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TechCrunch Europas: Optimisim & Creative Destruction Alive and Well

UPDATE: Added a photo of the Herbinator name badge, cleaned up formatting, deleted multiple postings (thanks Typepad iPhone app :), and spell checked it).

Mike Butcher and the rest of the TechCrunch Europe crew did a great job with the 2009 "Europas" Awards last night at the Delfina near Tower Bridge. Lively, packed crowd that was there to drink, be merry, and talk tech shop. 

You can get a more detailed list of the startsups that pitched and the eventual winners over at TechCrunch UK or on TechMeme I'm sure but here were my takeaways.

1- Sure times are tough but you can't kill the entreprenuerial spirit. People were looking for a reason to celebrate a little bit (Spotify was the big winner last night) and there's always comfort in a shared experience, whether it's a struggle or a success. 

2- the Europe v. U.S. flared up ever so slightly when the panel of experts at the break between pitches and awards discussed how increasingly innovative startups are coming from other places. Sarah Lacy had a good thesis on this, stemming from her book research, that we should be looking to China or India. But the question that kicked it off was how European startups should attack the market rollout question, stay local or pan-European service at the beginnning?

Is harder to reach scale if you're only in one market like just the UK, France, or Germany, and that's because Europe is distinct countries and languages. But this is a ever present challenge so how can Europe move on from this question? You can keep using it as an excuse or crutch but you'll only fall father behind the longer you dwell on it.

3- question Malte (my colleague) and I discussed, per the scalability and market size question: could Twitter have started in Europe?

Lots of reasons yes and no but a valuable thought experiment. What do you think?

4- with the pitch part of the night, they were good to average. You gotta practice your pitch, have it down perfectly, and for God's sake don't read your bloody PowerPoint slides. And no music either, we want to hear you, not some frilly electro crap that distracts from understanding what the hell you and your company do.

5- Venue was goodfor networking but poor for the presentation side of the night. Not until halfway through did they get the doors closed off to the bar area. So it was noisy and hard to hear those speaking. That being said, per #4 above, speak loudly when you present to a room and audience like this...

6- that being said, kudos to Scoble for yelling at the crowd to shut up. He's obviously had some practice doing that.

7- Sarah Lacy almost had a wardrobe malfunction with her skirt and the akward stool setup for her and the panel but she deflected it gracefully and there was no Paris Hilton moment.

I'm sure there's more to say than that but it's time for work and them I'm off to Shanghai for a week tomorrow.

TechCrunch Europas: Optimisim & Creative Destruction Alive and Well

Mike Butcher and the rest of the TechCrunch Europe crew did a great job with the 2009 "Europas" Awards last night at the Delfina near Tower Bridge. Lively, packed crowd that was there to drink, be merry, and talk tech shop.

You can get a more detailed list of the startsups that pitched and the eventual winners over at TechCrunch UK or on TechMeme I'm sure but here were my takeaways.

1- Sure times are tough but you can't kill the entreprenuerial spirit. People were looking for a reason to celebrate a little bit (Spotify was the big winner last night) and there's always comfort in a shared experience, whether it's a struggle or a success.

2- the Europe v. U.S. flared up ever so slightly when the panel of experts at the break between pitches and awards discussed how increasingly innovative startups are coming from other places. Sarah Lacy had a good thesis on this, stemming from her book research, that we should be looking to China or India. But the question that kicked it off was how European startups should attack the market rollout question, stay local or pan-European service at the beginnning?

Is harder to reach scale if you're only in one market like just the UK, France, or Germany, and that's because Europe is distinct countries and languages. But this is a ever present challenge so how can Europe move on from this question? You can keep using it as an excuse or crutch but you'll only fall father behind the longer you dwell on it.

3- question Malte (my colleague) and I discussed, per the scalability and market size question: could Twitter have started in Europe?

Lots of reasons yes and no but a valuable thought experiment. What do you think?

4- with the pitch part of the night, they were good to average. You gotta practice your pitch, have it down perfectly, and for God's sake don't read your bloody PowerPoint slides. And no music either, we want to hear you, not some frilly electro crap that distracts from understanding what the hell you and your company do.

5- Venue was goodfor networking but poor for the presentation side of the night. Not until halfway through did they get the doors closed off to the bar area. So it was noisy and hard to hear those speaking. That being said, per #4 above, speak loudly when you present to a room and audience like this...

6- that being said, kudos to Scoble for yellig at the crowd to shut up. He's obviously had some practice doing that.

7- Sarah Lacy almost had a wardrobe malfunction with her skirt and the akward stool setup for her and the panel but she deflected it gracefully and there was no Paris Hilton moment.

I'm sure there's more to say than that but it's time for work and them I'm off to Shanghai for a week tomorrow.

Ambient Awareness Explains the Value of Online Social Activities

For those on Facebook who use it but don't yet understand its value (if you're on and actively using it then you probably get it but there are people who were reluctant at the start, myself included-- I'm talking about my college buddy Tyler, who I had I spent several months convincing-- I think he gets it know), read this (albeit a few weeks old) NYT piece on digital intimacy and microblogging.

Here's the key excerpt.

"In essence, Facebook users didn’t think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye."

Carr's Big Switch Exemplified by ISPs Going Metered Usage

  more bandwidth && more sandwich 
  Originally uploaded by EisFrei.

Given NYT's article on some of the major ISPs moving to a metered usage fee model, this matches Nick Carr's premise in his newest book, The Big Switch (at bar/lounge right now reading it), that the IT & bandwidth model is going the way of electricity. What Carr points out is that electricity has a positive feedback loop, the more you made it available, the more of people used-- this wasn't the thinking of many analysts & ISPs back in the Dot Com Bubble who didn't think the fiber being laid everywhere would ever be used (e.g. Level 3 who almost went under with the Dot Com Crash but seems to be sitting pretty).

What's spurring the ISPs current push for metered usage?

It's to make more money but what's driving the decision, is it because:

1. Demand is truly outstripping supply or
2. Is it to combat the power users who unbalance the price equilibrium that used to exist between average users using slightly less bandwidth and the minority power users who used slightly more bandwidth?

If we move past that point, the more important question is will we as consumers except the metered usage idea?

Of course the bloggers and techies will protest but will the average user notice or care? They won't care unless they start seeing exceptional high bills-- and that will happen, per Carr's premise that if you give them bandwidth (and Web2.0 is guzzling up more and more) they will want more bandwidth, then average consumers will eventually complain unless the usage fees are scaled correctly as bandwidth use for average users increases.

And this last point is exactly why Net Neutrality is so important-- bandwidth shouldn't be a scarce resource (this doesn't  preclude software & web engineers from designing w/ scarcity or constraints in mind-- see 37 Signals) that ISPs and current internet heavyweights wield to curtail the next generation of web entrepreneurs, companies, and ideas.

Also, research shows that even the idea of costs, either in the form of carrots or sticks, has a pyschological impact on people and changes people's behaivors quite easily.

The Commoditization of the Social Graph

  No Facebook - Blessington St, St Kilda 
  Originally uploaded by avlxyz.

The data portability dust up, thanks to Google's announcement of Google Connect, and covered by the Gillmor Gang and Techmeme, is continuing the conversation that Umair at BubbleGeneration started awhile ago. He deserves the credit for being one of the first to posit the notion that Facebook was evil and wrapped within that theme is the idea that their model or platform would start to crumble:

Which, in turn, begs the question: will it be plastic, or specific?

That is, will it be dependent on graph/platform/profile/etc data from a single network, or from many networks?

If you understand what network scale economies really are, it's almost inevitably the latter.

So who's in a dominant position - Google, or Facebook?

I think we, not the mainstream press but the early adopters of the web/techie world, are starting to see the same cracks in Facebook's amour that Umair has been thinking and blogging about for some time.

Fred posted on this topic today, in fact citing a lunch conversation he had with Umair a few months ago, and here's the synthesis of the future of the social graph:

What you cannot commoditize is the desire to create a social graph on a web service and the desire to maintain a social graph on a web service and the flow of data into and around that social graph.

The internet, if it has any one permanent characteristic in the way that is has evolved so far, is a fundamentally disruptive force on every product, service, business, or industry that tries to harness its power.

What does this mean for technologists and entrepreneurs?

Think hard about how to use the internet because we are in its infancy and there are millions of opportunities out there. But as well, be cognizant of how quickly your idea can be copied and cannibalized by those same internet forces that first gave you inspiration.

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Now playing: Bloc Party - Tulips 

Craig Newmark Speaking at Case Western

Craig Newmark of Craigslist fame is speaking today as the commencement speaker at Case Western University. Thanks to my friend Jeff Schuler for the Twitter heads up.

He spoke for about 20 minutes and just wrapped up. A few highlights from his speech:

• It's the common, trite things that people care about
• I'm a nerd and wore a pocket protector back when I was in school
• "I suck as a manager" and that why Jim Buckmaster runs Craiglist
• Treat others as you want to be treated
• Customer Service is my job
• It's not that we (Craigslist) don't want to sell out, but it comes down to Nerd Value: once you've become comfortable and planned out your future, why should you want to get more money?
• I know rich people in Silicon Valley and money doesn't make them more happy, it becomes a burden so instead we focus on doing, on action
• The internet is fostering new ways of social action and philantropy, like Donor's Choice
• MBAs should think about customer service as a valuable asset rather than a cost
• If you're graduating from law school, think about the U.S. political elections for president because Washington is going to need some new lawyers
• He also noted that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were some of America's top news reporters

And if you watch the video, try the WMV version instead of the Quicktime version, it was much better quality.

Long on Twitter: It's Their Unique Space on the Internet

  Twitter 6x6 
  Originally uploaded by Steve Woolf.

From my Exeter trip on Wed., where I found wifi at the train station that let me access a few sites for free, the BBC had a succinct article on the unique space that Twitter fills: http://tinyurl.com/58p9be

I've called it microblogging or short status messages to friends and family unfamiliar with Twitter but the weak description doesn't do it justice.

I found myself using Twitter as a starting point for my news, in addition to my iGoogle homepage. In fact, I noticed a fundamental shift in my reading habits as Twitter has increased it share in my reading and online activity use. When I have a second of free wifi on my smartphone (see my last post about how I'm using my mobile as a wifi device here in the UK) and only a site or two to scan, I'm now reading Twitter because I get a good mix of news/updates from those I follow and it's always current (as someone on Techmeme pointed out, Twitter beat the USGS in announcing the devastating China earthquake).

''But as I sit here writing this I feel connected to a community of people, feel that we share a space that none of the social network sites can conjure up, a space that is both here and not here, somewhere between offline and online.''

The following & followers feature on Twitter is easy to describe but the benefit or value of this feature is quite difficult to express to non-Twitter users. There is connection to these people in your Twitter community that I don't have from other social or communication platforms because my Twitter community isn't composed of people who are friends in the traditional sense of the word, which is how I've been using Facebook (meaning I don't accept just casual  acquaintances or one-time meets offline as a Robert Scoble or Jason Calacanis does).

So it means that Twitter, and I'm sure this was an accidental innovation-- the way that most disruptive technologies or innovations occur-- is a unique platform/service in my online presences. Fred and Brad at Union Square Ventures were smart to invest because they understood this unique space that Twitter fills, even if 'monetization' isn't yet clearly defined. Since you get addicted to Twitter for both personal and professional reasons around staying connected to your friends and community (whether social, tech, or business), I'm not worried about monetization right now and am long on Twitter.

A Smartphone Without the Phone

       My old but
  dependable XV6700

Having moved to London, I've been in the quandary of what to do for a mobile device. My old smartphone, an XV6700 from Verizon, was a birthday present from three years ago. While awkward at the beginning, I did become quite attached to it (I thought maybe I could have the phone chipped over here and keep using it).

Or I thought I was addicted to the smarthphone.

What I've realized after having been without the phone connection, however, is that I'm addicted to the web, not to the phone connection or even the device.

In fact, I could almost care less about the phone. So I did use it for voice calls-- quite often in fact and with a full QWERTY keyboard, texting was a breeze-- but I've never used my personal mobile that much during the day for phone calls because of office line.

So until I picked up a new, cheap, pay-as-you go phone via Virgin, I was really only missing the mobile after work. And I will admit, looking for a flat in London without a mobile is almost a suicide mission; even with Google Maps, you still get lost.

  My new MotoFone F3 via Virgin

What's surprised me is that the smartphone is almost as valuable as before, even without the phone service, because it has a wi-fi connection.

All of a sudden, I'm no longer dependent on Verizon for getting on the web, checking Gmail, sending Twitter posts, etc., I'm now dependent on free, open wi-fi hotspots.

But the fact that I can get by with almost 75% -85% of the my phone tasks without having the  smartphone on a phone network should tell you a lot; it's all about the web now.

Granted, I'm an early adopter so I everyone may not yet be at this stage but this case exemplifies where the world is going within the mobile market. Yes, we still want to talk and text each other, but damn it, just get me on the web somehow (and wi-fi hotspots, at least in a big city, are easy to come by) and I can get by just fine, thank you very much Mr. Dinosaur Teleco.

The telecoms aren't disappearing but their market is all about 1s and 0s now and that's a hard notion for them to grasp. And once the voice connections become better via VoIP and Skype on the smartphones, then the assumption that we still need a dedicated voice connection for our phones may start to crumble.

Could you get by with almost 75-85% of your must-have tasks without being connected to the phone network and only using the smartphone's wi-fi connection?

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Now playing: Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart

MicroHoo Deal Falls Through and That's the Right Outcome

  Microsoft is taking over Yahoo! 
  Originally uploaded by Gnal.

[May 7th Update: Meant to post this late Sunday night before the amrkets clsoed but that didn't happen. SO a little dated now but I was right about the stock price hitting $24 a share.]

Read late last night that the Microsoft-Yahoo deal has collapsed, primarily due to price differences (Microsoft was willing to pay $33 a share, Yahoo wanted $37) but there are lots of reasons that this fell through. Marc Andreessen's extremely insightful pre-collapse analysis explores all of the why-not reasons, which he wrote before the collapse was announced.

I didn't want this deal to go through and I'd suggested to friends when I went to the Utah Ski Trip back in late February. that this wasn't a good acquisition.

Two dinosaur tech companies without clear internet strategies means two poor players merging to become a super poor-player.

Here are some good posts on why the deal wouldn't or shouldn't happen:

• Mike Arrington interviews Citi analyst Mike Mahaney
• Bijan- "big market share doesn't equal innovation or success"
• Gillmor Gang- emergency May 3rd addition on MicroHoo deal collapse

I'll also be interested to see if Umair weighs in on this merger-collapse discussion.

Quickly, who are the winners and losers?

• Winners- Google (in the same way that it "won" the FCC's wirless spectrum auction) and the us (e.g. internet users)
• Losers- Microsoft, and less so, Yahoo

So looking ahead, Fred Wilson and others are taking guesses on where Yahoo's stock price will go on Monday. Take the poll below to participate:

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Aggregating My Online Presences

Thanks to Joe Lazarus, who I stumbled upon via Fred's Tumblr song circle post, who hooked me up with a invite to FriendFeed, which is is my first attempt to aggregate all of my online profiles into a single page or feed. I was able to add these services:

• Flickr
• Last.fm
• Twitter
• deli.icio.us,
• Tumblr
• Google Reader shared items
• LinkedIn
• Amazon Wishlist

You can view all of these aggregated services on my FriendFeed page.

This is just my first attempt at aggregating these online presences into one page but the next logical step is consolidation of the services. While some of these services do cross-post automatically but I'm still hesitant on this always working and not enough services cross-post so I end up updating with the same information multiple times to ensure I cover every service.

The problem with this? Well beyond the annoyance of having to manually re-post everything to multiple services, I then have redundant posts when I am able to aggregate of my online presences into a single page like FriendFeed. You'll see some overlap between Twitter and Tumblr posts. Maybe that's my fault but it would be much better if I can send one update, whether it be to Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, or wherever, and know that the information cascades down to all my online presences.

FriendFeed isn't the ultimate solution but it's surely a step in the right direction and now that they addressed the aggregation solution, I hope that they're thinking about the consolidation question next, e.g. how can we reduce redundancy in online presences through open APIs and RSS.

One last thing. Since I've had so many great musical recommendations come from Fred and Joe shares musical tastes with Fred, here's Joe's Yahoo playlist that I'm listening to right now as I finish this post: