Having no business plan is totally going viral
God bless xtranormal. It's a web app that lets you create movies out of simple text, spoken by one or two robotic characters in one or two robotic voices. Most scenes sound like HAL 9000 arguing with Stephen Hawking, and frankly... that's really okay with me. Hey, at least the puppet-like actors are better than Nicholas Cage.
Techcrunch posted this brilliant (and extremely meta) video about a woman and a large-haired man talking about her plan for a successful start-up website. Beware, future angel investors; this is what 99 per cent of Internet "visionaries" want your money for.
Okay, so it looks like all the bases are covered here:
- Go viral
- Get on Techcrunch (check!)
- Facebook + Google = $$$
- Go viral
- Everyone uses it
- Go viral
What else do you want here? It's got everything!
On a personal note, this video reminds me a lot of my time working in print media. When things started looking rough for community newspapers, everyone started turning to the Internet as their savior. But not all publishers realized that mastering the Internet went beyond a few key terms and meaningless buzzwords; and because they had no understanding of how Internet success was made, they usually failed. They never planned to "go viral," but they might as well have.
"Internet" basically became a byword for futuristic success machine: "Oh, what's that sir? We're going to Internet our problems away? Do go on!"
"Ah yes, sir, Twitter! Of course! Because that's exactly what our over-60 readership wants from their newspaper! Something on a computer they have no chance of understanding!"
Needless to say, these publishers' bold use of buzzwords they had no grasp of did not bode well for their job security, and many were fired by their superiors. They were replaced by publishers who did save the publication, thanks to a buzzword that anyone could understand: "layoffs."
Who needs innovation when tried and true methods work just as well?
