“To try to be cool is to not be cool. To chase cool, you’re chasing something that already exists, which means you’re always going to be on the wrong side of it, you’ll always be following.” - Andrew Keller, Co-Executive Creative Director, Crispin Porter and Bogusky
Holy shit, is Facebook really down?? And no funny / crafty slogan or image to make light of it? LOL.
Google makes its bucks by tracking every aspect of your life online. For the benefit of FREE we allow Google into every intimate aspect of our lives: our communication (Gmail), our interests (Search), where we’re going (Maps), and what we see (YouTube). Tracking our “data stream” (everywhere we go and everything we do) online is big business. By correlating our behavior and interests with other people’s, Google can figure out with a high degree of accuracy what we want and when we want it. It monetizes this information by placing highly relevant advertising in front of us at those times.
Amazon is successful for the same reasons. When I go to Amazon with the intention of buying one book, I usually leave having bought about five. That’s because Amazon has tracked the behavior of every single person that has ever visited the site. They’ve taken every purchase anyone has made and correlated it to your behavior and your purchasing decisions. That’s powerful data.
Apple’s GPS enabled 3G iPhone promises to bring life recording to a whole new level by taking it offline. Location aware cell phone apps will bring the power of the data stream to our everyday lives in much the same way Amazon brings it to retail. Think about your daily activities. You have a routine. You shop at many of the same stores regularly. Almost everything you do has a pattern that you’ve spent your whole life developing. When you overlap that pattern with other people’s lives you’ll discover new products and services that people with similar interests use that you don’t know about. That’s the power of tracking user behavior.
The economic implications are enormous. Besides the obvious dating (“notify me when someone with similar interests is nearby”) and social (“notify me when my friends are nearby”) applications, location based services will fundamentally change the way we interact with the offline world. People will discover new products and services based on automatic recommendations derived from behavior they have in common with other people. The broker of these recommendations will make a lot of money.
But why stop there? We already let Google read our email in exchange for a free account. Why not let a service listen to our phone conversations? Companies like PhoneTag already listen to your voicemail and transcribe that to SMS text for your convenience. It’s not much of a leap to combine that with advertising and make it free or offer free cell phone service that targets advertising based on what you say and where you go. (Maybe this is the strategy behind Grand Central and Android).
Moreover, location based apps will fundamentally change the way we interact with the world and the people in it. It’s like carrying your Facebook profile on your head. I can learn everything about you before you say “hello.” When I’m walking in the mall, I can find out where other people with similar interests shopped. When I drive down the street, I can get offers for stores I drive by. Think of it as Google Adsense for the real world. Instead of contextualizing advertising to the content of the web page you’re on, the advertising becomes contextual to the content of where you are and what you’re doing.
Yes, I’m a total Mac fan boy, but if I was going to settle for a windows box, I’d be all over this. Check out the brilliant innovation in the Ethernet port being integrated into the power block. I’m surprised Apple didn’t come out with something like this on the AIR to give users more ports.
I just got my Garmin Forerunner 305 in the mail today. It’s a $200 GPS enabled sports watch the tracks my running and tells me how fast I’m going. It comes with a heart rate monitor which straps around my chest and displays my heart rate on the watch while I’m running. Pretty nifty. I can’t wait to try it.
I got it mostly because of my failed attempt at running the Aloha Run in under 1 hour. I want a better way of keeping track of my speed while I’m outdoors. Hopefully this will help. I’m pretty excited about exploring the social features of the watch too. It records all my runs and can compare me to other people who use the watch through an online community.
The thing is HUGE though. I mean seriously. I don’t know whether to look at it or talk to it. I think it’s waiting for me to say “Beam me up, Scottie!”
Rob Robinson, a business school professor at the University of Hawaii, asked me to speak to one of his MBA classes recently. I did that this morning.
I mostly spoke about entrepreneurship in my life and what I’ve learned from running Blue Lava. The students were awesome and they asked some great questions. One thing that was different from when I was in school was that a lot of people had laptops in class. Nobody carried a laptop to class when I went to university – and I majored in Computer Engineering. I was also surprised that of about 10 laptops I saw in the classroom, only three were Mac. I would have guess that there would be more.
It was kind of strange being asked to speak to an MBA class. I never went to business school but I’ve given it some thought over the years. I think if you had asked me a couple of years ago, I would have said yes, I’ll definitely go. At this point I’m pretty sure I’ll never go.
As an academic exercise, I think it would be great. I consider myself an eternal student. Right now I need to buy a second bookshelf because I’ve got about 50 business books overflowing from the 200 or so I already have stacked. And that’s just books I’ve bought in the last 2 years (no, I haven’t read them all – I’m working on it!). Amazon loves me.
It would be awesome to go to school for two years and do nothing but study business. But that would probably last about a month for me. I’d be off starting a new venture about as soon as I’d settle into the academia. I imagine that the coolest thing about business school is the people you meet. What a great place to make connections and meet future business partners.
A couple of our guys, Jason and Chad, are going to the WWDC in SF next week. We’re going to have a table at the student fair where hopefully we’ll recruit the brightest Cocoa programmers on the planet. Anyhow, as if our software isn’t cool enough, we’ve actually gone to the trouble to create some nifty give aways. I’m still torn on whether they’re worth the money, but, as a recruiting expense, if we’re successful in recruiting even one kick ass candidate, the answer will be yes.
We got branded memory sticks from MemorySuppliers.com (red with our white iLovePhotos logo) and branded pens from 4imprint.com (ditto). So far so good. Hopefully the actual items are as cool as the pictures. I’ll post an update!
UPDATE: The memory sticks were awesome. The pens never made it there on time and 4imprint customer service sucks.
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