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Asus came to Dell and said, “We’ve done a good job fabricating these motherboards for you. Why don’t you let us assemble the whole computer for you, too? Assembling those products is not what’s made you successful. We can take all the remaining manufacturing assets off your balance sheet, and we can do it all for 20 percent less.”

The Dell analysts realized that this, too, was a win- win… […]

Then, in 2005, Asus announced the creation of its own brand of computers.

Struck by how strong a random tumblr’d-upon image can trigger longing…

I can’t be at Art Basel this year, and it’s killing me to miss out on all the work going up on Wynnwood’s old warehouse and gallery walls.

“Writers love a challenge like the one we posed them — i.e., making up a story inspired by an object they’ve never seen before. Our contributors met the challenge with wildly imaginative, deeply moving, and darkly ironic stories. They wrote letters, email solicitations, memoirs, operating instructions, public notices, diary entries, wine-tasting notes, and public ordinances. Some crafted rich character studies, others told tales through whipsaw dialogue or internal monologue. Some took bold experimental risks, while others opted for evocative minimalism or genre fiction.

It turns out that once you start increasing the emotional energy of inanimate objects, an unpredictable chain reaction is set off.”

– From the introduction to “Significant Objects ”

// And yet, isn’t this what we do (or *should* do), every time we embark on creating a new digital product or campaign?

… In the age of the social web, the convenience of the social graph has largely toppled the lock-in that once kept users bound to one network over another.

Without the upfront investment in physical hardware and users’ newfound ability to port personal information and contacts, how is a company to retain its users? Is the network effect’s ability to lock-in users dead? Hardly.

The power to leverage the network effect now resides in “stored value.” Unlike network access costs, stored value is investment that comes in small increments with repeated use, increasing the importance of the service the more a user engages with it.

Stored value comes in four forms, and companies leverage these tiny investments to build lock-in to their service and retain users.

Creative content (e.g. Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram): Users invest in creating a portfolio of creative content, which forms the basis of their interactions on the platform. The quality and quantity of the content results in more interactions with other users, which, in turn, provides greater value to the content creator.

Reputation (e.g. TaskRabbit, AirBnB, StackOverflow): Although marketplaces for physical goods, such as eBay, have been around for some time, services marketplaces have grown in popularity lately. Trust is an important component of this new breed of network effects business. As a result, reputation built on the platform directly contributes to greater value for all users. Building reputation on a platform requires consistent delivery of highly rated services and may also involve qualifying for some minimum criteria set forth by the platform. Hence, once a service provider builds reputation on a platform, it prevents her from migrating to a competing platform.

Usage Data: Users store value in the form of data, either by actively collecting information, such as in the case of Dropbox or Reddit, or passively as their usage improves the service by offering more relevant information, such as is the case with Quora, which delivers a personalized news feed based on usage. The more a user consumes information through the platform, the more intelligent the algorithm becomes in recommending pertinent content to the user. In both cases, the data set built by or for the user delivers greater value with increased usage, something that won’t directly be available on a competing platform.

Influence (e.g. Twitter, YouTube channel subscriptions): Networks that utilize a one-sided follow model create an influence dynamic. Unlike importing contacts or “friending” people, collecting followers is largely outside the direct control of the user. With the exception of sketchy tactics banned by the Twitter terms of service, accruing more Twitter followers can only be done by tweeting content others find interesting enough to share. As the user’s follower count grows, so does the stored value in the network and the incentive to stay actively engaged.

Creating a network effect is not what it used to be. Today, stored value created by the users reinforces the power of the network effect to retain users and grow market share. This dynamic makes creating user habits all the more important as investments of stored value only occur through successive passes through the user experience 

// http://bit.ly/Vk69ld

Struggling with the first half of this:

“Innovators and intrapreneurs believe that their job is to build the best possible innovations within time and budget constraints. This is demonstrably false and counterproductively naive. Their job is to build the best possible innovations that their managements will enthusiastically, not reluctantly, support. The answer(s) to "What would it take to change your mind?” had better be known before the meeting’s first PowerPoint/Keynote slide appears.

There is a powerful and singular exception to this. The CMO may loathe the idea, the new product council may hate your designer’s guts, a rival business unit may fear you as an internal threat — but the surest way to “change their minds” is to have a real, powerful and desirable customer or client for your proposed innovation. Nothing is more persuasive and compelling than a customer who’s expressed passion, enthusiasm and a willingness to pay for an innovation.“

http://bit.ly/UYntf4

AfterEllen: What’s with the “I am Linda Evangelista” T-shirt?

Jenny Shimizu: There’s a wonderful story about why the T-shirt was made. One of my first jobs in New York was for a beauty ad where they were going to take portraits of our faces and when I entered the photo studio, number one, I saw five tents. One tent around each make up mirror. I was late, of course, and I looked inside the first tent and saw Christy Turlington, and in the next tent I saw Naomi Campbell, and I’m freaking out because never in my life had I ever thought I would even meet these people, let alone work with them and I’m breathing the same oxygen in the same space as these people.

Then the next tent was Kristen McMenamy and I saw an empty tent and I ran into it. I couldn’t look anymore — I was having a panic attack. I was telling myself how much I hated myself and that I didn’t belong there and I sat down in a chair, waiting for the make up artist to come. I’m sitting there and I can hear this whisper, “I am Linda. I am Linda Evangelista,” and it kept going, over and over again, and we were separated by two pieces of white fabric. I pushed the white fabric open and I see Linda Evangelista staring at herself in the mirror and she’s still saying, “I am Linda Evangelista,” and it’s just getting louder and louder, so I sat down back in my seat, getting myself back together and I said to myself, “I am Linda Evangelista.”

Basically, that line of strength got me through that day because I was flipped out and the story goes, every time I get very nervous or very scared or think that I can’t handle it, I always say, “I am Linda Evangelista.”

Growing up Jenny Shimizu and Omahyra Mota were my “I am Linda Evangelista.” Still are.

// http://www.afterellen.com/blog/emilyhartl/styled-out-jenny-shimizu-puts-her-heart-on-your-sleeve