Thinking about some Facebook usage statistics

February 4, 2010

I spend most of my working life researching how collaborative technologies – particularly social media – are impacting business strategy. My academic background is in economics. So when The Economist does a special report on something like social networking, it always gets my attention. And as with most articles in the publication, I always find [...]

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The Web 2.0, good sushi, and a wonderful case of creative destruction

January 14, 2010

When it comes to the Web 2.0 and the process of “creative destruction”, a lot of people associate it more with the latter word than the former. After all, we hear story after story of entire industries being washed away – and what replaces them simply doesn’t provide a livelihood for nearly as many people.
So [...]

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Recent research: SeatGeek – using data to empower customers and alter industry dynamics

December 18, 2009

Last week I wrote about The Hipstery, focusing on the concept of using data to create and leverage “blind spots”. This week I’m going to talk about SeatGeek – a relatively new start-up that uses existing data to empower customers, and potentially alter the dynamics of the secondary ticket industry.
What SeatGeek does is gather information [...]

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Recent research: The Hipstery – creating and leveraging Johari blind spots

December 11, 2009

My job as executive editor at nGenera Insight involves doing a lot of research about new business models and start-ups tied to the Web 2.0. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing a high level overview of some of the work I’ve been doing recently. Today I’m going to start by talking [...]

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StickK: I love this idea, partially because I also came up with it

December 9, 2009

Very early in my career, I was told there are very few new ideas out there – if you’ve thought of it, somebody else probably has as well. What’s rare is for people to actually do something with the idea. So I find it quite amusing when I see people get all upset about somebody [...]

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Seeking out new ideas, and why being open isn't always better

December 2, 2009

I do research for a living. A lot of it tends to centre on the Web 2.0. And the Chairman of my research group wrote Wikinomics. So I spend quite a bit of time out looking for new companies and business models, with a particularly keen eye for things that are “opening up”. But to [...]

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Localbacon: improving the customer experience by making them pay

November 30, 2009

In most cases, getting something for free is preferable to paying for it. But now always. One example I’ve always found intriguing on this front is online dating sites. If you’re (say) a very attractive female, it’s HIGHLY likely that you will be inundated with messages from potential suitors. But by making the suitors pay [...]

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Stigmergy, community building, and social media

November 27, 2009

On Monday my colleague Naumi Haque sent me a link to an interesting article by Professor Francis Heylighen titled “Why is Open Access Development is so successful? Stigmergic organization and the economics of information“. It provides a great overview of open access / self-organizing systems in relation to traditional economic theory, but the part I [...]

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The Sports Guy, using statistics, and the gambler’s fallacy

November 20, 2009

Today my favorite writer – The Sports Guy – wrote an excellent column about Bill Belichick’s “reckless” call to go for it on 4th and 2 when his team was up by 6, on their own 28 yard line, with just over 2 minutes left to play. Much of the article goes into great detail [...]

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Twitter popularity and Marvel Comics: an interesting difference between follower and list counts

November 20, 2009

As part of my ongoing research, I’ve been paying close attention to developments around Twitter’s “list” feature (launched in October) – “A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.” Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting finding (that has me scratching my ahead a bit) in relation to follower [...]

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