remarkable

If You Want to Find Your Niche, Look For the Gap

“Give people a choice and the tail always gets longer.

”

Seth Godin

In Purple Cow, Seth Godin showed why it’s important to be remarkable. In Meatball Sundae, he shows why “New Marketing” and “Old Marketing” don’t mix.

Old Marketing, explains Godin, was about organizations—corporate giants like General Motors and IBM. The New Marketing is about starting a movement. Google, eBay, and YouTube aren’t organizations in the twentieth-century sense. They’re movements: Their growth is driven by users that are passionate about the choices that these Web sites add to their lives.

Although the Web makes it faster and cheaper than ever to spread an idea, the idea that choice matters is as old as the Old Marketing itself. Henry Ford amassed a fortune by making a car that ordinary people could buy. His Model T was affordable because it was a “one-size-fits-all” solution. In Ford’s words, it came in any color, “as long as it was black.”

By the mid-1920s Americans were more prosperous. They wanted better cars and more choices. Under Alfred Sloan Jr., General Motors offered people “a car for every purse and purpose.” Sloan’s company moved to the forefront of the automobile industry because Henry Ford, one of the greatest innovators of his day, stopped innovating.

The lack of foresight that almost destroyed the Ford Motor Company in the 1920s and 30s would undermine Sloan’s own company several decades later, after GM executives decided not to develop smaller, more energy-efficient cars. By failing to provide more choices, American companies lost customers and revenue to more innovative Japanese manufacturers, just as Henry Ford once lost markets to General Motors.

What Alfred Sloan did at GM is no different from what Daniel Neal is doing today at kajeet. Neal used gap analysis to create a pay-as-you-go mobile phone service for kids. How did he do it? It was all a matter of “homework”: He thought about the kind of cell phone he wanted his own children to have.

“Our story,” says Neal, “began with three dads (Neal and his two co-founders) figuring out how technology, kids and parents work best.” Their success reminds us that the best way to be remarkable is to give people more choices.

Over 80 years ago, Alfred Sloan discovered a gap between what Henry Ford was selling and what buyers wanted. That’s the same way to find a gap today: Analyze what the leaders are doing. Then ask yourself what they’re failing to do.

If the answer is something that people want—and something you’re passionate about—you’ve found your niche.

While I surf through the net each day, I have come across some really remarkable websites/blogs. By remarkable, I mean worth making a comment about. It could be because the site offers very useful information, adds value to what I'm doing, or contains interesting or humorous content - but content that stands out from the rest of the pack.


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As you know, our site promotes ideas that spread therefore, I thought it would be an interesting concept to find out from our readers (yes that's right, I'm looking at YOU), if you could tell me some of the most remarkable websites you have found out there on the world wide web. I am certain there are sooooo many out there that I haven't even heard of, that's why I'm asking for your help :)

As for myself, one website I found absolutely remarkable, is a site called We Feel Fine. It has a really unique and interesting concept. It searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling" and then collates the data and displays it in an innovative way. It's almost like looking into the soul of all the people around the world as it captures how people are feeling when they use these phrases...it is really remarkable. If you're interested in checking out this site just click here.

By sharing with the rest of our readers, the sites you think are worth making a remark about, we can all spread the word and ideas together.

So post a comment with:

1. Website name/url
2. And why you think it's worth talking about

I look forward to your suggestions. Thank you in advance for taking the time to share with us :)