I just got back from reading another brilliant post from Seth Godin, he always writes such great stuff, but i’ve never seen such a stark lesson in all my life of what NOT TO DO 
Here’s a quote from his article titled Lesson learned from my biggest business mistake
My biggest mistake (at least in terms of income avoided) was not believing in the world wide web in 1994.
It’s not like I didn’t know about it. I had written a book called “Best of the Net”. I’d even written the cover story for some now-defunct magazine on how to surf the internet. But in those days, the Net referred to Archie and Veronica and the online services… there was no real browser, no search engines to speak of, just a bunch of conferences and some guys in the Valley.
Not only did I ignore it, I actively ignored it. I didn’t register hundreds of domain names or build out the website for Yoyodyne beyond much of a placeholder. Instead of expanding my online game show/promotions company into the web, we focused on Microsoft’s Chicago service and Apple’s eWorld. Sigh.
Instead of building a search engine, I wrote a book called The Smiley Dictionary. Earnings to date: $10,000 or so.
I’m going into all this painful detail to let you know what an idiot I was. How many clues were just sitting there, how much access I had, how deliberate I was in ignoring them.
Great point right? Well here’s the lesson, Seth is also ignoring Twitter, my advice is, get on whatever Seth is ignoring
Now Seth’s got a great business, is a sought after speaker, and sells a shit tonne of books so who am I to give him advice.
For me twitter is the ability to connect with some of the leading thinkers and business people who are changing the web. If you want to learn something start following:
http://twitter.com/cshirky
http://twitter.com/johnbattelle
http://twitter.com/timoreilly
http://twitter.com/stoweboyd
http://twitter.com/charleneli
http://twitter.com/jowyang
http://twitter.com/armano
(is not exhaustive, but that’s a good primer)
for other inspiration follow:
http://twitter.com/richardbranson
http://twitter.com/gladwell
http://twitter.com/hodgman
oh and try and follow Seth, maybe he’ll get the hint
http://twitter.com/sethgodin
it’s an interesting experiment right now, but there is tremendously powerful business models that can be built on Twitter, check out this great post from O’Reilly Radar
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Spot on. Aren’t we all, to some extent, kicking ourselves for not executing that big idea (and of course some deserve a much bigger kick than others)! It’s reassuring to read this from Seth Godin.
Anyone with half an eyeball on technology can explain the fundamentals of killer web services that just a few years ago were ripe for the picking – the irony is that most of these ideas, in principle, are so damn simple – otherwise people just wouldn’t get it.
At least @sethgodin had the foresight to hold an account in his name, and wouldn’t conclude from this that he has anything against Twitter. After all, despite Twitter’s runaway success, it still has a long way to go before we can put it in the same game changing category as the web.
That’s not to say that microblogging as a method of communication is here to stay, and my vote is for a decentralised service model, such as Laconica, to prevail – and for Twitter along with other niche services to integrate and ride the same wave.
The last paragraph in the above comment should start:
“That’s not to say that microblogging as a method of communication isn’t here to stay, and my vote is for an open and decentralised service model…”
Re: O’Reilly Radar article.
Targeted advertising has been a wet dream of web marketers ever since I can remember. The fact that it hasn’t been done “right” yet should tell you it’s not exactly an easy problem to solve.
To build a profile like Nick is describing in his article is not an easy thing to do. I also think a scheme like that would suffer from too small niches…i.e. that the majority of the profiles are such that there are no matching advertising inventory.
Totally agree Tero, the problem with almost all advertising ideas is that they are driven by how to create value for the advertisers and not the users, so they run into Grudins Law:
“When those who benefit from a technology are not those who do the work, then the technology is likely to fail, or at least be subverted”
http://experiencecurve.com/archives/grudins-law
It says right beside your request (to the right) ‘Seth is not active on Twitter. This is a placeholder.’
What do you think that means?
It just means he’s protecting his brand I think
first time that I comment here!
Just my general idea… it is true that seth godin is a well established authority, but that does not strictly means that you cannot give him advice (or that his advice is always right!)
Great ideas come from unexpected places.
True dat Denis, I do respect Seth’s work and think he is a great instigator and marketing thinker, so I didn’t want this to turn into a character assassination link bait
just trying to talk about an idea!
that does not strictly means that you cannot give him advice (or that his advice is always right!)