Improve revenue by dicking your users

I don't make any money from my blog, but I appreciate the well-wishes. I also didn't submit to Reddit. Think I should?

If you think the attributes are random, you've missed the point entirely. Companies in the first set are focused on short term thinking entirely, at the expense of the relationship with their end users. They make money at the expense of a great user experience, because overall, the user experience has no value to them, or much less value than quick, easy money.

The second set establish that short term money is much less important than the long view. They make sacrifices in the short term (expensive product development, slipped release dates while products mature, expensive customer service ops, foregoing revenue opportunities that would alienate loyal users) because the overall long term relationship with the user is more important to them.

Many random symptoms, two core philosophies. The one where you don't sacrifice your customers to make money right now lets you do some impressive things in the long term.

Edit: Also, where in the south of Germany? Some of my favorite memories of Europe are in Augsburg and Munich. I took the best nap of my life in the English Garden.

Blockbuster's problem was that it was indifferent to its users and it got lazy. They optimized for their short-term goals, not the long term relationship with the people they needed most. Any user focused company stays busy trying to obsolete its current business with the next big thing, because that's what the user wants. It didn't kill itself on late fees or inventory myopia alone — it just painted the target on its back.

If Blockbuster were genuinely interested in making their users happy toward the end, they could have bought Netflix for a cheap $50 million and moved forward. They didn't care, and their user hostile approaches to making cash were evidence this was true.

I gave you the best ones! Use them at your peril.