EBay deserves credit for not shutting down this pro-boycott thread in their own forum. EBay is doing the right thing by allowing the thread to stay alive. It must be frustrating for insiders to watch.

Congratulations eBay for allowing the community to continue using that thread. The decision to support dissenting opinion reflects well on the confidence, values and vision of your leadership team.

One excerpt from the 234+ page pro-boycott discussion thread:

“Even as I sit here looking at my unsold items, I’m still kind of happy I’m contributing to the boycott. Even if it’s only in a small way. While they might not be as popular as eBay I’ve found a lot great sites. The one I’m moving my listings to right now let me import my ebay feedback score to their site so that I don’t lose my good ratings! They even transfered all of my unsold item listings from eBay over to their site!”

Things are looking up for eBay’s competitors, meanwhile eBay share price is approaching a three year low. The boycott could easily lead to multiple compression, if investors decide to reassess eBay’s 112.33 P/E ratio based on a forward P/E ratio of 27.37.

Question: Why the discrepancy between yahoo finance and google finance’s data for eBay’s P/E ratio? Doesn’t their data come from the same source?

Musician and producer Jon Brion:

“I think my life is a version of my show played out over a very long time. There are periods of structured things; there are periods of improvisation. There are periods that go better than expected, and there are periods where you fall on your face. You get back up if you really love what you’re doing, and you do it regardless. I have that freedom by not having a set list.”

Always fun to hear people from the pop music industry talking about ideas.

Interesting side plot seems to be the AV Club editors weighing their obvious appreciation for stories like this one against their desire to reach as many eyeballs as possible. Probably some kind of growth management story in there too. Difficult decisions to be made when opportunities for growth potentially conflict with efforts to honor an original vision.

[tags]Onion AV Club, Jon Brion[/tags]

Guy Hands has been working hard to reengineer EMI. Terra Firma bought EMI in August of ’07. Since then they’ve suffered a number of public disappointments, not the least of which being Radiohead’s departure from EMI for their latest release “In Rainbows”.

This week marks a new low for the Terra Firma team. First there was the announcement of a restructuring process that will cut between 1,500 and 2,000 jobs. Next, Barney Wragg resigned from the head of EMI’s digital division. Then another public break – the Rolling Stones will release their upcoming “Shine a Light” with Universal Music.

Cutting unproductive units may generally be a smart move. Hands has decided to reduce risk by focusing on publishing rights acquisition and management.

I wonder how they’ll maintain the market insight needed to preserve margins. Artist development may not be a self-supporting unit, but it may have been EMI’s best means to stay in touch with the market. Will EMI invest in key relationships to preserve their competitiveness moving forward?

UPDATE: Jim Fusili at WSJ makes a pivotal error by assuming that EMI’s stated commitment to A&R will benefit “music lovers”. Fusili asserts that EMI’s “silo mentality” leads to the unnecessary segmentation of consumers.

This would be true if EMI were in the business of directly interacting with consumers. They’re not. The music industry relies heavily on distribution partners and most importantly, retailers. Glenn at Coolfer also points out some benefits of “silos”.

Retailers use segmentation and classification to help customers find what they’re looking for. Distributors, ad agencies, publicists, booking agents, old media outlets, and new ones alike use segmentation to deliver an attractive product. Segmentation is useful and desireable in a world where so many different dialects are spoken.

Many hip hop fans love classical music, and vice versa, yet they don’t want to have to dig through the Lil Mama to find their Liszt.

Label execs generally won’t pretend to have the same talents of a successful local record shop manager. Similarly, financiers shouldn’t pretend to have the same talents of an A&R rep.

[tags]Guy Hands, Terra Firma, EMI[/tags]

In 1959, author and academic David J. Schwartz, Ph.D., introduced the world to “The Magic of Thinking Big”. Some refer to that work as a “success classic“.

In 1965 Schwartz followed up with “The Magic of Psychic Power” (!!) which was later retitled “The Magic of Self Direction”.

There’s something less than straightforward about an author who teaches us specifically and exactly how to think for ourselves. Nevertheless, here’s Schwartz in “… Self Direction”:

“Advice is everywhere and most of it is free. Your neighbor, your relatives, your associates, just about everyone you know is eager to advise you. You have perhaps a dozen or more unpaid voluntary “consultants” on your self-management staff. These consultants, even without your asking for it, advise you on everything from rearing children to caring for your health to making your investments.”

“Psychologically immature people follow the advice of these self-appointed consultants, who usually know little of what they talk about. Rather than trust their own judgment or seek the advice of a competent, trained person, these people listen to and follow suggestions of second-class people.”

- David J. Schwartz, Ph.D., 1965

By the way, I’m in the advisory business.

[tags]advice, success, psychic power[/tags]

Here’s an interesting thought:

“Our faith is that throughout the world, beside the impulse toward coercion and death that is darkening history, there is a growing impulse toward persuasion and life, a vast emancipatory movement called culture that is made up both of free creation and of free work.”

“Our daily task, our long vocation is to add to that culture by our labors and not to subtract, even temporarily, anything from it. But our proudest duty is to defend personally to the very end, against the impulse toward coercion and death, the freedom of that culture – in other words, the freedom of work and of creation.”

French writer Albert Camus in 1957.

Bad news last week for SNOCAP. On the positive side, even a failed myspace initiative can register a lot of users. SNOCAP built a fair sized list – 80,000 bands and 175,000 consumers (unidentified overlap).

It sure would suck to be one of the folks that got cut. Sorry.

How will the market value SNOCAP’S remaining assets?

From Myspace’s perspective it’s also a significant loss. Key partner SNOCAP has lost credibility. Repositioning SNOCAP will require a major redesign. Replacing SNOCAP seems unlikely and probably not the best move. They’ve no doubt learned a lot from the SNOCAP crew and even more from user behavior. At what point will myspace decide that they don’t need SNOCAP?

[tags]SNOCAP, CAPS LOCK BRANDING, ACRONYM OR SHOUTING??[/tags]

Is this a political rant? I hope not. It caught my attention. I think it deserves a minute of yours.

Rick Weiss at WashingtonPost.com has written an interesting story about tiny flying surveillance robots, he calls them robobugs. I was caught by the way he handles the topic. In the face of glaring public privacy and civil liberties concerns, Weiss takes a gee whiz popular mechanics angle. The whole thing is a little disturbing.

Consider Weiss’ conclusion:

“Cellphone cameras are already everywhere. It’s not that much different.”

Right…

To be exact, those words aren’t Weiss’, rather his editor chose to use those words to neatly wrap up the story. The quote above is attributed to UC Berkeley roboticist Ronald Fearing. I doubt Fearing had any review over how this story would read.

From my perspective it reads very much like the editors of the Washington Post are making a clear assertion. It’s a political assertion. They’re not making an argument and they don’t appear remotely interested in the social implications of what they’re talking about. They do seem aware of the policy implications; this is happening in the context of the absurd wiretapping non-debate.

The Washington Post asserts that (a.) the public is ok with cellphone cameras; therefore (b.) the public will be ok with the American government using swarms of tiny flying cameras to spy on us.

Jonathan Cunningham of the New Times of Broward-Palm Beach has a nice item about the growth of a small local music retailer (via Coolfer). After interviewing a few south Florida record shops, they’ve identified localism as a key to growth management.

“”Dude, we’re in a death zone with our current location,” Ramirez says. “In a five-mile radius, we have a Borders, Target, Circuit City, Barnes & Noble, and a Best Buy. We’ve got all these killer stores right around us — but that doesn’t mean that we can’t survive. Everyone says these record stores are done, but that’s bullshit. We just have to work harder.”

Cunningham also describes efforts to convert a retail store into a community gathering space. This local community focus can be a successful source of differentiation for many types of retailers. But like any strategy, it needs to fit the context of the business. Localism works well if your main competitors are decidedly non-local. Localism also works well when local businesses learn to collaborate.

And sometimes localism isn’t enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Alana Semeuls of the LA Times seems to think so (via Techmeme). She reports:

“But the sites of many of the companies remaining in Second Life are empty. During a recent in-world visit, Best Buy Co.’s Geek Squad Island was devoid of visitors and the virtual staff that was supposed to be online.”

“The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.’s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.”

Dell Island? Does that sound like a fun fantasy world to you?

It’s all trial and error for now. Obviously fantasy based Second Life isn’t a great test environment (better than WOW). Still, real customers were virtually shot outside the virtual American Apparel store. That’s not sexy. That’s not good for the brand.

The situation will sort itself out in time. Virtual worlds aren’t going to go away. The businesses that learn to work with them will be better off for it. Here’s hoping folks can figure out smarter ways to experiment.

UPDATE: One angle of the LA Times story is the suggestion that Linden Labs is to blame for the corporate marketers failures. Techcruch’s Duncan Riley writes that reasons for the failure are open to debate, yet his headline implies otherwise. He’s illustrating a lights out scenario for Linden. Strange. More analysis at GigaOm.

[tags] Second Life, Dell Island[/tags]

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