English

Posts in English

Ice Cream as a Service

In the summer of Y2K I went to California on vacation. The bubble had already burst, but there were still a few Flooz.com ads to be laughed at. I spent a couple of days around Silicon Valley. The only thing that struck me about this otherwise uninteresting place were the prices in ‘Italian’ restaurants. 16 to 18 bucks for a ‘risotto-ooo’ made me wonder if a dotcom were really the best path to riches.

Fast-forward 10+ years. No dotcoms anymore, and start-ups are all about software. As they should have been in the first place. Software as a service. Today, I paid 4-Euros-50, which is close to 6 bucks, for an ice-cream in Barcelona. Buy ice-cream-making machines (servers), learn how to do 8 great flavors (software), find a suitable location (SEO?) and then it’s all about traffic and scaling.

Having just read this post, Ice Cream as a Service (ICaaS) sounds like a better plan to me.

Ten Inconvenient Truths about the Web

Here are my Ten Inconvenient Truths about the Web:

1. The world is changing, but not as fast as they would like you to believe.

2. No new miracle marketing channel will overtake all the others before the week is over.

3. The shift is much more of a cultural one than a technological one.

4. “Social Media Marketing” is bullshit. Disagree? Please explain what it is.

5. People want to talk to one another, not to your Mktg or PR Dept.

6. Spam is in the eye of the beholder. Most “Email Marketing” is spam.

7. The Internet is more of a threat than an opportunity for the average company.

8. No new cool trick will turn your dumb company into a smart one overnight.

9. If you don’t have a business model you’re a hobby, not a startup.

10. If you don’t have a business model AND you have raised $1 billion, you’re Twitter.

2 Comments

SMM Social Media Mindlessness

They say that the second M actually stands for “Marketing”. But I don’t get it. What is Social Media Marketing? Buying banner ads on Facebook? Taking part in the dumbest race ever to see who has the most followers? Does it work? Really? Apple has 7 million “likes”. Sounds like a lot? It’s less than 1% of the smartest coolest most connected people in the world on Facebook – not of the Joe Six-packs at Walmart. On the other hand, how many million iPods, iPads and iPhones have they sold? No wonder they’re not panicking. The BBC World News has only 2 million “likes”. That’s 0.2% of the users on Facebook. Do you think they’re worried? Fiat has 300,000 “likes” in Italy. Ten years ago, they used to sell over 1,000 units of the Fiat Punto model a day in Italy alone. Isn’t this more proof, if needed, that people first buy a product and THEN perhaps “like” it on Facebook, and not the other way around, which is what Social Media Marketing types will try to bullshit you into believing?