The article posits that Starbucks is working to reposition itself as an in-store information portal, with all sorts of goodies available to those who go to the stores and log on to its network—and that ads on this network could become the premier place to reach certain consumers, as well as the favored online community that could displace Facebook in our affections…
I’m not sure it’s going to unfold exactly as they see it, but I suspect pieces of it will play out that way. That’s a future that leaves me with more than a little discomfort. It’s like a vertical and horizontal integration of the mind similar to, say, General Motors’ vertical and horizontal integration of the car market starting at least in the 1930s. I don’t like to see so much energy concentrated in one company, whether it’s GM, Google, or Starbucks.
Entries Tagged as 'google'
Starbucks as Ad Network/Social Media? OMG #blogboost
August 25th, 2010 · View Comments · Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media
Tags: advertising portals·general motors·google·social media networks·starbucks
Tim O’Reilly & SF Chronicle on SF Privacy Changes
May 21st, 2010 · View Comments · Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media, privacy
Personally, I go into the online world with the expectation that there is no privacy. And therefore the specific changes don’t bother me over-much. But as someone who writes about ethics, I have a problem with obtaining consent for one restricted set of behaviors and then wildly expanding it while requiring opt-out (and difficult opt-out at that) rather than opt-in. It’s nothing more than an electronic form of bait-and-switch–something I find unethical and in fact argue against in my latest book on business ethics, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (co-authored with Jay Conrad Levinson).
Tags: apple computer·bait-and-switch·facebook privacy·google·Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green·Jay Conrad Levinson·mark zuckerberg·san francisco chronicle·tim o'reilly·user bill of rights
Sidewiki Makes Me Question Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” Mantra
October 7th, 2009 · View Comments · Business Ethics, Ethics-International, Media Ethics, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Uncategorized, Web 2.0/Social Media
mmediate spark of this post (which has been brewing for over a week), is my deep concern about Google’s Sidewiki.Sidewiki, as I understand it, allows users who have the Google Toolbar installed to comment, unmoderated, in an area that appears on the left side of the webpage–but those comments are only visible to others who have the Toolbar installed! Among the many evils this can lead to: spamming, blocking site owners’ sources of revenue (or even replacing them with links that benefit those commenting), loss of control over one’s own website, black hat search technique, slander of site owners or contributors, unethical business practices such as deceptive advertising, and even something as simple as wrecking the aesthetic and content integrity of a carefully designed website
Tags: censorship·don't be evil·google·intellectual property rights·privacy·sidewiki
Google: Plusses and Minuses/Compare with Bing/Privacy Issues
July 12th, 2009 · View Comments · Ethics: General, Marketing Trends/News, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media
Perry Marshall has a really good article about online privacy concerns, the Google experience yay and nay, and Google’s first real competitor in general search–Bing. It’s getting a lot of comments, including this one from me. I discuss not only transparency vs. secrecy, but also the Google user experience, talk about the USP (Unique Selling [...]
Tags: 1984·bing·dystopian novels·fahrenheit 451·google·perry marshall·privacy·transparency
BNET: Why Bing Won’t Bother Google–and What Microsoft Should Do Instead
June 7th, 2009 · View Comments · Customer Service as Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News
The article does have a solution for Microsoft, though: it identifies a core weakness of Google’s and gives Microsoft an exact recipe to exploit this vulnerability.
Yes, New Startups Can Achieve Dominance
March 21st, 2009 · View Comments · Abundance and Prosperity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies
The answer is clearly yes, if you have an attractive user experience that’s better than what else is out there.
