Category: Internet/Web Companies

More Forward or Die

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I was reading BusinessWeek and there was a good interview with Cisco’s John Chambers 

Companies that don’t change get left behind. Since I became CEO [in 1995], 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don’t reinvent themselves will be left behind.

Wow. I love that. You see this all over the place.  The companies that will be killing it in 10 years probably don’t even exist yet.  They say that each person today will have 8 careers by the time they are 65.  The world changes pretty fast now. It’s exciting. 

Some Predictions

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With a new year (i know we’re a month old already) I’ve been wondering more about what the future holds.  I have a few thoughts i’d like to share and get your thoughts.  They are some prediction of the technology space.  Here they go: 


More and More Social Networks. 
I wrote in 2007 when Facebook released “The Platform” that they would take over the web.  Their product updates since then have great and as a result, they’ve been killing it for years and been gobbling up users (approaching 1 Billion now).  However, this year I saw more and more social networks emerge. You have Path, Instagram, Foursquare, FoodSpotting and others. It’s easy for me to see now that in the future everyone will be on Facebook but that’s not where everyone will share.  It will be fragmented.  Depending on what you share (Food, Books, Photos, etc.), you may be someplace else and sharing with a smaller group.  Facebook will continue to be a huge company but their days of being the only game in town are numbered. Social is now not a facebook-only feature. Everyone has it.  The future is more about what your social activity revolves around.  I’ve started to tell people that “facebook is a fad” and it’s old news.  That’s not entirely true but it’s more true now than ever. 

The Future of Local Publishing 
More and more people are trying to get into local publishing.  The local newspaper has seen its classifieds, sports, world news and national news all get marginalized by other outlets (TV, internet, twitter, etc.).  All that’s left is local.  I used to be bullish on Patch, but that’s waning as i don’t see them innovating and it seems to be too big and too expensive an operation at each location.  That may change though.  With that said, here’s my prediction for what wins in a local community:  

You have a site, this could be a WordPress site or Tumblr or whatever.  It’s managed by one to three super-engaged people who are not pulling a salary (or a minimal one).  They do two things.  First, they curate all the news from papers, blogs and other local sites that are reporting in their community. Second, they accept via twitter and their site submissions of links and news.  They curate both of them and then spit it out back to their followers on their site and on Facebook and Twitter.  This becomes the best real-time source of news.  

This works because it is impossible for one source to aggregate all the information themselves (what newspapers used to do) but it is all being covered by other people who are willing to share.  The new local publisher is a connector of local interests to other web sites.  I could see this being just a twitter feed or a Tumblr blog.  Whatever the destination is, it’s heavily conversational and constantly curated. 

Just some predictions i have.  Would love to hear your thoughts. 




FourSquare is Pulling Away…

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I wrote a post 9 months ago about whether FourSquare or Quora were going to break out as great companies. Many in the office chose Quora and i chose FourSquare. I didn’t know anything at the time, but i just had a hunch.Foursquare vs. Quora

I’m still not correct.  Quora is doing really well still, but more and more people are recognizing Foursquare as a pioneer.  In fact, yesterday, Anil Dash wrote a great post about why it’s such a compelling company, stating:

[Foursquare] has blossomed into truly impressive execution: Foursquare is the one startup that’s doing the most remarkable job of any company out there in product strategy and product creation.

He sites these 6 main points as to why:

  1. Core platform
  2. Reliable iteration
  3. Technical competence
  4. Design innovation
  5. Thoughtful business model
  6. Meaningful API’s

It’s a good read, check it out.




Looking back at 2011

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Some things i’ll remember about 2011:

Steve Jobs’ Death & Legacy. As Esquire says…

No one ever died the way Steve Jobs died. Other people have died of cancer. Other people have died in the public eye.  But no one has ever died with the inexorable logic of their mortality feeding into a logic of expectation that they themselves created and aroused.

Reading about Steve Jobs in 2011 was a terrific experience.  He inspired me to take my passion in products to the next level.  He was truly a special individual and will be missed.

Mavericks vs. Heat. The stage was set: a team of underdogs who lost to the Heat in 2006 vs. a team of selfish divas. Down 2-1 and nearly 3-1, the scappy Mavs fought back and took the title in the most exciting NBA Finals I’ve ever seen. Continue reading “Looking back at 2011” →

Steve Jobs Biography was Great

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I just finished the Steve Jobs book and it was probably one of the most enjoyable books i’ve read in a long long time. I might say the past 10 years.  Here’s why:

Steve Jobs really cared about his products, deeply.  He had an intuitive feel for what the consumer wanted, and what he wanted.  He truly wanted his products to be close to art.   Even though very few in the industry believed him, even after the Macintosh had been around for over 10 years, he continued to hold on to this belief.  Each button, CD tray, color, and line was important to him. There’s a great passage in the book when he found out that the CD-ROM drive of a Mac was a tray instead a slot and it brought him to tears.

It was also fascinating to hear about the infant PC industry.  I had no idea how the PC industry started. I knew there was Apple and i knew there were was IBM but i didn’t understand how it emerged.  The narrative of the hobbyists building the board in garages makes sense to me, and i now understand.

I also didn’t understand how Jobs could get kicked out of his own company by a CEO and board that he selected.  But, after reading the story, i’m surprised he didn’t get kicked out sooner.   To hear of his return and his path back towards success was riveting.  Just a great story.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who’s enjoys Apple even a little bit.  Most people didn’t revere Jobs that much when he was alive (except, obviously the fanboys) but looking back at his accomplishments and commitment to excellence and innovation, we have to place him in the pantheon of business and product innovators.
I do think the world is a better place for having him here and i wish more people followed his path and held on to their dreams and reached for the stars.  It’s a great thing when it happens and actually works.




Steve Jobs is Shocking in his Biography

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I’ve got the mp3’s of the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson and i’ve been listening on my daily commute for the past few weeks. So far, i’m 25% through the book and loving it. Here’s what i like about the book so far.

  • Describing the social, music, and industry scene of Silicon Valley in the late 60’s and early 70’s is fascinating. The confluence of hippies, technology and drugs must have been amazing.
  • The hobbyist movement around electrical engineering. What people thought of computers and how the PC emerged from microprocessors and silicon. It’s so hard now, in a world where there’s a computer on every shelf, to imagine how people didn’t logically think of the PC.
  • Steve Jobs vs. Woz. It was an interesting partnership and highlights how you need different people with different talents to get a business off the ground.
The main plot of the book is around Steve Jobs and his rise as the leader of Apple. I’ve been pretty shocked about what i’ve read so far. I’m shocked by his demeanor and his behavior. The book does a good job of showing his passion, and his attention to detail. But i’m amazed about the amount of abuse he dished out to his colleagues. The book describes how each engineer, although degraded and demeaned regularly by Jobs, holds up that period as one of the most memorable is his life. The book attributes this to Jobs. I disagree. These guys were at the perfect moment of time where technology was making this type of a product possible- and were designing a product that didn’t yet exist. The market was poised to explode and did. What Jobs did was bring the right list of specifications but did it for a product that the world was clamoring for.

So far this book has increased my respect for Jobs ability to intuitively know what people want but i’ve also amazing how bad he was as a manager, friend and as a person. He seemed so erratic and awful.

I’ve yet to read about his exile, his days at Pixar and Next days, or his Apple comeback. i’m sure he gained perspective and some humility but man, in those early days of Apple he seems brutal.


My thoughts on Steve Jobs

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I’ve been reading all the news about Steve Jobs’ death these past few days. It’s one of the few stories that i can’t get enough of.  Because of all the articles, i didn’t want to post anything about it and be just another post about a topic that everyone knows about.  But i’m going to anyway.  I’m going to post for myself and because i think it’s important to write about people that impact you.

Steve Jobs was a hero of mine.  Not in a childish Superman-y way, but in a real day-to-day way. I spend my days discussing, inventing, reviewing and managing the production of online products.  This is what i do.  Every day.  Lots of people do this.  I’m friends with hundreds of them. Steve Jobs also did this.  But Steve did it differently. He was able to make products that came directly from his imagination and make them real.  This is something that is amazingly hard to do.

I also admire him as an entrepreneur.  He had a passion and a vision that was rare.  He envisioned 30 years ago a world where hardware and software met.  A world where the public can get excited about technology, where technology achieves cult status.  He got fired for thinking this way.  Seriously, read this article.  This thinking got him canned.  The CEO who replaced him said this of Steve’s thinking in the 80’s,

But Steve was thinking about something entirely different. He felt that the computer was going to change the world and it it was going to become what he called “the bicycle for the mind.” It would enable individuals to have this incredible capability that they never dreamed of before.

He got fired and regrouped.  Talk about a 2nd act.  First Pixar and then NEXT and then back to Apple.  His passion and focus made him successful every step of the way.  You can’t be an entrepreneur and not be inspired by his story.

I remember the first time i put the iPhone in my hand and used it. I was sitting at the Washington Nations game with Drew Mowery.  He had one and showed me.  Using it was like a window into the future.  That’s a rare feeling to have. It happened over 4 years ago and i still remember it.  I feel lucky to have been alive when he was around and building products.

As an innovator and as an entrepreneur, I’ll miss Steve Jobs.

 


I Still Believe in Patch

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AOL released their earnings last week and the market did a collective vomit-in-their-mouth over the results and their market cap dropped by one third.

Lots of the criticism came from AOL’s expenses in producing content and skepticism that they will ever make enough money on the content they are producing.  It also came out that they are spending $160 million a year on Patch which equals about $150k a year on each site.  One analyst (Robert Peck at Quasar Capita) said about AOL, “If you sell lemonade for $1 and it costs $800 to make it, that’s not a great business.”

Personally, I think AOL should continue to focus and pursue Patch. What’s their alternative?  Since Tim Armstrong has taken over, AOL has gone down the path of being an online content company.  That’s their strategy.  To abandon it would mean to become something completely different – something they have no vision or focus on.  Web companies don’t succeed and don’t create value by copying existing incumbents. They do it by innovating and building new distinct and unique offerings.  A hyperlocal site that covers and reports local news, that has local advertising and other deals tied in will exist.  The world is asking for it. AOL is uniquely positioned to build and provide it.  The newspaper is dead, and in 10 years online/mobile outlets are going to be the primary way news is found and read.

Of course, there is a question of whether they are structuring it correctly.  $150,000 a year seems steep for each site.  Could they do it more efficiently? I’m sure they can.  And, even people working there are admitting that their current attemps at revenue have been bad. But to call for them to stop doing it is just dumb.  I’m bullish and still believe in Patch and i think it’s a bold and interesting strategy for AOL and their only chance of being a relevant company in the web space.  I hope they make it work.


Why Turntable is Kicking Ass

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I have a new love in the office and it’s called Turntable.fm.  If you haven’t heard about this web application, it’s a website where you can go and play music.  Except it’s not just you playing music, it’s a table where you and up to 4 other friends each rotate playing music.  So, you play a song, then your friend, then another friend and then back to you (if only 3 people in the room).  If you’ve in an office where music playing is public or you want to get music suggestions from friends, this is the perfect application.

 

There have been a million music applications built in the past 5 years, so the question is: why is turntable successful where the other ones weren’t. Here’s why:

Continue reading “Why Turntable is Kicking Ass” →