Netizen

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Stream 2.0: The Next Big Thing?

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Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

You could argue FriendFeed is doing it, but maybe not. Hotmail had an Inbox. Gmail has an Inbox. Before Hotmail Outlook had an Inbox.

Twitter beat Facebook to the punch on the stream concept. Facebook has all the traffic, but Twitter has all the buzz.

The buzz moved from Microsoft to Google and Bill Gates offered to buy Google, "at any price." The buzz moved from Google to Facebook, and Google wanted to buy Facebook. Facebook wanted to buy Twitter.

"Is my credit good enough to buy you out?"

I came across UnHub when this TechCrunch article got emailed to me recently: UnHub Offers A Simple Way To Showcase The Online You. UnHub smells of possibilities, although the tough economy has many of us on the tizzy. It is a crack at the stream concept. Many took a crack at the Inbox. Many will take a crack at the Stream. Several will survive.

If you think about it, it is ridiculous that I have to go to this one place on the web to update my status. The stream should be able to zap up my status on its own from my many different online presences.

Evan Williams has talked recently of revolutionizing email. Perhaps the next level email will attempt a fusion, a fusion between the Inbox and the Stream.

The Stream, The Lifestream, The Mindstream
Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity

David Gelernter: Manifesto
The Human Is The Center Of Gravity In Computing
Visionary Entrepreneurs Will Recreate The World
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Web 5.0 Is Da Bomb

Microfinance, Nanotech, Biotech, Software/Hardware/Connectivity

Maybe Jack McCambridge - never met - is not the microfinance messiah, but a visit to his blog yesterday helped me gel a thought. I must have a soft spot for white guys who end up in India: I am half Indian. I found his blog at the blogroll of Slice Of Grice a few days back.

Reveling, In India

I think of microfinance the way I think of software/hardware/connectivity, biotech, nanotech. I fantasize of a day when the world pours a trillion dollars into microfinance instead of pouring trillions into housing bubbles in rich countries like just happened.

Top tech entrepreneurs expect to make billions. People who will help the world pour a trillion dollars into microfinance should fall into that same category. The return from microfinance is twice as that from US treasury bonds, more. But China gave an American president almost a trillion to fight a wrong war instead.

The near transparency at all levels that IT will make possible will help that goal of major league microfinance. But ultimately it is for individuals to step up to the plate.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
Dell, HP, Apple
The WiMax Appeal
Internet Phones, Video Blogging, Nano
Not Hardware, Not Software, But Connectivity

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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Define Social Media

Image by luc legay via Flickr

My childhood best friend - the only person I have "tagged" as such - is on Facebook, but we don't do Facebook, Twitter, Gchat, we do very little Gmail. He only comes alive on the phone: I wish we talked more often. And I'd love to get him to move to New York. He is in Georgia, the state. He is an engineer who went to engineering school in India, and came to America after winning the diversity lottery. He has a green card, a wife, a daughter. We grew up in Nepal.

The most prolific litterers of my Facebook stream are not people I know best in person. One I have met only once, or maybe twice, but I doubt he will recognize if he were to meet me again: Baratunde Thurston. I tried to get his attention a few days back. Your profile photo is scary, I said. He did not notice, he did not respond. He is one of those for whom Facebook is a broadcast medium. He updates his status every other minute. He is speaking, he is not listening.

8 - yes, that is her middle name - is also very prolific. I met her on Plenty Of Fish, we have never met. But she was not one of my Plenty Of Fish horror stories. (Plenty Of Fish: Online Dating King) She was impressed I had managed to track down her Gmail address. We exchanged a few emails, became Facebook friends. She said she was dating Craig Silverstein. Which Einstein? Is he googleable like you? I asked. I ended up exchanging one email with Craig: Craig Silverstein. Recently 8 made me do this: http://twitter.com/paramendra/statuses/1643658620

I decided to use Twitter as a broadcast medium myself. (Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter) But on Facebook I have opted for something else. After all, this is my second Facebook account. The first one Facebook deleted afer I had acquired about 1500 Facebook "friends." I have about 50 pending friend requests. I am open to online only friendships. But some of these who send friend requests are not up for exchanging even emails.

Define Social Media

In trying to figure out social media I think a lot of us start at the wrong end. Instead of starting with people, we start with old media. And so new media looks fancy and intimidating. All new media is saying is anyone who can come online can broadcast. All new media is saying is people now have the option to talk to each other in a big way. It is weird that was never possible before. Because the concept is so very simple.

Meeting new people, finding new information, establishing new connections, enriching existing ones, social media makes all that possible. People are all the rage on the web.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Peter Thiel: Primitive Mind In The Tech Sector

Facebook Backer Wishes Women Couldn't Vote Gawker first outside investor in Facebook .... Thiel is the former CEO of PayPal who now runs the $2 billion hedge fund Clarium Capital and a venture-capital firm called the Founders Fund. His best-returning investment to date, though, has been Facebook. His $500,000 investment is now worth north of $100 million even by the most conservative valuations of the social network. .......... all those voting females have wrecked things .......... "The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics. Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron." ........... The problem with women is that they don't vote like their menfolk tell them. We would have so much more freedom, Thiel suggests, if only we'd deprived women of it. ...... rumors we'd heard about Thiel during his PayPal days, especially while he was fitfully coming out as a gay man. ......... The clubby ranks of VCs are mostly straight, white and male. They instinctively prefer entrepreneurs who remind them of themselves. At best, it's a wrongheaded sense of caution. At worst, it's prejudice with a handy alibi. ...... The effects are hard to document. VCs fund so few of the companies they talk to that it's hard to prove a case of discrimination; there are a hundred reasons why they might pass on any given startup. ....... I think it explains a lot about Thiel: His disdain for convention, his quest to overturn established rules. Like the immigrant Jews who created Hollywood a century ago, a gay investor has no way to fit into the old establishment. ....... Peter Thiel, the smartest VC in the world, is gay.

For those of us who aspire for tech entrepreneurship with a purpose, Thiel's very presence is an offense. I think Facebook should go ahead and figure out a way to return his investment money.

I had never heard of Peter Thiel before this article. Then I read the first few paragraphs and got offended. Then I read a second article on him and found out that, one, he is gay, and two, he is considered a very smart venture capitalist.

I tried to cut some slack. If you are smart, it is hard to fit in. If you are gay, it is hard to fit in.

I have personally encountered people in life who are otherwise losers but who think if only they can talk racist, somehow they will belong with people who think that, well, they are losers. Often times, the formula seems to work.

It is possible Thiel thinks his sexism will somehow give him a sense of belonging. But what exactly is he trying to belong to?

I can understand differences in opinion. I can understand not agreeing on, say, tax policy. I can understand voting for McCain. But what Thiel has expressed is rabid sexism, and racism, and there can not be room for that. The social media echo chamber needs to talk out loud on this one.

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