"Personal brands will have disintermediated the old system and a new one will replace it. Don't see how content creators can be considered gatekeepers in this context."
- leigh himel
"Interesting to note - a client meeting with over 30 people in it the other day - about half didn't know what Tumblr was but almost everyone had heard of kickstarter."
- leigh himel
oh twitter - sometimes i'd prefer not to know RT @stuartma: RIP Whitney Houston #1 trending item in every geography #sad
"yes - socially speaking......these large co's always try to create huge social networks -- google + as an example - when they could start to figure out how the dynamics of an engaged network of people could actually improve what is already native to their business or even device..... - posted via Engagio"
- leigh himel
"haha -- so i have an hour to kill before a huge presentation - and I was like - I'm going to clean out email bc it's got outta control - of course instead of doing that, i came here to see the latest AVC post."
- leigh himel
"omg yes... The Hour. Just finished watching season one and LOVED it. It's British Mad Men but involving news and intrigue. - posted via Engagio"
- leigh himel
"I'll add one more then -- The Tragically Hip -- our creative technologist Dave runs their community of over 150K strong -- It's a model for how to do it (and he now runs similar communities for Sam Roberts, The Trues, Sarah Harmer and a bunch of other Canadian bands off his music story platform). If you ever end up in Toronto, or if i come down to NY any time soon, I"ll walk you through it (or get Dave to). The stuff he is doing constantly blows my mind. :) - posted via Engagio"
- leigh himel
"you may not see it right away -- they are AMAZING -- online invoicing startup here in Canada -- but they focus on small (and now to medium sized businesses) around the world -- some stuff they do: -- give great referral fee to users (embed marketing into the product) that gets taken off our monthly amount (send email as to how much we've earned) - everyone i know found out about Freshbooks through word of mouth and then got other people to use it for the referral fee-- they do Freshbook meet ups in various cities inviting users to connect with each other and them -- they embed user small business stories in everything they do -- they have partnered with a bunch of other startups that target small businesses like 37 signals @stuartma is their CMO and i'm sure can add some more context if he's not busy working the phones (which he does once a month as well)"
- leigh himel
"Impatience is one of the greatest barriers to the bottom up ecosystem based approach. You have to give it time before it sees success. In a world that measures performance by daily stock price, it's often hard to see that bigger picture and give this approach the time and commitment required. Union Square/Fred Wilson/AVC (and actually Freshbooks) are two of my favorite examples that i use with clients all the time where community is core to the business strategy and it actually works."
- leigh himel