Month: February 2008

I just spoke with someone who used to work at the FTC and knows a bit about email marketing and the FTC side of things.  I continue to be annoyed that it is legal to resell email addresses.

An example:  you can sign up to my list on the top right corner.  If I include in my (hard to find) privacy policy that I reserve the right to resell your name, you could legally start receiving viagra advertising in your email just for joining my list.

So I asked why that is allowed?  He suggested it was to enable commerce and is MY PROPERTY as the list owner of that data (ie your email addresses).  So I asked him to give me an example of where it is good for consumers for that to happen.  He said it was very good for commerce.  I asked again where its good for consumers.  He started giving me an example of being a camera site and how they might resell their list to someone making some new camera equipment and that it would be good for me to find out about the new product by being emailed a promotion.

I wasn’t impressed.

FTC:  Its time you stepped up and fixed the spam problem permanently.  Stop allowing people to resell email lists.  Email is NOT the same as postal mail lists.  The only reason we don’t get 5000 times more spam is because technology is doing a decent job at blocking it.  Thank god for google mail, they block around 2,000 spam messages daily from getting into my inbox.

In the past month two people have spoken to me about someone being a "genius".  They referred to the (different people ) as being simply better than other people.  They spoke about them almost with a sense of awe.

With all the interviews I do on meetinnovators.com, I am exposed to smart "genius-like" people very frequently (we do one interview per week).  So I've started to get some strong feelings about "geniuses".

"Geniuses" are normal people just like you and me.  They just happened to have hit the things in my post about internet entrepreneurship.  That is, using their natural abilities in their market, filling a market need, passion for the market and focus.  And there's one more thing they have: good strategy.

But, its a tricky balance.  Once that good strategy goes away so does their success.  Strategy is critical. 

An example:  Microsoft's strategy isn't working as well today as it used to.  The stock is far below its levels of 2000.  Fake Steve Jobs has a great summary of why Microsoft is going downhill

But does this mean Bill Gates is or is not now a genius?  No, its just that his strategy isn't on track like it used to be.  Locking users into various platforms worked great in the 80's and 90's, and today it doesn't.  Google doesn't lock users in, ever, and people love it.

It takes a magical balance to get things to work properly.  Once you have it, you have to ride it as much as possible.  But it doesn't last forever.  And even if you get it, you still won't be a genius in my book.  You'll be a smart guy who got it right.