Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Mission Statements of Tech Companies & Sites

Some of the 25 statements listed below are from the official website of the company, while others were found from second hand sources; some are official mission statements, others are parts taken from company overviews or the introduction to a site’s About page, as not all companies or sites define their mission clearly.

1. IBM: “At IBM, we strive to lead in the invention, development and manufacture of the industry’s most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, storage systems and microelectronics. We translate these advanced technologies into value for our customers through our professional solutions, services and consulting businesses worldwide.”
2. Digg: “Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg – we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.”
3. 43things.com: “Discover what’s important, make it happen, share your progress.”
4. Microsoft: “At Microsoft, our mission and values are to help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.”
5. Cisco: “Cisco ... enables people to make powerful connections – whether in business, education, philanthropy, or creativity. Cisco hardware, software, and service offerings are used to create the Internet solutions that make networks possible-providing easy access to information anywhere, at any time.”
6. Google: “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
7. Wikipedia: “Wikipedia ... is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project... Visitors do not need specialised qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social background can write Wikipedia articles. With rare exceptions, articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link.”
   And from the Wikimedia Foundation: “The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. ...the Foundation provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.”
8. Apple: “Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.”
9. Intel: “Delight our customers, employees, and shareholders by relentlessly delivering the platform and technology advancements that become essential to the way we work and live.”
10. Dell: “Dell’s mission is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve.
11. Sony: “Sony is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, communications, and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets. Its music, motion picture, television, computer entertainment, and online businesses make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world.”
12. Techmeme: “... the next big story in technology may reside on a blog you’ve never heard of or a news site you don’t have time to scan. So I built a software agent to surface these links in real time and the result is Techmeme”
13. Amazon: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.”
14. Ebay: “eBay’s mission is to provide a global trading platform where practically anyone can trade practically anything.”
15. Twitter: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”
16. Yahoo: “To connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge.”
17. Facebook: “Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections.”
18. Blogger: “... focusing on helping people have their own voice on the web and organizing the world’s information from the personal perspective.”
19. Sun Microsystems: “The Network Is The Computer ... Sun was founded with one driving vision. A vision of computers that talk to each other no matter who built them. A vision in which technology works for you, not the other way around. While others protected proprietary, stand-alone architectures, we focused on taking companies into the network age, providing systems and software with the scalability and reliability needed to drive the electronic marketplace.”
20. Techcrunch: “... dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space.”
21. StumbleUpon: “StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites.”
22. Del.icio.us: “... the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. ... You can also use del.icio.us to see the interesting links that your friends and other people bookmark”
23. Fark.com: “... a news aggregator and an edited social networking news site ... The idea was to have the word Fark come to symbolize news that is really Not News.”
24. Orkut: “orkut is an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating. orkut’s social network can help you maintain existing relationships with pictures and messages, and establish new ones by reaching out to people you’ve never met before... It is our mission to help you create a closer, more intimate network of friends. We hope to put you on the path to social bliss soon.”
25. Adobe: “Our mission is to revolutionize how the world engages with ideas and information.”

Wikipedia defines a mission statement as follows: “... a brief statement of the purpose of a company or religious or other organization. Companies sometimes use their mission statement as an advertising slogan, but the intention of a genuine mission statement is to keep members and users aware of the organization’s purpose.” (Wikipedia adds, “In the case of public commercial companies, the primary purpose must always be to uphold the interests of shareholders, whatever the mission statement.”)

Mission Statements of Tec ... by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (4)

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