Branded Utility, Web Analytics Intro, In the Year 2020, & Hallelujah: A Spy Magazine Book

Normally I would have filed this under Too Cool, but it deserves top billing.

Much like today, in Middle School and High School I spent 2 hrs a day on the train. Had Blogs been around then, I’m certain I would have been Blogging and/or Blog hopping, as I do today. But since they weren’t, I filled the hours on the train with Spy Magazine. It is the only magazine I loved other than Mad Magazine (the only magazine I’ve loved since is Radar… sometimes). I’ve always wondered why they never brought it back and why they never did a book. I wonder no more: My Coffee Table prayers have been answered because, coming soon is Spy: The Funny Years via: Vanity Fair.

The What Have I Been Reading Reading List:

• Brands could be creating things that are actually useful “For the most part, big brands and agencies are still trying to apply old-school formulas to the Web. Even though brand and agencies claim to understand the social power of the Web, at the end of the day they’re still only creating one thing: entertainment. You can spend millions on a flashy ‘interactive’ campaign that people try to ignore or you can put that money towards building something that could actually improve their lives; something that they could use and interact with every single day; something that they’d actually seek out. At a time when people are constantly asking ‘what’s in it for me?’, isn’t it blatantly obvious that the best way to engage someone is to be useful to them?” Thanks Jack! (via: Marktd)
• Web Analytics Toolkit (via Attuned) “Intended for Web Analytics professionals at beginner and intermediate levels, the toolkit provides a simple framework to set up an Web Analytics initiative and informs the readers about how to put the steps of the framework into action.” Great read. What I like most about this into to Web Analytics is the links to additional resources. Actually it reminds me of IBM’s Search Engine Optimization Basics Series
• Future of the Internet – (via: MediaPost – what is up with their linking policy – I can’t be the only one who hates reading things there only to have to search for the source.) Pew interviews analysts on predictions for the internet in 2020. You may laugh as much as I did if you repeat, “In the Year 2000” a’la Late Night with Conan O’Brien as you read the PDF.

The I Also Glanced Over Reading List:

• How Software Platforms Revolutionize Business “The broad lesson here is that ingenious product design can take you very far; however I am willing to take a bet that in any multi-sided market, sooner or later, even the best product design will end up subordinated to the best multi-sided platform in town.” See also: Why they don’t upgrade (and what to do about it)
• Newsweek to Team Up With Kaplan to Offer Online M.B.A. See also: DMA Certification Program in Search Engine Marketing
• Video 2.0 - Second Life Machinima + Youtube. See also: IBM holds Alumni meeting on SecondLife
• Study: Teens Use Web for News

Posted by: Natasha “That Girl From Marketing” Robinson