Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 194
April 3, 2016
The Power Of Leading With Innovation
Episode #508 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
I have said it before. I will say it again. Christopher S. Penn is a deadly weapon... and I mean that in the kindest sense of the saying. Yes, he's a practicing Martial Artist, but he's a more dangerous marketing weapon. He's that rare breed of deeply tech savvy professional combined with an understanding of marketing that will make your head spin. His full-time job is as the Vice President of Marketing Technology at SHIFT Communications, but he's also one of the co-founders of PodCamp, co-host (with John Wall) of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast, and a very passionate blogger at Awaken Your Superhero. He's also published a slew of business book, White Belt Marketing, Marketing Blue Belt and - most recently - Leading Innovation. Some fans of the show may also remember him as one of the co-hosts of Media Hacks. With that, we came together to discuss all things innovation. Where does it come from, how does it work and what's your company missing? Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #508.
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April 1, 2016
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #302
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
Like - The Intercept. "Following up on my recent link about click fraud in modern marketing, this short (10 minute) video looks underneath the pay-per-like market, estimated at $200M a year. It ain't pretty." (Alistair for Hugh).
Using computer vision to understand big visual data - O'Reilly . "I'm running content at Strata this week in San Jose. We had a raft of good keynotes: this one from our first day stuck out. It's Alyosha Efros giving an amazing talk on the state of computer vision (spoiler alert: it's not as good as you think) that also manages to be strangely hilarious." (Alistair for Mitch).
How to Hack an Election - Bloomberg . "A non-tech friend asked me about this story, about a kind of black-hat election hacker... who helped elect, among other clients, Mexico's right-of-center president, Peña Nieto, and has worked in the dark arts in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Colombia, among other places. There will be movies about this, and if you think it's not happening in this US election cycle, well, you are more trusting than I am." (Hugh for Alistair).
ELLE on Earth - Observer . "Did you hear about the NY writer who penned an article that insulted just about every powerful person in NY's magazine publishing world? Who knows what the real story is behind Jacques Hyzagi sublime act of career kamikaze, but it sure was fun to read." (Hugh for Mitch).
What's Next in Computing? - Chris Dixon - Medium . "I'm surprised that I have not seen this article being shared more. It was sent to me - via email - by several key people in Silicon Valley. It seems to be making the rounds. It's a smart look at a very tough question, in a very curious environment. The answer to the question of 'what's next' has never been so obvious, while - at the same time - so complex. There is so much that is here, so much that is right on the cusp of becoming something bigger, and so much that is still coming. Technology. Wow. It's going to really blow our minds in the next little while..." (Mitch for Alistair).
In Praise of Well-Made Books - Craig Mod - Medium . "I'll admit it. I saw the headline to this article, and figured it would be perfect for Hugh. I wasn't even sure that I had to read it. That would be disingenuous, so I did dive on it. I'm glad that I did. I buy most of my books on Kindle. I read all of my books on my iPhone. With that, I am happy to buy physical books too. I want them on my desk, on my shelf and in my life. As physical books creep into the furnishings of our lives, I'm ever more eager to buy a book, when it speaks to me. In both how it is designed... and how it is made." (Mitch for Hugh).
Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.
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What's A Yahoo?
How much time do you spend thinking about Yahoo?
I spend a lot of time thinking about Yahoo. Not the Yahoo you used to use as a gateway to the Internet (or for common searches), but the Yahoo of today. "Yahoo is dead." This is the typical sentiment/eye rolls I get when I mention Yahoo (much like talking about MySpace) to anyone, but I am left wondering if Yahoo's biggest challenge is how they communicate and market their own brand? That web portal/search platform called Yahoo has changed - dramatically - since it was no longer cool to use them for search.
Does Yahoo have a future?
Yahoo definitely has a very interesting portfolio diversification strategy in play. They are being challenged (as most public companies are), but there is a lot of money and attention at stake here. In all of the current commotion surrounding Yahoo, I found the conversation between Yahoo's current CEO (and former Googler), Marissa Mayer, with Charlie Rose very captivating. Rose doesn't pull any punches, and Mayer is quite clear in describing both what Yahoo is today, where the attention is currently being spent and a lot of vision around the opportunity to make something happen with this iconic brand. It's complicated. Mayer states that... and she's right. Still, all businesses are trying to figure out their way, in this very different economy. This is a profoundly interesting conversation.
Do you really believe that Yahoo has no future? You may want to watch this: Charlie Rose - An hour with Marissa Mayer, CEO and President of Yahoo.
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Mobile Breaks Search... And Your Brand
Mobile could well be the last true computing platform.
Not smartphones, but mobile. The ability to be connected (with high speed and consistency) anywhere and everywhere. This is nothing new. This is not an original thought. It was an original sentiment, when I started writing about it, well over fifteen years ago. Back then, the mobile carriers were not concerned with data. There was no real mobile Web. There was no real interest from consumers to use their mobile phones for a Web-like experience. In fact, when text messaging was first introduced, you could not text someone unless you were both on the same carrier, and the messages were limited to 140 characters (hint: this is why Twitter maintained that limitation, lest many people forget). Back then, saying that, "mobile will eat the world," made anyone and everyone chuckle. Now, it's not so funny. Now, it's just a matter of time.
Mobile is eating the world.
Ben Evans works at the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, and he's an amazing writer on the technology space out of Silicon Valley. He's also known for his presentation titled, Mobile Ate The World. Just this week, Evans updated his 76 slide deck, and it's well worth everyone's effort to spend some time reviewing it, taking notes and sharing it with your teams. If you want to better understand where Evans' headspace is at, when it comes to mobile, you should also read his piece: 16 mobile theses (from December 2015). He's right in saying that mobile is the new central ecosystem of tech, and can't be compared to Web browsing. From his article...
"Each new generation of technology - each new ecosystem - is a step change in scale, and that new scale makes it the centre of innovation and investment in hardware, software and company creation. The mobile ecosystem, now, is heading towards perhaps 10x the scale of the PC industry, and mobile is not just a new thing or a big thing, but that new generation, whose scale makes it the new centre of gravity of the tech industry. Almost everything else will orbit around it."
Everything. Yes, everything. Think about cars, drones, virtual reality, augmented reality, Snapchat, wearable technology, bots, and whatever else is captivating your attention. The ecosystem - at the core - is mobile. With the user at the center, there is still one big, honking and unsolved challenge that faces brands in this amazing world that we live in...
How will anybody truly find your brand?
Many will be dazzled and amazed by the many charts, graphs and flows that Ben Evans uses in Mobile Is Eating The World to build a dramatic case for why brands need to innovate... now. For my dime, there was something much more subtle. It's a couple of lines of text that appear on slide number 54. The slide states:
"For 20 years, PC internet mostly meant web browser + mouse + keyboard. Search (and later Facebook) dominated. Mobile unbundles the web into apps, apps into the OS (& other apps), breaks search. From stability to rapid ongoing change."
Mobile breaks search. Focus on this brands... focus!
This is true. This is painful. This is scary. Think about the current user experience. If you're not an airline, bank etc... the user has no real reason to download your app, and keep it on their already-cluttered home screen. You've seen the data (or just keep clicking through the slides in Evans' deck). When it comes to apps, they are over half of all Internet use (we are moving from desktop Web browsers to this platform, very rapidly), but one third of all app use is Facebook, and the rest of time consumers focus on less than a handful of other apps. Think about that. We went from a handful of network television channels (CBS, ABC, NBC, etc...), to a handful of Web portals (AOL, Yahoo, etc...), to a handful of social media platforms (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc...) to a handful of mobile apps. The saving grace used to be Google and search to dig into the niches and find that more specific kind of content.
Now what?
If your app isn't a daily utility (like banking), and a consumer needs/wants your content, how will they find it? They'll do a search? They'll search on the app store? They'll find you on the app store, download the app, open the app... who isn't already exhausted? There is no fluidity, etc... from app to app. Even the mobile browser experience feels like a shrunken-less-than version of the desktop. Search is no longer the needle's eye that threads these many brand experiences from one to another, when it comes to mobile. Facebook's search functionality has yet to truly serve the consumer in this fashion. This is - and will continue to be - a huge issue for brands. The solution seems simple enough: we need a better mobile search experience that enables consumers to access content, and share it much in the same way that the desktop/browser experience provided. Still, we're not even close to a solution. Plus, that solution needs to have the same, look, feel and usability as the many apps that these consumers use on a daily basis (again, not just a dumbed down version of a website)
What this means for brand's today?
More than ever, brands have to realize that Facebook (and other social networks) could well be the Internet for most consumers. Assuming that social media is just another paid advertising channel or a place to do digital experiential is a huge mistake. These platforms are crucial for content publishing, consumer engagement and to build deeper and more valuable connections. In short: while you're competition is foolishly just advertising on these channels, take advantage of this to make your brand something that much more connected, as the ground shifts from desktop to mobile.
Mobile is eating the world... is your brand primed?
Mobile Is Eating the World (2016) from a16z
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March 31, 2016
I, For One, Welcome Our Algorithm Overlords
Are you done with Instagram?
Earlier this week, Instagram (owned by Facebook) announced that it would be testing a new algorithm in the feed. What does that mean, in plain non-Silicon Valley English? It means that instead of getting the organic flow of pictures that you now see on Instagram (which is, essentially, the people that you follow, and their most recent pictures and videos), Instagram (or rather a computer program that Instagram built) will decide what you will be seeing in your feed. We are removing the humans who have posted.
The robots are coming. The robots are coming.
People are panicked. They're worried. They feel like they are losing their freewill. There may be a revolt at hand. Or not. What if it works? What if it's a good thing? What if you saw this awesome combination of the people you really liked (based on photos you have hearted or commented on, or the people that you engage with the most) first, coupled with the subconscious choices that you make (the time of day that you tend to hop on Instagram, types of images that you may have liked and not known that you were developing a pattern of interest in, or even pictures of people you don't follow, but are heavily liked by those you engage with the most?). What if Instagram started showing you images of people that you're friends with on Facebook, who recently joined Instagram, and made it easier to start seeing their stuff? Imagine how much better your feed might be.
We don't know what we don't know.
Facebook's explosive growth came post introduction of the news feed. Before the news feed, all we saw were the most recent posts of everyone that we were connected to, by having to hop over and visit their individual pages, once they changed some kind of status. That format worked, and it helped build the popularity of the online social network. When Facebook did introduce the news feed (first in 2006, and then updated - in a big way - in 2011), they faced a ton of criticism. Facebook (like Instagram) was allowing the algorithm to decide what users see and connect with. This algorithm is "all knowing" and it controls the content. People had the same reaction that they're currently having about Instagram. Now, think about it, how great is the Facebook news feed? I'd say it has made Facebook the superior social media experience that it has become.
Love the algorithm.
There. I said it. I used to be a purest. I used to hate when these platforms decided what to show (and what to hold back). I'm a big boy. I know who I am following. I know the type of content that I am interested in. If I don't like something, the tools to hide, mute, delete, unfriend, etc... are obvious. Let me decide. Still, as the years wane on, it has become abundantly clear to me, that the algorithm does know better. Quick example: I'm super close with someone in Europe. When they post, I'm usually asleep or "away." Because the algorithm knowns this, their content was suddenly presented, integrated and highlighted. I'll often "step away" from certain channels for a few days. When I log back in, I used to not be able to scroll all the way back to the people I mostly wanted to connect with. The algorithm has truly solved for this. The results: I'm more connected to the platform. I use it more often. It's most relevant to me.
Hate the algorithm.
The other side of this will be problematic for brands. While Instagram, Facebook and other platforms move to a more algorithmic feed, to keep users engaged and connected, the best stuff may not be the stuff being posted from brands. This algorithm also empowers Instagram to throttle content from brands that is not performing at the same level as the user's friends (and, let's be honest, we all know how hard it is to create branded content that can be as admired as our friend's pictures and videos). We've seen this happen at Facebook, and it's a smart bet that this is going to happen on Instagram now. If brands want to reach their fans (and acquire new ones), they are going to have to pay for it, and up the quality of their game (regardless of the free run they had to acquire all of these fans). This will be both an expensive and frustrating transition for the brands that have already built a following on Instagram. It's going to make newer brands - that have yet to embrace the platform - to think twice about their ability to do anything substantive on it as well without paying a heavy freight.
Play the game.
There are two sides to this story. Story #1: Instagram will quickly become a pay-to-play service for brands at a macro-level. Story #2: Instagram will be an amazing space for brands who understand what their consumers want in this channel, what Instagram will prioritize (in terms of content that works), and have a very visually appealing space to tell more interesting stories. Brands don't have to choose just one story, in this scenario.
Do you embrace the algorithm? Is your feed all the better for it?
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March 29, 2016
The Magic Space Of Digital Marketing Today
Does the term "digital marketing" make any sense, at this point?
It's the "digital" part that gets everyone so irritated. The rational thought is: "what advertising isn't digital?" That's fair ball. The "digital" part may be more useless and nebulous than it was over a decade ago, when the idea of using digital channels and production was still nascent, and a minor component of the marketing mix. In order for marketers to maintain any semblance of relevancy today, they must be digital at the core.
Digital at the core?
What does that mean? It's one thing for an agency to offer digital marketing and advertising services, but a service offering does not make an agency digital at the core. When asked what a digital marketing agency does differently than a tradition agency (now, more commonly referred to, as "full service" or an "integrated" agency), the answer is usually staring everyone right in the face. The companies that have a more Madison Avenue (or traditional advertising) legacy in their blood, still think of solutions from an advertising perspective (or, "what is the messaging that the consumer will see about the brand?") mixed with a media solution (or, "this is where the messaging should go! (and this is how much it's going to cost us!)"). Digital at the core takes a different perspective. Digital marketing agencies (if that's what we're still going to call them) look much more like solution providers than an advertising outcome. For my part (and yes, my perspective on this is completely slanted, because I have been in the digital marketing space since the early nineties), advertising is but one lever that our agency, Mirum, likes to pull to drive attention (in a myriad of ways) to the solutions that we provide to a brand. Digital marketing agencies provide technology solutions, management consulting, the building of platforms and channels, and are that much more able to become a Chief Marketing Officer's true advisor, partner, and the ones to execute on the global brand vision.
This is less about digital marketing, and much more about the marketer's needs.
If you speak to any leading marketing professional, the story is systematically the same. They are given more work - above and beyond managing the advertising and communications portfolio. These leaders are expected to tie-in much closer with IT, to handle the digital transformation of the business, build different customer experiences, think of new revenue generation models, help decide how the data and analytics should be used (and stored), what the over-arching business strategy should be, understand the customer journey, figure out where content plays into the experience, be future-focused on disruptive technologies, provide insights on startups and other competitive forces and, of course, create a great advertising messages. When you span the arena of partners that can help this individual to be successful - and to support this new and diverse skill set - it still feels like a digital marketing agency is best positioned to be their primary partners.
The Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies.
When we first started our agency as Twist Image back in 2000 (we changed the name to Mirum about a year ago), we would analyze the competitive landscape... obsessively. We knew that we didn't want to be just another advertising agency, and we truly wanted brands to work with technology to get closer to their consumers. With that, I have always followed Gartner's work in this space, and read their reports on who was leading the charge. Yesterday, Mirum issued a press release because . From Gartner's report: "For this year's Magic Quadrant, we looked at firms that focus on strategizing, creating, executing and measuring customer‐facing digital experiences across the customer journey. For consideration, providers needed to demonstrate an ability to deliver comprehensive strategic services, creative and content services, technology implementation, measurement, and analytics -- and a close alignment with the marketing needs of global brands, whose leaders seek those specific competencies when choosing a marketing service partner."
Mirum is a part of the Visionaries quadrant.
What's most interesting about this report (beyond everyone on the Mirum team being extremely proud to be included only one year after our creation), is Gartner's "Market Overview" section, in which they declare, "the traditional agency model is broken." From the report: "In 2016, CMOs are rethinking their brands' dependence on external marketing agencies. Many aren't convinced that external firms are the right allies to take into battle, highlighting a continued trend among CMOs to build internal marketing capabilities or even establish in-house agencies. The reason for this shift is two-fold. First, CMOs want creativity as a core tenet of their own teams. In May 2015, Chobani CMO Peter McGuinness told Digiday, 'The more you outsource, the less of a creative culture you have.' In October 2015, Brad Wakeman, president of PepsiCo's global beverage group, went further, shaking the agency world with his assertion that unless it innovates, the traditional agency model 'is not going to bend, it's going to break.' For their part, agencies rightly critique marketers' ineffective briefing processes and the use of the agency pitch to score spec work, which drives up costs on both sides, according to Eve Reiter, VP of Global Supply Management at American Express. Indeed, the selection process greatly influences the client/agency relationship success. Marketers (not procurement alone) must invest time and effort to fully vet an agency, taking care to clearly illuminate business goals and challenges. In doing so, the agency can properly vet them in return. Agency selection left largely to procurement, and beholden to stringent process versus open conversation, neutralizes a critical element of a successful creative partnership -- the ability to challenge each other. To help their clients compete in today's global and digital marketplace, agencies need to rethink traditional models of engagement and execution. Three rounds of creative review may be three rounds too late for relevance to today's always-on consumer. Outdated staffing models may create scope creep, or worse (for agencies), dollars left on the table. The leaders in this Magic Quadrant are finding ways to disrupt themselves from within -- through, for example, more flexible compensation models -- and deliver newfound agility to their clients."
Call it "digital marketing agency," call it an " advertising agency," or call it a "marketing agency." Is it really delivering? That's the point.
You can read the full report right here: Magic Quadrant for Global Digital Marketing Agencies.
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March 28, 2016
Is Someone Hacking Your Car?
Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am a guest contributor on CHOM 97.7 FM radio broadcasting out of Montreal (home base). It's not a long segment - about 5 to 10 minutes every week - about everything that is happening in the world of technology and digital media. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly to SoundCloud, if you're interested in hearing more of me blathering away. I'm really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up on listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry and Heather B. morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.
This week we discussed:
Can someone hack your car? Everything from stopping it (and rendering it dead) to hacking your information, because you connected your phone to the car? How safe are we in our own cars? A warning has been issued from the FBI over the dangers of car hacking. With that, a connected car can be great for us (unlocking our cars, etc...).
Back in November, I chose Bitmoji as the app of the week. Bitmoji is owned by Bitstrips - a Toronto company that was originally founded in 2007 to help users build personalized digital comics, but in 2014 refocused on customized and shareable cartoon avatars. Users download an app, and then pick from a variety of face shapes, skin colors, and other features that often result in eerily accurate portrayals. These "bitmojis" then can be put into various different poses or with different accessories, and are readily accessible for mobile communications. Snapchat has acquired them for $100 million.
Jimmy Kimmy enlists DJ Khaled as his Snapchat coach, and this points to a new world of influencers and brands.
App of the week: Apple's new Night Shift mode and check out f.lux for your computers as well.
Listen here...
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March 27, 2016
Is Customer Service The New Marketing?
Episode #507 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
It's always a pleasure to welcome Jay Baer back to the show. We don't always agree, but we both do love marketing in this modern age. Jay is back with a brand new book called, Hug Your Haters. The book is being described as a modern day approach to customer service. Jay says that customer service is the new marketing (a point we debate on this episode). Jay's last business book was Youtility. And, as if that weren't enough, he turned his blog, Convince And Convert into a major publishing platform that features multiple voices along with ton of fascinating podcasts and more. His first book, The Now Revolution (which he co-wrote with Amber Naslund), also broke ground when it was first released. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Mirum Podcast #507.
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March 25, 2016
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #301
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist's Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
Conversational UI: a short reading list - Berg . "A few weeks ago I wrote a Medium post on chat as interface that sort of blew up. One of the best things about a widely-shared post, is the way you learn from the comments. And in this case, Dave King pointed me at some prescient writing from BERG in 2012 that should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand the next few years of human-machine interface." (Alistair for Hugh).
Aphorist proves Twitter is the form's perfect new home - BoingBoing . "An aphorism is a small, pithy truth, often exposing an inherent tension between two things. And Twitter may be its perfect medium: Short non-sequiturs from anywhere. And nobody is doing this better than Aaron Haspel." (Alistair for Mitch).
Plants talk to each other using an Internet of fungus - BBC . "The symbiosis between plants and fugus networks is fascinating, but even more interesting is that different plants connected to the same fungus networks 'communicate' with each other, share nutrients, and in some cases can mount shared defences against intruding plants. But the best part of this article is the use of the term the 'wood wide web'." (Hugh for Alistair).
State Of The Music Business: What The Numbers Tell Us - RIAA - Medium . "This is from the Chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, so it must be taken with a grain of salt, but it includes this astounding statistic: in 2015 vinyl sales (of 17 million units) grossed $416 million, while ad-supported streaming music (of billions of plays) generated $395 million. So, 'dead' vinyl is now more commercially valuable than all of the free streaming services out there." (Hugh for Mitch).
We're More Honest With Our Phones Than With Our Doctors - The New York Times Magazine . "When we think of privacy and our data, many people are quick to worry about the myriad of social media spaces that are capturing our every mood, post, update and the pictures of our kids. What about search? What about buying online? Think about the things you tell the search engines. Think about the things that you look for at online stores. Pretty scary. The meta data tells the truth: we're more honest with our phones than we are with our doctors. What? It's true. It's sad. It's true. We probably tell a search engine things that we have yet to share with our spouses or close family members." (Mitch for Alistair).
Careful What You Ask For Because This Guy Is A Photoshop Troll Master - Design For Trust . "Beyond the fact that this one of the funnier things that I saw online this week, I've become deeply fascinated with the fact that things like hacking, bots and now, trolling, have become something positive and... even... funny. A part of the popular culture. Nothing more to say, other than enjoy the laugh and consider the fact that some trolls are the best of things... and not the worst of them." (Mitch for Hugh).
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The Airbnb Story
Most people know Airbnb as the disruptive hospitality business that is valued at $24 billion.
Sometimes, the number, size and speed to market of these startups can blind us to the people who are building them. It's easy to think of these innovators and entrepreneurs as moustache-twirling evildoings, who are hoarding wealth and disrupting the status quo. More often than not, this is not the case. Joe Gebbia is the co-founder of Airbnb. To be frank, his story is charming... even humane. Prior to this past year's TED conference, I had not heard the Airbnb story, as told by one of its founders. Was it about money? Hardly. It was an accident. Gebbia bet his whole career on the notion that strangers can trust each other enough to stay in each other's home and - when they do - the world becomes more tolerable.
Getting over stranger--danger bias.
A core component to building a successful business comes down to one's network. In the early days of Mirum (back when we were known as Twist Image), I would often give presentations on how to develop a personal brand, by using the nascent social media channels and tools that were offered back then. Another component of that presentation was networking. I would (half) jokingly tell people that while our parents engrained in us the thought that we should "never talk to strangers," when it comes to business, we should "always talk to strangers." Gebbia took this notion, coupled it with a one-time-experience that he describes in his story below, and layered strong design and usability on top of it to create Airbnb. Over 125 million hosted nights to date (and always growing), Gebbia and his team are now dreaming bigger. They want to create a culture of sharing and place, where design can help to build community and connection to one another.
Airbnb is more than just a place to crash.
Airbnb is changing the way that the world travels, and the way in which people connect. It's not hyperbole, just watch their story below for real life examples of how Airbnb has done this. Gebbia - along with his co-founders Brian Chesky and Nathan Blecharczyk - have also developed a new economy via Airbnb for millions of people in close to 200 countries.
Watch the Airbnb story about how humans can connect: How Airbnb Designs For Trust - TED 2016.
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Six Pixels of Separation
- Mitch Joel's profile
- 80 followers
