Monthly Archives: February 2008

Black I Am

If you haven’t seen what I wrote about being black, you should probably read it.

There’s also a great op-ed by K.A. Dilday, a guest contributor to the New York Times, who discusses the merits of being called black vs. African American.

(Are they just jacking my blog? Ha ha)

I’M black again. I was black in Mississippi in the 1970s but sometime in the 1980s I became African-American, with a brief pause at Afro-American. Someone, I think it was Jesse Jackson, in the days when he had that kind of clout, managed to convince America that I preferred being African-American. I don’t.

Now I live in Britain where I’m black again. Blacks in Britain come from all over, although many are from the former colonies. According to the last census, about half of the British people who identify as black say they are black Caribbean, about 40 percent consider themselves black African, and the rest just feel plain old black. Black Brits are further divided by ancestral country of origin, yet they are united under the term black British — often expanded to include British Asians from the Indian subcontinent.

The term African-American was contrived to give black Americans a sense of having a historical link to Africa, since one of slavery’s many unhappy legacies is that most black Americans don’t know particulars about their origins. Black Americans whose ancestors arrived after slavery and who can pinpoint their country of origin are excluded from the definition — which is why, early in his campaign, people said Barack Obama wasn’t really African-American. Yet, since he has one parent from the African continent and one from the American continent, he is explicitly African-American.

Distinguishing between American black people based on their ancestors’ arrival date ignores the continuum of experience that transcends borders and individual genealogies and unites black people all over the world. Yes, scientists have shown that black means nothing as a biological description, but it remains an important signal in social interaction. Everywhere I travel, from North Africa to Europe to Asia, dark-skinned people approach me and, usually gently but sometimes aggressively, establish a bond.

The biggest enemy of Facebook … is itself.

(Update: See the comment thread below — it helps to flesh out the ideas I’m pushing in this article a bit better.)

There has been much debate over the social networking phenomenon known as Facebook.

It’s CEO — sometimes called youthful, sometimes called rash and arrogant, but almost always called genius, — has taken the company from Harvard to multi-million dollar company in just four years. A feat accomplished by few, and very remarkable by no stretch of the imagination.

Since it’s inception, it’s inspired doubt and pre-judgment by many investors and the press alike, as many were befuddled to see the young Mark Zuckerberg turn down reported offers of $750 million and even $2 billion.

They said he was stupid — that there’s no way a social network can be worth more money than that.

For the meantime, he quieted all naysayers of his decision not to sell when Microsoft pumped $240 million into Facebook for a mere 1.6% share, which many have tagged as a $15 billion valuation of the Facebook.

There have been heated battles all over the technological blogosphere, which has even reached the ears of the mainstream media.

Will Facebook fail? Or will it, as Mark Zuckerberg has done for years, continue to prove all the naysayers wrong?

Is social networking really the future? And if it is, is Facebook the Moses that will take us to the web 3.0 promised land? Or will it be another form of social networking, or something without a coined phrased yet?

Facebook’s biggest weakness is not its security issues, not its continued flogging in the blogosphere and mainstream media for every misstep, not even its management team, which features Founder Mark Zuckerberg and two old friends of his.

Facebook’s weakness is in the very thing that makes it so interesting.

The social graph.

This term has taken off, mostly because it’s one of Zuckerberg’s favorite ways to describe the secret sauce behind his personal project-turned-billion-dollar-corporation’s run away success.

He, like his friend and mentor Willam H. Gates III, has been accused of robbing the idea for Facebook, both in part, and in whole. Zuckerberg’s admiration of Gates, may be the reason why the young padawan doesn’t want to give up the reigns of Facebook for another CEO.

But really, just as Microsoft, once your raking in the millions, it becomes increasingly less and less important where the idea actually came from, as the focus shifts from past (i.e. cool story of a kid in a dorm room developing a billion-dollar company) to the future (i.e. how does this company rake in the revenue to match its valuations and uber-confident investors — Peter Thiel, particularly).

The attention then shifted to Microsoft, for being foolish enough to value Myspace’s so-called biggest rival at a valuation greater then Ford Motor Co., one of America’s oldest and most-storied companies.

So with the recent drop in numbers, especially in the UK, a lot of the doubters have returned, saying this is the end of Facebook.

I, however, profusely disagree.

This is not the end of Facebook — rather Facebook, I believe, will be with us for a long time. Rather this is the beginning of the micro-niche, community-driven era.

Facebook, which was once the poster-boy to the community-driven aspect, mostly lost sight of this in its attempt to build a social graph of the world. That may be all fine and dandy, but in the end, in hindsight, it’s failure to focus on the micro-communities that exist within Facebook itself may be its biggest detriment.

For some time now I’ve argued that Facebook is in danger of becoming an AIM — but the web 2.0 version.

There was a time where AOL instant messenger was the rage, and indeed its parent company received massive valuations as well, but in the end, there was no end for AIM — and I believe the same will hold true for Facebook.

If you look at instant messenger, there are still companies building businesses on the back of it — and other chats as well — just look at Meebo and you shan’t need to go any further.

But is AIM the hot talk of the day? No, but almost every single friend I have on AIM is on Facebook, and vice versa. And they’re actually on AIM a lot longer. They leave their AIM chat up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, almost year round, with that rare exception of losing power.

Everybody uses AIM — in America at least, outside the country MSN is the default– yet nobody talks about it anymore. It’s simply something you use every day without any regards to the magnitude of it or the users there.

Let’s even look at Skype for a minute — a product that has 12 million users on it at any given time — yet it gets nowhere near the hype Facebook does, although it has had its run in with billion dollar valuations.

But let me get to the crux of my argument — Facebook will be relegated (unless it can turn it around) to the back of everybody’s mind as just yet another tool we use to keep in contact with each other.

Unless it can get back that luster of its micro-communities. Facebook Groups, I’m sorry, simply does not cut it. Join and forget is what I call it — users join a group and probably never even think about it again. (Yet the media loves to cite statistics of how many Facebook users joined a certain group).

Facebook groups are completely inefficient, and even cumbersome to be a part of, and in many cases they don’t accomplish their purpose.

Everybody, from Bill Gates to Matt Brezina, a friend who co-founded Xobni, think that email is the next great social network– but up to a point. By making the connections in email, it certainly is one of the many pieces to the puzzle, but there has always been — and still exists — a gaping hole in the whole social network sphere.

A social network based on need.

I’ll give you an example.

Just yesterday I met with a friend from high school, who was considering transferring out of Penn State U to go to music school. Apparently, a girl who had went to our high school, two years my senior, just recently got signed by a Major label. And there’s also another high school alumnus that plays guitar for the Jonas Brothers.

I’ve been trying to help Liz Ester, break into the music scene for about 8 months now, and we’ve been traveling 6-8 hours every weekend to do it, meanwhile there are artists from my hometown who have had major successes. Facebook didn’t tell me that, Linkedin didn’t connect me with them.

That’s a failure, rather a need, of social networks — and it simply doesn’t exist.

Thank you Facebook for telling me what the favorite movies are of folks in my network, but I’d rather know that someone is an A & R, a budding musician, or even a music producer — and start making friends and connections, and help Liz advance in her career.

Instead, I’ve put 10k miles in 6 months on my car as I travel around looking for anyone to help her out with her career. In fact it’s been someone who watched a youtube video of hers who has been the most useful in connecting us with someone.

The gentleman, a police officer from New York City, referred us to some helpful friends of his — from which we may finally see a small breakthrough in Liz’s budding career.

We all know the old adage “it’s not what you know, but WHO you know.” Well I give social networks an F for helping me find people relevant to my interests and pursuits.

I’m interested in technology start-ups, but for now more people seem to be interested in Techcrunch and even the blog I contribute to — Venturebeat – then building up their local or regional social networks in order to connect with entrepreneurs in their area who can actually HELP them get to their startup to the next level.

I have respect for all the traffic and word-of-mouth (not to mention Venture Capital interest) that a major blog can give a start-up, but what about a community of start-ups, both locally and nationally, that connects people with shared interests and goals.

So far Meetup has been the closest model to this, but it needs a lot more press time, as well as a wider user base to be able to draw in the necessary crowds to make it worthwhile. I’ve been trying to connect with the NYC tech meetup crowd, but the success of that group isn’t fair — the group’s head is a co-founder of meetup.com itself.

To be honest, a lot of the failure of social networks - Facebook included — is that it a) only exists to connect you with old friends or b) because it’s cenetred around a lot of miscallenous junk that has almost no meaning or relevance to my life.

Your favorite show is Sex and the City? Great. You like the Count of Monte Cristo? Ok, we have something in common. But that doesn’t help me know you any better — it doesn’t tell me your story, our shared interests, your passions, your dreams, your hopes, your aspirations.

It doesn’t tell me that Stephanie Smith, a girl from my high school, is becoming a major musician meanwhile I’m struggling through the “bleeding” period facing the ridiculous rising price of gas, and the long journeys to other states just to get help to break into the music business.

It doesn’t tell me that a fellow high school alumnus is an associate at a VC firm, or that another high school alumnus has a start-up on the verge of mass-success. What about my next-door neighbor who is the HR manager for a start-up I wrote about on VentureBeat? I didn’t find out until I was demo-ing the app.

Even more interesting is that the associate of that VC firm, high school alumnus at the cool start-up, and the HR manager for the startup all know each other. But they didn’t even know they were all working in overlapping fields. Two of them, in fact, both live in New York and had no idea.

Where was Facebook when I needed it? And LinkedIn? Honestly Youtube has been more helpful than myspace or facebook or linkedin or yasn (yet another social network) to connect us with people interested in furthering Liz’s music career.

The point, although you may have lost it from the beginning (I understand this is an incoherent rambling that may not be too cogent) is to say that Facebook has not done anything to build it’s micro-communities.

And that, ultimately, will contribute to a downfall — IF there is one. I do not fool anyone to consider myself a prognosticator (although I’ve tried once or twice), but I do think that Facebook at some point will need to build it’s micro-communities with in itself or it will not be successful.

Connecting with people in our geographical, company-related, or university-related networks is cool, I get that, but how do we build a more robust micro-niche community of communities within those larger networks?

We. shall. see.

No Man Walks Alone

http://charuhas.com/story/page8.html

I went on to say that my agoraphobia was a self-inflicted wound. I’d incurred it by telling myself that the end justified the means: “I’ll work myself into the ground to make big bucks, but once I’ve succeeded my wife can stay home with our son and we’ll all be happy.” Balance, I now realized, was key. If an entrepreneur worked too single-mindedly to make things better, he might just make them worse—and damage himself in the process.

Another big mistake I’d made was working alone. Since my company’s founding, I had been its sole employee. I hired contractors to help when necessary, but all the pressure had rested on my shoulders. Entrepreneurship is tough enough when done with partners and co-founders; going it alone had made it doubly stressful for me.

Working alone had not only hurt me, it had crippled my company. My one-man-band had lacked the support networks, division of labor, and depth of expertise that distinguished successful startups. Even worse, it had been just successful enough to mask that fundamental flaw.

Buffet on how the rich escape taxes

Emory:

It seems that the worldwide trend is towards lower corporate tax rates. Do you think that the US risks becoming less competitive if it maintains its current corporate tax rate?

Buffett:

Relative to GDP, government taxation is 18.5% and spending is 20%, so we borrow the balance. The national debt should not be a scary topic and the fact that it’s gone up is fine as long as it’s proportional to GDP. Where do we get that 18.5%? There’s 2.7 trillion in government revenues. 2.2 trillion comes from individuals, and less than 1% of that comes from the estate tax. 1.1 trillion comes from income taxes, with payroll taxes consisting of 900 billion, but it’s capped at the first $100,000 of salary. We want a tax system that encourages greater prosperity, but it needs to take care of the family.

We did an informal office survey by looking at the total tax footprint versus the total income. I earned 46 million and paid a tax rate of 17.5%. My rate was the lowest, the average was 33%, and my cleaning lady paid 40%. The system is tilted towards the rich. The Forbes 400 total net worth has gone from 220 billion to 1.54 trillion, an increase of 7-to-1. You see in legislature that there is lobbying carried on by the powerful over issues such as the estate tax and carried interest for private equity investments. We need to flatten income and payroll taxes, and those making under $30,000 shouldn’t be bothered.

Why going to another country is not the key to learning a language

Why going to another country IS NOT the key to learning a language

Yo hablo un poquito de Espanol. And a little bit of French too. I studied spanish for 2 years in high school, and french for 5 years (8th grade included), yet my spanish was better than my french EVEN BEFORE i left for the Dominican Republic. Point in Case, Senior year, during the Advanced Placement tests I scored a 3 in Spanish and a 2 in French (yah i know i was pretty embarassed). Neither sounds too imprssive, considering the test is out of 5, english and calc did go a lot better, but PSU still gave 8 credits for a score of 3.

One thing that really bothers me, is the cop-out attitude that people have. Or, as Colin would say, a lack of intestinal fortitude (it means you have no guts, lol). When people realize I speak spanish pretty well, (which is al right, but have you ever tried listening to spanish news? lol) they figure it’s due to my time in the Dominican for 6 months. Or that I have a special ability to learn languages (if Josh or Fuego or the Dominicans heard that, they’d die laughing)

Cop-out

As PK always told me, desire trumps ability any time. In essence, it’s not your skills that matter the most, when learning a language, it boils down to “how bad do you want it?’

How did I speak spanish better than french at the end of high school, even though I’d studied french 3 years longer? Desire. Desire became a search,a hunger to practice and to ask questions and to learn. I was constantly pestering Fuego, asking questions, making him practice with me, even to the annoyance of other people (especially Shannon haha). Did i ever do that with french? nope, i spoke french maybe, 3 or 4 times outside of the classroom.

Showing up to class is not going to cut it. Going to a nother country is not going to cut it. I know people who have studied abroad for a year, and they come back speaking mediocre, and I know ppl, like Jen Brown or Sarah Hopkins came back speaking practically like natives. I wasn’t with either groups of people, so who can say what the factors were, but even when you go to another country, nobody can force you to practice.

I remember one of the crazy ideas I came up with. Not to speak english for a month, unless it was absolutely necessary. It workedpretty well, i forced myself to make up Spanish, even if I had no idea what I was saying. Or I remember Justin before going to Haiti, he had a whole list of creole words he was practicing, with Iveto and Peterson (two haitians working/living at the base).

Trust me, I’m not applauding myself. Being barely able to speak spanish or french to me, is not a means of major accomplishment, well it is, but there is so much more. I remember reading a book by a guy who speaks more than 29 languages fluently. I know several people, whether they be like Emmanuel or Iveto that can speak spanish, french, english and haitian creole, or Josh who’s really good at spanish, french, english and is learning Mandarin, or my sister who did pretty well in Japanese, and is conquering French and Spanish also, that all have learned (being born into a bi/tri lingual situation is completely different) much more than I have.

or maybe Mark Oliver, who learned Italian pretty well in 9 months. he told me he was listening to tapes in the car, was practicing a few hours a day, even had a tutor once a week to help him with his pronounciation.

desire trumps ability

so up there, in all the garbage that i’m trying to say is this:

don’t give yourself lame excuses such as “i’ll learn the language when i get there” cuz that is a cop-out.

Kung Fu means (training/committment through time and effort

there is no magic to Kung Fu, or to playing the guitar, or snowboarding, or learning calculus. It comes through time and effort. sacrifice and committment.

if you don’t get to where you want to be, it’s because you either are not putting in enough time, or you’re not putting in enough effort. As for me, it is usually a combination of both.

Kung Fu and intestinal fortitude.

The real reason Hillary is Done

I haven’t officially supported anyone yet — but the defeat was clear at the last debate. Contrary to the political know-it-alls (as if you can know it all in politics) it wasn’t Hillary’s WORDS that nailed the coffin shut, but rather her eyes. Anyone who has ever played a sport knows that look. The moment when you and your opponent both know “it’s all over.”

You look into your opponents eyes, you smell defeat, and you prep for a last-effort all out blitz to permanently blow by them and win the race, juke them and score a touchdown, or knock them out.

Salesforce’s biggest threat has only 8 workers in Silicon Valley

And 600 in India.

Read this phenomenal story in Forbes about Sridhar Vembu, the Founder and Chief Executive of AdventNet, the company behind powerful startup Zoho.

Zoho, a productivity suite for personal consumers and enterprises a like, provides everything a typical Microsoft Office package does — for free. Free for individuals, and at a low cost for enterprises. It’s Customer Relationship management is $10/ user/ month in comparison with more popular web-based SalesForce, which charges users $65/user/month for the enterprise edition.

To be fair, the statistics the Forbes article are only partly true, SalesForce offers cheaper packages for its thriftier (and smaller) customers. For example, I set up SalesForce for my company (the 2000 version of ACT just wasn’t cutting it for our 2000+ customer database) for a mere $600 for one year with five user accounts.

That is $10/user/ month to save you from doing the math.

Apparently, Marc Benioff, SalesForce’s CEO, is so afraid (or envious of Zoho’s low costs) that he made a private offer to Vembu, which was turned down.

And to top it off, Sequoia’s Mike Moritz is breathing down his back.

At $1 million profit per month, who can blame them

And with a work force of 600 in India working at affordable living wages (and as the dollar declines it only gets better for them).

I won’t lie, I didn’t get Zoho when I analyzed the different products because the interface is horrible, and my boss is not to technologically-savvy, to say the least.

Some famous bloggers go on the defense when anyone attacks the Silicon Valley culture, but hey, apparently you can start a profitable business from outside the valley after all.

And for those who care about “social entrepreneurship,” Vembu’s bold strategy of hiring high-school grads from poor families seems to be working out.

Not only that, in India Vembu’s operation does not hire engineers with highflying degrees from one of the prestigious India Institutes of Technology, thereby squeezing his cost advantage.

“We hire young professionals whom others disregard,” Vembu says. “We don’t look at colleges, degrees or grades. Not everyone in India comes from a socio-economic background to get the opportunity to go to a top-ranking engineering school, but many are really smart regardless.

“We even go to poor high schools, and hire those kids who are bright but are not going to college due to pressure to start making money right away,” Vembu continues. “They need to support their families. We train them, and in nine months, they produce at the level of college grads. Their resumes are not as marketable, but I tell you, these kids can code just as well as the rest. Often, better.”

An awesome treat to begin this fine Sunday.

Oh, and the article’s author — you might want to add her blog to your reader.

And I’m sure we will see a response from Yale that makes sense

NYT’s has a guest op-ed by Peru’s first Lady in which she takes Yale to task for playing a game of finder’s keepers. (My words not hers)

Besides the fact that one Mr. Howard Bingham was shady about “finding” the “lost city of the incas,” aka Machu Pichu, but even more ridiculous that Yale won’t give up the rights. (Bingham denied he had any help reaching Machu Pichu, instead attributing his find of a life time to “local rumor.” Ha ha, sure.

This too shall pass.

For our memories for now, but this incredulous example for a supposed “higher” institution of educational learner just shows how far an American-supermacist model can take you off the enlightened path.

I would say the good brethren at Yale are having some racial problems too, but since I have a few friends attending, I won’t comment.

Maybe President Bush, an alumnus can step in and give the Peruvians their artifacts back, but it’s highly unlikely from that skull & bone.

Reverbnation to become Tunehive?

Reverbnation and Tunehive

Registrant:
eMinor Inc

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: TUNEHIVE.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
NS27.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS28.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

The Question every American should be asking

To be informed, voters need to know the advisers our future president may be listening to. Who do each of you think are the two or three best qualified people to hold the positions of attorney general, secretary of defense, secretary of commerce, secretary of labor, national security adviser and secretary of energy?

— LORRAINE WOOD
Naugatuck, Conn.

From an NYT article.