
Ever feel like you are being manipulated into herd behavior?
Facebook is getting a lot of publicity right now about their vanity name deal. I am sure you have seen this already, if not check out this great post by the Facebook Queen, Mari Smith.
And then there is the domain name grab of top level domain extension liberalization which essentially means soon you might be seeing .coke, .apple, .microsoft and .garrett … well, maybe not the last one.
How do you spot a real gold rush? Which should we get up at early hours for and which should we let slide?
The sad truth is it is very difficult to tell when something will be a big hit ahead of time. I am fortunate in that I am such an early adopter that I have time to get things wrong, correct my mistake, and STILL be ahead of the major curve. I did this with the internet itself in the very early 90’s, and most recently with Twitter a couple of years back. How do I do this?
Grow a good network.
It’s not about size, although scale does help, but about connecting with people who truly have their ears to the ground, fingers on the pulse, and any other “well connected” cliche you can think of.
You need that early warning system. If more than a couple of your trusted friends and contacts are buzzing about something then take notice, even if it still seems absolutely daft and meaningless. The more scarcity is built in, the more you need to take note.
Risk and reward are also important. How much will you risk for how much potential upside? It makes sense to grab your Facebook username, it makes sense to grab your .com and it is obvious now to most that you need your Twitter name. The risk is low (or zero) compared to the upside, which can be large.
With the tld domain liberalisation, I am on the fence right now. But I am listening to my trusted advisers.
What say you?
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