Got an email today from Rok Hrastnik letting me know that sales of Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS are going well.
That’s not surprising. I’m impressed with how well he’s promoted it. In addition to getting a lot of contributors to talk about it on their blogs, he also has added value to the book by offering customers-only updates. For contributors like me, he’s given us this nifty little bug to put on our blogs:
Tyler Cowen: You are not as benevolent or generous as you think. The main reason you gave to tsunami victims is because other people did.
This is not surprising at all. Change “gave to tsunami victims” to “bought Nike shoes.” Humans are social creatures, who in spite of our rationality, behave emotionally a great deal of the time, especially when it comes to spending (donating) money. Any marketing copywriter can tell you that.
Rok Hrastnik has written an incredibly comprehensive e-book about RSS for marketing, and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it. 
Check it out. (aff.)
Wow. There’s a burning discussion going on about whether GoDaddy is being wise or stupid to run an ad in this year’s Super Bowl.
As a marketer, I’m not a big fan of Super Bowl ads per se. Most of them are pretty lame, but there have been some big success stories. Someone on the board pointed out Monster’s ad from a few years ago. Of course, the Macintosh was launched in the 1984 Super Bowl. And several years ago Garden Burger launched themselves to the next level with ads on the final Seinfeld episode (which can be thought of as the Super Bowl for Women).
But the best part of this whole kerfluffle is the emergence of Bob Parsons, CEO of GoDaddy, as a commenter. He had some cogent points and, hey, it’s pretty cool to see the CEO of a $100 million company jump into the fray. And it turns out he has a blog.
Coming in 2006: The Google Grid. Maybe. Kinda fun to think about. Or scary?
I’ve been advocating a helper-application approach to RSS for at least 18 months. (Which is not to say that I invented the idea. Others have talked about something similar, and the idea of a helper application is obvious to most people who’ve done any kind of web programming.) But now that Jeremy is advocating it (and opposing Dave’s needlessly complex version), maybe something will happen.
Dave’s idea is kind of neat, but it doesn’t pass the “will my mom understand it?” test.
An apparently anti-commerce nut says, “It’s time for Google to give something back to the public sector.”
Like maybe all the information that Google has given you access to over the years?
Last night’s movie: The Secret Lives of Dentists. We liked it. It has a quirky combination of drama and almost campy humor. The night before we watched Girl with a Pearl Earring. Also two thumbs up.
Over the last few years, little by little, I’ve become a sports nut. When I first moved to Boulder, I didn’t follow any of the local teams and in fact actively disliked the Broncos because I never liked John Elway. (There’s not denying he was a great player, but I never liked the way he refused to go to Baltimore when he was first drafted.) And as it happened, the very first week I was here, the Broncos played the Atlanta Falcons in the 1999 Super Bowl. Though I was never an avid Falcons fan, I grew up near Atlanta and hopped on the bandwagon when they made it the Super Bowl.
They lost.
Since then, Elway retired, the Falcons and the Broncos both hit a rough patch and I slowly started following the Broncos. I also became a huge Colorado Avalanche fan (even if no one else cares about hockey) and at least pay attention to the Nuggets. I also started playing indoor soccer twice week and developed new respect for how hard it is to be a successful professional athlete. Now I listen to every Broncos game on the radio (we don’t have a TV), frequently check stats on ESPN.com and listen religiously to the Fan, especially Sandy Clough and Irv & Joe.
I was lucky enough to live in Chicago during the Michael Jordan era and I followed the Bulls religiously. I was also a Bears fan during that time, and come to think of it the Broncos are a lot like the post-85 Bears. Usually a pretty good team with flashes of brilliance, but every year there seems to be a piece missing, and since Elway they don’t have a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, kind of like when Walter Payton retired from the Bears.
