September 2008 Archives

The cover version has always been a popular musical trend, yet covering someone else’s song is not unique to music. Bloggers frequently ‘cover’ another blog post, presenting the same thoughts and conclusions as a way of entering or continuing the online conversation.

It might seem odd to talk about blogging in these terms, but the analogy is sound.

This morning, I had the pleasure of chatting with Franco Lagudi, the business brain behind new internet startup The SOC Exchange, in relation to an article I'm writing for Nett Magazine. I have a lot of admiration for Franco as he has an extremely principled attitude to business that insists on rewarding the consumer for their own success.

In the immortal words of REM - "It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

Sometime today, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located in Switzerland will get fired up for the first time and - possibly - will spew out a handful of microscopic black holes. This, say critics, cannot be good for us. Black holes are not the kind of export we usually expect from the land of cuckoo clocks and Toblerone, but it has certainly made people sit up and notice.

There are hundreds, nay thousands, of websites out there promising the secrets to getting rich quick online. They all make it sound so easy, explaining how you’ll be jacking in your job in no time and living the life of luxury with an automated income continually refilling your bank account.

You are probably aware that I am rather passionate about the uses and abuses of online content as a source of information and misinformation. The ability for the internet to completely distort and manipulate our view of the world is immense and so far isn't taken seriously enough - particularly by the media operations that still use the internet for fact-checking.

The inimitable Seth Godin, marketer extraordinaire, shared his thoughts on competitive advantage today in a way that resonated with me. Competitive advantage is another way of discussing the value proposition, something that I've dealt with in detail on this blog before, especially in the series "Why should I buy from you?".