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FOMO is disastrous for company strategies
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoFOMO explains 95% of Web 3 / NFT strategies had by companies that should really know better.
- throwaway_7874 4y agoI was going to say this.
- naavis 4y agoI assume FOMO means ”fear of missing out” in this context, but the article never actually spells it out.
- echelon 4y agoIt's a very common acronym that I hear in ordinary daily conversation, and its usage has passed that of the original phrase. Easy to Google, too.
- ziddoap 4y agoThere is not much that is more annoying than an author assuming the reader knows the acronyms that they want to use. This particular case isn't as bad as others, but especially when getting into any sort of technical conversation it's wildly frustrating to see multiple acronyms used with no indication of what they stand for. Then you go to look it up and there's like 29 results that fit the acronym, half of them being plausible. I was always taught to use the full word/name/whatever the first time it occurs in writing and immediately provide the acronym in brackets (I've also seen vice-versa, which is fine), then feel free to acronym-soup the rest of the text. I sorely miss when that was the rule, now that it seems like it is the exception.
- Swizec 4y ago> There is not much that is more annoying than an author assuming the reader knows the acronyms that they want to use Sometimes you're not the intended audience and that's okay too. Constantly explaining acronyms that everyone in the audience uses daily gets frustrating too. Imagine if every article written for senior software engineers in VC-backed companies had to re-explain what PR, CI, VC and AWS stand for. Or if every article for American audiences re-explained LA, NYC, and EST. Jargon is useful.
- mcherm 4y agoWhen I write, I typically DO spell these things out. > We accepted a pull request ("PR") for our continuous integration ("CI") server. As a result, CI will now automatically trigger a canary release instead of the old blue-green deployment process, except on AWS where canary releases are not supported. Note that there's no real interruption to the flow of the writing, as I only spell it out the first time it is mentioned. Nor do I stop to explain what "pull-request" means -- the full name (unlike the acronym) is enough to perform a search on the topic and read about it if needed. And I don't do this universally: everyone I know uses "AWS" instead of "Amazon Web Services" and even pronounces it that way in conversation, so I don't bother explaining that one.
- krisoft 4y agoYou also don’t bother explaining what canary releases are. Which is weird. Who is your intended audience with that example? Is this some imaginary audience who knows and cares about canary releases and blue-green deployment but somehow missed out on PRs and CI?
- wizofaus 4y agoYou can at least easily Google "canary release" I suppose, in a way that's going to give a clear answer vs googling "PR" or "CI" (which will likely tell you PR means public relations and CI is the symbol for a "curie"/unit of radiation).
- aloisdg 4y agoI have a public collection on GitHub of "technical" acronyms with their definition for this reason: https://github.com/d-edge/foss-acronyms https://github.com/d-edge/foss-acronyms
- munk-a 4y agoUnless this is a very recent edit the second paragraph starts with: > I was surprised to hear how much FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) my friends were experiencing. I had also forgotten what FOMO stood for but thankfully the article defined it above the first page fold.
- alttab 4y agocough Meta cough
- 3a2d29 4y agoDefinitely a good example, although you can extend it to so many. In the US if you say "tech" people suddenly scramble to you because everyone is afraid of betting against you and becoming blockbuster. Ex: Wework is another one. Many of the big rich real estate families in NYC all were heavily invested in it. None of them wanted to be the dinosaur left behind even with a company that was claiming to be "tech" without really being tech.
- alttab 4y agoI'd argue that WeWork's strategy was a disaster itself. FOMO into disasters is one thing, FOMO - AFAIK, was not a WeWork strategy.
- daenz 4y agoThe multi-armed bandit problem[0] is an interesting example of optimizing a reduction in FOMO. Basically you need an intelligent way to assess a good use of limited resources. 0. https://towardsdatascience.com/solving-the-multi-armed-bandit-problem-b72de40db97c https://towardsdatascience.com/solving-the-multi-armed-bandi...
- bragr 4y agoCounterpoint: FOMO is great marketing strategy for companies
- warpech 4y agoWhy?
- throwaway_7874 4y agoBecause people buy more products and make company more profit in less time. Mostly people buy product in hopes of flipping it for some quick bucks ( some try to become long term collectors ) and mostly people do this to "stay in loop" and "not fall behind the curve".
- marcosdumay 4y agoYou mean inducing FOMO on others? Quite a predatory kind of marketing, but I can believe it makes companies give you more money on the short term.
- rgrieselhuber 4y agoThis is a difficult problem in many SaaS verticals, I call it the “Oooh problem” because your target audience on social media is always saying “Oooh” to every new product and feature they come across and it’s one of the reasons that software gets so bloated, full of checkbox features. As an entrepreneur it takes an enormous amount of patience and discipline to not get sucked into building for Oooh People.
- nimbius 4y agobut the metaverse will surely prove otherwise, just wait!
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoIt's a good lesson to learn for life - we have so many options these days that we can run round trying them all - a better more systematic approach would help
- rvz 4y agoI guess this is a lesson to Clubhouse that has built it's whole company around FOMO and its invite system. It turns out you weren't missing anything. Just another hype train that got overheated by a16z and the other smaller VCs that tried boosting the platform and it ran out of steam after it was copied to death and the poor delays and the disastrous release of the Android app. Now not even the VCs want to use it anymore and have instead moved to YouTube.
- TameAntelope 4y agoI would love to have whatever problems Google has, and if FOMO is how Google got to be/remain Google, please yes give me lots and lots of FOMO... My point is that maybe one of the most successful companies on the planet might not be a good example for illustrating "disastrous company strategies". I do agree, generally, with the article FWIW.
- aloisdg 4y agoWhat is `FWIW`? For What It's Worth I guess?
- SimDeBeau 4y agoYes
- peteradio 4y agoGoogle did not get to be where it is via FOMO.
- Animats 4y agoDefinitely not. They started with a good idea for search, and then they acquired a really good approach to selling ads. Everything else is a sideline, and most of those sidelines have lost money.
- WJW 4y agoFOMO is often disastrous for personal strategies as well, career strategies or otherwise.
- Animats 4y agoThe other side of FOMO is appearing as the US transitions to a shortage economy, like the former Soviet Union. It used to be that if something was popular, more of it would be made, and then the price would go down. Now, if something is popular, the seller is likely to restrict the supply to push the price and margins up. Buy now, while you still can. Cars. Houses. AWS S3 space. Meta's VR headgear. Meat. Most of the toiletries and drugs CVS and Walgreens sell.
- jmalicki 4y agoMeat is interesting... when I read this at first I was taken aback, thinking that while there might be 1-3 years lag in producers responding to demand, surely meat is nearly a pure commodity without market power being involved? Then I remembered slaughterhouses: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/12/10/recent-data-show-dominant-meat-processing-companies-are-taking-advantage-of-market-power-to-raise-prices-and-grow-profit-margins/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/blog/2021/12/10/rec...
- Animats 4y ago"Comparing the fourth quarter of 2021 to the same quarter in 2020, that same firm increased the price of beef so much—by more than 35%—that they made record profits while actually selling less beef than before."
- to11mtm 4y agoThis is the future we have brought :`) Data analytics and JIT often leads to an invisible cost to the lower class. I remember the days where my parents would go to the meat store and make some random thing off schedule. I remember when I was starting my career and would be able to make do with the 'use it now' discounted meats. Now, not nearly so much. The problem with these improvements is twofold: - They impact impoverished people, which are more likely to be dependent on such discounted items. - They 'hide' inflation cost.
- 4y ago
- aryaman_kha 4y agoIt seems as though larger companies are typically those who fall prey to FOMO strategies, but many of them do successfully usurp smaller companies' markets simply by copying features. Sure, some of those features flop, but that doesn't make FOMO disastrous. Ex - after Snapchat launched stories, every tech company tested a copy. For Instagram, the copy was wildly successful, even if it was a relative failure for FB, LinkedIn, etc.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoI think FOMO is a great strategy instead. The point is FOMO-ing first, that is not in envy or in fear of missing out what other people are doing, but FOMO-ing because you see something in Nature or the structure of the marketplace (or both) which is an untapped opportunity. Big tech is not FOMO-ing enough against Nature nor the Market. Each of the big tech companies have lost the willingness to put distance between themsevles and other big tech companies, maybe they are afraid of D.C. the DOJ and the whole Sherman Anti trust but at some point you have to be willing to go Super Nova just to experience what it feels like. Google and Meta could be the ones to actually go and decide to go Super Nova, that's because of the double class shares which enables Page , Brin and Zuckerberg to call the shots without having to answer to investors who are clearly opposed to the concept of going Super Nova because it throws instability in their portfolios.
- refurb 4y agoWhy do you spell Nature with a capital "N"?
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y agoWhy do people spell God with a capital G? Or Universe with the capital U? The entity or thing that holds up all the secrets deserves respect. Whether you think it's a guy dressed in white with a long white beard or an ethereal entity like Nature.
- refurb 4y agoThat’s exactly why I capitalize the “M” in Money.