To Beta or Not To Beta
So here's a question...
Voki launches next Wednesday and the question came up... Beta logo or no?
Here are three good reasons for it and three reasons against it, but I'd love to hear your feedback.
For:
- The product is new and sure to have a few bugs and require some immediate changes. The "Beta" label lets people know that they're using the first public version and a few things might need to get updated/fixed... sets expectations.
- The idea of a perpetual beta is a good philosophy, because it implies continuous development.
- Says that we're not done and expect more functionality in the m0nths to come.
Against:
- "Beta" isn't really accurate. If it is public and anyone can use it, its not really your Beta... its your product. Public Beta is a contradiction in terms.
- Beta isn't an excuse and shouldn't be used as one. If something doesn't work, you fix it as soon as possible. You always innovate with new features... and labeling something a beta doesn't get you off the hook for anything, let alone any sympathy from users.
- Beta is sort of a passe terminology... almost a little bit of a cliche now... totally overused by Web 2.0
What say you blog readers? To beta or not to beta?
The Future of Apple, Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft...
Hey Folks...
I'm going to be talking to my class tonight about the future of some of the more visible technology companies... and how each one seems to be encroaching on the spaces of the others... Google building office apps, Microsoft releasing consumer electronics, Apple moving into TV, Yahoo!... well... where does Yahoo! want to go anyway? Remember when AOL was on this list, too? Is it a Google and Apple world? Is Microsoft really dead? What about Nintendo backing its way on the web through its Wii browser?
Here are what I see as the most interesting questions:
- How far will Google go with its office app strategy... and.. well, why?
- Will Google be successful with other types of media advertising, like TV and radio?
- How will Yahoo! integrate all of the social apps it bought and will they make another run at a social network like Facebook? What are they trying to build?
- Will Apple control all my access to media?
- Will Apple ever gain a major foothold on the web? Does the fact that they don't seem interested in it mean that the web isn't the place for mainstream rich media consumption? What does that say about YouTube?
- Where does Microsoft fit into all this? How long can their OS and applications business survive in a world of Google and open source?
- Who else can be a major player of such size and scope? Sony? What about the media companies? AOL? IAC? NewsCorp?
- Does eBay become the phone company?
- What about Amazon?
It should make for an interesting discussion and I'd like to provide some further post-class reading... If anyone knows of any great "Future of..." posts from reputable sources, I'd love to hear what the thought leaders are saying about the direction of the big guys. I'd be very appreciative if anyone could post links in either the comments or tag something for:ceonyc. Thanks... I'll follow up with another post about the best ones that came in.
Incubate This!
There is lots of debate as to what the bottlenecks for innovation are in NYC. Space. Cost. Money. Professional services with startup knowhow... And one approach at solving this is the incubator.
Ahhh, yes... the incubator.
Because there's nothing better than a machine that grows babies, chickens, and startups.
But seriously, what exactly does an incubator do and where are they in NYC?
One thing that really struck me was that, when I was at USV, incubators didn't seem to get prominent attention in the startup world. I found them tough to locate and I wasn't always aware of what was going on in them.
I'm curious about people's experiences with incubators and if there isn't something that can be done to elevate awareness about them here in NYC.
Here are a few that I know of, but would like to know more about:
NYSIA Incubator
NYU Stern Incubator
Polytechnic Incubator
Second Century (Pace)
Perhaps it is worth doing some kind of nextNY event where reps from all the incubators can get together and just tell people what they're all about?
If you've been involved with one of these, you should join nextNY, b/c we're a group that really wants to know about these sorts of things and could be where you get your future tenants.
Lacuna Coil Rocks Roseland
Last night, I went to the Jaegermeister Tour at Roseland to see Lacuna Coil... I discovered them last year on last.fm and they've quickly become one of my favorite bands. They're a bit like Evanescence, with a powerful lead female singer in Christina Scabbia. Great show, but they were unfortunately followed up by Shadows Fall, which was just a bunch of noise. Total crap.
Anyway... I took a few videos of Lacuna Coil... here you go:
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.