“…the Web tends to turn businesses into commodities — no matter what that business is selling. Before the Web, businesses could carve out profitable little regional niches based on their skill sets. They didn’t have to worry about competition from the next state and definitely didn’t have to worry about competition from overseas. Location insulated them and allowed them to grow.”

“If you really want customers to keep coming back, then toss out those glossy brochures from vendors looking to sell you the latest in CRM software. Customer loyalty does not stem from clever stratagems to collect every conceivable piece of data from customers and then cross-sell them something they don’t want, says Fred Reichheld, Boston-based Bain & Co. director emeritus and Bain fellow who has studied the topic.”

“Marketers should be focused on giving people a reason to listen to their messages. Once people are listening they should be presented with an infrastructure that allows people to amplify the message through digital word of mouth, what I call ‘word of mouse.’”

“At the retreat I went to the weekend before last, we were each asked to offer a word or small phrase that held special meaning for us. I’ll save my word for a later post, but I was particularly intrigued by Clay Shirky’s — ’small-world.’ Specifically, Clay expressed interest in the ’small-world phenomenon,’ which probably has it’s most popular expression in the notion of ’six degrees of separation’ and ‘Kevin Bacon is the center of the universe.’”

“In a recent column about the top seven priorities for business technologists, I urged ZDNet’s audience to stop buying desktop computers and to start buying notebooks. Several readers concurred. Others asked ‘why?’ Here’s why…”