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I won't buy a product online from a company with a bad website. You probably won't either. It's because a poorly executed website makes us question the reliability of the site, the security of the site, and perhaps most importantly, it makes us question the validity of the brand itself.
Which is why I was surprised to see that one of the most respected brands in business today, Berkshire Hathaway, has a REALLY BAD website. In fact, I'm not sure how you could come to any other conclusion, as evidenced by the screenshot below.
A quick check of the Wayback Machine shows that the site has been essentially the same for the last 13 years. This would say to me that Berkshire Hathaway is a company that doesn't understand the value of their 
corporate website. The design hasn't evolved, the content is sparse, and the technology is outdated. In fact, the most advanced feature on the site is a section for the sales of Berkshire Hathaway activewear, which has been around for 13 years, too!
It would be easy to explain this lack of focus on the site as a reflection of Warren Buffet's investment and life philosophy, which stresses basics and simplicity over extravagance. But I would argue that the Berkshire Hathaway corporate site is not an extravagance. In fact, it should be an essential part of further building value for Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. What surprised me most was that they've known that shareholders are the most important audience on the site since it launched in 1997. You can see that represented in most of the features, such as letters to the shareholders, meeting reports and even activewear. Yet the site has stayed the same while the world changed.
Here's how to redesign the Berkshire Hathaway site in simple ways that will make it a shareholder destination worthy of the brand that Warren Buffet has built:
I understand with all the money coming in, Berkshire Hathaway might want to pay a dividend, and they should. But I would propose setting a modest amount aside to update their digital presence. Warren Buffet won't invest in a company unless it's been around for 10 years. By that math, I think the website is past due.
I’ve become a Quora addict. In fact, in just a short time, I’ve been going to Quora first, instead of Wikipedia, if I’m interested in a topic. This got me thinking about the differences between the two. Wikipedia just marked their 10 year anniversary, but it was a celebration that came with questions about declining numbers of contributors and an ongoing quest for money to fund the site.
While Wikipedia has stayed relatively unchanged during these last 10 years, Quora represents a new twist on a similar concept, evolved to fit more with the behavior and technology online today.
Quora Acknowledges Opinion
One of the things I love about Quora is that differing opinions are out in the open to see. With Wikipedia, an elite group of contributors shapes the content. Quora lets me see debate, yet allows the building of consensus through voting, to see what the majority of people believe the best answer is. In many ways, it’s much more democratic than Wikipedia.
Quora Allows Attribution
You don’t know who’s edited a Wikipedia article. You trust in the multiple sources that have created it, but don’t know who they are. With Quora, details about who’s answering are there to see. In many cases, people are connecting their Facebook profiles to Quora, so it’s likely you’re seeing the real contributor. This attribution allows you to judge an answer not just on content, but on source as well.
Quora Creates Relevancy, not Reference
Wikipedia is a reference site. This means it works like an encyclopedia, arranged by broad topics. Quora has created relevancy by drilling down further into specific questions within a topic. This relevance means instead of searching for topics, I’m able to look for other questions that are similar to mine, or tailor a new question just for me. In my experience, Quora already has a wealth of existing questions, and new questions don’t take much time to get answered.
There are a few questions that still remain. How will Quora make money? Will they run into the same issues Wikipedia faces now? I think that if they approach this question with the same openness they’ve approached contributions, we may see an ad-supported Quora or Twitter-like model with “verified” answers or company profiles. It will also
It will be interesting to see how Wikipedia evolves, and which site will remain the go-to source when you want questions answered. For now, I’ll keep visiting both, for different reasons.
Looks like Starbuck has unveiled a new logo. The single biggest change is that they competely dropped the words "Starbucks Coffee" from the logo. This seems to be causing a little bit of an uproar, but let's think through why they would drop it...
Starbucks is so well-known, maybe they don't need the logo. Think about it... McDonald's basically gets away with just using the Golden Arches. Why couldn't Starbucks do the same?
They won't drop the name everywhere. I doubt they'll drop the name on every sign outside every store in the universe. It's gone from the cup, and a few other places.
Read more about the change on the Starbucks blog.
