Facebook’s Marketing 2.0 group had a nice Q&A with David Weinberger on Wednesday. There was some discussion about David’s book and the tagging possibilites that are out there but not getting utilized.Here’s some chicken scratch ideas I collected during the Q&A:- Markets are conversations
- Marketing doesn’t have to be a conversation
- The future of the internet is in jeopardy due to controlling forces
- Companies are co-creating products with their customers much more than they used to and this benefits everyone.
- Conversation can be undermined by companies/entities paying people to say good things about them. - The conversation has to be transparent.
- The idea of advocacy marketing is coming about, there’s nothing wrong with that as long as everyone is honest about where they are coming from: who is the hired gun?
- Customers have learned to trust each other more than they trust the business.

3 Things to Work On:
- Specifications (the stats, the metadata, the bones of the product, the facts, stuff that you can be sued for)
- Advocacy Marketing (blogging, forums, lacing up the gloves and stating your case)
- Marketing Materials (is looking phonier and phonier: the challenge for marketers is to improve this)

- Marketing that is going to sound simplified is going to sound insulting.
- Marketers need to get as complex and interesting as the subject matter.
- Simplicity still has value: What is your product? What is your company? This basic message should be simple
- “Control of the message”: what’s left of the idea if someone was to take control of it? Marketing is _not_ in the control business, that’s a way to alienate your customers. Marketing/the Company should be a source of ideas.
- What if there was no marketing? Your employees are already talking, that’s a form of marketing and a potential area of focus.

I initially thought this was more Apple bashing, but really, it’s just the media being a bunch of morons. Considering that there’ve been numerous people have been struck by lightning while talking on cell phones over the last few years. Dear CNN, why not complete the list? Don’t walk around during thunderstorms while carrying a lightning rod, digging bar, TV antenna, etc.

Lately I’ve been amazed at what people do during thunderstorms. We were having an extreme thunderstorm on Monday with straight-line winds that took down trees all over the place, lightning bolts striking, horizontal rain….. and I watch this guy soldier on, refusing to dismount his lawn mower, for at least a 1/2 hour during weather madness. Actually, he was probably being safer than if he was wearing an iPod since the rubber tires did provide some insulation.

In reading up on all the articles surrounding Microsoft’s most recent failings with the Xbox, thenugget that came to light (for me) is that this particular division has already lost over $6 billion since 2002, not counting the $1+ billion that will be spent attempting to remedy the current issue.

Is there any other technology company that would allow such a loss to continue over time? Sure, there were some crazy investments during the dot com days, but was there any company throwing away over $1.3 billion per year (on average)? I’m not talking about automobile manufacturing or any other industries propped up by government subsidy. I also understand the idea of long term investment and patience for profitability but I don’t think that’s what is happening here. I think that what we’re seeing is a company that is paying for presence just for the sake of doing so.

While it’s true that there are other entities in the space that are struggling, none of them have the infrastructure or “machine” that the Microsoft division has behind it, a machine that should, while not guaranteeing success, should result in less loss. I guess a tactic could be to encourage Microsoft to continue this investment as it is an allocation of resources away from it’s monopoly.

I saw this brilliant post the other day and just had to laugh.

From the opening statement that Microsoft “is an amazingly transparent company. Google is not” it’s a laugh a minute.

This post is supposedly the reposting of an interview with a former Google employee, now a Microsoft employee, to provide insight to Microsoft employees about Google’s environment.

Virtually everything mentioned in the interview that is cached in negativism would be considered a positive at any other tech company. It’s obvious that the interviewee and the interviewing entity are threatened by a progressive organization like Google, which is very very flat - you tell me, which is more progressive: layers upon layers of control and management structure vs. a flat field? They are extremes and both have their problems but one is definitely more progressive than the other.

My feeling is that in the business world, and particularly in technology, companies that fear progression will eventually go down and go down badly. They might maintain some control or corner some part of a market but they will die as a superstructure. Think of IBM, Xerox, or SRI, etc. They still exist in some form but because they embraced regressive control they lost. Is there any doubt that Microsoft is the Big Blue of today? I think this post just confirms the inevitable and it would be better for everyone if the collapse happened sooner than later.

As someone who worked for a number of years in the Google-esque environment at Excite, I am all too aware of the problems inherent with that organization type. The emphasis given to a Stanford degree, if that’s true, is rather unfortunate. It might prompt some to perceive Google as a kind of Ivy League boys club similar to insurance companies of 50 years ago. I don’t know how true that is though, since we had an intern from UMass Amherst last summer who was heavily recruited by Google. My feeling is that they’re interested in truly creative people, wherever they are from.

The most telling thing about this post is less the inane and myopic bitching from the interviewee creature and more the clamor of fear in the comments. Dear Microsofties, explain your transparency if you have so many people who are rabidly afraid of the repurcussions of posting this pathetic “interview”. The purpose of this interview, BTW, is to keep Microsoft employees in line. An organization who is eager to dole out terror, both internally and externally, in order to maintain its status quo does deserve the death and collapse that I hope is on its way in short notice.

I not sure that Google “is the answer” but I _know_ that Microsoft isn’t.