Monthly Archives: August 2012

August 28, 2012 · 9:47 am

Twitter And The API Decision

You might have read or heard about the Twitter brouhaha last week.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

No, not another politician sending pictures of his undies.  Twitter announced that they are going to restrict the use of their API and due to that a bunch of companies are going to have big problems.  While I realize that this entire discussion might be a bit of inside baseball for you non-tech business folks, I think the decision Twitter made is instructive no matter what business you’re in.

Basically, Twitter announced a bunch of restrictions on the number of times an application can access the Twitter stream.  You can read the details on Twitters developer blog but suffice it to say that anyone who makes a traditional Twitter client – Storify, Echofone, TweetBot, etc. – is going to have some issues.  These folks compete with Twitter’s own app (both the regular Twitter client and TweetDeck, which they own) for ad dollars and part of what Twitter announced was the division of the Twitter world into four quadrants.  One of those is “consumer engagement” and while Twitter is trying to encourage competition and business building for analytics and B2B, it wants to ” limit certain use cases that occupy the upper-right quadrant.”  In other words, restrict anything that interferes with their ad-supported business model.

I understand why Twitter is doing this.  After all, it’s their data (even if the users are creating the content).  However, I think they’ve got it backwards.  Rather than protecting themselves in a very difficult, competitive area (ad sales), maybe they should have focused their revenue efforts on the folks who are making money themselves (the analytics and other B2B guys).  They’re saying they welcome development on their platform as long as it avoids their core revenue model, which is consumer experience enhanced with advertisements.  In my mind, setting up a bigger toll booth in front of the folks who remarket the data for large fees makes more sense.  It’s the Willie Sutton rule – go where the money is.  Twitter has no competition when it comes to the folks using their data to drive their product while there is plenty of competition in the ad world – Twitter isn’t yet a “must” buy.

That sort of decision-making comes up in many businesses from time to time and I think a long look at what Twitter chose is instructive. What do you think?

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August 27, 2012 · 9:22 am

Being Fearless

A 15 year old young woman won the CN Canadian Women’s Open over the weekend.

English: Thirteen year old New Zealander Lydia...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Lydia Ko can’t drive cars but she certainly showed she could drive into the middle of fairways as she beat the best women professionals on the planet.  She’s not yet one of them – she has retained her amateur status because she thinks she might want to play collegiate golf.  That’s a $300,000 decision but one would think she’ll have many years in which to earn that back and a lot more.  This isn’t a total shock – she is the current U.S. Women’s Amateur Champion but she did beat a strong professional field so it’s very unexpected.

What impressed me most about her post-tournament interviews wasn’t her achievement.  In fact, she sounded pretty much like most almost 16 year olds do – lots of use of the word “awesome” in between the giggles.  But she did say something that really impressed me and it’s a great business lesson for the rest of us.  This is from her post-tournament news conference:

Q. Lydia, you’re 15 years old. You’ve just beaten the best players in the world. Has it sunk in what you’ve just accomplished, and was there ever a point on the Back 9 where you’re looking around going what the hell is going on here?
LYDIA KO: (Laughs). I don’t know. Like the first time I looked at the leaderboard was on I think 17 or something. Maybe I had a peek or anything. But I kind of looked at it because I wanted to become more relaxed, and today I said I’ve got nothing to lose. I already got the leading amateur in my bag.
And yeah, all I need to do is play my game, and my goal was 4 under, so I shot 5 under, even better.

In other words, she was fearless.  Her attitude was “I’m a kid, I’m not supposed to win, I’ve already accomplished a lot by winning the Amateur, I’m learning a lot just by participating so why worry.”  How would each of us perform at our jobs if we kept that perspective rather than getting so caught up in the moment or current crisis?  That’s my thought to start the week – you with me?

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August 24, 2012 · 9:37 am

Your Business Is Pasta

Our Foodie Friday Fun this week is pasta.

English: Strozzapreti pasta

Strozzapreti pasta (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve expressed my love of Italian food on many episodes of the screed and there’s nothing more Italian than macaroni. There are dozens of shapes and types . Long noodles, short noodles, extruded shapes, rolled shapes. Most are associated with a particular region and the type of sauce dictates the type of pasta.  My personal favorite are the Strozzapreti – the Priest Stranglers of Roman cuisine.

Walking into a fresh pasta store in Italy is a mind-blowing experience. There are so many choices and what isn’t available can be made for you using the array of dies they have. Yet the basic building blocks are very simple – flour, eggs, maybe some oil, maybe some water. There are add-ins like spinach and squid ink but the basic as always the same. What does this have to do with your business?

First, many of us get frustrated in our attempts to “be different.”  We tend to focus on being radically different when the reality is that the basic ingredients are, in many cases, the same.  The little alterations – a pinch of salt, the cheese used in the filling – are what separates good from great and the same old same old from the fresh.  If you change things up too much, like badly made pasta it falls apart.

So what are the basic business ingredients?  The same ones we discuss all the time around here.  A plan, an open mind, a focus on facts, a great team, and an ability to listen to everyone – customers, markets, and staff.  Like flour and eggs, dozens of outcomes are possible depending on the circumstances. We determine which pasta to make base on the sauce we’re creating – delicate noodles with delicate sauces, ridged pasta to catch the sauce.  In business we need to think about the sauce – the market  – as we consider the pasta – your business.

If your business was a pasta, which one and why?  Something to ponder!

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