Interesting Snippets from 2012-05-15

• Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived - The Oatmeal

  Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived

• Disruptions: Facebook's Real-Life 'Spidey Sense' - NYTimes.com

  Facebook actually has this power. Because it connects Facebook users to more than nine million apps and services through Facebook Connect, the Open Graph developer platform, and the hundreds of millions of like buttons that perforate Web pages across the Internet, the company can see what people are using. Facebook is more tapped into the pulse of people online than any company on the planet.

  As a result, Facebook has the inside track to what is becoming more popular in a way that its many competitors do not.

• The newsonomics of Pricing 101 » Nieman Journalism Lab

  Now that news companies are getting comfortable with the idea of charging digital customers, the question becomes: How much? Here are nine things we’ve learned from early experiments.

• Making Choices in the Age of Information Overload - NYTimes.com

  Signaling is also often associated with consumer goods. In many ways, it was useful. How does anyone really know that they’ve picked the right baby formula, soda or car? They don’t, and manufacturers know that. That’s why our economy is filled with highly promoted branding campaigns that, however superficial or annoying, can be enormously helpful guides. In 1982, Coca-Cola demonstrated its market power with a star-studded commercial, featuring Bob Hope and Joe Namath, to introduce Diet Coke. Pepsi recently paid a fortune to hire Nicki Minaj as a spokeswoman. Even for consumers who don’t listen to her music or trust her expertise in the carbonated-beverage sector, the mere act of paying for a pop-star endorser sends a subconscious signal that their product is so successful that, well, they can afford Nicki Minaj. It also signals that the company is too heavily invested to turn out a shoddy product. For many, that’s a reason to choose the soda over the generic stuff.

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