DISQUS

Mashable - The Social Media Guide: 2008/08/26/insights-into-the-marketability-of-tech-companies/

  • debs · 1 year ago
    Great post. I am increasingly shocked by companies who create features masquerading as companies without asking is this viable? who would use this outside my 10 friends? What are the benefits? How dies it fit into their daily lives?
  • patricia · 1 year ago
    brilliant post.

    this also means that the market is tightly focused on itself - and missing other really big things happening around it. i work in all areas of digital and also traditional television, media and brands and there is definitely a lot going on that people are missing because the viewpoint is so tightly fixated.

    it's like plato allegory of the cave.
  • Paisano · 1 year ago
    Impressive piece. Right on the money too (literally!). It's great advise for tech bloggers as well.
  • Enrique Gutierrez · 1 year ago
    From a person in the echo chamber & dealing with clients that are in their own... Awesome post! It's an interesting, dynamic and needy world out there. Small businesses have the advantage of scaling to those needs & changes... it's amazing to see one that won't based on whatever it is they do to justify their "stayed course".
  • idrawgirls · 1 year ago
    Amazing post! It's so true that most of the time brilliant ideas and products will only get stuck just in the inner circle (echo chamber). And that is too bad. Sometimes not just for them, but for all of us.

    -But the internet will only get cluster and more crowded, how or what is the best way to deliver your message or products to people WITHOUT the HUGE marketing campaign and gigantic budget to back up?

    -Will there be good enough filter that only let the Great to good stuff out instead of the Hype and the Buzz but inferior in value and content?
  • Robert Richman · 1 year ago
    Agreed on all points. It's the hungover, morning after feel when the money is gone and the market is non-existent!

    It's a classic situation... solutions in search of problems.

    So..everyone...what examples do we know of people who have had the realization and then found the right market? Or does it always "find you"?
  • tia · 1 year ago
    Excellent post Jackie! it's tweet-tweet time! This needs to be shared ;)
  • Scott Lockhart · 1 year ago
    Brilliant post. I would say that the early adopter crowd in the valley and elsewhere does has value as they can help you shake down your site really well in the beginning. But you have to be mindful that if you are looking for a larger more mainstream, or as we like to say, a "normal people" audience, you will not please all the geekorati all the time, they might not get why it is not employing 15 different APIs and you have to be okay with that. These users can also skew your site to a tech focus, if there is a lot of user interaction (like ours) and that can put off normal people from getting engaged when they do encounter the site. It's all about balance.
  • Phil Lelyveld · 1 year ago
    Jackie,
    Excellent post. About a decade ago, in a discussion of the cable and satellite industry, one of the studio heads said 'consumers don't pay for distribution channels, they pay for content.' As you point out, mass markets rarely buy technologies to simply own the technology. They buy the tech if it helps satisfy some need or want in the best way for them. Talking to the digirati may help with the initial debug, but as Geoffrey Moore points out (re: Jason's post above) in his books (ex. Crossing the Chasm), there is complementary, follow-up work to be done to tune the product for the general consumer market.
  • Ethan Bauley · 1 year ago
    Ironically, I think the echo chamber is going to be increasingly in competition with real companies with real products and real customer bases, who are beginning to realize that social software is one of the best ways to scale "social media marketing."

    Nike+ and Vocalpoint.com are the tip of a VERY large iceberg (Deb Schultz I'm sure has some perspective on that ;-)

    Would love to see some concrete examples of tech companies that are marketing themselves the "right" way in your estimation.

    Thanks for the post, also recommend Marshall Kirkpatrick's article on this subject from 8/12, "Does Good Tech Need PR?":

    http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_good_...

    Ethan
  • alisa leonard-hansen · 1 year ago
    PERFECT.
  • chris · 1 year ago
    I am often conflicted on this exact issue. I think the modern tech culture as a whole has lost some societal perspective. I read another blog post recently that stated that gen y'ers will not stand for jobs that aren't fun (among other statements...some valid, some not), where the author incorrectly assumes that most americans will have the luxury of quitting a job because it isn't fun enough. The absurdity of this statement reinforces the notion to me that the contemporary culture of tech is a closed world (ironically, the latest web incarnation is widely characterized as "open") that largely ignores the major issues that many people face.