Giraffe Forum

Managers in large organizations are too concerned with downsizing and cost cutting and not concerned enough with efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction.
“Much of the conventional wisdom about downsizing—like the fact that it automatically drives a company’s stock price higher, or increases profitability—turns out to be wrong, Jeffrey Pfeffer writes for Newsweek in February 2010. […]

Good complexity leads to greater convenience, choice and options. Bad complexity leads to frustration, wasted time and wasted money.
Dimitris is a small business owner in Greece. According to a TIME article, he estimates he has paid “about a fifth of his revenue in bribes — to tax collectors, health inspectors, police and other officials”. Small […]

Traditional marketers and communicators are obsessed with achieving their objectives. Web marketers and communicators are obsessed with helping customers achieve their objectives.
“Brand advertising, the kind you’re used to seeing on TV and in print, isn’t nearly as big on the Internet as the search ads dominated by Google,” writes Peter Kafka for the Wall Street […]

Craigslist is a very ugly website. In 2009, it is estimated that it will have a turnover of $100 million. It has 30 fulltime employees.
Craigslist breaks all marketing and branding rules. In fact, it doesn’t market or brand or sell itself at all. There are no marketers on staff. “Only programmers, customer service reps and […]

What is good for the organization and what is good for the customer are not always the same thing.
Organizations are used to saying to customers: “Here’s what we have. If you like it, you’re going to have to adapt to how we do business.” But on the Web, the customer has much more control. The […]

Those who enjoy serving customers will be the ones who create successful web careers.
A website is self-service. Customers do things on websites that they would otherwise have needed help doing. Self-service is attractive to organizations because it reduces staff costs. It is attractive to customers because it is convenient, fast and generally discounted.
Self-service is […]

The Web is the network. The Web is the organization. Your website is not important. Reaching your customers is.
A website has substance. You can count the number of webpages and the number of visitors. It is something you can show to your manager. It is something you can talk about in a way that others […]

From a closed, centralized, cohesive unit, the organization is being changed by the Web into an open, dispersed, cohesive network.
There are few better websites than the BBC, and there are few organizations that truly get what the Web is about better than the BBC. I came across a set of 15 BBC Web Principles some […]

What kind of digital citizen are you? Pew Internet and American Life Project have conducted a survey designed to classify Americans into different groups of technology users. The survey results shows just how many people still find the web unsatisfactory
49% of Americans only occasionally use modern gadgetry
and many others bristle at electronic connectivity
In our industry […]

Last night, as I walked towards security at Heathrow Airport (London), I took my computer out of my bag, as computers need to be scanned separately. Someone walked up to me and said:
“Is that a computer?”
“Yes.”
“Put it back in the bag.”
“Why? I have to take it out for scanning.”
“You must put it back in the […]