
What's in the Third Edition?
- More completely avoidable positioning disasters by such luminaries as Microsoft (Windows 8) and Amazon (Fire Phone).
- More detailed models on proper product positioning!
- More insightful analyses of industry trends and future technologies!
- More clueless high-tech CEOs!
- More up-to-date cases studies (but the classics remain)!
- More aegism!
- More cultish company cultures!
- More Americans signing up to help TikTok commit Uyghur genocide, brainwash your kids, and destroy your privacy!
What's New!
- STEVE JOBS DISEASE BREAKS OUT NATIONWIDE! CEOs nationwide start wearing black turtlenecks while screaming "disruption!" It all culminates in Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and the slaughter of billions of innocent investment dollars.
- STEVE JOBS DISEASE BREAKS OUT NATIONWIDE! CEOs nationwide start wearing black turtlenecks while screaming "disruption!" It all culminates in Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, and the slaughter of billions of innocent investment dollars.
- JEFF BEZOS CENSORS THE WORLD! Using its monopoly/monpsonie power, Amazon can can now control what books you can see and read. What could possibly go wrong?
- THE BIG SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES DECIDE THAT HALF OF AMERICA SUCKS! And so does the First Amendment! No Parler for you, American proles! It's all working out wonderfully as half the country returns the sentiment.
- ARON SORKIN WRITES A STEVE JOBS MOVIE WITHOUT A SINGLE FACT IN IT! (Well, there WAS a Steve Jobs.)
- YOUTUBE DISCOVERS ORTHODOX JEW BEN SHAPIRO IS A NAZI! (No, seriously.)
- CHINA CREATES THE WORLD'S MOST EVIL SOCIAL NETWORK. (Tik Tok). Americans clamor to join!
- GOOGLE TURNS SEARCH ENGINE INTO "THE MATRIX!" Billions trapped in fake virtual reality!
- AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!

From Chapter 9: Ripping PR Yarns
Receive with Your Purchase the First High-Tech Novel of the AI Age!
Liver follows the adventures of high-tech serial wantrepreneurs Nate Pennington and Ignacio Loehman as they begin their journey to startup glory. Through a series of fortuitious events, they find themselves in possession of Steve Jobs’ liver, the 1.0 version removed from his body during his transplant operation), Inspired by the life and wisdom of Steve Jobs, they decide they will put a ding in the universe, mind meld, and create a new business concept that will bring Steve back to the masses and enable anyone to be inspired by America’s greatest entrepreneur.
The result of their mind meld is a new company, Reliqueree, whose mission is to disrupt death and funerary practices worldwide. To achieve this, the company introduces the uLivv, the first wearable mobile device literally built around the life of Steve Jobs. The uLivv is networkable and packed with information about the life and times of the Apple co-founder, including a massive compendium of Steve Jobs facts and figures, The Steveopedia, a day-by-day timeline of his life, a collection of fun and entertaining games built around key business events in Jobs’ life and much more. But the most important feature of the ULivv is that every version contains a unque Steve Job Persona (SJP), a powerful AI built on top of Steve Jobs’ DNA. In addition, each copy of the uLive also contains an actual sample of Steve Jobs’ DNA embedded in it.
The Steve Jobs AI contained in a uLivv is interactive, teachable, and as other owners train and network their own SJPs, infinitely expandable. Owners of the uLivv can look forward to “thinking different” as they draw insights and new perspectives into their businesses and ventures from Steve Job directly. And the ability to extend the power of the uLivv to other technology titans, celebrities, and even cherished family members makes the concept even more appealing to the market.’
Rick's Personal Guarantee

If reading Selling Steve Jobs’ Liver doesn’t:
- Inspire you to create new ideas and technologies that disrupt existing business models…
- Spur you to create new content to achieve your startup dreams…
- Drive you to innovate new marketing programs and industry-shaping events…
I’ll be very, very disappointed in you.
After 15 years, the Classic Is Back! Softletter Releases the 3rd Edition of In Search of Stupidity: Over 40 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters

Excerpt from Chapter 14 "The Social Ministries: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Various Other Enforcers"
LinkedIn’s success in disintermediating its groups from their “owners” did not go unnoticed over at Facebook, now the 900lb gorilla of social networks. In 2014, the company began its own campaign to kick its stakeholders from their positions atop “their” business pages. This was done via, in Facebook’s own jargon, by “reducing organic reach,” in other words, blocking people who signed up for “your” page from seeing “your” posts in “their” Facebook News Feed. Prior to this, if you had a following of 100 people, between 20-to-30 of them would typically see your posts, and the number could be much higher.
Now, that number would be much lower. How much lower? Facebook was a bit coy on the topic, but the answer turned out to be one, or two, or maybe none. What was going to appear in your network’s News Feed instead? Whoever Facebook wanted or whatever and advertiser paid for the privilege.
In other words, Facebook had succeeded overnight in turning your business network into their business network.
The hijacking was accompanied by the usual dose of marketing Newspeak and techno babble the industry had learned to spew when they were pulling a fast one. For example, in 2018 Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that the company had:
“…a responsibility to make sure our services aren’t just fun to use, but also good for people’s well-being.”
An online presentation deck proclaimed that:
We want the time people spend on Facebook to encourage meaningful social interactions.
It turned out that “meaningful” interactions equated to anything that disgorged more of your personal information into the Facebook maw.
In addition to the creepy feeling generated by a corporation attempting to manage your well-being and deciding what constitutes a “meaningful” social interaction, Facebook’s disintermediation movement also gave rise to the logical question “How does blocking posts (content) from sources I’ve picked of my own free will contribute to my well-being and meaningful interactions? Maybe instead of worrying about that, you should be spending more time preventing the myriad of data breaches your system has suffered, privacy and data breakdowns that really can hurt my well-being?” Facebook responded to these questions with more techno mush and babble.
That benefited both them and Facebook. They had driven millions of people onto the platform, where Facebook could categorize, data mine, and package them up for sale as lists at great profit. What was their reward for this?
Excerpt from Steve Jobs' Liver Chapter 10: Presentation
We called it a night and went to bed in accordance with the EEE/RRR rule. Early to bed, early to rise, early to arrive so you show up refreshed, relaxed and ready. We were at Illarion’s office a couple of minutes early and a receptionist escorted us into a small conference room where I placed my Mac on the table. At 10:00 am sharp, Illarion stepped through the door.
“I am ready,” he said.
“Thank you. You told me we had 30 minutes. We’ll finish the deck in 20 and answer any questions in the remaining time. Of course, feel free to break in at any time.” I handed Illarion the first cut of the business plan. “This document contains early financial numbers.” He placed the papers on the conference table without looking at them. “By the way, GateIconic is now Reliqueree.”
“Please, go ahead,” he said.
I brought up the cover slide, then moved to the next.
“Just a fast note about our company values. This philosophy has guided us in our previous projects and endeavors. It’s who we are. We think you’ll agree our new venture adheres to all of them.

“A quick market overview. Our new enterprise is built around the inescapable reality that everyone dies. It’s an unpleasant truth people prefer not to dwell on, but we believe it’s this ubiquity that opens paths to major new markets and revenue opportunities.
“Note the drop in annual revenue. This trend began several years ago and is slowly accelerating. A sign The Winds of Disruption are sweeping through an industry.”

“The downside of death is, obviously, dying. The upside is it’s a universally shared experience creating a huge set of expectations and shared challenges across every country, culture and market. Steve Jobs himself recognized and spoke to this issue directly at his famous commencement address at Stanford in 2005. You can watch the entire speech on YouTube. It’s extremely moving.

“The challenge facing the U.S. market is how to explore death’s incredible growth potential. However, today’s ‘funeral’ industries no longer innovate. Instead, they recycle outdated concepts and processes, what we label the ‘mortuary mindset.’ But technology today offers new opportunities for remembrance, connectivity, and interactivity, or ‘RCI,’ with loved ones who have departed and move onto the post-life.”
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