Seems like everyone is talking about the new Google Wave product, demonstrated at today’s Google I/O event. Of course, it will be much easier to have something to say about it when we can all use it, but it looks very promising.
Not too long ago, all we had was email. Then IM came blog. And then blogs, wikis, Twitter and now Wave. All of these different communication tools bring something new to the table. What’s truly astonishing is how quickly communication technologies have morphed and evolved over the last decade.
One communication angle that I’ve exploring at Slife Labs that I haven’t seen too much out there yet is what I call activity awareness – communicating and staying in touch through the broadcasting of activities. I think there’s room for this form of communications in our arsenal of communication tools, but that’s a topic for another post.
Have you ever heard of the Disney Institute? Me neither. But I just ran into an ad for it and its logo caught my eye. It’s a great logo and captures the Disney spirit quite well:
Now you might be wondering what the Disney Institute does! Here’s their answer:
Disney Institute is a recognized leader in experiential training, leadership development, benchmarking and cultural change for business professionals across the globe.
You can read more on their site, but they seem to offer classes around Disney’s management approach and its values. Interesting.
How does this affect Facebook’s approach with regard to an IPO?
And Zuckerberg answers:
We want to take money that will help us realize the long term vision of the company. For lots of startups the IPO is the end goal. That’s not the case for us, it’s a milestone along the way. It’s not something we see happening on the immediate horizon.
Why is it that Facebook keeps downplaying its IPO? It’s going to happen, there’s no hiding it. Employees want it. Investors need it. It’s almost like they are saying, “that IPO thing, oh that’s just for companies that want to cash out. It’s beneath us. We are different, we are here for the long haul”.
Come on. Maybe in the go-go days of the Internet, circa 2000, one could argue that the IPO was just a money making event. Not today. In fact, claiming that “for lots of startups the IPO is the end goal” is just plain inaccurate.
Google did the exact same thing years ago when it was a private company. It downplayed the IPO as much as possible, saying that it wasn’t the company’s focus, etc and we know what happened. And Google is probably a much better company because of its IPO.
Virgin is an amazing company. They change the game plan in every industry they enter. I didn’t know they were in the train business, but that seems to be the case now.
They are promoting Virgin Trains with a line of ads that embody everything Virgin. They are fun and out of the box.
The ad industry is struggling to reinvent itself in large part due to sloppiness. Pushing brands and ads down people’s throats is a losing proposition. If all ads were like Virgin’s I wouldn’t mind watching them.
