Reading blog - Kid Kustomers

Children used to only be targeted by a handful of companies such as Disney or McDonalds around 25 years ago. Now just about every imaginable venture has their sights on your children. This trend started in the 1980s with saturday morning cartoons. Until recently, Joe Camel was more recognized by children than harmless characters such as Mickey Mouse. Even though the ad campaign was discontinued, the damage was done.

Prereading blog - Kid Kustomers

Children are being used against their parent's wallets. Recall a time when we all were begging our parents to go to Chuck-e-Cheese for the obnoxiously loud and incoherent music, the sub-par pizza and the games. To the average adult this would be a ripoff but not to their children. I think that is what Eric Schlosser would try and communicate in "Kid Kustomers". Children are bombarded with ads during the commercial breaks of cartoons and they can't tell the difference. You as the parent then are subject to "Mommy Mommy" (or Daddy, if they don't know better ;) ) "I gotta have X" or "I wanna go, pweeze?".

Tipping Point Pre-reading blog

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell sounds like it's going to be about spreading an idea that catches on like a wildfire. The analogy on the back of the book is a single sick person can start an epidemic of flu but it also appears to go the other way. This reminds me of Mozilla Firefox in the sense that in mid 2002, no one heard of a little offshoot of Netscape known as Phoenix. I have recommended it to family and friends who are quite happy with it. Others have done the same and today it is estimated that 25-30% of the global market uses Firefox. Gladwell introduces several ideas such as "The Law of Few", "Stickiness Factor" and "The Power of Context". The Law of Few states that ~80% of the work is done by 20% of the participants. Under that are 3 types of participants. The "Connectors" are people with excellent networking skill, "Mavens" gather information and "Salesmen" sell their ideas (or goods). The "Stickiness Factor" is how memorable the subject was, such as famous persons like Elvis. Finally the "Power of Context" is how human behavior is affected by their environment or surroundings. One example would be peer pressure in school. Some student may be goaded into doing something that he or she wouldn't do otherwise. Oh and in the second to last chapter, Snape kills Dumbledore, FYI.

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