It appears that Yahoo!, one of the earliest pioneers of search, is getting out of the search business. No, they are not exactly conceding the race to Google. Rather, they decided that they needed to combine with Microsoft in order to become Pepsi to Google's Coke. Basically, Yahoo! is dumping their own search engine and integrating Bing as a substitute.
http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/press/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=399702Paul Graham is right on the money about the disconnect between the most productive schedules for producers vs. managers. Great managers understand the disconnect and protect their producers.
Slate publishes a clever way to have a more secure, but still memorable set of passwords for the web. This is important, especially in light of the Twitter - TechCrunch fiasco.
This is currently the 3rd most emailed article on NYTimes.com. Not a ton of depth, but worth a quick read for a few anecdotes about how using Twitter is helping some small businesses.
Amazon is acquiring Zappos for ~$850 million. I wonder if this will affect their agency review.
http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-buys-online-shoe-retailer-zappos-for-800-million-2009-7#
Peter Madden is correct when he posits that agencies (especially small ones) don't do enough to promote themselves - and certainly not at the level of work they do for their clients. We frequently find ourselves in this predicament, but I think the major culprit is simply the old "shoe cobbler's children" syndrome. We always put ourselves last. We always wish we had more time to do great work for our clients, so the last thing we're going to do is steal from our most limited resource - time - to promote ourselves.
That said, at some point it has to be done.
Publishing 2.0 has listed some best practices for media organizations that want to "create significant value for readers by curating the web." Click on the post, "Best Practices for Journalists Curating the Web" for the details, but their list includes:
Good advice.
NEW YORK The chance to work with a hot brand like Zappos is too much for many agencies to pass up, even when it means pouring in tons of time, effort and money into a Byzantine review process in which they have little chance of succeeding. Zappos recently got RFP responses from 104 agencies, with 22 then chosen to do 90-minute presentations at Zappos headquarters in Las Vegas this week. In an unusual twist, it required shops to submit storyboards and ad mockups for the initial round, all in a tight two-week turnaround.
Frankly, the sheer amount of time Zappos has spent on this is insane. This is a broken process. I know Zappos is all about openness, but this sort of thing isn't fair to anybody.
