The Myth of “Verticalization” — Community Ain’t Easy

As anyone who's actually worked within a "vertical" knows, whether from a niche consumer or business-to-business angle (or, heaven help them, for a non-profit organization or political campaign), just because a subset of people share a common passion doesn't mean they're a single-minded group that can be engaged in one templated way. Every vertical that presents a viable business opportunity is going to have its own sub-communities and overlapping layers, with some often in direct opposition to others.

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My Favorite Reads of 2011

Unlike movies, I rarely read books when they're first released, especially hardcover fiction, so my favorite reads in any given year are usually a mix of backlist and "new" trade paperbacks. I also like to mix things up throughout the year, so I rarely read as deeply in any one genre as I might like to, and my to-read pile grows ever higher as I discover new-to-me writers with deep backlists that I'll never have enough time to fully explore. Here are my five favorites (plus one honorable mention), in order of combined awesomeness and emotional impact, in what has arguably been one of the best years of reading in a long time, not just in quantity, but quality, too.

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Ownership vs. Access: Which is More Important?

In less than a week, I've already spent more money on PoxNora—the "free-to-play" virtual card game I raved about earlier this week—than I have on ebooks all year long. If you include all of my Steam purchases (effectively the Kindle of computer gaming) over the past six months, it's more than I've spent on ebooks ever!

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New Obsession: PoxNora

I never got into Magic: The Gathering, but I did play a lot of Pokemon and VS., so the appeal of collectible card games (aka, social gaming!) isn't new to me, and Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is one of my all-time favorite games, so turn-based tactics is right up my alley, too. Combine them with an impressively deep setting, beautiful artwork, and a slick (if not totally intuitive) deck virtual management system, and you have a winner.

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On the Appeal of Indie Bookstores

There are a number of challenges indie booksellers face—a shit economy being the biggest of them—and there are many that won't succeed, not because Amazon put them out of business but because THAT'S WHAT HAPPENS TO MOST BUSINESSES. There are many neighborhoods that simply can't (or won't) support a local bookstore, and that's perfectly normal, too.

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