01 December 08
Pownce was a once-hyped micro-blogging competitor to Twitter. I say “was” as today Pownce announced that they will be shutting down their service on December 15th.
While the demise of Pownce and other social media sites during this recession seems like dot-com bust déjà vu, there’s one key difference. We the users feel the loss as well. Our connections with long-lost friends, geo-tagged photos, witty and pithy comments, and moment-by-moment recitations of the best days of our lives are lost — forever. Along with all the countless hours invested uploading them to the world.
It’s not just the start-ups that are shutting sites down either. Yahoo! shut down Yahoo! Mash, their MySpace/Facebook competitor. AOL shut down AOL Pictures, their flickr competitor. Google shut down Lively, their Second Life competitor. Some have been kind enough to help you port your content to a similar service, but not all.
The lure of these services has been strong over the past few years. My wife and I opted to use Tumblr for micro-blogging about our newborn — fully aware that we were entrusting our efforts to a start-up service. Why? It was free and really easy set up, customize, and maintain.
Next up, Facebook. Just about every article you read about this social media darling mentions that they still haven’t announced how they’re going to make real money. With the recent market downturn some are suggesting that they figure out a way to start charging users. Others feel like that would be disastrous.
Now as some of us are counting ourselves among the web 2.0 casualties and learning the true price of “free”, it will be interesting to see what 2009 holds for start-up and user alike.
25 November 08
This was shot on Wooster Street in Soho. For fans of street art, I highly recommend checking out Wooster Collective.
17 November 08
My wife recently gave birth to our son. That spectacular event triggered a flurry of communications from our health plan — namely, plan statements. Plan statements get mailed following a provider visit. They explain what procedures were performed, what the provider billed the plan, and what the consumer’s cost is (if any).
Up until recently we really didn’t pay much attention to our statements as we rarely visit the doctor. But after the birth, larger bills started to float in — it was time we looked closer.
22 October 08
58 Gallery has been at the cultural center of the Jersey City arts community for some years now. Their opening receptions are frequently followed by lively parties and often showcase great local bands.
20 October 08
A blog I frequent published an article that, with a simple quiz, brought into high relief the lack of brand differentiation in online retailers. The author removed the logos of a dozen or so e-commerce websites from brick and mortar retailers such as Sears, Macy’s, and Kmart and challenged you to identify who’s site was who’s. I got most of them wrong.
While this exercise is quite powerful, there is a critical piece of the equation that the author left out. Many of the retailers that she cited don’t have distinctive customer experiences in the the real world. Yes, I could tell the difference between whether I’m in a Kmart, Macy’s or Sears, but how memorable and engaging are these customer experiences? What does the JC Penny brand really have to leverage in-store that they can extend online? The fact that Penny’s has consistently scored high on Forrester’s Customer Experience Index isn’t enough to truly set them apart online — especially when competing against companies like Zappos.
So who does do a good job extending their brand and differentiating itself online? Let’s take a look at a few examples…