Buildings & clouds reflecting
in a East London street
Originally uploaded by cherbert.
A friend recently complained that when logging into Facebook, ~70% of his home page was filled with my "stupid updates - this isnt twitter man!"
As someone said recently, why be on Facebook if you're going to update your status? Or see the NYT's piece on ambient awareness.
Because despite the trivial, banal, and seemingly trivial drivel that can *sometimes* appear as people's status updates, your friends actually do read this. They may never admit it-- similar to people when asked which magazines the read would never admit to reading the tabloids at the check-out points of the grocery store-- but they do read and secretly enjoy seeing what their friends are doing. We are voyeristic animals, it's as simple as that.
Here's my what I posted back to my friend about my seemingly too many status updates (which I bet are on average, or only slightly above average, for status update frequency across the Facebook user base):
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Think of it this way, I don't post crap, I actually post cool, interesting things here that I think people might not have seen but that they would enjoy. In that sense, I'm a "cool" filter or curator who goes through of all the crap ad shares only the best of the best. You need to stop and smell the roses every once in a while and that's what I'm doing when I post a photo, story, link or video, I'm making you pause from the normal 9-5 rat race so that you can remember the more important things in life.
Been awhile since I've posted but since I'm attending Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference tomorrow and the cast of characters page links me to this blog instead of my Twitter page, needed to post a meaningful update. And in honour, I thought the FAIL whale accurately represented my blogging over the last year or so.
I've been lackadaisical, unmotivated, uninspired, and generally un-passionate about writing and thinking about the things that I used to care about on this blog-- that's not to say that I've quit reading voraciously but I've resorted to Twitter at the expense of writing on this blog. That needs to change.
I want tomorrow to re-energise me; what an opportunity to listen and talk with people who care as much about Twitter and the future of the web as much as I do. Plus, it's always nice to put voices and real faces to those people that you've only interacted with before on Twitter.
And if anybody has an extra ticket for the after-party at Flordita, let me know.
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.
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.
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:
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 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 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:
And if you watch the video, try the WMV version instead of the Quicktime version, it was much better quality.
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.
