Tag Archives: Megan Berry

Google Buzz Explodes the Myth of First Mover Advantage. Again.

Entrepreneurship, Social media, Technology, , , , ,

Somewhere in the 1980s we coined the phrase “first mover advantage.” Right or wrong, I associate it in my mind with the birth of Compaq Computer, in the middle 1980s. Compaq’s original 34-pound sewing-machine-sized computer was dubbed the first compact computer. Luggable was more accurate. And it wasn’t the first, either.

This bugs me. “But that’s not new,” people say, meaning, as they say it, “so it can’t be an interesting new business.” It’s an idea fetish. It misunderstands that underlying fact that being first doesn’t mean diddly without getting the traction to stand out, and stay.

Apple wasn’t the first personal computer. And Google wasn’t the first search engine (I read recently it was the 11th). Amazon.com wasn’t the first book site on the Web. And so it goes.

Which brings me to Google Buzz. Not first, at all. Not original. But very powerful. My favorite quote on this is Mobclix evangelist Megan Berry’s Power Trumps Innovation post on Huffington Post yesterday (bias alert: she’s my daughter). She says:

So how is Google Buzz different? It doesn’t have a character limit and conversations are threaded so you can comment below the original post. (OK so there’s actually a few more differences and you can check out Monica O’Brien’s ode to Buzz for the play by play). But, honestly, that’s pretty much it and neither of these ideas are really new. Google Buzz is decidedly unoriginal (for more on this check out TechCrunch’s superbly titled If Google Wave is the Future, Google Buzz is the Present). There’s nothing new here. Threaded comments have been around since online forums, the idea of social sharing is so 2005, and choosing who to follow is, well, have you heard of Twitter?

I totally agree. It’s not new, but it’s very important, because Google has power. We can’t ignore it.

A case in point, actually, is how many of us will revive our gmail facility just to get into Buzz. I’m annoyed, I admit it. This means that if I’m going to be absolutely up to date with everything I do in blogging and Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn these days, now I have to add Google Buzz into the mix. I’m really hoping Tweetdeck adds it into the interface, like they did with Facebook and LinkedIn, so I only have to go to one place.

What I mean is: damn! Another social media platform? Really? But this one is Google, so I don’t dare ignore it.

And that’s the point. Like Microsoft before it, Google has the power to jump into a market after it’s become important, and change it, even, in a short time, lead it. So first mover advantage? Well, not so much.

5 Things Avatar Can Teach You About Development

Software, Technology, ,

(Note: this is a guest post by Megan Berry (my daughter), social media evangelist for Mobclix. It was originally posted on the mobclix blog.)

Avatar is a world-wide phenomenon and is currently the top grossing movie of all time*. How can you learn from its success and apply it to your own projects (even if they aren’t billion dollar movies).

  1. avatarTechnology Matters. James Cameron first wrote Avatar in 1994, but he ended up tabling it until 2005 because he felt the technology wasn’t there yet. Figure out what your idea needs and how you can make it happen. If your current idea won’t work well, put it on hold and work on something else.
  2. Love Your Idea. This movie finally came to fruition 15 years after Cameron’s initial idea. He didn’t just forget about it, he waited for his moment and made it happen. And now he’s very rich (er, richer).
  3. Get Fans, Not Just Viewers(/Users). Avatar was so successful because you didn’t just go and think “good movie” and go to sleep. You wanted to tell everyone you knew about it. After watching this movie I immediately started telling my family and friends they had to see it. Now.
  4. A Little Controversy is Good. Avatar’s a commentary on the war in Iraq. And our treatment of the environment. And a critique of the military. And advocates polytheism. And deals with racial issues. Or maybe none of the above, but it made you talk about it, didn’t it?
  5. Make it Beautiful. Avatar is a cinematic masterpiece. It’s gorgeous. Don’t settle for less with your iPhone app. If your iPhone app is the best looking thing I’ve ever seen I’ll not only use it but share it with everyone I know.

*Okay, so this actually depends on whether or not you count inflation. In any case, it did very, very well.

Solving the Job Crisis One Job at a Time

Family Business, Marketing, Self Promotion, , , ,

Blogs are supposed to be personal, right? So allow me to personalize. Let’s consider the plight of one Megan Berry, 22 years old today, graduating from Stanford in two months with close to straight As.

Megan wants a job. More specifically, she wants a job related to social media and Internet marketing in the Silicon Valley.

In any normal year, this would have been no problem. Google would have snapped her up. Yahoo would have. So would a couple of dozen other companies. She’s an opportunity. A “fuzzy” political science major who won Web awards for programming Cold Fusion databases before she reached puberty, and did serious Web programming work for darfurgenocide.org while still in high school; she’s kind of a bridge, a writer and marketing type who understands the depths of programming. She has her own blog, and blogs at Brazen Careerist and Huffington Post. She’s been on Facebook for four years. She’s on Twitter. She’s on LinkedIn.

But then came the downturn. And the worst year for graduating seniors since sometime in the 1930s. And Megan’s got some possibilities, some things might still work out — one of which came directly from Twitter, by the way — but we’re passing mid April now, and she’s still available.

Think of this strategically. She’s as young as most college graduates, but in her chosen world of social media and Internet marketing, that whole world started about the same time she got into it. So maybe she has something special in the strengths and weaknesses category, something that might help even in this toughest of all years to get a job.

All her information, links to her various blog posts, and all the rest are (right where they should be for a young social media marketing person) at meganberry.com.