January 5, 2009
Facebook has crossed the canyon. If the “chasm” is the leap from early adopters to mainstream, then the “canyon” is the leap from mainstream to mass commercial appeal. Facebook has taken that leap. In the past few months, my dad, uncle, aunt and the mother of a high school friend have all joined Facebook. Facebook has become, as I explained to a hold-out friend of mine last week, the most fun and efficient way to keep in touch with the people in your life. As recently as five years ago, I reserved most Sunday nights for catching up with people by telephone. That was the way I maintained friendships, particularly with people living in other cities, who I didn’t see face-to-face on a regular basis. I’d call them after dinner, speak for 20-30 mins, get an update on the past few weeks (or months in some cases) and then say goodbye, until the next time we called each other. Today, telephone conversations of this sort are passe. Why waste time on the telephone, a communication medium limited to audio, when we can peruse each others’ photo streams, see what events our friends have been attending, and most of all, from a single page, get a snapshot of their status’. The feature with which Facebook offers the summary view of our friends’ updates is called the News Feed. If we really care, we can review their historical status updates to get a more complete picture of how they’re doing. When’s the last time you received as complete of an answer to the question “How ya doin?” <insert Joey accent>. Most industry wonks agree, the status update is Facebook’s single greatest achievement. It allows people to keep in touch with the absolute minimal amount of effort possible. It’s possible that Facebook makes it too easy, contributing to the loose ties effect that sociologists have been preaching, where our networks become less centered around a few close relationships and more around many looser ones. More than any other tool in my universe though, Facebook is having a significant impact on that shift in the social landscape. Their crowning achievement, the status update, is such a good invention that several companies have been formed around it, the most notable of which is Twitter.
Not surprisingly, Twitter’s growth trajectory has been similar to Facebook’s. Twitter virtually launched two years ago at SXSW in Austin, when it caught fire among a captive audience. Since then, it’s consumed the early adopter market and steadily made it’s way toward mainstream. In the past few months, several celebrities and consumer-focused orgs have caught on and grabbed ahold of Twitter accounts to communicate with their constituents. According to Compete.com, Twitter traffic measured by unique visitors is up 640% in the past year – though this figure doesn’t fully account for Twitter’s influence since a big chunk of their traffic flows through one of several messaging apps that feeds the platform. Like Facebook, Twitter is having it’s own effect on social behavior. I’ve recently noticed conversations taking place between groups and individuals that might be unlikely to converse otherwise. One example is GazaNews who has, not surprsingly, attracted a bunch of followers recently and engaged in some compelling back and forth. This is a good thing. Open dialogue and discourse between people that are geographically and/or ideologically far apart can only be healthy, and for a company as nascent as Twitter to be enabling this is a huge accomplishment. Twitter has essentially peeled off and borrowed a piece of Facebook by identifying and unleashing the full potential of this feature…not that there was anything Facebook could have done about it – it’s unlikely the status update could have been patented. Still, Facebook should buy Twitter to reclaim ownership of the feature and own the social media landscape that they’ve helped transform. It would re-establish them as owners of all things status update-related and give them another outlet for their ad sales activities. Better integration with Facebook would also expand Twitter’s influence exponentially, making it a far more powerful tool than it already is. The reality of Twitter is that it’s a feature that caught fire, but can probably only survive so long by itself. Facebook could likely acquire them for a reasonable price right now and quickly justify it by the further growth they can help fuel on the platform. It would also be a strong defensive move for them. If one of their competitors – in social networking, blogging or sharing – acquired Twitter, they’d essentially be stealing a piece of Facebook and I think that may come back to haunt them down the road.
October 14, 2008
There’s been a lot of focus recently on the macro economy, sub-prime debt exposure and a recessionary or even depressive economic outlook. A quiet, but growing sub-plot though on a micro level, is what this means for the technology industry in New York City. So far this year, the city comptroller estimates 40,000 jobs have been shed on Wall Street and it’s expected that this number may rise to 50-60,000 before it’s all over. Large Wall Street firms have dominated the New York economy for much longer than I’ve been relevant. There’s been plentiful discussion in tech circles, over the past few years, that one of the pitfalls of growing the tech industry in NYC is the difficulty in luring IT professionals away from deep-pocketed Wall Street firms. Now that there are two fewer Wall Street firms though and far fewer jobs, the local economy is poised for a transformational repositioning. An obvious sector to absorb some of that vacuum is technology. Crain’s NY reported a few weeks ago that New York added 1,100 technology jobs in the first half of the year to bring the overall number to 42,700. While the broader economy purges jobs by the minute, we’re adding them in droves. This is super exciting.
The WSJ reported that, in the first six months of this year, there were 67 NYC-based startups who received VC investment totaling $828 million compared to $480 million in the same period last year. I believe that growth rate will accelerate. With the flood of newly unemployed financial markets-focused professionals, there are more smart, hungry and creative people looking for opportunity than ever before. As the few i-banks remaining recast themselves as bank holding companies and accept federal funds and the compensation limits that come with those funds, high pay-grades that once lured many of the best and brightest IT professionals and managers may no longer be as significant of a factor. Compensation reform, generally on the verge of sweeping through all facets of our economy anyway, is only one more factor encouraging the aspiring business owner to finally go for it. The alignment of incentives that once made the leap difficult are severely diminished and in some cases (for employees of Lehman or Bear as examples), eliminated. Also, as other areas of the local economy decline – real estate prices fall, office space becomes more affordable, etc – other historical barriers to starting a company here also diminish. With the city’s history around financial services and the experience of the recently unemployed, I think financial services technologies is one area, in particular, that will likely see a lot of innovation in the coming years. When you combine this new reality with recent trends, NYC becomes an increasingly attractive market for VC investors. We’ve been ranked third behind the Bay Area and Boston for several years and while our growth has been accelerating versus Boston for a little while, I think these recent local developments lend reason to believe that we will inch even closer to them in the coming years.
As recently as August, I had continued to consider a professionally-motivated move back to the Bay Area. I’m convinced it’s something that every young aspiring technology professional occasionally thinks about. At the moment though, those thoughts are diminished as I see enormous opportunity for NYC early-stage technology. Boston should be on high alert because New York is biting at its heels.
July 12, 2008
I’ve been hearing pleanty of hubub about the new iPhone from friends and the media over the past few weeks – in some cases the same people representing both. The new iPhone’s launch was only slightly less eventful as the original. Back then, my dad called early on the Friday to let me know he was waiting in line and to ask if I wanted one. Interestingly, he reported that the line was 3x as long this past Friday, when he returned to the same AT&T store. Back then, I took the bait and bought one….how could I pass up such a gracious offer. I played with it for two weeks (mostly in the first few days) before selling it on eBay to a guy in Switzerland at a 20% premium. I sold it back then because I disliked the form factor, the keyboard, the battery life, the email functionality and most of all, because I had no complaints with my blackberry and my current email/calendar/contacts setup (this hasn’t always been the case). I had high hopes for the second rev, but early reports are unencouraging. Users I spoke to claimed that battery life has, in fact, decreased. It’s true there is a more powerful battery in the phone, but the 3G circuitry and chip drains battery life faster and net-net, the new phone dies sooner. This is a non-starter for me. My blackberry almost always lasts a full day, even when on the road under the most extreme circumstances. Tony’s iPhone frequently requires multiple recharges during a day, a situation that leaves him searching for outlets in restaurants, and one that would frustrate me. The other feature I had hoped for was a rotating keyboard so that typing long emails would be made easier. Everyone was calling for this initially so I’m surprised Apple didn’t follow through. Anyway, I’m even more comforted by my recent purchase of RIMM two weeks back. The blackberry is a solid product and one that I believe has a good life ahead of it.
June 12, 2008
I’ve been preaching this for a long time. A few years ago, I compiled a folder full of studies on damage inflicted by cell phones. Now, it’s getting mainstream media attention. CNN devoted an entire Larry King to the topic two weeks ago. This article (and forthcoming scientific study) sound ominous. Those 4 years of I-Banking with that old school Nokia glued to my ear may come back to haunt me, in more ways than I realized….
Cancer and Technology: Top 10 Highest-Radiation Cell Phones
March 7, 2008
As the quest to find decent customer service continues – one of my favorite topics – I had two infuriating incidents this week with Asus and HP. Bought a new router from Asus that has a usb port for printer sharing….’pretty cool’ I thought until I called the Asus customer service line for help setting it up. In what was probably the worst customer service experience of all time (yes, I know that’s saying a lot) we spent 20 minutes discussing the issue before the guy told me my printer was not compatible with the router. Infuriated, I hung up, only to figure the whole setup out on my own 15 mins later networking both my mac and pc. Later in the week, I had a scanning issue with the printer (post-networking). Similarly, I engaged HP customer service, which is leagues better than Asus (as it should be), but again was given poor advice. They suggested i uninstall all software and driver and then, reinstall. Unfortunately, this process continued for 3 days because the reinstall wouldn’t take. Eventually, I figured out that scanning wasn’t going to work on the printer networked through usb. In both cases, customer services provided little to negative value. Thanks guys.
November 20, 2007
I just ordered a Jawbone bluetooth headset from eCost.com (cheapest quality merchant on Pricegrabber). When I went to checkout, they listed Google Checkout as a separate checkout option. I logged in and two clicks later, the transaction was complete. But along the way, there was a checkbox next to the statement "Keep email address anonymous from eCost.com". Why, yes, please, thank you. Google Checkout allowed me to order from a merchant without sharing my email address, preventing the inevitable onslaught of promos and sale notifications I would receive for several months or years thereafter. This is a huge benefit, not to mention the two-click checkout speed. Google Checkout has been fighting an uphill battle against Paypal for a while, and this won’t part the red sea for them, but it’s a nice enough feature, that it made me notice and so will bring me back again soon. Not to mention, I can charge the item to my credit card and get the miles, something that is more difficult to accomplish on Paypal.
October 23, 2007
Two weeks ago, a project I began exploring in late 2006 launched. A partnership between Answers.com and WordPress, AnswerLinks is a tool that scans an article’s content prior to publishing and suggests words, terms and people, that may require additional detail, to link back to Answers.com definitions, explanations, bios, etc. It’s the first 3d party tool integrated into the WordPress publishing interface, which makes it somewhat innovative and exciting. It’s also the first distributed application of Answers.com auto-linking technology, an area that we believed has significant growth potential. From what I hear, response from WordPress bloggers has been positive so far and the partnership format has been noticed by others. AnswerLinks is also available as a plug-in for WordPress.org bloggers.
September 30, 2007
I posted a few weeks ago about my frustration that so few email solutions provide the functionality and convenience I’ve come to expect. My problem was the following: (1) multiple computers and access points, all of which I expect to remain sync’d at all times (2) a blackberry device that also needs to remain sync’d (3) a calendar system that needs to communicate with my blackberry and interact seamlessly with other communication platforms. While gmail was exciting to me initially, it proved inefficient, as deletions required more than one click, my inbox soon reached 1,700 messages, and messages often slipped through the cracks, sometimes falling off my first page, sometimes lost forever. GCal was extremely disappointing. It couldn’t sync with the blackberry, only sending SMS messages before appointments, making scheduling a challenge and checking my calendar a nuisance. I looked into Yahoo Mail, but wasn’t impressed with its blackberry compatibility either. Well, after a bunch of research, my problems have all been solved. I researched virtual exchange servers and decided to purchase a plan from Mail2Web for $20 per month. Their virtual exchange sever allows me to use Outlook or Entourage to manage my mail, and keeps my email, calendar and contacts wirelessly sync’d between computers and devices at all times. This is the way the blackberry device was designed to be used and boy, does it make a huge difference. Never again will I miss a conference call because I forgot to manually sync my blackberry. Mail2Web offered the best package of the Microsoft certified partners and as a Canadian company based in Toronto, I found their 24-hr customer service department to be unusually skilled and helpful….note: no outsourcing to India here, every representative I spoke to was a true Canadian, eh? Finally, to throw another wrench in the mix, I recently switched to a MacBookPro for my work laptop, a move that I’m thrilled about…this is the most fun I’ve had on a computer in a long time. I played with Entourage for a week or so, but found it extremely inferior to Outlook 2007, which incidentally, I found to be a huge improvement over 2003. Running XP over Parallels on the mac, and adjusting the settings to optimize for performance, I’m able to run Outlook with good speed, not sacrificing email and calendar functionality. So there you have it. If you want more info, I’m considering doing some IT consulting on the side….
September 9, 2007
In an effort to migrate my life to hosted organizational tools, I switched to Google Calendar a few weeks ago, hoping that managing my email and calendar in the same place would prove effective. After a few weeks of using it and several hours trying to export my data and stop using it, it would be difficult to accurately convey my disappointment with the application. GCal sucks. Not only does it not work elegantly with GMail, but it doesn’t sync with PDAs. The sharing functionality – the reason hosted apps are helpful in the first place – is only so-so, and after several frustrating hours trying to figure out how to export my data to a better solution, I’m giving up because Google’s instructions and forums on the topic are pitiful. I’m hoping to give 30boxes a try, but my expectations are tempered, and I suspect I may have to return to Outlook. Despite all the attention paid to hosted apps over the past 10 years, from my perspective, it seems they’ve progressed only minimally. Is it so difficult to design a solution to manage email, calendar and contacts seemlessly in a hosted environment? If anyone has suggestions on apps I should try, please leave a comment.
Not surprisingly, Twitter’s growth trajectory has been similar to Facebook’s. Twitter virtually launched two years ago at SXSW in Austin, when it caught fire among a captive audience. Since then, it’s consumed the early adopter market and steadily made it’s way toward mainstream. In the past few months, several celebrities and consumer-focused orgs have caught on and grabbed ahold of Twitter accounts to communicate with their constituents. According to Compete.com, Twitter traffic measured by unique visitors is up 640% in the past year – though this figure doesn’t fully account for Twitter’s influence since a big chunk of their traffic flows through one of several messaging apps that feeds the platform. Like Facebook, Twitter is having it’s own effect on social behavior. I’ve recently noticed conversations taking place between groups and individuals that might be unlikely to converse otherwise. One example is GazaNews who has, not surprsingly, attracted a bunch of followers recently and engaged in some compelling back and forth. This is a good thing. Open dialogue and discourse between people that are geographically and/or ideologically far apart can only be healthy, and for a company as nascent as Twitter to be enabling this is a huge accomplishment. Twitter has essentially peeled off and borrowed a piece of Facebook by identifying and unleashing the full potential of this feature…not that there was anything Facebook could have done about it – it’s unlikely the status update could have been patented. Still, Facebook should buy Twitter to reclaim ownership of the feature and own the social media landscape that they’ve helped transform. It would re-establish them as owners of all things status update-related and give them another outlet for their ad sales activities. Better integration with Facebook would also expand Twitter’s influence exponentially, making it a far more powerful tool than it already is. The reality of Twitter is that it’s a feature that caught fire, but can probably only survive so long by itself. Facebook could likely acquire them for a reasonable price right now and quickly justify it by the further growth they can help fuel on the platform. It would also be a strong defensive move for them. If one of their competitors – in social networking, blogging or sharing – acquired Twitter, they’d essentially be stealing a piece of Facebook and I think that may come back to haunt them down the road.
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