Tag: Twitter

Where is the news going to come from?

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Quoted in Buffalo News about the local citizen...
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As the media industry consolidates and more and more people are simply linking to news – you might start to wonder where all the news is going to come from. There’s a great quote that was passed along to me by Jordan that goes:

what no one seems to understand is that “news” doesn’t just magically appear on twitter/the web/etc. Most of it is scraped off these “old dead media” sources. I’m constantly amazed by the childlike mindset of the digerati to this process. It’s like kids thinking that food comes from the grocery store. Kill off the farmers and the journalists and see how much magic food and news just “finds you” for your consumption

Lots of stuff is derivative on the web and it makes you wonder if the world is going to just become one big echo chamber. Or will journalists do more stuff on their own?

Personally, i don’t think the analogy holds. Food must be grown but news doesn’t have to be paid for by journalists at major media companies.

  • Not every newspaper needs to write a report on the ballgame. ESPN will cover that for us.
  • We don’t need to pay reporters to go to town hall meetings and report back, people are doing that for free.
  • We don’t need local papers writing opinions on what’s happening across the globe. A handful of paid opinion pieces plus organic perspectives (blogs / twitter / etc.) are enough for me.

What the world needs is not to cut off the supply of news but to radically change the way it’s published and the economics behind it. Most news is still being produced and most of it is being delivered at very low cost or free. If it’s more expensive than that, it has to go.

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4 Reasons Twitter Makes My Life Better

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There’s an article i read today (thanks to Lizard) about how Twitter can you a better and happier person.  The reasons listed in the article are:

  1. Transparency & Values: Twitter constantly reminds me of who I want to be, and what I want to stand for
  2. Reframing Reality: Twitter encourages me to search for ways to view reality in a funnier and/or more positive way
  3. Helping Others: Twitter makes me think about how to make a positive impact on other people’s lives
  4. Gratitude: Twitter helps me notice and appreciate the little things in life

I find all of these true.  Sometimes i want to post a tweet about my life and i have to reflect about what i’m really doing and how it’s interesting to others.  It often makes me adjust what i’m actually doing – and if i don’t do that then it makes me realize how i’m actually living my life.  In that respect, it’s quite helpful.

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Fred Wilson's Take on Twitter

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Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

There’s a good video by Fred Wilson about Twitter and what he, as an investor in it, thinks about it.  What he boils it down to is three points:

  1. “the single most important is that twitter from day 1 is a platform that others can build upon”
  2. “it is very one-dimensional…it doesn’t do anything that is not in the timeline….It’s power comes from that – it’s straightforward”
  3. “Twitter is the news feed for the web” as people embed links in their tweets and it’s now an alerting system

What else is interesting is that Twitter wasn’t pitched to Fred but rather he was an early user of it and he pitched to them to try to get them to take money from Union Square Ventures.  This is why i think Fred is one of the best VC’s in the business because he uses the products.  The web is all about product.  It’s not like the industrial revolution, it is a consumer facing which means that the usability is extremely important.  He is an early adopter and gets into the weeds. I have a hard time imagining other VC’s using Twitter when it was still a part of Odeo.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fzl5k2B84Kg]

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I Do Not Agree with the Hog Pile on Facebook

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There’s a growing trend in the media to attack facebook.  It started when their redesign got pretty bad reviews, continued when their CFO left, and now is gaining steam as mainstream outlets are questioning it’s core business proposition. There are three different things here and the media is pointing to them as an indication of Facebook‘s failure.  I disagree.  Here’s why:

Product enhancements. One thing i’ve admired about Facebook is their ability to keep pushing their product forward.  They introduced a great photo experience before any of their competitors (and have grown to be #1 on the web).  Even as they were experience phenomenal growth (they hit 8 million student readers), they completely redid their home page when they introduced the News Feed.  While initially hated by their users (FB blog) and the media (Time article), it set the standard for how social networks should display user activity and is now seen as a stroke of genius.  And growth climbed even higher.  At 70 million users they then completely redid the profile page to be a feed-based page as this is the best way for users to continuously portray themselves (see Tumblr for an example).  This was hated at first too.  Now, they redone the Facebook Home page to better showcase conversations and user activity.  Is it like Twitter? Yes.  Is it hated by their users? Yes. But it is also an improvement.  More than any other company i know of, Facebook is constantly pushing to get better in all areas and doing it fearlessly.  Even if they misstep, I applaud them for it.  From my experience at AOL i’ve seen that when yoy have a large user base it’s very easy to become tentative and second-guess every move.  Not changing becomes the easiest path.  It also means you start dying.   This latest change is more an indication that they’re not dying but moving forward.

Valuation.  Facebook got an absurd $15 billion valuation from Microsoft when it sold them some equity.  That deal was more than just equity sales but it also solidified Microsoft’s relationship with them as their exclusive third-party ad provider (story).  That valuation has become a problem as every new raise that happens in the industry (Twitter,  FriendFeed) is evaluated against it.  Facebook is now raising at a more reasonable level at a $5 billion valuation.  I don’t think this is an indication of failure of FB but rather a reflection (a) that these raises are straight equity and not part of an ad sales agreement, and (b) the market is the worst it’s ever been.  I think it’s ridiculous to think that the environment is the same as it was in October 2007.

Business Model. The media talks about Facebook’s failure to make an ad business out of their inventory.   Time’s article this past week was called, “Facebook Takes a Dive: Why Social Networks Are Bad Businesses.” This is completely ridiculous.  First of all, MySpace is making money.  Let me repeat. MySpace is making money.  They were bought by Fox for $580 million and they then immediately did a deal with Google to sell ads on their search page from 2006 to 2010 for $900 million dollars (details here).  That’s a quick profit of $320 million.  Everything else on top of that year-in and year-out seems to be gravy.  The article in Time continues to say:

What is true is that social network sites have had trouble making money. MySpace was supposed to be a big part of the revenue growth at News Corp. Wall St. thought Murdoch was a genius to buy it. Last year, News Corp had to admit that MySpace would not hit its revenue targets. That is usually not the hallmark of a property that is going to take over the Internet.  Analysts believe that MySpace rival Facebook had revenue of $265 million last year. That is astonishingly low for a company that had 57 million unique visitors in the U.S. last month. And, Facebook also has a very large international user base.

So let me get this straight, even though MySpace is profitable at $500-800 million dollars a year in revenues and even though it’s generated hundreds of millions of dollars for News Corp it’s a bad business becuase they missed their revenue target last year?  That is completely ridiculous. Facebook is a differnt issue.  They have repeatedly said that they are deprioritizing ad revenue and instead focusing on growth and user engagement. Since they started saying this (starting in late 2007), they have grown from 50 to 200 million users.  I’d say that’s pretty good execution. Facebook makes about $275 million a year.  Could they make another 100-200 million if they started selling more ads on search pages and profile pages?  Absolutely.

All of these reasons above are why sensationalist articles discussing the demise of the social network drive me nuts.   Nobody knows what the future holds, but one thing that we can pretty much be sure of is that sites that have great user engagement and activity – and facebook has over 20 million users update their status at least once a day – will get the ad dollars.  Nick O’Neil has a good post on AllFacebook today on why he’s willing to pay a $34 CPM on facebook.  It’s not the silver bullet but it shows that there is a profitable end in sight for the company and it’s not necessarily the horrible business the media would like it to be.

Recording Life

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I just read a great article by Clive Thompson called “Head for Detail” about Gordon Bell‘s latest experieement.  Please just read the first 2 paragraphs.  It’s about Gordon and how he is recording everything he’s doing (video, audio, emails, web, everything).  He’s been doing it for the past 14 years and is able to bring up almost eveyrthing.  Clive writes about Bell, saying:

He[Bell] had a tiny bug-eyed camera around his neck, and a small audio recorder at his elbow. As we chatted about various topics–Australian jazz musicians, his futuristic cell phone, the Seattle area’s gorgeous weather–Bell’s gear quietly logged my every gesture and all my blathering small talk, snapping a picture every 60 seconds. Back at his office, his computer had carefully archived every document related to me: all the email I’d sent him, copies of my articles he’d read, pages he’d surfed on my blog.

This really resonated with me as i am already trying to record my life. I have photos up on Flickr, i have my ideas going to my blog, i have my mundane thoughts going to Twitter, my videos going to YouTube, and my friend interactions recorded on Facebook.  I’m already on the web but just in the totality that Bell is.  Storage is getting cheaper and cheaper it’s gone from $233,000 for a gigabyte in 1980 to less than $1 today.  Soon there will be enough storage in your cell phone for your entire life to be stored.  I do this because i want to remember. I want my memories to be accesible all the time and reading the article made me realize how inefficent i’ve been in capturing them.

I really like articles like this becaues they make you think about where the world is going and wonder how human interactions and functions will change.  It touches on how humans will change when we no longer have to remember stuff.  I already don’t remember phone numbers beceuase of your cell phone. What if you don’t have to remember people’s names and interactions and you free you mind to be more creative.  Just imagine – that’s what i’m doing now….

Related articles:
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Twitter thoughts

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I read this article by Tim O’Reilly called “Why I Love Twitter” and it has some good points. Specifically:

  1. “Following” instead of “Friending” – in my opinion, only true/proper social networks that are primarily about social interactions (like Facebook or MySpace) should use 2-way friending.  The rest should allow for 1-way following.
  2. “Ambient intimacy” is about deepening people relationships via short messages and thoughts.  Similar to how you get to know someone who’s desk is right next to yours because of offhand comments, you can do the same via twitter
  3. Cooperating with others – Twitter allows others, even competitors, to utiilze them.  And it seems to only strengthen twitter.
  4. A true mobile app – for me this is the first mobile application that works better on mobile than the web.  It has truly changed how i think about working on a mobile device

Twitter is an interesting beast because it’s still niche but gaining steam.  People also love to bitch about how it doesn’t have a business model.  This is true, it doesn’t but neither did email for a long time and now it’s one of the biggest driver of pageviews and engagement on the web.

Related articles:
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How many people can you know? What's your Dunbar number?

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In the same NY Times article i just wrote about, there’s a great section the “hard-wired upper limit on the number of people he or she can personally know at one time” and compares that number between humans and apes.  It reads:

In 1998, the anthropologist Robin Dunbar argued that each human has a hard-wired upper limit on the number of people he or she can personally know at one time. Dunbar noticed that humans and apes both develop social bonds by engaging in some sort of grooming; apes do it by picking at and smoothing one another’s fur, and humans do it with conversation. He theorized that ape and human brains could manage only a finite number of grooming relationships: unless we spend enough time doing social grooming — chitchatting, trading gossip or, for apes, picking lice — we won’t really feel that we “know” someone well enough to call him a friend. Dunbar noticed that ape groups tended to top out at 55 members. Since human brains were proportionally bigger, Dunbar figured that our maximum number of social connections would be similarly larger: about 150 on average. Sure enough, psychological studies have confirmed that human groupings naturally tail off at around 150 people: the “Dunbar number,” as it is known.

The big question then is: Are people who use Facebook and Twitter increasing their Dunbar number, because they can so easily keep track of so many more people?

I find my social networks work against/for this number in 2 ways:

  1. For my good friends the relationships are strengthened through social networks and Twitter. I learn more about them and we’re able to interact more often
  2. There are weak friends that i normally would discard and never talk to again but instead they hang around on Facebook and Twitter and i gradually grow to learn more about them.  Over time they turn into actual friends or i delete them and they turn into nothing.
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Being Digitally Close

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There is an article in the NY Times a few weeks ago called “Brave New World of Digital Intimacy” and i think it’s one of the best pieces i’ve read in a long time at explaining why Facebook Status, News Feed, Twitter and other new digital platforms are useful and popular.

The online area that the article talks about is “incessant online contact” or as some call it, “ambient awareness.” In the offline world people pick up on moods by little things like body language, sighs, little comments, etc..  In the online world this is being done by microblogging tools like Twitter (140 character updates), Dopplr (where are you traveling?), Tumblr (what web items do you like), and Facebook’s Status Feed.  The article asks the question that i get asked all the time, Who cares?:

For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your Image representing Twitter as depicted in CrunchBaseblow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae? And conversely, how much of their trivia can you absorb? The growth of ambient intimacy can seem like modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme — the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity-addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world.

This is indeed how many people view it.  But the genius of the article is how it explains the subtle usefulness of the information:

Each day, Haley logged on to his account, and his friends’ updates would appear as a long page of one- or two-line notes. The updates were indeed pretty banal. One friend would post about starting to feel sick; one posted random thoughts like “I really hate it when people clip their nails on the bus”; another Twittered whenever she made a sandwich — and she made a sandwich every day. Each so-called tweet was so brief as to be virtually meaningless.

But as the days went by, something changed. Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

This is exactly how it works.  Now, i don’t have ESP through this but i do enjoy the knowledge of how my friends’ lives are progressing. These tools have enabled that to happen and it has certainly enhanced my relationships with them.

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