When I finished reading "The Purple Cow", one thing that came into my mind is that, I’ve got to find myself a purple cow. Since my passion is in programming, my purple cow would be to build/develop something remarkable.

I remember the author says that its better to focus on niche market of a big market, than on the big market itself. The biggest market in the world wide web would be Search Engine (google) and Social Networking (facebook).

Developing search engine is complicated, so I’m definitely not going to that direction. If the thousands of developers that Microsoft has couldn’t get it right, what chance do I have?

This leaves me to Social Networking. Despite the fact, this market has been dominated by facebook, I think there should be some undiscoverable purple cows in the market. If one ever find the purple cow in social networking market, its a guarantee success as long as you get it right.

The success of twitter and foursquare are perfect example of purple cow in social networking market. Twitter and foursquare can be considered as a social networking website, but it’s nothing like facebook or myspace. Twitter focuses on sharing status, and foursquare is geo based social networking.

On the other hand if you try to build a facebook esque website, like orkut, it won’t be as remarkable. It will be ordinary, just another social networking website.

I think it’s worth looking at social networking to see if there’s unexplored ideas, I believe people are still hungry for more remarkable social networking sites.

RWendi

Finished reading this book a few days ago. It’s written by marketing guru Seth Godin. This book primarily tells us about the “Purple Cow”, something remarkable and extraordinary. If you saw a purple cow on the road, you will notice it straight away. This remark applies to marketing, whereby rather than focusing on marketing the product, one should focus more on creating a remarkable/extraordinary product. A product that’s remarkable will market by it self.

The author also tells us to not be afraid to develop a product that already has a big market in it. In fact we should market products that already has high demand for it. The trick to be successful is that to, rather than marketing for the masses (focus on the bigger market), find a niche market and focus on that smaller market. Marketing for the masses works in the past where there aren’t many products circulating around the market and didn’t cost as much. But now it costs a lot and does not guarantee success. One should start from niche market and it will eventually spread to the masses, if you got the “Purple Cow” right.

Moreover, the author points out that its important to market products to “sneezers”. Sneezers are ones that will use your product, and tell everyone they know about it. Sneezers are usually inovators/early adopters who will influences the masses to use your product. They’re the ones that will make your “Purple Cow” successful, they’re one of your marketing tool for success.

The idea of purple cow can be applied to everything, not just to your product. It can be applied to your service, packaging, pricing, publicity, etc. The author gives a lot of case studies to back his argument, and to show that purple cow works.

So how one create a purple cow? While being passionate in the product does help, but it’s not necessary to have it. One could just learn of:

• The art of projecting of getting inside the heads of the people who are passionate about the product, and making something they love and like to share.
• The schience of projecting – to build discipline of launching products, watching, measuring, learning, and the cycle goes on.

I think the purple cow is a fantastic book. Really inspires me to create a purple cow, rather than being the first to create/develop a product. Nowadays being the first is rather impossible, because everything that everyone ever need has been created.

RWendi