Today I read a blog post by Dave Rosenberg on Facebook and how much money they are making from the sale of virtual goods. Some estimates have come in at $34.5 million of how much Facebook users have sent on virtual goods.

Virtual goods. That’s right, fake goods that you can buy for people and post in their profiles. But this line is what caught my attention:

“The vast majority of Facebook gifts are bought from the first screen of gifts in the directory–almost 80 percent of the total sales come from the group of the first 20 gifts. This points to the self-reinforcing nature of popularity (the crowdiness of crowds rather than the wisdom of crowds) when popularity data is made public.”

This “crowdiness of crowds versus the wisdom of crowds” is a very important concept to think about as it pertains to e-commerce, blogging, and establishing power users in social networks.

People like to follow the crowd. In the Facebook example, the most popular products rise to the front and this prequalifies the selections for those who are not as decisive. The thinking may be, “well others like these products so I should too.” When strategic levers are in place, marketers can leverage this phenomenon to create great results. Read more…

Love him or hate him, Loren Feldman may be known in the future as the one who jumpstarted the popularity of video commenting. Or maybe the correct word is the “necessity” of video commenting not the popularity of it.

This is the video that I am referring to:

Confused? Well, it started with this article on Tech Crunch today. In the post Michael Arrington reported that video blogger Loren Feldman, in response to an interview with billionaire Mark Cuban, wrote, “Mark Cuban is not a tech visionary. He is a lucky bastard. Broadcast.com was a joke,” Read more…

Yesterday I had an embarrassing thing happen to me. While telling someone about my post about DHL and the “Largest Drawing in the World” I was told that it was all, in fact, a hoax. It seems that what I accepted as fact yesterday was rendered fiction today.

So now, I was faced with a dilemma. Here I had praised the artist and DHL for a creative mashup of technology and art and it was all, in fact, a big lie. Do I delete my old post? Edit it? Leave it alone?

These days, news moves through the internet and blogosphere at lightning speeds. And with the competition for readers and exclusive content, few take the time to validate their information. We are, after all, not the New York Times. Some of us are just amateurs looking to put some ideas out there to our readers. And even though most bloggers strive for accurate information, I would argue that most understand that it is easier to publish first and ask questions later. Read more…

In response to the recent news of The Sharper Image facing bankruptcy and therefore not honoring Sharper Image gift cards, their main competitor, Brookstone, has seized the opportunity.

Brookstone is honoring those Sharper Image gift cards by giving customers 25% off all items. No one likes to see a company go down. Who am I kidding? No one likes to see a company down more than a competitor. The important thing is to not get caught just watching the downfall as a spectator. There are customers to acquire and those customers are ripe for the picking.

In the case of Brookstone and The Sharper Image, customers thought the unused gift cards were barely worth the plastic they were printed on. By giving a blanket savings for those customers, Brookstone, which sells similar items and caters to the same audience acquired them for a fraction of the normal cost of acquisition. Read more…

Last week I went to my local IKEA with my wife and bought a few picture frames. When I checked out, I learned about a new initiative IKEA was testing out in North America. They were using my local store (In Avon, MA) to pilot the program in the United States. In a nutshell, if you want a bag for your stuff, IKEA is charging $0.05 per bag and is donating that nickel to an environmental charity. Sounds pretty cool right?

Well, imagine how you would feel if this is how it was explained to you:

Cashier: Would you like a bag?
Me: Yes.
Cashier: I know this sucks, but we have to charge you 5 cents for every bag. Read more…