The 10 Most Hated Companies in America – 24/7 Wall St.
Guess who made it to number one:
Facebook currently has more than 800 million users. Any company of this size is sure to have some detractors. Compared to other leading social media sites, however, Facebook has the lowest customer satisfaction score from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
It’s eerie to me how Facebook users are considered customers. Best Buy unsurprisingly is number six.
Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually – Forbes
Some months ago I wrote why big box retail is always gonna end up sucking at customer service sooner or later. I’m self linking because I think it relates a lot to the click-bate Forbes article by Larry Downes, and because I also think it’s one of my good ones.
To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.
This was painful to read, for reasons that may not be so obvious, but could be figured out. All I’m saying is that their business model is counting on eternal customer ignorance.
(Via Daring Fireball)
Focused dabbling – Neven Mrgan’s tumbl
Neven Mrgan reacts to what Dan Benjamin said on a Back to Work episode about side businesses and if it’s even possible to be successful at them.
What makes a hobby a business is whether you can make money with it, and we all probably agree that it would be great if we could make money with our pastimes. Focusing specifically on the money-making aspect is a recipe for headache, but a smart person who already makes money at their “day job” has a lot of low-stress options for making money with a hobby these days. Will it be enough money to cover the recording of that album, the writing of that book, the making of that app? Maybe not. But with hobbies, you have to count the pleasure you derive from the effort as income; substantial income, too, otherwise you’d be better off with another hobby.
(Via Kung Fu Grippe)
A transcribed talk by Charles Munger, who works for Warren Buffet, about the importance of “wordly wisdom” for picking stocks. Pretty much required reading.
What is elementary, worldly wisdom? Well, the first rule is that you can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ‘em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in a usable form.
You’ve got to have models in your head. And you’ve got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models. You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.
via Kottke
There’s been a lot of free talk provoked by Chris Anderson’s book, Free: The Future of Radical Price. Cory Doctorow’s critique of the book is very spot on when he mentions that some things are just “truly free” and can exist outside of a “marketplace”. That’s why Anderson fumbles a lot between the idea of free and cross-subsidized methods. But the above link to the Snarkmarket post takes the cake in explaining and understanding what Anderson is trying to explain, or sell.
When the idea of free really works, it makes us forget that it ever even cost anything at all. Reading web pages is free – once you count the money you pay for internet access. Between my phone and my house, I pay more for internet access per month than I do books – and I read a lot. Add on to that all of the ways my free behavior is paid for with information from or attention paid by me, and a ruthless calculus would determine that the internet is expensive as hell.
Almost all free things are cross-subsidized in some ways. But if the cross-subsidy is obvious – “Free phone with a two-year plan worth at least…” – then free fails. If your website suddenly has a glaring and obnoxious banner ad, then it doesn’t matter if it is as free today as it was yesterday. It doesn’t feel free anymore.
Wired‘s chief editor Chris Anderson was last night on the Colbert Report promoting his book Free: The Future of Radical Price. I downloaded the audio book some days ago, but I still haven’t finished it. I don’t know squat about business and finance. I even struggle in getting the “supply-demand” thing straight. But my impression so far is that it’s intellectually interesting, but theoretically contradictory and fishy. Till’ now I’m confused about the really, really free, the somewhat free, and the close to zero. There’s a chapter were he even gets all etymological on the word free. My rhetorical question is: How can there be on economy based on really, really free, with an exchange of zero goods, but make money somehow and call that “free”?
Why There Are So Many Tech Blogs, SEO, Social Media, and other Consultards
1. You get fired from your job, are about to, or you’re just stuck in a dead end job. No promotions, no pay raise. Zip. Zero. Nada. You figure that if everyone can start their own business, you can too. You start thinking about an idea that can make you money.
2. Since you’re a n00b about business, your first bump in the road is the business paradox that you need money to make money.
3. Oh the sweet internet with it’s infinite possibilities! This is where every desperate entrepreneur ends up. There are literally zero costs to start a website so you solved the paradox problem. You start the brainstorming for an idea.
4. Since your purpose, goal, and agenda is to make money, you start looking at things that can be potentially monetized.
5. You make another of the millions of websites dedicated to the technology field with google ads and other undistinguished advertisements.
In a surprising move, bald marketing guru Seth Godin tagged Anderson, and betrayed his intellectual buddy. The drama ensues.
Conde Nast (publisher of the Wired (Chris’s magazine) and yes, theNew Yorker (Malcolm’s magazine)), is going to go out of business long before you get sick, never mind die. So will newspapers printed on paper. They’re going to disappear before you do. I’m not wishing for this to happen, but by refusing to build new digital assets that matter, traditional publishers are forfeiting their future.
Dear Malcolm, Why so Threatened?
Chris Anderson responds to Gladwell’s critique of Free.
Since journalist Malcolm Gladwell has somewhat parochially decided to make the Future of Paid Journalism the focus of his review of Free (which is, ironically, free on the New Yorker’s website; perhaps this is something Gladwell should take up with David Remnick?), I’ll try to respond in a bit more detail.
Oh, snap!
Price to Sell: Is Free the Future?
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest New Yorker article takes on Chris Anderson’s Free: The Future of Radical Price. As you would assume, Gladwell is very skeptical about the whole idea of “free” as a business model. Here’s Gladwell’s counter argument on Anderson’s idea about journalism turning into an “avocation”:
His advice is pithy, his tone uncompromising, and his subject matter perfectly timed for a moment when old-line content providers are desperate for answers. That said, it is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between “paying people to get other people to write” and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for “non-monetary rewards.” Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels?
