Weekend Reading

Futuristic Play: Bridging your traffic engine with your revenue engine. "I want to use HotOrNot as an example of bridging your traffic engine with your revenue engine, because I think they do it very well."

bubblegeneration: A Wake Up Call For The Venturescape. "The power of 2.0 isn't minigames and ad nets: it's the new DNA it brings to the table. [...] Ad nets, social nets, and minigames won't change the DNA of the economic system. Radical new approaches to consumption and production across the industries that are broken will. [...]

-For venture guys, that means: most of you are going to have to develop new investment theses, centred on redefining industrial era DNA. What do next-gen value chains really look like? What do the economics of production and consumption look like tomorrow?

-For entrepreneurs, that means: forget about hot products/services (ads, games, etc) and tech. Think about DNA, and how it can reshape the markets and industries that are crying out for help. Where does business suck today, and how can you make it radically better?

-For corporates, that means: stop making acquisitions driven by growth/share thinking. That's easily dominated. Make acquisitions driven by DNA, and use it to suck the lameness out of your strategy - fast."

A VC: Everything Everywhere. "Here's my headline. You cannot be a destination exclusively on the Internet anymore. If you are not a open web service, you won't get nearly as far these days."

Umair Haque Edge Economy: How Apple and Google Dominate. "The ends they're working towards are similar: Goople aspires to - with laserlike intensity - change the world for the better. And where most of their competitors will sell out everything they believe in for a few bucks and a latte, Goople is deeply, radically purposive: they won't compromise much, if anything, to achieve the goal of changing the world for the better. (One can argue that Google's policy of following local content-filtering policies in China is a notable exception.) You'll never see an ad on Google's homepage, or a Mac that's not a joy to use, even if Bill Gates, Gordon Gekko, and Lucifer held a fire sale, and mortgaged the world to Goople."