Health Care Summit

This has nothing to do with our class, but I wanted to share my two cents on healthcare, now that the White House and the Congress are taking another (perhaps final) look at how to fix the system. Last year, after a mild pain in my back I decided to visit a doctor. First, I made sure it was in-network and close to work. After my first visit, the physician said that he wasn't sure what it was and that he need a MRI to see my lower back. Before that, he needed to take x-rays because the insurance wouldn't approve the MRI before the first procedure. I lost another day of work to got to the lab. A week later the results didn't show anything. He ordered an MRI. Right in front of me he got the approval over the phone (at least that's what he said). Went to the lab again and waited a week for the results. In the meantime, the doctor prescribed to me an anti-inflammatory drug like Motrin. When I got the results, I was already feeling fine. The doctor said that nothing looked particular worrisome and could had been a nerve in my back. Almost year after, I got a bill from the MRI place for a few thousand dollars. They said that the insurance did not pay. I called the insurance and they said that the doctor didn't follow the right steps. I called the doctor and he said that it was the insurance's fault. Nobody wants to pay, but there's only one name on the bill. The insurance, by the ways, is from GE, one of the biggest companies in the world, in the richest nation in the world, with the "best" healthcare system in the world. What a joke!

Chile, Chilenos, and Texting

By this time, we all know what happened in Chile this weekend. Chileans love "futbol" (the picture on the left is from Colo-Colo, the most popular soccer team in the South American country). I met many chilenos when I lived in Miami. We used to play soccer for hours, young and old, in the same field. Chile is a great example for other South american countries. After years of a military dictatorship, it transformed itself to a prosperous and stable country, without firing one bullet. I had already booked a trip to Chile for this summer when I learned about the earthquake on Saturday. I'm still going because the country will be ok by then, I believe. Of course, Chile will need help. There are new campaigns to raise money using texts. These campaigns are very simple, you just need to text a key word and a donation is charged to your account. Could this be the start of a new model to gather donations? It proved very successful with Haiti, but I don't think it will be as impressive with Chile. One of the reasons is that you won't see as much damage (even though the earthquake was more powerful) in Chile. We will have to wait and see how the people respond. I'm afraid that if we keep seeing the same tactic applied to the latest tragedy people may get tired of it. With those questions aside, it's great to see technology working for a good cause.

Should a Small Business Have its Own Community?

How big should a business be in order to invest in an online community? I've been thinking about this since we started our class. My feeling is that most small business should use the available free tools (facebook, twitter, etc) to interact with their costumers before spending their resources. On the other hand, with sites such as Ning.com there are available resources to build it without a lot of money. This Monday, we'll know more on how to manage a "new" kind a corporate community. How to engage the users in a different way (not the usual PR crap). Can the same tools be applied to small businesses?

Have You Driven a Ford Lately?

I don't know about you, but Ford seems to be putting a lot more effort in building better looking cars. The Fusion, for instance, looks as sharp as a VW. We'll have to wait about the quality of these new generation of cars, but the company posted some gains lately and seems to be on the rebound. Social media is right in the middle of the new Ford strategy. I just saw this video

Zero to 60: Ford’s Social Media Story, by Scott Monty; presented by GasPedal and the Social Media Business Council from GasPedal on Vimeo.

It's presented by Scott Monty, who is charge of Social Media for Ford. He shows insightful examples how to use social tools like Facebook and Twitter as a way to get feedback and interact with your costumers. Among the useful things: On Twitter, Ford has different accounts for specific niches (you don't want to mix the "Ford Green" with the "Ford Mustang" message). Scott tells a story about a blogger who posted that he wasn't sure about buying a Ford car and asked for the CEO of the company to give him a call. He got the call, thanks to Scott who noticed the post. The overall strategy is to make "humanize" the Ford brand. After watching the presentation, I'm not giving up my VW, but he got me thinking.

Steve Jobs - The Salesman

It's fascinating how Steve Jobs seems to use the media to improve Apple's stock. This article makes the same case by pointing out Job's "Sneakiest Statements." In it, the Apple CEO says that he's not convinced that people want to watch video or movies in a small screen. That was in 2003, but we know that two years later the I-pod was playing video in tiny screen. Another one was in 2008 when he said that the Kindle had no future because people were not reading anymore. One more: "We didn’t think we’d do well in the cellphone business," said in that same 2003 interview. Before announcing the I-pad, Jobs said that Apple couldn't make a $500 computer that wasn't, "a piece of junk." This led the experts to think that the tablet would cost around $1000. However, you can get the basic version of it for $500.

Are those statement to trick the competition? Or may be to confuse the experts about pricing so when the products is unveiled it actually cost less than what most gurus agree? Or could it be that when CEOs are asked to predict the future of technology, even them, are not going to be right a 100 percent? I think is a combination of the many factors, but I'm convinced that he's a great salesman. And when he said that Apple couldn't make a computer for $500 that wasn't a piece of junk... he's still right!

One last look at Twiistup

I wasn't able to attend Twiistup, but I feel that most people learned a lot of new things about the online business. One great example, if you haven't read it, is Lisa Jacob's blog about her experience. She was able to listen to Paul Graham"s interview about start ups. After reading Paul Graham, he has become one of my favorites bloggers and entrepreneurs. This guy gets it.

Back to Lisa's blog, she has a few main points about Mr. Graham. First, he dressed down, a sign of how confident and successful this guy is. This happens in many professional fields. A few years ago, I met legendary anchor Dan Rather while I was walking in a hallway of the CBS building in New York. Those who have been there know that the building is very old. Confusing. I was lost when I saw him. He was really nice and talked for a few minutes, and then even showed me the way out. It may sound new to you, but most anchors that I know wouldn't do that. But the really talented ones, in my opinion, seem to be comfortable enough to be nice to "general assignment" reporters like me.

Paul Graham fits that category. He sounds like a winner and also makes it clear. He advises to be determined and think big when you're building a new project, a website. More important, build something that people need. A great advise that sometimes gets lost in the excitement.

Super Bowl Ads and Flo TV

ManCrunch Crunches the Super Bowl Ad Game... Scott Sles analyzes in his blog how Mancrunch outsmarted the media (in this case CBS) and benefited from the controversy of not being able to buy space in the Super Bowl. I agree. It was a great way to get publicity without paying for it. He also mentions that he wasn't impressed with any of the ads. I have to disagree with that one. I thought that the Google commercial was really smart and told a story in a very simple but emotional way.

Another commercial that captured my attention was Flo TV. It was not because of the ad, but for the product. I'm not sure about how new the technology is (I believe the I-phone has similar capability) but with the Flo TV device you can watch TV from any place you have a connection. There are three ways to access it: through your cell phone, your car entertainment system and with your personal television. The price of the small TV was $200 on Amazon.com. I checked Flo's website and couldn't find the subscription price.

Could this be a great way for TV to recover some of the advertising money? I think this could be part of the solution. The service will give viewers a way to watch their shows anytime they want, but also be able to get live news or sport events, even in their cars and with a clear picture and no download waiting time (at least that's what they promise). The device is small enough that you can carry in a purse or even your pocket, but it should have a better picture quality that most cell phones. That should make it attractive. How about competitors? May be the I-phone, but I can't think of others. It has great potential because I believe that eventually these mobile devices will find a way to incorporate the internet to their products. It will be interesting to see how and when.

Ning.com

Building a social network in less than 30 seconds. Needless to say, it took me about 15 minutes, but after trying Ning I was shocked to see how easy was to build my own community. I decided to build one for me and a few guys from work who get together every Saturday (rain or snow!) to go play soccer in the morning. Once you register with an e-mail address, there are about 20 templates to choose from to start your page, so there is a lot of ways to make it look like if it were original content. Then, there many ways to customize it by importing your background or a logo for a header (these are the things that I tried, but I'm sure there are many other functions that you can do to build it). A really cool feature is that you can import (I don't know if I'm using the right word here) applications. For instance, I picked HULU to be part of the main menu. So, whenever I get a new member, the member will able to watch a sport channel courtesy of HULU. You can add more widgets to your own network. For many of us looking to built a web base business, these tools are a really affordable tools to make a website attractive. Another example that we study this week is KickApps. You don't really need to spend a lot of money, the services and platforms are already there.

Dewey Defeats Truman - En Espanol

This is a headline from the Los Angeles Spanish daily, La Opinion. It was published on Thursday, Feb. 4. It reads "Concejo municipal aprueba despidos" or "City council approves layoffs" (below a picture of three firefighters). Except that it didn't. I was covering this story last Thursday, one of the three days that the Council meets in Los Angeles. Since that Tuesday we were hearing that the city needed to layoff about a thousand workers. By Wednesday, it was almost certain that they wouldn't reach an agreement and announce the cuts. But by late Wednesday, the council agreed to postpone a decision for 30 days. Of course, by that time, La Opinion press deadline had passed and published the embarrassing headline - a la "Dewey Defeats Truman". I haven't talk to the reporter since then, so I don't exactly know what happened. A few comments... first, it's inexcusable for a paper to run a story that did NOT occur. That's basic journalism. Very sloppy. But it also reflects the challenges that newspapers are facing and why their business model is broken. Because they have a strict deadline, local newspaper reporters have to finish a story earlier that most TV reporters working for the 11pm newscast. The whole process of going to press is time consuming and there's no way to correct something once is printed on paper (something you can easily do on line). No wonder people are rushing to the web to get the news.
I was having breakfast this morning and there were a few copies of the LA Times available for the costumers. Only two older gentleman were reading the paper. It seems, that even when it's free, a lot of people will not read a paper anymore.

On Line Reviews

If you haven't read Andrew Menendez' blog on "on line reviews", you should take a look at it. I won't go into the specifics, but he discusses why reviewers should not get compensated by receiving the products that they blog about. The main issue here, as you may have already guess, is credibility. Amazon has a program called Amazon Vine that according to them, "enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions." Amazon provides its members free copies of those products . Conflict of interest?

Imagine if the same situation can happen, not in a trivial household product, but perhaps in more important cases, such as politics? How about if I want to influence a political campaign and rely on blogs to make "X" candidate look "good", at least online? From our readings, "Here Comes Everybody", the author makes a case that "mass amateurization" has made it easy for anybody to become a news outlet. That change has made professional writers (newspapers, tv) lose control of what makes something "newsworthy". How about the standards that were established by media professionals? Those are gone too and that could be dangerous. This is why I think "branding" will still have a great influence in the future. I believe people will still believe that a good brand is usually providing a better product. That's why, most people trust the New York Times, not the New York Post.

Twiistup

I believe a few APOC students were able to attend last week's Twiistup conference. Unfortunately, I wasn't one of you because of my work. Anyway, I think it would be really beneficial for the rest of us if those who were there can share some of their experiences as volunteers. Was it a good event to network? Who did you meet? What did you learn specifically? I would love to hear from you. Who knows, may be in tonight's class or blog about it. Thanks!