Jackie Danicki

Excellent post from Om Malik about how the seeming must-succeed online video content play ended up where it is today (i.e. not a great place). On Om’s list of what went wrong:

Too Big, Too Fast: Joost hired too many people, too quickly. It never behaved like a startup but instead always felt like a grown-up company with too many bureaucratic layers.

One of my biggest fears is that I’ll end up working again someday in a “grown-up company” that doesn’t allow a small team of smart people to exercise their own autonomy, be flexible, and move quickly to take advantage of opportunities. I’m sure this was a key issue at Joost which led to another item on Om’s list:

Chasing Its Own Tail: Joost also made some basic mistakes, such as not having a good SEO strategy. It never quite figured out a social media strategy in order to garner viral growth, either. It was like a tech company from the 1990s — out of sync with today’s web environment.

I’ve been surprised by how many people working at many online companies don’t seem to live in the space they seek to cultivate. Rather, they (and the company as a whole) talk about “strategy” (sorry, Om, but this is a really Business 0.5 term that marks an organization out as amateurish when it comes to the web) and still view the internet as just another broadcast channel through which they can shout out their “messages” to “consumers“. Unsurprisingly, they’re not doing too well online.

Filed under: Life