commbasics

OK, I’m a little behind it wrapping up this discussion.  Things are really getting crazy around here.  A couple of weeks ago I started talking about how SEO is not your biggest concern with your website and then followed up with how social networks followed that up with creating target audiences.  My premise is that both of the automated egalitarian technologies are being gamed by companies and building a basic distrust within their audiences.  I wrapped up my last post with: “So we are entering into another cycle; one that will be difficult for the current players to understand.  It is a cycle that will be based on ethics and trust and it is something that cannot be generated by an algorithm.” We’re going to build on that today. Trust is at the core of all genuine communication.  Once that goes out the window so does the communication.  That’s why search worked for a while because it wasn’t in the hands of the marketing department... until th...

Just got Gabe Moretti's email newsletter where he takes me to task for bagging on the EDA industry's lack of marketing acumen.  Always like to know when people disagree with me and Gabe makes some good points.  But there was one that popped out to me: "Lou repeats the old mantra that EDA companies area really not making the tools that the costumers want, and that should they ever get smart enough to just do that they would become widely profitable. There is nothing farther from the truth than this statement. I agree that EDA could benefit form an injection of capable marketing know how, may be even using social media. We do not need to discover what is needed to take a design to silicon: we have done that for over thirty years as an industry and longer than that as in-house CAD departments." To which I answer with an old adage, "If you guys are so smart, why ain't you rich?" I'm off to check out a profitable industry.  C ya. UPDATE:...

Last Friday I dropped a flash-bang into the room saying search engine optimization (SEO) isn’t what you should be concerned about.  I got one comment from a SEO person pointing out, very nicely, that I didn’t know what I was talking about because SEO is still very important.  I don’t disagree with that statement because SEO is important... especially if you’re selling ink cartridges and boner pills.  That still doesn’t take away from my original statement.  SEO is not what you should be concerned about, especially if your business is about anything other than commodities. When Google got going in the mid double-oughts, search was THE thing.  People were still getting used to this interwebs thing and it was kinda fascinating being able to find all kinds of stuff that normally took a dozen phone books and a lot of shoe leather.  It also turned the garden hose of information in our lives into a viaduct.  People started applying subjective filters ...

I've been considering and reading about all the changes in the data-eating industry that Google, Facebook, et al are enacting and one big theme is starting to arise in my head: Search and search engine optimization are virtually worthless now.  (That's gonna piss some people off.) It used to be that people kept their browser start-up page on Google because they went on the interweb tubes to look for stuff; sometimes with a purpose but most of the time just to do it.  That's not the case anymore.  I know very few people that fire up their laptops, tablets and smart phones and immediately go to the browser.  now they got to Facebook, Twitter, Linked-in, Flipboard or any other application that allows them to get input from their social circle.  I know I'm one of them.  My browers (I use several) are set to open on publication sites like The Economist, SFGate and Electronic Products .  That, too, is not unsual as I see many people re...