Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin

Twitter Need Get Work Done

Measuring Your Twitter Influence

You read more posts on TechCrunch about FourSquare than you do about Google, but that does not mean FourSquare has become bigger than Google, or ever will be. It is just that location has been all the buzz this year. The buzz might have shifted from Twitter, but that in no way means Twitter's utility is less now than it was in the Spring of 2009.

I am so glad I don't have to choose, I log into Facebook every day, often several times a day, but if I had to choose, I'd pick Twitter. I want to be finding new people, new info, I want to access people who I otherwise can't access.

Twitter has not realized its potential. It has not even come remotely close to realizing its potential. Twitter has work cut out for it.

(1) Simplify

If you are a SEO Optimizer in a small town in Kenya, I am going to consider you part of the tech elite. Twitter right now is at the level of the tech elite. Twitter has to simplify and appeal to the average person.

Learn from Tumblr. If I were a new person, and I showed up on the Twitter homepage for the first time, I'd get scared and I'd leave. If I were a little more gutsy, I'd sign up, and then leave, and not see the point in coming back.

The first page has to be dead simple. Okay, so here I give you my email address, and I put in my password here, and, wow, now I can send out my first tweet? Cool. And based on my email address, you are telling me these people in my circle are already on Twitter? Can I follow them? Wow. Here are five topics of interest to me, or three. Based on that you are suggesting three celebrities on Twitter and three lists. I'm excited.

(2) Eat Into The Ecosystem

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Buy or build. Both cost money. Here's money: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO. Twitter has to go public, and with that money it has to go on a buying spree.

A site known for 140 characters, look at how long the URL for a tweet is: http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/11872417573

That is too long. It should be more like http://tw.tr/1r

That long. Anything longer is too long for a tweet URL.

Photo and video can't be separate services. I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter, and so far I have never used Twitpic. Am I supposed to create yet another account?

Some of the obvious services have been stated by many. Integrate them into the Twitter site itself.

(3) Link

Why can't a phrase in a tweet be a hyperlink? Bit.ly throws people off. It scares people. The name does not help. It is as if it will bite. If you can't just go ahead and hyperlink a word or a phrase to the desired web address, you will save on space, for one. 140 characters will feel like more space.

(4) Search

This is my number one gripe with Twitter. Google searches the entire web. You should be able to search just your site, just your servers. That is not too much to ask. Every tweet that was ever sent out has to be searchable. That way I'd not need a separate bookmarking service. I already don't need a separate RSS service. Twitter is my Google Reader. I go to my Twitter page in the morning to skim through the headlines of the day.

Real time search is not only real time as of today or the past few days. Real time as it happened a year ago is also relevant.

Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google

(5) Visualization

Tweets are meant to be read a thousand at a time, a million at a time. Make it possible. Make it possible, fun and playful for individuals and small businesses to play around with the tweet database.

(6) Scale

Get rid of the fail whale.

(7) Monetize

This is where Twitter is going to break away from the Netscape model. Twitter will make a lot of money. It has already started. The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Prove that. And then go make a ton of money.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

It has to be the ad model. The Twitter ad is going to look like a tweet, but it is going to look different. It has to be obvious it is an ad. Color coding maybe?

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April 2010 NY Tech MeetUp

HackNY Segment
Dropioke: Easily set up and share gatherings or "hangs". (http://dropioke.com,http://music.qoobster.com/)
Aviary Tennis: Add props to images and swap with friends. (http://aviary.techatnyu.com/)
Foursquare Candidates: Search Twitter for Drop.io music. (http://manhack.com/)

Student Segment
CabSense: Find the best corner to hail a cab. (http://cabsense.com)
Where do you go?: Heat map of where you've been. (http://www.wheredoyougo.net/)
Project Noah: Collaborative field guide. (http://www.networkedorganisms.com/)
Hangalong: Easily set up and share gatherings or "hangs". (http://www.hangalong.com/)


5-minute Demos
Parse.ly: Personalized content aggregator. (http://parse.ly/)
BantamLive: Social CRM for your business. (http://www.bantamlive.com)
Whistlebox: Augmented reality children's games. (http://www.whistlebox.com,http://www.docrew.com/)
ThinkTank: Ask your social graph questions; connect with the issues that matter. (http://expertlabs.org/thinktank.html)

Announcements
2010 Entrepreneur's Census: Measuring the entrepreneurial landscape in Boston, New York and Silicon Valley. (http://entrepreneurcensus.wordpress.com/)
Why 2K?: Petitioning the senseless $2,000 fee hurting entrepreneurs in NY. (http://nytm.org/2010/03/17/why-2k/)
Wikimania: Help bring Wikimania to NYC! (http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Speakers
Game-based Marketing by Gabe Zichermann: Inspire customer loyalty through rewards, challenges, and contests. (http://www.amazon.com/Game-Based-Marketing-Customer-Challenges-Contests/dp/0470562234)

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Getting To Know Fred Wilson

I first came across the AVC.com blog. Frankly I thought the name was cheesy. VCs are not supposed to have blogs, I thought. VCs are supposed to be inaccessible, working in smoke filled rooms. A blog is the opposite of a smoke filled room.

Then I started visiting the blog once in a while, after having bookmarked it and not visited for months. I started liking it. It was a decent blog. It was interesting. The blog posts touched on many current topics of interest to me.

Then I started liking it a lot.

I got excited about Zemanta and Disqus before I realized they were Fred Wilson's portfolio companies. That made me respect the guy. It was only a matter of time before I realized he was an investor in Twitter, and sat on the Twitter Board. That was a big nugget to have come across in 2009. 2009 was Twitter's year. During the first half everyone was talking about Twitter. The icing on the cake was to realize no, Twitter did not pitch Fred Wilson. Fred Wilson pitched Twitter.

I like vision people. Clearly Fred Wilson was a visionary.

I wish there were a few top tech entrepreneurs who were as avid bloggers as Fred Wilson is. That would be a triumph. I wish all of the very top tech entrepreneurs were avid bloggers. Not even Kevin Rose is, and he is not exactly the topmost entrepreneur. Fred Wilson kind of stands out in the tech industry that way.

And then I realized Geocities also had been part of Fred's portfolio. I was a Geocities guy back in the days, an avid user. I was sad when Yahoo shut down Geocities recently. Geocities was the original online community.

Fred Wilson did not need to prove to me no more. This cat's got something going on, I thought.

Fred Wilson's Insight
Happy Holi
Fred Wilson: VC
Fred Wilson: A VC
Fred Wilson

AVC, Not For Me

If you are an early stage entrepreneur, you are, of course, looking to find the VC types. For a while I thought of pitching Fred. We even exchanged a few emails. If he was not going to come in himself, he was going to lead me to some people. But I was too early stage. Like too. And I did not articulate myself well.

Then I was resigned to the fact I just don't fall in his domain expertise zone. He does "web services." I am absolutely not in the dot com space.

But that did not change the fact that he was a visionary in the tech industry, and he had become my favorite solo blogger. I very rarely emailed him, but when I did, he replied. That was and is a big deal.

Maybe A VC For Me

But I was not going to give up. You can't bemoan not having a 200 billion dollar tech company in New York City, and stay stuck in the dot com space. I took a friendly swing at Fred Wilson in a blog post. When I started work on that blog post, I had no intention to do so. But a few paragraphs later I was doing it. What the heck, I thought. Tell it like it is. (Fred Wilson's Insight)

Fred Wilson's Gift To Me

Finally it happened. Fred Wilson gave his gift to me. It happened in his comments section to this blog post: Yochai Benkler On TheBroadband Plan. Yes, he is open to going beyond the dot com space, he will invest in broadband if the spectrum is opened up. Opening up the spectrum is a political battle. I am well suited for a political fight like that one. Taking a singular focus to a revolutionary proposition. I could do that. I am itching for the fight.

My Comment:

"There isn't enough competition on the access side of the Internet, both wireline and broadband. The rest of the Internet stack is hypercompetitive and is innovating at a mile a minute. But in access, we have monopolies who go at whatever speed suits them. There's nothing pushing them to go faster."

Finally, for the first time, Fred Wilson and I are "talking."

(1) Hardware (2) Software (3) Connectivity.

Paul Allen wanted MSFT to do both hardware and software. Bill Gates vetoed that. He said no, only software. He was right. But by now the biggest virgin territories are in sector three: Connectivity. That is where the big fortunes stand to be made. Hardware and software will hum along, but the biggest disruptions stand to be made in sector three. The dot com space is kinda saturated by comparison, although that space will always stay fertile because the human mind never satiates. But sector three is where big things will be done in the next push.

Fred Wilson's Comment:

i think you may be right, but i am scared of the capital costs involved. if wireless spectrum was dregulated, i might get interested

My Comment:

"....if wireless spectrum was dregulated...."

That has to be the primary push.

That is all the opening I need. This fight is not entirely as complicated as what happened in Nepal in April 2006. (The First Major Revolution Of The 21st Century Happened In Nepal) This tech entrepreneurship challenge speaks to my political strengths.

My company wants to bring hundreds of millions of new people online. Internet access is the voting right for this 21st century. Take me to the fight.

Andrew Parker

And then Andrew Parker happened out of the blue. I'd love to do a May 2010-May 2011 stint with Union Square Ventures. I think my startup will have covered more ground in three years with this stint than without it. I hope I get to do it: fingers crossed.

Who Is Andrew Parker?

Fred Wilson (financier) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twitter Employees Cheerlead Top Investor's Bombshell Post...‎

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Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
The New York City Subway
Broader Broadband
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
Broad Broadband
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
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Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
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I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

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