Brilliant!

Quoted: So why is this working? I told you loyal readers back in August. Unlike its competitors, it’s effectively leveraging location awareness and social networking/human team building instincts to create a bit of a phenomenon. The result is a viral spread.

Recommended by Andrew Chen ( http://andrewchenblog.com/ ), a blogger who I respect quite a bit.

Looks like this book has a greater focus on case studies and specific techniques as compared to Scott Berkun's book, "Making Things Happen".

Quoted: The Product Manager's Handbook is the essential guide to successful product management in today's fast-changing business world. Product and brand managers, as well as upper-level sales, marketing, and branding executives, will find the text thorough and informative as it explains and analyzes the product manager's role in both traditional, hierarchical organizations as well as in newer horizontal, team-driven decision-making structures.

Latest post to the blog.

Quoted: I recently gave the following talk to the Chinese Institute of Engineers on the Microsoft campus. The talk is an introduction to Search Engine Marketing (SEM), focusing on Search Advertising and Search Engine Optimization. I also explain the search business model and ranking algorithm to the extent that is needed to effectively implement SEM.

Honda, with its Honda label, is generally effective at offering the right product for the right demographic at the right price. But, Honda hasn't been able to quite figure out the equation with its Acura label.

Quoted: Have you seen Honda's new brand image commercial, the one with all the company's products: jets, snowmobiles, outboard motors, ATVs, fuel-cell vehicles, even a knock-kneed robot named Asimo? Where is Acura? Surely if you promote your private-jet business, you can promote your luxury car division

Google Insights is a pretty useful marketing tool. I searched for social bookmarking and got a a state by state break down of "regional interest". In theory, it would make sense to invest disproportionately on marketing efforts for a site like Faves in those states.

"Social bookmarking" searches are distributed across a number of states whereas "microblogging" searches are only popular in California. And overall, "microblogging" is a far less popular search term than "social bookmarking".

It's also fun to type in my last name and get a breakdown. Presumably, this tracks the relative concentration of Indian Americans in the U.S.

Agreed. At Microsoft, this was sometimes a source of tension between marketing and Program Management.

Quoted: So what’s the cure? True perspicacity into the needs of a user base is the result of talking with customers, and complementing that direct knowledge with data from a larger sample. Qualitative research alone gives you direction and awareness of issues – and I fully admit that awareness is 70% of the solution. But quantitative research gives you conviction regarding the extent of issue.

Quoted: The vast majority — 80% — either started their own business or worked for a small company that saw explosive growth. And almost all of them made their fortune in a big lump sum after many years of effort.
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Quoted: Consultant Joel Kurtzman, who evaluated 350 startups for his book Startups That Work, found that successful outlets usually have a team of two or three founders who share a common vision; the success rate for this model was a remarkable 50%. The odds for solo founders were more like the oft-quoted one in 10, in part because they often found themselves working at cross-purposes with hired guns who see things differently.

Quoted: Sized at an estimated $5.6 billion in 2007, Japan boasts one of the biggest online advertising markets in the world – a huge ...

A great list of essays, especially if you are involved in anything in the consumer Web space.

On an unrelated note, I like how he includes his name and Twitter id in the blog title.

Quoted: I finally decided to make a page listing all the reasonable essays I've written over the last 2 years on one page, which you can find here.