Make Your Mark Blog

Another bit about research:

“Most young adults in the UK would rather give up alcohol, chocolate, sex, tea
or coffee than live without their mobile phone for a month.”

That’s the leader from this story:
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2192796/young-adults-opt-mobiles-else

You have to take this sort of research with a grain of salt, but there is also probably more than a grain of truth to it. I don’t find it at all difficult to believe that the human impulse to communicate is more addictive than alcohol, chocolate, sex, tea
or coffee. But maybe it’s really just that mobile phones make it easier for people to find those things.

I thought I would flag up a couple of interesting stories have come out recently - showing how different online spaces attract different sorts of people.

This one talks about how young women have become particularly active online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6662469.stm

This one shows that there are differences between people that subscribe to MySpace and those that subscribe to Facebook:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6236628.stm

For me, these stories drive home the (perhaps obvious) insight that its necessary to tap into different networks to reach a range of different kinds of people.  It ties into understanding who your market segment is, and where they are likely to be found.  If you are trying to reach a broad market, chances are that you will have to find multiple channels to reach them.

I can’t believe how quickly Open Coffee Club has taken off - it was started to encourage entrepreneurs, developers and investors to meetup informally to talk about their ideas. Saul Klein started it in a Starbucks cafe in London in early March and now only a few months later there are over 58 Open Coffee Clubs all over the world - including in Coventry, Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, Liverpool…. and counting - how does something like this grow so fast? I guess it is pretty easy to start a group like this - just pick a place / date and invite some interesting people to get together. There are some interesting thoughts on Saul’s blog on what makes an Open Coffee Club work well.

Young entrepreneurs, Oli Barrett and James Murray Wells, are about to launch Ideavolcano.com to house spare business ideas that can be developed by anyone that finds them interesting. They say that entrepreneurs have lots of ideas but not enough time to work them up. And there are also lots of people out there looking for good ideas. So this ‘ideas blog’ is a way to match them up. Entrepreneurs will post their ideas on the blog and other people around the world can develop them. Ownership of the idea is up to those involved.

I’m sad. Not only did I listen to this debate http://www.veodia.com/Enterprise2, I also wrote a note of it for you guys. It’s quite long but have a quick look through it.

It was a lively debate between two speakers focused on the question
whether web 2.0 and collaborative technologies will have any impact on
business and organisational performance.