Business Reflections 2008
Dec 14th, 2008 by admin
Although 2008 will be remembered for staggering unemployment rates and some of Wall Street’s darkest days, there were some business bright spots, humorous outtakes and other slip ups throughout the year. Here’s a look back at 2008:
January 2008
eBay Has a Panic Attack: In December 2007, we witnessed the mighty Amazon thundering past eBay in terms of US traffic for the first time ever. Drowning in panic, eBay made some radical changes to its fee structure in an attempt to “improve the customer experience.” Were eBay sellers happy? Well, let’s just say that a small army of merchants threatened to go on strike. The protest never materialized – Prozac to eBay’s ears.
February 2008
Jan-Pro Cleans Away the Competition: Jan-Pro emerged as the top franchise opportunity as reported by Entrepreneur in their February 2008 print edition. This commercial cleaning franchise boasts 7,000 franchises throughout the United States and Canada. Rounding out Entrepreneur’s 2008 Fastest Growing Franchises: 7-Eleven, Subway, Jani-King and Dunkin’ Donuts. These are good times to be fast, clean and awake.
March 2008
Cuban’s Rules: Mark Cuban – the self-proclaimed Blog Maverick – posted his rendition of rules that all start-ups should follow. Topping his list was “Don’t start a company unless it’s an obsession and something you love.” That’s right folks. If you’re not OCD over your business, you’re simply not in love. End of story.
April 2008
Living and Launching (not lunching): April 2008 saw the release of Fortune Small Business’ 100 Best Places to Live and Launch – start a business, that is. Bellevue, Washington – with its abundant tech talent, strategic location and gorgeous backyard views – placed it at number one.
May 2008
Bacon Bonanza: May was the month of all things great and bacon. From chocolate covered bacon to bacon-flavored vodka, in May it seemed that entrepreneurs were going hog-wild over this pig inspired meat. And that’s all I have to say about that… Think-er before you tinker entrepreneur.
June 2008
Gates Ends Employment with Microsoft: Microsoft founder Bill Gates officially retired as an employee of Microsoft on June 27, 2008. Even better than his commercials with Jerry Seinfeld, was Gates video spoof shown during his CES 2008 keynote address. Depicting his last full day at the company, Brian Williams, Jay Z, Bono, George Clooney, Al Gore and others pay tribute to a world without
Gates.
July 2008
Totally Cuil – Maybe Not: Okay… Google has long had zero competitive threats. And despite the much anticipated heavily-funded Cuil (pronounced “cool” according to its founders) – Google still has zero competitive threats. In case you’re interested, Cuil made its debut on July 28 as the world’s biggest search engine – dubbed the Google Killer. Well, it got off to a rocky and less than cool start. Because of the hype surrounding its launch and the incredible traffic that went its way, the site’s servers crashed that very afternoon. They should have remembered the golden rule of business, “Always anticipate the unexpected and prepare accordingly.”
August 2008
A Winning Combination - Entrepreneurs, Athletes and the Olympics: August was all about athletes with the 2008 Summer Olympics taking center stage around the world. While Michael Phelps dominated the Beijing Games, he had a little help along the way. According to a press release from the SBA, the Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center in Baltimore, Maryland (Phelps’ home training facility), received SBA financing through a 504 loan in 1994.
September 2008
Techcrunch Gets Technical (I think): For one week in September, Techcrunch released findings from its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report. The research claimed that the more you post the higher you rank – that blogging is a volume game. This, of course, does not explain the phenomenon here on Babe of Business, nor the high rankings my posts receive on Google. Could it be that quality trumps quantity?
October 2008
Tweaking AdWords: Speaking of quality and Google, the granddaddy of search modified its AdWords system in October giving precedence to higher quality ads. A bold, but admired step for Google! From their blog: “To appear above the search results, ads must meet a certain quality threshold. In the past, if the ad with the highest Ad Rank did not meet the quality threshold, we may not have shown any ads above the search results. With this update, we’ll allow an ad that meets the quality threshold to appear above the search results even if it has to jump over other ads to do so.”
November 2008
Immigrant Small Business Owners Rule: The SBA reported in November that according to a new study conducted by UC Santa Cruz professor Robert W. Fairlie on behalf of the SBA’s Office of Advocacy, immigrants in the US are 30 percent more likely to start a business than native-born citizens. This explains those luscious Italian restaurants in Manhattan.
December 2008
Bernard Made Off With the Money: Rounding out the business reflections of 2008 is a rather sad story and frankly, one that is hard to believe. Bernard Madoff, former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and best known as the founder of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, was arrested this week for running a major investment scam - without the SEC so much as blinking an eye for two years. I guess everyone was too busy focusing on the global economic woes to notice the ones around the corner.
Enough reflection, already. Where did 2009 go? They’re up next. 
