Category Archives: Web 2.0

The iPhone Rapture: Apple Bias in the Media

(Disclosure: I own an iPhone and am extremely satisified with the device; so much so, in fact, that I have considered purchasing a MBP in the near future. It is my first Apple device ever — no, I never owned even an iPod.)

Not too long ago, I wrote a post exploring whether or not there exists an apple bias in the media (loosely defined as bloggers, journalists, TV anchors, etc.):

The media at large are enthralled with Macs and all things Apple — a major media outlet like the NewYork Times, a tech blog like Techcrunch or VentureBeat, or even a college newspaper.
Mac seems to represent not only the hip and elite, but smart, intelligent, and free-spirited — all superlatives we as writers love to associate ourselves with, even if only by brand.

Or as Stuff White People Like humorously remarks:

On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?
Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

You’ll see post, post, after post, after post, after post, after post, after post, after post by the devout and faithful Apple fans, but none of them are as honest as Mike Arrington:

So while I agree with Charles Cooper that Apple may sometimes get more press, and more compliant press, than they “should,” I think he and others miss the (much) larger point: Apple, and Steve Jobs, stoke our imagination in a way that no other technology company has ever done. Apple is about elegance, design, and potential, and we love them for it.

And he knows he’s got drunk on that Apple kool-aid:

I’ve been to enough Steve Jobs keynotes now to know that the man is able to take a crowd and bend it to his will. Every time, I’ve been a willing subject - sometimes (but not every time) to find myself in a hangover-like state a day later when I try to remember exactly why I thought that whatever he was pitching would change my life forever.

That’s why I like reading Mike’s writing: if you’re gonna be biased, be open and honest about it, and people will love you for it:

I love the iPhone for the same reason I love technology in general, and loved Disneyland as a child - it drives my imagination and makes me wonder what kind of magic to expect next. Also, it just works

This may be akin to those olds Apple Jacks commercials where the kids would always say “we eat what we like.”

The perfect reason for having an Apple bias? Nope.

An open and honest answer? Yes, sir.

For the rest of you Apple-toting fanboy press, tsk, tsk, tsk, try a full disclosure.

Is There an Apple Bias in the Media?

There was an interesting discussion today on Hacker News, generated by a post by Matt Maroon, simply titled, ‘Vista is Good.’

He certainly has an interesting lede:

As Apple fanboyism has spread throughout the tech publications, so too has Vista-bashing. In short order it went from being the Windows operating system that even Mac users were digging to the biggest mistake Microsoft ever made. The major media outlets who in tech, as with a lot of niches, take their cues from the blogs these days, have slowly followed suit, though they’ve been much more guarded about calling it a disaster.

Considering that most of the hackers (or at least those who comment) use OSX, Ubuntu, or some other variation of Mac or Linux-based OS, it’s not surprising that the general reaction was so hostile.

Partially because so many are drinking a bit too much haterade, but Matt brings up an interesting point that some consider “trolling”:

I am of the opinion that much of the tech media is held in thrall by Steve Jobs and is abandoning their job of fair and balanced reporting because they want to have early access to new iPhones and iPods. (In fairness, I blame Jobs as much for having that policy as I do for them abiding by it.)

Is there a bias favoring Apple in the Media?

Absolutely, positively, yes, in both the tech blogosphere and the mainstream media.

While covering tech for my school’s newspaper, I had an interesting conversation with my editors. I had asked them if I could cover CES, and they blankly stared at me asking “is it local — how does it affect our students.”

I tried to explain to them that it’s the biggest electronics show on the entire continent, and they gently rebutted me for its lack of local relevance.

The very next week, I get a breathless call from my editor, advising that I follow the MacWorld expo keynote by who else, but Steve Jobs. The next day, as soon as Jobs unveiled the MacBook air I was immediately buzzed by my editors, frantically asking that I round up a few student quotes and get into the office pronto to start hacking an article together on the earth-shattering news.

CES? No go. Not local enough.

Macbook Air released? Top priority. Also not local.Macbook Air

What was the difference? Why my editors, of course, are Mac Fangirls. They simply love and adore Mac. One of the pair got an iPhone for Christmas and was as attached to it as Gollum was to the ring.

But, you say, ‘it’s just one college newspaper — how does that demonstrate an apple bias in the media?’

For the weeks following the Macbook Air release, I could hardly go to the NYT website without seeing three or four articles PER DAY about Steve Jobs, Macbook Air, Apple, or all of the above. It was, in a word, digusting.

Even with all the ridiculous amounts of hype and coverage, I doubt a random person on the street would have any idea what a Macbook Air is.

‘A Macbook what?,’ they’d say.

But of course, an $1800 laptop isn’t targeted at the average person, because the average person is not stupid enough to pay nearly two thousand dollars for a product with the functionality more aptly valued at $500. So even with all the fawning coverage (and not as much advertising as, say, the iPhone) the Macbook Air is still, to the vast majority of Americans, an unknown quantity.

When I was at the O’Reilly Money:Tech conference in New York, I was more likely to see a blogger or journalist with an XO than a Windows-powered computer. Most all, of course, were sporting the glowing apple.

To my knowledge, not one of my VentureBeat cohorts owns anything but a Mac. I’m not positive about Matt Marshall, but Eric, MG, and Anthony seem to be hard-core Mac users.
Young, Hip, Intelligent. Using a Mac in a cafe.

How, then, can you ever expect an unbiased article when referring to Microsoft or Apple’s products or OS’s?

You can’t and you shouldn’t. (which, imho, is why I think each biased article should be preceded by a disclosure, unless, of course, if you’re reading TC which is thankfully openly biased.)

The media at large are enthralled with Macs and all things Apple — a major media outlet like the NewYork Times, a tech blog like Techcrunch or VentureBeat, or even a college newspaper.

Mac seems to represent not only the hip and elite, but smart, intelligent, and free-spirited — all superlatives we as writers love to associate ourselves with, even if only by brand.

Or, as Stuff White People Like puts it:

On the surface, you would ask yourself, how is that white people love a multi-billion dollar company with manufacturing plants in China, mass production, and that contributes to global pollution through the manufacture of consumer electronic devices?

Simple answer: Apple products tell the world you are creative and unique. They are an exclusive product line only used by every white college student, designer, writer, English teacher, and hipster on the planet.

The issue at hand is not MSFT OS vs MAC OS or Linux OS, the issue is the unfair bias towards Apple in the media.

There are certainly worse bias’ to have, and from someone who has an iPhone, I’m not an Apple-hater by any means, but as a writer, I must be perfectly honest … the bias is not only prevalent, but annoying and a bit irresponsible.

But hey, whoever said the media is fair?

What? 53,651 Early adopters traction DNE main stream adoption?

A very insightful post by Dare Obasanjo (a fellow Nigerian).

In his post, reminiscent of the book that he cites, Crossing the Chasm, he lays out a few points why targeting and solving problems for the early adopter crowd does not ensure success, nor mainstream adoption.

First, let’s define the audiences.

Early Adopters are risk takers who actually like to try new things.

Pragmatists might be willing to use new technology, if it’s the only way to get their problem solved.

Conservatives dislike new technology and try to avoid it.

Laggards pride themselves on the fact that they are the last to try anything new.

This drawing reflects the fact that there is no smooth or logical transition between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists. In between the Early Adopters and the Pragmatists there is a chasm. To successfully sell your product to the Pragmatists, you must “cross the chasm

Some technology trends that haven’t reached mainstream adoption:

*Blog Search: A few years ago, blog search engines were all the rage. You had people like Marc Cuban talking up IceRocket and Robert Scoble harranguing Web search companies to build dedicated blog search engines. Since then the products in that space have either given up the ghost (e.g. PubSub, Feedster), turned out to be irrelevant (e.g. Technorati, IceRocket) or were sidelined (e.g. Google Blog Search, Yahoo! Blog Search). The problem with this product category is that except for journalists, marketers and ego surfing A-list bloggers there aren’t many people who need a specialized feature set around searching blogs.

Social bookmarking: Although del.icio.us popularized a number of “Web 2.0″ trends such as tagging, REST APIs and adding social features to a previously individual task, it has never really taken off as a mainstream product. According to the former VC behind the service it seems to have peaked at 2 million unique visitors last year and is now seeing about half that number of unique users. Compare that to Yahoo! bookmarks which was seeing 20 million active users a year and a half ago.

RSS Readers: I’ve lost track of all of the this is the year RSS goes mainstream articles I’ve read over the past few years. Although RSS has turned out to be a key technology which powers a number of interesting functionality behind the scenes (e.g. podcasting) actually subscribing and reading news feeds in an RSS reader has not become a mainstream activity of Web users. When you think about it, it is kind of obvious. The problem an RSS reader solves is “I read so many blogs and news sites on daily basis, I need a tool to help me keep them all straight”. How many people who aren’t enthusiastic early adopters (i) have this problem and (ii) think they need a tool to deal with it?

Here’s an excerpt reminiscent of what I wrote in my post, Blogger v. Reality: Crossing the Chasm:

1. Just because you wish something to be true, does not make it so.

If you think I’m referring to the great twitter debate, it’s probably because I am. (Don’t know what Twitter is?)

However the one overriding theme is that all of these recent entrants is that they solve problems that everyone [or at least a large section of the populace] has. Everyone likes to communicate with their social circle. Everyone likes watching funny videos and looking at couple pics. Everyone wants to find information about topics they interested in or find out what’s going on around them. Everybody wants to get laid.

If you are a Web 2.0 company in today’s Web you really need to ask yourselves, “Are we solving a problem that everybody has or are we building a product for Robert Scoble?”

That also reminds me of a famed Josh Kopelman quote:

Too many companies are targeting an audience (Techcrunch circa May 2006) of 53,651.

Xobni pimped by the New York Times

(This is a post I originally wrote for IST Building)

It’s not every day a Penn State co-founded start-up is mentioned by Bill Gates. Now, that same company, Xobni (zob-nee) founded by PSU ‘03 Electrical Engineering (and Schreyers) alumnus Matt Brezina, whose email capabilities Gates called “the future of social networking”, is featured in one of the top publications in the United States — the New York Times.

Xobni is featured in today’s New York Times as the service finally opens up to public beta use. With 50,000 users and 140,000 more on the waiting list, it seems plausible that the fledgling company that just turned down Microsoft’s acquisition offer (this wasn’t as high profile as the Yahoo bid, of course) will see some significant traction.

This, a follow-up to fellow Y Combinator alumnus Weebly(self-described as web page creation that ‘doesn’t suck’), which was ranked in Time’s 50 best websites of 2007, and this may be the (good) writing on the wall, forecasting the future direction of Penn State start-ups.

So what is Xobni?

From a previous article:

Xobni’s goal is to not only revolutionize its users inboxes, but also organize personal information, Brezina said.

“Our goal is to organize information around relationships. We want to be the Google of personal information,” he said.

His company’s first product, Xobni Insight, is a Microsoft Outlook plug-in that extracts information from the emails stored in Outlook. With the information, Xobni’s toolbar automatically creates profiles of each email user, displaying a person’s relationship, attachments sent, a history of emails sent between the two parties, as well as a time graph showing at what time of day the most quantity of emails was sent.

While Xobni is focused for now on email organization for Outlook, it wants to be able to aggregate information from different webmail clients such as Gmail, Yahoo, and others. Brezina said it also wants to bring in instant messaging, and aggregate information from social networks.

Brezina gave the example of a friend who remembers a story another friend related about a ski resort in Vermont. A user will be able to search Xobni’s database for “Stow,” the name of the ski resort, and instantly find all the related threads , conversations, and media traded with friends.

Venturebeat’s Editor-in-Chief (my boss) Matt Marshall gives a bit more insight on Xobni’s future plans:

Notably, Xobni is also working with third party developers to let them build applications with Xobni. By allowing third party integration for its APIs, Xobni becomes a trojan horse for those third parties to access Outlook integration through a plugin. Microsoft Outlook doesn’t offer a friendly set of APIs for people to plug into Outlook, and so Xobni hopes to become the place developers come to for such access. Salesforce is a good example. If you’re emailing someone, Xobni could show you — through an integration with Salesforce — how many sales calls you’ve made to the person, and how many dollars in computer sales you’ve made to them. Xobni will announce such partnerships over the coming weeks.

VP of engineering Gabor Cselle, such a geek (respectfully I say this) that he wrote his thesis on organizing email, has a much more technical analysis of the email nightmare Xobni seeks to solve:

Experts say that there are two types of email users: Cleaners and Keepers. Cleaners receive only a few emails a day, and they meticulously file each email into a specific folder. Keepers, on the other hand, receive copious amounts of email, and although they may start out with a good organizational system, it is quickly abandoned. We designed Xobni for the Keepers — the everyday people who need a product that will help navigate their flooded inbox.

The average Xobni user deals with a whopping 30,000 stored emails and communicate with some 1,900 people. For many, this means sifting through several hundred messages every day. It’s only going to get worse: the Radicati Group estimates that by 2009, people will spend up to 41% of their workday dealing with emails. We are experiencing bona fide email overload, and the challenge for us “power users” is to find a way to process and organize large volumes of information over a short period of time.

If you’ve read my blog, you’ve probably seen countless post after post hailing Xobni as King — but then again I’m biased. Matt graduated from State High, and I knew his sister years before I knew him or his email-revolutionizing company. That being said, he’s a pretty cool guy to know, regardless of whether or not he ever started Xobni.

Many PSU students don’t even use Outlook, but Xobni has plans to integrate not just with other webmail clients such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or Gmail, but also services such as Facebook (which has a horrible UI to search/store messages), LinkedIn and Salesforce.

Liz Kisenwhether, Director of the Entrepreneurship Minor here at Penn State, has brought Matt in to speak with various classes and meet with students as part of the Spring 2008 Bishoff Entrepreneur in Residence program. Although I’m not sure when he’ll be back next (as a State College native I’m sure this will be quite frequently), I highly advise any students interested in technology start-ups to speak with Matt as he gives some pretty insightful feedback on everything from refining your vision, to investment pitching.

News like this would be probably pretty standard for a Berkeley, Stanford, or MIT alumnus (which coincidentally, is where Matt’s co-founder Adam Smith graduated from) — so this shows Penn State has a ton of work to become a major player in Technology start-ups, but this University is clearly on the right path. (Although I wonder how many more start-ups could come out of this place if they didn’t horde Intellectual Property like Gollum and the ring)

Congratulations to Matt and co. for the exciting news — it’s currently the 5th most popular technology post on the NYT (unfortunate if it is overshadowed by the Microsoft-Yahoo battle, which (temporarily) ended on Saturday) , certainly in part to the support they get from the Y Combinator community.

Blogger v. Reality: Crossing the Chasm


Take a deep breath.

Bear with me and hear me out.

I joined the world of print press in September of last year, and the professional (albeit freelancing) world of blogging later in December (although my first post was right after the new year). I’ve had variations of personal blogs, from blogger to xanga to wordpress, for about five years, and surprisingly I’ve been known to speak the truth as I see it.

So it may (or may not if you know me) come as a bit of a shock when I say that bloggers, specifically tech/web2.0/startup bloggers (I don’t follow many other blogs so I’ll talk about what I ((think I )) know) are often out of touch with reality.

For two simple reasons …

1. Just because you wish something to be true, does not make it so.

If you think I’m referring to the great twitter debate, it’s probably because I am. (Don’t know what Twitter is?)

Kara Swisher’s post, “Twitter: Where Nobody Knows Your Name,” was the straw that broke the camel’s back of the discourse.

Swisher, of popular technology blog All Things Digital, highlights her experience at a wedding in the US capital.

And I conducted a little experiment among the more than 100 folks gathered for the wedding, all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology.

They were also made up of a wide range of ages and genders, from kids to seniors.

And so I asked a large group of people–about 30–and here is the grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0

She goes on to ask for predictions of “when the delta is reached when early adopter interest meets mainstream attention.”

Undoubtedly, there were various responses throughout the blogosphere (read: echo chamber).

And no surprise, many were stumbling all over themselves crying out “just be patient” and “give Twitter a chance!”

Now I use Twitter, so I’m just as un-objective as the next blogger, but I have to ask myself, “what vested interest does Joe Blogger have in Twitter’s rise to glory?”

See, all the bloggers defending Twitter so desperately WANT Twitter to go mainstream. It’s the very essence of web 2.0. — Simple app, built quickly with a small team, millions of dollars raised, adored and used (every second) by bloggers.

Oh, and it has no business model.

(Although in all fairness when Matt Marshall was running me through the ropes, this was the first question he told me I should ask the companies I interview — then again, he wrote for the Wall Street Journal so maybe he doesn’t count).

Put simply it’s an app that’s For Bloggers By Bloggers.

(Some comments on the post from “A-list” bloggers that I would put here, but the post was becoming way too long).

From the look of things, we’ve seen this debate before.

Digg and “social news aggregation.”

Digg, which was once Mike Arrington’s baby, (which YC-baby Reddit unknowingly cloned) doesn’t seem to share the same quality of space as Yahoo Buzz.

(see the whopping boost Buzz gave Techcrunch)

See Yahoo, which has millions upon millions of users, took a very “new” concept of social news aggregation, waited for it to catch on in the tech community, and then provided it to its hundreds of millions of users who never heard of Digg.

(I remember playing a game of Taboo at Thanksgiving, and the word came up Dig, and I said “think a website where you submit and share news stories and links ….. cricket, cricket, cricket).

What’s to stop Microhoo from doing the same thing to Twitter?

Oh, no! The tech world might collapse if millions of users are using a competing service to Twitter (and because most bloggers are driven by the need to draw traffic, they’ll of course –if not make a complete switch –at least utilize dual services).

So many tech bloggers want, in fact, need, Twitter to be worthwhile and sustainable that I wager it clouds their judgment just a tiny bit.

Just because you may wish for it to catch on and go multi-platinum does not mean it will. This desire to see the same tools and apps they (we) love, often times cloud their (our) vision and drags us that much further from reality.

Is there room in the market for more than one competitor? Of course, Twitter already has Pownce, Jaiku, and a range of others snapping at its heels. Even Digg and Reddit can somewhat co-exit, although uneasily, with the entrance of a dominant player like Yahoo.

But really, it’s about our mentality.

We’re not coming to the table to have our needs met, we’re swaggering drunken gluttons coming to eat to our heart’s content on all the hot, hip technology we can get our hands on.

2. The marginal cost of blogging means anyone can criticize a web/mobile application, but how many of the critics can build one?

One of the most cited quotes from the pre-WW II era belongs to Teddy Roosvelt (and in fact this quote hanging on my wall), clipped from his address “Citizenship in a Republic,” at the Sorbonne, Paris, on April 23, 1910:

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

The danger of being a blogger, whether an “A-lister,” a professional blogger, or just a hobby blogger is being that critic. For the longest time in my life, I’ve considered myself the man in the arena. I ran track, played football, and did numerous other scholastic events and a few achievements that meant others wrote about me, not visa-versa. No, I wasn’t a Michael Johnson of course (more precisely Bernard Lagat, but maybe one day…) but I always scoffed at the journalists who would chronicle events and more often than not make a debauchery of quotes, criticism (unfounded or not), and their articles hacked away from the safety of a computer.

I’ve never wanted to be the critic — I’ve always wanted to be the doer, the competitor, or in this case, the tech hacker/entrepreneur.

So naturally, one of the things I fear most about writing for VentureBeat (freelance) — and what I think most other bloggers should think about, whether nor not they do — is that I’ll gain this higher-than-thou status from the perch of my chair, laptop and cellphone, giving death and life with the words mashed together on the tips of my fingers.

What have I — or any blogger — done noteworthy in this particular field to deserve to be the voice of reason or doubt, pride or prejudice, praise or shame on any of the start-ups, Venture Capitalists, angel investors, and existing internet behemoths that we cover?

Knowledge is power — and I imagine that journalism/blogging is a gate keeping of sorts, but there’s always a danger for one who has never been of assuming too much.

For all the gripe about Twitter down-time, how many of those same bloggers has built and scaled a web app to millions of users?

Arrington’s Edgeio certainly didn’t have that problem.

Power bloggers Jeff Jarvis, Dave Winer, AND Arrington’s Daylife again doesn’t have that problem.

I know Eric Eldon has launched a company, through Y Combinator (although it tried to start as a non-profit) that to my knowledge, hasn’t really taken off.

That’s not a knock against Mike or Eric — yet those two are terrific bloggers and seemingly, besides blogging, haven’t launched run-away successes (although neither’s start-ups are in the dead pool).

For this reason I say bloggers are in a constant struggle with reality — the power of the pen (or the keys, rather) is more than just that, it’s also a responsibility.

But there’s a recognition that we all must make: most of us haven’t made it to the promised land yet our passing judgment on those in various stages of their assault into it, and we must be careful not to swing the axe of hypocrisy.

I, for one, have a pretty cool idea I’m working on, that should be ready in the next six months or so — but what if it fails?

I believe in this era, the bloggers are much more closer to closing the chasm –between perception and reality, critique and participation — than journalists have been for the past several decades have been.

Why?

Because Mike HAS had a successful start-up (besides his previous ventures). It’s called Techcrunch.

Ditto for Matt Marshall at VentureBeat, Om Malik, Robert Scoble, and a host of others who have bootstrapped themselves to building companies out of popular blogs.

But the chasm is not closed — not between the echo chamber and reality, nor between entrepreneurship and those who critique — because each person who comes on after the fact (i.e. myself) that is earning bucks probably didn’t go through hell and high water to make the start-up take off.

A little blood and sweat sure — but again the gap is still there.

In fact, in an effort not to drink a bit too muchhaterade, and I certainly don’t want to come across as a better-than-thou type. In fact, the start-up I’m working on is sans-business model (although I do have one in the back of my head).

I simply enjoy telling people the truth: The Starbucks goddess does not rule the world, Facebook is great but not worthy of our worship, and you don’t need to have a Macbook Pro/Air to be cool, kind of truth. (but since you’re probably a “geek” ((awesome cliche word for anybody who reads Techcrunch and Engadget from an iPhone)), having one makes you feel better)

I have a simple piece of advice to make …

Keep a foot in both worlds — whatever you’re most involved in (in this case, the technological/ web/mobile application world) — and the real world. (i.e. people who don’t have a Facebook account, don’t know what Digg is, and send text messages ((how old school)) as well as those who are bootstrapping their existences for their company).

I seriously doubt that the chasm can or will ever fully close, but I humbly stay in pursuit with my words of what we all should …

Truth.

“A-list bloggers” comments on Twitter

I always laugh when I hear or see the word “A-list.”

Ah, people and their pride.

Let’s take a look at some of the comments on Kara’s blog and across the “blogosphere.” (Admittedly I laugh every time I type that word).

Scott Heiferman, Meetup.com CEO and maybe one of the lone voices of reason, says

Making a householdword is the great challenge. Not only does the word need to be universally known, but it has to be universally known for something that people need. eBay, Amazon, Google, and Craigslist are universally known, and people need what those words mean: People need to buy & sell & search in their everyday lives. SecondLife is known, but people don’t need it; Flickr could be the word that means photography — the Kodak of the 21st century — but it’s wide value prop is fuzzy, and my non-tech friends still send me their crappy Shutterfly links. I’m highly suspicious of most startups’ potential to reach sustainable householdword status because they’re not really serving real people’s needs. As for Facebook, people need to stay in touch with people they know, so they’re on-track, but I suspect their word is too muddied with pokes & kid stuff.

but popular VC (investor in Twitter) and blogger Fred Wilson chimes in (mildly) optimistically saying

it’s a great point and the second challenge twitter has, after scaling, is to go mainstream.

many think it can’t happen.

i have been slowly but surely turning on my friends who don’t even use facebook to twitter.

none of them work in the tech world (easier to find friends like that in NYC)

i just tell them to text “follow fredwilson” to 40404 and when/if they get tired of it to text “leave fredwilson” to 40404

what’s interesting to me is that some really like it and have been using it with their friends

so i am optimistic, but also mindful that crossing the chasm is not easy and that twitter has a long way to go on multiple fronts in order to truly go mainstream

He then later complains about wanting to temporarily unfollow people.
And the pure bloggers?

Dave Winer says

It’ll catch on, Twitter is powerful. We need more than one vendor though. There was a time when blogs were like this, outside a few thousand people, no one knew about them, and now you’re asking this classic question on a blog. Seems a little ironic, but perfectly natural!

While Dave McClure gives one of the few predictions (and boasts about twittering about the birth of his child):

mmm.. i predict twitter “mainstreams” in ~2-3 years, friendfeed in ~3-4 years.

(altho my guess is both get acquired / integrated into something else before then).

would have been interesting to ask about Digg, which i think has already crossed over a bit.

(ps - i twittered the birth of our second child, including 3 cervix dilation updates… NERD!

Sarah Lacy is surprised by the international ubiquity of Twitter (maybe because text messages are so expensive in the US):

My in-laws asked my husband if it was an invasion of our privacy to “follow us” and while I was out of town my parents– who use absolutely zero social networking or social media sites and are doing good if they read anything I write — sent an email to my husband that read, “What is a Twitter? Is it just like a one-line blog?” I was floored. And, let’s not forget international. Every time I travel outside the U.S. I’m stunned by Twitter’s ubiquity. After all, mobile apps are much stronger outside the U.S. In my own informal polls, people in Europe and the Middle East rank Twitter among the most global companies in the Valley, well above Facebook even.

In short, Twitter isn’t mainstream, but it’s getting outside the echo chamber fast. The problem is it’s not necessarily in predictable ways. It’s in random spurts

Jeff Clavier, an investor in Seesmic (which acquired Twhirl, an application built off of Twitter’s API), who at least realizes that the success of a micro-blogging platform does not mean it has go to be Twitter:

Note that I am making the case for a broad adoption of micro-blogging, or whatever that “super easy posting of a personal status update” is called. As to whether Twitter, Facebook or another yet-to-come service will be the “winner” in the space, who knows. But the broader audience, and the broader need, will be there. As to how you turn this into a business, and make money? There are enough smart people in and around these services, and enough usage, that something will eventually be figured out IMHO.


Matthew Ingram considers Twitter at the early-stage status of Chat applications or a Facebook:

But I don’t think the concept of Twitter is quite as foreign as many people make it out to be — and certainly no more foreign than the idea of “instant messaging” was not all that long ago. And as MG Siegler notes, there are some pretty cool apps being built on top of it.


Dan Farber quotes Steve Gillmour:

In this context, Twitter is a highly efficient way to share, discover, and market ideas. My journalist/blogger friends have taken to Twitter broadcasts of their posts, and on occasion I have Twittered live events, broadcasting my notes and observations to followers, who receive it in real time or for later consumption. You can also “Track” keywords to follow people or concepts without signing up to follow them. “It creates a public/private scenario where discoverability and special social interactions can happen,” Gillmor said.

but maybe more revealing says:


Twitter adds to the overflow of information, but if you find the right people to follow, or lead, it does offer a good ROI for the time spent consuming 140 characters at a time.

DING DING DING DING!

In a moment of pure echo chamber Robert Scoble says

If no one is on Twitter why am I getting a new Tweet every second?

Yeah, Kara Swisher’s friends aren’t on Twitter. Of course they are the same type who would look at you strange back in 1977 if you bought an Apple II for $5,000 like my dad did.

(Maybe he should try reading the Paul Graham essay on how to disagree)

My personal favorite, though, is MG Siegler’s take on Twitter:

Third, even within the tech world itself I’ve seen Twitter “haters” turn into “players” in a matter of months. I won’t name names, but there are several folks out there who had absolutely nothing nice to say about Twitter when they first heard about it and saw it in action. Every single one of those people have now changed their minds and use the service regularly.

To which I reply (via twitter):

Nurture vs. Nature: Is Entrepreneurship born or developed?

Shall I start this post with a quote?

“The common denominator of success — the secret of success of every man who has ever been successful — lies in the fact that he formed the habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do.” Albert E.N. Gray, exceprt from a major address at the 1940 NALU (National Association of Life Underwriters) annual convention in Philadelphia.

There’s been some debate throughout history, with whether a certain trait or characteristic is innate, or whether its developed. A scientist may call it a discourse on Nature vs. Nature.

With the advent of entrepreneurship — the term at least, the practice of it has been around since the origins of humanity of course — that discourse has extended to it.

Is an entrepreneur born or is he or she developed?

A friend sent me an email today saying “I am becoming convinced that entrepreneurs are born and cannot be made. Not good if you teach entrepreneurship.”

A very interesting argument to be sure, based on this person’s experiences with start-ups, but I’m not sure I wholly agree.

I think, it’s a combined force of nature and nature.

Some have it in them sure, some entrepreneurial characteristics. I’d say a bit of a rebellious nature is probably necessary. Also some confidence (this helps to whither the tough times), resilience, and a general vision and the will to gut it out.

But is the “habit of doing things that failures don’t like to do” innate, or can it be developed?

If only I had an audience to pitch this to, we could have some valuable discourse, unfortunately I’m not a beggar and I won’t be riding any wishes :).

A habit, of course, can be formed, and I believe the same is true with entrepreneurship. It is more a habit and a way of thinking than it is an actual characteristic that one is born with.

Some are most likely born with a greater propensity to develop this habit (just the way some are born with a high propensity to be alcoholics), but I wouldn’t bet that entrepreneurs cannot be developed.

At the heart of this question is whether or not a man can change his destiny. If he can’t, then he is destined to be and to do the path laid out before him. (i.e. he can’t be an entrepreneur)

And if we can change our destiny … ?

Stream of consciousness: IM chat clients and the rise of Social Networks, Why Google will buy Scribd or Docstoc

Many in the start-up world frequently mention an interesting warning: don’t create a product that is a solution looking for a problem. Rather, find the problem, and create the solution to it.

I’m not here to debate the veracity of that argument, but rather present an interesting thought that I twittered.

On IM chat clients, specifically AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger, it took years before you could leave a message for someone and them receive it upon signing back in the service (if the message was sent while they were logged out.)

Add that to the skyrocketing use of the away message, and it was nearly impossible to know if the intended recipient truly read the message or not. Perhaps he or she signed in a different computer and logged out the computer logged in with the away message. Maybe the user signed in and accidentally closed the window with the message.

I wonder how much this contributed to the rise of the static social network (i.e. Friendster, Facebook, Hi5, Myspace, etc.)

Guestbooks, known on Fbook as “The Wall” and on MySpace as simply comments, has been around for years before the web 2.0 era, but usually hosted on an individual service platform, a la tripod or geocities, which wasn’t really well connected with users.

Xanga did a better job of this, but it was still more about blogging and sharing your life story than it was about connecting with your friends.

Even now, when I use AIM integrated with Gmail, my Gmail sidebar only shows me users who are “active.” I have about fifty friends who are always signed on, albeit with an “away message.” With the ability to send messages while in away status (and to even hide being signed on) this inevitably has led to most people simply never taking off their away message.

Obviously, this is a boon for privacy, but not so much for communication. That’s what I feel is the main attractiveness about the wall (besides being a lot less private than a direct IM). You leave a message, and if the user uses the service regularly, they WILL see the message, no doubt about it (as well as all of his or her friends).

Honestly I know this is a lot of analysis on such a small feature, but I strongly believe that it’s the small features that make or break a service.

Oh, and while using Gmail today, I realized that the behemoth must have plans to buy either Scribd or Docstoc.

Why?

Well when someone sends me an mp3, I can open that directly via Gmail, ditto for a 97-2003 word document, excel spreadsheet, or powerpoint.

But I can’t do that with a PDF.

I have to actually download the PDF to my computer, which is a big pain. And until they have Gdrive, maybe even more important when Gdrive releases, seamless PDF integration will be very important, and I believe Docstoc or Scribd will fit in nicely with Google Docs, Gmail, and the Google Apps suite.

Penn State beginning to dominate Ideablob

There have been two recent strong showings by Penn Staters on Ideablob. (One, Mashavu, wants to make medical care a bit more social).

So we’ve shown we can have good ideas, lets show the world Penn Staters can actually build successful products and companies.

Here’s an article from Daehee and IST Building (and another one from Rob Shedd):

One of our very own is running in the Final 8 on an entrepreneurship competition website called IdeaBlob. Matt Allison (Senior, Economics with minor in Engineering Entrepreneurship) has come up with a way to improve exercise at home. He suggests a personal trainer device that syncs up with a social networking website. Matt describes his product by introducing the pain in the market,

Individuals begin fitness programs each year, but set unrealistic goals or improperly structure their fitness programs and eventually lose interest. I’m developing a portable touch-screen device equipped with a heart rate monitor, acting as a personal trainer. The device uploads workouts from our website, where based off an individual’s fitness goals, they can build their own workout or use one of ours. The device displays progress charts, advice for future workouts, and can incorporate daily nutrition information. The website also functions as a social networking website centered around device results for exercise gurus, athletes, and anyone who enjoys living a healthy lifestyle.

Matt Allison can use all the votes he can get to rise to the top of the IdeaBlob competition this month. Support a fellow Penn State student and vote for his idea today.

IdeaBlob awards $10k every month to a top voted startup idea. If Matt’s team wins the money, he says,

With $10,000, we will invest the first $3,500 into web development fees to get the website up and running. Most of the website is already built; however we need some assistance in making the website sync properly with the device we are using. We will be purchasing 4 devices for prototyping at about $140/unit. The remaining $ 5,940 will be used for programming fees for the device.

Of course, $10k is not enough to begin manufacturing units for this commercial product, but it will allows Matt’s team to build a prototype that can then be used to raise millions of dollars in venture capital funding.

Back in February, another Penn State team won the IdeaBlob competition for a laptop networking solution for the medical infrastructure in third world countries. Because IST students have a wide exposure to and understanding of technology, I bet many of us have killer ideas that can solve current problems. So why not capitalize on an idea? Don’t waste it in your head, and IdeaBlob is just one place to start!

A unified social graph

Or something like that, go check this out.