Best Places to Work (2009) via Glassdoor.com ↪
The Top 50 were selected from more than 11,000 companies reviewed by the nearly 75,000 employees who completed a 20-question survey on Glassoor.com in 2008.
Preview of top 5: 1. General Mills, 2. Bain & Company, 3. Netflix, 4. Adobe, 5. Northwestern Mutual. Click on the headline for the full results.
Internet users viewed 12.7 billion online videos during the month, representing an increase of 34 percent versus year ago.
In this TED Talk, Benjamin Wallace explores some of the world’s most luxurious products all the while asking the question, “Can happiness be bought?”
His findings are interesting and suggest that if we perceive something to be more expensive we will in fact enjoy it more than something less expensive.
Ad Agencies Fashion Their Own Horn, and Toot It ↪
This article in the NYT (click on the title of this post to read the full article) details Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s latest attempt at redefining what an ad agency is / does to make money. Instead of merely creating ads for clients, agencies are now creating products and services themselves. In the case of BBH, it’s a blog, called Mrs.O, that chronicles Michelle Obama’s fashion and style.
It seems that agencies are hoping to refocus their creative energy into building new companies, not just new ad campaigns.
We spend so much time smoothing things out, we lose the opportunity for change, or for texture or creativity.
Instead of working so hard to make everything okay, perhaps it is more helpful to work hard at living with a world that rarely is.
In order to do my job well I need to ask interesting questions of people and listen intently to understand their underlying motivations, which is actually quite difficult because I have (we all do) all sorts of biases about why people do what they do when they do.
But our biases block us from actually hearing what people are saying. And if we don’t actually hear what people are saying, we can’t effectively uncover insight into anything.
Additionally, in order for me to effectively convince others that an insight is important I need to help them understand their own bias so that they can then see the insight afresh. And the only way I can do this is by fully understanding my own bias first.
But the curious aspect of most great insights is that they are fairly obvious, but we are just blind to them because of our biases.
So a good place to start when trying to uncover insight into a given topic is with oneself. Try to recognize your own bias as a starting point as it will make you much more effective in both uncovering and communicating great insights.
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A comedy group out of Chicago, The Vacationeers, made this hilarious, and all too true video. Google seems to consistently toe the line between being useful and overly knowing / creepy. That’s very interesting for a company who’s moto is, “Do no evil.”
What we call “authority” is the right we give others to author us, to enlarge us.
The human need to increase what we know, and to help each other do the same, is what the Net at its best is all about. Yeah, it’s about other things. But it needs to be respected as an accessory to our humanity.
This quote from a WSJ article on Justin Vernon of Bon Iver got me thinking:
“The Internet played a significant role in feeding people the music…. It’s like wildfire [how it] spreads,” Mr. Vernon, 27, said before a show earlier this year in Philadelphia, where the band performed to a boisterous crowd of about 500 in a church basement. “That propelled us right into being able to choose what kind of record label we wanted to work with.”
I’m a fan of Bon Iver, but I must say he’s not doing anything too different in the online world. I think his success has more to do with his talent (and a unique sound) than anything unique he is doing on the Internet.
I wish he wouldn’t have just USED his Internet success to then become the same as any other musician (not that there is anything wrong with that), but rather made his Internet success part of his story by creating a rabid fan base online and rewarding them with unique access to music, photos, reflections, journals, videos, etc.
Perhaps he could learn something from The Grateful Dead. According to a past CMO of Booze Allen, Sam Hill, “The Dead established a long-term personal relationship with their customers and that was the basis of the brand.” They also allowed fans to tape (and then distribute) live concerts, order tickets in advance through a mail in system, and they welcomed the vendors from the parking lot (which is where all of their rabid fans hung out) as licensees.
Now if only Bon Iver would do something equally unique.
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I am excited about the power of blog commenting to bring ‘intellectual discussions’ back to the mainstream. We’ve had forums on the internet for as long as I remember but they’ve been largely for a niche audience. Blogging has brought a more mainstream audience to the idea of ‘discussions’ but the friction in the system is still too large.
― Fred Wilson - I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I’d rather this blog be more of a forum for ‘intellectual discussions’ than just a place for me to rant. So join in the discussion.
The questionnaire contained information about the network’s plans to “offer online streaming of programming free for people who subscribe to HBO through their cable provider.
As I’ve become more and more hooked on tumblr as my place online to share thoughts, ideas, pictures, critiques, etc., I’ve also been finding myself more and more interested in finding other tumblelogs that I might find interesting, which has led me to the tumblr explore page.
The tumblr explore page is divided into 5 sections:
So, in my opinion, this page has a lot of room for improvement, and I’d like to offer up a few new ideas in hopes of sparking more ideas from all the people that read this blog.
I’m sure there are better and more useful ways to improve the tumblr explore page, so please reblog this post or leave a comment with your suggestions and who knows, maybe this post will make it on to the tumblr explore page.
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Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us.
This graph illustrates the percentage of startups still in existence after 10 yrs (92-02).
— Via smallbiztrends.com
The failure rate is pretty astonishing and, I would think, would deter most people from starting a company (which it probably does), but it also makes the obstacle to starting a company so high that it becomes very attractive to many.
And, I would think these numbers haven’t changed much over the last 6 years (well maybe it takes longer for an Internet company to die since it also takes much less capital to start one).
I live in Silicon Valley with my wife and daughter and work as Director of Consumer Insights for Netflix.
This is my personal blog about people, technology, media and the point at which the three intersect.
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