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Gordon Segal, founder and CEO of Crate and Barrel, says lack of wisdom is the reason his store got off the ground.

“We didn’t know anything about retail,” Segal recalled. “I had grown up in the restaurant business, so I knew about service but not about retail. We didn’t know a market from a markdown. We didn’t know anything about importing. In fact, if we weren’t 23 and totally lacking wisdom, we would never have done this. You just go ahead with your passions, and you rush forward without a great deal of thought,” Segal reflected…

“We were truly a counter-culture story of the 1960s,” Segal said. “We literally turned over packing crates, stacked up the merchandise and went into business. We just thought that was nothing special. Of course, everyone walked in and was amazed that these two young kids were starting this business, that we could find French pottery and Swedish glass and Danish flatware and bring it to a small, little street in Chicago called Old Town. It was really crazy, when I think back, that we felt that we could import product into a little 1,700 sq. ft. store.”

Makes you wonder: How many others have succeeded because they didn’t know the rules? Because they didn’t realize that they were doing things they weren’t supposed to be doing?

We’re always taught to look before we leap, but it’s interesting to hear about the Segals of the world — those who succeed by rushing forward without thinking.

But doesn’t wisdom lead to success? Sure, it often does. But sometimes the winners are those who don’t have a lot of wisdom. Look at NFL quarterbacks. Routinely the best ones aren’t the brightest.

All quarterbacks drafted into the pros are required to take an I.Q. test—the Wonderlic Personnel Test…Of the five quarterbacks taken in round one of the 1999 draft, Donovan McNabb, the only one of the five with a shot at the Hall of Fame, had the lowest Wonderlic score. And who else had I.Q. scores in the same range as McNabb? Dan Marino and Terry Bradshaw, two of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game.

Maybe these quarterbacks succeed in part because they don’t have the highest IQs. Maybe they go with their gut instead of overanalyzing things.

Now, I don’t want to sound like I’m celebrating ignorance. Leaping before you look isn’t the best way to, say, invade a foreign country. But if you’re doing something with a little less downside — like starting a business — maybe you’re better off ignoring all the naysayers who tell you that you need to spend tons of time and money on planning, researching, testing, educating yourself, studying the competition, etc. Sometimes there’s real value in not worrying about what you don’t know and just putting something out into the world.

Facebook is starting off the new year with a bang. Today, the social network announced that it has reached the 150 million user mark. Members speak in 35 different languages and represent 170 countries and territories.

But how many of those users are active? Facebook says half of them use the social network every day. That's remarkable.

Writing on the Facebook blog, founder Mark Zuckerberg said, "The full potential of the web is to make the world more open, so everyone has a voice and can share what is important to them. With 150 million voices and counting, we can't wait for the rest of 2009, and we look forward to offering even more ways for you to connect with the people who matter most."

This should make Microsoft happy as well. Last year, they struck a deal to become the search engine for Facebook.

Related Reading:
Facebook: Get Educated on the Hottest Social Media Platform
Facebook's New Privacy Problem: Groups Created Under False Pretenses

Paid search spending was up 12% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same quarter in 2007, according to SearchIgnite.

We've been hearing that advertising dollars were being shifted online, with the strategy accelerated by the rough economy. But is that trend slowing?

SearchIgnite says October's spend was up by 15% and November was up by 43% year-over-year. But December's spend dropped 14% from the previous year.

It could be a reaction to consumer behavior. Conversion rates increased by 11% in October, but dropped 2% in November. They went back up in December but just by a 4% increase.

Still, Roger Barnette, President of SearchIgnite, suggests that in all the confusion there is opportunity for the technologically innovative.

“Retailers were more aggressive with their paid search spend in the first half of the quarter compared with the year earlier in an effort to capture more consumer dollars ahead of the holidays.” said Barnette. “This is evidence that the challenging and changing economic environment is requiring retail marketers to adjust their online marketing strategies accordingly. As such, tools for testing and understanding how both search and other online media are performing together will become increasingly important for retailers as they look to make more nimble, data-driven decisions about where to allocate their media spend.”

Related Reading:
59% of Small Businesses Don't Do Paid Search Marketing
Yahoo Gives Itself Permission to Change Your Search Marketing Campaigns

Searching by terms is great. But some things are just easier to find when you can actually look at them - especially if you tend to be more visually oriented. Book dust jackets, album covers, and product packaging, for example, tend to register with some people far more easily than names. And, then of course, there's video. When you're looking for a video, you're likely looking for that video. So, wouldn't it be great if you could quickly scan thumbnails to find that YouTube video you were seeking? Now, you can with Wibe7.tv.

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Wibe7.tv allows you to perform YouTube searches and return results based on relevance, views, rating, or publish date. Granted, nothing earth-shattering there. Instead, it's the way the results are arranged that makes finding that video you're seeking much easier. It's strikingly similar to PicClick, a visual search of Amazon and eBay we reviewed last year.

Rather than present an obtrusive column of thumbnails coupled with large blocks of text - like YouTube's search results - Wibe7.tv discards the text, opting instead for a mosaic of thumbnails - giving you the visual content you were seeking. Suddenly, scanning the screen for your favorite video becomes a great deal easier.

Just as important, Wibe7.tv's matrix of thumbnails helps you weed out the inevitable duplicate videos that crowd YouTube. (In fact, I found myself entering a number of search terms just to see how many duplicates existed for popular videos.)

Once you find the video you want, clicking on the thumbnail begins playing the full-size video in the lower corner of your browser window. Or, you can always click through to YouTube.

While the mosaic is a helpful first pass, I found myself wishing for some mouseover functionality to deliver additional information on the content. Having to play each video to get more information becomes a bit laborious if you don't see what you want right off the bat.

Still, the ability to quickly scan for the video - instead of scrolling through multiple pages of YouTube results - made the service a welcome improvement over searching on YouTube for content.

To start looking for those YouTube videos you've been seeking, visit Wibe7.tv.