The importance of listening to your customers

I think this blog post says it all. Google, we're more interested in quality than your time to market.

Listen to your customers. They'll tell you what they want. You don't need to guess.

Is the online market getting overserved?

I've been getting a number of requests to "trust someone on Spock." What is Spock? After going to their site, I don't have much of a clue. At best I can figure out, it looks to be an aggregator of one's online information and content.

While I do agree that the social networking space could use an aggregator, it also occurs to me that the social networking solution I've built up over time (blogs, email, RSS reader, LinkedIn) work good enough for my needs. As such, sites like Facebook, MySpace, and now Spock overserve my needs.

And I think that's where a lot of the older crowd gets their "I don't get Facebook" attitude - it doesn't improve on the needs relative to what people have put in place to date.

Where do I think the online market is underserved?

Personalization: with all the investment into social networking I am very surprised very little, if anything, is being done in the personalization space. Why doesn't Google do a better job knowing whether I am trying to buy something or whether I am researching a topic? Why am I not made aware of products relevant to me that are being promoted?

I have left a long trail on the Internet over the last 20 years. Why isn't that being used today?

I know I will get the "well it is being used." To which I respond "Bull." It's being used in a superficial fashion. I want deeper personalization. Sites that know my interests, my values, my history,

JetBlue gets it

A while back I shook my head at Boeing's failed Connexion initiative.

I think companies that are thifty by nature (or even by design) understand cheap ways to test product ideas. JetBlue is taking a much smarter approach to putting Wifi in its planes: it's starting with one plane and providing a stripped down service.

The idea here is not to give users the best experience. The idea is to see how valuable the idea is. They can track how many people try to access the service and how often they do it. Given that current user's alternative is zero access to the Internet, I imagine anyone interested will be happy with a "better-than-nothing" offering.

And, if the idea doesn't have any wings (no pun intended), then JetBlue gets off cheap. And that's the point.

Good for you, JetBlue.

Facebook CEO issues apology

Since I've blogged about this recently, including this apology from Mark Zuckerberg about their approach to Beacon.

PayPal's new Storefront Widget

I am going to try and sell my Baby Einstein videos through PayPal's new Storefront Widget. Was easy to set up, will see how it works in production.