Free Food Goes A Long Way

It is not really a budget issue, so I don't see why more companies don't do it. Another good one is the 20% time. A third is child care.

This free food thing was a great early step to take. So simple, so obvious, so visible. It will garner headlines.

In Week Two, Marissa Mayer Googifies Yahoo: Free Food! Friday Afternoon All-Hands! New Work Spaces! Fab Swag!

a weekly Friday afternoon all-hands meeting ...... Mayer is also prepping major changes to the layout of the work spaces and buildings of Yahoo to make it feel more collaborative and cool, as well as upgrading swag in its stores..... Such focus on improving cultural issues is an interesting initial move by the neophyte CEO, since the care and feeding and, most of all, cosseting of employees has been a critical element to Google’s success at creating an always sunny work environment. ..... “It might be just a small thing, but people are thrilled,” said one Yahoo employee, in a common sentiment about the symbolic gesture of free grub...... Mayer has been up to much more serious business.. most especially pushing product innovation as the savior for Yahoo to anyone who will listen. ...... Better email! Better Flickr! Better search! Better ad-serving! ..... “This is the sound of Yahoo becoming a technology company again.... It will be all about platforms and products.” ..... a big splashy tech or product deal in the days ahead, perhaps via an acquisition to signal the new direction. ..... Will Mayer, as Google CEO Larry Page has done forever, approve all hires at Yahoo going forward? ..... Mayer has been studying org charts carefully this past week, and several sources told me that she has asked all her direct reports for strategic plans in the next 45 days.

Jack Dorsey got elbowed out of the CEO position at Twitter by Evan Williams. Months later Dorsey said he should have had weekly team meetings.

Flat workspaces are another thing. No cubicles. Just one big, open space.

You want your people to be happy.

I asked for a free Flickr, (Make Flickr Free Again) but got free food instead.

Of all the Google things, the 20% time I find the most intriguing. That is Google's elixir of youth. That is the reason why when Google becomes bigger it tackles bigger problems instead of going staid and corporate.

Free lunch in week two is a master stroke.

What will be Mayer's first acquisition? I bet many minds are asking that question. Flipboard would make a lot of sense.

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Make Flickr Free Again

One fine day Yahoo decided it was going to charge for Flickr. When the rest of the industry was going in the other direction. And I remember feeling, Yahoo has lost its way.

Photo is so central to the mobile experience. It has proven to be the central mobile experience. And Yahoo almost shuttered a crown jewel. That was a dysfunctional move by a dysfunctional company.

How Marissa Mayer handles Flickr will tell me a lot about if she has what it takes to bring the sexy back to the Yahoo brand. For one, make it free. People should be able to upload as many pictures as they want. And they should be able to embed the pictures wherever they want. That sharing part is key. And then see if Flickr can be given a mobile version.

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Google Plus: What Went Wrong?

Image via CrunchBaseNothing went wrong. Google Plus continues to grow like a weed.

But I have not been using it daily, or even weekly. It has not become an integral part of my life. Contrast that to the fact that I use Twitter and Facebook every day, Twitter several times a day.

What went wrong?

For me it really bothered me that I could not feed my blog - hosted on Google's very own Blogger - into my Google Plus stream. I'd have liked it if my blog posts showed up in my Google Plus stream and gathered some comments.

Google Images, Facebook Photos, Twitpic, Instagram, FoodSpotting

Image by Michelle Brea (busy-away) via FlickrI guess people have been taking pictures for a while now. Sight is a dominant human organ. And now there has been talk of a new startup called Color. My first reaction was, how did they get that domain name? Was it not already taken?

So what's the idea? The first piece I read on the topic told me you will never be able to leave me. You are stuck with me within a mile radius. Not even a mile. This world is getting small.

Before trains and airplanes, that used to happen. People could spend their entire lives within a few tens of miles. Some people obviously think we need to go back to that kind of reality. You pick the 10 people who matter to you and you never leave. You constantly take pictures for each other, you tweet for each other. But there is another angle to it, like when you are public and semi public. Then people far, far away who are not part of your immediate circle get a much more realistic picture of what your life is like. That could lead to world peace. Peace gets disrupted when communication breaks down. If everyone gets to speak, and everyone gets heard - see and be seen - maybe there will be fewer fights.

Yahoo Doldrums

Image via CrunchBaseMike Arrington has relentlessly gone after Carol Bartz from day one. Some of that I have attributed to sexism. Some I have attributed to the media's need for conflict and drama: that is partly how they generate page hits. Some I have attributed to Mike angling to get bought by Yahoo's rival AOL: that happened. But Yahoo does have serious problems.

Yahoo's problem is not that it is not number one, or that it is not going to get back the crown. Yahoo's problem has been that it has messed up being number two. Yahoo bought Flickr, and look at Facebook: photo sharing is the number one thing that happens on Facebook.

Facebook And Twitter: The Only Two That Count

Image via CrunchBase

TechCrunch: 2010 State Of The Blogosphere: Facebook And Twitter Drive The Most Traffic (Slides): They use many types of social media (LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg), but when it comes to driving traffic back to their blogs only two social media services really count: Facebook and Twitter

I have long suspected this. People have been like if you want traffic for your blog, become a regular on Digg, go visit StumbleUpon, and I have resisted. I have put my efforts only into Facebook and Twitter.

The Web Lifestyle And Company Cultures

Image via CrunchBaseThese three articles below are great reads on the web lifestyle and the company cultures of Google and Facebook.

BBC: Cult Of Less: Living Out Of A Hard Drive: Chris Yurista, a Washington, DC resident who lives out of a backpack, claims digital technology has replaced the need for his home and his possessions ..... Mr Sutton sold or gave away most of his assets, apart from his iPad, Kindle, laptop and a few other items ..... a "few" articles of clothing and bed sheets for a mattress that was left in his newly rented apartment. ..... credits his external hard drives and online services like iTunes, Hulu, Flickr, Facebook, Skype and Google Maps for allowing him to lead a minimalist life. ..... the internet has replaced my need for an address ...... Yurista has taken to the streets with a backpack full of designer clothing, a laptop, an external hard drive, a small piano keyboard and a bicycle - an armful of goods that totals over $3,000 (£1,890) in value ...... spends much of his time basking in the glow emanating from his Macbook, earns a significant income at his full-time job as a travel agent and believes his new life on the digital grid is less cluttered than his old life on the physical one. ...... he no longer has to worry about dusting, organising and cleaning his possessions ...... his new intangible goods can continue to live on indefinitely with little maintenance. ...... replaced his bed with friends' couches, paper bills with online banking ...... "you never know where you will sleep". ...... And like a house fire that rips through a family's prized possessions, when someone loses their digital goods to a computer crash, they can be devastated. ...... some people have gone as far as to threaten suicide over their lost digital possessions and data. ..... He says if a complete map of our brains was uploaded to a computer and a conscious, digital replica of ourselves was created, we could, in theory, continue to live forever on a hard drive along with our MP3s and e-books.
GigaOm: The Early Facebook Employee Exodus:Employees who leave are often emboldened by their work on such an influential and widely used product, and want to start their own companies. Others are burned out. Still others feel stifled by the company’s management structure......And just last week Ruchi Sanghvi, the company’s first female engineer who wrote the blog post announcing the then-radical Facebook news feed back in 2006 (and in doing so became the target of subsequent user outrage), left as well. ....... Others are getting engaged and married (sometimes to each other) and starting to have kids. They’re far removed from the early days of Facebook Proms ...... One frustration of early employees is that they’ve had limited upward mobility as Facebook has matured. With the exception of VP of Product Chris Cox, Mark Zuckerberg’s management team consists of outside hires, a good number of them from Google. ...... receiving avid investor interest in their new projects ..... Some leave to found startups that are related to Facebook, but aren’t priorities internally ..... examples of Facebook employees leaving to work at Google and Twitter ...... Facebook has chosen a distinctive method of regenerating the young startup mojo that it may be losing in this early employee exodus: buying young startups. ..... efreshes the company’s stable of 4-year stock option vesting cycles, along with delivering a fresh dose of entrepreneurial chutzpah.
GigaOm: Google Is From Mars and Facebook Is From Venus:The search company is like graduate school, filled with big brains working on complicated problems, while the social network doesn’t think as much about the deep implications of things; it just does them......Google is more technically focused, in that staffers there “value working on hard problems, and doing them right… things are often done because they are technically hard or impressive [and] on most projects, the engineers make the calls.” ....... when projects are undertaken at the search company, “the code is usually solid, and the systems are designed for scale from the very beginning. There are many experts around and review processes set up for systems designs.” ..... engineers and technical specs rule the day at Google ..... Zuck [CEO Mark Zuckerberg] spends a lot of time looking at product mocks, and is involved pretty deeply with the site’s look and feel

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Buzz Takes Gmail To A New Level

Image of Adam Carson

Earlier today I was fooling around with Buzz. Even before that from just reading about it in the news, I never thought of Buzz as a Twitter or Facebook killer. My suspicions have now been confirmed. Buzz is a Gmail enhancer. Otherwise my Gmail experience was starting to get a little staid.

Google reinvented email with Gmail. I don't think it has reinvented social, updates and geo with Buzz. But it sure could not have afforded to be left behind. Social is not Facebook, updates are not Twitter, geo is geo. These are elements of the web experience, and they will seep through to everywhere or most places. The leading dot com could not have skipped the cacophony.

Two names popped up during my first experience: Adam Carson, and Vin Vacanti. I never connected with Adam on Facebook like I now do on Buzz. The guy got me on the Reader bandwagon long back, but once I got strong on Twitter, I shifted over to Twitter. My Twitter page is my newsfeed. I skim through the headlines in the morning on my Twitter page. Vin I got introduced to over email last year. I met him in person a few days back. And now I am part of conversations with his friends. And Buzz does not cut into my allowed Gmail space. That is important to me.

Right now my Buzz box is sexier than my Gmail Inbox, and only one click away. I am liking the experience.

One Buzz thread had the founder of Gmail and FriendFeed saying Buzz looks "familiar." How did Google find out I might be interested in that particular Buzz thread? They got it right. I don't know how they did it, but all I got to say is keep tweaking those algorithms.  

Introducing Bzz
Introducing Google Buzz For Mobile
Readers: Get Your Buzz On
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What Should Facebook Do

Image via CrunchBase

Facebook is in news today for wanting to catch up with Twitter. Facebook has the mass and the volume, but Twitter has the buzz and the momentum, something Facebook has plenty of. Facebook is a great site, but it could do with improvements.

(1) Do Not Become Twitter

Twitter has its place. Facebook has its place. Facebook would do itself a major disservice if it tried too hard to imitate Twitter. Twitter can not become Facebook. Facebook should not become Twitter.

On Twitter the emphasis is on real time, on 140 characters. On Facebook much more depth is possible. That depth is Facebook's competitive advantage. It should not let go. Instead it should enhance on that depth.



You go on Facebook to better organize your social reality, and to enhance that social reality. You go on Facebook to arrange to meet offline. That offline part is key. Facebook should make event planning seamless. It already does a good job.

(2) Existing Friends

The idea behind Facebook has been that you are only supposed to accept friend requests from people who are already your friends. It is supposed to be a walled garden. It errs on both sides. It does not do enough of it, it does too much of it.

You should be able to accept friend requests from everyone you know, but you don't want your boss to see the same side of you as your college roommate.

On the other hand, what's the point about so many interesting people being on Facebook if you can't make new friends on there? I was at almost 1500 friends and then Facebook went ahead and deleted my account. I got a new one that now has 500, almost all of which are people I know offline.

Friend: now that is a broad category. Facebook should introduce the concentric circles idea. Anybody should have the option to become your fan, but those fans should not see all those many aspects of you that your friends might. Fans should get a much more limited view. And close friends should see more than not so close friends. There should be a whole category called colleagues.

(3) Making New Friends On Facebook

I think that is probably the largest untapped potential of Facebook. Facebook should be a place where you go to meet people. But it has to be safe, and it has to be gradual. You should be able to explore shared interests and conversations for a long time without having to reveal your name or face.

The Unfacebook

Facebook could morph to become the leading dating site. But it should not do so by becoming like the other dating sites. Facebook can become a job site, a place you go to seek talent. Once you get that many people at one place online there are so many things you can do.

(4) Status Updates In Real Time

I believe they have already decided to do that. Good. About time. Here Facebook could really give Twitter a run for the money, especially if it not only does status updates in real time, and makes it URL friendly, but also does a good job of allowing people to search just the status updates.

(5) Allowing Celebrities To Mingle

If you had a million fans, what should your Facebook experience be like? I think people who end up with a large fan base on Facebook should have special features just for them. A million fans should be manageable because of Facebook. How exactly you would do that, I don't know, but I got a few ideas. Fans are not just after the celebrities they are after, they are also after each other. Make that happen. Celebrities should be able to interact with their fans. They should be able to "zoom in" to perhaps interacts one on one, to meet, arrange to meet.

(6) Deepening Friendships

Facebook should be one of the tools that allow you to become better friends with people you are already friends with.

(7) Facebook For Family

Maybe Facebook should help you build an inner core to your profile that only a few close people get to see. Perhaps status updates should be layered. Maybe you want one status feed for the eyes of your spouse only.

(8) Safety And Privacy

Those are paramount. Add all the features in the world, but if you botch these two, you are in bad shape. The idea is not to stop being a walled garden, but rather being many gardens, some more walled, some less, some out in the open.

(9) Photos, Videos, Links

Facebook totally took off with photos. I believe there are way more photos on Facebook than on Flickr, and that happened a long time ago. Flickr made a bad move: it started charging.

If Facebook wants to compete with Twitter, it needs to compete in the aggregation and sharing of links. Links are the number one action on Twitter. Make it easy for people to post, share, search.

(10) Status Stream

That has to be real time. I believe Facebook already did that. Good.

TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
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Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
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