Twitpay for your newspaper

We have discussed the concept of Twitpay before, and Scott noted the possibilities of creating a platform for making quick and easy payments even from phones.

An easy, comprehensive service like Twitpay makes more and more sense the more I think about it. For example, take Mark Cuban's "Note to Newspapers" ideas and consider that in order to pay the LA Times or whoever you could use your existing Twitpay (or PayPal) account and just zap them the $0.50 for the in-depth article you want to read, or the $1.99 for today's paper online, or even the $50 for your yearly subscription, or whatever the amount comes to. The main point of Cuban's that I completely agree with is that people use Amazon all the time because it's super easy - they have one-click payments, remember all your info, keep your queue, make recommendations, etc. The ease-of-use features that make Amazon great drive more sales than obtuse systems for payment, shipping, and all that.

I was also surprised to see that iTunes leads online marketplaces in number of active users with 100 million, compared to Amazon's 94 million and PayPal's 75 million. Do you think that if a service like Twitpay or PayPal became a more comprehensive platform for easy online transactions, it would grow its market share versus that of iTunes or Amazon? Or do you think those two existing marketplaces will instead grow their services into arenas like the one Cuban talks about?

Business Week: Best Young Entrepreneur Finalists

Business Week has put up its twenty five finalists for Best Young Entrepreneurs under the age of 25. These are the kind of business owners you'd see on Young Entrepreneur Blog or on Jun Loayza's blog. There are some cool people in here with some interesting businesses. Anyone stand out to you?

Is Google Still the Best?

I really enjoyed today's Business Week article titled Can Google Stay on Top of the Web? It raised a lot of interesting points and talked about the current strengths and strategies of its main competitors in the sphere of dominating the way people interact with internet content. It is a six-page read and it focuses primarily on Google working to improve its search functions.

How Do We Crush It? F*ck if we know...

Grace Boyle has posted an interesting contest related to the new book by Gary Vaynerchuk titled Crush It: Why Now is the Time to Cash In On Your Passion (full disclosure: I've already ordered the book on Amazon but it hasn't shipped yet). We of course remember Gary Vee from his antics on Wine Library TV and his social media thoughts. Here is the prompt that Gary lays down for Grace:

"Take this quote from Gary in Crush It: “Skills are cheap, passion is priceless,” and write a blog post about how you’re crushing it, your dreams to crush it, and what this phrase means to you.



But what to do if you lack skills and passion? Every single 'personal branding expert' will advise you to pick a single topic, be really passionate about it, and then proclaim that you are an expert in that subject. Well, our whole premise is that we just talk about stuff we find interesting, with no discernible focus or expertise. Hence the self-conscious blog title. But maybe we're actually crushing it by just doing what we feel because we like it, critics (and readership) be damned?

The sale of Mint.com

Last week the personal finances website Mint.com was sold for $170 million to Intuit. The company was started by Aaron Patzer, age 25 at the time, who discusses his entrepreneurship in an interview with YoungEntrepreneur.com. Patzer and Mint.com remind me of the entrepreneurship of Facebook which we just discussed. But unlike Facebook, Mint.com sold its business after two years where as FB appears to be angling to be "the next Google" - a supergiant, hands-in-everything internet platform.

Facebook Was Losing Money?

I just read in BW that Facebook hit a milestone - it made more money than it spent during the last quarter. Zuckerberg's exact quote is "cash-flow positive" for Facebook. I infer from this that during its five years of dominating social networking online it hasn't been profitable? How is that possible?

Gary Vaynerchuk: Content DJ

You may remember Gary Vaynerchuk, marketing blogger from his comments about AOL's use of blogs. Now in a recent video he talks about the value of being a content DJ with a blog. We have already kind of touched on this with the content of bloggers like Penelope Trunk and sites like Brazen Careerist. I think the content DJ philosophy is relevant to FIWK because it is half of the stated goal of the FIWK blog - the other half being conversation around the content we post.

Smart Management: Chrysler and Starbucks

Two recent Business Week articles showed different approaches of companies managing in the economic downturn. The first is from Chrysler and its new CEO Sergio Marchionne of Fiat; Marchionne is moving quickly to increase competitiveness at Chrysler and is aggressively changing the management there. The second example is that of Howard Schultz re-taking his place as Starbucks CEO after vacating the position from the company he founded; he is looking for more efficiency within the company and opening the company to new ideas.