Anyone remember listening to music on CDs? Yeah, me neither. Every one of my twelve billion songs lives in a device smaller than a single compact disk (“compact” being a very ironic word choice). Today, if you want a new album you don’t go buy a new disk or tape or record. You don’t even leave your home. You get on your computer, go to the itunes store or amazon, and pay to download a file, right? Um…right.

Well…no. Let’s be honest. Legality and morality aside, the fact of the matter is that’s not how most people go about obtaining music. Why pay ninety-nine cents on itunes when thirty seconds on Google will yield the same song for free? While we can probably all think of free music sites that have been shut down in the past for copyright infringement, there are many more still. They seem to be coming into existence faster than “the Man” can shut them down. Clearly legal music distribution as we know it is quickly becoming unenforceable. For this reason, moving forward I’m very interested in watching how the music industry goes about playing catch-up with the available technology. I am strongly of the opinion that in the not so distance future musicians will have accepted that zero percentage of their income comes from the music that they create by itself.

There is no denying that the interest has had an extremely profound effect on the music industry. What do you think will happen when the dust settles? Do you agree that soon all music will be free? Do you think we’ll figure out a way to better police “stealing” music? Do you think we’ll be forever stuck in the power-struggle we’re in today?

In the business world, we tend to categorize all other relevant businesses as partners or competitors. Because of its unique design, Digg has effectively positioned itself in a different type of relationship with other comparable businesses.

Imagine that you desire to start your own comedy blog. How do you get content? First, you could create it all yourself. Aside from being difficult and time-consuming, you’re now competing with a billion other comedy blogs for hits. Alternatively, you could form relationships with other content providers and get content from them at some cost either monetary or otherwise. While you’re comparing the relative down-sides, let’s consider Digg.

Digg doesn’t post any unique content. It all comes from outside sites. At the same time, it dodges the need to negotiate with these sites by posting links to them, rather than just copying their content. The end result of these “anonymous partnerships” is a hit for Digg and a hit for every site that a given user clicks on.

We can learn a lot from the way that Digg has managed to turn all of its potential competitors “anonymous partners”. In other businesses, this may not be as easy, or even possible at all, but it should be considered.

Kiva is a fascinating site. Put simply, Kiva is a bridge between donors/lenders and aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. Potential lenders can go on the website, read profiles, and decide who they would like to lend to via PayPal.

I am beyond astounded that this process works. Where is Kiva finding these people who are willing to lend a non-trivial sums of money to a picture and a paragraph?! In the real world, lending institutions don’t make decisions so frivolously. They go through a careful process. If you’re generous enough that you’d just like to make a donation, ok fine. On the other hand, if this is a business decision for you, and you expect to see your money again, you’re kinda dumb.

Would you ever give money to this site? Obviously I wouldn’t…

There are several ways to create a successful business. The most obvious (and arguably the most ethical) is to create a quality product or service that legitimately has value. This isn’t the only way to go about things, however. Alternatively, if you can identify a perceived “need” that is strong enough, the quality of your product/service becomes irrelevant.

One of the best examples of this questionably shady business model is online dating websites. We’ve all seen the commercials where the .01% of success cases talk about how they were matched on 23 levels of compatibility blah blah blah (just kidding, they’re just actors, not a perfect match). Seriously…does anyone actually think that love and relationships can be quantified in the way these sites suggest? Can a genuine connection actually be made with a person who you’ve never actually met? Furthermore, how do you know the person with whom you’re communicating isn’t just a smart-alec teenager? The answers are no, no, and you can’t. The service being offered by these sites is of very little value. Luckily for them, that makes absolutely no difference.

The minds behind these sites did not think they were actually going to revolutionize the dating process. All they did what identify an extremely powerful desire, the desire for companionship. They then used this desire to exploit the desperation of millions of lonely people around the world. These people don’t care that the service that they are purchasing most likely won’t work. They’re so desperate that they’re willing to try anyway.

To be fair, I don’t think there is anything unethical about this type of marketing strategy. I find it quite clever actually. I also don’t think there is anything necessarily wrong with people who use these services. At the same time though, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it.

Sex sells. Yeah…we all knew that. Do you know what else sells, especially on the Internet? Humor. (Ok, you probably knew that too, whatever.) Sometimes it’s even so funny and popular that it spawns not one but several spin-offs like the site that I’m about to introduce did. Now I sincerely hope that this post is not relevant to you, because that means you discovered and inevitably became a fan of this very popular site (or series of sites actually) long ago. If you haven’t, and this post IS relevant to you, then I apologize, because your life has been seriously lacking up until this point. BUT…that ends now. To the unacquainted few, allow me to introduce, FMyLife.

FML

Users post 2-3 sentence stories about “terrible” (and usually hilarious to all outsiders) things that happened to them that day. Other users can then vote on whether they agree that their life is indeed “F-ed” or that the person actually deserved what happened to them. For example:

“Today, I got a letter from Princeton that said i got accepted. I jumped for joy screaming at the top of my lungs. My little brother walks in laughing with his camcorder on record. He played a joke on me and gave me the real letter. I was denied. FML”

The site was so popular that there now exists (among others) MyLifeIsAverage, MyLifeIsAwesome, and MakeMeThink (the latter didn’t get the memo that these only work when they’re funny…). I remember FML back when they were still looking for people interested in advertising on their site. Suffice it to say, I’d kill to have been one of their early investors…

P.S. – This site is rated P-13. Fair warning.

Enjoy.