From Silicon Alley Insider:
After holding steady for most of 2008, Yahoo’s share of all search engine advertisers dropped like a rock in October, November and December — plummeting from 30.4% to 19.4% at the end of Q4, according to search marketing firm AdGooroo.
How do you explain this? Everyone else is gaining share and they’re losing it. This is very sad to see. I’ve always liked Yahoo!
Google Blogoscoped has an elaborate chart of all the google products and how they are monetized. It’s very confusing. So lets make this simple:
Now, wasn’t that easier?
If this is true, it goes a long way towards explaining why my service has degraded so much. I have a 1st gen iPhone on AT&T. I’m in the Bay Area. Here’s the story:
…Open for Business has learned that AT&T has been quietly sacrificing 2G signal strength in an effort to speed up the build out of its next generation 3G network…
…While previously the company had been primarily relying on the 850 MHz band that offers a more robust signal, including superior indoor reception, company technicians confirmed to OFB that transmitters for the 2G signal used by the original iPhone and most other handsets, including most AT&T offered BlackBerry and RAZR models, have been shifted to the weaker 1900 MHz band in some areas.
If this is true, AT&T really sucks.
I hope everyone has a great new year.
Is it just me or does Live Search put the coolest pics up?
Dad and I went to Fisherman’s Wharf today. It’s always nice to get fresh Dungeness crabs and clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl. Yummy!
The sea lions were out making a bunch of noise at Pier 39.
And out in front of the In-N-Out Burger was The Bushman. This dude sits on a milk crate holding branches he cut off of a tree. He hides behind them and pops out to scare people walking by. He got us when we walked by. We wondered how he kept from getting his ass kicked. Turns out he hires a body guard. Claims to make about $60k a year. You can read about him at the link above. Pretty interesting stuff. He’s been doing this for years. It’s hilarious watching him. We sat in the In-N-Out burger watching him while we ate. BTW, In-N-Out Burger kicks ass!
Alcatraz was just as impressive the second time around as it was the first. The island was opened up so we could walk around more. The place is much smaller than you’d imagine and the cells are depressing. They’re small, damp, and cold. Few get any sunlight. It must have been terrible to have been there so close to the city, being able to hear all the life going on around you, yet knowing you were stuck in your little cell on the island.
After checking out Alcatraz, we saw the entire Miami Hurricanes football team waiting in line for their chance to see Alcatraz. They were in town to play Cal in the Emerald Bowl.
The final Cowboys game has been played at Texas Stadium. They lost and it looks like they’re not going to make the playoffs. Another disappointing season from a team loaded with talent. But I digress.
I love the Cowboys but hated Texas Stadium. Never-the-less, there were many great moments that took place there. My most recent experiences there involved touring the stadium and seeing Marshall Faulk’s final game (1st row, 50-yard line – it was AWESOME!).
Goodbye Texas Stadium.
Let’s cut to the chase – No, it is not bad for small guys to partner with big guys.
Bronte Media references a post from Albert Wenger about small companies partnering with big Internet companies – Avoid David and Goliath Partnerships. The rationale:
Partnering with the biggest of the big on the other hand tends to be problematic because they are unlikely to be sufficiently responsive. […] So whenever possible, as a startup you should rely on mid size well established companies when it comes to strategic partnerships.
OK, I have lots of experience with this on both sides of the equation. All I can say is that there is some truth to this, but in general this is bad advice. At Verizon we worked with a few small companies and ended up essentially building their businesses and keeping them from dying during the dot.com bust. But I’ve also seen Verizon treat small partners poorly and likewise for other big companies that I’ve worked for. The key for the small player is to have a good contract that lays out how the relationship is to work and has sufficient penalties for not playing nice. Having an extremely responsive account management team also makes a huge difference.
Of course getting a solid contract is easier said than done. I didn’t like giving other companies much power over us when I was at Verizon. Likewise, the guys that were bigger than us didn’t like giving us much power. But if you can focus on win-win and genuinely add value to the bigger player, you can get to a place that works for both parties.
It’s worth noting that big companies in general don’t like doing deals with smaller players because of the risk that they won’t be around to fulfill their obligations. I was the guy that had the unfortunate task of delivering the bad news to hundreds of small guys that we wouldn’t do business with them and often the reason was that they weren’t established enough. Big guys tend to want to go with established players.
The thing that I think is most overlooked is that if the small guy can work a good deal with the big guy, it can make their business. It makes them a legitimate player and opens things up for additional deals with other large players and additional funding. This far outweighs the risk of the partnership not working out.
37signals wrote “Big business learning that smaller teams can rekindle the creative spark.”
The message: Keep teams small, give employees freedom and a sense of ownership, don’t focus too much on the competition, create a culture of experimentation, and use technology to enable remote teams.
They quoted the NY Times as saying:
By breaking huge business units into smaller, nimbler teams, companies stand a chance of rekindling the creative spark that got them rolling in the first place. After all, “small is the new big,” as Seth Godin, a prolific blogger and author, puts it in his 2006 book of that name.
I couldn’t agree more. When I was working at start-ups one product manager and one engineer could get more done in a day than an entire scrum team at one of my larger employers could do in a week. This came with the added benefit of nothing being lost in the translation and the ability to rapidly make changes until you got to where you wanted to be. I miss those days. It was very invigorating and both myself and the engineer walked away with a great sense of accomplishment and ownership.
Now go and spread the word.
Back in December 2006 I wrote about TiVo not keeping up in the quest to be the provider of the “sofa web.”
Om Malik at GigaOM discusses the new game consoles and the contribution they might make to Internet browsing. He refers to it as the “sofa web.”
It was announced that TiVo and Amazon Team Up – NYTimes.com. This is a positive step towards TiVo becoming part of the sofa web. I can’t wait to see more deals.
15-year Internet Marketing Veteran & MBA with Extensive Experience Taking Products and Partnerships from Idea to Marketplace
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