Chippydip's Profile

Agreed! I’m also interesting in seeing how they compete against some other personalized types of schooling like Montessori schools and also against homeschooling.

Apparently, can’t edit, and these comments are using markdown so it’s destroying the code. Anyway, what I meant to say is now here- https://docs.google.com/document/d/15wWclS_PtpcNTnEC6x1Z3vk_dFbhl1y7RIRKQVrRZyc/

Although I very suddenly see the problem you were having.

Sorry, submitting that did something weird to it. Trying again.

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Instead of being free, they could do some sort of discount program for the unpopular directions of the bikes. I’m thinking about companies like Jetsuite that do this for jet repositioning- where people can buy seats on a private plane that needs to be moved from one city to another at much cheaper prices than the normal rates. Something similar to that could work well for Hubway.

I actually WOULD argue that people are going to start buying their groceries online- Amazon’s definitely banking on that, and companies like Peapod and Instacart are doing great and gaining market share over time. I think a lot of people right now just don’t instinctively think to buy those sorts of things online, but there will come a tipping point pretty soon where they will. I’d be very worried if I was Nielsen.

Until it’s legalized, I worry that the crowd won’t be as capable of contributing as you’d like. Either people are going to have to be completely anonymous, which invites trolls and unverified information, or you’re going to scare contributors who would like to talk about their experiences but are afraid of legal and job repercussions. It seems like a fantastic project, though, and I definitely see a large and lucrative future for businesses in the cannabis industry.

I’m down. But when I downloaded the app, it’s requiring an invite to use. Unless they’re doing small pilot tests right now, I think that model is a recipe for disaster, since a barrier to use right up front is going to limit the number of people (and thus, context) they can get. Crowdsourcing can’t work too well without a crowd, can it?

I think what differentiates Wikipedia from a Yahoo Answers type site is reliability. Many of the people answering questions on Yahoo answers are laughably incorrect- I can even find that on the Wikipedia page for Yahoo answers which tells me “The number of poorly formed questions and inaccurate answers has made the site a target of ridicule.”. Wikipedia’s editors keep an incredibly high standard for content, minimizing trolling and inaccuracies. As long as they can maintain that, I have a hard time believing that another company is going to make a better or more used online encyclopedia.

WoW’s subscriber base isn’t dipping because of the network. It’s dipping because the last few expansions have been horrendously disappointing. (I say as someone with four max-level raid-ready characters, an absurd number of achievements, and a subscription that I cancelled a few months ago). I think FTP would actually make it worse; the subscription price isn’t that expensive, and freemium models kill any sense of fairness in a game, because the people who pay more are better. They’ve done a good job at monetizing cosmetic extras- mounts, pets, armor looks that don’t affect the stats. But the second they start allowing people to pay for stat improvement in-game or to unlock content is when a lot more loyal subscribers will leave.

I don’t think they’re losing to a network effect. I think they need to put out an expansion that’s as good as Wrath of the Lich King was, and get rid of a lot of the changes they made in Mists of Pandaria and Cataclysm. Warlords of Draenor was a good start- it had an engaging storyline and good questing/leveling content- but still fell flat at the level cap, which is where, in most players’ eyes, the game really begins.

HF, I’m not sure if it would have helped them. A lot of times Groupon gets used for things like laser hair removal, or dental cleanings, etc. That’s not necessarily the sort of thing I’m excitedly sharing with all of my friends and coworkers. I think if they stuck with people needing to be more public about what they were buying, they’d have to change the types of deals they were offering. And even then, even if people were only buying massages and vacations, I’m not sure they’d want to tell everyone what they were doing with their money.

The way they’re going now may not be working great, but I think their old model would have been way worse.

Frump, I’m pretty sure that Pinterest already is working closely with retailers. I definitely get “suggested for you” boards which are often company-owned, with things ready for me to buy. Companies also hold contests on pinterest, to get people to do the advertising for them. The idea of predicting trends sounds intriguing; I know that Google was trying to predict fashion trends a while ago (and is probably better suited because while a specific post on pinterest may trend, it may be hard to really find similar ones, whereas searches are more cut-and-dried).

I love the suggestion about keyless entry, but I think the only way that AirBNB would be able to do that well would be to provide the new locks to the homes, which would be a pretty large expense for them.

I’m not sure whether your thoughts are that AirBnB is a winner or a loser, but from the laundry list of improvement ideas that seem beneficial but unlikely, I see how it could be slipping into loser territory. That’s a really interesting view, since most of the press I’ve seen about it has been positive- a few years from now, I guess we’ll see which way it goes! I think you make a lot of valid points, and they should pay attention… or pay the price.

I think it definitely had a lot to do with the impulse purchases, like the candy and toys. If you look at grocery stores, I’ve seen figures like 60% of purchases are impulse buys, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to me to think that maybe 20-30% of Blockbuster’s sales were from those ancillaries. It would be interesting to see how their financials without those were doing even at the time they were successful- I would guess that they weren’t great. They may have seen themselves failing in the movies-only business and thought Netflix would do the same; losing to piracy for people who just wanted to watch it once, losing to Amazon for people who wanted to buy the disks.

First, I -definitely- think that wearing shoes that look like spaceships are cool, but then again, I carry a backpack that looks like a shark. Your review almost sold me a pair of Adidas! (although I’m not quite in the market for more shoes right now).

But you’re right- cooler than a galaxy print is that ability to have the shoes quantify your life a little more. The hardware integration would make me more likely to buy the Nike shoes. I’m less sold on the effectiveness of the Training Club- if it’s free to use without buying any of their products, and doesn’t integrate with their products, I can’t see myself being more likely to buy their leggings because of it even if I used and loved the app.

Anyway, great post, and I’m off to go download some Nike apps!