Social Media Roundup: Don’t Hand Good Ideas To a Committee

It may seem smart to get all the players involved in a brainstorming session, but often, a good idea is way more precious than that.

The downsides of “design by committee,” and more, in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Ideas Are Precious

https://twitter.com/ThadLurie/status/362940649311453185

Fans of design by committee, read this: You might be ruining your chances to do anything innovative. So says KAYAK cofounder Paul English, who’s always kept his meetings tiny for a reason. “It’s very easy to be a critic and say why something won’t work,” he wrote in a recent piece for the New York Times  (opens in a new tab). “I don’t want that because new ideas are like these little precious things that can die very easily.” Speaking of good ideas, be sure to check out Susan Cain, the Opening General Session speaker  (opens in a new tab) (and the person who spotted this quote  (opens in a new tab)) at ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition on Sunday. (ht @thadlurie  (opens in a new tab))

One Weird Trick

How ‘One Weird Trick’ Conquered The Internet http://t.co/4svmYEzMnQ  (opens in a new tab)

— Hacker News Bot (@newsycombinator) July 31, 2013  (opens in a new tab)

You know the type. It’s an ad with a single scrawled drawing of a woman in a bathing suit, and a promise that “one weird trick” might be able to help you lose weight. Or a message claiming that a national emergency will occur in 10 months and you need to be ready for the worst. You may have never clicked the ads out of fear you might get a virus or 10 on your computer, but is there some sort of lesson of value from the ads? Slate writer Alex Kaufman wondered the same thing  (opens in a new tab), clicked the ads, watched the videos on the other side, and talked to marketing experts about why they’ve proliferated and why they use the techniques they do. (Hint: They look like scams because they’re trying to weed out the people who won’t be easily fooled.) Obviously, you’re not in the market to replicate these ads, but could you borrow the seedling of an idea from them? (ht @newsycombinator  (opens in a new tab))

What’s on your reading agenda today? Tell us about it in the comments.