A Microsoft Evangelist’s BlogPosts RSS
A marriage is not an easy relationship by any means. The stresses of children, finances, families, and a shared living space (and many more) wears on the partnership and causes tension and friction. It takes work and a lot of communication to make it successful. But in addition to constant effort and communication, I think there are two other critical factors - tolerance and shared vision/values. (source)
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Posted in Marketing Thought, Quote on Jun 29th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
Any time you can successfully bring together people who have a reputation or skill with people who sell things, you’re creating value. If you find an appropriate scale, it can become a sustainable, profitable business.
(source)
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"…intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs — in other words, it’s your alternatives that matter. That’s how we make all of our decisions. " (source)
[a smart person scans] the world trying to get his opportunity cost as high as he can so that his individual decisions are better.” (source)
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In the morning I review the newspapers, national and international, and watch the morning news. I pay attention to anything that might have an effect on my many businesses and make mental notes about that. It gets my mind going for what I need to address that day, and gives insight into developing situations that might also affect my businesses in the future. This provides an immediate focus. – Donald Trump (source)
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總有一天，你不會再做你此刻正在做的事。想想此刻你在這個世界所處的一隅，是什麼模樣，再想想看當你離開時，你希望它又會是什麼模樣。
- 唐納.歐基
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BILL GATES JR.: Well, Paul had spotted this computer on a chip, the microprocessor, and we’d been talking about that for several years. And he had encouraged me, hey, let’s start a company, let’s start a company. Well, I was under some pressure to go to school and do — you know, be semi-normal. So he came back to Boston to keep convincing me we should do it. 當年 Paul Allen 比 Bill Gates 更急於創立公司。
…but Meg called Mary and said, gee, I have houseguests at my place on Bainbridge Island, and Warren Buffett and Kay Graham. And I have a weekend ahead, and I wondered if maybe we could come visit you at your place on the water. And we said, sure, that would really be fun. I mean, who would want to pass up the possibility of a day with those two? And the interesting next point, of course, is we called Bill. Actually, Mary called Bill and said, you know, we have this wonderful overnight ahead.
WILLIAM GATES SR.: And he said, “Mother, that’s a Friday. On Friday, we work at Microsoft.” And she persisted a bit as she was prone to do, and he said, OK, OK, I’ll come over for a couple hours in the afternoon. And he came for a couple of hours and he never left. He got so involved in these wonderful conversations with Warren. And you know, to this day, that beginning was an indication of just what a great amount they had in common.
BILL GATES JR.: Oh, it was one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me. It was July 5th, 1991. I had taken part of Thursday off because that was July 4th, and I was going to work on Friday. There was some important work to get done. But I ceded to my mom’s strong request and then I met Warren, and you know, he and I just started talking. And he asked me questions I had always wanted somebody to ask, you know, which showed a lot of understanding, of, OK, why did IBM do this and why didn’t other computer companies do that? And it just started a conversation that continues to this day about the fascinating world of business. Bill Gates 和 Warren Buffett 第一次見面的經典橋段，相信大家多少都有聽過，這次由 Gates 父子口述這段過往，更添加了真實性。
CHARLIE ROSE: There was I think if my memory serves me, you asked a question about what is the most important quality in a life, and several people said I think — either Warren or you said, focus. And you looked around and the other was shaking his head in affirmation, yes? WILLIAM GATES SR.: That’s right. BILL GATES JR.: Being maniacal about something is very helpful. 不只要專注，而且要到偏執狂 (maniacal) 的境界。
BILL GATES JR.: …So early reading lets you imagine all these situations and start to think of yourself. You know, could I ever run a business? Could I ever discover something in science? And I do think some positive reinforcement — hey you, you’re clever, you can do these things — at a young age takes you a long way, and then — and this is a great time to be a curious person. You know, you go online, get DVD courses. 讀書帶來想像的空間；想像的空間帶來人生更多可能。小時後讀(過)什麼，真的會大大影響到往後的興趣、志向、甚至是整個下半輩子。
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you have a role model in your life beyond your father? BILL GATES JR.: I’d say Warren Buffett as the closest thing I have to a role model. CHARLIE ROSE: Because? BILL GATES JR.: Because of the integrity and thoughtfulness and joy he brings to everything he does. You know, I’m continuing to learn from my dad, I’m continuing to learn from Warren, and many times when I’m making decisions, I try and model how they’d approach a problem. 除了父親，Gates 人生的另一位楷模就是 Warren Buffett。
(source)
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During the 1999 stock bubble, Jeff says he kept telling employees "Don’t feel 30% smarter because the stock is up 30% this month, because you’ll have to feel 30% dumber when it goes down."
"One of the differences between founder/entrepreneurs and financial managers is that founder/entrepreneurs are stubborn about the vision of the business, and keep working the details. The trick to being an entrepreneur is to know when to be stubborn and when to be flexible. The trick for me is to be stubborn about the big things."
"We’ve made many errors. People over-focus on errors of commission. Companies over-emphasize how expensive failure’s going to be. Failure’s not that expensive….The big cost that most companies incur are much harder to notice, and those are errors of Omission.
(source)
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People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn’t fit with what they already know.
- Jessica Livingston
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Because marketers were raised on the scale of mass—TV, radio, newspapers—they have a churn and burn mentality. The internet turns this upside down. The internet is about who, not how many. The internet lets you take really good care of 100 people instead of harassing 2,000.
Yet, panicked marketers still look for scale (How many followers can we get? What can we do with a Facebook fan page?) and then hijack that attention, hoping to filter out the masses and get a few sales.
Scalejacking inevitably tarnishes most communities, because individuals (people) hate being treated like numbers just standing by to be filtered.
On the Internet, the mantra that works is, "Be with the ones you love (and the ones that love you.)" Ignore everyone else. It doesn’t have good internal pentameter, but it’s true.
(source)
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After this publishing titan pleaded for advice about how to build his own community, Zuckerberg’s reply was, in full: “You can’t.”
Full stop. Hard stare.
He later offered more advice. He told the assembled media moguls that they were asking the wrong question. You don’t start communities, he said. Communities already exist. They’re already doing what they want to do. The question you should ask is how you can help them do that better.
His prescription: Bring them “elegant organization.”
- Jeff Jarvis, What Would Google Do
…這位媒體大亨懇切尋求如何建立社群的忠告後，薩克柏僅簡短回答一句：「你做不到。」
句號。無情的鄙視。
後來他終於提出更多建言。他告訴在場的媒體群雄，他們問的問題根本就不對。你根本不可能開始一個社群，他說。社群本來就存在，正在做著他們想做的事。你該問的問題是，你如何幫社群做得更好。
他開得處方式：給他門「優雅的組織」。
讓我們仔細咀嚼他所說的話。優雅的組織。仔細想想，這正是薩克柏帶給哈佛和其他大學，以及之後擴及全球的社交平台Facebook所做到的。在薩克柏來到之前，哈佛的社群已存在超過三百年了，薩克柏只是幫助這個社群做得更好…
(source)
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But I very much believe in leaps of faith. Every investment we make, every person we back, every strategy we concoct in partnership with the entrepreneurs we back is a leap of faith.
Wikipedia says that a leap of faith is:
the act of believing in something without, or in spite of, available empirical evidence
- Fred wilson (source)
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So it seems to me that consumers are driven to new experiences that are simple and useful and/or entertaining.
- Fred Wilson (source)
能夠帶來娛樂效果的東西就有機會吸引 (一般) 消費者。人除了有吃喝拉撒睡的需求外，還有渴望被娛樂的需求。
同理可證: 宅男交女朋友 Rule 101: be interesting, bringing entertainment to the girl you like. 而不是修電腦。修電腦完全無法滿足上述五種需求的任何一種 :P。
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說道的人多，悟道的人少。 知道 的人多，行道的人少。
- 達摩大師傳
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抱持著懷疑心態看待更年輕的世代，也是人類的本性。無論是聖奧古斯汀、亞里斯多德、荷馬、甚至是古亞述人，都曾在他們所屬的世代，譴責年輕人不夠尊重長者、生性懶惰，責備他們任性不守規矩，表現得不像是 [在美好往日裡] 的人。
- 唐納．基歐
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對員工而言，艾倫公司是個福利國家，對公司經營者而言，則是殘酷的資本主義制度。
- 賀伯特.艾倫
不過 Allen & Company 只有一兩百名員工，再加上又是IB，難怪有辦法像福利國家經營。
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如果你沒有問對問題，那麼世界上所有的研究都毫無意義。
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If Google’s power over the web wanes, and I think it will in time, it will not likely be the result of Microsoft or someone else replacing it as the default search service. It will be because new default functions emerge that lessen the number of times we want to use the search function. (source)
想想我們還真的有不少 ”default” 的網路使用行為。看新聞都固定去哪個網站? 買東西都固定去哪個網站? 找朋友都固定去哪個網站? 收信都固定去哪個網站? 寫部落格都固定去哪個網站? 聽音樂看影片都固定去哪個網站?
成為 default bahavior 的終點，你就贏了。創造大眾新的 default behavior ，你就打敗G.Y.M. 之流了。
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…as the quality of search engines has approached parity. Sure, there are no switching costs, and it’s easy to simply type in a new web address should a better engine come along, but the psychological pull of the leading brand in the space overrides those factors for many consumers. (source)
突然想起我們常說搜尋引擎使用上的「轉換成本」 (user從搜尋引擎A. 換到搜尋引擎B. ) 很低，只要網址輸入一下，或滑鼠點幾下即可。但這似乎只是表象。我們都忽略了一個另一個看不見的隱性成本 — 習慣。習慣所帶來的束縛力量恐怕不是學理上 ”perceived value” 可以衡量的。
難怪小時候都走同一條路上學…
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感謝 Donald Trump 熱情分享:
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Posted in Management Thought, Microsoft, Quote, Thought on May 17th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
老實說一年多來很少見到 Ballmer 談企管心法的文章，總算昨天 (2009/5/16) 紐約時報 Corner Office 專欄請來 Ballmer 暢談想法，這不完整收錄一下是不行的啊！
開始之前，先節錄本日佳句：
Q: How do you assess job candidates?
A: … I try to figure out sort of a combination of I.Q. and passion. I just ask somebody to tell me what they’ve done that they are really proud of and tell me about it. And if it’s something you are proud of, you should be able to answer any question I can come up with, at least at a level that would satisfy my interest. I ought to be able to see your passion. It might be quiet passion; it might be bubbly passion. But I should be able to sense that you are one of those people who just sort of throws themselves into things.
好，訪談全文開始：
This interview of Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive of Microsoft, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. Are there areas you want to improve as a leader?
A. I race too much. My brain races too much, so even if I’ve listened to everything somebody said, unless you show that you’ve digested it, people don’t think they are being well heard. Sometimes you really don’t hear because you’re racing. It’s just the way my brain works. My brain is just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And so, if you really want to get the best out of people, you have to really hear them and they have to feel like they’ve been really heard. So I’ve got to learn to slow down and improve in that dimension, both to make me better and to make the people around me better.
Q. What’s it like to be in a meeting run by Steve Ballmer?
A. I’ve changed that, really in the last couple years. The mode of Microsoft meetings used to be: You come with something we haven’t seen in a slide deck or presentation. You deliver the presentation. You probably take what I will call “the long and winding road.” You take the listener through your path of discovery and exploration, and you arrive at a conclusion.
That’s kind of the way I used to like to do it, and the way Bill [Gates] used to kind of like to do it. And it seemed like the best way to do it, because if you went to the conclusion first, you’d get: “What about this? Have you thought about this?” So people naturally tried to tell you all the things that supported the decision, and then tell you the decision.
I decided that’s not what I want to do anymore. I don’t think it’s productive. I don’t think it’s efficient. I get impatient. So most meetings nowadays, you send me the materials and I read them in advance. And I can come in and say: “I’ve got the following four questions. Please don’t present the deck.” That lets us go, whether they’ve organized it that way or not, to the recommendation. And if I have questions about the long and winding road and the data and the supporting evidence, I can ask them. But it gives us greater focus.
Q. How do you assess job candidates?
A. If they come from inside the business, the best predictor of future success is past success. It’s not 100 percent, but it’s a reasonable predictor. For an external candidate, what I’ve found is that reference checks are super-important. I didn’t used to believe so much in reference checks. You can always get somebody to say something nice about you. But the truth is, if you ask enough questions and you ask around, you can really get a profile of who’s accomplished various things and who hasn’t.
And I try to figure out sort of a combination of I.Q. and passion. I just ask somebody to tell me what they’ve done that they are really proud of and tell me about it. And if it’s something you are proud of, you should be able to answer any question I can come up with, at least at a level that would satisfy my interest. I ought to be able to see your passion. It might be quiet passion; it might be bubbly passion. But I should be able to sense that you are one of those people who just sort of throws themselves into things.
Q. Is there a skill or qualification or trait that you’re looking for in prospective hires that didn’t matter as much 10 years ago?
A. Mostly, I’m still looking for what I’ve always looked for: extremely smart and talented people who love to work hard, who are passionate about technology and who have a great foundation in math and science. But compared to 10 years ago, technology is more complex, products and services span people’s lives in new ways, and our business is much more global. So it’s more important that people can think outside the confines of their individual expertise and their product group and connect the dots between technologies, customer needs and markets in new ways.
Q. What’s the most challenging part of your job?
A. Finding the right balance between optimism and realism. I’m an optimist by nature, and I start from the belief that you can always succeed if you have the right amount of focus combined with the right amount of hard work. So I can get frustrated when progress runs up against issues that should have been anticipated or that simply couldn’t have been foreseen. A realist knows that a certain amount of that is inevitable, but the optimist in me always struggles when progress doesn’t match my expectations.
Q. Fill in the blank. You want the culture of your company to be more _____ ?
A. Efficient. The right word is efficient. That’s the direction that every business leader is steering their company culture toward right now. Given the current economic climate and the uncertainty about how long the recession will last, this is a time when organizations need to do more with less, and Microsoft is no exception. We’ve made good progress, but for a company that has grown every year for more than 30 years, learning how to operate under more constrained circumstances is not always that easy.
At the same time, the need to be more efficient drives us all toward sharper focus on what is important and what can truly move the needle in terms of meeting customer needs and taking market share. Of course, we need to be innovative, but we also need to be efficient.
Q. Any books on management and leadership that you’ve found particularly useful?
A. Jim Collins’s book “Built to Last.”
Q. In all the speeches you’ve given, is there a favorite line or story or passage or quotation?
A. In February I was invited to share my business perspective on the economic downturn with House Democrats at their annual retreat. In that speech, I got to share something that my dad always told me growing up, which is a simple piece of advice that really shaped my approach to life and to business.
My dad worked for Ford for 30 years. When I was a kid, he’d say: “If you’re going to do a job, do a job. If you’re not going to do a job, don’t do a job.” What he meant was, if you really want to accomplish anything, you have to be committed, motivated, tenacious and smart about what you do. That’s really just the essence of the American work ethic, but it’s one of the most important things I ever learned.
Q. If you had to choose another profession, what would it be?
A. Education, probably. I like working with young people, and I think it’s really important to encourage talent. I love basketball, so I could see myself as a high school basketball coach. I think a basketball team that I coached would have a really good chance of being a winner.
Q. What would you like business schools to focus on more, or less?
A. I’d like to see more emphasis on the importance of taking the long view. Companies focus too much on short-term results in business. It takes patience to build a great business, and sometimes you have to be willing to make the long-term investment and then keep at it if you want to succeed.
Q. If you could teach any b-school course, including one that you create, what would it be?
A. Leadership. Microsoft has grown from 30 people to more than 90,000 since I started, so I’ve had the chance to play a leadership role at practically every stage imaginable in a company’s growth and development. I’ve learned a lot about leadership along the way from some great people that I’ve worked with and through experience.
I’ve come to believe that to be a great leader, you have to combine thought leadership, business leadership and great people management. I think most people tend to focus more on one of those three. I used to think it was all about thought leadership. Some people think it’s all about your ability to manage people. But the truth is, great leaders have to have a mix of those things.
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Google has a number of explanations for why it plays fair, which it’s been sharing in a presentation called "Google, Competition and Openness." For one, the company likes to say its competition is "just one click away." In other words, there’s nothing really preventing users from switching to another search engine - aside from sheer habit - if they want to find better results. As proof, Google points to an incident from January 31 when a Google coding error affected all of its search results and users shifted search engines immediately… (source)
這真的是一個有趣的論點，如果使用者從市占率過高的產品專移到競爭品幾乎無障礙，這樣還算是壟斷嗎?
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When making a choice between two options, only consider what’s going to happen in the future, not which investments you’ve made in the past. The past investments are over, lost, gone forever. They are irrelevant to the future. – (source)
Obsession of the past makes you a lame decision-maker.
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Posted in Marketing Thought, Quote on May 6th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
這句我也很喜歡：”Once you build a network, it’s extremely difficult for someone else to disrupt it.” 站在能量守恆定律的立場，這很公平。我們看到的各種 network 效應都是用數千小時心力去經營出來的，然而從旁觀者的角度來看，network effect 似乎是擺在那邊就會自己匯聚成型一般。所以通常故事結局都是這樣：眼紅的競爭者看到亮麗結果，也想跳進去模仿 (衝阿！社群無敵！衝阿！網路無敵！)，但俯衝之際就被進入門檻拌了一跤。嘿，沒想到進入門檻這般高。有多高？大概有三、四層樓那麼高。
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The iPod stemmed losses in the music industry. The Kindle gave beleaguered book publishers a reason for optimism. — Now the recession-ravaged newspaper and magazine industries are hoping for their own knight in shining digital armor … (source)
NY Times 記者鋪這些梗 (& beautifully written) 就只為帶出明天可能會公佈的新版 Amazon Kindle - 大螢幕版。大螢幕代表什麼呢？代表可以把閱讀雜誌、閱讀報紙的經驗複製到電子裝置中。上週末巴菲特才公開表示他獨愛的報業已經走到 change or goodbye 的境界了。全球書迷們都在猜 Kindle 最後會成為出版業的銀鎧王子，或是屠城木馬 :D。
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市場是什麼？那是叢林法則，大自然法則。而文明又是什麼呢？是對抗大自然。
- 伊多瓦.巴拉度, 前法國保守派總理
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Posted in Investment, Quote on May 1st, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
本來只是因為上篇文章需要，找了一下葛老的名言：非理性繁榮 (irrational exuberance )
…But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade… (source)
一時手滑又找到耶魯大學教授席勒所著的同名書籍<非理性繁榮>簡介，在書中第六章驚見「台灣」兩字： 我們的市場竟有幸被拿來做 case study XD
台湾的股民在90年股市泡沫破灭之后，历经多次股市三温暖的洗礼，对本书的感受想必更深。席勒在书中第六章写道，台湾的几次股价大跌，都名列世界前茅，1989到90年股市跌落74.9﹪，为那年最大跌幅国家中的世界第一；五年期股市跌幅较大国家中，台湾也分列第七名与第27名。不过，台湾的投资者似乎一直没有从失败中汲取教训，政府也一直认为“股市兴亡，官员有责”，带给投资人一个“股市会涨，不会跌，如果真的下跌，政府会出面救”的错误观念，股市的机制也以助涨不助跌的原则来规划。但台湾的投资泡沫一直不断地破了又吹、吹了又破，真正的原因是政府所扮演的角色有问题，可惜的是当前的股市已经跌到似乎国安基金也无能为力的地步了，投资人必须正视市场机制的存在，这时，席勒的书就更有用了。(source)
政府該不該介入市場，何時介入，採什麼方法介入，實在不是我們凡人能夠瞭解的。遙想去年10 月崩盤，台灣政府頒布的組合套餐：上沖下洗3.5 啪，搭配禁止放空令不沾醬，結果是造成無量下跌，一堆權值股每天開盤就跌停鎖死，實在是經典啊！
不過上文段落出自大陸的互動百科，席勒實際在書中是輕描淡寫帶過台灣，還是深入剖析，就待閒暇時再去一窺究竟囉。
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Suits, for example. Suits do not help people to think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their bathrobe to make a cup of coffee. That’s when you have ideas.
– P. G.
非理性繁榮的觀念是有一天早晨，我在浴缸裡準備演講搞時想出來的。至今，我有許多好點子都是在浴缸裡想出來的。多年來，我的助理已經習慣看著浸濕的黃色貼紙上狗爬似的草稿打字 — 直到我們找到一種墨水不會暈開的筆之後，這個艱鉅任務才變得比較輕鬆。在泡澡中，我很高興我能像阿基米德一樣思考全世界。
– 艾倫.葛林斯潘
誰來多提撥幾筆預算，買套好浴缸好睡袍送給這群對我們生活有重大影響力的人呢？如果當初阿宅工程師都穿西裝，現在大概連 Weblog 的觀念都不會有人提了，更不用說其他新媒體。可惜沒穿西裝的人創造的新東西，最後要賣錢時，又是交給一群穿西裝的；行銷部門的存在，就是為了要消彌西裝與點子之間的距離…
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…These media companies used to be the distributors and creators of content. But now they are just the creators and they will never get back to a position of being a distributor unless they become "tapeworms" (means contet aggregators) too. (source)
台灣還有多少人直接到 portal 看新聞，而不是透過各種間接資訊彙整工具/資訊彙整服務呢？
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威尼斯，我瞭解，是創造性破壞的反證。她是靠靠保存與欣賞過去而生存，不是靠創造未來。但這點，我瞭解，正是關鍵之所在。這座城市除了美麗與浪漫以之外，還提供人們對安定與及永恆的深沈需求。威尼斯受歡迎，代表著人類矛盾性格中的一端：一個慾望想要增加物質享受，另一個欲望卻想要逃避改變，及逃避改變所伴隨而來的壓力，掙扎在這二個欲望之間。
- 艾倫.葛林斯潘, 我們的新世界, P.213
前聯準會主席葛林斯潘以說話模糊難懂聞名，但很少看到他展現出感性。上面這段話，是他在回憶錄中，想起 1997 年與第二任妻子到威尼斯蜜月旅行的感觸。他一生中有大半都在為提昇美國人民物質生活而努力；熊彼得所提出的 <創造性破壞> 在書中多次出現，他與聯準會委員也相信，創造性破壞是產生一次次社會財富重新分配的關鍵。然而，他卻在威尼斯找到「無創造」、「無破壞」，也能帶來附加價值的反證
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Posted in Management Thought, Quote on Apr 22nd, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
It’s hard to judge the young because (a) they change rapidly, (b) there is great variation between them, and (c) they’re individually inconsistent. That last one is a big problem. When you’re young, you occasionally say and do stupid things even when you’re smart. So if the algorithm is to filter out people who say stupid things, as many investors and employers unconsciously do, you’re going to get a lot of false positives.
– P. G.
組織文化、歷史包袱，基本上決定了這個 “algorithm”，但 people maager 有權力加入 parameters 來影響最後產出結果。
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Posted in Investment, Quote on Apr 7th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
What really motivates investors, even big VCs, is not the hope of good returns, but the fear of missing out. - P.G.
「大家都上轎了，只有我還沒上轎，左想右想，這怎麼行，還是跟著一起上轎好了。」
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Almost everyone’s initial plan is broken. If companies stuck to their initial plans, Microsoft would be selling programming languages, and Apple would be selling printed circuit boards. In both cases their customers told them what their business should be– and they were smart enough to listen. – P.G.
變化趕不上聽話。
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Ever heard of Philo Farnsworth? He invented television. The reason you’ve never heard of him is that his company was not the one to make money from it. The company that did was RCA, and Farnsworth’s reward for his efforts was a decade of patent litigation.
– Paul Graham
這個故事告訴我們，以後只要聽到有人說「ooo 就是aaa公司發明的啊」，就該馬上停下手邊工作，向原發明人(團隊)默哀，向這間公司的行銷部門致敬。。
n年前聽說隨便找個台灣人問「什麼是網路？」還會有人回答，網路就是 (=) 雅虎奇摩阿！
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Facebook is deliberately not taking a lot of the kind of normal brand advertising that a lot of Web sites will take. So you go to a company like Yahoo, which is another fantastic business, and they have got these, you know, banner ads and brand ads all over the place. Facebook has made a strategic decision to not take a lot of that business in favor of building its own sort of more organic business model, and it’s still in the process of doing that.(Facebook, YouTube, Twitter等目前被批為沒獨到獲利模式的熱門網站，其實只要心一橫，讓廣告無孔不入，就能賺到輕鬆錢。)
MARC ANDREESSEN: Twenty million people lined up in 1998 and decided they wanted to start using Napster to listen to music. If there had been a “buy the CD” button there or “buy the digital track,” it would been a gigantic new source of revenue for the music industry, and the music industry would be far healthier today. And so when you get huge numbers of people lining up to do something, in my view, you figure out how to take advantage of that. (音樂產業是一個創造潮流的產業，但只要扯上和business model有關的議題，就一點也跟不上潮流，甚至逆勢而為。全因為 音樂產業 / 唱片公司內部正由一群官僚當權。)
CHARLIE ROSE: How many networks do I want to belong to? There’s LinkedIn, there’s Facebook, there’s on and on and on and on. MARC ANDREESSEN: I would say how many things do you care about in your life? CHARLIE ROSE: Oh, man. MARC ANDREESSEN: How many things are you into, right? CHARLIE ROSE: I don’t want to belong to that many social networks (因為我們無法同時關注太多獨立的社群網絡，Social networking site發展到最後不是被一兩家壟斷 (telecom model)，就是發展出百家爭鳴，但可輕易互通資料的龐大結構(Internet model)。)
So the big thing is, is mobile has arrived. And so you know, you have these technology trends that people talk about and talk about and talk about and talk about, and they never quite happen, and then all of a sudden, they happen, and they are a big deal. The Internet was like that. The Internet took off in ‘94, ‘95. The Internet has been getting built for 25 years up to that point, but it took off in ‘95. (中國人說，一件事情要有天時、地利、人和才能大成功；一種新科技也是如此。西元兩千年mobile網路應用被炒過一波，但那時頻寬與硬體技術都不夠稱頭，這次呢？關鍵性的硬體出現了沒？關鍵性的收費制度出現了沒？關鍵性的應用模式出現了沒？)
And then the other significant thing is, now that the iPhone is successful, it paves the way, much like the Macintosh paved the wave for Windows PCs, it paves the way for another set of companies, whether it’s Microsoft or RIM or, you know, dozens of others, or start-ups, to create new devices. ( XD 我也不知道說什麼好。)
That thing, I mean, the Kindle does books and magazines and newspapers, but that form factor and that shape of a device and that weight in a couple of years is going to be doing video, it’s going to be doing music, it’s going to be doing video conferencing. It’s going to be doing telephony. It’s going to be doing Web browsing. It’s going to be doing everything, right? And so that’s the next — one of the fascinating things is that’s the next screen size and the next killer device, I think, is what’s going to happen. (之前才聽說ASUS要暫時把注意力移開7吋小筆電，把未來一兩年重心放在10到12吋的螢幕機型。但Marc Andreessen 卻認為像Kindle那樣「穠纖合度」的「7吋薄片」，將有機會成為下一波行動裝置主流。我想他說的有可能會實現，但除非是這些平台跳過既有的作業系統 (?!) - 跳過這些操作介面、運算架構都是基於大螢幕，基於「個人電腦」設計的作業系統。站在未來數位裝置將朝specialized發展的立場來看，如果廠商口袋夠深，能重新開發出針對重要「應用情境最佳化」的作業系統，則螢幕不管大小，都能解決消費者嫌速慢，字太小、鍵盤太擠的怨念。)
And I actually think what we need — and I think the Valley can play a role in this — I think there should be a new wave of financial institutions that should be created from scratch today. And they should take the role. And so instead of trying to figure out how to unwind some big bank that’s under water and hundreds of billions of dollars insolvent, let’s create a whole bunch of new ones. And by the way, let’s have them all be new and online. So, instead of having all this physical infrastructure and all these old systems and all these ATMs and all this stuff, let’s do it purely online, purely Internet banks, purely virtual, much lower cost structure. (是時候該有個同時懂金融體系和網路產業的人出來開天闢地了。Mint、Prosper、Zopa 只是consumer金融市場的一個起點。)
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All quotes are paraphrased:
Charlie Rose asked: “what’s the original business model of Google?”
Eric Schmidt: “Larry and Sergey tried to sell the search technology just invented to all of the then powerful Internet companies, but everyone turned them down. They said we don’t know how to work with you, you’re too young, that sort of things.”
When talking about percentage of advertising revenues to total revenues, Eric Schmidt said “98%. We’re an advertising company.” “Today, our strategy is search, ads, and apps.”
On acquisition, “We’re not going to buy anything in the short term (including Twitter). Partly because I think the prices are still too high.” (my thought: the (perceived) valuations of U.S. hot startups shrinked quite a bit recently. Is the “too high” simply indicates that Eric Schmidt is not confident enough about the economy outlook?)
Joke time: “The vast majority of the photographs people taken with their phones are kept in the phones because they can’t get them out of them.” “We’re going to solve that problem.”
Eric Schmidt: “One of the things I like to see in the future is that Google (& YouTube) as the “politicians BS detector.”
“95% of ads served on Google are text ads”
“Contextual ads are not the only way for user-generated content monetization, think about micropayment. Say you have millions of audiences, 2 cents, 5 cents per view will be quite lucrative. We’ re seeing related technologies and tools being developed in the industry, and I think they are likely to be successful.”
Charlie Rose asked about what’s on the edge? Eric Schmidt: “If you’re willing to give Google more information about you, i.e. interest, background, etc., Google will do more for you. Say, you’re on a street with your GPS-enabled phone, and Google should search for and tell you what you may be interested in nearby, automatically.” “Imagine that the people, the phone, and the constant search create a narrative stream.”
“We work in a technology where prices are improving.”
More philosophical talks on the latter part: “Press the ‘off-button’ — just because I have access to all (crisis) information doesn’t mean I have to worry about all of them.”
Also a very interesting question in the end asked by Charlie Rose: “Are people in technology different?” Eric Schmidt: “Technologists as a group tend to be more analytical, data-driven, more personally liberal, more willingly to tolerate the difference among people, more global in their focus…People in technology believe that they can create a whole new business…believe they can change the world from technology.”
And there you go: the full interview video
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Posted in English Posts, Marketing Thought, Quote on Mar 10th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
Since the measure of a technology’s success is how invisible it becomes, the best long-term strategy is to develop products and services that can be ignored. (source)
Visibility – short term success – marketing
Invisibility – long term success – core value
The strategy you’re pursuing is visibility or invisibility?
If you’re a manger or founder, would you rather make yourself more invisible than visible within an organization?
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All quotes are paraphrased.
Charlie Rose asked Marissa Mayer, “what’s the next big thing?” She said, “cell phones plus social networking features.”
What’s the difference in Larry and Sergey?” “Sergey is very mathematical, he has very good memory at numbers, including employee stock options, salaries. And he’s looking into details of deals with other companies.” “Larry tends to be more about the product, the technology, the user interfaces, etc..”
The business model?” “Our revenue base is more diverse than it would originally seem, because we have advertisers from almost every sectors.”
“What’s the decision process of making the Android and G phone?” “First, find the right people and the right team.”. “Software companies should make software on the phones, not the hardware companies as most of them are doing now. (Charlie commented: this argument is very Microsoft-ish.)”
“When you hire new people, what factors you’re looking for?” “There are two key elements that are parts of all the very good people we have at Google, and that is ‘smart’ and ‘getting things done’.” “We’re also looking for people who are motivated to make positive impact on the world.”
“Base on our hiring regression model, we find background, past performances, and references are relatively good indicators.”
I can’t embed the interview video, so please check out the source if you want to see the full episode.
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(11:46)…Having lived through it (pancreas cancer), I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept: No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.
And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.
Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs can, why you cant’t?
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「出於本能會發現、迴避重大風險的人物，從來不曾碰過重大風險的人才，也在其中之列。」成功出線的人選必須展現「獨立的思考能力、情緒穩定性，而且深入了解人性與機構行為。」
- 巴菲特也會犯的錯 (Event Buffett Isn’t Perfect) , p.178
Over time, markets will do extraordinary, even bizarre, things. A single, big mistake could wipe out a long string of successes. We therefore need someone genetically programmed to recognize and avoid serious risks, including those never before encountered. Certain perils that lurk in investment strategies cannot be spotted by use of the models commonly employed today by financial institutions.
Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behavior is vital to long-term investment success. I’ve seen a lot of very smart people who have lacked these virtues.
- Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2006 Annual Shareholder Letter, p.16
The above, as basic traits of a qualified investor, rule universally. Those who can’t control their emotions and are clueless about organizational behaviors can’t, in the long run, survive in big corporations, needless to say being Buffett’s potential successors. We shall always stay aware that people’s perceptions of you is strongly correlated with your emotional appearance.
And remind your colleagues and friends, please.
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Too often, I hear about businesses that just might be a dream come true for their owners, but hardly for the people they seek to recruit or the customers they hope to snare. What do your prospects dream of? What would get them to wait in line? (source)
這讓我想起當初Bill Gates和Paul Allen創業時，除了是為了自己的夢想，也為一群熱愛迷你電腦的geek圓一個能獨立撰寫程式，不再被藍色巨人綁住的夢，
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Posted in Investment, Quote on Feb 26th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
“I don’t want to wind up being known as the Jerry Yang of this market (Internet/Search/Advertising),” said Ballmer, 52. “That whole episode left me understanding how shareholders can get frustrated with managements who aren’t serious about performance.” (source)
能操能算真用兵，快人快語真英雄。橫批：股東無敵。
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生活在富裕的西方世界，我們有時會忘記許多生活經驗本身就很虛擬。車裡聽的廣播，耳機傳送的音樂，回家時打開的電視，甚至是閱讀的書籍與報紙，都是在模仿人類的陪伴。我們可以選購和下載電影、音樂和書籍、觀賞線上電視、戴上耳機聽廣播。我們以自我為中心，利用科技選擇世界各地的知名人士相伴，卻忽略的身旁的普通人。
– 第二人生 (Second Lives), p.38
玩線上遊戲的理由千百種，寂寞是其中之一。
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在做一些關於Google PageRank的study時，發現這一段：
PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank[3]) and later Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine.
- source: Wikipedia on PageRank
所以PageRank中文我們不能叫做網頁排名法，要叫做佩吉排名法。(?!)
也趁精神好時，看一下一般人應該不會有興趣的簡化版PageRank演算法公式 (alert，這只是簡化版，較完整的版本還要加上調整係數，和random surfer的概念…)
PR(X)代表網站X的PageRank值，L(X)代表網站X的對外連結數量。由簡化公式可得，一個網站的PageRank值，來自於每個連結到此站的網頁PageRank值除以此網頁的對外連結數加總。
或請出西格馬大叔來進一步簡化公式：
用人類語言來說，就是先假設全宇宙只有A、B、C、、D四個網頁，其中網頁B、C、D各有一個對外連結連到網頁A。依照最原先PageRank的定義，網頁A的PageRank值，來自於網頁B、C、D個別的PageRank值加總。但網頁B、C、D貢獻的PageRank值還會被其他同樣在B、C、D網頁內的對外連結削弱，也就是說，假如網頁B除了有一個對外連結，連到網頁A，還有另外2個對外連結分別連到C與D，此時，網頁B貢獻給網頁A的PageRank值就要除以對外連結的總數，也就是除以3 (網頁B共有連到網頁A、網頁C、網頁D等3個對外連結)。
所以這個故事告訴我們：
1. 在一個網頁中，放很多out-going links，對自己站的SEO不會有太大影響 (incomming links仍大大影響網頁的authority分數)，但對於網站貢獻出去的PageRank值則有影響。
2. Google核心競爭力，建立在無人能攻破的演算法之上，想透過網路獲利或創業，你可也先想想是否也同樣有三兩三，再來考慮是否上梁山。
ps. PageRank只是Google評估一個網站搜尋結果排名的因素之一(畢竟PR值只有0到10，一堆同樣集中在2或3的網頁仍需要其他參數來分結果先後，但PR仍是一個決定性的因素)，其他推估影響網站搜尋引擎排名的因素，可以參考這個SEO影響因素一覽表。
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I am all for trying to protect the small inventor, but solo inventor who does not commercialize his/her technology does not bring nearly as much economic value (and jobs) to our society as the entrepreneur who actually takes the risk, starts the company, hires people, commercializes the technology, raises the necessary capital, and builds lasting sustainable value. (source)
商.業.化.三個字對一些人來說就像是會玷污人類[原始][高貴][情操]的…醬油，噢，別沾了，換個口味想想吧：商業化能快速把發明、創新的經濟價值回饋到社會。商業化讓價值的原持有人(賣方)有了動力把價值轉手讓出，商業化也讓價值的追尋者(買方)珍惜付出成本後所獲得的結果。一來一往， 前者是促進資源消費，後者是減少資源浪費。
支持開放原始碼暨想讓世界變更好的熱血才俊們可加減參考以上解盤，看就好，喜歡再下單。
Though this blog is powered by WordPress…
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Posted in Investment, Quote on Feb 13th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
本書最後3.5頁堪稱菁華，透過感性筆調完整呈現了Warren Buffett’s business of life。你可能沒有時間再重讀一次這本磚塊書，但最後這個段落，值得在雪球滾累時重拾回味。
When Warren was a little boy fingerprinting nuns and collecting bottle caps, he had no knowledge of what he would someday become. Yet as he rode his bike through Spring Valley, flinging papers day after day, and raced through the halls of The Westchester, pulse pounding, trying to make his deliveries on time, if you had asked him if he wanted to be the richest man on earth – with his whole heart, he would have said, Yes.
That passion had led him to study a universe of thousands of stocks. It made him borrowed into libraries and basements for records nobody else troubled to get. He sat up nights studying hundreds of thousands of numbers that would glaze anyone else’s eyes. He read every word of several newspapers each morning and sucked down the Wall Street Journal like his morning Pepsi, then Coke. He dropped in on companies, spending hours talking about barrels with the woman who ran the outpost of Grief Bros. Cooperage or auto insurance with Lorimer Davidson. He read magazines like the Progressive Grocer to learn how to stock a meat department. He stuffed the backseat of his car with Moody’s Manuals and ledgers on his honeymoon. He spent months reading old newspapers dating back a century to learn the cycles of business, the history of Wall Street, the history of capitalism, the history of the modern corporation. He followed the world of politics intensely and recognized how it affected business. He analyzed economic statistics until he had a deep understanding of what they signified. Since childhood, he had ready every biography he could find of people he admired, looking for the lessons he could leaned from their lives. he attached himself to everyone who could help him and coattailed anyone he could find who was smart. He ruled out paying attention to almost anything but business – art, literature, science, travel, architecture – so that he could focus on his passion. He defined a circle of competence to avoid making mistakes. To limit risk he never used any significant amount of debt. He never stop thinking about business, what made a good business, what made a bad business, how they competed, what make customers loyal to one versus another. He had an unusual way of turning problems around in his head, which gave him insight nobody else had. He developed a network of people – for the sake of his friendship as well as his sagacity – not only helped him but also stayed out of his way when he wanted them to. In hard times or easy, he never stopped thinking about way to make money. And all of his energy and intensity became the motor that powered his innate intelligence, temperament and skills.
Warren Buffer was a man who loves money, a man for whom the game of collecting it ran in his veins as his lifeblood. That love kept him going: buying little stocks like National America, selling GEICO to have to money to buy something cheaper, pushing at the boards of the companies like Sanborn Map to do the right thing for the shareholders. It had made him independent and competitive enough to want his own partnership and say no to the chance to be a junior partner to run Ben Graham’s old firm. It made him tough enough to shut down Dempster’s distribution center and fire Lee Dimon; it gave him the determination to break Seabury Stanton. It had tamed his impatience and made him listen when Charlie Munger insisted they buy great businesses, even though listing to other people against his very grain. It stiffened his will to survive the SEC investigation of Blue Chip and to break the strike at the Buffalo News. It made him an implacable acquirer. It also made him to lower his standards from time to time when his turf dried up. Yet it saved him from serious losses by keeping him from abandoning his margin of safety.
Warren Buffet was a timid man who shied from confrontation and needed people to cushion him from life’s rougher edges. His fear was personal, not financial; he was never timid when it comes to money. His passionate yearning to be rich gave him the courage to ride his bicycle past the house with the awful dog and throw those last few newspapers in Spring Valley. It sent him to Columbia, seeking Ben Graham, after Harvard turned him down. It made put one foot in front of the other, calling on people at prescriptionist, while they rejected him over and over. It gave him the strength to return to Dale Carnegie after losing his courage the first time. It forced through the decisions in the Salomon crisis to make his great withdrawal from the Bank of Reputation. It lent him the dignity to face years of almost intolerable criticism without counterattacking during the Internet Bubble. He had spent his life contemplating, limiting, and avoiding risk, but in the end he was braver then he realized himself.
Warren Buffett would never call himself courageous; he would cite his energy, focus, and temperament. Above all, he would describe himself as a teacher. All his adult like to had sought to live up to the values in him by his father: He said that Howard taught him that the “how” matters more than the “how much”. To hold his ruthlessness in check wasn’t an easy lesson for him. It helped that he was fundamentally honest – and he was possessed by the urge to preach. “He deliberately limited his money,” says Munger. “Warren would have made a lot more money if he hadn’t been carrying all those shareholders and had maintained the partnership longer, taking an override.” Compounded over thirty-three years, the extra money would have been worth many billions – tens of billions – to him. He could have bought and sold the businesses inside Berkshire Hathway with a cold calculation of their financial return without considering how he felt about the people involved. He could have become a buying king. He could have promoted and lent his name to all sorts of ventures. “In the end, ” says Munger, “he didn’t want to do it. He was competitive, but he was never just rawly competitive with no ethics. He wanted to live life a certain way, and it gave him a public record and a public platform. And I would argue that Warren’s life was worked out better this way.”
It was the will to share what he knew in an act of sheer generosity that made him spend months writing his annual letter to the shareholders; his joy in showmanship that made him want a mobile home at his shareholder meeting; his pixieish sense of fun that led him to endorse a mattress. It was his Inner Scorecard that made him cling to his margin of safety. It was pure love that turned him into what Munger called “a learning machine.” It was his handpicking skill that let him use the knowledge to figure out what the future might bring. It was his urge to preach that made him want to warn the world of dangers to come.
When Warren reached his seventy-seventh birthday, he mused that he had lived one-third of the lifespan of the United States, His age weighed on him; it was getting harder for him to read all day long the way he used to, since one of his eyes was getting a little weak. So he read more efficiently, He had finally gave in and agreed to wear hearing aids. His voice turned gravelly faster then it once did. He tired more easily. But his business judgment was still quick and sharp. He wished he could have the next ten years’ worth newspapers delivered to his doorstep right now. The years ahead weren’t endless, but with luck they could be long. Trees don’t grow to the sky, but he wasn’t scraping the horizon yet. Another new person, another investment, another idea always waited for him. The things left to learn far exceeded what he already knew.
“The snowball just happens if you’re in the right kind of snow, and that what happened with me. I don’t just mean compounding money either. It’s in terms of understanding the world and what kind of friends you accumulate. You get to select over time, and you’ve got to be the kind of person that the snow wants to attach itself to. you’ve got to be your own wet snow, in effect. You’d better be picking up snow as you go along, because you’re not going to be getting back up to the top of the hill again. That’s the way life works.”
The snowball he had created so carefully was enormous by now. Yet his attitude toward it remained the same. However many birthdays lay ahead, he would always be astonished each time the calendar turned, and as long as he lived, he would never stop feeling like a sprout. For he wasn’t looking backward to the top of the hill. It was a big world, and he was just starting out.
The Snowball, Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, P. 827 ~ P. 830
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Posted in Marketing Thought, Quote on Feb 10th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
A company blog - even one that talks about customers in the traditional case study’ way - will still be greeted with skepticism - because of the motives behind it. We all judge the speaker by what they have to gain by our listening to them. – by Commenter, Dana Theus (source)
值得深思。因為blog reader不是笨蛋，笨蛋比較容易上置入性廣告的當，但你的流量如果都來自笨蛋 — 那也幫不了你什麼 — 除非歷史告訴我們：笨蛋都很有錢。(不好意思以上用詞直接了點 XD )
根據Forrest Research 2008 Q2調查，超過80%美國受訪者不信任企業部落格。
話說回來，這年頭，「不信任」不等於「不看」或「不留意」。台灣人都說不信任政治人物，但是政論節目加減看的還是不少。我也不太信任整天拍成功人士(&賺錢企業)馬屁的財經雜誌，更不信任雜誌上粉飾門面的廣編稿，但我閒來無事還是加減看。
That’s why you should continue your endeavor on corporate blogs. Don’t give up. Bored people plus their skepticism generate your valuable readership.
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Posted in Investment, Quote on Feb 8th, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
Graham刪減1973年修訂版”The Intelligent Investor”第19章：”Shareholders and Managements”，把原本(1949年版)34頁的份量刪到剩下8頁。不見的一部分，是關於shareholder應actively行使”the investor as business owner”權益的討論 - 經過24年的倡議，Graham坦承以現實情況來說，individual investor (散戶) 根本無法(某方面來說也是懶得)行使監督或影響企業治理的權利。所以他「放棄」了這部份的探討。
以下節錄自1949年版19章原文開頭：
“In theory, the stockholders as a class are king. Acting as a majority they can hire and fire managements and bend them completely to their will. But, in practice, the shareholders are a complete washout. As a class they show neither intelligence nor alertness. They vote in sheeplike fashion for whatever the management recommends and no matter how poor the management’s record of accomplishment may be…The only way to inspire the average American shareholders to take any independently intelligent action would be by exploding a firecracker under him…We cannot resist pointing out the paradoxical fact that Jesus seems to have been a more practical businessman than are American shareholders.”
- P. 497, The Intelligent Investor, Chapter 19 Commentary, Jason Zweig, 2003 Ed. Original Texts: Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor, Chapter 19, 1949 Ed.
Graham 40年前放棄了，因為當時沒有網路可以把individual investor的力量連結起來。但現在可不同了，我覺得如果以下3點如果水到渠成，散戶還是有可能發揮影響力的：
1. 開發一套web service讓investor建議、投票、連署
2. 政府相關單位為這套service與user行為的法律效益背書
3. 企業尊重(必要時需強制遵守)平台上小散戶集體的決議
當然各項建議從起草到通過的過程，需要設定相當高的門檻 (如多階段，一定比例的票數)，以防外行領導內行，或是又回到只為少數人(法人機構、持股大戶)謀利益的老作法。
現在大多美國企業都用webcast的方式進行earnings call了。用virtal event的方式進行股東大會不是夢想，是已經在發生的事。實體股東大會有座位限制，但線上股東大會就沒有這個問題。不過空間問題解決，時間限制還在(就算進行8小時webcast，也無法讓每位線上與會股東有機會發言)。所以現在我們只差一個可用時間換取空間的中介平台(我上面提到的web service，投資人可以花半年時間在平台上辯論、修整某一項提議)，讓多數人(有建設性)的聲音事先被彙整，在線上股東會那天，所有股東與管理團隊只要進行最終的投票、確認等動作即可。
這樣一來，還在罵公司經營不善，把成長股搞成地雷股的散戶，就只能怪自己懶惰了。說真的，就算沒有上述的服務，小散戶還是有很多機會參與決策，但股東會通知單願意多看兩眼的有幾人？曾行使委任代理投票權的有幾人？
PS. 在Google上搜尋 “webcast earnings call”，相信Graham也會讚嘆科技的力量 ：
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Businesses are worth the net present value of future cash flows.
換句話說，你我現在的價值就是:未來一輩子能賺到的金錢總額折回現值。這樣亂換好像也滿有道理。
現在從事的工作如果是薪水低，但未來較有發展(賺大錢潛力高)，和現在從事的工作薪水高，但未來發展潛力小，選擇前者似乎比較有價值。
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Posted in Marketing Thought, Quote on Feb 3rd, 2009 繼續閱讀 »
IAS:
This disease affects people when their communication moves to digital, and the emotional cues of face-to-face interaction–including tone, facial expression and the so called “blush response”–are lost.(source)
面對面溝通，有肢體表情、面部表情、和聲音表情當線索；透過電話溝通，還有聲音表情當線索；透過網路(文字)溝通，大概只剩當下情緒和過去經驗當線索。線索越少時，人的心理狀態和反應行為就越趨近原始(動物)本能。於是網路小白就這樣誕生了。
***
從事digital marketing，溝通線索往往也侷限在文字與圖片，(影片例外)，線索越少，就越不能期待受聽眾有理性反應。這恐怕也是為什麼令人耳目一新的campaign對刺激衝動型消費比較有效 - 透過感官去激發出動物本能。但如果溝通手法只為引發一時衝動性call-to-action，對需要長時間耕耘的產品或服務幫助不大。
性感的Ms. Dewey就引起了很多人的衝動 - 試用Live Search的衝動，但看看流量圖，彷彿也像一股衝動，上去後不久就下來了，然後趴在那邊。這就是大師最喜歡掛在嘴邊的create buzz, buzz marketing。
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昨晚上湊巧也有幸經歷到Google把每個搜尋結果都判別成「對你的電腦有害」事件。今天看到官方部落格馬上站出來解釋情況。發言人當然是大家都很熟悉的Google public face – Marrisa Mayer，她並強調(2次)，這次的簍子，來自於人為疏失。
What happened? Very simply, human error. Google flags search results with the message "This site may harm your computer" if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously. We do this to protect our users against visiting sites that could harm their computers. We maintain a list of such sites through both manual and automated methods…
We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here’s the human error), the URL of ‘/’ was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and ‘/’ expands to all URLs…
讓我比較驚訝的是，過去網路服務商出包時，總傾向於把錯誤作外部歸因，像是以下我們常看到的說詞:
由於系統錯，造成您的不便…
由於突發性斷電，造成…
由於伺服器例行性維護，造成…
爛一點的還有:
由於非預期性的錯誤，造成…(非預期性的錯誤?有人可以翻譯一下嗎?)
反正千錯萬錯，都是機器的錯。Where’s the people? Where’s the management?
Google這樣做，值得學習。user其實寬容度很大的，user只是想知道原因，user只是想看到企業負責任的樣子。要成就一個大眾喜愛的品牌沒這麼難，也不用花很多預算，也不用天翻地覆跑campaign，只要有血有肉的人出來說人話。怎麼做呢?在官方部落格署真名說真話，不失為一個好方法。
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Posting tweet...
