I've been doing nothing but pooh-poohing Seth's article starting with my first comment on page one.
Oh sorry. I missed that.
But that's Seth for you. He's made a career out of doing that. I'm amazed he never worked for Apple. I'm guessing he didn't because Steve Jobs didn't want any competition in the mystical techno-blather department. Especially since everybody (including Steve) knows Godin would have done it better.
Lol, thanks for this.
I never knew that was what Seth's reputation was. I just thought he was one of those pioneer "idea guys" that tech experts respect because he spouts some super secret articles that seem vague and weird to newbs like me.
In fairness to Steve though, Seth IMO does a better job of sounding simple and less in delivering something simple.
Ex.
As far as I know Squidoo was more exposed to Seth's name but no one truly got it. Or at least I didn't.
Compare this to Hubpages whose name made it much easier to grasp the whole concept behind it. (Even if it was mainly a similar service to Squidoo)
Compare this to AllTop who, even if it's something that can be done on IGoogle and Netvibes and had a weird name, still defeated Squidoo because it was much less ambitious.
Compare this to Diigo who, even with a weird name that many thought represented the tooth of a sabertooth tiger, won a niche because it beat Squidoo in delivering the simplicity of it's advanced features.
Sure it's just one example and it is unfair to the guy because I never read his works, only praises of him, but I don't think Jobs ever screwed up an ambitious project like that to so many other competitors.
Then again, it could just be attributed to Jobs taking less risk and being the Jay Leno of tech marketing. I know I've seen videos of "How to be like Steve Jobs" parodying how Jobs just repeat the same marketing trick over and over again with his products.