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Microsoft has taken to "educating" consumers on Google's holiday search practices. Yes, there's even a website devoted to this "public service." Microsoft is trying to bill itself as the voice of the uninformed masses. In this fictional world, Bing provides true, unfettered, pure results.
This is just lame. Microsoft can't beat Google at search so the former results to this futile effort. It smacks of desperation. Separately, its head of search
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As I write in the book, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have many things in common, no the least of which is the tendency to disrupt themselves before others do. Case in point: Amazon recently lowering its prices on AWS. If profits are lower in the hosting world, why would others enter? For its part, Google doesn't want to become Microsoft. In a world of "social search", why do I
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Ken Auletta appeared on Charlie Rose recently to talk about Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. It's a great talk about some of the more interesting dynamics at play.
Rose should have me on his show.
There. I said it.
Wonder what it's like inside a gazillion-square foot distribution center?
Wonder no more. (Video may take a few seconds to load.)
The Charlie Rose episode with Jeff Bezos is nothing less than fascinating. Among the highlights for me the are study hall and the discussion among Amazon top brass of ideas in depth. This might be the best 40 minutes of viewing of the last month for me.
In this 60-minute talk at NMHC in Dallas, TX, I discuss The Age of the Platform and the platform as a business model. I then take about 15 minutes worth of questions.
My 54-minute keynote and Q&A from the Columbus, OH OCLC event in September of this year is now up. I talk about the management philosophies of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. I also discuss the similarities between Instagram and YouTube, Microsoft's purchase of Yammer, and a whole host of other topics.
In this 45-minute talk at OCLC in Columbus, OH, I discuss The Age of the Platform and the platform as a business model. I then take about 15 minutes worth of questions.
An interesting piece on HBR claims that Facebook may be too big to survive. From it:
...it only takes a few unsolicited, valueless notifications and the utility of Facebook goes down. It is simply inefficient to spend any of your precious neocortical processing capacity finding out about the lives of people who are irrelevant to you — people who will never be one of your 150 meaningful social relationships
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My friend Mark Cenicola wrote an interesting post for VentureBeat on the benefits of using existing platforms vs. building your own. I'm quoted in the piece and there are some nice props to The Age of the Platform. Here's an excerpt:
Let’s face it, apps are the new sexy. They’re an easy path to success, right?
With companies like Instagram being purchased for $1 billion, everyone hopes their
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Read my Inc. Magazine column: All About the Platform.
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