In many markets, coordinated poor service by multiple providers results in the short term profit maximizing strategy. I’ve taken a 6am Monday morning train into the city 3 out of the past 4 weekends. This allows for great Sunday nights will Jill, Edie, and our new baby Cooper; and I’m an early to bed early to rise kind of guy [...]

"The telephone's a terrorist I'm not even listening" -Frente Yes the telephone is terrible, but when should you use it? I strongly believe in telephone use for nuanced conversations that can be quickly resolved using voice but could spiral out of control on email.  I would list in the bucket: Price negotiations.  If you're a good negotiator or have read Getting to Yes, [...]

A good poker player is evaluated over the course of weeks, months, years, and a career or playing. You lose some hands and some games, but this doesn’t necessarily mean you made the wrong calls. With that said, each hand is a universe in and of itself. When you’re playing hand, your chip stack and the stacks of those around [...]

In product oriented businesses you need to name things all the time. I find the best names for products are the ones that occur to you spontaneously and that you like right away. If it’s a name you wonder about, it never gets better. It’s a lot like naming children. My favorite Buzzfeed name to date is our in-stream ad [...]

Being able to “tag” friends when you check in will be a huge growth driver for Facebook Places. I’m an unabashed fan of Foursquare and think the service will continue to thrive. With that said, if I’m out for dinner with my parents and check them in with me, they’ll see it in their feed, probably comment on it, and [...]

Don Draper seemed to be channeling Henry Ford and Steve Jobs when he casts aside market research in last night’s episode.  Faced with research arguing for one marketing strategy for Ponds Cold Cream, Draper explodes stating that after a few months with his campaign in the market people will think differently. The theme is that if Ford asked his customers [...]

I often get asked why people share more on Buzzfeed. The data proves out this claim, but let me offer some qualitative drivers. A recent study found that our users share 67.5% of the time, as opposed to the next closest site, whose users only shared only 49% of the time: A BuzzFeed user is on average much more to [...]

Earlier this week, we started the New York Viral Media Meetup. We did it because we weren't aware of any meetup or group that addressed ourparticular subsector of the media and tech world in NYC. I've been really excited by the response to our first meetup, which is scheduled for next Thursday, as well as the groups quick membership growth. The event [...]