The king of that 140 character, billion dollar valuation micro-blogging platform,
Twitter has hit upon an absolutely brilliant concept.
I don't know why nobody ever thought of this before.
Biz Stone says he will announce plans to monetize Twitter with…..are you ready?…… Advertising. Happy Friday!
Everyone has their pet frustrations with the device they can't live without.
The failure of the iPhone browser to support Flash content has been pretty frustrating if only because everyone insists on putting Flash into their sites (never mind Google can't index it, but I digress). Along comes Rich Wong of Accel Partners, a Valley VC saying that Adobe blew it, Flash is toast, Fuggedaboudit.
Flash won't be supported on the iPad. Now I could this see this having a big affect on how publishers develop content. Since publishers both online and off are stumbling over each other to develop iPad-ready versions of their magazines and newspapers, it's not hard to see how Flash starts to lose its appeal for publishers. Why do things in Flash if readers can't see it on the iPad — because, as you know we will each own five iPads in about two years, not counting the kid's pads.
One possible benefit of the death of Flash (I'll believe it when I see it) is the demise of the classic advertising agency site built entirely.in Flash so as to satisfy some art director's vanity — sites where you can't copy content or download anything while you play cat and (ready?) mouse (har, har. Sorry had to do it) trying to find the precious hidden roll overs.
You know those ever so cautious, ever so serious emails or phone calls. The one's where they say that they have been
retained by a "very important" company to conduct a "top secret" job search and they are wondering if you might have some recommendations for them. We all know that this is usually a headhunterspeak for "we're not really interested in your friends but we don't want to offend you by assuming you are unhappy, but would you be interested in interviewing for this job?"
Turns out the same Internets that fed these guys your name might well taketh their lunch.
Jesse Hempel writes about the impact of LinkedIn on the headhunting business in this week's cover story in Fortune at http://ow.ly/1qS7h .
Other tidbits from Jesse's piece:
And, you've gotta' love this one. There is an actual, real-life professional online presence consultant out there making real cash money dollars giving would be LinkedIn users advice on selecting profile photos like this gem:
Who knew? Better check your profiles for cows everyone. Mine has bricks.
It takes a while to plow through all the new features on each of the updates of the now 135 iPhone Apps that I've downloaded.
While I am busy risking my life attempting to become the Mayor of the Golden Gate Bridge on Foursquare, Yelp may have driven right around all four squares.
If you have not been in San Francisco or Austin lately, I suppose it is possible that you are not already "playing" Foursquare on your mobile phone. This is the app where, for seemingly no good reason, you and I are pushing white rimmed notifications at each other all day long telling everyone that we've a) 
bothered to show up at work b) have traveled somewhere semi-exotic (like Sunnyvale) or c) we are at the latest, hippest, happening bar with hottest, hippest girls or boys (take your pick) within thousands of miles. For this effort we win "badges" when we don't crash our cars. The only problem is that nobody, not even your best friends really cares all that much. Yes, they do care a little (but have you ever asked yourself why?). Yes, my "friendroll" has grown exponentially in the last seven days. Yes, it's fun in a vicarious sort of way to watch the kids in the office traipse their way through the Herpes Triangle on Friday night, but other than that, who are we all really kidding?
Along comes the latest Yelp iPhone update which not only allows you to tell your "friends" where you are –but it comes with the stunning innovation of giving you very useful information about where to go. So, instead of gunning for "badges" I can find a list of nearby bars with user ratings included while I tell you the location information that you don't really care about anyway.
So, you have to wonder, where does FourSquare fit in? Will the "game" trump the utility inherent in the Yelp location based services? If the past is any guide, there will be room for both –but this does put the onus on Foursquare to get useful fast.
When I started my career at age 20 in the pre-fax, pre Internet, almost pre-fedex days on the 
eighth floor of Grey Advertising's 777 Third Avenue office building, not only was my calculator chained to my desk, (really. It was) but seemingly, the Grey spot media buyers had been chained to theirs for several decades. They were let loose to plop (they all plopped or plotzed) into the waiting limosines of the slick-suited salesmen (the buyers were all women the sellers were *all* men) from the spot media rep houses like Katz, etc. Off they went to the Yankees game or 21. They bought impressions and negotiated rates by parceling out percentages of their budgets. Send me my tickets. Over and Out.
My sources tell me things haven't changed all that much. Within the last year, I heard of a San Francisco- online buyer on the phone with spot buyers at a major buying agency (not Grey or Mediacom btw) in New York who was told point blank, something to the effect of, "if you don't stop talking about accountability and measurement in front of the client, we'll take your entire budget away". They weren't kidding and they still had that power.
Dave Morgan's column in MediaPost today, about "Minimum Motivational Frequency "reminds me that these days may finally be coming to an end. It is becoming increasingly possible to measure the sales impact of specific television spots (see Morgan) as well as the impact of an entire medium on actual behavior. Check out Wes Nichols' company Marketshare Partners if you don't believe me. It's no longer fantasy, it's happening. At the AAAA's meeting last week in San Francisco, I talked to an agency CEO who had yanked the media business away from one of the big media buying agencies with a proposal that actually cost more in fees than the "we negotiate the best rates and offer the lowest commissions" media houses by proving better effectiveness. Even more impressive, he had won the argument with the purchasing department.
Buyers of all media are going to look more and more like digital buyers and less like spot buyers. It's going to get harder. Data, rather than limo length witll drive decisions. Yes, it's taking forever, but it is still going to happen. They find their own limos and they get off on spread sheets and pivot tables. Ain't nobody going to chain them to their desks either.
About time.
This is a very interesting concept on how to get funding for your business. You get funded. In exchange, the investor gets a cut of your life earnings. I don't know what happens if the investment fails.
Let's all stipulate as to Kjerstin Erickson's general brilliance for coming up with the concept and getting into Stanford GSB and her general goodness for starting up a non-profit to revitalize African refugee communities and all that.
But… did she really have to name this idea the "THRUST" fund and then offer up this pose for her "head"shot, possibly setting back the concept of taking women in business seriously by, oh, let's say three decades.
I'm just saying.
