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"This is my site. It’s an evolving experiment in collaborative and peer reviewed analysis."
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Horace Dediu: Apple expert
By: Markin Abras
The most important business analyst covering Apple’s innovations and performance is not located anywhere near Wall Street or Cupertino. In fact, you need to travel all the way to Finland. Meet Horace Dediu, the founder and managing director of Asymco.
Horace, who often writes from his home overlooking the Baltic channel in Helsinki, writes the Asymco blog and counts industry analysis among his hobbies. He has eight years of industry experience as an industry analyst and business development manager at Nokia, preceded by six years of software development and management in a startup environment, two years of IT management and five years of computer science research in an industrial laboratory.
MacDirectory’s Publisher Markin Abras recently spoke with Horace about his work and Apple.
What is the story behind the Asymco name?
When I started Asymco.com I did not have a plan. I did not have a policy or vision statement. I wrote what I found interesting. I knew nothing of blogging or of web publishing as a business. Over the following nine months I learned a few things. I also learned a bit about how web publishing (and publishing in general) works. My observations were brought into clear focus by this brief overview of the core values of web publishing summed up by this leaked document form AOL: “The AOL Way“.
• AOL tells its editors to decide what topics to cover based on four considerations: traffic potential, revenue potential, edit quality and turn-around time.
• AOL asks its editors to decide whether to produce content based on “the profitability consideration.”
• The documents reveal that AOL is, when the story calls for it, willing to boost traffic by 5 to 10% with search ads and other “paid media.”
• AOL site leaders are expected to have eight ideas for packages that could generate at least $1 million in revenue on hand at all times.
• In-house AOL staffers are expected to write five to 10 stories per day.
• AOL knows its sites are too dependent on traffic from AOL.com, and it wants its editors to fix the problem by posting more frequently, with more emphasis on getting pageviews.
How did these observations and findings affect your writing?
This codification of values has inspired me to put in writing my own priorities for Asymco:
• Learn by writing. Teach by listening.
• Improve. Move the intellectual ball forward.
• Illuminate topics which are bereft of analysis.
• Be notable. “The proliferation consideration.” How likely is the idea to being widely re-published?
• Review. Encourage participation by reading all comments and reply to as many as possible. Police comments with zero tolerance.
• Repair. Declare and correct errors.
• Select. Publish only when the contribution is unique. Avoid redundancy, clutter and noise. Don’t waste reader time.
These are notable values, but how about a business model? Do you use any specific one?
I’m afraid there isn’t one. I’m still naive enough to think that if I build a great product then everything else will take care of itself.
Interesting! It appears that you are creating a sort of free-flow statistical web site. Is this accurate?
This is my site. It’s an evolving experiment in collaborative and peer reviewed analysis. Everything on it reflects on me so I developed some rules to try to encourage a scientific method of analysis. Contributions to this site through comments are welcome but they must also obey these rules.
They are:
1. Show work. Like your teacher and professor told you: no credit without a clear trail of logic. Extra credit for brevity, clarity and visualization.
2. Attribute and cite what is not your work. This is why URLs were invented.
3. Share data. Keeping analysis secret reduces its value and accuracy because it is not subject to peer review.
4. Cite only public information. If the owner doesn't want to share, he or she has the right to keep secrets (but see rule 3).
5. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
6. Maintain zero tolerance for lack of civility. Any disrespectful comments will be deleted. There are no warnings.
These rules are certainly visible in your writing, but what is the reason for creating Asymco?
The reasons I started this site are the following:
• To render strategy and analysis in clear, well-written prose so others may learn.
• To learn from my audience. Everyone has something valuable to offer and everyone knows something I don’t. I hope sharing my knowledge will encourage them to share theirs.
• To stay in mental shape: enforcing a discipline of going to the mental gym every day. The more I write, the better the writing.
• To make contact with smart people and possibly to help them solve problems.
What has been the feedback of your work so far?
After six months, and a million views and thousands of intelligent comments, I am very happy to say that I’ve achieved all of these goals. As a result, I want to keep doing this.
For more info visit:
Asymco
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Great insight on Horace. I have been a big fan of his writing!!