The Power of Why

Some time back I commented on Ric Merrifield's book: "Re:Think" where he created definitions for How and What in a business context.  Today I came across a book that ads Why to the list:  Simon Sineks's book: "Start With Why". In this book Sinek argues that if you want to motivate people to do something, think about Why your company exists.

If you are interested in the topic, I recommend going to Mr. Sinek's web site and watching the 18 minute video introducing the idea at the TEDx Puget Sound.

I agree.  Here are his ideas applied to our business:

What (the business we are in): We help large technology companies sell more through their channel partners.

How (what makes us different from our competitors):  Like our competitors, we bring our capacity to do work to the table, unlike our competitors, we also bring our experience and expertise.  In other words, our competitors want to be told what to do -- and then they do it.  We help our clients decide what to do, and then we do it.

Why (do we exist):  We exist to create a great place to work.  Many people could think of our business as a commodity.  As processes that can be standardized so each and every last penny can be squeezed out of its production.  We have unmatched passion for working together with each other and our clients to do things that make a difference.

A great place to work -- really?  I say yes.  There are many reasons to work and countless studies about why people work.  Getting paid is in there, also the challenge, and also doing things that matter.  These are mostly focused on the end result of work -- the destination.  We are focused on the journey.  Working side be side with each other and with our clients to deliver measurable results makes for an awesome job.   

AT&T Takes a Bite Out of the Cloud

It has been widely reported that AT&T changed its pricing model from unlimited to limited data plans.  The changes go into effect on June 7th. There have been many articles about this and some even come down on the side of AT&T.  As people work to figure out who the winners and the losers are -- I think the cloud could be the long term loser.

We are moving towards a world with thin wireless devices and computing in the cloud.  A variable cost of connecting to the cloud will certainly cause friction in this migration.  Slowing down the migration would be bad for Google and Apple, and give Microsoft a chance to catch up.

Google announced at Computex this week that their 100% cloud operating system Chrome OS will be available sometime this fall.  

This will be yet another interesting story to follow.

Ballmer Brings Ozzie to D8

I was at a small conference last month where Ray Ozzie spoke and he demonstrated, as he has done many times before, a refreshing grasp of the state of the industry and Microsoft's position within it.  Steve Ballmer did the right thing by bringing Ray to D8.  There has been a great deal of coverage, so instead of adding to the heap, here are some links:

• Ars Technica: This one is probably the best distillation 
• eWeek: A quick summary
• All Things Digital: A rough transcript
• Engadget:  This one contrasts Job's comments about PC = Truck to Ballmer's response

In the end Ballmer seemed on the defensive, and was not able to land an innovative forward thinking idea.  Ray Ozzie had some well crafted thoughts about the industry direction but in the few video clips I saw he seemed to get cut off right before he was going to say something meaningful.  Microsoft still has great deal of work to do.

Loyalty Love On the Decline

Done right, loyalty programs do a great deal to drive revenue.  Doing them right is much easier when the inventory of loyalty love is on the rise.  Frequent flier miles that can never be redeemed can even damage customer relationships.  When building a loyalty program it all seems quite easy.  Set aside some inventory, in the airline example this would be seats, and increase the inventory a bit each year to keep up with the increasing number of loyalty customers and their increasing expectations and you are all set.  This all comes to an unhappy end when the number of loyalty customers continues to rise, or worse accelerates, at the same time the inventory of awards contracts.

This is exactly what is happening right now with the airlines.  The airlines have reduced their capacity by paring back schedules and parking planes.  The people flying are mostly those that always fly -- those in the loyalty programs.  This means fewer reward tickets, fewer upgrades, and eventually, structural changes to loyalty programs.  My main airline just increase the highest level from 40,000 miles to 75,000 miles -- ouch.

We see the same thing happen to partner programs.  While on the upswing there is plenty of loyalty love to spread around.  In this case the loyalty love usually comes in the form of leads (opportunities for new business).  When in a recession the flow of leads goes down and the focus on leads by partners goes up.  Expectations up plus delivery down equals unhappy partners.  Here are three things to do about it:

1. Invest what you have in the right place:  As painful as it may seem, the airlines are doing the right thing.  They know they do not have the capacity to make everyone happy, and they are going to make sure the reduced number of happy people are the right ones.
2. Add new features and benefits:  There are always things that can be added to fill the gap.  Soft benefits are not as good as hard benefits -- but better than nothing.  As above, these new benefits have to go to the right places.
3. Engage to grab market share:  Vendor and partner both want to grow out of the cycle -- which in a down market means take market share.  Since this investment is being made anyway -- make the most of it by working closely with key partners to drive increased revenue for both entities.

Yes all of this means we have to pedal faster in a down market.  It is worth it however because the potential gains are tremendous.

More Advice for Microsoft

I have been working for a while on a post that would summarize all of the advice people are giving Ballmer and Microsoft.  With the whole market cap thing last week the flood of advice has me so buried I cannot read it all -- let alone comment.  So here are a couple good recent ones you may want to read:

• Fast Company: Argues that the thing to do is bring back Bill Gates.
• Motley Fool: Makes the case that Apple did not pass Microsoft, but rather Microsoft is killing itself.
• Information Week: A pretty good rant about the cloud, the market perception of "Microsoft as rigid, backward-looking, reactive, and afraid to compete" and the whole iPhone ban.
• Blogger Andrew Brust: A good list of things to do -- mostly focussed on the consumer space (again).
• Mini Microsoft: Can't have a list like this without a sweeping post from Mini - Microsoft.

If Microsoft really is in its final death dance -- will the wolves come and start picking at the carcass?  There are so many parts of Microsoft the challenge of listing the assets in prioritized order would be even bigger than tracking all of this advice.  

If I had a few billion to spend, I don't think I would buy any of the consumer stuff.  I think maybe Hyper V or SQL Server could be good. 

Steve Jobs at D8

Steve Jobs was the big feature at the All Things Digital conference yesterday.  He was humble about the market cap thing: “It’s surreal, but it doesn’t really mean anything” and about Apple itself: “Apple is a company that doesn’t have the most resources in the world, and the way we’ve succeeded is to bet the right technological horse, to look at technologies that have a future. We try to pick things that are in their springs. And if you choose wisely, you can be quite successful.” And he did not take the bait on war with Microsoft: “No, we don’t see ourselves in a platform war” says Jobs. “We never saw ourselves in a platform war with Microsoft, either…Maybe that’s why we lost. But we never thought of ourselves in a platform war; we just wanted to make good products.” or on war with Google: “Well, they’re competing with us...we didn’t go into search.”  

There is a really interesting riff on the development path that brought about the iPhone and eventually the iPad: 

Jobs: “I’ll tell you a secret. It began with the tablet. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on with your fingers. I asked our people about it. And six months later, they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He got scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, ‘my God, we can build a phone with this!’ So we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the iPhone.”

This just emphasizes how Jobs has the metal to make big decisions and make them decisively.  There have been a lot of these big decisions lately including Flash of course, and the market is being shaped and reshaped by Steve Jobs yet again.  This shaping will continue with Steve pulling for newspapers over bloggers: “I don’t want us to see us descend into a nation of bloggers,” civility and control over openness: “We have a rule that says you can’t defame people,” and his own curating of ideas: “The best ideas have to win, no matter who has them.”

Steve Jobs is still the best CEO in existence.  Quite a performance.

Microsoft's Secret Weapon: Channel Partners

It has been a rough week for Microsoft and the advice for Steve B is really starting to flow now.  Technology blogger Andrew Brust has a pretty good list, and I really like this point:

7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers

There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.

We have done a fair amount of work in both the traditional channel ecosystem (VAR, SP, ISV), and the consumer electronics ecosystem.  One would think they are the same thing or at least closely related, but in fact there are significant differences.  

Andrew is right.  If Microsoft were to make a serious run at building a CE channel it would be quite a strategic asset. 

Steve and Steve at WWDC 2010?

Barrons reports that Steve Ballmer may be scheduled to make a guest appearance during Steve Job's keynote at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference on June 7, 2010.  This would be quite a thing, the nature of the announcement is that Microsoft is positioning Visual Studio 2010 as the tool to write native apps for the iPhone and iPad. 

I don't remember the battle for developer mindshare ever having been quite this fierce.  Apple has done a good job over the past few years of turning its developer partners into selling (Go To Market) partners.  If this rumor is true, then Apple will have made a very interesting play to turn Microsoft's development partners into Apple's GTM partners.

I am having a hard time envisioning how this benefits Microsoft.  Sure there will be more VS2010 licenses sold, but VS developers fueling the Apple App Store?  Maybe the carrot of VS built apps easily transferable to become Win Phone 7 Apps is big enough to justify the risk of long term developer partner erosion.  Well, June 7 will definitely be an interesting day.

Maybe Steve B will lift the ban on iPhones on the MS campus!

One Last Post About Facebook

I have found myself promising to stop writing about Facebook lately.  It surely is a tired old rant, and this really is going to be my last blog post on the matter.  After today, you can find Facebook related thoughts on a section of this website called Facebook.  

On that page I intend to chronicle my efforts to find a suitable replacement.

On 5/19 I turned all of my Facebook settings to the most private possible ("Custom>me only").  I was surprised to find today that what appears to be a new category just controlling what outsiders can see of my friends was turned to "everyone".  

I found this by creating a new Facebook account with a fake name so I could see what people outside of my network could see.  On a side note, I picked Ty Webb as my fake name.  Ty Webb is the name of the character Chevy Chase played in Caddyshack.  Can you believe there are over 700 Ty Webbs on Facebook and most of them have pictures that look exactly like Chevy Chase!

If you are a Facebook user I encourage you to go through this exercise.  I found it much more illumnating than the services that tell you what others can or cannot see.

Much to my surprise, I navigated Ty Webb to my Facebook profile and I could see my full list of friends, and could click through to see all of their friends.  In the past Facebook only presented a few friends and you could not click on them at all until that person had accepted you as their friend.

Interesting I thought.  After bolting down my friends (again), I thought I should have some fun with this -- you know -- now that I could see all of Mark Zuckerberg's friends without actually being his friend.  Turns out, Mark is just not very social.  He does in fact have a page, but it is a fan page, and I could not find a Facebook page for Mark.  He has over 500,000 fans -- but no friends.  And I was fool enough to think he would be leading the charge to share the names of his past girlfriends, ex business partners, and current investors and advisors and employees with all of us.  I could not see what web sites he had gone to, what he bought with his credit card, or where he was right now either.  Not a word about what he was working on, who he was having lunch with today.  Turns out Mark Zuckerberg is quite the private person.

Seems strange that he would want everyone else to share their identity information.

What Microsoft Does Best

I find myself thinking two things about Microsoft in the media lately:  1) They just keep missing the consumer mark, and more often 2) Microsoft isn't even in this conversation.

The main obsession these days both inside Microsoft and outside is Apple getting a bigger market cap.  Here is a piece from the Seattle PI on the market cap, and here is a piece from the WSJ about a re-org in the devices division.  Both seem to be about the same subject if you ask me.

I don't know if Microsoft is ever going to get the consumer thing figured out.  Chasing after the others just does not seem to work anymore.  

I do know that Microsoft has everything it needs to dominate in the business market -- from SMB to the Enterprise.  Why can't that be cool enough to be it?

The Score on Facebook

The next week will be very interesting with regards to Facebook.  Here are a few things to watch:

People Quitting Publicly on a special site set up just for this purpose.

Not that any number of quitters will make a difference to Facebook's nearly 500 million total. But this was just 2,000 last week and this is just a sample of the true number of quitters.

People Giving Money to Diaspora on Kickstarter here.

These guys don't have anything going for them except having said they will build a competing system. So far?  $185,000!  (they wanted $10,000)

Later:  Mark Z. posts his response in the Washington Post.  

Decoding Education Reform

The New York Times Magazine published a terrific piece about education reform yesterday. The Unions have so much power that we do not often see clearly articulated arguments like this in the mainstream press.  In case you are new to this fight, here is a quick list of the codes used:

Resources:  The most frequently misappropriated term in the debate is Resources.  To most this implies funding, and we do need to increase school funding.  However, to the unions this means dues.  Since union dues are by headcount the unions want more headcount regardless of the quality.  Smaller class sizes means more headcount.  Clearly there are benefits to smaller class sizes, but all of the studies now show that better teachers are much more important.

Measurement: Next on the hot list is measurement.  Standardized tests do create all kinds of warped behaviors and this needs to be addressed.  In business we know that there is no single good performance measurement, but we also know that things need to be measured -- the more the better and the more the data is shared the better.  The unions not only oppose measurement, but also oppose better data systems that would make it easier to expose performance data.  In most states this opposition has made it hard to track students even crude measurements like grades, activities, and attendance.

Charter Schools:  The NY Times article said it better than I can:  

Charter schools are not always better for children. Across the country many are performing badly. But when run well — as most in Harlem and New York’s other most-challenged communities appear to be — they can make a huge difference in a child’s life. 

The article goes on to do a side by side comparison of a NY charter school that shares a building with a public school.  The charter school spends slightly less than the public school and performs well above.   The customers (parents) have noticed and tens of thousands of students are turned away from charter schools every year because there are not enough charter schools.  

In some states (Washington included) the unions have successful blocked charter schools with targeted legislation. It is an effective way to keep the resources out of the hands of people that can make more efficient use of them.

The Obama administration's $4.3 billion "Race to the Top" contest is changing things fast.  This is a good example of creative government spending using a relatively small amount of money to make a big impact.  In order to be competitive, a state must demonstrate its ability to measure teacher performance and must have charter schools.  This does not make things look very good for Washington State, but it is absolutely the right thing for the country.

The tide is turning now and we are going to start seeing the states that figure it out get way ahead of the states that don't.  This is very good news for our country because fixing our education system is the single biggest thing we need to do to remain competitive and retain our high living standards.

If you are interested in following along, here are two organizations in Washington State that are making a big impact:

League of Education Voters.

Stand for Children.

I wrote a book review about Work Hard: Be Nice -- which follows the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) and Teach for America.

Anonymous Sources: The NY Times Encourages Bad Behavior

Is it just me or is the use of unnamed anonymous sources increasing?  I guess it is not so much the fact that their names are withheld, but that the circumstances surrounding their wish for anonymity are freely disclosed and problematic.  The type I find the most disturbing are the direct references to sources who acknowledge breaching other legal agreements to which they have freely entered into.  

Here is an example from today's NY Times:

One person at the Department of Justice, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the situation publicly, said that the...

A person from the Department of Justice no less!  Either the person is authorized or not.  This is not a case where we need a whistle blower inside the Department of Justice.  The subject of the article is Google and it is not even about a conflict inside the Justice Department about how to handle the issue.

Here is a link to the official NY Times policy about anonymous sources.  Where the paper acknowledges that people may be skeptical of anonymous sources:

In any situation when we cite anonymous sources, at least some readers may suspect that the newspaper is being used to convey tainted information or special pleading

True, but a how about the readers who think the NY Times is encouraging people to violate, participating in the violation of, or portraying as acceptable the violation of other legal obligations.

Here is a post to the NY Times Freakonomics Blog about the matter where Ian Ayres exposes the paper's role in the misappropriation of other people's property.

But newspapers routinely grant anonymity to employees who misappropriate employer information. Often times these grants are given to sources who could be legitimately fired or disciplined for violating their fiduciary duty to their employer. The sources who steal — I mean misappropriate — employer information aren’t willing to directly disclose because they know they could be fired for the disclosure.

Here is a post to the NY Times Bits blog where a source is quoted in violation of a non disclosure agreement.

A senior editor of a major magazine publishing empire working on an internal corporate project, and speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a nondisclosure agreement, told me...

Sure, the non disclosure agreement may have said that you can disclose this sensitive and proprietary information to the press but just not with your name attached, but I have never seen an NDA like that.  

Here is a post from the NY Times public editor about this from a year ago.  There is no mention of this business of encouraging people to break other legal agreements where there is clearly no societal greater good to be gained.

The New York Times and other leading papers should stop this practice.  Not only is the Times turning itself into a publisher of press releases by doing so, but they are reinforcing a growing societal norm that fiduciary responsibility or non disclosure agreements have no weight or meaning.

Could Hollywood Go Direct?

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the Hollywood studios are considering releasing movies to home viewers as early as 30 days after their theater release instead of the customary four months.

This is very likely a good step forward for an industry that has struggled to address the changing nature of its market.

This is very unlikely to be a good thing for the owners of the movie theaters.  These partners of the studios could suffer a significant drop in their business volume at the same time that the studios could gain an increase.  

So should  the studios do it?  What would happen to the movie industry if a whole bunch of movie theaters go out of business?

Turn the Key and it Works

Earlier this year I rented this Camaro and drove up the coast between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay.  I never thought for a moment that I would have trouble making the car work.  I just knew that when I turned the key it would work. Many of you know that I also drive around a world war II era tug boat from time to time.  Aside from a few old timers, I am literally the only person that can make the thing go (and it takes about 30 minutes and 30 steps just to get it going).

Which one of these experiences is your computer and which is your cell phone?  After countless rejections from my kids, I have now stopped offering to teach them about their computers.  When they have a problem I just fix it for them and most times I do so without crabbing about the fact that they won't let me teach them how it works.  They just expect it to work -- and they should.  Computers have been around for long enough now that we should be able to turn the key and they should just work.  Unfortunately, computers are not getting easier to use.  Every advancement in capabilities is accompanied by a greater increase in complexity and we continue to lose ground.  

When you add in the fact that most customers have zero interest in becoming a computer mechanic -- and we have trouble in the making.

So who is going to win?

• Smart Phones: Easy to use - have you ever read the manual?
• Fastest Path to a Browser: Except for the whole Flash thing, this is my iPad -- always on and zero brain damage.
• Anything managed by professionals somewhere else: IT in the cloud.

People who are betting their careers on the PC should spend more time figuring out how to just make them work.

Here is how Steve Jobs thinks about this.  He is still the most impressive CEO in the business.

Should Google Add Some Polish?

Yesterday on This Week in Google, Leo Laporte and his tech friends were reviewing the first day of Google i/o.  The TWIG panel recounted how over 5,000 developers showed up and overwhelmed the event (and the WiFi -- which is pretty funny for a cloud company), and how the content of the event was dense even for its target audience of developers, and how there seemed to be a significant lack of coordination as Google blog posts were going live during the keynote that had no correlation to the keynote messaging.

It was at this point the Leo said all of this rough around the edges stuff was good because a Google with too much polish would be scary.  Forgive the very loose (not direct quote) account here.  Please do listen to the podcast if you want the actual dialog.

This brings up a very interesting idea in marketing.  There is a continuum that spans from accessible and not polished to not-accessible and very polished.  Google seems to be taking up residence on the accessible end and Apple on the other end.  Where do you position your company?  I would argue that trust is highly correlated to accessibility and that if you want your customers to trust you -- don't get too polished.

Google Enterprise Keeping Score

There has been a good deal of press and even more talk about Google taking on Microsoft in the Enterprise.  Last week Google made a post to its Enterprise blog about a channel partner that left the Microsoft channel program in favor of the Google Apps channel program.  In fact the post is guest written by the company doing the switching.  Clearly the chance to be featured on the Google Enterprise Blog is big for a young small company.

The most dangerous part of this to Microsoft is that Microsoft will not even notice.  The partner in question probably does not even show up on Microsoft's radar.  

Losing a partner to the competition, no matter how small, is a problem.  Losing a partner that specializes in migrating to Google Apps and Amazon Services is a problem.  Google is chipping away at the edges of Microsoft's channel partner relationships.

Google i/o starts today in SFO.  So I suspect we are going to see a bunch of stuff like this during the week.

Truth in Banker Speak

The advertising industry has benefited significantly from Bank of America's ad budget.  It is hard to imagine a human in North America that does not know about Bank of America's 1.5 trillion dollar pledge.  

I have to wonder if anyone is going to track what this means or if they do it.  

Here is a link to a page on the B of A website with a April 28, 2008 transcript of remarks at the Federal Reserve Public Hearing on the proposed merger between Bank of America and Countrywide Financial Corporation where Liam McGee, President, Global Consumer & Small Business Banking, Andrew Plepler, President, Bank of America Charitable Foundation, and Janet Lamkin, California State President outlined their intentions. 

It is a little long, with each of the three of them taking turns saying the same thing over and over.  Here are the basic details quoted from Liam McGee's part of the transcript:

I am proud to announce Bank of America’s new, and unprecedented, 10-year goal of $1.5 trillion for community development lending and investments. This is the largest community development goal ever by any company in America. In coming years, this goal is certain to enhance quality of life for millions of Americans in need, by:

• helping finance construction of affordable housing throughout the nation,

• providing loans and other needed capital to small businesses,

• supplying consumer loans, including housing finance, for low- and moderate-income and minority borrowers, and

• financing economic development for communities in need.

In addition, our Charitable Foundation is raising its philanthropic giving goal from $1.5 billion to $2 billion over 10 years. This is the most ambitious long-term corporate philanthropic goal ever announced by any company. We are setting this goal despite uncertain economic times.

I am glad that B of A has made a large commitment to community development.  This list however is just a list of things that bankers do.  So the advertisements saying that Bank of America is giving 1.5 trillion dollars back to the community are a little misleading.

Even so, a search on the B of A website for press releases about community reinvestment produced this from November of 2009:  (dramatic music here) 1 billion dollars!  Some simple math tells us that a 10 year campaign starting in April of 2008 is 20 months into its 120 month life or 16% complete.  I am pretty sure that 1.5 trillion is 1,500 billions.  So 1 billion is .067% of goal.  It appears that Bank of America is REALLY going to have to get after this in the remaining 100 months.

Has anyone seen any news items digging into this?  According to CNNMoney we have given B of A 15 billion dollars in bail out money.  

Even with the diminished capacity of the newspapers to do investigative work, this has got to be worth looking in to.

Physics, Nature, and the Rule of the Mob

Life is governed by the laws of physics, the laws of nature, and the rule of the mob.  Physics is "what goes up must come down". I don't know what the laws of nature are, but we say they have been violated when we see something really disturbing, so I am sure they are useful. And the rule of the mob is about to take down two companies we thought were invincible just a few months ago:  Goldman Sachs and Facebook.

There are undoubtedly books on the rule of the mob and I have not read any of them.  My description goes like this:  when a person or an organization gets to the top of the heap, it has to spend so much energy just staying at the top of the heap, that it cannot stay on the top of the heap any longer.  The timing of the process is highly variable, but the faster one gets to the top of the heap the more likely the mob will vigorously pursue a change in the hierarchy.  

Goldman Sachs got there slowly and stayed at the top for a very long time.  Most of us cannot even remember a time that Goldman was not at the top.  SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro was quoted in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday saying "If we don't get serious about this process, we may cease to exist." Goldman may own parts of the government, but this kind of resolve will be hard to overcome.  Who would you pick for longevity, the SEC or Goldman Sachs.  I go with the SEC.

Facebook blew past 300 million users to its current 500 million or so and its founder has turned down hundreds of millions of dollars to keep running it.  The tide is turning however and it is now cooler to quit Facebook than to use it.  The tech community turned against Facebook several weeks ago, and the rest of the mob will likely defect in the weeks ahead.  In fact there is a web site dedicated to this movement called Quit Facebook Day.

One interesting element to these actions by the mob is the lack of viable alternatives.  Goldman Sachs is probably not any more evil than any of the other firms on Wall Street.  Their unique crime is that they are just so good at taking their client's money.  Clearly market demand for a system we can use to organize our relationships on the web has driven Facebook to its current heights.  No clear successor has presented itself, although the mob is putting some weight behind the Diaspora Project, but four kids with an idea does not a viable alternative make.

If you are Mark Zuckerberg, or Lloyd Blankfein, you can be comforted to know that the crowd will only take you down a few notches and probably not out of the picture all together.  After all, your predecessors put you in good company.  Firms like Standard Oil, IBM, and Microsoft all fell victim to the mob.

Funny, my spell checker wants to replace "Zuckerberg" with "Boodsucker" -- even spellcheck has turned against him!

-image courtesy of www.thefirstreporter.com

 LATER:  NYT post from Friday about how the Web itself is a social network.

Facebook is Amway 2.0

Mark Zukerberg is the next Richard DeVos.  We know history repeats itself, and as we are seeing it right now as Facebook becomes Amway 2.0.  Both organizations provide tools to aspiring networkers, focus on counting things, and work to monetize the relationships to the maximum degree possible.

Aspiring Networkers

Both Amway and Facebook provide the tools and encouragement to build a network of friends.  Quantity of friends is more important that quality, and no attempt is made to value one friend more than another.  There are no best friends on Facebook or in Amway. 

Count Your Friends

Once in Amway you are encouraged to produce a list of your friends so you have a place to start building your network.  You are coached as to how to approach your friends, and suggestions are made about friends of friends.  The objective is to get as many friends into the network as possible.

We Make it Easy for You

Once you get enough friends into the network, you can work to sell things to them, or work to get them to sell things.  You can be a big success even if your friends don’t buy anything – as long as your friends of fiends do.

So the next time someone asks you to lunch to discuss a new “business opportunity”, make sure to ask:  is this Facebook?

All of this is not necessarily bad for Mark Zuckerberg.  After all, Richard DaVos owns a really big boat and the Orlando Magic.

Later:  Here is a good post by Robert Scoble about what Facebook should do.