What the fark did I just read?

I feel pity for the thousands of workers who will have to listen to that analogy be regurgitated by their inept managers.

FTA: But, people can talk themselves into hiring pretty much anyone (or anything) if they want to delude themselves enough.

And it's much easier to distinguish delusions from inspired thinking in hindsight. The (better-written) linked article about Second Life admits that predicting success/failure is pretty much a guessing game.

/All I got out of the article was a strange desire to ride a scooter to the local malt shop
//I sound fat

So... I shouldn't invest in useless products?

Ohhhh

So 1 million users per month is a failure? I wish I could have an MMO that failed so bad.

What a load of horseshiat. I can imagine people sitting and listening to this crap nodding their heads in empty agreement though.

Seriously, it sounds like something Herman Cain would say.

Faddy: What the fark did I just read?

I feel pity for the thousands of workers who will have to listen to that analogy be regurgitated by their inept managers.

People who drink milkshakes are now job creators.

unyon: This analogy makes no sense. Second Life may not have been ultimately successful, but the idea of a compelling alternate universe is alive and well in myriad other forms. It didn't fail because it was conceptually flawed. In fact, it's arguable that it was an important social engineering pilot.

I'm not about to 'hire' Twitter, because I don't think it adds much to my existing pantheon of communication vectors. That doesn't mean that other people see it the same way as I do, or that Twitter is doomed to failure.

Delusion is a two-way street.

People like MMOs.

People like milkshakes.

Lets make an MMO just like real life and give people freedom to do what they want, they'll make their own worlds of stuff to do and we'll save development costs!

Lets let people make their own milkshakes from multiple flavors and fruit combinations.

Wait, people don't want to log into a game and have a second job. Fuuuuuu.

Wait people in the morning just want to get their farking milkshake in 10 seconds and get back on the road. Maybe if we buy some sort of low orbital milkshake shooting satellite then we can serve our customers with sun roofs by launching their drinks into their cupholders...


You just have to be a moron who failed business school.

Ashelth: Wait, people don't want to log into a game and have a second job. Fuuuuuu.

Given the success of "grindy" MMOs, I'd say they do.

Tyrone Slothrop: Ashelth: Wait, people don't want to log into a game and have a second job. Fuuuuuu.

Given the success of "grindy" MMOs, I'd say they do.

Oh, and also, given the success of Minecraft, I'd say people like to play games that let them be creative. Now, maybe Second Life doesn't do that very well (the creative stuff happens outside the game), but the potential is there.

This is like a dilbert cartoon stretched into a 500 word piece. Forbes further cements it's reputation for most insipid business writing possible. At least I know to steer clear of both of the books mentioned in the article.

Using the metaphor of interviewing and hiring was confusing and detracted from the author's point.

Understanding your customers' behavior and how your products meet their needs is a basic principle of marketing, but is underutilized in practice. It can make or break a product or a company.

The morning milkshake filled a very specific role in the customers' routine -- a complete breakfast able to fit in a car's cupholder. Understanding it that way enables the business to improve it from the customer's point of view and perhaps expand the product line to other car-friendly items. If it is not understood, the business might actually destroy the product in attempting to improve or promote it by, say, making the container too big.

Second Life had potential as a general concept, but ultimately did not tap into enough specific long-term customer needs. Second Life should have looked more closely at not only user demographics, but what customers were getting out of it and what drove them to return. People are driven to keep using Facebook to see what their friends are saying, define themselves to others, share pictures, and a hundred other specific reasons that Facebook has helped create. Second Life was able to develop very little of that.

In business, tactics trumps strategy every time. Sounds like a truism, but both large and small business keep making the same mistake over and over.