What the two brands have in common is this : they get the customers to do the work, and to enjoy doing it. Some economists call it “the value of co-production”. Details, in the always-enjoyable column by Tim Harford, “The Undercover Economist” of the online paper Slate.
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- Emerging economies — Knowledge vs. Infrastructure Technology is spreading to emerging markets faster than anywhere else. Soon, there will be more internet users in China than in the United States. In India, the phone subscriptions are growing by 8 million a month, and the country produces more engineers that the US. But outside modern urban centers, the lack of reliable infrastructure, [...]...
- The Plaxo deal and the Facebook/Goolge clash Two significant news items last week in the social network fray. First, cable giant Comcast bought Plaxo the n°3 social network behind Facebook and MySpace for a reported $100m (euro 64m). Plaxo sports a 40m members base (and a 50 people staff – I kind of like the ratio…) Why is Comcast doing this? According [...]...
- Did Facebook stole some code ? As we speak, some court-appointed forensic computers experts are poring over Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg’s old hard drives to detect a possible intellectual property theft. Three Harvard grads filed a lawsuit accusing Zuckerberg to actually have build Facebook on their idea : in 2002, the three guys had dreamed of a social network called ConnectU. [...]...
- The Facebook Candidate In last week Monday Note, my co-writer Jean-Louis Gassée explained why Silicon Valley was about to vote for Barack Obama, “He’s one of us”, he said. Here is couple of interesting stories I’m submitting to your point and click acumen. Two are from the Atlantic Monthly. The first one, tilted “HisSpace” explains how the use [...]...
