Posted 7/31/2003 05:34:29 PM by seth godin

Liquid Democracy

Joi Ito has turned me on to an entirely new topic, a worldwide discussion I'd previously missed.

Some of it is tricky to navigate (it hasn't been prettied up yet) but I think it's worth a bit of your time.

LiquidDemocracy is a cool idea. What if we could restart the whole idea of voting--this time with the Internet as the enabling technology. Not what some are trying to do: forcing the voting machine online. Instead, it's about proxies, real time voting, speed, flexibility and more.

Will we elect a president this way any time soon? I doubt it. But I do believe that smaller organizations will start using ideas like this for decision making quite soon, and it will grow from there.

Posted 7/31/2003 05:24:11 PM by seth godin

Spam of the Week

Here, verbatim, is the first paragraph of a piece of spam I received today:

"tampers etude brained maternity bowdlerizes humanitarian microprograms
matronly exemplary expressive schooling accuse criticized plumb cower
countries imbecile accusal imagen boastings evaporation acquaintance
counterargument exploitations crimes illegal exerts coup teacher
existentialism $RANDO MIZE brakeman ideally adaptable plumes terror terrier
plump adumbrate hypothetical anatole cowerers pragmatics ponds boon
mechanical exponents popularizes criminals membership brazilian mental
melanoma poplar telemetry mightily brains tags scimitar admirable couched
$RANDOM IZE betsy mediate mens seaweed bhutan croupier poked microfilms
tapers criminally excresence mechanized antony berkeley evaporate
telekinesis mazes arcturus scrambling cow corresponding"

Now, if the sender's only goal is to get past a filter, she succeeded. But other than annoying us, what's the point. If you want more, feel free to visit: Spam fan club.

This whole thing is getting out of hand.

Posted 7/30/2003 01:08:36 PM by seth godin

A big virus

Emphasis on the big part. Hummer Parody.

I think the interesting part is an ordinarily staid non-profit can find a way to interact with a large number of people by doing something that seems risky. Of course, it's a safe strategy, compared to buying yet another ad, anyway.

Worth clicking through to the Experiment, the agency that built the site. A little too much self-reflection on the site, but also a neat way to look at how the death of advertising is changing the very agencies that make it.

Posted 7/30/2003 09:22:26 AM by seth godin

I'd like you to meet Joi Ito

Just met him at the Fortune conference. What an extraordinary combination of business, politics and technology, all rolled into one.

When they talk about how blogs are changing the way people interact, they're talking about Joi.

Joi's Blog.

Posted 7/30/2003 09:20:31 AM by seth godin

The polar bear is real. Really.

End of discussion. Thanks.

PS If you're late to this party, you can read all about my bestseller and the seminars and free stuff at the Purple Cow site.

Posted 7/22/2003 07:59:16 PM by seth godin

Sharp-eyed analysts...

say that the polar bear below is a hoax.

Next thing you know, they'll take on the Tooth Fairy.

Posted 7/22/2003 07:58:13 PM by seth godin

Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today

But these articles about the Postal Services sponsorship of Lance Armstrong (here's one) are really annoying me.

The Postal Service didn't get much "free advertising" out of sponsoring Armstrong. They mostly got some graft and free tickets and trinkets and stuff. I mean, I mean, do you really think someone sees Lance Armstrong and says, "Oh yeah, I gotta go out and mail some stuff!"?

The unmeasurable amorphous feel-good branding stuff can go too far, and this is a fine example of that. The sponsorship of Armstrong is almost without value because it does nothing whatever to increase awareness or consumption of the USPS, nor does it even give them much of a halo effect. Think about it: are many companies going to consider switching from Fedex to USPS (the only place they don't have a mandated monopoly) because of seeing them in Sports Illustrated?

Posted 7/20/2003 09:33:21 AM by seth godin

A story worth thinking about

Making your own change. How could it change your business?

Posted 7/18/2003 09:14:27 AM by seth godin

I don't make this stuff up!

Rob May pointed me to A purple polar bear. More proof if you needed it that various purple animals can, "increase visitor numbers to the zoo by 50%."

Posted 7/15/2003 07:55:11 AM by seth godin

The last workshop (for a while)

If you've been debating signing up for a Purple Cow workshop in my office, here's your last and best chance for a while. September 10 near NYC.

The best part (for me, anyway) is how much fun everyone has. It really is a great day.

More details on the workshop.

Posted 7/15/2003 07:48:47 AM by seth godin

The next big thing?

Pocket IM is a new product from Motorola. It lets kids (or kidlike adults) roam about the house, IMing their friends via AOL instant messenger.

A walkie talkie on worldwide steroids.

Posted 7/9/2003 09:38:25 PM by seth godin

I liked this...

I just got a note from the guys at http://www.snapnames.com/. A quick visit to their site shows a neat idea--you reserve a domain and they check it all the time, grabbing the domain the minute it expires. What's remarkable is how they got the little things right. The banana is right there (twice) on the page. The design communicates quite obviously that this isn't a scam (actually, it might be a scam, I haven't tried it, but I doubt it's anything less than it appears to be.)

They've got an API and even though the business isn't inherently viral, it has many of the markings of a smart net business. Just FYI.

Posted 7/8/2003 04:15:15 PM by seth godin

A good ideavirus

Flawlessly executed.

Go to google, type in "weapons of mass destruction" and hit "I'm feeling lucky".

It's going to spread fast.

Posted 7/5/2003 07:05:44 AM by seth godin

Politics and the Internet (Dean isn't "raising money on the Internet")

So, it appears that the New York Times has discovered the fact that politicians are starting to use the Internet. Their insightful analysis begins and ends with several articles describe the Dean site as a place where donors use credit cards to make donations.

The Times (and the entire beltway establishment) appears to see the Net as just a modern version of TV--with a little junk mail thrown in. For them, it's all about being in charge, about marketing AT people, not with them.

My favorite part of the article in today's Times is this quote from Bob Bauer, "whose company represents Mr. Kerry, Mr. Gephartdt and ... Senator Joseph I. Lieberman". Mr. Bauer says, "...But the Internet as a revolutionary tool? I don't know."

So what's the real point? The internet isn't a tool. It's a medium. And it's not a medium for interactions between Dean and person A and Dean and person B. It's a medium for interactions between A and B --about-- Dean. In other words, by enabling an ideavirus to spread, the Internet allows someone without the money to buy a lot of TV to be the topic of (many) conversations.

The insight of the Dean campaign (accidental or not) is that sites like meetup.com and constituencies of online sneezers can dramatically increase the chances that your candidate will get talked about. Add to that a site optimized for the interactions you desire (where's that banana!) and a candidate can radically recast the entire campaign process.