Testing CUNY's New Business Models with Adjusted Assumptions

My poking and probing shows that when the assumptions are changed to less optimistic but still reasonable scenarios, the models can swing to much lower profit levels or even losses.

My latest Poynter e-Media Tidbits column

Being Social With Architects

I was invited to be on a panel for the architecture group AIA last night, and found that not only is the Haworth Showroom a very nice venue, but also that architects, like many, are grappling with how to use social media, what one can do to raise one's image, get new clients, follow the "rules" and otherwise figure out how to works.

Some of the main points I raised were that it's important to experiment, cultivate and get better over time ("iterate" is one way of putting it). One audience member asked how to use social media like Twitter, which is quick and short bursts persistently, in the course of managing long-term architectural projects. "In the course of managing the project, don't you find yourself considering a lot of things, checking in often as you make decisions?" I replied, "Wouldn't it be nice if you could, for example, Tweet that you were considering a certain wood for a certain type of situation, say a damp environment, and get feedback from others in the community about woods they'd used that were particularly effective for your situation? Or cement. Or doorknobs." He made the point that you will not only gain interested followers who want to learn about your projects, and potentially pick up new clients that way, but also get "inbound marketing" intelligence that may be useful to your business.

Adam Lutz, facilities manager of Google, talked about how a niche brewery instilled passion among avid fans by being very participatory in social media. Mike Plotnick, Media Relations Manager, at the architecture firm HOK talked about how they'd started HOKLife and let 30 staff members talk about what they were doing around the world -- and that sometimes it was a risk (they said things in ways that weren't quite "on message") but ultimately the brand was carried by them,a nd spread more. Jessica Sheridan, Editor-in-Chief of eOculus, talked about how she'd found sources, stories and more on Twitter and other social media.

You can see more coverage by looking on Twitter at the hashtag #aianysocialmedia.

Ad Spend Down, IAB Says. Is it Right, Though?

Over at PaidContent, David Kaplan writes of the new IAB report saying ad spend is down more than 5 percent. Online.

But I ask (becuase PaidContent belched my comment): "Are other things that are now marketing but not ads in the traditional sense included in this?

"Virtual goods, Facebook fan pages, content widgets, dedicated blogs, YouTube videos, sms text messages, outdoor ads on digital signage, etc, etc.

Cuz if we count those, bet we'd see more money moving to digital than ever."

Meanwhile, Over at Tumblr

I've been doing a lot of posting of things I find interesting, and excerpts of my own writing and projects, on my Tumblog. In fact, I may move this blog to Tumblr.

Women and Social Marketing

"We're seeing a divide right now of where the women are leaping ahead of the brand and the brands are struggling to find how best to interact with them."

From Social Network Branding Fails to Sway Female Purchasing

Jason Calacanis' Rant Against Apple

UPDATE: Managed to get Jason to talk to me for a few minutes at the conference. He explained his position in some more detail on why Apple needs to open up -- and developers need to insist they do so -- talked about his Blackberry vs. his iPhone, and also about the "cognitive dissonance" of presenting a bunch of iPhone apps, then slamming Apple in the same breath.




Digiday's conference organizer said they'll have the video of his keynote presentation up tonight I'm hoping there'll be video, but for now, here's the notes I quickly took on a rant by Jason Calacanis against Apple at the DigiDay: Apps conference in New York. (Twitter tag is #digiday.)

In a nutshell, if you don't want to have to plow through all the below: He says Steve Jobs wants to control the network, devices and the desktop, that he is working against the four decades of work spent to build the open Web, and that application developers should say "stop, enough" stop building apps for iPhones that Apple can reject without reason or explanation. Stop them and demand openness. You should, he says, be able to get any app or platform you want on your iPhone, a device you paid for and for which you pay handsomely for andata access. (Some pointed out the inherent contradition in how Calacanis prefaced his remarks by talking first about how Mahalo, his current company, is developing an iPhone app, and recommended about 10 other such apps, from geo-location to find the nearest Starbucks without a line, to getting fake calls from celebrities to impress your friends.)

Now, his words, in rough notes typing as he talked:

Apple folks are "dictators, taste makers and control what we do ... We shouldn’t allow that... if the poeple in this room, and others, say ‘enough, the platform shoudl be open. lf people want to load an application, they shoudl be able to go to starbucks.com, they should be able to go to the website and load it'... but because steve jobs builds beautful, oh, devices, they get away with it .... i’m a capitalist ... people in china are geting paid nothing to make those phones, and all the profits are here. ... however it’s now getting to the point where it’s anti-competitive, and it's going to hurt the industry. AT&T is screwing you by not letting you do what you want with your data mix. However, we’re all schmucks becuase ... if i told you when you bought your car you could only drive it a certain way at certain times on certain roads... you have google voice but you were not allowed to use, cannot attach to phone to laptop ... on computer can put any browser you want. but on iPhone can’t.... iphone is “the greatest device ever made”... (kisses his iphone) ... i love it, but just cuz i love it doesn’t mean that i am going to extend the evil empire from here onto my tablet (which apple is building -- makes case software on tablet will be iphone, not open comptuer OS). and he’s only going to stop when he gets to your desktop. .....steve jobs is jesus, mohamed in our industry. however, we’re letting him get away frith murder. take all the progress in tech industry over 4 decades and reverse it. o’wise, ev’y time.. if you can order your lunch thru any web page, then why can’t you order throuh the browser on here (holds up iphone -- because, he says, they have a patent on an ordering technology)? apple, steve jobs in collusion to shut down all 3 layers at 1ce. network shoudl be open and free, appl’n, device. ... they're slowing down the industry (by kicking people out of apps store)... "

Answers to questions:
"Microsoft has gotten their ass kicked by the internet, so they've taken some steps to be more open. does that mean x-box? no. but otherwise more open source becuase they have to ... google uses all open source tech'y ... allow exporting of ev'g they do ... they scary from standoint of how good they are ... Google has no lockin (you can use Bing or Yahoo) with exception of privacy. hold our data for 18 months. we should have the right to remove it. apple and google behave better in Europe... in australia pick iphone, pick provider. ... it's heartbreaking to watch all the work and sweat of makign the internet open taken away by steve jobs) ... closed is never as good as open. .. facebook, which is partly closed, and apple, will make us realize that.

Twitter as News. Seriously

I met an ad exec at a dinner I attended last week (thrown by Pepsi as a "thank you" for a I and others had worked on for Internet Week) who told me he followed the Tour de France via the racers' Twitter feeds and that by the time he got traditional news reports, they seemed stale, old and less immediate. Why, he said, would he need regular news reports distilling the riders' feelings and thoughts when they'd already shared them in Tweets.

Likewise, he followed an astronaut who had Twittered from space, and, he said, learned a lot he'd never known -- such as the fact that the astronaut was not allowed to drive for three days after coming back to earth -- by reading traditional news reports.

Something to think about if you're in the news business. If your sources don't need you as an intermediary to reach the people who are interested in what you have to say, what does that do to the news biz?

Twitter as News. Seriously