Thursday, September 30, 2010

Adoption And Missed Opportunities

DAVOS-KLOSTERS/SWITZERLAND, 30JAN09 - Mark Zuc...Image via Wikipedia
The Chromium Blog: WebP, a new image format for the Web: a single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images....Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today.
The engineering accomplishment might be the easy part. Adoption might be the hard part. There still are people whose ISP is AOL. Most people who use IE use some primitive version.
Slate: The Other Social Network:That spring, Goldberg started instant messaging with Mark Zuckerberg. In March, he met with Zuckerberg and Sean Parker, the Napster co-founder and early Facebook investor, at a Starbucks on 96th Street. According to Goldberg, Parker tried to persuade Zuckerberg to acquire CU Community. Zuckerberg didn't tip his hand, but Goldberg says they kept in touch. In June, he says, Zuckerberg invited him to Palo Alto, Calif., where the Facebook crew had moved to work on the site. Goldberg flew out and stayed with Zuckerberg and pals for two weeks. "I think we went to one Stanford party," he says. There was "no crazy partying or drinking," Goldberg says, despite what The Social Network may suggest...... One factor was that Zuckerberg's site had the financial means to expand. Goldberg says he turned down advertisers, including MTV, and didn't seek out venture capital .... He started writing a food blog
The dude should have joined the Facebook team at the earliest possible date. Capitalism.

In The News

CNet: Google offers JPEG alternative for faster Web

Google Social Web Blog: Google URL Shortener Gets a Website: http://goo.gl

The Official Google Blog: Explore the world with Street View, now on all seven continents: everyone can now see places from all seven continents

AP: IMDb turns 20 with a refreshed, video-full website:the site has 100 million monthly visitors worldwide.

Adventures in Capitalism: Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?:In 2005, Peter Thiel paid $500,000 for a 10% stake in Facebook..... his stake is worth between $2-3 billion. That's a 6,000x return on his capital in 5 years.

The Next Web: Square using social media stats for credit checks and fraud prevention:the number of Yelp reviews a business has or the number of Twitter followers a business has.... Square, which wants to be “PayPal for the real world”



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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Internet 10 Years From Now

Like they say, freedom is not free. Liberty asks for eternal vigilance.






YouTube: Internet Society

(Source: Internet Society: Future Internet Scenarios)

Future Of Display Advertising

The Official Google Blog: What does the future of display advertising look like?: “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy.” ...... Display advertising really is at the heart of what we’re doing at Google these days. 99 percent of our top 1,000 clients are now running campaigns on the Google Display Network. And last year, they increased their spending on display advertising by over 75 percent. .... in five years, there will be five metrics that advertisers commonly regard as more important than the click ... Watch

Google probably feels "stuck" with its traditional revenue source, the ads that show up with search results, the spartan text ads. Unless it goes into mobile, into display, its market value is not going to compete with Apple. This new push for display ads is Google's idea of an iPad. It is a new thing to do. But it is not like Google is going into display ads, something it so avoided when starting out. Google's display ads will be a new, interactive, social kind. Google intends to reinvent display advertising on the web.

With this push Google is looking for its next big growth. This is no one trick pony.



In The News

Wall Street Journal: Digits: Google Wants to Make Online Display Ads ‘Sexy’: “On television, [networks] generally made more money by showing more ads,” said Shishir Mehrotra, a YouTube executive. “Online video will reverse that trend.” .... display advertising would be one of his company’s next $10 billion-plus businesses.

New York Times Backs News-Aggregation Software Company: Ongo describes itself as providing “computer and telecommunications software for use in aggregating and viewing news and syndication feeds.” ..... News Corp., which owns the Wall Street Journal, has been talking to media companies about creating a cable TV-type business for news, allowing consumers to set up one bill to access digital content from multiple media companies.


New York Time: Bits: By the Numbers: Apple, Microsoft, Dell, H.P.: $49.53 billion — That’s the gap separating Apple and Microsoft .... on the back of strong iPhone sales and rising interest in the iPad. ..... $52.47 billion — That’s the gap between Apple’s value and that of Exxon Mobil ... Dell .. can claim more patents than Apple

Amazon Introduces Kindle for the Web: lets digital book buyers read books on the Web and also offers the ability to embed book samples on blogs or other Web sites, similar to the function offered with video clips on YouTube.


New York Times: Media Decoder: Google Predicts More Social, and Profitable, Display Ads: a Web where the ads are more social, mobile and real-time — and a lot more profitable..... cellphone screens would be the No. 1 screen for viewing the Web by 2015..... “Static banner ads will become a thing of the past.” ..... a “meta media phenomenon.” .... Display advertising will grow to be a $50 billion market. .... companies would have more time to focus on the creative aspects of their marketing campaigns. “The technology should just work”

Gizmodo: The Plans For Steve Jobs' New House: more of a small, private retreat than any towering glass-and-steel tech chapel or totem of wealth. ..... Jobs intends to populate the 6 acres with an assortment of indigenous flora; a simple three-car garage; a modest 5 bedroom home with plenty of windows and decks; a network of lighted stone walkways; and even a private vegetable garden. Everything is neat, tight, pragmatic, and in its place. ..... No chauffeur's cottage, no cook's cottage, and no tennis courts. In fact, when compared something like Larry Ellison's $70 million feudal Japan themed estate located right up the road, Jobs' new digs seem downright monkish—if not Buffettian..... almost Zen ..... At a time when architect and design firms are just starting to apply to Apple's design principles to the building of homes (clean, tight, nothing unnecessary), Steve Jobs has gone and designed the iPhone of houses. ..... the home was clearly built for a man (there's a distinct lack of a woman's touch here) who likes privacy, a natural setting, and working. Especially working...... a person whose life if very internal. He does not want what is going on outside to interfere with what is going on inside


Advertising Lab
The future of Internet advertising and online marketing
DataXu's Blog - Strategies for Digital Media Buying - DataXu
Internet Advertising Blog
Personalization: The Future of Print & New Media

LA Times: Google envisions bright future for online display advertising

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Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Mike Arrington's Big Day



Tim Armstrong: We Got TechCrunch
Mike Arrington: Why We Sold TechCrunch To AOL, And Where We Go From Here

TechCrunch founder Michael ArringtonImage via WikipediaMike Arrington was recently in news for days for what was termed Angelgate. Now he is in news for selling TechCrunch to AOL. Arrington turned TechCrunch into the leading tech blog in the world. That is no small achievement. He has personally remained controversial. He makes it sound like that is the nature of the job. I still don't know how much TechCrunch was sold for, but it might be close to $40 million. Looks like Arrington finally, finally became a dot com millionaire. Quoting from this article below might be relevant at this point.
Inc: The Way I Work: Michael Arrington of TechCrunch: started as a hobby .... was researching Silicon Valley start-ups and decided to post his findings online ..... 9.2 million visitors a month and boasts annual revenue of about $10 million ..... 25 full-time employees ..... still spends much of his time reporting and writing. On most days, he works remotely from his home near Seattle, in a cavelike home office. From morning until night, Arrington sits in darkness in front of his computer—blasting music, working his contacts, and focusing on what he loves best: breaking big stories. ....... We break more big stories than everyone else combined in tech ...... I’d work until I passed out, and wake up eight or nine hours later, which might be 4 p.m. or 3 a.m. Then I’d work again until I passed out. That was my life for four years ...... Negotiating with companies over how news breaks is a big part of what we do. ...... I usually spend about half my day talking to sources, either on the phone or on IM. ..... There are very few people in Silicon Valley—or in tech, in general—whom I don’t know pretty well. Chasing down stories is my favorite part of my job. ....... I truly love entrepreneurs. They’re my rock stars. I’ve always been fascinated by entrepreneurs. ...... . Most of them could go out and get a perfectly reasonable job as an accountant or a lawyer. Instead, they risk everything for almost certain failure. ...... I also use Skype a lot. The video quality is great. When you go full screen, it’s like the other person is in the room. ...... I don’t want to chitchat about your family, because I don’t know you. ...... When I first started TechCrunch, I would post several times a day. ...... By the third day of writing, I got my first comment from somebody who wasn’t my mom. ...... people started subscribing to my RSS feed. Every day, that number would go up—10, 13, 100. That constant feedback is my reward. I still scan for comments on my posts. ....... an event every month ..... I wrote a blog post inviting people to a party—10 people came. I made hamburgers. We drank beer and stayed up until 4 a.m. drinking Scotch by the fire. Two weeks later, I had another party, and 20 people showed up. About 100 people came to the next one, then 200. ....... because I’m introverted—I like being alone— ....... In 2008, somebody spit on me at a conference in Germany. Before that, I had a death-threat incident—I had to hire private security 24/7 to protect me and my parents. ...... I have never been very good at managing. I want to be writing, and it’s hard to be a coach and a player at the same time. Plus, I’m moody. .... We have never had an executive meeting. Instead, we use this program called Yammer to make sure everyone at TechCrunch is on the same page. ...... After dinner, I’m usually back at the computer. That’s when I do thought and opinion pieces. I’ll spend two or three hours on one post. ..... I like working late at night. There are no interruptions. I usually listen to music when I write. I like hard music that is not happy music—Metallica, Eminem, Rage Against the Machine.
You can see the vultures now circling Mashable.

Arrington is a former lawyer. His parents were happier when he was a lawyer than when he quit lawyering and became a blogger. Blogger what? Today there are more bloggers than lawyers and software programmers in America. Blogging can make you money. Ask Arrington. It has made him a millionaire.

9.2 million visitors, wow. This blog - Netizen - gets 30,000 plus visitors monthly. Used to be worse. The best day has been 3,000 visits. On good days I will get 1500 these days. Those numbers are known to go up over time.

Daily Blog Tips: AOL Just Acquired TechCrunch
Scoble: TechCrunch to keep independent voice, Arrington says
The Huffington Post: AOL Buys TechCrunch
Scripting.com: Congrats to TechCrunch and Mike (Natural Born Blogger)
AllThingsD: AOL-TechCrunch Deal: Pros and Cons
Forbes: How AOL/Techcrunch Can Scale From Here
VentureBeat: Confirmed: AOL acquires TechCrunch, founder Arrington to stay at least 3 years
Wall Street Journal: Exactly What is TechCrunch Worth?
NYConvergence: AOL Acquires TechCrunch
Traffick: So Much for Techcrunch can we expect the most vibrant, obsessively-followed Silicon Valley blog imaginable, to neuter its culture and gradually fade into respectability?
VillageVoice: AOL TechCrunch Deal Is Done, So What Does This Mean for Everyone Else? Arrington's always been a cantankerous guy who isn't one to be kept on a short leash..... larger corporations are finally catching on to the need to Let Bloggers Be Bloggers instead of faceless drones who have to have their publish buttons babysat ..... he built influence by covering every startup that would talk to him
NYMag: Jason Calcanis Celebrates the AOL-TechCrunch Deal by Calling Arrington ‘a Trainwreck’
TechEye: AOL to buy Techcrunch - Needs it TechCrunch is a big and successful website with a loyal fanbase. AOL is trying to expand itself but has had no luck building such sites itself....AOL in the past had acquired Weblogs, the blogging company behind Engadget, and it has been those that have helped AOL compensate for steep loss of traffic.
Arpit Shah: Breaking: AOL to acquire TechCrunch
Geek With Laptop: AOL Buy TechCrunch Blog in $25 Million Purchase “You are going to get more page views out of a TechCrunch user than you would out of an average user of the Internet.” .... is third behind Engadget – another AOL blog, and Gizmodo, which is owned by Gawker Media. With ownership of two out of three, it seems AOL is putting a lot of energy into controlling the tech end of the blogosphere. ..... Arrington has said “It was time for us either to start investing a lot more money in things like technology and marketing – which probably meant raising a venture round – or to simply sell and partner with somebody who could do that,” adding “AOL has a very robust, large blog network that shows they have the software side nailed. So it solves a real problem for us from the technology side.”
Srmana Mitra: Bootstrapping Pays Off For Michael Arrington




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Ruby

Ruby on Rails logoImage via WikipediaRuby on Rails
Ruby on Rails: Download
Ruby on Rails Guides
Ruby on Rails - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ruby on Rails Documentation
Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials
Ruby on rails: up and running - Google Books Result
Ruby on Rails Tutorials - Tutorialized
Dribbble: Dan Cederholm and Rich Thornett | the Ruby on Rails Podcast
rails's rails at master - GitHub
Ruby on Rails Tutorial
Tutorial
Ruby on Rails Guides: Getting Started with Rails
Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example | by Michael Hartl
Ruby on Rails: the Ultimate Beginner's Tutorial
Ruby on Rails programming tutorials2 - Meshplex
Ruby on Rails Tutorial
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Rails Forum: Ruby on Rails Help and Discussion Forum
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User Groups = Rails Wiki
Free Online Ruby Programming Classes
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Exploring Rails 3 The Free Rails Online Conference - February 18th...
Ruby on Rails RoR Tutorials Install Windows Development Ajax...
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Techie, Tech Blogger, Iran Democracy Activist, New Yorker

"A former student asked me a few days ago how I learned Ruby on Rails. The answer was that I simply read a lot of great tutorials."


Techie, tech blogger, Iran democracy activist, New Yorker.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I just changed my Twitter and Facebook profiles to read the above. It used to be: Iran Democracy Activist, Tech Blogger, New Yorker.

And then there are distractions: The Movie Business.

Fundraising to be able to do full time Iran democracy work has not been easy: Selling 5% Of Nobel For 50K. I mean, if the Iranian American founder of eBay will not come along, who will?

Tweet 1, Tweet 2, Tweet 3, Tweet 4.

Not only do I not seem to have the knack for small dollar political donations, I think political work is meant to be public service, and so I am not going to discontinue my Iran work, I am going to do it on the side, part time. Insa-allah.

I have a LinkedIn email from Anu Shukla that has me psyched.
Location is southbay or virtual - exciting early stage opportunity. Will invest in training and ramp up for non Ruby engineering talent that are interested in learning. Competitive salary and stock.
This means, if I can get in, I get to telecommute from NYC, and I can spend the first few weeks learning Ruby. I am up for it. Besides this looks like might be Anu's new stealth startup. Anu is a serial entrepreneur. She is bigger than Sabeer Hotmail Bhatia because Bhatia basically disappeared after Hotmail, whereas Anu kept chugging all along, and with Anu it is like you ain't seen nothing yet. Her best is yet to come.
Image representing Anu Shukla as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBase
That is the impression I get. Offerpal Media is a bigger promise than the company she sold over a decade ago for was it 200 million dollars?

She is inspiring. I'd be honored to be part of her new stealth startup.

Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!
The Highlight Of My Internet Week
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

I might even be open to moving to the other coast. But for now I should stay put. I think I like the idea of staying put in NYC and visiting the Bay Area often enough. That would be a swell arrangement.

Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails: Download
Ruby on Rails Guides
Ruby on Rails - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ruby on Rails Documentation
Top 12 Ruby on Rails Tutorials
Ruby on rails: up and running - Google Books Result
Ruby on Rails Tutorials - Tutorialized
Dribbble: Dan Cederholm and Rich Thornett | the Ruby on Rails Podcast
rails's rails at master - GitHub
Ruby on Rails Tutorial
Tutorial
Ruby on Rails Guides: Getting Started with Rails
Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Rails by Example | by Michael Hartl
Ruby on Rails: the Ultimate Beginner's Tutorial
Ruby on Rails programming tutorials2 - Meshplex
Ruby on Rails Tutorial

Languages: English, Hindi, Nepali, Maithili (very good). Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Tharu, Urdu (good). Bengali, Sanskrit (so so).


Paul Graham: What Happens At Y Combinator: a portrait of YC is in some ways the complement of a portrait of the average startup .... an event called Demo Day, at which the startups present to an audience that now includes most of the world's top startup investors. ..... the details people omit in more public talks tend to be the most interesting parts of their stories ...... you hear just how screwed up most of these successful startups were on the way up. ...... Startups modify or even replace their ideas much more than outsiders realize. ..... Usually we advise startups to launch fast and iterate. .... real users, whose often surprising reactions to your product teach you what you should have been building. ..... Since there are a large number of points on the perimeter of most existing technologies at which one could push outward to create a quantum blister, what to build first is one of the most important questions we talk about. ...... The larval product should also have a larval business model. ..... Most things that happen to newly launched startups are bad. But paradoxically, these disasters are precisely the reason to launch fast: they all represent problems you're going to need to solve eventually, and the only way even to find out what they are is to launch. In practice they vary from technological bottlenecks to threats of lawsuits, but the most common problem is that users don't like the product enough. ...... the search space is huge ..... Some startups are immediately attractive, and they'll find it easy to raise money. Others are ugly ducklings, who will grow into swans in time ...... because raising money is like choosing an angle of attack for a plane. If you try to climb too steeply you just stall. ....... Once you start to get hard commitments from investors, more investors want in. ....... We still talk regularly with founders from the first YC batch in the summer of 2005. ....... Occasionally investors will say "I'm in" at Demo Day, but most of the convincing happens in subsequent meetings. ....... Getting a startup set up correctly is a nontrivial problem. ...... mediating disputes between founders. ..... Now, 5 years later, the YC alumni network is probably the most powerful network in the startup world. ..... Starting a startup was a very lonely undertaking when we did it ourselves in Boston in 1995. One of the goals of YC's batch model was to fix that, by giving founders the colleagues one would otherwise lack as companies with just 2 or 3 people. ....... even the most ardent boosters of other cities wouldn't claim they're at parity with the Bay Area. All other things being equal, Silicon Valley is the best place to start a startup. ...... Founders from other places are almost always surprised when they get here by the breadth and depth of support for startups. The Bay Area is for startups what LA is for the film industry. ....... The kind of horror stories you hear about investors dicking over startups rarely happen to those we fund. We almost never see broken termsheets. ....... "One of my goals since my last job was to stop working with mediocrity and find/surround myself with people smarter than I. YC definitely provided the quality of people I needed to be around." ...... The only person who's funded more is Ron Conway, and he may not have had such close interactions with all of them. ...... the intensity of YC.
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Friday, September 24, 2010

Scoble Chimes In On Angelgate

Scoble, Longhorn EvangelistImage via Wikipedia
Robert Scoble: The secret hell of tech industry angel investors: when the story broke, I thought it was just Mike being bombastic and trying to make something out of a dinner that he wasn’t invited to..... Mike stumbled into a story that has a ton of undercurrents. ..... The angel investor world is getting HYPER competitive .... Entrepreneurs are seeing access to lots of capital. ..... 10 people just are not going to have enough market power to do anything really naughty although it’s good to nip this problem in the bud, which is why I now support Arrington’s stance.
The early stage investment world is seeing major churn, but I would like a much larger geographical spread, not just on the continent, but globally. It will happen.
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