What Threads can teach us about leveraging our existing network when launching a new service.
July 22, 2023
Threads, a new Twitter-like service from Meta, the owner of Instagram, launched this month and almost immediately attracted 40m active daily users. The service’s growth has since stalled and now has just over 10m daily users, but that is still commendable. The Wall Street Journal shared that this impressive launch was largely possible because Meta used its built-in network of one billion Instagram users. This user base helped it overcome the “cold start” problem of acquiring ...
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An East Village Artist’s Death Prompts a Reflection on the State of Indie Retailers Today
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While thumbing through the Times, I noticed a smiling young woman’s picture in the obituaries. In the black and white photograph, she's standing on a fire escape with a historic building and a bridge in the distance. I was initially attracted to Ronni Solbert’s 1959 picture, yet I was even more drawn in by what I noticed next to her photo: a children&...
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In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon, who plays a handsome MIT janitor moonlighting as a math savant (can one say, “Hollywood career vehicle”?), woos a young lady (played by the actress Minnie Driver) by outmaneuvering a few competing, obnoxious cads. When Damon’s character gets the girl's telephone number, he proudly shows it to the other guys and boasts, with his South Boston access, “How 'bout ‘dem apples?” I imagine Tim Cook imitating this...
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A new trend in retail is vacant shops in urban neighborhoods being converted to small warehouses. In the East Village on 10th Street, we see on the left the new warehouse model; on the right we see a traditional retailer. For the ‘store’ on the left, the customer orders via their mobile phone and then does a pickup or gets a delivery.
I’m seeing more of these ‘zombie stores’ around the city. Just in the East Village, I’ve seen four: ...
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Today’s Times shares that Amazon Prime members often spend twice as much compared to those that aren’t members. This led to me ponder: What if a first step to reducing Amazon’s monopolies is just canceling a $119/year ‘membership’? Prime may be Amazon’s strength—as well as its achilles. If we can find a way to undermine it, I believe one can save money and our communities.
When a few companies have a monopoly, the system is broken. It’s time indie stores have a fighting chance. Bridge gives indies a seat at the table.
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I spotted this board game 'Anti-Monopoly' at a garage sale. The character on the front has an uncanny resemblance to Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon which many people consider to be a monopoly in a few sectors from online shopping to cloud-based computing.
When a few companies have a monopoly, the system is broken. It’s time indie stores have a fighting chance. Bridge gives indies a seat at the table.
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Happy to see Daniel Silva, U.S. sales director for Smart Brand partner Vista Alegre, featured in this month’s Tableware Today.
I learned in the article that:
Vista Alegre has a program called ID Pool to collaborate with young designers.
Vista Alegre has 35 stores around the world, and another 40 shops within a shop.
Vista Alegre has 200 sister companies, as its owned by Portuguese monopoly Visabeira. That’s a big family! :)
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December 28, 2018
December 28, 2018
India is passing laws to stop big tech from cornering the market. Does the U.S. government need to take a page from India? China, not our first go to for policy direction, has similarly had success with regulating its market to support local tech companies over international ones. I think some large U.S. tech companies engage in predatory behavior and have advantages that need to be curtailed to allow smaller, local U.S. companies to grow. Unfettered capitalism isn’t capitalism. It’s abusive ...
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