Guy Kawasaki

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A Response to Lev Grossman’s “Quitting Twitter”

22 March 2009 in From the Field by Kate | View Comments

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This is a little delayed (I was reading an old TIME at the gym this morning), but I feel compelled to respond to Lev Grossman’s article from the 16 March issue, titled “Quitting Twitter.”

The subtitle of the piece is “It’s the social network du jour.  But what do we really get out of it, aside from interrupted?”

I certainly can’t blame Lev for thinking this.  Heck, 90% of my friends always ask me “What’s the deal with Twitter?”  And maybe 30% of those still haven’t even heard of it.  So I thought I’d take a few minutes to throw my own observations out for people in this position to ponder about.

My biggest piece of advice for Lev, since he seemed to not being finding value out of people’s Tweets is to find where he value is and who’s giving it!  Search for people in your field or interested in general news, or nerd topics like technology.  Read their bios, read their first page of Tweets.  If the tweets are mostly about getting burritos with hot salsa instead of mild or how awesome it is to watch their cat playing with a tennis ball… it sounds like that might not be valuable to you.  If they’re on interesting news, observations on specific topics, or they seem to be having good conversation, that’s a great start.

Just as I could pick up a romance novel to read in bed at night, I could also pick up a book that had substance and meaning.

Awesome (and useful!) ways I’ve seen Twitter being used

  1. Early crisis warning, like what Nate Ritter is doing with CrisisWire. (@nateritter) [Note: In my opinion, the aggregation of Twitter is one of the coolest things I see happening to Twitter's future].
  2. Speaking of aggregation, how about getting updates from around the world on Inauguration Day experiences on Inauguration Report?
  3. Getting yourself out of Egyptian jail, as was the case for student James Karl Buck last April.
  4. Finding out about local and national information on industry networking events, gatherings, news, information, products… you name it… all from Twitter.  Oh!  I forgot to mention we got a paying client too!
  5. Raising a lot of money for charities or social good, as was the case with Twestival (among many, many other cases).
  6. Starting meaningful conversation, like PR professional Sarah Evans (@PRSarahevans) has done with #journchat.
  7. Helping people and families close to you using your social network, as David Armano did for his friend Daniela and her family. (@armano)

Some of my big favorites to follow for value, aside from those already mentioned? @guykawasaki, @shelisrael, @timoreilly, @knealemann,…. I’m gunna stop here, I could go on for a really, REALLY long time.

If you want to check in with the funders of Twitter?  Follow @Fredwilson at Union Square Ventures, or you can check out his blog, A VC (search for “Twitter” and you’ll get all the information you need to see why he supports it).

Lev ends by reminding us all to “just remember, the un-Twittered life is still worth living.“  Lev, thank you, really, but most of us do know that.  Some people, of course don’t.  Some people also don’t think regular old life is worth living either.  It’s all about how you use it, and how you work it into your life.

Do you have any other examples of great Twitter usage?  Anyone Lev should be following?  Any advice for him about getting the most out of Twitter?

[Sidenote: I'm currently watching an ABC News clip on this exact topic, pointing to several cases where maybe Twitter is getting out of hand.  I can't find the video at the moment, because it was literally just on, but when I went to search for the video, I came up with this nice clip about using Twitter to teach.]

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SXSW: Guy Kawasaki and Chris Anderson

17 March 2009 in Conferences & Events by Kate | View Comments

“In 2006, Chris Anderson introduced the concept of the Long Tail. His soon-to-be released book will talk about the power of free. Will his theories stand up to the tough questions of venture Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki?”

Keynotes:

Guy Kawasaki, CEO, Alltop
Chris Anderson, Wired Magazine

Guy: What would you do if you were Twitter and needed to make money?

Chris: I’ve been dreading two questions.  This is one of them.  The other is how to fix the New York Times.  There’s the monetary economy, and the non-monetary economy.  Your options were to exit or throwing advertising at it. Now, we’re talking about making money now.  So there’s the Freemium model (have a portion free, a portion paid for).  So, who’s going to pay?  Consumers or advertisers?  The ability for Twitter to raise some brands in standing is actually worth it.  Maybe that’s where advertisers can come in.  For Twitter, I think charge companies somehow, and build from there.  How do you create the version of the product that people will pay for without crippling the base product?  How much loyalty and stickiness do you have?

Guy: How would you change Wired Magazine if you could?

Chris: Paper still matters.  I believe in books.  What content adds value to the internet is the question.  Paper that is high productive value, 8000 words, high-quality photos… that works better on paper.  But that’s not all we do.  We have multiple forms.

Guy: I tried to get my editor to offer Reality Check for free in .pdf form, and it was like hitting a wall.

Chris: My editors are great, and they knew what they were signing up for when we started working together.  I wanted to be able to experiment in publishing.

Guy: Conceptually, most entrepreneurs think that, now, monetizing popularity is hard.  Do you think monetizing popularity or achieving popularity is harder?

Chris: Monetizing.  I also think that the user has their own problems with monetizing their popularity.  Give your audience value, and then getting money from there… there’s no one way.  Everybody is trying new things and experimenting.  One of the key problems in publishing is misalignment of goals.  In the music industry, the only thing not working is the publishing portion.  The labels decided they needed to align their goals with the industry.  Seeing the world the same way that the artist will see it.  Books have a similar problem.  Publishers want to sell books, and doesn’t participate in all the other ways in which you’re selling yourself (speaking, different forms etc).  Maybe the publishers can align their interests with those goals and do something like offer full consulting services for an author.

Guy: Tell me about the book.

Chris: We have a love hate relationship with free.  20th century free is a world where the products have real costs.  Now we have a new kind of free.  The ability to produce this content at such a low cost makes it, basically, free.

Guy: I was in Shanghai the other day, and I bought your book already for 50 cents.  What can we learn from China where there are no copyright laws?

Chris: China is the future of free (and Brazil).  Free is the force of the digital era.  We have he first market where the marginal cost is close to zero, so the economic theory of bringing down price to marginal cost.  What is piracy?  It’s the animal force of Bertrand’s theory, it’s forcing you to bring down your price to free.  If you’re good, you use piracy to benefit you.  It’s produced and distributed for you, and creates a celebrity for you, and that’s where you monetize.

Guy:

Chris: You’ve described Wall’s Drug.  The people who bought this store in the 1950s, they needed to get people there, so they gave out free water to bring people in.  People would then buy other things.  You have to calibrate it.  You don’t want a bunch of free-loaders.  So you’ve have to do it so you get the appropriate conversion.  Free is very powerful.  Think about Zappos, they offer free shipping, and they take the risk out of experimentation, encourage you to try out shoes etc.

Guy: Why is free so much more attractive than something like 10 cents?

Chris: The penny gap.  There is a huge difference between zero and one penny.  There is a cognitive flag of realizing what money means in terms of value.  Offering zero doesn’t even raise that flag.  It’s not about the money, it’s about that flag and the fact that it makes you really analyze what you’re purchasing.

Guy: Is there any scenario, in the upcoming generation, that people will pay for digital music?

Chris: Sometimes, it’s easier.  It’s easier to get music off iTunes right now and pay 99 cents.

Guy: Is there any scenario where the fact that “cheap means it isn’t good” will come into play?

Chris: In general, no.  We’ve internalized that fact that there’s no excuse of sucking.  If something sucks, we will leave.  It’s not the metric we use in the digital worlds.  When dealing with you competitors, some of which might be paid-for, you have the issue of people importing their thoughts of the original service onto your product, with skepticism about the fact that you’re claiming to be them.

Guy: Psychologically, do you think people are more motivated by the fear of losing something they had, or the fear of not getting something that they could?

Chris: Great question.  We’re generally motivated more by thing that are negative.  Things that you don’t have are looming issues, that’s what traditional marketing deals with, but they never follow up by asking how you felt about it.  Free is great with this.  They let you decide how you feel about it before you commit the resources, and by the time you’re ready to pay, you (hopefully) love the product where you don’t even hesitate.  You don’t have the scenario of fearing losing something or not getting something.

Question: Do you really think “free” is healthful for our industry?

Chris: I don’t prescribe.  I’m observing and describing the economic conditions and trends.  I’m not saying that everything should be free.  It will be out there.  The book is about business models that are based around free.

Question: How does this apply to the luxury brand market and the non-profit sector?

Chris: You have two ends of the spectrum.  Luxury is an interesting space. It’s a classic Long Tail model, where the smallest percentage of the population pay the highest portion of the price.  Free exists here, you can get the cheap version or the expensive version.  And the existence of the cheap version makes the luxury brand more desirable.

How do you feel about the free model?

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A response to Umair Haque

22 May 2008 in Uncategorized by Kate | View Comments

I wanted to respond to Umair Haque’s blog posting of last night after a night of thinking. There are a few things I’d like to say.

1) I admire Umair and respect his thoughts on where business is going today. It’s something I also feel strongly about, and, for the most part, agree with him on. In fact, one of my own professional goals is to address many of the issues that Umair does in his blogs.

2) That being said, you can read the comments to his post, including mine, on how they people about his recent tone. No need to address further.

Most importantly, however, I’d like to amend my original Tweet/comment, and give Umair a little credit (Twitter doesn’t offer a whole lot of space to do so). He didn’t post his almost immediate response to my Tweet, which was a statement allowing me to feel the way I felt, but also included a question about what it was that was turning me off to his blog. That, combined with his post, led me to the following thoughts on him (keep in mind, I have never met him, although would like to):

“This guy is legit. He expressed himself passionately, held true to his beliefs, but was consequently very open to being received respectfully by the very audience to which he’s communicating. He accepted constructive criticism (and my criticism could very well have not been taken constructively), opened up the floor for more, explained himself, but did not give up what he does feel strongly about. Since the time when I could be a judge of character, this has always gotten a thumb’s up in my book.”

It also made me really think about my own presence. This is what else I came up with:

“Here I am, new to the scene. Sure, I have an MBA and an MA, some might call me bright, but I’m soft. Most of the time, I’m too soft. I read many of the top blogs, from Umair, to Guy K, to Tara, to Pam, to Chris and so on, and I think to myself that I don’t know “it” like they do. I have strong thoughts, but what do I know? Sure again, I’m starting up a company because I want to do something I truly love, but boy I still have a lot of proving to do! I should give Umair more credit than I did. He isn’t afraid to come out and say it. Darnit Kate, maybe you can learn something from him.”

And so, I will. While I do hope that Umair communicates his thoughts in a less abrasive way (I tend to give more credence to passionate, well-communicated, but non-confrontational thoughts…), I also hope that he doesn’t compromise the strength with which he puts those thoughts forward. In other words, keep up the passion, but just change the method.

This is where my own change comes in. I am going to make a personal effort to unsoften myself a bit. To express the passion that I do have about these issues and be confident in the ideas in my head that I know are good ones.

And to end, a personal note to Umair:

I will meet you halfway between these two extremes, perhaps someday in person, but at least here. At that point, I stand true to my comment last night and would like to help….. actually, my new mindset begs another word…. I would like to collaborate…. And get things done, ideas communicated and people on board. Until then, I will kick myself in the butt a little harder. Thank you.

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