« May 2007 | Main | July 2007 »
links for 2007-06-30
June 30, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Sah-weet... My Voki has a car... props!
Ok, so its not a Mustang, but now some of our characters (and soon all) will have probs. Check out his little convertible. Vroom!
June 29, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Informal iPhone survey
I just pinged a bunch of random non-techie friends... you know, the other 98% of the world... and asked them the following:
1) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next week? Yes/no
2) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone in the next three months? yes/no
3) Are you likely to purchase the iPhone ever? Yes/no
Responses:
Next week? 16 no's. A clean sweep.
Next three months. Another 16 no's.
Ever? 3 yes, 6 no, 7 maybe.
Ok, first of all, maybe wasn't a suggested answer, but besides that, here's what people wrote on the "maybe" side:
maybe if cheap enough, sometime! But it would have to be drop-proof...and waterproof!
i could be persuaded if i didn't have to switch my plan (because i'm really happy with verizon), if it becomes significantly cheaper and only after they get out the inevitable first generation bugs.
iPhone’s only available currently with AT&T, and I have a contract with Verizon.
No, but only cus I'm poor. If I were rich, then yes.
June 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Point and Laugh Friday - iPhone, MySpace, Facebook Apps
My favorite radio show, Opie and Anthony, has been doing a "____ day" gimmick to make fun of other radio stations. Yesterday was "Phone call Thursday" and it just featured listeners calling up with absolutely nothing to say just because it was Phone call Thursday. Hilarious.
Today is "Point and Laugh Friday" in addition to being "Mispronunciation Friday" and a few other things, and I think I may just make Fridays into Point and Laugh Friday on this blog as well.
So feel free to point and laugh...
...at anyone at the front of the iPhone line. Including professional line sitters.
...for MySpace for thinking that developers would spend time building apps for them after Facebook has already said anyone is free to make money there and MySpace has a history of bullying the very applications that made the service what it is today. Chris DeWolfe thinks the Facebook platform "is interesting."
...at Yankee fans, who think there's any shot whatsoever of the Yanks making the playoffs.
...at Facebook app developers for thinking that all they had to do is throw any kind of crap up there and get 7 million users, plus have their business plan solved for them as well. Oh, so wait... you still need a marketing strategy, a compelling and viral app that provides utility, AND a business model??
Point and laugh, folks. Point and laugh.
June 29, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Plaxo: Shiny and new, but doesn't quite work
Spam issues in the past aside, I've usually found Plaxo to be a pretty useful service. Having moved companies a few times, the process of moving address books around and keeping up to date with people has been made much easier because of it.
So when they announced themselves as the place to sync everything, I was psyched. Their new interface is terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work.
First off, it somehow triplicated all of my calendar entries. That's ok, though, because they have a premium feature that includes de-duping. Ahh... I see their business model now. Screw up your calendar and than pay to fix it. Clever!
In addition, they sync with GCal, which is fantastic, because GCal couldn't understand the CSV file that I had exported from Outlook. Plaxo told me that I had too many calendar entires (about 3x too many, perhaps?) and that it would sync everything for me in the background. That was yesterday. Is it still working? I have no idea if the feature is broken, it just didn't work that time or if its halfway done.
Perhaps I should wait for Plaxo 3.5?
June 27, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Trip Updates
So we made a little change on the front end... the Cooperstown day ends with a few hours to Ithaca, NY. That will give us 5 1/2 hours to trek across Western NY on our way to the Tribe game in Cleveland.
So here's the map now. Remember, all those west coast stops aren't actually stops.. they're just a way to get Google Maps to drive on the right road.
So, in terms of cities, stops and opportunities to meet folks...
We have a free day in Seattle on 7/11, both day and night. Suggestions are welcome and we'll prob do some sort of happy hour type thing for the handful of folks we know in Seattle.
We're also free the night of 7/14 in San Fran. We might stop in if anyone is hanging out after CommunityNext, but also, @caroliiine is going to be headed into the Bay Area that same night, so we were thinking of maybe doing a NYers invade the Valley thing, too. Up in the air...
I also just ordered my radar detector. That should come in by the end of the week... vroooom.
We picked up a few audio books as well, and I'm thinking of dusting off my XM radio and resubscribing. Does anyone have the car adapter for it? Does it work? I was pretty disappointed with the performance of the adapter for the iPod.
We also managed to avoid camping entirely... Mere called Yellowstone again and found a hotel cancellation, so we don't have to sleep in the woods. That would have been a lot of extra gear to carry around for just one night.
Tickets purchased for Royals game on 7/4 and for LA Dodgers on Monday the 16th. Most expensive seat at Kaufmann was $32, not surprisingly. At least I'll get to see Ichiro, b/c the Mariners are in town. I hope King Felix pitches.
June 26, 2007 in Roadtrip 2007 | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
danah boyd on Class and Social Networking
Wow... thoughtfulness in the blogosphere...
I'll read this kind of thing any day over that ridiculous "people ready" flap that killed off a couple of million collective brain cells over the weekend...
From danah... The part I liked best about this essay was the part that had nothing to do with social networks...
Link: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace.
People often ask me if I'm worried about teens today. The answer is yes, but it's not because of social network sites. With the hegemonic teens, I'm very worried about the stress that they're under, the lack of mobility and healthy opportunities for play and socialization, and the hyper-scheduling and surveillance. I'm worried about their unrealistic expectations for becoming rich and famous, their lack of work ethic after being pampered for so long, and the lack of opportunities that many of them have to even be economically stable let alone better off than their parents. I'm worried about how locking teens indoors coupled with a fast food/junk food advertising machine has resulted in a decrease in health levels across the board which will just get messy as they are increasingly unable to afford health insurance. When it comes to ostracized teens, I'm worried about the reasons why society has ostracized them and how they will react to ongoing criticism from hegemonic peers. I cringe every time I hear of another Columbine, another Virgina Tech, another site of horror when an outcast teen lashes back at the hegemonic values of society.
I worry about the lack of opportunities available to poor teens from uneducated backgrounds. I'm worried about how Wal-Mart Nation has destroyed many of the opportunities for meaningful working class labor as these youth enter the workforce. I'm worried about what a prolonged war will mean for them. I'm worried about how they've been told that to succeed, they must be a famous musician or sports player. I'm worried about how gangs provide the only meaningful sense of community that many of these teens will ever know.
Given the state of what I see in all sorts of neighborhoods, I'm amazed at how well teens are coping and I think that technology has a lot to do with that. Teens are using social network sites to build community and connect with their peers. They are creating publics for socialization. And through it, they are showcasing all of the good, bad, and ugly of today's teen life. Much of it isn't pretty, but it ain't pretty offline either. Still, it makes my heart warm when I see something creative or engaged or reflective. There is good out there too.
June 26, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-26
June 26, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Facebook Problem? Huh? (Scratches head) People, the same rules still apply!
The web is talking about the "problems" with the new Facebook platform.
Last time I checked, customer acquisition was a real benefit, no? Don't people usually pay for customer acquisition? As far as I'm concerned, the main reason why I suggested that Oddcast build a Voki app for Facebook was exactly that... to get more users. That's a phenomenal benefit for developers. Oh, wait.. is Facebook also supposed to invent a business model for you, too. That's like saying that AdSense sucks because it doesn't promise you customer conversions too, just traffic.
The problem of not making money with your app is not a Facebook problem. Its your problem! It shouldn't be up to Facebook to figure out your business model, too! Figure out a way to monetize your audience. If no one wants to pay for the Where I've Been app or you can't figure out how to stick relevant travel ads on it, then it shouldn't exist. If the Where I've Been app existed at whereivebeen.com, it would have the same exact issues. Facebook is not a parallel universe where the rules of needing a business model don't apply. This is real life, folks... and if you can't figure out a way to get the bills paid, well, sorry... This isn't Facebook's fault. Don't put your mouth in front of the firehose and than complain that the water comes out too fast and that you have a small bladder.
I don't really think this is a Facebook specific problem either. In fact, its actually a testament to how pure the signal usually is on Facebook. Right now, I have 25 posts in my newsfeed. Of the 25, 8 of them are notifications related to my friends adding or subtracting applications. The rest are actual usage of those apps, like Twitter updates, or people adding photos or friends or whatever they usually do on Facebook. That might be a lot, but compare that to my e-mail inbox. Of my last 25 threads in Gmail, 14 of them were not from humans. They were confirmations from purchases, notifications for folks joining the nextNY mailing list, ads, etc. On top of that, 4 more were blog comment notifications, which were initiated by humans at least, but not direct conversations.
I'm sure Facebook will adjust this issue, though, but it's not a huge problem. At some point, there will be equilibrium in the app world and people won't be adding or subtracting nearly as many apps. Plus, I don't really need to know when someone took something down... and maybe I shouldn't need to know that someone added something. If you invite me, fine... but I don't need to see that people are just playing.
In any case, I think the same basic rules of needing a business model, needing to be compelling enough to stand out from the crowd, needing to scale, etc. still apply in Facebook. Let's not forget that. It's still the web, people, not Fantasyland.
June 24, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-24
June 24, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextNY Social:Rooftop 2.0 This Wednesday!
Want to meet cool folks in the NYC Tech and Digital Media scene? Signed up on the nextNY listserv but haven't met us in person yet?
Come to the LaQuinta rooftop this Wednesday night (6/27/07) at 6:30PM and hangout under the NYC sky. It promises to be a great time.
Let us know that you're coming... RSVP here.
June 23, 2007 in nextNY | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Business Tools for One
I've been really fortunate. Since I announced the fact that I was leaving, a bunch of interesting projects and conversations have come up.
And I've been keeping them all on a Google spreadsheet.
That's ridiculous... but does anyone else have any other solutions?
Basically, I want the Salesforce-like ability to attach e-mail conversations to people. I could actually get Salesforce, but I didn't really like it. Plus, I don't think I can attach e-mails to people unless it's with Outlook, and I've been using Gmail a lot lately. Do any consultants use Salesforce just for themselves? Anything else useful?
LinkedIn's Outlook plugin doesn't quite do it, because I can't add any info to it. I may owe someone an e-mail, but I may have a reason to wait, which I can't add.
And while we're on the subject of Google apps, why on earth doesn't Gcal provide IMAP compatibility so I can sync it with my Mobile phone or Outlook cal? This is a nobrainer and I think a ton of business folks would convert to Gcal fulltime if they could add and view appointments using their mobile phone.
Anyway, it just amazes me how, once you get out of the Outlook/Salesforce world of enterprise focused apps, how poor the tools are for organizing the professional lives of individuals are.
June 23, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (6) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-22
-
Oh, this is just too good...
June 22, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Breaking open Experiential Learning: An opportunity?
On Monday, two people asked me what I *really* wanted to do, and both times what I can up with was to be the head of Career Services for Fordham. (At Fordham just because that's my alma mater and the school I have the closest connection to... not because it needs the most help... seems that most schools are on par with each other in this area.)
That's not really realistic, though, for a number of reasons. First, I don't want to run the current implementation of career services at any university... The whole thing needs to be completely reinvented and its unlikely any university would allow that without a serious change in its approach. Too harsh? Take a poll of current students and graduates...ask them how helpful career services has been to them. Ask graduates how satisfied they are with their current job and whether or not career services even helped them get a job in the first place. Find out how many graduates undergo a complete career change within the first three years of graduating. It's just a broken model. A career staff of 5 can't help 2000 graduates all find their dream jobs without seriously scalable educational structures.
I have no doubt that the numbers are sorrowful, but I also have no doubt that most schools don't even come close to keeping these statistics. I teach. I talk to students all the time and right now, especially right now, they're overwhelmed by the task of career fulfillment. I'll write more later on this, but its not a quality issue in career services personnel. They're dedicated, hardworking people. Its a structural issue with the way these groups interact with students, employers, alumni, and information technology that creates serious inefficiencies.
You've got alumni with a tremendous knowledge base that goes relatively untapped. Counselors get tasked with the impossible task of helping a student get into book publishing one day and mortgage backed securities trading the next. Plus, you've got all these fantastic information and networking resources online like blogs and social networks that the students aren't being taught how to use professionally because most schools don't actually have a career class.
What I realized, though, is that the problems with this kind of education are not limited to the college career office. In general, structures for industry specific learning, particularly when it comes from learning from the accumulated wisdom of successful and experienced professionals, is horribly inefficient. This occurs to me when I compare the success of grassroots efforts like nextNY and BarCamp to the conference industry at large. As nonprofit, community driven organizations, they are often able to attract better, or at least more passionate, participants than their pricey, more capital intensive counterparts in a more open and intimate setting. Many times, conferences amount to members of a community paying hundreds of dollars to talk to themselves--a tax on poor self organization. Plus, you often wind up with industry newcomers having the material go over their heads and veterans finding the content relatively pedestrian. And don't even get me started on how hard it is to find the three people you absolutely should meet.
One of the issues with these grassroots organizations is that the second you turn on the money part, it needs structure, oversight, and it sort of loses its authenticity.
What of this all? I dunno... but what we have now in terms of how I connect with likeminded folks, or how someone learns about a career and makes contacts... is just poor. The amount of work I need to do to accomplish anything the least bit efficient on this front is ridiculous.
June 21, 2007 in Breaking Open Experiential Learning, It's My Life | Comments (5) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
MySpace, Yahoo Swap? Worst. Deal. Ever.
Link: Report: Murdoch ponders MySpace, Yahoo 'swap' - CNN.com.
"Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is discussing swapping social networking Web site MySpace for a 25 percent stake in Yahoo, The Times newspaper reports."
Remember when East Germany and West Germany merged and they set the exchange rate at 1:1 and it wound up crushing the German economy to the point where it became known as the "Sick Man of Europe"? That's the kind of effect Yahoo buying MySpace at a valuation of $9+ billion would be.
June 20, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (2) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-20
June 20, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Thought exercise: Facebook ad network driven by users
Here's a thought exercise:
Why doesn't someone build, as an app, a Facebook ad network.
Facebook sells advertising that puts ads on our pages and in our newsfeeds. Could you build an ad app that people would ad that could become like AdSense for Facebook (or, in fact, an actual AdSense for Facebook app). Conceivably, it could use some of the data of the signed in user to tip off the engine to get more relevent results, and you could pay the person who added the app. Imagine that, an advertising network that never has to pay a dime for the platform itself... you wouldn't even need to cut Facebook in.
Of course, there would be downsides. People might not like you selling stuff within their feeds and bringing a commercial feel to a social environment, so they may turn you off in their feeds... or join you and ad the app themselves so they can make money, too.
I would imagine that if such a thing was successful, Facebook would adjust its policy on ads in apps.
June 19, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The First Weekend of the Rest of My Life
One thing I'm going to really love about having a little bit of time is the opportunity to meet more people. I'm a sponge for new people and their projects and being able to schedule things during the day is very exciting... so these next two weeks before I go will be very busy.
However, I'm also making some time for play. I spent a good chunk of this weekend dragging Mere around my life, which she was able to document.
Seems to me that any offspring would be genetically predisposed to large smiles...
Keeping a watchful eye over the kayakers... and yes, that's my softball jersey. No reason to change if I was just going to get it dirty later.
Concentration...
Samara almost got lapped... but she did get on with a nice outfield single.
I think I can... I think I can...
Sweet action shots... and yes, I totally popped the ball up to center, but it looked nice, no?
Four of Us Had Lyme Disease goes to 7-0, winning 21-12 even though we only had 8 people.
June 18, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (3) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-16
June 16, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
From Voki Product Manager to just one of many passionate Voki users... leaving Oddcast and looking for challenges, opportunities, and conversations
Softball is often a metaphor for life.
Seriously, hear me out.
I play on and manage two teams. When it comes to writing up the lineups, I always pencil everyone else in at their positions first, and then play wherever we’re missing anyone. Sometimes it means the outfield, sometimes first. Last night, I found myself at shortstop for an inning. I can pretty much hold my own almost anywhere in the field.
I’ve always been like that—playing where the team needed me. I enjoy new challenges and try to take a very systematic and thoughtful approach. I may not play the most graceful first base, for example, but I grew up watching my best friend playing it quite well and I’m always learning, taking notes… studying the game.
So when I started at Oddcast about a year ago as Director of Consumer Products—Voki employee #1 (before it even had a name, and yes, the name is my doing, or my fault, depending on what you think of it)—I played the role of utility player for quite some time. Sometimes it meant working on product specifications, other times consulting on design and UI, and then I also found myself in marketing and business meetings. It was an exciting opportunity not only to cut my teeth on product work, but also participate in all of the various aspects of the operational side.
In time, we filled out the Voki team around me… Business Development, Product, Marketing. As we got closer to launch, internal folks started converging and helping to push things forward. That was great for the product, but not as great for the larger opportunity that I wanted for my career. Essentially, if we're keeping with my metaphor, I started to DH, since all of our positions in the field were being filled. That may have been the most logical move for the team, but I knew deep down that I had the ability to make a bigger impact.
Was it a desired outcome? To be honest, not really, but it’s also no one’s fault and there are no hard feelings. I initiated the conversation about transition about a month and a half ago. I thanked Adi, our founder, for believing in me enough to bring me here in the first place and providing a fantastic experience. I talked about my desire to make the biggest impact possible in this social media/startup world we’re in and we came to the mutual conclusion that Voki was in good hands with the team we had put in place. At that point, we set a timetable that would allow me to explore some other opportunities that came up without leaving the team shorthanded. In fact, I will continue to work with Oddcast in a part time role over the next month or so and specifically focus on a couple of product and business development projects that I really want to see through to conclusion.
In an organization moving from a service business to more of a product business, there are bound to be disagreements, changing roles, and tough decisions, but I have to say that, down to a person, I enjoyed working with and respect every single employee here at Oddcast.
So, what’s next for me? Well, I’m not completely done with the sports analogy. Consider this my declaration of free agency. There have been some very compelling opportunities that have come through the grapevine (it was hard to completely keep it a secret that I was leaving) and I’m going to explore those. Frankly, I’m looking forward to having the time and the focus to give every opportunity I have its deserved attention. Trying to think about the next job while still working is hard. In the past, I took a weekend off before I started as an analyst at Union Square Ventures, and with Oddcast, I started working here on weekends even before I left USV. I’m definitely not going to do that again!
As you probably know from this blog, I have an exciting cross country trip planned for the first two and a half weeks of July and will take that time to think about what’s next and where I can make the most out of what I have to offer.
So what do I have to offer?
I’ve been exposed to quite a lot in a very short amount of time… getting more involved in venture capital from the LP side in 2004—the beginning of what people consider to be Web 2.0, jumping to a top tier venture firm in 2005 and seeing just about everything in the space for a year and a half, and then rolling up my sleeves and launching a social web application at a portfolio company that has thousands of users after just a few weeks of its Alpha launch. I’m extremely interested in product work, but also how the social media world has left a very thin line between product, marketing, and business development (see Facebook apps). I’ve been a technically savvy non-developer since 1987, when my dad first game home with our PS/2, and while I understand and believe in the power of “Web 2.0”. But, that goes for a lot of folks my age. What I think separates me is that I also have my feet firmly grounded in a Finance major and Economics/Accounting minors and can help companies take a very rational and effective approach to social media, versus just playing “follow the buzz”.
What could I do with all that? Well, I’m willing to have a conversation with just about anyone in the space and I’m considering everything from being employee #2, employee #8, working at ad agencies, venture firms, incubators, big media companies and maybe even just teaching fulltime. So, if you know of anyone interesting that I should be talking to, please, by all means feel free to make an introduction. My e-mail is charlie (dot) odonnell (at) gmail.com.
In the meantime, I do have a little bit of time on my hands, so if there are any interesting consulting projects or speaking engagements, I think it’s a great opportunity to get to know people I might want to work with and for others to get to know my capabilities. I’ve had a unique opportunity to connect to so many great people… 3 great employers, 2,000 blog readers, 900+ nextNYers, 500+ LinkedIn connections… and I’ve learned such a great deal from them that I always enjoy sharing it, especially with relative newcomers to the social media space, which is why I teach at Fordham’s grad and undergrad programs as well.
In closing, I want to thank everyone at Oddcast for making my time here incredibly educational and helping to lay the groundwork to make Voki successful, particularly Oddcast’s founders Adi & Gil Sideman, Adam G., who Voki could not have come to fruition without and I learned a ton about the technical side of product management from, our tech “hat trick” in Sergey, Dave, and Jon, our VP of Biz Dev Shaival, Hannah the Instigator, Annette, Craig, Yuni, Daphne, James, Cory, Tony, Erez, Gally, Isak, Oren, and Riv.
June 15, 2007 in It's My Life | Comments (17) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Mets, you've forced me to make a lolcat.
Can this get any worse?
June 14, 2007 | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-14
-
I hope this thing still works.
June 14, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Is there any reason I'm not getting a Helio Ocean?
Avi told me last night about the Helio Ocean and I checked it out:
So 500 daytime minutes, which is all I need, will cost me $65 a month.
Other features:
- Slideout keyboard (Two thumbs up!)
- Unlimited texts
- Integrated AIM instant messaging
- Integrated Gmail and (coming soon) Outlook Exchange sync (we'll see how coming soon this is, that's important for me)
Does anyone have this phone yet?? This all seems too good to be true.
June 13, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Notorious D-A-D
Send this to your dads for this Sunday... hilarious!
June 13, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Tailspin
I just don't know what to say about the Mets. Finally, David Wright starts hitting and the rest of the team completely stops.
And I guess Joe Smith realized he was Joe Smith, too.
But back to back to back home runs. Dude... Baseball 101. If two guys hit home runs on you on two pitches, the next guy gets one right in the mouth. Frankly, after you give up one, you should always throw behind the next guy.
Somehow, we're still two up on the Braves, with the Phillies just three behind.
This team better start turning things around, especially now that the Yanks are winning. If, at any point, the Yanks have a better record than the Mets this season, I think I'm going to blow chunks.
And Pedro isn't the answer either... its not the pitching... they're not hitting. They need to get Alou back and figure out how to hit in the clutch.
PS... I played softball last Friday night and the guy on the other team looked exactly like Pedro Cerrano. I yelled out "Hats for Bats" from the outfield, but I don't think anyone got it.
June 13, 2007 in Baseball and Other Sports | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-13
June 13, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
The Future of Twitter: Five Applications to Think About
If there was ever a poster app for Web 2.0 tools you need to use to really understand, Twitter would be it. On the surface, it's quite easy for someone to look at it and go, "It's a bunch of people incessantly blabbering on about meaningless crap." Fred made a great point at lunch today that you could just as well say that about instant messengers, but obviously IM clients represent some of the most valuable and sticky applications users have on their desktops.
Past the incessant microupdates, though, which I, of course, take part in, there's much more potential here. If anything, Twitter's biggest challenge to success may be in defining exactly what it wants to be when it grows up and what customers it wants to serve. And, of course, its fun and interesting for us bloggers to ponder such theoretical exercises.
Right now, very much like del.icio.us at the time of its funding. It has a lot of passionate users, people are building mashups and lightweight apps on top of it, and it has the potential to be a lot of different things. These outcomes don't have to be mutually exclusive, but it will certainly be interesting to see how Twitter brands itself over time, builds features, and what segments of the population it actively goes after. In fact, who the service targets will likely influence what it becomes, and vice versa, so in some sense, defining its audience is largely an exercise in self-definition.
There are a few groups, applications, instantiations, versions, etc. of Twitter that I think could gain a lot of traction that make for interesting thought experiments:
- LiveJournal & other Social Networks: I picked out LiveJournal because it's a perfect fit. Each blogs is read by only a small handful of readers--friends of the LJer. Providing a tool by which they could continue to communicate off the site could help increase loyalty and social interaction to a site that already excels in those areas, but would probably like to extend its reach. Plus, LJ already has a "status" that is a widely used part of the site. It would be only natural to want to allow LJers to publish this status or blog updates across the web, IMs, and mobile. Facebook should be powering its status through Twitter as well. One thing that both of these sites do quite well is promote communication, and I think the keys to their future are implementing features that help maintain the communicative aspects of social networking. Sites like MySpace aren't going to survive if its just about friend adding and profile browsing. Key Feature: Privacy. Social networks need robust privacy features and so do the apps that build on them. Most LJ blogs are closed and making sure they've simplified and completely nailed the privacy features would be key to adoption. Key Business Point: Will SNS realize that enabling more user communication is key to user engagement and loyalty or will they look for immediate paths to monetization? Plus
- Conference Attendees: SXSW really nailed it for me. With various possible tracks and a constantly ebbing and flowing swirl of closely proximated people, Twitter proved to be the perfect conference app. People freely gave out their Twitter screenames knowing that they could always leave or block those people later on, lowering the bar for mobile communication. If you're running a big conference, you should be using Twitter to be the digital hallway, and as we all know, hallways are often the best parts of conferences. Key Feature: Stats, Directories, and Co-Registration. Conference producers would definitely look for ways to get more of their audience on this, and to provide them with enough information to message each other. Streamlining the registration process so that you can sign up for Twitter or publicize your account when registering for the conference would be key. This way, they could publish your screename in attendee directories and make it easier for key networking contacts to find you. In addition, they would probably die for a management view of this app where they could see who the "talkers" were, who they were talking to, connections over time, conference feedback, etc. Key Business Point: What does the management tool look like and could you sell it?
- Corporate Twitter: We have an intra-office e-mail address that blasts messages to everyone that routinely gets abused by reply-alls that I wish I could unsubscribe to. On top of that, there's often the need to message people through phones in short form when you don't know exactly where you are. Putting a smart phone seems like overkill for this and not everyone necessarily wants to give their cell number out to the whole office. Twitter could be a great cross-platform IRC channel for small to midsize offices, and even part of an office's emergency management plans, with its capacity to blast messages out to a large group of mobile users. Key Feature: Privacy and monitoring. Corporate IM applications have needed to not only provide extra levels of security and privacy, but also monitoring of what gets discussed. Twitter would likely have to do the same, lest anyone Twitter corporate secrets. Key Business Point: How corporate would it be? Perhaps just a lightweight app more geared towards small businesses would be a better start, rather than building a heavy locked down version behind the firewall.
- Content subscription portal: There have been lots of fake celebs popping up on Twitter... Steven Wright, Christopher Walken, John Edwards... (oh, wait.. Edwards is real, right?). Adding a celeb or a business to get a stream of content from them makes so much more sense than just being their friend via a profile. It's only a matter of time before bands, movies, comedians, etc. make Twitter a standard part of their communication with fans. Plus, I wouldn't mind a Weather Channel Twitter update on Brooklyn weather conditions, score changes for the Mets, and Hudson River water temps. Key Feature: Spam prevention. Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous. Key Business Point: There was a land grab on Twitter names when they opened up their API and they may need to boot some squatters, but this is likely to come to pass and I'm sure it will be a revenue opportunity for them. The question is what is a Twitter subscriber worth?
- Gaming: I'm surprised that people haven't built large scale games out of Twitter. (Sounds like a Jane project...) Twitter could blur the line between participants and lurkers, since your public twits related to the game could enable others to follow along and perhaps jump in with answers, route advice for location based games, etc. Imagine adding a game "friend" one day and just knowing that, sometime over the next week, you're going to get instructions for a game. Key Feature: Spam prevention. Twitter will have to build in some limitations on how often 3rd party content providers can blast out updates, what types of messages are allowed, etc., just in case marketers get overzealous. Key Business Point: There's big advergaming potential here, and the great thing about Twitter is that it acts like a portal. You don't have to remember some special shortcode for a mobile game... everything is based on 40404. Gaming and mobile contests can be built in a very social way with Twitter and enable lower barriers to entry and discovery.
What else could Twitter be? Where is it's greatest potential?
June 12, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (4) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-12
June 12, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Open Source Cross Country Trip: Places to Stay, to See, and Tunes to Listen to
So, the route is pretty much planned out and so is the calendar, but that still leaves a lot of things that need to be done, like what we do at certain places, things to bring, etc.
We could use some help, so if anyone could help us out with the following, we'd really appreciate it.
- Tunes - We'll need quite a lot of tunes on our trip, since we're spending three full days in the car, so if anyone would like to send over some mixed CDs, we'll check 'em out and give you a shoutout, plus a little review. You can either e-mail me playlists or mail me CDs to 7423 Ridge Blvd., Apt. 1B, Brooklyn, NY 11209.
- Western NY - We need to stop in Western NY on our way to Cleveland and we got a tip that Olean, NY has a decent place to say and that pretty close to St. Bonaventure and Allegheny State Park, so that looks like a go to me, but we've set out to spend a fair bit of time trekking through Western NY the next day and would like suggestions on places to stop along the 86/90 route west of Olean. I'm thinking food, farms, nature stuff... quaint little places that no one knows about, etc. It seems like it would be a pretty quaint country drive if we found some nice places to check out. Also, if there's a place in the Olean, NY area that you think is worth staying at, let us know.
- St. Louis - What to do in St. Louis on a Wednesday morning? Brunch? Shopping area? Something historic?
- Sioux Falls, SD - Where to eat lunch?
- Yellowstone - Best place to camp out and also where to go to buy a lightweight tent for two without breaking the bank, since its probably the only time we'll need one. We're going to spend a day in Yellowstone.
June 11, 2007 in Roadtrip 2007 | Comments (6) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-09
-
Mere's favorite painting.
June 9, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Self Deception
I've been reading the Moral Animal and it had a really fascinating observation about self-deception.
It turns out that self-deception is likely to be a natural evolutionary advantage, developed as our perception about our outside world improved. As you would expect, humans with better sensory perception had an advantage over rivals--they could sense danger, forage better for food, size up opponents, etc.
Our increased sensory perception also allowed us to read body language, facial expression--look past a bad poker face, essentially.
The self-deception comes in when it becomes and advantage not to give away a lie with your body language. And, as we all know from George Costanza, "It's not a lie if you believe it." To an extent, deceiving yourself first is an effective way to decieve others, and, for better or worse, the ability to deceive others is an evolutionary advantage. Perfect example: standing up to a bully twice your size. Perfectly translated observation to cognition to observation should tell you that you're going to get your ass handed to you. However, if you can delude yourself enough that you actually have what it takes to win, you might get the other guy to think twice, versus smelling blood.
Of course, in this case, the combination of speed and self delusion turns out to be the best advantage.
I wonder if self delusion isn't a natural advantage of entrepreneurs? You have to admit, attempting to knock off Google or Microsoft or whoever must come with some kind of evolutionary kool aid consumption.
June 8, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-07
June 7, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
How to get started as a Venture Capital (VC) analyst
A lot of people ask me about my VC experience and want to know the secret to getting into the VC world. Its a pertinent question, especially if you're in NYC. If you've been paying attention, my VC successor will probably reach the halfway point in his stint this year, and if you wait until that spot actually opens up to position yourself, well, you'll probably be too late.
As an analyst, you can be useful at pretty much only three things: communication, sourcing, and analysis. The great thing for VC wannabes is that these are all things that you can do now, before a job even comes up. There's nothing stopping you from putting forth your analysis of a new startup, or tipping VCs off to potential deals today, even when you're not at a firm.
Many students have the misconception that, as an analyst, you're going to be put in front of a big stack of business plans and your filtering skill is what's going to make you the next Mike Moritz. Guess again. VCs hustle hard to track down deals and they expect everyone in the shop to be bringing deals to the table, because you should be in the flow of interesting things going on.
But, all this can be a lot of handwaving unless you have specific,
applicable action items, and since the web loves top ten lists:
1) Make a digital home for yourself.
If I haven't beat this to death already, creating a digital presence, preferably through a blog, gives people you connect with a landing page. It is the center of operations for all your online networking and a place for people to assess what you're all about, what you're thinking, etc--the equivalent of hoisting a sail on a windy day. No presence, no sail.
2) Know your community calendar... attend.
As a VC, you want to meet innovators, but the innovators are already meeting... in Meetups and Co-working groups, speaking events, and usergroups. (nextNY, for example,if you're into tech in NYC) They'll be a lot more accepting to you if the first time you meet them isn't when you're trying to vulture around for something to shove money into. Plus, you need to get out there and in the flow to keep up with what's going on.
3) Be passionate for the product...no matter what it is.
Frankly, I don't know how anyone could be a VC analyst and not be passionate about the products they're looking to invest in. If you're doing web services, and you're not a user, you're just never going to get it. Why do people use Twitter? Why is Facebook better than MySpace? These are things you're just not going to understand if you're not a real user.
4) Be an innovation leader in your own world.
You don't have to be a former entrepreneur, but being generally entrepreneurial and an innovator helps. Did you lead the investment or entrepreneurship club at your college? No? Why not? There wasn't one? BUZZ Wrong answer. You should have started it.
5) Be selfless with your time for startups.
One of the most valuable thing you can do with your time as analyst is just talk to a lot of startups...get a sense of what you like and what you don't, best practices, good teams vs. weak teams, etc. And startups are often looking for feedback, beta testers, ideas... the more you make yourself available, the more you will learn and generally be seen as a useful person to talk to. Go help a startup with their marketing plan.
6) Ignore the hype.
It's not just about e-mailing the companies you find on TechCrunch. Just because it doesn't have AJAX doesn't mean it won't be worth billions one day. Remember that the whole world doesn't necessarily blog and some startups can't even be found online yet because they're still in stealth. You need to cut through the buzz and make your own decisions.
7) Teach.
You will never have a clearer understanding of how something works until you attempt to teach it to someone else, which requires you to make some semblance of sense of your subject. Offer to teach at your high school or the Learning Annex or anything... Convince grandma to join Facebook. It will be a sobering experience and will remind you that not everyone gets RSS and some people don't see the value of being social and out there. It's those people that startup success is built on. Win the middle.
8) Be social and have a personality.
If you're going to be an involved community member, people need to actually like hanging out with you. This is where those countless hours in college bars should have taught you something. I know plenty of people who succeed because of their great personalities more so than any other reason. It's not hard to be nice and have a little fun... try it.
9) Build relationships with VCs..not just for stock information interviews.
Right now, you can go do a report on a hot new space or a review of a product and send it to a VC (or tag it for them). If you really want in to this space, why wouldn't you? How about hanging around their blog or showing up at the same events? VC's don't live in a bubble. Their job dictates that they need to be "out there" and that's where you should be, too. It always blew my mind when I was at USV how many people sent biz plans to info@unionsquareventuers (dot) com, when we were so out there with our digital presence.
10) Know your place.
You are not a partner. You're an analyst.. or you want to be. There are a lot of people with a lot more experience than you who have seem this all before. Respect experience. Don't trash a startup, because, for all you know, the entrepreneur is the VC's best friend from Stanford or they're currently in talks for funding now. The best thing you can do sometimes is listen. Listen to what VCs and entrepreneurs are saying on blogs and at conferences and take it all in before you go position yourself as the greatest thing since sliced bread....especially since a large part of your job will be listening and asking smart questions.
So, the next time I hear from someone via LinkedIn or e-mail who wants to hear about my VC experience, I fully expect that they already go to Tech Meetups, have joined nextNY if they are in NYC, use all this stuff passionately, etc.... That's a good first step.
June 6, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (9) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-06
June 6, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Meet Ambition
Meet Ethan.
Ethan has a blog. He does some graphic design work.
I found him because he's attending the Future of Online Advertising Conference and registered for their little social networking app.
Did I mention that he's a 17 year old high school student?
If you teach or work in the career services world, this is exactly what you need to be teaching... how students can create a professional digital presence for themselves and be ambitious enough to go to conferences, connect with people, network, etc.
Or are you too busy running job fairs?
Soon, the best jobs will be gotten through digital backchannel conversations by people who maintain their professional thoughts in a searchable and consumable manner.
If you're working in career services are you spending more time with students on their resumes or teaching them ways to get jobs without them?
June 5, 2007 in Mentoring, The Blogosphere | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
nextMiami: Sun and Innovation in Florida
A few people have made attempts at mirroring the nextNY concept in other geographies and I think it's a fantastic idea.
Nathaniel McNamara and Jason Baptiste are down in Miami attempting to bring together people
interested in technology, new media, and entrepreneurship together in a social setting. If you're down in Florida, you should make a point of connecting with these two guys in their attempt to help strengthen the community of innovators down there. The "next" concept takes a lot of community interest, passion, and involvement and nextNY has been a fantastic way to connect with others in the space. Frankly, its brought a lot of people out of the woodwork that I didn't know were there.
Check out the event next Thursday night, June 14th via Facebook or Meetup.
Please forward to Florida startups and innovators...
June 5, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Hey Austin for Edwards, please do not spam my del.icio.us for: account
I just got some politically oriented links supporting John Edwards in my "links for you" section in del.icio.us from "austinforedwards".
The "links for you" section of my del.icio.us account is like an e-mail box, which pretty much makes this spam. I don't support Edwards for President (he's a good guy, but I'm just waiting for Bloomberg to run... ) So, for one, I'm going to tag this post for:austinforedwards so they can see that I don't want to be spammed. Two, del.icio.us needs some sort of blocking or report as spam mechanism in that section, because, as of this moment, I have no way to prevent someone I don't know from just tagging a whole bunch of links for me.
June 5, 2007 in Politics | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-05
June 5, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard... An underground blob of oil in NYC
Ok, nix Greenpoint of my list of places in NYC I'd like to move to....
June 4, 2007 in Random Stuff | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Big Media, Web 2.0, Meet your young users: A NYC conference/non-profit idea
Some unfiltered thoughts that bubbled up at the gym this morning:
- Anyone who has any interest in the future of NYC as an innovation center recognizes the importance of education--not just at the University level, but in high schools and elementary schools as well. We can't just be a town that attracts smart people from elsewhere to educate them in technology... we need to foster the seeds of technology innovation from a very young age.
- Couple that with the idea that internet, mobile, and digital media related companies want better inroads into younger generations, for not just marketing, but for feedback and ideas.
- High school kids need jobs... and ideally more interesting jobs than working at McDonald's.
So, what about some kind of a program whereby startups and large companies alike targeting the high school/college audience engages the schools in an educational manner, in terms of talking about the technology, the business, product management, etc. of their products, and then "hires" these students for both feedback and marketing purposes during the summers. So, maybe during the year, they do a six week program about all the aspects of their service, and then the students spend the summer providing feedback, helping to market, etc.
Is there anything out there like this?
June 4, 2007 in nextNY, Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (1) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
links for 2007-06-02
-
I'm not sure this quite works...
June 2, 2007 | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Twitter out raising VC money?
Evan mentions it in this post.
Thanks, Chris!
June 1, 2007 in Venture Capital & Technology | Comments (0) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
Bloggers can't write... Sphere flattening?
I was talking to Shri the other day about blogs and we both agreed that some of the most widely read blogs out there aren't actually particularly good writing and are getting less and less informative. Nate echoed similar sentiment and said that few of the blogs that he reads have a lot of traffic. He figured that, if something was important enough, it would filter through to the small niche blogs that he reads.
More and more, I'm hearing anecdotally of people unsubscribing from "A-list" blogs and meanwhile, I've noticed the RSS subscriber numbers of the rest of us trending up. Is the blog world becoming more flat?
I agree with the whole bad writing thing, though... and if anyone has any really well written blogs they read that they'd like to share in the comments, feel free.
June 1, 2007 in The Blogosphere | Comments (3) | Remember this post with del.icio.us| E-mail this post to a friend
