Saturday, April 24, 2010

Fred Wilson: DJ

Image of Fred Wilson from TwitterImage of Fred Wilson
When I first came across the FredWilson.FM web address, I "accused" Fred of flashing a vanity URL. If FredWilson.FM is not a vanity URL, I don't know what is, I said.

Fred Wilson: VC

A little later I started following Fred on Tumblr, and ends up he is quite a music man. I was not surprised. Books, movies, music are mind food. We are in the middle of a fundamental transformation akin to the one from an agricultural to an industrial one. We are heading toward a decidedly post-industrial age where mind food plays a pretty central role. Fred, owing to his vocation and interests, has a front seat to much of that change. He had to have had a huge appetite for mind food all along.

Fred Wilson's Insight

I also figured Fred might help me go one layer beneath the top layer I have stuck to for the most part. (Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred) There was this promise of richness, novelty, discovery and plain good music, although our tastes are slightly different. Some of the songs on the list are a little too soft for me, and when I say soft, I am not talking lyrics here, I pay attention to the lyrics only much later into liking a song, I am talking about the tempo of the musical rhythms; but I like all kinds of music, I could even name you a few country songs that got me truly excited. (Lady Gaga) I don't like all songs on Fred's list, although I'd be hard pressed to skip any. But I like most of what I hear. (I'll Be Gone)

Fred Wilson: A VC

So earlier today for the first time I ventured over to FredWilson.FM, and the site is a treasure. There are 881 songs liked enough by Fred that he was compelled to share. And I really like the streaming concept. You turn the music on and go do something else. 881 songs, how many days of music is that? I think I just listened to about 20.

Fred Wilson

I went over to the Streampad site that supposedly powers FredWilson.FM and FredWilson.FM is prominently displayed on their front page. I am not surprised. I guess Fred is a celebrity user of the service. If Fred Wilson is using it, it must be a good service. Good marketing. It is a good service.

Fred Wilson: VC

I wonder if during my second visit to FredWilson.FM I can go to say song number 46 and start from there. Or do I have to begin at the beginning again? I know I can skip songs, but having to start at the beginning and then skipping one song at a time would take away from the experience.

Fred Wilson's Insight

One feature that is lacking or that I did not discern during my first 10 seconds at FredWilson.FM is the shuffle feature. I want the system to jump randomly from song to song. Then repeat visits would be more likely. But even now I am definitely coming back. Something in me wants to listen to all 881 songs over months. No pressure, no hurry, just something to end up having done some day.

Fred Wilson: A VC

Now that I have found it, I realize I have been looking for something like FredWilson.FM for a while now, a good music collection of mostly never heard before music that I can simply turn on and listen to end to end. Now there is a link to FredWilson.FM from my private homepage that is my jumping point to most of my daily web experiences. That is not to say I will be visiting daily, but I'll be back.

Fred Wilson

(Update: 40 tunes down.)


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Friday, April 23, 2010

Graphic Reality

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase
Albert Wenger: Facebook And The Net
Fred Wilson: One Graph To Rule Them All?

Both Al and Fred are saying Facebook runs the danger of repeating Google's mistake in some form or fashion. Google made several attempts to "get" social. None of them have succeeded in a dramatic way so far. But Google was the company of the decade, and for good reasons. An obvious example of a Google social failure has been Buzz. Gmail already had tens of millions of users. And aren't people who you email back and forth with the most your closest people socially? Let Buzz present to you your social graph. That thinking bombed in a big way.

For Google the starting point is information, and it is the best in the game with that. For Facebook the starting point is the social graph, and it has been taking the lead there. You could argue for FourSquare the starting point is location, and since that can not be the starting point for either Facebook or Twitter, FourSquare does not run the danger of getting under the Facebook, Twitter bus.

Yesterday I watched Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at the F8 conference. Today Fred Wilson was talking about it at his blog, and looks like he got inspired by a blog post by his partner in venture capital crime Al Wenger.

Since Facebook has taken over Google as the most visited site in the US, you can not blame Zuck for trying to suggest PageRank is b.s. That what really matters is the social graph. I think all the Facebook initiatives are robust and good ideas to take Facebook to the next level, but only if Facebook keeps the criticisms of the likes of Wenger and Wilson in mind. Respect that there is not just one social graph. LinkedIn a few days back came out saying they will also now allow for the sharing of updates, news items and links in general, and I am thinking, great, this can be the Facebook for your coworkers and bosses. Your work social graph looks different from your friend social graph. Your family social graph looks different. And what are the chances I will find a friend of mine read the same Time magazine article as me. The chances are minimal.

So I say, march forward, but march with caution. Always be iterating means always be listening.

(Al just got promoted to the A1 section of my blogroll. He is very good about replying to the comments you leave at his blog.)


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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chatroulette Is For Real


We are all sold on location, and for the right reasons. But random connections as a space is not garnering the same respect, and I am going to call that a case of adultism. Because the founder of Chatroulette is a 17 year old, a lot of people are having a lot of fun talking about penises that supposedly sprout out during the Chatroulette experience. Guess what, sex is in the mind. Penises sprouting out do not take away from the basic Chatroulette promise, that random connections is a new web space, and Chatroulette has a bright business future.

Once I got a hang of Twitter, I said many times you can take Facebook away. I feel like both a high school and a college dropout. Most people on Facebook remind me of two institutions I do not want to be particularly reminded of. I liked it that on Twitter I could interact with people I did not know. Chatroulette takes that to a whole new level. Note: I have not tried Chatroulette yet, but I don't have to, I am sold on the space.

Chatroulette has to iterate. It is already at 30 million hits. That is a great point at which to roll out the future versions, to add new features. What could some of those new features be?

Once I roll the dice a few times, and I find someone I like interacting with, I should be able to bookmark that person, but only if that person agrees to get bookmarked. Once I build a library of a certain number of bookmarked people - and I don't need to know anything about them to that point - I should have the option to roll the gun only inside my library.

On the other hand, I should also have the option to block people. If I see a penis, and I don't like it that I had to see a penis, I hit a button that says Block For Nudity, and if a person accumulates 10 or more such blocks, they should enter a special zone. As in, people should have the option to say keep me away from people who have been blocked for nudity 10 times or more.

Voila. The penises are gone.

When I am thinking Chatroulette, I am thinking world peace. Seriously. We need more people talking to more people to get at that utopia called world peace. I want Chatroulette on all Israeli and Palestinian screens. Get those buggers talking to each other. And let them show penises to each other when they are pissed instead of blowing each other up. The 2010 version of make love not war?

Ever heard of people to people interaction programs run by governments? This is it. Chatroulette is the ultimate people to people interaction program.

But it is important to keep the randomness intact. You should be able to bookmark me, but I should not have a profile on there, no name, no location, nothing about me. If people volunteer such information to each other during conversations, fine, but Chatroulette should keep the randomness very much intact.

The next big filter jump would be to allow for geographical filtering. So I go on Chatroulette and I want to meet random people from Africa, I should be able to do that. (Nfodjo, is that you?) Or go to the country level. Or maybe even city level. I feel like meeting people from Moscow, how about it? Hello Olesya.

Just a few filters and the bookmarking and blocking options, and a lot of the caricature of the service vanishes.

Fred Wilson (the first person to tell me about Chatroulette, through his blog.... I accused him of now having got into the breaking news business)
What To Make Of Chatroulette?
Some Interesting Facts About Chatroulette

TechCrunch
Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me

AllThingsD
Chatroulette Creator Andrey Ternovskiy Gets an iPad, Gives Us a Peek at Version 2.0
Chatroulette Dude: I Don’t Want to Sell. But I’d Like Google to Pay.
Jon Stewart Plays Chatroulette, And We All Win

New York Times
One On One: Andrey Ternovskiy, Creator Of Chatroulette

The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tech-Talch - Chatroulette
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorTea Party

TechCrunch

Chatroulette Is 89 Percent Male, 47 Percent American, And 13...
Chatroulette! | CrunchBase Profile
TinyChat Launches Grouped Version Of Chatroulette
Chatroulette! Posts on TechCrunch
Oh, The Humanity: My Chatroulette Experience
Andrey Ternovskiy | CrunchBase Profile
The Daily Show Reveals Chatroulette To Be Filled With Creepy...
Chatroulette Quadruples To 4 Million Visitors In February
CHATROULOLZ Collects Great Chatroulette Screencaps So You Don't...
[Actually NSFW] Highlights From South Park's Facebook/Chatroulette...
Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me
PopJam Runs With Chatroulette Idea, Creates Random IM With Strangers
Friends vs. Strangers: What's Next for Foursquare? And ChatRoulette?




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Monday, April 19, 2010

Dennis, Fred, Scott: Tweet Boom Tweet Boom

Image representing Dennis Crowley as depicted ...Image via CrunchBase
New York Magazine: Tweet Tweet Boom Boom

Dennis Crowley

“Those are Botanicalls. When they need to be watered, they send you a message on Twitter that says, ‘Water me, please.’ I have it hooked up with one of my plants at home.”

“There was a girl who had a project that was just three robots following each other around. I said, ‘I need to be here playing with this stuff. This is where I belong.’ ”

“See that foosball table? That was my first project at ITP. I put sensors in the goals. When you started playing, you swiped your NYU I.D. on the table and your stats got shown on the screens behind it. If you scored a goal, it would show.”

“I wanted to make the foosball table smarter. My professor”—Internet-culture guru Clay Shirky—“said to go analyze a source of social data. I had all the data from the foosball table, and I started thinking, What do friendship circles look like? Who are the outliers? Who doesn’t connect to other folks? I was trying to wrap my head around it. To make a foosball table smarter isn’t that different from ‘Let’s make a city smarter.’ ”

“It was just after their IPO. The New York office had just opened. A couple weeks into it, we were like, ‘Where are those engineers?’ We were hoping to have more of a team, but it was hard to get engineers.”

“The stuff is, first and foremost, meant for our friends. The same thing happened with Dodgeball. We were just building tools that were making New York more efficient for twenty of our closest friends. A lot of the ideas we shoot within Foursquare are also themes that I think already existed in Dodgeball. We’re just bringing them back to life in new ways, with smarter phones. At the time, Dodgeball was a New York application. It was meant for people to start off with 25 friends who could easily jump to five places in one night, which is definitely an urban type of experience. Foursquare has been changed so that it rewards a one-player experience—it gets more interesting as you add friends to it, but it’s definitely a better one-player experience. And it’s designed to work in New York, and then we kind of tweak it so it works everywhere else. I think it works best in really dense urban areas. New York’s been critiqued for a long time,” he continues. “The critique is that you can’t do stuff like this here, but I think part of the reason that our product is interesting and special is because it came out of New York. It was designed to solve problems in that context, and those solutions tend to work in other parts of the world pretty well. I think the product is better because we’re based here.”

“Usually what will happen is a user becomes the mayor somewhere and asks the manager, ‘What do I get for free?’ ” says Crowley. “The manager at first is usually like, ‘What are you talking about?’ They’ve never heard of Foursquare. Eventually, the manager will break down. It’s an opportunity for us to start turning users not just into evangelists but also salespeople. So the venues win—anytime someone checks in, it’s like a mini-ad. With the stats tools, you can find out who the most valuable users are to local businesses, like who’s sending their check-ins to Twitter. Maybe the owner wants to reach out to that person.”

“We have all these companies calling us, and it’s a little bit problematic—we have so much inbound business development that we can’t capture it all. Foursquare could eventually turn into not just an app that tells you how many bars your friends went to the night before but a more ambitious project about social relations. You build a game of it. The first person to do ten crazy things wins. It expands it beyond consumption. Maybe you get badges for meeting people or bringing people together.” So on Foursquare, based on the bands you saw in one week, maybe you met more people, and so maybe your happiness and your productivity is higher. So check-in is just the first part of this story.”

“There’s enough of a unique user experience within Foursquare that I don’t think someone can come along and replace it. It’s a different type of sharing. When Facebook changed its status updates, it didn’t kill Twitter. It might make us a little more focused.”

“We’re trying to figure out what the best thing is for us going forward. We’re raising financing and meeting with tons of different companies. Don’t read into it too much. It’s a business that can be a real business.”

“We could make it work as a stand-alone business, or it might turn out that there are other companies that would find us valuable. The future is rosy.”


Fred Wilson

“They’ve taken the Silicon Valley culture and infected hundreds of engineers with it, and those engineers are not likely to want to go work for Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. It’s not in their DNA. That’s not what they’re going to do. They’re more likely to go into one of our start-ups.”

“I think it’s partially the Wall Street mentality. This is a very merchant town, a very commercial town. My partners and I make a decent living, but we manage $275 million. I have friends who are my same age who are partners at Goldman Sachs, or who are running their own hedge funds, who make ten to a hundred times more money than I make. I’m not upset about it, because I love what I do. But in New York, it’s about making money.”

“We have a two-year program here, and we try like hell to hire women into that program. We tell the world we’ve got this opening, and anybody who’s interested can apply, and it’s 90 percent men who even bother to apply. I mean, I don’t know what the problem is.”


Scott Heiferman

“Start-up culture is about really changing the world. I know that’s a cliché. But Si Newhouse never wanted to change the world.”

“Here we were schlepping around, protecting the power of gatekeepers and publishers and Barry Diller. Fuck that. We really have to look at ourselves—the Internet is reinventing and rejiggering everything. We need to see ourselves as making a new New York.”

“In Silicon Valley, when an Apple or a Google happens, it inspires tons of people to not just be entrepreneurs or founders of start-ups. It encourages people to just work in the industry because they know if you’re an engineer for a company that does really well, then you do well. New York does not have its great success stories that become the stuff of legend and lore and myth.”

“Madison Avenue ain’t gonna be the heart of New York anymore. Wall Street’s not going to be the heart of New York anymore. Media’s not going to be the heart of New York anymore. New York is actually really hot. We’re inventing the shit that the world is using! This is a first. The fact is that New York didn’t create any great companies in the first tech boom. The closest thing was DoubleClick—but that was about making what old advertisers need.”



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Sunday, April 18, 2010

A Soft Spot For Mike Arrington

I have a soft spot for Mike Arrington. I think it is because we put down the same first four letters when naming our blogs: tech. Michael seems to think technology is a four letter word.

http://techcrunch.com
http://technbiz.blogspot.com


Kevin Rose once said on TV that Mike Arrington was a "d____." Sometimes he is, but I would not make such a blanket statement. At the end of the day he is a great guy with a great blog.

Location! Location! Location!
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla










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Chris Dixon On Twitter: Not Impressive


Chris Dixon is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he has a great blog (it's on my blogroll), but his latest post on Twitter I did not find all that impressive. The guy comes across as high on diligence, not so high on vision.

This morning when I showed up at AVC.com for my morning coffee - I am not much of a coffee drinker, by the way, beer and coffee are strictly social for me - Fred Wilson had mentioned Chris Dixon. Obviously the two have a mutual admiration thing going on.

Fred Wilson: Narratives Over Numbers
Chris Dixon: Size Markets Using Narratives, Not Numbers

And what's up with bloggers who flash this road sign on their old posts? "Comments for this page are closed." I don't do it, I don't get it. It is not like your blog post can not be found a few weeks later. Unless you are someone who makes a point to read every comment that was ever left at your blog. That might be Fred's rationale behind flashing that road sign. I don't flash it. I use my Disqus dashboard to manage my comments. It probably helps that I don't get all that many. Looks like Fred and Chris have a high class problem to have: many, too many comments.

Chris was already on my blogroll. He does have a swell blog. But this attention from Fred made sure he got promoted to the A1 section on my blogroll. These are bloggers that if they post something new, I have to go read it if I spot it. There are too many white males in that section. And a disproportionate number of Indians, but that is understandable.

Fred and Chris should have been there when they ran me out of the Sun building: Presenting At The Dot Com Hatchery. I came from the narrative angle, and they came from the not-ready-for-prime-time, the-guy-does-not-have-numbers angle.

Anyways, so I am thinking, I have not been to Chris Dixon's blog in a while, let me go look at some fresh stuff. And I found this.

Chris Dixon: Twitter And Third-Party Twitter Developers

Some of the things Chris says are unbelievable.

Real Time Is Real Time, Today Or Last Year
Twitter Has To Scale The Signals
Twitter Does The Deed: Ads
If The Tweet Is The Atom, What Is Location?
Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Twitter is perhaps - not perhaps, it is - the most talked about company at my blog. That is why I think I would be a great addition to the Union Square Ventures team: Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying. Twitter is the best investment Fred ever made, in my opinion.

This is the Twitter narrative: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. Either you get it or you don't get it. If I were to write that blog post today, I'd probably add FourSquare at the end. But I will admit I did not see FourSquare coming. I was at FourSquare's demo at the NY Tech MeetUp I believe in March 2009. I remember not being impressed. Although I made a point to say hello to the Indian looking guy Naveen, who sensed it and was not impressed.

Fred Wilson imagined a Twitter like service before he actually came across Twitter, and it was slightly different from what he had imagined, it was better than what he had imagined, it was a case of reality being stranger than fiction. But scientists knew of Pluto, before they actually pinned it down. Fred Wilson and Esther Dyson are visionaries. Every time I get to meet Esther she makes my day. And I have met her at a few different NY Tech MeetUps. I don't think she knows me, but I could care less. The first time I saw her, I immediately recognized her, I could not believe it was her I was seeing. I thought the NY Tech MeetUp was for mere mortals like myself.
  1. Location (Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him)
  2. Random Connections
  3. The Inbox
This is what I am looking at for the first half of this year. I guess this could go on for all of this year, and maybe even some of next year, but I don't feel confident projecting too far ahead. 2010 is definitely location's buzz year. Next year the space will have matured and receded from the headlines a little.

So coming back to Chris Dixon and Twitter.
Twitter having sent mixed signals over the past few years..... somehow Twitter had convinced the world they were going to “let a thousand flowers bloom” – as if they were a non-profit out to save the world, or that they would invent some fantastic new business model that didn’t encroach on third-party developers...... Twitter has yet to figure out a business model..... Twitter search will monetize poorly ..... Twitter’s move into mobile clients and hints about a more engaging website suggest they may be trying to mimic Facebook’s display ad model. ...Facebook’s ad growth is being driven largely by companies like Zynga who are in turn monetizing users with social games and virtual goods..... Facebook’s model depends on owning “eyeballs,” which is entirely contradictory to the pure API model Twitter has promoted thus far. ....Hopefully Twitter “fills holes” through acquisitions instead of internal development. ..... but on the product development front has been underwhelming ....Now that Twitter seems to be mimicing Facebook...Facebooker Ivan Kirigin tweeted yesterday: “I suppose when your competition is making huge mistakes, you should just stfu.”
Other than the fact that this guy is running a few days behind, obviously he has not blogged since Twitter made its big announcement. That is curious because the Twitter announcement was the biggest announcement in tech this past week. As far as I am concerned, the Twitter announcement is bigger than the iPad release. Twitter affects and will affect far more people. Steve Jobs, the Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)

Twitter has not sent any mixed signals. There is an almost total overlap between the Twitter path and the Google path. First build the product. Worry about monetization later. Just like there is a Google ecosystem (and this blog - Netizen - is part of it), there will continue to be a Twitter ecosystem. But Google bought Blogger and YouTube. Twitter will make its purchases. Twitter never pretended to be a non profit. If there are people who ever thought Twitter was a non profit, that can't be Twitter's fault.

Twitter search will monetize poorly? Chris, Twitter is second only to Google in the search arena. That has to ring a bell.

Twitter could not imitate Facebook even if it wanted to. Google could not become Facebook. Facebook can not become Twitter. Facebook and Twitter can add location, but FourSquare will thrive. Vision 101.

Facebook has not in earnest started to monetize. Their ad model will rely on the social graph and the social interactions. In a sense Facebook has not yet done what Twitter has done already. (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different)

The "API model" has been about extending Twitter's reach and making tweets fundamental to the web experience. It has been part of product development. It was never a business model.

It is not a choice between buy or build. Twitter has to do both. Each situation is slightly unique. My suggestion has been to go for an IPO, and then go on a buying spree: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO.

Twitter deserves credit for Twitter.com, but it also deserves credit for the Twitter ecosystem. I could complain Google did not give me Gmail on day one, or I could say thanks, they finally did it.

How is Twitter mimicking Facebook? The Facebook Ivan dude is making even less sense. Twitter is in the best shape it has ever been after its Chirp announcements. And there are people who think Twitter is imploding? Wet dreams.

We need to talk some resonance sense into this guy.



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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Still Looking For A Better Free Hosting Plan For Your Blog?

If you want to have a blog for free, then you probably know that there are so many options to choose from these days on where to host it. Unfortunately, not all the options you may have are right for your needs and wants for your blog.

The popular ones are Blogger and Wordpress. For a free hosted blog, they both provide something nice. And I must admit, they really are quite great for a simple blog. But still, there are so many limitations within your account and sometimes, some features that you need aren’t provided. So, if you’re stuck with those issues and still looking for something that is still free but with better features, then you should try checking Doteasy.com.

Doteasy is one of the popular web hosting providers that also offers domain name registration services.  They don’t just provide affordable hosting packages but free web hosting as well. With them, you can get your own domain name without the long subdomain name such as yourname.blogspot or yourname.wordpress. With their current promo of any .COM/.NET/.ORG domain registration, you can get yourself a personalized domain name for only $7.95 with coupon code 1003BPM, and enjoy their free web hosting services. Doteasy is also reliable and guarantees no ads on your site compared to what other free web hosting providers provide. With your free web hosting plan, you get to use a cPanel control panel and a lot of free web tools and applicationssuch as for easily creating blogs, forums, photo gallery, shopping cart and many more. You can even host multiple domains on your free account and get your own email address with your own domain name on it. Isn’t that cool? And they also provide email and chat support for all their members, in case you need some assistance. Believe it or not, you get all of these for free.

But what’s even better is that you can even earn lots of money with Doteasy through their affiliate program. You can earn from $5 up to $70 just for a single referral sign up. You don’t even need to be a paying customer before you can join. Just register to their affiliate program and create your own code for your referral link. And that’s it. They’ll provide you with everything that you need to start promoting such as links, banners or buttons and put those up on your own site. The more referrals you get simply means the more earnings. Now, that’s definitely a great deal you wouldn’t want to miss.

(Blog Post Ad)

Friday, April 16, 2010

4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night


I was at David Noel's blog, at this particular blog post actually, following everybody on the list, trying to give myself a relaunch at Tumblr, a platform I use to listen in. And way down is Dennis Crowley's tumblog. Guess what I find on there. Tonight's gonna be a good night.

David Noel: Best Entrepreneurship/VC Tumblr Blogs
Dennis Crowley: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night
FourSquare Tweet, FourSquare Blog Post

Four squared is 16, get it? Hence April 16. That was a grassroots recognition, not a Team FourSquare recognition. FourSquare just had its RT moment. The RT - retweet - did not come from Team Twitter.

Friday April 16, 10pm -> 2am
The Hotel on Rivington - Penthouse
107 Rivington Street (btw Ludlow and Essex)
Lower East Side, NYC



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Managing Al, Brad, Fred: An Opportunity To Jump For

x

"I am interested in understanding why you chose the title General Manager. It does not seem that you need one person to manage the small and largely self-motivated team." 

Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring "we have envisioned an Investment Analyst and a General Manager of the Union Square Ventures Network"

Albert Wenger, Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) (Tumblr), Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson: Talent Overload

Fred Wilson and USV first put out a post weeks back saying Farewell Andrew Parker, or something along those lines. And someone commented, in all earnesty, who died? He did not say who died, he said I came over here huffing and puffing hoping noone had died or anything like that. Oh no, Andrew is thankfully alive and well, Fred had to respond.

And now this even more earnest comment on the management position. These two comments have so far stood out as the hiring process rolls on at USV.

Albert Wenger
Brad Burnham
Fred Wilson

Andrew Parker
Dorsey Stinson
Eric Friedman

USV Investments
  1. 10gen
  2. Adaptive Blue
  3. AMEE
  4. Boxee
  5. Bug Labs
  6. Clickable
  7. Covestor
  8. Disqus
  9. Etsy
  10. Foursquare
  11. Heyzap
  12. Indeed
  13. InfoNgen
  14. Meetup
  15. Oddcast
  16. Outside.in
  17. Pinch Media
  18. Return Path
  19. Simulmedia
  20. Targetspot
  21. Tracked
  22. Tumblr
  23. Twitter
  24. Wesabe
  25. Zemanta
  26. Zynga
The USV Focus
Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying
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Thursday, April 15, 2010

Real Time Is Real Time, Today Or Last Year

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBase
Time 1937: Richest man In The World.

Look at this article from Time 1937. The richest man in the world at the time was an Indian. Hello Bill Gates. It was empowering to get to read the article in the raw. I think this is the model I have in mind when it comes to Twitter. What is being said right now in real time is important. But the Twitter archives are also important.

And finally I got it.

I knew Google needed to step in.

Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google

Mashable: Google Upgrades Its Twitter Search Features
Google Blog: Replay It: Google Search Across The Twitter Archive
CNet: Google Launches Twitter Timeline Search

This is not Twitter giving the farm away. This is Twitter bringing in Google to enhance the value of every single tweet. Suddenly every tweet in the Twitter archive has become worth so much more. This is a huge boost to Twitter's monetization efforts. (Twitter Does The Deed: Ads)

Being able to search every tweet ever is great. But there is one missing link: visualization. Tweets are not meant to be read one at a time. And visualization is perhaps the best way to read many tweets at once. Google has work cut out for it in the presentation department. Searching through tweets is not the same as searching through webpages. Tweets are a different animal.

Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once

What I say today about Obama's victory in November 2008 is a different animal from what I said about Obama's victory as it happened. It is still me saying it, but real time is a different dimension.

This ability to dig through the Twitter archives is going to be a great tool for many players to go out there and see what people are saying about them, or how what they have been saying has changed over time.

Right now the archives go back only to February. It has to go all the way back. And Google has not even started work on doing the best possible job on presentation. Don't treat tweets like they are webpages. They are not.


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Why Will Facebook Itself Not Do Facebook Enterprise?

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBase
Fred Wilson: Software Is Media

Why will Facebook itself not do Facebook Enterprise? That is a question I have asked a few different times. The Salesforce guy had a guest post in TechCrunch not long back. A friend of mine emailed me that post through Google Reader. (Ignite, Set It On Fire) And I posed him the question on Buzz. Why will Facebook itself not do Facebook Enterprise?

The dichotomy between consumer software and enterprise software is vapid. It is unreal. It is an inconvenience that ought not last too long.

In his post today Fred Wilson is making the point that software should be as easy to use as media. He has not quite spelled it out, but I don't think he is trying to say he is only talking about consumer software. Software should be as easy to use as media also applies to enterprise software.

Salesforce trying to imitate Facebook to offer enterprise software: is that better than Facebook itself offering an enterprise version of itself? I don't think so.

The inbox was not copyrighted by Hotmail. The status update has not been copyrighted by Twitter. Similarly the stream is not Facebook property. Check in is similarly going to be a commodity feature.

Twitter should offer a Twitter Enterprise, and Facebook should work on a Facebook Enterprise. It just makes sense.

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