Starbucks Tomorrow: McDonalds or Neighborhood Roaster?

When I’m on the road, Starbucks is where I get my internet access.

My taste for their coffee has gone from dislike to barely tolerable. These days, I spend $1.57 there on a small decaf that I sip for my 2 hours of laptop battery life.

“Put another way, there are two markets for coffee drinkers: those who love coffee, and everyone else. Can Starbucks really continue to try to serve both” – Peter Meehan

That’s the question. Doc says they should go back to their roots.


4) Give your employees better training around what makes great espressos and cappuchinos. (Lattes are too milked-down to serve as a reference point.) Don’t hire them if they don’t grok the basics.

5) Get more involved in local communities. Peets puts on workshops that educate customers on great coffee drinks. That’s a good model. Do the same.

May 4th: Too Much Joy’s First Show in 10 Years

True to their word, Too Much Joy never broke up – they just stopped having gigs. Until now.

Friday, May 4th
The Knitting Factory
74 Leonard Street
New York, NY

“It’s all ages. TMJ will be playing as a 5-piece, as both Sandy Smallens and William Wittman will be joining the celebration of drummer Tommy Vinton’s retirement from the NYPD after 20 years on the beat.”

Congrats to Sandy, William, Tim, Jay and especially Tommy.

Unsocial Networks

The Head Lemur digs into Ning’s terms of service (similar to Flickr’s and YouTube’s, et. al) highlighting the problem: in exchange for free services “members” grant rights to their stuff to promote the “network”.

“None of these sites are created for the people. These are, to the last picture, file, and pixel solely created as businesses to make money for the plantation owners….People flock to these things like the little kid in the room shoveling horseshit, and exclaiming, “There HAS to be a PONY Here!!”

Sorry boys and girls, No Pony.
It is just another room filled with shit. They place ads around your stuff, and deliver eyeballs to advertisers in the electronic version of valpack coupons and junk mail.” – The Head Lemur

I don’t think it’s a fair trade either – it assumes that my stuff isn’t valuable in it’s own right unless it’s wrapped in AdSense. I wonder what one of these “social networks” would look like that places a higher value on their members’ stuff than on monetization.

Initial thoughts:

  • Members pay a non-trivial amount for access
  • Members can import, remove, and export all of their stuff easily
  • Members can kill their account easily – say, by not paying
  • The network considers members’ stuff private and won’t use it for self-promotion

From that list, I’m thinking BaseCamp or Joyent Connector are the closest things we’ve got.

ELSEWHERE:
Mike @ TechDirt says:

“Peer production only works when it creates value for the ‘peers’ involved. When you increase value in one place, there will always be somewhere else where that value can be captured monetarily….The mistake is thinking that just because peer production doesn’t involve direct payments that the overall value isn’t increased and that there isn’t a way to later capture that value monetarily.”

Yes, but, AdSense (and advertising in general) is an admission that the value is misunderstood.