Scott Andrew - lo-fi acoustic pop superhero!

A random thought: in the wake of last week’s YouTube/Google insanity, this NYT article on Friendster’s failure to become a similar bling factory is really interesting and somewhat grounding.

Something like nine out of ten business ventures fail, for various reasons. We’re told to embrace failure, to cherish it. Fail faster, fail better. Take your lumps and keep moving, lessons learned. So why is it only the grand successes that get lavish attention and adoring media play? The way things are spun now, it’s like some people honestly believe that blogging creates everyday millionaires the same way they believe MySpace creates rockstars.

I’d love to learn more about the failures. I’d love to know why something didn’t work out, why a great idea fizzled, how some crucial detail was overlooked or market overestimated. I think that’d be fascinating. I think there’s real value in sharing your mistakes.

We need a new magazine. We’ll call it Modern Failure or maybe Do-over Monthly, and every month it’ll contain in-depth interviews of people who screwed up, made mistakes, made wrong assumptions and had plain ol’ bad ideas. There will be no trace of snark, not an ounce of gloating. Just profiles of people who tried something and flunked it. What they learned, and what they’d do differently if they had a do-over.

Sure, some people only care about the summit and who’s on top of it. Me, I want to hear more about the climb, and that time you rolled to the bottom in the center of a giant snowball!