I’m an insane online shopper. Online wins over in-person for several reasons. One is research based; if I pick well, I only need to pick a few things that last. 2nd reason is that, most times, I know what it is I’m looking for, if only by category so that makes in-store shopping harder, not [...]
Tag Archives | High-Tech Case Studies
Netflix Pricing: What Not To Do
Netflix, a service whose adoption rate has been growing at astounding rate of 3.6M users a quarter, has changed the way we watch shows and movies at home. They are one of the most successful tech firms started in the late 90s. Just think of some of their dot.com competitors: Excite, Kosmo, and Webvan and [...]
Trends to Watch, January 2011 (alpha)
A good friend of mine, Harry Max, keeps pointing out that I am obsessively good at spotting trends & market moves that matter, and that I ought to use that force for good. So I'm going to experiment with some posts to point out key trends, technologies, and ideas that matter. It could cover some [...]
EA’s Collaboration for Growth
The gaming industry certainly has been getting a lot of attention, especially with new entrants like Zynga creating wide-spread buzz and adoption. Add to that the iPAD and mobile gaming phenomena, and you know that traditional style game companies have to be thinking about how to compete in this new landscape. The execs at EA [...]
Using Past to Design Future
Nokia keeps doing its analysis and strategic planning and ending up with answers that suggest “stay the course” or “do more of the same”. It reminds me of GM circa 2004 and how they kept building big-ass cars the size of boats and then were “surprised” by the market wanting small cars. By 2008, they [...]
Competing With Adobe, Apple
When a company like Apple launches a sexy new product (iPad), one can react (Amazon) or get caught flat-footed (Adobe). It’s easy to look at today’s market situation and say who’s winning or losing. The more interesting conversation is to determine what someone can do to compete or take advantage of this changed topography. That’s [...]
Understanding Twitters Growth
One of the hottest recent stories in the tech industry has been the rapid rise of the messaging service Twitter. Starting from a small base of enthusiast users, the service has rapidly risen to prominence in the media, with extensive coverage of its adoption by celebrities. In the last month, Google counted about 65,000 news stories mentioning Twitter, and the web tracking service Alexa reported a remarkable 400% increase in traffic to Twitter.com in the last four months. In April 2009, Alexa reported that daily visits to twitter.com surpassed those to cnn.com:
Online Communities, How They Work (II)
This is Part II of a series of posts on online communities (that is also available in PDF form: Rubicon-web-community) originally done at Rubicon (the company I led/founded). To return to the Introduction, Part I of this series, click here. Overview Working with online communities has long been touted as a great way for a [...]
Ballmer to Yang: I Just Can’t Quit You
Two NYT journalists see Microsoft ‘needing a franchise’ as the software giant puts the moves on Yahoo all over again. Two weeks after walking away from takeover talks with Yahoo, Microsoft made clear on Sunday that it still needed to create an Internet powerhouse that could rival Google — and that its interest in Yahoo [...]
Apple iPhone: Successes/Challenges
The Apple iPhone is easily the most publicized new mobile device in recent memory. But despite all the discussion about the product, there’s relatively little hard information available to the public on its impact. How is it being used? What effect is it having on customers and on the technology industry?
To help answer those questions, Rubicon Consulting conducted a detailed survey of 460 randomly-selected iPhone users in the US. This report summarizes the findings from the survey, and what they mean for users and other companies.