December 6, 2009

Sunday links

dshen: Talking People Out of Being Entrepreneurs. "It's sexy being an entrepreneur. The rewards are great. The upsides are what everyone sees, and nobody sees the downsides. Dealing with the downsides is where the rubber meets the road and where you'll be tested sorely on whether or not you are a great entrepreneur. But if you're not entrepreneur material, you're not and that's that, whether it's your personality, life stage, or otherwise. You're not a bad person; it's just not for you and we should all just realize this, and not fool ourselves into thinking otherwise."

Financial Times: The rise and fall of MySpace. Good read on the corporate side of MySpace post-acquisition.

New York Times: Swan Songs?. ""A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs."

Seth Godin: If Craigslist cost $1. "Money creates a sort of friction. In the digital economy, magical things can happen when there is no friction. You can scale to infinity. On the other hand, sometimes you want friction.

If you lead a group that allows anyone to join, for free, your group might be large, but it's not tight, it's not organized to make important change. Commitment slows things down in the short run, but ultimately aligns interests."

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