I enjoyed watching this, I hope you do too.
technology
18
Feb 10
Selling Tricks
I broke a tiny trackball off my phone. I then received a $40 (20% of the total cost of the device) quote from a company with a physical store. Their main claim was the expertise in fixing trackballs. Dissatisfied with this quote, I scooted over to youtube. Watched a few short videos about fixing trackballs. I then swung by amazon.com and picked up the trackball for $9 postage included. 4 days later my device was as good as brand new.
The firm that gave me the $40 quote (700% markup) was the sole authorized dealer in Atlanta. Since they were the only game in town it was easy for them to engage in careless rent seeking behavior. Just a few year ago I would have had no choice but to fork over $40 plus tax. Today, the Internet has swung the balance of power in my favor where I now have a say in a transaction that traditional I would have been left to the mercy of the service provider.
The end is near for firms that specialize in the business of lack of / the distortion of information. How many more times does does this scene have to play out before some businesses realize that, in a short time, there will be no business in their present business. How many businesses can survive on only the payments to their factors of production with no additional income from their rent seeking practices. Only those will exist in post Internet world. We inch further to perfect competition in some industries everyday.
7
Feb 09
Facebook: You Can Poke But You Can’t Help
Facebook lawyers or the Facebook algorithm pretending to be an employee acted like an On-Off switch. At Facebook there seem to be no grey area when it regards to the fair use of the platform.
The Back Story: An administrator of a Facebook group with 1015 Facebook user decided to help out some of the group members, by connecting out-of-work group members with other members whose employers have job openings. She sent out notices soliciting for the URLs of these job postings and then posted a message on the groups page asking the unemployed members to send her private mails. She erroneously assumed that it was okay to use Facebook as a platform to give back to some group members who had written lengthy posts about the hardship associated with being out of work. Facebook thought otherwise, as far as they were concerned, this was an unauthorised use of the platform. The promptly sent her a cease and desist notice. Continue reading →
3
Nov 08
Nigeria: Who is Afraid of Enterprise 2.0
The returns on innovation and collaboration in production and business processes could be enormous, especially LDC’s. Early adopters are starting to reap dividends of web based application and online storage. Enterprise 2.0 is in, and isn’t going anywhere soon. The ability to collaborate across firms, within firms and with freelancers is proving to be the area in which collaboration and the decentralisation of information can be used to spur extraordinary growth for frontier firms. However the decentralisation of information also comes with the decentralisation of decision making. Naturally, anyone who enjoys the status quo has an incentive to resist the new order because it directly challenges the power and therefore the relevance of the current decision makers. Continue reading →
