The latest from TechCrunch
- How Did The Major Online Retailers Cope With Black Friday Madness?
- NSFW: 1200 words absolutely, definitely not about Rupert Murdoch and Google
- Winner's Curse: Why Losing A B-School Biz Plan Competition Is Better Than Winning
| How Did The Major Online Retailers Cope With Black Friday Madness? | Top |
| Website monitoring service InternetVista vigorously measured the uptime and response time of seven of the most popular Internet retail websites from Monday morning November 24 until midnight November 28, to see how the online outlets would cope with the Black Friday madness, traditionally one of the busiest shopping periods in the United States both on the Web as in meat space. InternetVista pinged Amazon.com, Apple.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Dell.com, Target.com, ToysRus.com and Walmart.com every minute for the entire workweek from multiple datacenters located around the world, in order to find how well the websites were handling the influx of visitors looking for great bargains. Turns out all of them managed to stay online the whole time, with the exception of a brief period of downtime that was registered for the Toys”R”Us website, although notably most of the websites clearly suffered from slower response times at busy times. The report – embedded below – shows that the uptime of six out of seven online retail websites was 100% for the entire period, with only Toysrus.com experiencing downtime for 5 minutes (meaning the site still registered 99.9% uptime in total). Perhaps not so surprisingly, practically all of the measured online retail websites suffered from slower response times – particularly on Friday afternoon and evening – with the exception of computer manufacturers Dell and Apple, whose websites actually loaded faster at the end than at the beginning of the week. On average, Walmart.com scored best with an average response time of 0.512 seconds, just beating Apple.com, which came in second with an average loading time of 0.513 seconds. Dell.com’s performance stood out as the poorest with an average load time of 2.75 seconds, at one point even taking nearly 50 seconds (!) to load in its entirety. Have you shopped at any of the measured websites last week? Did you notice any slowness? InternetVista – Uptime of Online Retailers during Black Friday – InternetVista – Online retailers on Black Friday – report – Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | |
| NSFW: 1200 words absolutely, definitely not about Rupert Murdoch and Google | Top |
| One of the most tiresome group of people you encounter when you write a weekly column is the “suggesters”. Throughout the week, my inbox receives a steady flow of emails; from friends, from colleagues, but mostly from total strangers – all containing useful links to stories they “assume I’ve seen”. And always with the same suggestion: “you should write about this in your column!”. Worse than the suggesters are the “trusters”. They’re even more irritating because of their belief that they wield some kind of editorial influence. “Trust you’ll be writing about this in your column this week. Can’t wait to hear your take on it!” they say, blithely assuming that their lack of patience will ultimately be rewarded. Some of them even add a ‘LOL’ to further underline what total and utter wankers they are. In truth, it rarely pays to indulge the recommenders or the trusters. If a subject has blipped across their radar then chances are, by the time my weekly deadline has come around, it will have been done to death by other bloggers and columnists. By Saturday even the person who ‘couldn’t wait’ to hear my take on a subject will be utterly bored with it. The perfect example of this is Rupert Murdoch’s “ threat ” to remove News Corp content from Google, and his “ negotiations ” with Microsoft to make articles from The Wall Street Journal and the rest “only available on Bing”. It’s no exaggeration to say that the entire fucking universe has emailed me to say how much they’re looking forward to hearing my opinion on the prospect. Apparently my criticism of the aborted Microsoft adverti-raping of Family Guy means my views on Microsoft and Murdoch somehow matter a damn, and the fact that I’ve worked for old and new media means that I have some unique additional insight. Also, I swear a lot when I talk about Rupert or Microsoft, and people dig that shit. After the eighty-six-millionth email dinged into my inbox, I did almost consider surrendering to popular pressure and dedicating an entire column to my analysis of whether such an arrangement is ever likely to happen and what it would mean for Google, and the wider world. But then I realised that I’m paid to write long, and that a column like that would read as follows (in its entirety)… Will News Corp Remove Its Content From Google, And If So What Will It Mean For The World? No. And nothing. …which feels lazy, even for me. The fact is, as a Brit, I’ve seen Murdoch pulling this crap countless times before. The News Corp-owned Sun is the biggest-selling newspaper in the UK, and second biggest-selling English language newspaper in the world. In every national election for as long as anyone can remember, the candidate backed by the Sun has gone on to win. (And not just in the UK – the paper backed Obama for President, even though Murdoch also owns Fox News.) The Sun’s endorsement of winners is, according to some , evidence of Murdoch-as-kingmaker; a man with the ability to shape opinion and to win (or lose) elections. Sure enough, the Sun’s recent shift from supporting Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to Conservative rival David Cameron coincided with a spike in opinion polls for the latter to become the next Prime Minister. But to assume that Murdoch’s backing of Cameron lead to the spike is to flip cause and effect. Murdoch doesn’t create winners, he’s simply adept at spotting where public opinion is heading – waiting until he’s absolutely certain who the winner of a fight will be – and then endorsing them so loudly that when they inevitably win, he can share all the credit. “It’s The Sun Wot Won It”, the paper once declared after an election, when in fact a more accurate headline would be “it’s the Sun wot noticed it”. The idea that Murdoch removing his content from Google will be the beginning of the end for the latter’s dominance is just nonsense. Sure a few smaller news rivals might be dumb enough to heed his rallying cry for a mass-boycott of Google News, but that will just be an added bonus to Murdoch. The numbers show that most searchers wouldn’t even notice if the Wall Street Journal and every other News Corp publication vanished from their results. What would definitely happen, though, is a huge drop in eyeballs and ad revenue for News Corp, which would certainly cost Murdoch far more than he could hope to recoup from a deal with Bing. Again, anyone familiar with the Sun (and its New York-based cousin, the Post) will know that Rupert will always put his hunger for eyeballs above his insistence that people pay for news – to the point where he is happy to slash cover prices to economically-suicidal levels to win readers. But fortunately Murdoch doesn’t need to make that decision: unlike in politics where you can’t endorse both candidates, there’s really no reason for him to pick a horse in the search race. His ideal scenario is to continue to make News Corp content available via both Google and Bing, but to encourage both to display it in a way that drives the maximum monetizable eyeballs. Which is exactly what his current strategy will achieve. By convincing Bing that there’s a chance he might drop Google – for the right price – Murdoch suddenly has a new partner falling over itself to give him prominence in their search results, on his terms. Sure enough, Microsoft has just agreed to help fund the next-generation search crawling protocol, ACAP , which gives content owners like News Corp more control over how their news is indexed. Meantime, Google might not be worried about a mass exodus to Bing, but as more publishers start to consider alternative search services they have to at least begin to take ACAP seriously. After all, if you want to index the world’s information, you have to accept that a big chunk of that information belongs to Rupert. Again, this is win-win for Murdoch who can keep his content on Google, but with the option of locking some of it away behind un-indexable walls in future. And that’s where we see Murdoch’s real genius: he has managed to use his illusion of influence to get all of these benefits without having to commit himself to anything, or expose himself in any way. There is no way in hell that News Corp content will vanish from Google and yet with every headline asking whether Google should be worried or suggesting that other companies might follow Murdoch’s lead, his image as a kingmaker is strengthened. It’s bad enough that he has millions of readers and viewers for his own outlets, without the rest of us doing his dirty work for him. And it’s for that reason that I won’t be swayed by the recommenders and the trusters, no matter how many emails they send. I know Murdoch’s game, and unlike my poor misguided TechCrunch colleagues, I refuse to play it. So, sorry Rupert, I don’t know what my column will be about this week, but one thing’s for sure: it won’t include a single word about you or your…. …oh. Damn you’re good. Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | |
| Winner's Curse: Why Losing A B-School Biz Plan Competition Is Better Than Winning | Top |
| One of the best things about being an academic is being able to mold young minds and guide them to success. When one of my students , Andrew Leblanc told me he was entering the Duke Startup Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition , I told him to come and see me and do a practice run. After all, I had judged several of these contests at Duke and other universities. I thought I knew what worked. After the eleventh iteration, Andrew got it right. He wasn't trying to pack his presentation with unnecessary details. He had slowed down his pitch, added a personal touch and was now exuding confidence. Andrew even researched the background of the judges and tailored his message to their interests. So after two hours of intense preparation, I had little doubt that Andrew would win. Andrew lost. I was surprised. But what I told him afterward is that it really doesn’t matter. Contrary to what the organizers of these competitions will tell you, university business plan contests don't produce winning companies. Yes, a number of companies have emerged from business plan bake-offs that have been moderate or small successes. But not a single home-run has emerged from this now-omnipresent practice. This is not to say that the contests are bad. Instead, they educate students in entrepreneurship and motivate them to come up with interesting ideas. But for all of you out there who think a biz plan victory is a ticket to the big time, think again. And for all the engineering students who think any outcome but victory is a waste of time, you also need to think again. Even though he lost, Andrew met a potential partner and also got to speak with Bill Maris of Google Ventures, a priceless encounter. (Bill promised to introduce Andrew to the Google Power Meter team. Don’t forget, Bill!). In fact, let me throw out a radical thought. I submit that losing in a business plan contest is actually more beneficial than winning. There is a growing body of research that children who are praised too early and too easily end up under-performing peers who are not praised but are told, in constructive terms, they can do better. This is one of the core tenets of Po Bronson’s new book on parenting, " Nurture Shock ." Extending this to the realm of entrepreneurship might be a leap (and it could be great fodder for a future PhD dissertation). But to me the outcomes don’t lie. Business plan competitions don’t breed winning businesses. Rather than winning a beauty contest, building a business is a marathon that requires steady and constant effort , surmounting regular difficulties , and living through emotional peaks and valleys. The very roots of the current business plan craze go back to one of the periods that represents a low-point in sane business practices. The business plan competitions first started in the dotcom days. At that time, there was a frantic rush to start new companies. Entrepreneurs would create professional-looking, buzzword-laden business plans. Venture capitalists would then trip over each other to fund these plans, usually with way too much money. The prevailing theory was that a good business idea and enough money were enough to create the next hot IPO. B-schools readily jumped on the bandwagon and soon an arms race ensued to see which school could offer a bigger prize to winners. With the bursting of the dotcom bubble, the tech world was reminded that even a great idea funded by venture capital didn’t necessarily produce business success. In hindsight everyone saw that it took more than a good idea. It took a thorough understanding of the market, excellent management, and the ability to navigate rough waters to build a thriving enterprise. Some of the biggest dotcom winners came from me-too ideas that were executed better than the originals. Nor was this anomalous. Ask any seasoned entrepreneur in any industry, and he or she will likely tell you that his or her first business plan was probably the best work of fiction they ever created. A glimpse back through the big winners of the Dotcom Era also underscores the lack of impact business plan competitions actually had. Amazon, Google, Ebay, Yahoo—none of them won a business plan contest. In fact, not a single home run from that era won a business plan contest. And one of the biggest successes of its time, Akamai Technologies, actually lost the M.I.T. $100K contest . After the great Internet Bubble burst, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs quickly adapted to the new reality and went back to basics. But no one told the b-schools. From Silicon Valley to Research Triangle Park to New Delhi and Shanghai, new contests are still sprouting. Only now, the prizes have gotten bigger and the competitions more serious. Yet real successes remains non-existent. (If I’m wrong in five years on this, then call me out). But failure is no surprise for these b-school business launches Without a solid understanding of market needs and real-world validation of their ideas, few young entrepreneurs can achieve their business-plan projections. The hottest startup methodologies of today, built around ideas fostered by Y-Combinator and TechStars emphasize giving startups almost no money and encouraging them to get a product to market as quickly as possible in order to get real world validation. This is almost the exact opposite of the current business school competition ecosystem, where market validation is non-existent. So realistically, few of the business school plan entrants can even understand whether their business plans even make sense. Business plan judges, for their part, are equally in the dark most times. Andrew’s plan involved utilities and power management, a topic I know virtually nothing about. B-school contest judges are usually generalists who have only superficial insights into the internal dynamics of the industries at which these plans are aimed. It would seem, then, that the insights of long-time experts in those industries would likely be far more valuable to a prospective entrepreneur. Again, I am not at all saying that business school plans are inherently bad. To the contrary, Andrew learned an enormous amount about starting a business, the importance of understanding markets, utility and power management technologies, and team building. His plan to build software that would allow residents of college dorms to track their power usage through a visual interface and more easily understand the direct impact of their behaviors on electricity consumption was not a bad idea. In fact, it was a good enough idea that many others are currently attempting similar types of systems for various social settings and environments. My colleague, Lesa Mitchell at the Kauffman Foundation believes that these contests foster collaboration between business school students and engineers or scientists. This, she says, teaches valuable lessons about launching businesses to both potential inventors and would-be CEOs alike. Finally, let’s not confuse failure to execute or unrealistic plan expectations with bad ideas. Young CEOs going into industries they barely know armed with b-school plan competition money are like lambs to the slaughter. But the core idea behind their plan may be quite innovative and powerful. My takeaway from all this? If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, don’t win a business plan competition. If you do win, your first act might be to hire a CEO with industry experience. And win or lose, the most valuable lessons you’ll learn will come more from playing the game than from coming up with the best plan. Editor's note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa . Crunch Network : CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors | |
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