Hittin' the Road...
Just wanted to put it out there... Plans are in the works for a cross country trip the first two weeks of July. No, I probably won't be driving the 'Stang... one because I don't want to put her through that, and two because I get such crappy gas mileage. :) Also, I plan on coming back and I'm going to just make this a one way drive. So, I'll probably just be running a rental car into the ground instead.
So, if anyone has any suggestions on routes, stops, etc... please feel free to tag them for me.
nextNY Members: Now that's some steady growth
I don't even think I could draw a line straighter than this... Here's the growth of nextNY over the last year+. We started out with 79 interested members, and we're at about 780 at the moment.
Outrage and Taboos Create the Problem
Now we have two "n-words".... the new one being "nappy".
Until this week, I'm fairly sure that I've never even spoken or let alone thought this word before... but now I can't avoid it. It's on TV left and right. The fact is, more people heard the term "Nappy headed ho's" spoken by newspeople than heard it spoken originally by Don Imus in the first place.
It was a dumb comment... It was wrong. Don Imus was being a bully... but you know what the best way to deal with bullies is?
Ignore them.
In fact, people were ignoring Imus on their own. In 2005, Imus in the Morning had half the listeners he had ten years earlier.
When you get outraged over something and you create a taboo around words, you only increase the incentive for someone looking to draw attention to themselves to use those words.
And its not only about hate... we have all sorts of taboos in this country that don't reflect our own individual moralities. We're so scared of the kind of flash mob that went after Imus that we have to make grandiose gestures like firing a guy right in the middle of a radio telethon campaign for charity. We have taboos about drinking... we push the drinking age to 21 and send our kids off to war before they can nip a beer and then we wonder why college binge drinking is such a big issue. We've got so many taboos around sex that we can't even have an open dialogue with our kids about it, leaving them largely in the dark about sexual health. We want to ban MySpace and limit what bloggers can say. Janet Jackson pops a boob in the Superbowl and we're "outraged". You think if we weren't so horrified by our own bodies and what we can do with them in this country that w
What's the Standard?
"Every other day
Another bitch another drop"
- This is Why I'm Hot - MIMS (#1 Rap Song in America This Week)
“... A victory for public decency. No one should use the public airwaves to transmit racial or sexual degradation.”
- Rev. Jesse Jackson on the firing of Don Imus
"When it come down to these hoez
I dont love em....
...And anything fine im bag-gin it
And if she got a man, I dont care...
...Now the moral of the story is cuff yo chick"
- I'm a Flirt - R. Kelly (#2 Rap Song in America)
"...We cannot afford a precedent established that the airways can commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism."
- Rev. Al Sharpton commenting on the Imus Situation
I just want to know what's ok to say and when... that's all...
Reprise Bought by Interpublic
Reprise Media just got bought by Interpublic. That's really fantastic and I can't say enough about Pete and Josh and the rest of the Reprise folks. They really know their market and obviously Interpublic recognized this. There are a lot of players in the SEO space, but few as sophisticated and thoughtful about their business as Reprise.
Good luck with Phase 2 and congrats!
Somebody wake Friendster up... Best opportunity ever as MySpace blocks Photobucket Video
I'll admit it. I have Friendster nostalgia. It is the first social network I started using, back in 2003, and admittedly, I went on several Friendster dates. :)
But then, using it was like watching paint dry... it folded under its own weight, and got swamped by MySpace's speed and flexibility.
But the thing is, we may have forgotten Friendster, but few of us deleted our profiles on it. Friendster is still a huge social network... lying dormant... waiting.
Somewhere, there's a magic spell or a feature that will awaken the beast so that people find a reason to go back to it. Today, NewsCorp may have uttered the first words of that incantation by blocking Photobucket videos.
If I was at Friendster, I would put the PR and marketing pedal to the floor and announce support for Photobucket videos and play the "NewsCorp is big and evil" card to the max. Go scrape up a couple of viral videos, too.... whatever it takes. It's a chance to steal some thunder and capitalize on users' continued frustration with MySpace's control tactics on a site that gets more and more spammy everyday.
And while we're on the "if I was at Friendster" subject, it's pretty obvious to me that Friendster, in its current condition isn't really going to make an attractive purchase to anyone.... so why then, do they insist on maximizing revenue by making the site uncomfortably commercial? They're mixing True dating site profiles in with regular search results and Google Adsense ads wind up in the must awkward of places. It's a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. How much revenue could they possibly generate from their current userbase? Even if they do manage to break even, who would want to buy a barely profitable has-been?
Strip out the ads, get some killer features in there, and go on the marketing offensive... because now is the time to get in front of the "MySpace sucks" parade and lead it.
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!