The Adamancy

Redeeming a Foursquare Offer… Not So Easy

I finally unlocked my first Foursquare offer. Yes, I have been using Foursquare for quite awhile and am the mayor of a few places, but none of those mayorships offer anything and I don’t feel like going to Starbucks constantly to get $1.00 off a Frappucino.

However, last night my parents were in town and after dinner, we stopped at the Glow Bar in the Marriott in Marina Del Rey, where they are staying. We sat down and, naturally, I whipped out my phone, checked-in on Foursquare, and to my surprise, found that anyone who checks-in gets a free appetizer.. just show your phone to the server – awesome! As we had just come from dinner, I wasn’t that hungry, but I also wasn’t going to pass-up free food. So I perused the menu and picked out the most expensive thing – ahi tuna stack for $12. It was when I ordered the appetizer and showed the server my phone that things got a bit more interesting…

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Digg Redesign [Screenshots]

So, I finally had a chance to check out the long-awaited Digg redesign and thought I would post some screenshots, as it’s quite a change from the existing site.

When I first logged-in to the new site, I was prompted to ‘Find Profiles to Follow’ with a suggested list (which includes brands and companies), broken down by category. This looks and functions almost exactly like the ‘Browse Suggestions’ list in Twitter… imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

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The Problem With Networking

I’m not the biggest fan of networking. Yes, I understand it’s valuable and “it’s not what you know, but who you know” (I’ll get to that in another post). It’s just that being in a room in which I don’t know 90% of the people, and of those people, 75% are walking around with their business cards out and constantly glancing from nametag to nametag trying to figure out who to talk to and who’s important, is not fun. In my opinion, that’s doing it wrong.

Networking is reflective of society in many ways in that it’s about self-fulfillment, and in my opinion, that’s the problem.

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Book Review: Orbiting the Giant Hairball

If you have worked at a large company with lots of layers or bureaucracy , you know what it is to feel like creativity and innovation are being stifled by a corporporate force that you have little-to-no control over.

Enter Orbiting the Gian Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie’s solution to this problem. A longtime Hallmark executive who held titles ranging from sketch artist to The Creative Paradox, Mackenzie describes the hairball as,

“… making business decision after business decision, creating procedures and generating policies. And, in doing so… adding countless hairs to the Hairball.

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Five Business Lessons from the Super Bowl

As I was watching the Super Bowl, I couldn’t help but think about the way success in football and professional sports often parallels success in the business world.

As such, here are five business lessons from the Super Bowl.

• Don’t give up if you don’t have early success – The Saints found themselves in a quick 10-0 hole after the first quarter, which against Peyton Manning, isn’t a good sign. However, they took the early punch and kept fighting. In the same way, very few very businesses are successful right from the start. There is a constant battle with competitors, money, employees, and more, but you cant give up as soon as you get down.

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Twiistup 007: The Wrap-Up

I once again attended Twiistup this year, and it was a great event featuring a bunch of the best minds in tech. There was a ton of excellent info shared and presented, geared towards entrepreneurs and starts-ups, and I wanted to share some of the major points I noted.

The Evolution and ROI of Content

Up first at Twiistup was a conversation between Richard Rosenblatt, CEO of Demand Media, and Om Malik regarding the Evolution and ROI of content. Much of what was discussed was Demand’s business model and the content creation coming out of Demand Studios. In short, Richard summarized that they calculate ROI by assuming each piece of content has a five-year life cycle, and along with knowing the CPC and estimated traffic from their proprietary algorithms and past content, they then know how much to pay for the creation of the piece of content to achieve the margins desired.

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It’s the Little Things that Matter

A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to hear a talk from Dave McClure about product design where, among other things, he discussed how slight changes on a page — making a button bigger, changing the placement of a link — could make a huge difference in conversion rates. This got me thinking how often in product design and development, I can be focused on huge goals, such as redesigns or entire new products, and often overlook major wins that can be accomplished through little changes in the state of existing products.

However, I then started thinking about the concept, not only relating to products, but to my life.

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Startups Uncensored – Building an Online Brand

Last night, Jason Nazar and Docstoc hosted another Startups Uncensored event, this one focusing on building an online brand. Jason was joined by Sean Moriarty, former CEO of Ticketmaster and current Board Member at Eventbrite, and Blake Irving, former Corporate Vice President of the Windows Live Platform Group.

As usual, it was a great event and there was a lot of excellent insights. Here are some of the key things which I learned:

• To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be…

1. Tenacious and able to deal with uncertainty
2. Willing to dream big and execute day-to-day (start modestly and be relentless)

• Companies either create and get the brand they deserve or the brand they tolerate (most companies have a brand they tolerate)
• A company can only get away with a tolerable brand for so long until a disruptive technology or company comes along (i.e. Southwest in the airline industry)

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