links for 2007-04-06
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Trashing someone with my blog... and its encouraged?? This is too easy.
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I don't think I want to see what's on the bottom of the Hudson...
This is the end of the beginning... Social gets built into the browser
New technology becomes a commodity over time. That's just the way it works.
Someone comes out with a new feature, than everyone copies it, then it just becomes a standard. That's good for everyone, except the people who made businesses based on those new features (cough... Tivo... cough cough).
Mozilla's Project Coop may just be the beginning of "social" being built further down in the stack... a layer more deeply integrated into how we experience the web. If the web is the operating system, that sort of makes the browser part of the "hardware" to me... It's really exciting and something I'll be tracking more closely, b/c I certainly can't depend on all of those blogs and social networks to somehow come together on a single identity standard or FOAF-like format.
I'm not smarter than you... I've just downloaded more crap and given my universal username and password to more websites than you
It was a running joke when I was at Union Square Ventures that my job was to download as much rogue software to my laptop as possible. I'm a user... first and foremost. When we saw deals, my first question was, "When can I start using it?
Over the last few years, I've been in a fantastic position, both as a blogger, a VC analyst, a connector in nextNY and a product manager, to try and really get my hands dirty with so much social media... very much like getting the opportunity to live in another country and get immersed in the language. You can take Spanish classes all you want, but spend six months in Spain and you'll be more than just fluent... you may even start to think a few thoughts in Spanish.
So when Greg Verdino wrote about how social marketers need to get their hands dirty to understand this stuff, he couldn't be more on point:
"My point isn't that I know more than they do. Maybe I do, maybe I don't. My point is that everyone in this business owes it to themselves (not to mention their clients) to experience social media firsthand. It is only by rolling up your sleeves and getting involved with these channels as a consumer (even as a power user) that you can truly understand how to leverage them (and tap the active communities that use them) for marketing. You can't be a passionate user of everything (who has time for that?) but I firmly believe that you do need to at least try any new form of media that you plan to recommend to your clients. The list of services I've tried is as long as my arm -- I haven't loved every one of them but at least I can look my clients in the eyes and give them my personal perspectives on them all."
What's most difficult to do is to converse with people who haven't gotten their hands dirty and attempt to debate the right course of action when marketing or building products for these spaces.
This is especially true in design, where many people are more focused on making something look fantastic versus being functional--a typical approach by someone who doesn't actually use an application.
I know I can never speak for every user... and every user is different... but I can see, from the inside, what people are doing in this spaces and within these applications. I talk to them and ask them why. Why are you in this social network versus another? How often do you go to it?
It's a little bit like "management by walking around". It's very undervalued, but its important to get out of your office and walk around on the factory floor once in a while to truly get a feel for how things are going on the line.
I think marketing & PR firms, VC firms, anyone who has any kind of business interest whatsover in social media needs to mandate that the decision makers on your staff, right on up to the top, all "walk the floor". Maybe Fridays should be "social media days" where the whole office plays in MySpace, Second Life, blogs, plays World of Warcraft, Twitters, etc... Like Google's 20% time. Take some Flickr photos, poke some people in Facebook... (virtual pokes only, please)... Hell, go nuts and create a few speaking stand-up comedy avatars. (Shameless Oddcast pitch) The point is, "getting it" isn't a function of being smart, or having experience with other forms of media...
It's participating!
Well Pitched Games, New and Secret Jamba Flavors and Gmail Spam
Hmm... maybe he is King Felix after all. 12 k's in 8 scoreless... not half bad. Better than Curt Shilling, who is not only on my fantasy team, the Jesuit Ultimatum, but he's blogging, too. Here's his pitch by pitch blog account of his subpar KC performance.
Gotta love the one comment:
"Hey Curt, you really bogged down my fantasy team man. Let’s get a better performance out there next week, maybe get some more K’s too. Atta kid."
I'm sure that's what drives Curt Shilling... fantasy stat lines.
So, yesterday, I confirmed the existence of secret Jamba Juice flavors. I leaned over the counter and quietly asked for a White Gummy Bear. They quickly jumped over to my side, throw a black bag over my head, hit me in the knees with a pipe and dragged me downstairs to a dimly lit room. After several hours of painful interrogation, they finally gave me the yummiest smoothie I've ever had there, until this morning. This morning, I noticed two new flavors in the Fruit only menu... peach and pomegranate. The pomegranate is fantastic.
Oh, and by the way... hey Gmail... when I click "report spam", that means I never ever want to get mail from that sender...ever. And shouldn't it get smarter the more I click "Report Spam". I get a bunch of Euromillions spam and "Dear Sir, please send me your bank account number" scams.
On Conversation
This is just a really great post about conversation by Eric Nehrlich:
When I’m talking to friends, I’m not just reciting the events of my life. I’m struggling to put them into context, figuring out the narrative that ties them together, making sense of the chain of events so that I can understand what happened. In other words, I’m constructing my self-story. By telling it to somebody else, I’m explaining it to myself, but at the same time, the feedback that I get may encourage me to modify my understanding. For instance, if I’m talking about an interaction I had with a coworker, and I explain what they did and why I thought they did it, my friends will offer alternative explanations that may better explain the events. And I modify and retcon my story to incorporate that new interpretation...
...I should also mention that such conversations aren’t entirely selfish on my part. By using my friends to help me make sense of the world, I’m promoting our ability to make sense of each other. Because they’re helping me interpret the events of my life, they gain a better understanding of how I think about the world. And their interpretations help me better understand how they make sense of the world. Plus, i can contribute my viewpoint to help them make sense of events in their world. It’s a two-way process that builds community and trust, and also increases our ability to function in a world that doesn’t always behave in an expected fashion.
I've met someone interesting recently and gotten to know them through a ton of e-mail conversation... so much so that it has us both interested in the nature of how people get to know each other and how information and story exchange works in the process of building up friendships and relationships. I really like how the second paragraph puts that function in perspective.
The Domino Effect of Confidence
Confidence is a funny thing. People say it's contagious, and I totally agree with that, particularly on sports teams. I've been on some great baseball teams when I was younger and we walked onto the field thinking, or knowing, rather, that we were going to pound out 10 or 15 runs a game. It's tough to beat that. Similarly, when things weren't going well, we had innings that we felt like we'd never get an out.
But what's also interesting about confidence is that not only does it spread, but it often has a powerful causality that may not be initially obvious.
For example... When you delegate, and someone doesn't carry out a task exactly as you would, your reaction can have some unintended results down the line. Let's say you correct them in ways that aren't qualitative, but just more along the lines of style choice. Then, the next time, they come to you for every little thing because they know you'll wind up changing it. Eventually, you'll be creating a bunch of people that can't execute, or that you don't allow to execute.
Even worse, when you don't get behind your staff and their decisions, eventually, people start going around them and checking with you on every little thing. Before you know it, all roads lead to you and you become the bottleneck.
This happened to me when I was in college. I had started a business newspaper that ran for two years, but being the perfectionist, I always wound up doing things myself if I wasn't happy with the work of the people around me. I wouldn't settle for any kind of quality dropoff when we started. What happened was that the people under me never really learned how to edit, do layout, etc... and so the paper folded when I graduated.
Plus, it's really unmotivating to a staff when they know that whatever they turn in isn't going to make the final cut anyway... that no matter what new ideas they come up with, they don't also have the power to execute them and be responsible. They fall back on their heels because they can't move forward without you.
The dominos start falling down outside of your organization as well. You send your staff out into the wild of business development and conferences, and it becomes obvious to others that you are not an empowered decision maker. You get taken less seriously and your organization gets the reputation as a slow mover.
Don't get me wrong... relying on people who don't do everything exactly the way you do or who might not be the perfectionist that you were is difficult... but sometimes, you need to let your people show you and the world what they've got, support them, and live with whatever they put out there. Otherwise, they'll never grow up and you'll find yourself the last man standing, and your college newspaper will fold. :)
I bike through glass, nails, and razor blades...
I tagged some kind of a run flat, steelbelted James Bond bike tire system the other day and now I'm thinking I should seriously invest in that. This time, I'm on the subway again with a flat BACK tire. Goddammnit.
1 Down, 99 to Go... Mets Win Opener Behind Glavine
Its great when you can score 6 runs without hitting the ball hard more than once all night.
A few thoughts:
Glavine should win at least 15 games this year.... He looked real sharp, especially with the change.
Moises Alou looked pretty good.. hustling around the basepaths, taking an extra on an aggressive play.
Kind of ballsy to bring out Joe Smith in the 8th there. Talk about trial by fire for the sidearming rookie. Did Willie think that was Chad Bradford? That should have been Heilman's spot all the way.
I'm concerned about David Wright. He had a weak 2nd half last year and he grounds the ball around the infield a lot, instead of driving the ball. I'm afraid we're going to see him at .210 after April, but I hope I'm wrong.
Nanatar: My Grandmother the Avatar
My 89 year old grandmother called me this morning and left a message. GotVoice promptly e-mailed me an MP3 file of the message and then I made an avatar out of it.
Shhh... The Big Secret About Oddcast Avatars
It's not really about the avatar. No one really cares about the avatar... well, not about a functionless avatar anyway. No matter how good a little fake picture of you might look, 3D, 2D, blinking, jumping, etc..., if all it does is represent you, like a digital placeholder, it's value is going to be a little limited. (See my sidebar if you disagree.)
It's the voice.
Ooooooooh.... controversial. :)
People have been asking me a lot how an avatar product is supposed to make money and why anyone should care.
Well if I think of us purely as an avatar play, I think I'd seriously struggle to answer that question.
Yet, no one ever asks that question about voice applications.... and I like to think of us as more of a communication platform... a cute, dressable communication platform that you can make bald if you want to.
Now, when I think of voice on the web... it's just about the most boring visual experience I can think of. (And the web is supposed to be visual, right?) Ever watch an iTunes song play? You can just watch the little timer bar count down and that stupid little diamond inch its way across the tube.... or, for a truly riveting experience, you can use the Visualizer, in case you want to know what it's like to play iTunes while tripping on acid.
I mean, seriously what's that supposed to be?
Voice is a powerful medium. It invokes an emotional response and has been doing so for years... you know... with that phone thing that people hold so near and dear and pay 100 bucks a month for. And I don't think it's a half step to video either... I don't think we're going to one day replace all our voice calls with video calls, lest we wind up calling each other from the bathroom wall Spaceballs style.
But, on the web, it needs a visual... a compelling visual that resonates with the viewer and representative of something, but at the same time whose creation doesn't represent a serious barrier to usage.
Enter the avatar.... the speaking avatar.
Imagine a poker game online. All you see is a table and cards... players are represented by text.
Not so interesting.
Ok, so instead of text... how about life action webcam video.
Um... yeah... right... kind of complicated... and... well, I don't think you really want to see exactly who you're playing online at 3AM. Nor do I think they always want you to see them.
So you throw in voice... Voice is cool, b/c then SouthrnBoy32 now has a bit of a drawl to him, and now your game has character... except... it doesn't really have character.. it has disembodied voices emanating from the abyss. Sort of weird and uncentered.
But with a talking character, you visually center and give context to voice. So, its really avatar wrapped voice, not a voice enabled avatar.
So when I think of places I'd like to integrate Voki into, I think of all of the places I'd love to add and enchance voice communication... my fantasy league message board, invitations and cards, chat, mobile services.
So, if I don't always get excited about virtual worlds conferences, it's because I'm actually a voice guy first, avatar guy second.
PS... This post wasn't meant to be self serving... it was meant to explain why I get excited about what I do and what we're going to offer.
nextBrooklyn!
So Tim Marman and I are attempting to singlehandedly shift the NYC startup scene to the outer boroughs and now we've got the help of Adam Quirk, who has graciously agreed to host a Brooklyn gathering of tech and digital media folks at his loft.
So if you have a startup in Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Park Slope, Bay Ridge, or my own place of origin, Bensonhurst... or if you're a Brooklyn resident, come say hello! RSVP Only!
The Times Square Shuttle Combine
One of my favorite things to do in the city is to enter the Times Square subway station on 42nd between 7th and Broadway and sprint to the waiting Shuttle train. On Tuesdays, I leave the office at 5:20 so I can catch the 5:35 Metro North Train to Fordham to teach class. Crossing from the bottom of the escalators to the Shuttle involves slipping through the fast moving crosscurrent of people exiting the back of the train. It makes me feel like a running back... not a power back, because I can't just plow through these people, but more like Barry Sanders...bobbing, weaving, highstepping... :)
You cannot stop me, you can only hope to contain me.
Twitter the OS and TwitterSquatting
Obsessive SXSW Twittering aside, I've been thinking a lot about what the "big picture" is there, and today I got a big clue.
For those of you who don't know... Twitter is service that provides an identity layer above texting and a single gateway by which to communicate with friends over SMS. It also extends to the web and IM.
So, I'm ceonyc on Twitter... just like I am everywhere else. If you were my friend, I'd get your texts anytime you texted to 40404.
And if you wanted to directly message me, you'd text "d ceonyc" so it knows to go directly to me... again to 40404.
Well, the site has APIs and RSS feeds, but today they took a really big step. By allowing the "d" function to be part of the API code, they're allowing services to plugin to the system sort of the same way people are trying to use IM bots. The big (and useful) difference is that when I'm sitting on IM, I'm usually at my desktop and don't need a bot's help. But with Twitter, when I'm on my phone, I can just send a note like "d weather 11209" and get my current weather if someone sets up such a service.
So, what we've got is a simple protocol, a controllable identity layer that allows me to control who reaches me, when, where, etc., and a leverageable API... one that businesses can take advantage of to build real services. I mean, who's really going to remember the shortcodes of every business on the planet that wants to be mobile... but if all you need to know is 40404 and a screename, I think you'll see an explosion in Twitter services.
Boy, there's a dream BizDev job...
I think if you wanted to just charge commercial entities to use the service, there's your business model. If there aren't VCs all over this thing, not because all the geeky bloggers use it, but because of its potential to make SMS a real business platform, then they're missing the big picture. What I hope they don't do is raise some ridiculous number like 10 million dollars and try to do everything too fast too quickly.
Evan, I think you've got something. Go raise 2 million to get the servers to operate much faster, hire some more dev folks, and keep plugging away!
You know what's amusing... there's already TwitterSquatting going on. The sports, news, weather, find, local, and where screenames are all taken... empty, but taken.
Now if I could only "bundle" my friends and have each bundle have its own individual settings to be turned on and turned off with one felt swoop, that would be fantastic.
Non Illegitimi Carborundum
There isn't much more to be said about the nasty comments and threats Kathy Sierra has been receiving.
Idiots. That's what they are...
But I do want to add one thing, though, that hasn't really been discussed...and that's the fact that Kathy Sierra isn't the first person to go through these kind of cyber attacks... she's just the most prominent, and I hope that creates a larger conversation about this kind of stuff.
There are many teens that go through this kind of thing everyday.... Cyberbullying is a major problem... and its roots are so deep in or society that its hard to see how something like this will ever go away.
Why do people do these kinds of things?
Because it's easy.... it's easier than aspiring and succeeding to become something great.
That's really what our culture is about, isn't it? Instead of focusing on some celebrity's positive contribution to society... or everyday people, we point and laugh at the ones who slip up, or criticize the ones we disagree with. It's all about taking down the people who make it to the top.
It's the reason why people who aspire to elected office are pretty much an adversely selected group and all the really great, qualified people succeed quietly in the private sector.
It's the reason why no one wants to be the first one to raise their hand in our classrooms.... and why all the students rush to sit in the back. Our best minds keep their mouths shut in fear of being brought down by idiots.
I think the worst thing anyone could do is let them win. Of course, that's easy for me to say... I've never received a death threat.
But, if inner city NYC public school teachers stayed home everytime they got threatened, they'd probably never show to work... and they prob don't make half the money or get half the support of most prominent folks who receive threats.
At the end of the day, everyone's got to make their own decision on their own safety, but if you're considering holding back your thoughts and public conversation, please don't. I don't want to see the best voices drowned out by idiots.
links for 2007-03-26
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Just a very cool blog.... this person left digital footprints on MBL...
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oooh.... I gotta try this.
