How to Crush Your Competition My friend Karl used to call this the “embrace and extend” theory of competition, and when it works, it’s brilliant. I just found a new example of it yesterday (thanks, Jack!) that’s very illustrative. I have been a Firefox user for a couple years now and love the browser and its extensions. I almost never use Internet Explorer any more — although sometimes I “have to,” because there are a couple of web applications I use that just don’t work well in Firefox, like Outlook Web and online banking. Hopefully some of that will change over time as Firefox gets more mainstream, but in the meantime, there’s now a Firefox extension that allows you to…
Archives / August, 2006
Book Short: And It’s Not Just Because I’m In It
Book Short: And It’s Not Just Because I’m In It Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book is a good super quick read for any CEO or senior executive who is contemplating starting a blog — or even better, for those who have decided not to do so. Weil’s writing style is great and very informal (blog-like, in fact) – a representative snippet is where she tells readers that there are two types of information to worry about posting on a blog, in her words, “stuff you don’t to reveal and stuff you could get sued for.” And her range of topics is great and deals with issues head-on. Things like fear of losing control, time commitment, and ghost writing are…
Tech on the Brain
Tech on the Brain I heard a good one today — a really good one. A friend of a friend (who of course shall remain nameless) was at a stoplight the other day in front of a big Victoria’s Secret store with a big sign out front advertising their newest product — Wireless Bras. Anyway, this friend sat there for a full traffic light cycle trying to figure out why the heck you’d need a bra that’s wi-fi enabled, and how you’d hook it up to a computer monitor or laptop to take advantage of the feature. Fortunately, it did eventually dawn on this person that this was an ad that referred to the absence of physical support wires, not…
Getting Good Inc.
Getting Good Inc. There’s an old saying in PR about “getting good ink,” referring to good press – a phrase that will probably replaced by something like “getting good bits” soon enough now, I’m sure. Anyway, Return Path was very fortunate to be ranked #167 in this year’s Inc. Magazine Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. See the list here and our press release here. We were also happy to see clients of ours like Constant Contact, Fishbowl, and Zappos on the list, as well as fellow email companies Exact Target, Vertical Response, and research panel Epocrates. That’s all the sign of a healthy industry! While we never rest on our laurels, it’s certainly nice…
People are People
People are People So after nearly seven years of running Return Path, I think it’s now fair to say that I’m a direct marketer. I’ve learned a lot about this business over the years, and there are a number of things about direct marketing that are phenomenal — the biggest one is that most of the business is incredibly clear, logical, and math-driven. But there’s always been one thing about the field that hasn’t quite made sense to me, and I think it’s because the Internet is once again changing the rules of the game. There are traditional companies in the space that focus on B2C direct marketing. There are others that focus on B2B. It’s been obvious to me…
links for 2006-08-17
Fractals of Change: Are You an Entrepreneur? Tom Evslin’s entertaining Top 10 Ways You Know You’re an Entrepreneur. Some may dovetail nicely if I ever write up my read of The Fountainhead through entrepreneurial lens! (tags: Entrepreneur VC)
Solving an Annoying Windows "Feature"
Solving an Annoying Windows "Feature" I was just about to write a quick rant on how ANNOYING it is when Windows downloads a software update and then automatically reboots your computer, shutting down all your open documents and windows and causing you to lose work, when our ace system administrator, Tom Nguyen, told me how to disable the auto-reboot feature. It seems that Windows has been doing this more and more frequently lately, and I’ve heard this as an issue from others as well. So for anyone else who is wondering how to do this, Tom says: Option 1. Click on the Start menu>Control Panel>Automatic Updates>Notify me but don’t automatically download or install them. Option 2. XP prior to Service…
Book Short: It Sounds Like it Should be About Monkeys, Doesn’t It?
Book Short: It Sounds Like it Should be About Monkeys, Doesn’t It? The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, is a must-read for anyone in the Internet publishing or marketing business. There’s been so much written about it in the blogosphere already that I feel a little lame and “me too” for adding my $0.02, but I finally had a chance to get to it last week, and it was fantastic. The premise is that the collapsing production, distribution, and marketing costs of the Internet for certain types of products — mostly media at this point — have extended the traditional curve of available products and purchased products almost indefinitely so that it has, in statistical terms, a really long tail….
Book Short: Choose Voice!
Book Short: Choose Voice! I took a couple days off last week and decided to re-read two old favorites. One –Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead — my fourth reading — will take me a little longer to process and figure out if there’s a good intersection with the blog. One would think so with entrepreneurship as the topic, but my head still hurts from all the objectivism. The second — Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, by Albert O. Hirschman — is today’s topic. I can’t remember when I first read Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. It was either in senior year of high school Economics or Government; or in freshman year of college Political Philosophy. Either way, it was a long time ago,…
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over With all due respect to lawyers, of course, Google’s recent decision to start making a legal fuss when people in the media use the word “Google” as a verb is NUTS. Someone, get Marketing on Line 1 — and make it snappy. Steve Rubel wrote about it, as did Jeff Jarvis, and the source material is here. For the record, anyone who wants to use any of the following words or phrases as a verb, noun, or any other part of speech, may do so at any time: Return Path, Sender Score, Authentic Response, Postmaster Direct. Oh, and then there’s ECOA, the service we pioneered in 2000 that *is* occasionally (in…
News Travels Fast
News Travels Fast Fred’s post was Day 1 of the currently-seems-silly TSA ban on liquids on airplanes. One day later, today, I had the pleasure of traveling from Idaho Falls to Boise and back (one metropolis to the next!), and I noticed almost no difference in security and passenger behavior at either airport. Most people in line zinged out one bit of sarcastic resignation after the next about the silliness of banning all liquids. My favorite was “next thing you know, we’re going to have to travel naked” — yikes — YIKES! — but as terrorists find new and exciting ways to terrorize us, and as our now-nationalized airport security staff doesn’t seem to understand the phrases “anticipation” or “long-term…