Content Businesses vs. Context Businesses
Is MySpace a content business? They don't create, for their noncommercial users, any blog posts, photos, videos, backgrounds, etc. When you look at your friend's page, you're looking at their creations, their aggregations, mashups, links and friend connections.
So I guess that makes them a platform, right?
So what is Typepad? Or Wordpress? Platforms, too?
No, there's something fundamentally different about what you're seeing in MySpace, and moreover why you're seeing it, that makes it more than just a CMS. MySpace, because of its easy onramp for bands and autoplaying of music set a tone for what the site would be. Even over and above other social networks, this content influences the experience...it provides a context without being a pure content company.
Its not even just the features, because, when it comes down to it, social networks, blog platforms, photo sharing sites...they all basically have the same respective features.
But a little bit of content here and there provides contextn Lots of things can provide context...initial users, featured examples of usage, even advertisers, or just marketing. I mean, is there any reason why my a female friend of mine couldn't use SuicideGirls page to post "in action" softball photos or her and her athletic friends. Technically, its just a CMS, right?
A little starter content, the right initial userbase and marketing verbiage go a long way, and I think we often mistake these nudges and examples as the makings of content businesses, when all they do is provide context for user participation.
MySpace, Sugar Publishing, outside.in, SuicideGirls. DeviantArt, Takkle...they're all good examples of context companies that use a little bit of editing, content, marketing, look and feel...all things that are really difficult to quantify or explain to an investor... to provide shaping guidence for what should go on their sites.
The key is knowing how much content you need to grease the wheels with before you accidently become a content company yourself.
Luck of Seven
Often times, I find myself coming up short when it comes to being involved in other people's stuff.
I involve a lot of people in my own stuff... 650+ people have joined nextNY, but the number of nextNYers whose groups and efforts I can get involved in... well... it always makes me feel like I'm coming up a bit short. I find myself saying, "Wow... ok, I knew you were doing something, but I didn't really have the time to see what it was."
So, today, I'm playing catch up... My "late to the party" entry for today is on noneck Noel Hidalgo's "Luck of Seven" journey.
In his words:
"for seven months, he will traverse the seven continents, dive into the seven oceans, and attempt to visit the seven ancient wonders of the world. Using a wiki, noneck will harness the collective knowledge of the globe, and report weekly on seven topics of freedom."
Ok, if there's anyone I've ever met that I could say is a "character", Noel is definitely, one of them... but the thing that makes me have enormous respect for him about is that he strives to learn.... to learn from those who have very diverse perspectives.
So, whatever Noel learns on his trek, I think we're all going to benefit a lot from that. He is a connector of ideas. I've noticed lately that a lot of people I've really enjoyed getting to know are in some way connected to him, even loosely... and so I'm wondering if maybe he's onto something.
He's raising money for his trip... $11.11 from 700 people. Get it now? It's all about the 7's. He's also leaving on 7/7/07.
He's trying to get 200 people by March 29th... and to me, spending $11.11 to send someone off to learn from people outside of our little NYC bubble and blog and wiki and vlog it for the world seems like $11.11 well spent. I encourage you to help him out.
The Difference Between the Media/Marketing Community and the Tech Community
YouTube. Yahoo! Google. Technology companies or media & advertising companies?
Very quickly being in tech on the web, unless you're building hardware or web-based application software, it's becoming pretty much the same thing.
That's why I'm excited to be in New York.... because there are so many media and advertising folks here, it's only going to make NYC's potential to have a major impact on the web that much bigger.
But yet, despite a lot of noise, nextNY doesn't seem to be adding many digital media or interactive advertising people to its ranks... still very tech heavy. I feel like a lot of people on the other side of the table feel like they're just not in the same community as we are, which is a little strange to me.
This is completely generalizing, unscientific and anecdotal, but I feel like the tech community is actually that, a community. Tech people are just used to collaborating more. There's more freelancing going on and so they're used to working with people from many companies, often at the same time. Plus, anyone who has ever coded or designed anything has often depending on their network of knowledgable friends to help them out with a line or two or a rounded box here and there.
Could you imagine agency folks e-mailing a listserv saying, "Hey, what's funnier? A talking monkey or a talking fish? I need to get the answer to this for a 10AM presentation to a client... can someone help me out?"
They might reach out to their friends about that... but other professionals? Just doesn't seem like there's that kind of dynamic.
And on the media side, when CondeNast folks get together with their counterparts at NewsCorp, do you think their first thought is, "Hey, how can we work together?" It's just a very competitive industry that has a zero sum approach to collaboration.
I hope I'm wrong about this... and in the coming months, you'll see some nextNY events that attempt to bring agency and media people into the fold... to talk about the future of those industries as they relate to the disruption caused by technology. If you're in the agency or media biz, you should definitely check out nextNY. We're not just tech people... we're digital builders, consumers, enablers, financiers, etc... and unless we realize that we're all in this together, not a lot is going to get done.
Top of the Cycle, Ma!! Have we peaked?
A tech blogger I know e-mailed this to me...
"We are at the top of the cycle... Its gonna get ugly soon if past is any guide"
*shivers*
Well, that doesn't sound good.... and certainly public market gitters aren't making people feel any better either.
Is this the beginning of the end?
Let's examine the possibilities...
Bearish Case: It is March of 2000. This is it. This is the beginning of the end. Sell sell sell.
Certainly the public market is starting to hiccup. We've given back some of the 20% equity gains we saw in the last year and there seems to be a lot of nervousness. The housing market is slowing down and the fear is that a slowdown in the housing market is going to ripple through the rest of the economy.
In the first bubble, much of the overvaluation and overfunding of companies hinged on a liquid and rising public market, so when that dried up, the whole thing came crashing down like a house of cards. So, what is supporting the current venture market?
There's a lot of acquisition activity, but it seems to come in two flavors... really big deals and really small deals. On one hand, you have Skype, Webex, YouTube, rumors of Facebook... all in the billion dollar range. Then, you have del.icio.us, Reddit, Writely, Flickr, MyBlogLog, JumpCut, Rojo... all supposedly below $40 million. Doesn't seem like there's too much in the middle... and not a lot of IPOs. So, there does exist the possibility that 1) There isn't much else out there to buy for a billion and 2) all the little aquisitions, relative to the amount of venture money flying out the door, won't amount to a hill of beans... hence the potential for collapse. Or, just imagine that the average entreprenuer sells out for less this time, b/c it was easier to build without a lot of outside capital, and so all the worthwhile companies get bought out way before they have an opportunity to really create much market value, resulting in severe underdelivery of the promise.
On top of that, you have a lot of companies underpinning their business models on the online advertising market, and there's a lady known to blow on some other guy's dice once in a while.
And, yet another argument that we've peaked is that, frankly, not a lot of these apps have gotten a heck of a lot of traction. The fact of the matter is that, before it went free, there were still more than ten times as many paying AOL dial-up users as their were del.icio.us users. Second life rarely gets more than 20k concurrent visitors and RSS hasn't even reached 5% of internet users yet.
Slightly Bullish Case: It is 1998. This is just a blip. We've still got a few good years left, but let's be careful about where the new dollars go and make sure we get out in time.
No reason to sound the alarm...but let's not get nuts either is what the slightly bearish case would tell you. Thus far, the public markets haven't crashed yet and economists are pointing to a soft landing, which is generally ok for stocks. On top of that, while I'm sure there are a lot of companies that shouldn't have gotten funded, there are few examples of really gross overfunding. VC funds are smaller this time around, and they're funding deals that don't burn a ton of cash, unlike the Webvan's of yesteryear.
Plus, the move to online advertising is more than just an uptick that might come back down, it is a structural shift unlikely to swing back. Print and TV are going to lose permanent share that has to come to where more consumers are spending more time and more money. Broadband penetration is still growing, and the original MySpacers are maturing, graduating college, and going to do more and more online. Granted, advertisers need to see good ROI and they're still not entirely comfortable with UGC, but still, the gravy train has left the station and we're all aboard. All good signs.
Of course, we still need to be cautious, especially as VCs start picking and choosing who gets B and C rounds. Keep in mind that VCs tend to fund for 12 months or so, give or take, and we really only started funding this Web 2.0 thing in the middle of 2005. A handful of companies have gotten second rounds, but that wave is just flowing through, and it is often at the C round where VCs take a look at themselves and say, "This just isn't working as a business." This is especially the case since most of these Web 2.0 companies are going to get a free pass to the B round, since the technology pretty much works. When you fund a chip company or biotech company, after the A round, you might discover that the thing just doesn't work, but with Web Apps, it usually works from day one. So, what might happen is that, over the next 18 months, we'll see some apps get their plug pulled and that will cause some healthy jitters, but with the ad wind at our backs, and no dramatic housing collapse, we'll be fine.
Unrepentant Bear Case: It is 1994. Are you kidding? This is just the beginning. We haven't even come close to building all we need to build. Deals for digital content are going to be the Netscape of Web 2.0 and we've got lots to build around that.
I think there's certainly a case for this. I mean, frankly, if I have to wait another cycle to get ad supported episodes of the A-Team on my computer on demand, I'm going to get really impatient. Hopefully, all of the music and tv licensing deals are open and friendly enough that they beget a whole slow of development around them in the same way that the browser opened up the internet to us.
On top of that, how much longer can US carriers continue to stunt mobile development. The promise of mobile, if it ever comes to fruition, could spur on a bull market in the startup space all on its own if we ever found a way to break the carrier lock. Whether its municipal wifi, or government intervention or whatever, you have to imagine this happens sooner rather than later.
So, the case here is that there's so much left to do that there has to be continued optimism. Online ads are still pretty irrelevant and lack engagement. Business class web applications to compete with Office still have a way to do... and there's been little web innovation in the finance industry in Web 2.0 and even less in the healthcare information sector.
To me, when you port offline models online, once every offline company has an online presence, that's pretty much the end of innovation... and that's when Web 1.0 sort of finished up... everyone went online and that was, well, pretty much it. Not a lot for really innovative business models.
When you start taking advantage of networks, metadata, mashups, etc... you should increase the potential for services and business models exponentially... doing what you couldn't do offline... and now, you can do it so much more cheaply that between these two points, I would naturally expect the Web 2.0 boom to last longer than the 1.0, unless you just say that now we have less patience and more fear after the last cycle.
So where are we in this cycle? What's your prediction? Let's get a good conversation going by commenting and linking around.
If you want to blog your thoughts on this, tag it "boomorbust" on del.icio.us.
This is better than YouTube, teacher ratings, and contains a list of good movies, the plot to momento, the prestige plot, the saddest song ever, Charlie O'Donnell, and ask city, as well as drivers for the Sprint PPC 6700.
Are you wondering why "This is better than YouTube, teacher ratings, and contains a list of good movies, the plot to momento, the prestige plot, the saddest song ever, Charlie O'Donnell, and ask city, as well as drivers for the Sprint PPC 6700"?
...Because these are the search terms that garner me the most traffic. Random.
Hi random searchers, I'm Charlie O'Donnell. This is a blog. Click here to learn more about me. I hope you found what you were looking for.
Outside.in knows I live in a neighborgood, not a zipcode
I've been checking out outside.in and I have to figure out how to geotag my posts per post... b/c I only rarely write about Bay Ridge, but I'm often in other places in the city.
But one thing that just strikes me is the web's insistence on using zip codes as neighborhood identifiers. Who really knows any zipcodes besides places you live and where you work? I've been setting up football games in Sportsvite and I have no idea what the zipcode of Riverbank State Park is, so I just throw in some garbage. (Other than that, though... its way easier to invite my team to a season's worth of games on there than on Evite.) A lot of local event things do this... and I can see how an information architect would love this... a numerical system for geocoding... but that's not really the way people live, except for the three people who tag Bay Ridge photos in flickr with 11209. A lot more people are using the bayridge tag.
Outside.in has mapped zipcodes to neighborhoods and so, now, I can subscribe to the Bay Ridge newsfeed. Kudos to them to realizing that I live in a place with a name, not a number.
There
I do hate celebrity culture, but... too funny a quote to pass up...
Superficial, on the Olson twins:
"Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen showed up to Paris Fashion Week a couple weeks ago looking like the Children of the Corn. Are they even trying to look like people anymore? I know Parisians take their fashion seriously, so I'm a little surprised nobody took them out back and beat them to death with croissants."
Be Part of Voki... Contribute a photo
Have you ever wanted to help create a web app, but don't know how to code, like me? :)
Well, now you can get a lasting contribution into what is sure to be one of the most popular web applications around. *I hope*
Our consumer avatar product, Voki, which will be launching soon, allows users to upload their own backgrounds to their avatar scenes or select from a stock file.
We've populated the stock files with some of our own images taken by people in the office when they go on trips and such. It's sort of neat to see people using your photos on their webpages with a speaking character in front of them... in a photogeek kinda way.
So, I figured I'd open it up... If you have a photo that you wouldn't mind people using as a "stock" background for their avatar scenes in Voki, just tag it "vokiphotos" in Flickr. Please, no shots of people, nude people, etc... We'll use stuff that seems "backgroundy". Nature photos, city photos, pictures of rooms... basically spaces that people would want to be... or completely funky stuff that just looks cool even though you don't know what it is.... all acceptable.
By tagging your photos, you agree that we will be using them as part of a commercial product and you will not retain any rights whatsoever over the usage of those photos in Voki. We will not specifically sell your photos directly... just add them to the pool of free photos available to all.
Testing, testing...
Typepad Mobile 1...2...3...
Wooo...weather is warm enough to be biking again!
Come here for news and commentary you're not getting elsewhere...
I've decided that, for the next week, I'm going to check TechMeme and the del.icio.us and Digg popular lists each morning, and not post on any of the news I see there... and pick a topic entirely different. If Apple gets mentioned in any way, I won't mention Apple.
So there will be no mention of "One BILLION dollars" [puts pinky to lip] on this blog today...
Typepad Mobile Posting Garbage
The garbage you've seen posted here (...to be more specific, the unreadable garbage... erm... I mean.. the garbage in computer gobbledygook.... well... you know what I mean...) is courtesy of Typepad Mobile, which seems to be on the fritz.
links for 2007-03-13
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Someone Peter should know... She spoke at SXSW about open source hardware and was great.
Twitter is awesome, and it sucks... 5 reasons on both sides
So Twitter is all the rage at SXSW and I have to say, after being totally bored with it up until I got here, I've been Twittering like a fiend.
And, because of the SXSW buzz, I'm sure some VC who has never used it will want to throw 10 million dollars at it.
So I get it now, and I think it can be great, but I can also see going back home from SXSW and never using it again. So, basically, it's too early to tell, but here are 5 arguments on both sides.
Twitter rocks because...
- Most importantly, it provides others access to me that I control. Facebook demonstrated the importance of this over its Newsfeed blowup. Privacy is huge. I'm happy to give someone my Twitter name, because I can choose to stop getting their texts, and frankly, I don't much care if they still get mine. I control their affect on my SMS inbox, which I wouldn't if I was giving away my phone number for texting. Plus, allowing them to text me shouldn't allow them to call me... that's just braindead simple.
- Twitter is to UPOC as del.icio.us is to Third Voice. There was a great article written by the creator of Third Voice that talked about how seemingly small architecture changes, like foldering vs tagging, and defaulting to public vs private, made a huge impact on the ultimate fate of Third Voice and del.icio.us. I look at Twitter the same way. There's already a group SMSing service out there
Two Great Quotes About Living
- Driving 80 miles an hour in the fog... I can't see EXACTLY where I'm going, but that's not going to slow me down.
- Life as a DANCE rather than a race or something similarly linear and competitive.
SXSW Thought of the Moment: UI and Design
Has there ever been a really useful web service with great features that died because the UI was too complicated. I have a theory that users will figure something out if the promise of the product is compelling enough and the purpose of the product is clear, but the interface sucks. True or false?
Web 2.0 adaptation of Spaceballs
"I'm your blog reader's blog tagger's other digger's twitter friend..."
"What does that make us?"
"Absolutely nothing...which is what you're about to become."