Posts Tagged ‘Guy Kawasaki’
All posts tagged Guy Kawasaki.
In a post yesterday, Graeme Thickens reminds the blogeratti that they (I’m not yet sure I should include myself in that category, but I’m certainly guilty, too) “missed the point” in the debate about Alltop, Guy Kawasaki’s new blog aggregation site. While journalists, analysts, and bloggers argued about the value, audience, and innovation in this site, few if any of us talked about how Alltop makes money.
I put that question to Guy, as I always do with new entrepreneurs, when I first talked with him about the site. And I failed to mention it in my initial post. Not surprisingly, the business plan is simple and common: attract a lot of users, then deliver targeted advertising based on the content visitors read. Because of the broad base of topics covered at Alltop, the site has potential to connect a much broader range of advertisers and consumers. That content range allows Alltop to play in very niche markets without the expense of developing niche audiences. In affect, the breadth of coverage at Alltop appeals to the niches within us all. Read the rest of this entry »
Often, the comments on TechCrunch and other blogs are more enlightening than the original posts. The a-ha’s come not necessarily for the comments themselves but from the biases and perspectives they reveal. Such is the case today with Mike Arrington’s post critiquing – no, slamming – Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop.
The criticism of the site seemingly comes from the simple implementation of Alltop’s list of top blogs and their RSS-fed headlines. The sight is short on graphic design. It required little developer skill to create. It likely cost little in either cash or time to build. And therefore, the comments seem to say, Alltop is not innovative.
Wow. What a pretentious and even arrogant definition of “innovation.”
Coincidently, I found myself discussing the definition of innovation over lunch yesterday with a senior director at the National Science Foundation. We agreed that innovation was best described on two vectors: novelty and market impact, and not necessarily on the technical achievement of an invention.
By that definition, it is not for a pundit to declare a product innovative. That’s up to the market. The challenge in attempting to be innovative is to put ideas into the market, iterate quickly, and be responsive enough to drive adoption. Only when an invention, a product, a service, a business model, or an idea is adopted by the larger market can it be truly innovative. Until then, it is just what it is: a concept waiting for someone to notice.
