A Plug for Mike Masnick and techdirt

Dec 20

For the past year I have been a huge fan of Mike Masnick who blogs over at techdirt. His insights into the economics of the digital world are just terrific. In fact, behind this space, Techdirt is my next "gotta read" blog.To give you a small sample, I thought I would link to three of his posts over the last few weeks that I have found interesting, along with a sentence or two of commentary from me.

On Google and Complementary Goods — this neat post does a great job of making the case for every business to spend some time thinking about and creating complementary goods. This is especially true for the Professional Knowledge Firm. What are you doing today to create these at your firm?
On Hugh Phone Bills and Unsuspecting Customers — Masnick hits the nail on the head with regard to billing in arrears and its degradation of the customer experience. When are the phone companies going to wake up? For those of you who are nodding in agreement with me and still bill by the hour, I say look in the mirror!
On Microsoft's Name in Portugal — this is a fascinating commentary on the Coase Theorem (no matter who is assigned property rights, as long as transaction costs are not too high, the efficient outcome will be achieved). In this case it is about a small company which owned the URL microsoft in Portugal. Instead of waiting to negotiate with Gates and Company, they just put the URL up on eBay.

I hope this gives you some reason to go take a look at Techdirt and maybe even subscribe to it via RSS. One word of caution, Mike Masnick is prolific. He sometimes posts a dozen times or more in one day.