Trying to be Viral

Have you noticed how hard everyone is trying to be viral these days? It's almost oxymoronic to be deliberately viral. Do you agree?

Or maybe the annoying attempts that I've noticed recently are just bad, and it wouldn't matter if they were attempting to be traditional campaigns, they'd still be bad.

One that I found particularly annoying was a hand-written card that I received at my office with a url written on it: www.whatsthisfor.com/gregwallace

No context, no nothing - like I've got that much time and I'm that curious to go to this web site. STUPID!!

And I see all kinds of companies doing this - putting some little tease out there, but not indicating what it's about and suggesting that people go to a web site to discover the big secret.

If you have connections on madison ave, can you please pass the word along that these campaigns suck?

thanks!

Spamalot

I was in New York this week and on my way to lunch asked a colleague to snap this shot of me with the actors in Monty Python's broadway play Spamalot.

‘Customer Affinity’ New Measure of B2B Mktng Effectiveness

Great article summarizing research by the CMO Council on the importance of transparency and trust between B2B technology vendors and their customers.

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CA-Sponsored Study Finds Data Center Automation Will Grow

study surveyed 300 CIOs and other top IT executives at companies in the U.S., EMEA and APAC with more than $250 million in annual revenue. It found the top three goals companies are hoping to achieve with data center automation efforts are uptime/business continuity, performance management, and enabling dynamic response to changes in business demand
More interesting than what this study "found" (didn't we all already know this?) is who sposnosred the research - CA....best of my knowledge, they don't really have a DCA solution now, do they? Comments?

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Open source a no-brainer for SaaS providers

Open source will start to dominate software infrastructure for providers of SaaS (Software as a Service) within three years, according to Gartner analyst Yefim Natis. Lower cost and better flexibility, compared to closed source, or proprietary software, are key factors for the growing popularity of open source in this segment of the market.

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Podcast with Syd Williams of Lyceum Associates

Just recorded this podcast with Syd Williams of Lyceum Associates

"Openness in Software"

Duration: 20 minutes (It takes a few moments to load)

Topics:

[1] With all the recent news on software openness, how are Microsoft and Google positioning themselves?
[2] To what extent is Microsoft playing catch-up?
[3] Does Microsoft suffer from brand deficiency, and is this affecting its bid for Yahoo!?
[4] How will worsening economic conditions affect IT spending? Which companies might benefit?

We Want It, and Waiting Is No Option

The Web empowers both groups and individuals as a place where choice is not only an option, but an imperative.
Awesome quote from this great article: “Storytelling is a hard problem that is cognitive rather than technological,” he said (while I breathed a heavy sigh of relief). “It requires a specific set of skills, and there are business models that enable storytelling, but maybe don’t require the whole manufacturing or broadcasting business that goes with them.”

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