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The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Change ChangeThis

15 comments on Change ChangeThis

Change ChangeThis

: Fred Wilson says I made a potshot at the launch of ChangeThis. Uh-huh.

I said that I don’t much like the concept. I don’t like the name — valuing change for change’s sake (why not ImproveThis?). I don’t like the attitude (“People are making emotional, knee-jerk decisions, then standing by them, sometimes fighting to the death to defend their position” — well, speak for yourself, people). I don’ t like the technology (PDFs are not interactive; they avoid conversation). I scanned the topics this morning and was unimpressed.

Now I’ve read the “manifestos” and I’m even more unimpressed:

: The Art of the Start is not a manifesto written for ChangeThis; it is an excerpt of Guy Kawasaki’s new book. It’s promotion. OK, that’s cool.

This is the kind of business book that makes high-altitude generalizations treating business as religion, or at least a cult:

There really is only one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture: Do I want to make meaning?

Meaning is not about money, power, or prestige. It’s not even about creating a fun place to work. Among the meanings of

15 responses to “Change ChangeThis”

  1. Trudy W. Schuett Avatar
    Trudy W. Schuett

    The sad thing is that they’ve had a brilliant opportunity to adress some really important issues, and they blew it, bigtime. I hoped for meat, and what they gave us was cotton candy.

  2. Andreas Avatar
    Andreas

    I couldn’t agree more. As somebody who’s currently involved in starting up a company the ‘manifesto’ gave me a good chuckle, but that was it.
    There is some good advice in there, ‘don’t plan to death, go and launch’ comes to mind, but also a lot of metaphysical claptrap that serves nobody, neither the consumer nor the entrepreneur.

  3. Timothy Lang Avatar
    Timothy Lang

    Kooks. Lead me to a webpage where then, finally I can download some content…when with less effort it could just be posted to a blog, where somebody might at least click and read it…
    It’s like taking Og’s stone out of his hand and giving him a hefty, steel claw hammer, and Og throwing the hammer away shouting “Og like stone!”
    Anybody got a list of local BBS’s I can dial up?

  4. hugh macleod Avatar
    hugh macleod

    Heh. Thanks for the kind words, Jeff =)
    Well, Seth is pone of my favorite marketing writers… when he’s good, he’s VERY good.
    I dunno… my guess is, he’s had a lot of success with the PDF format for mass-distribution of his books and whatnot, so I guess he decided to take the format and make it more available to other folk. I don’t think the motive was wrong.
    Though I agree, using the word “Change” during an election year might be asking for trouble.
    Still, I just posted a cartoon with the word “change” in the headline, so maybe I’m in trouble too ;-)
    (Cartoon here: )
    http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/000913.html

  5. Steve Goldstein Avatar
    Steve Goldstein

    Agree 100% on Art of the Start. It was silly to me. You start and run a business to maximize the wealth of the shareholders. Ethically.

  6. F451 Avatar
    F451

    Coca-Cola Is Evil! How cutting-edge…

  7. Jackie Martling Avatar
    Jackie Martling

    “I drank Coke all my life. I’m not fat. And I’m 50. Nya nya nya”
    Maybe not, but from your picture and from seeing you on CNN it sure looks like Coca Cola has done a number on your teeth.

  8. Bill Flitter Avatar
    Bill Flitter

    By going old school (using PDFs), maybe Seth is setting us up for his next book, “Purple Dinosaur.” – All in good fun, Seth.

  9. Joel Avatar
    Joel

    The author of the anti-soda tirade has their facts a little mixed up. He writes: “The Big Gulp at 7-11 is 45 ounces…”
    Uh, no. As any 7-11 regular could tell you, the Big Gulp is in fact 32 ounces. All soda sizes there are in multiples of 4. Thus the Gulp=16oz, Big Gulp=32oz, Super Big Gulp=440z, Double Gulp=64oz. There is no 45 oz cup size at 7-11. In addition, when people buy fountain soda they generally add this substance called ice to the soda to keep it cool. Thus the amount of soda consumed is almost always less than the cup size. Minor points perhaps but he does describe his facts as “unassailable” so he’s setting himself up for quibbles like this.

  10. Adam V. Avatar
    Adam V.

    Any comments on Coke pre and post the switch to HFCS?

  11. Jeff Jarvis Avatar
    Jeff Jarvis

    The teeth are, I’m afraid, the fault of DNA, not Coke: crooked, scraggly, shoulda had braces, didn’t want ’em, now — together with my jpeg delivery — they only add to the air of insanity.

  12. David St Lawrence Avatar
    David St Lawrence

    I signed up for ChangeThis notifications and managed to miss the fact that the manifestos were pdf format.
    Nonetheless, I downloaded Guy Kawasaki’s article and found I could not store it for later reading. WTF says I, how inconsiderate! How utterly clueless!
    Seth and his interns have really figured out how not to introduce a new concept. How could they have thought bloggers would benefit from discussing material that cannot be exerpted? It shows a startling lack of understanding of the mechanics of information dissemination in the blogosphere.
    ChangeThis will get a lot of mentions, but ridicule is not the most desirable publicity.
    ChangeThis has a lot to change before it will be of interest to bloggers. Unfortunately, like the Edsel, there is not much to work with…

  13. Greg D Avatar
    Greg D

    Wow, thank’s for the warning, now I don’t have to waste my time checking out the site.
    I note for content producers:
    I never read PDFs through my web browser. The plug-in interface is clunky, ugly, and hard to read. If you try to make me fight to download your PDF, I’m just not going to read it. As it is, just being in a PDF means I’m less likely to read it.

  14. Ben Casnocha Avatar
    Ben Casnocha

    Jeff, I like a lot of the stuff you do, but here I disagree. You spend a few posts blasting ChangeThis before anything happens, you then bash it even after the PDFs were released, and then you try to analyze each PDF as if it were giving it a fair trial? Come on, you were against this from the beginning so don’t try to go through each one and further beat this new idea to death.

  15. Jen Langworthy Avatar
    Jen Langworthy

    The Jeff Jarvis Theory of Success: Everything conforms to my conservative, status-quo thinking or I piss all over it and stomp on it with my jack boots.
    The undulating anger that bubbles beneath Jeff’s lonely persona makes Bill O’Reilly seem rather quaint.