On March, 4 1993, Jim Valvano won the Arthur Ashe Award at the very first ESPY Awards. This year marks the 15th anniversary.

Jim Valvano coached the NC State Wolfpack to a NCAA National Basketball Championship 1983. After leaving basketball, he became a television Basketball Commentator/Analyst in 1990.

For those not into sports, that is okay. It’s not sports that made him an inspirational person.

In June, 1992 Jim Valvano was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In his acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage, Jimmy V announced the formation of The V Foundation for Cancer Research.

Jim Valvano died later that same year.

Below is his inspirational and humorous speech from that famous night. (The title of the post will make sense when you watch the video.)

I am probably late to the bandwagon on this, but I am very happy to know about it now.

Dr. Randy Pausch, is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the married father of three and he is dying from pancreatic cancer. According to him “there are approximately 10 tumors in my liver, and the doctors told me 3-6 months of good
health left.” That was in August, 2007 and as he says, “you can do the math.”

In September 2007, Randy gave a final lecture to his students at Carnegie Mellon. Please take a moment to watch the video:

It is time for Ask.com to drop their “algorithm” marketing campaigns. Frankly, it was a bad idea from the beginning, but not for the obvious reasons.

Are the Ask. com ads offensive? Yes, possibly. Using the Unabomber and Jesus is an ad campaign was probably not the smartest idea. Now they have a new ad that is, well for lack of a better word, just creepy.

However, the mass marketing approach is a terrible idea. In this case, it would not have mattered what the message was.

So what would I do?

Steps to Increase Ask.com’s market share.

• Stop trying to be Google. It is too late. Google is Google, so Ask.com can not be Google. You can not go back and change the past. Currently, you have nothing to offer that they do not have already. Why would searchers come to Ask.com?
• The hard truth: The public does not care about accurate results.
  According to Ask.com’s CEO Jim Lanzone … “it is important to highlight the uniqueness of our algorithm, which takes a different approach to ranking than our competitors. The Ask.com algorithm’s relevance methodology goes beyond the popularity focus of Google, Yahoo and MSN’s, and is the only one to break the Web down into topic clusters and determine community-based relevance in real time.” We don’t care.

  Even Google, although they may not admit it, does not consider the accuracy of search results as important as other features. Speed, simplicity, and clean results are still higher priorities for Google. (By “clean results” I mean formatted nicely, with a distinct separation from paid and unpaid.)

• Do not market to everyone. Mass marketing does not work.
  For Ask.com to gain market share, only a small group of users are needed. That would be you and me. The people that read search engine marketing blogs and attend search engine marketing conferences. If we began using Ask.com, then word will spread quickly. However, Ask.com has not given us a reason to use their product nor have they attempted.

  Solution: They can offer all attendees to a search engine conference: Free Advertising for a Month. No catches, no sign-ups, no commitments. If they believe in the product, then it should not be a problem. If the trial period is successful and advertisers are happy, then word will spread quickly to that mass market that they are trying so hard to reach.

  Ask.com can let search engine marketers do the marketing for them. If we have success, then we will report on it. We will blog on it. We will discuss it in message boards. We will encourage our family and friends to use it. We will spread the word. We will reach the mass market that Ask.com is trying so hard to reach now, but we will be successful. Of course, that’s assuming the product is worth using.

Have you seen this yet?

Okay, I agree I may be splitting hairs, but I think it is important in the discussion of Web 2.0 that we do not classify YouTube as a social network.

Social network websites are user generated websites. The growth and success of a social network is strictly dictated by user involvement. Social networks have come and gone over the last several years. The successful ones have been able to keep users interested and ultimately make money.

The above description may sound like YouTube from a basic level. However, once you peel the layers a little more, YouTube is a little more complicated than a social network.

Social networking consists of users interacting and communicating. There is very little communication on YouTube. Users may interact slightly with each other, but not with the actual source of the media. Of course, in most cases that source is not aware that their video is even online.

YouTube must license content, at least the “good stuff.” YouTube users beg, borrow and steal to get the content online. YouTube itself bargains and deals with major corporations to get the quality videos.

When you watch a video on YouTube.com how often do you interact with others? A larger portion of YouTube users view videos without communicating with users.

YouTube is video on demand, just like Charter, CableVision and other major cable networks. The difference being YouTube hosts bad quality videos presented in a small window that are often under 10-15 minutes.

YouTube is a great site, I use it often. It has provided a relatively easy way for users to post stolen videos to a large audience. However, it is important to be clear what it is. It is not a social network. Its success or failures do not depend on user contributions. YouTube’s ultimate success depends on its relationship with production companies.

Here is a great video that I found.

It was done by Michael Wesch,
Assistant Professor Cultural Anthropology
Kansas State University

This was a terrific job on his part.