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Skinnycorp, the brains behind Threadless, has the best business model on the planet.

Last month, Brian Oberkirch wrote about their presentation at CommunityNext:

Here’s a metric I can get behind: this slide clearly tracks the growth of SkinnyCorp over the last 7 years as they moved the needle from sorta awesome to crazy awesome.

He also makes sure to address the ROI-monkeys who only think in decimals and dollar signs:

If you think they were just the feelgood entertaining crazy kids with the tats and the rock and roll, they were probably the only presenters whose businesses are self-funded and doing upwards of $20 million a year in revenue.

Today, ExperienceCurve linked to their CommunityNext presentation on How to Create Online Awesomeness:

Maybe I’m a hippy, but business needs more love. And Awesomeness.

Well, Brent and I have been trying to find time to write a little post-love for Picnik. So, in a busy moving week, we are brute-forcing it.

Picnik is a new, free, Flash-based web app for editing and sharing your photos. It lets you have the simpler features of Photoshop and/or Photoshop Elements, what you might use for a quick crop or color adjust, without having to open that pig of an app. Don’t get me wrong, I use PS to make a living, but it’s a pig and I only open it when I have to. Thanks to Picnik, for little things, I don’t have to. Blamn.

The editing options available are: Auto-fix, Rotate, Crop, Resize, Exposure, Colors, Sharpen and Red-eye. And under a tab called Creative Tools there are a few fun Special Effects available: B&W, Sepia, Boost, Matte, Vignette and Soften. Now, they don’t offer layers, or paint brushes, or vector masks, but most people who buy Photoshop Elements just want to kill some red-eye, crop a bad framing or correct the colors and contrast. Picnik delivers with ease. Besides, there are only about 10% of Photoshop’s stock filters that can be used tastefully anyway. Most folks don’t need them and most family photo-albums will fare better without their creators being made dangerous with too-cheesy filters. ::coughs “Watercolor” into fist::

Now for the sharing.

Picnik is gorgeously, seamlessly integrated with Flickr. Take these few steps with me.

*Take a photo and download it to your computer *Login to Picnik and grab the photo from your computer *Edit it *Upload it to Flickr from within Picnik with all the usual Flickr options like adding it to a photo set, tagging, title, description *Done

Additionally, you can use Picnik to edit a photo you have already uploaded to Flickr and either create an edited duplicate or replace the old photo. You can also email the edited photos from Picnik to a host of popular photo sharing and printing sites like Wal-Mart, PhotoBucket, Kodak EasyShare to name a few.

Picnik can also access your web cam (if you give it permission) and you can take a shot of yourself, edit it and upload it to Flickr. All right in your browser.

OK, the cover my Trapper Keeper is covered with “Charlie Hearts Picnik 4EVR.” It’s time to show you its handy-work. Here are three shots I edited in Picnik:

Please do enjoy. We are. Please also feel free to download the photos of me to decorate to your office, home, gym locker, that visor thing in your car. At least I’m wearing a shirt.

Seth Godin’s blog

If you’re in communication or business, you’ve probably heard of guru Seth Godin. He’s one of the most influential marketers and entrepreneurs today. He coined the phrase permission marketing, and all he asks of businesses is that they think small and be remarkable.

Subscribe to the RSS feed here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/sethsmainblog

Futurelab’s Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

Futurelab is a communication consultancy based in Europe (plus one office in Shanghai). Their focuses are strategy, innovation, marketing and design.

Their blog aggregates some of the most brilliant minds on the scene – including Guy Kawasaki, MIT Advertising Lab’s Ilya Vedrashko, and Experience Designer Dave Armano, to name a few.

Subscribe to the RSS feed here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Futurelab

iMedia Connection

Okay, this isn’t exactly a blog, but I’m including it anyway. It is a must-read for anyone in interactive marketing (and nowadays, that should be most marketers).

Topics include: new media, behavioral marketing, SEO, marketing channels, and measuring success.

Subscribe to the full content RSS feed here:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/ImediaConnectionAll

If the full content feed is overwhelming, subscribe only to specific topics here:
http://www.imediaconnection.com/global/rss.asp

Marketing ROI: Whims from Ron Shevlin

Ron spent nine years as a Research Director and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research, which means he’s much smarter than you are. Ron’s insights are poignant, sometimes sassy, and rich with direct application.

He provides serious takeaway for all marketers, but is especially relevant for those in financial services.

Subscribe to the RSS feed here:
http://marketingroi.wordpress.com/feed/

Creating Passionate Users

I can’t say enough about this blog. Kathy Sierra and company regularly blow me away with in-depth and occasionally hilarious discussion of consumer experience, marketing and business.

This blog will tickle your brain, and you’ll like it.

Subscribe to the RSS feed here:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/index.rdf

Want more?

Every week The Viral Garden puts out a list of The Top 25 Marketing Blogs according to Alexa ranking (which is the blogosphere’s popularity contest). If you’re on the prowl for great content, kick it off there.

What marketing blogs do you love?

Remember in middle school when all the good-looking, athletic, charismatic rich kids would sit together at a gold-plated lunch table where they could talk about big game hunting, or Being Awesome, or whatever fancy people talk about? And they wouldn’t let you sit with them because you had seasonal allergies and were uncoordinated and your mom still picked out your clothes?

Remember?

As the only PC-user in an office of Mac-addled crazies, this same type of alienation has been mine for over two years. But no more. Yesterday, Uncle Trabian, via Matt and Kelly, surprised me with a brand new 15-inch MacBook Pro.

It is amazing.

The moment I received it was so emotional that Charlie cried like David Hasslehoff at an American Idol finale.

Photoshop no longer locks up and gives me The White “Screw You” Screen. With Quicksilver I can find anything I’m looking for in 3 seconds or less. iSite caters to my narcissistic side. With Parallels I can run Windows, and therefore every single program I had on my PC, only now those programs don’t randomly keel over.

On top of everything else, it is just a beautifully designed piece of machinery that I can tell wants to be my friend.

I’m excited to hang with the cool kids.

On Monday JetBlue used YouTube to release a response to last week’s runway debacle. In the video, their founder and CEO David Neeleman openly admits their mistakes and explains what steps they’ve put in place to make sure that nothing like this will ever happen again.

What an amazing and common-sensical (might not be a word) response. Watch the video – What other company, especially at the CEO level, has ever been this open, up-front and vulnerable about a mistake like this?

I say vulnerable, for one, because they chose to release it on YouTube where they would be at the mercy of commentors, instead of opting for a “safer” release.

To (almost) quote Paul McEnany from Beyond Madison Avenue:

“You can tell their CEO actually gives a [crap], and the company turned circles to make sure we all knew that.”

As a part of the solution, they’ve also created a Customer Bill of Rights.

Sidenote: This is such a better use of YouTube than using it as a mindless catch-all for “going viral.”