It has been interesting watching my friends business grow.  Ten years ago starting something like that would have been very expensive.  Just getting setup with an e commerce site would have been very complicated.  There are so many tools available now that make it easy to start a business and get your products online.  The downside is that there is a lot more competition.  The upside is that you can spend more time concentrating on your product and marketing and less on just trying to get the infrastructure in place.

I think the next wave of e commerce is going to be wiring up people in third world countries.  When people in Africa can sell their wares directly on the Internet I think we will see a significant shift in how commerce is done. It will also mean an increase in customization.  If you are ordering a picture frame from someone living in a hut who plans to make it by hand, it makes sense to customize exactly what you want.  It seems strange, but for some types of things this might bring us full circle from craftsmen to assembly lines back to craftsmen again.

Link to movie because I can’t embed at Harvard

Apple has been making fun of PCs for awhile in their ads, so it is probably time for Microsoft to come back with something, but I don’t know that this is going to help them.

First, the add doesn’t even mention Microsoft’s products.  It is kind of like Goodyear advertising Toyotas because they come with Goodyear tires.  If Microsoft thinks their product (Vista, Windows 7, XP, etc.) is superior to OS X they ought to show the value of their products.  I like Apple and OS X, but I think there are some things Microsoft could really capitalize on.

Second, their current approach basically says that software is interchangeable and the only think you should look at is the hardware specs for the price.  If consumers take this type of approach to buying, Microsoft loses. A machine with Linux is generally cheaper than the equivalent machine with Windows.

Third, I don’t know that the “we are cheap” slogan works very well.  It is kind of like BWM saying “we are the ultimate driving experience” and Hyundi saying “Oh, yeah!  Well we are dirt cheap!”  Instead Hyundi has been saying “we are reliable and we will give you a warrantee to prove it.”

Apple is advertising their machines as non-commodities.  In this ad campaign Microsoft is trying to reinforce the idea that PCs are commodities and that the only difference is price.  In the end I don’t think this will help PC makers.  Which also means it won’t help Microsoft.

In one experiment, people were shown two photographs and asked which one was more attractive.  Then through a slight of hand trick they were given the photograph that they had not chosen–the one they had decided was less attractive.  They were then asked to explain why they felt that photo was more attractive.

74% didn’t notice the switch.  Worse they came up with a bunch of reasons why they had chosen that photograph.  Their memories basically switched to make them believe that the photo they had been handed was the one they had chosen.