looks like the uncertainty that surrounded three important priorities in my life is finally yielding to my persevering efforts. In addition, I've temporarily abandoned some of the home-brew web projects I was working on to focus on content. If content is your selling point, sometimes it is best to focus on that and diversify later.

Companies are similar.  When any company - new or old - is launching a new product. The original blackberries were little more than pagers with an amber-black LCD. RIM got very good at doing one thing before they added more functionality. Netbooks offered greater mobility and lower pricing as the greatest attraction factors, and worried about greater ram, faster CPUs and better wireless range as they became successful.

Yes, you can spend a lot of time working on the perfect version of something. Duke Nukem Forever might be an excellent example of what happens in such a case. It never gets done, or money stops coming in, usually one leading to the other. The reason companies can release imperfect products is thanks to early adopters. To all you disappointed iPhone 4G owners, you can rest easy knowing your money is not wasted; it is a donation to the Church of Mac. Without your donations, they would be unable less able to develop the next slightly-better version, which you will also pay a horrendous amount of money for.

For me, my next tech purchase will probably be a Kindle. It's got battery like nothing else, displays text clearly and yet also connects to the internet. That's a whole lot of awesome for a new product. So it's amber-black, so what? What if that is exactly what the application calls for? Besides, with so much variation between how colour is perceived (and also described, 'midori' is apparently Japanese for green and blue), perhaps amber-black is the best option for a number of mobile devices. You'll never see Apple, the company of colour for everything do that though, right? Right? Oh, except maybe on the original, original iPods.

Kids these days don't even remember THEIR good old days. This is what companies have to do, though, confront the initial uncertainty that their products may be viewed with and defeat it by doing one thing very well. If their product provides utility to individuals or companies in additional ways, it may help, but start by doing something very, very well.