Sunday, July 29, 2012

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Iterations: Craigslist's Network Effects And The Great Platform Challenge Top
platform diveA few weeks ago, Craigslist penned a "Cease and Desist" letter aimed at Padmapper, the popular apartment listings site, to stop its use of Craigslist data for the third-party service. While Craigslist has behaved this way before, the startup community does not particularly like these types of letters. It was not too long ago that the City of San Francisco sent a "Cease and Desist" letter to a company called, at the time, Ubercab, a letter that again brought startups together in a mutual display of support for new business models in the face of regulations and conveniently-timed rules enforcement. In the case of Craigslist, the power, wealth, and sometimes confusing policies of the small private company exposes the philosophical rifts among many in startup community who believe the global community message board stifles the advancement of products and services like Padmapper and, in the process, doesn't create the best possible consumer experience.
 
Jeff Bezos, A Blonde, And A Book Walk Into A Bar (Part I) Top
Screen shot 2012-07-29 at 6.12.53 AMWhile I find technology and innovation in technology to be intellectually fascinating and fun to read about, in my personal life, I am what product managers disdainfully refer to as "The Last Adopter." I've spent the last 9 years living in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco as an outlier so extreme, I still yearn for the return of The Pony Express because I love hand-written letters almost as much as I love ponies. I am not a journalist, a professional writer, or even a blogger. So: if you're looking for breaking news you can impress your boss with, let me save you some time. Set this aside, read every other article on this site, and return to this when you've just finished your fifth coffee, find yourself staring into space, and absentmindedly wonder what the Kardashians are up to today. This is not hard-hitting journalism folks.
 
The Rumpus Literary Website Brings Back Old-Fashioned Letter Writing Top
lettersStephen Elliott, founder and editor-in-chief of a literary website called The Rumpus, has found a modern-day audience for old-school letters. His site, a mixture of old-world letter writing and the modern web, is called Letters In The Mail and it aims to further disrupt the way we think about publishing. Elliott is a writer, filmmaker (his movie About Cherry comes out later this year), and occasional teacher He started The Rumpus in 2009, and it has evolved into a mix of reviews, interviews, the popular "Dear Sugar" advice column, with lots of other content. (I took a class from Elliott when I was in college, and also conducted a couple of interviews for the site in its early days.)
 
Google Fiber: 20% Of Kansas City, MO Neighborhoods Have Already Met Their Sign-Up Goals Top
fiber-rabbitThat was fast. Just a few days ago, Google officially opened registration for the 1 gigabit fiber network it is launching on both the Kansas and Missouri sides of Kansas City. Within just two days, more than 20% of the eligible neighborhoods on the Missouri side have already reached Google's thresholds for bringing its super-fast fiber network to their "fiberhoods" and quite a few others are just a few signups away from reaching their goals.
 
The Paradox Of VC Seed Investing Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-29 at 1.04.33 PMEditor's note: Brian Singerman is a partner at Founders Fund and previously worked at Google and There.  This is the first in a series of articles I am writing to bring more transparency and honesty to the field of venture capital. While many of the themes may be contrarian or controversial, I have two primary goals: First, I want to help entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts understand what motivates investors. Second, I hope to draw attention to some of the fallacies venture capitalists use in their negotiations with entrepreneurs. Aligning the incentives of entrepreneurs and VCs will lead to much stronger relationships and innovation. Entrepreneurs regularly come to Founders Fund asking us to lead or participate in their seed/angel round. They are often confused or shocked when I try to convince them that with very few exceptions, it is not in entrepreneurs' best interest to raise seed capital from large venture firms and neither is it beneficial for large firms to invest in seed stage companies. Among the reasons: the structure of VC economics and unavoidable perception issues. Since this conversation happens frequently, I'd like to share my honest thoughts on why large funds should avoid angel investing -­‐ and also why Founders Fund nevertheless does so through its wholly owned FF Angel funds.
 
This Is Your Brain On Boarding: How To Turn Visitors Into Users Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-24 at 11.40.31 PMEditor's Note: Nir Eyal is a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is the founder of two startups and blogs about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business at NirAndFar.com. Follow him on Twitter @nireyal. Before you can change the world, before your company can IPO, before getting millions of loyal users to wonder how they ever lived without your service, people need to on-board. Building the on-ramp to using your product is critical in every industry, but few more so than in the ADD world of web and mobile apps. Distractions are everywhere, vying for user mindshare and threatening to pull them off the road to using your products like the donut shops and strip clubs at a trucker's rest stop.
 
Founders Are Not Heroes. Let's Get Back To Work Top
Screen shot 2012-07-29 at 3.43.23 PMEditor's note: Derek Andersen is the founder of Startup Grind, a 15-city event series hosted around the world to help educate, inspire, and connect entrepreneurs. He's also ex-Electronic Arts, the founder of Commonred and Vaporware Labs.< A few weeks ago a founder called me to commiserate. He told me about how his product had taken longer than expected to build, how his co-founder was gone, and how he was almost out of money. There was desperation, but more than anything he longed for pity and a shoulder to cry on. My response? "Please shut up and get back to work."
 
Fly Or Die: Google Nexus 7 Top
Screen shot 2012-07-28 at 4.55.38 PMEver since I/O and the unveiling of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the blogosphere has been measuring Google's new Nexus 7 tablet. The verdict in almost every case is good, including our very own iPad lover's take. John and I thus found it only fitting to bring the little 7-inch tablet into the studio for Fly or Die. The tablet, with a 7-inch IPS 1280x800 display, a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, and the latest version of Android, didn't fail to impress.
 
Surprisingly Good Evidence That Real Name Policies Fail To Improve Comments Top
YouTubeIconYouTube has joined a growing list of social media companies who think that forcing users to use their real names will make comments less of a trolling wasteland, but there's surprisingly good evidence from South Korea that real name policies fail at cleaning up comments. In 2007, South Korea temporarily mandated that all websites with over 100,000 viewers require real names, but scraped it after it was found to be ineffective at cleaning up abusive and malicious comments (the policy reduced unwanted comments by an estimated .09%). We don't know how this hidden gem of evidence skipped the national debate on real identities, but it's an important lesson for YouTube, Facebook and Google, who have assumed that fear of judgement will change online behavior for the better.
 
From Information to Understanding: Moving Beyond Search In The Age Of Siri Top
child Head with symbolEditor's note: Nadav Gur is the founder and CEO of Desti, a virtual personal assistant for travel incubated by SRI. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Worldmate, the first mobile travel app. "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." --Albert Einstein Since the launch of Siri on the iPhone 4S last year, the media has been abuzz with the potential implications of what's next – from Google's Eric Schmidt commenting that Siri poses a great threat to Google, to countless articles by VCs and thought leaders.
 
Vertical Is The New Horizontal: How The Cloud Makes Domain Expertise More Valuable In The Enterprise Top
clv0910-red-velvet-cake-xlEditor's note: Gordon Ritter is a founder and general partner at Emergence Capital focused on cloud companies.  In the days before the cloud, on-premise software providers that focused on selling into a vertical market were considered second-class citizens to the "big guns" selling into the broader horizontal marketplace. The real "win"—in market share, wallet share and ultimately, profits—was the broadest approach. The notion of specializing in solutions that serve a market niche or specific industry was considered limited unless it was just the start of something more horizontal.
 
A Few Good Rounds: Trends In Venture Capital Over The Last 12 Years Top
taleof2markets1Editor's note: This is the second article in a series by Redpoint Ventures principal Tom Tunguz examining trends in the public and private technology markets. He recently discussed four trends in the public technology markets. Today, he compares the current state of the US venture capital to historical norms. The venture capital industry is in the midst of a contraction. Since 2001, limited partners have invested a median of $22B each year in venture capital. Over the last 3 years, those figures have dropped by 50% to $16B annually.
 
Let's Not Get Too Excited About Google Fiber… Yet Top
Google Fiber logoEarlier this week, Google provided details of its Google Fiber rollout in Kansas City. To hear some blogs tell it, it's like the heavens will open from above and grant Kansas City blazing-fast Internet and competitive TV packages that will solve all the problems locals have with their current cable provider or ISP. But see, it's not that easy. Google faces a number of challenges as it transitions to become an ISP. Here's why Google's grand experiment laying fiber might not be all the it's cracked up to be. From a pure cost standpoint, Google Fiber sounds pretty amazing. It offer Gigabit speeds at an attractive price point, which other ISPs probably can't compete with. And it would be great, if it were available today. But rolling out fiber is a complicated process, and most Kansas City residents anxious for some high-speed competition probably have a long wait ahead.
 
Move Over, Pebble: MetaWatch's New 'Strata' Aims To Make A Splash On Kickstarter Too Top
strata2Sure, the Pebble has nabbed its share of headlines and accolades lately, but that doesn't mean it's got the nascent smart watch market all sewed up. Case in point: veteran MetaWatch recently pulled back the curtains on its new Strata smart watch, and it's already picking up plenty of steam on (where else?) Kickstarter. Unlike some of the other smartwatch concepts that have been dreamed up in recent months, the Strata is the brainchild of a known quantity. MetaWatch has been tackling the problem of putting topical information on people's wrists for nearly eight years now -- the company's roots lay with the clothing and accessory mavens at Fossil, which produced a pair of fashion-conscious smart timepieces in May 2011 before the team split off and formed their own company that August.
 
Please Don't Watch NBC Tonight. Or Any Night. Top
screen-shot-2011-10-06-at-2-58-57-pmSpoiler alert: Phelps and Lochte raced today. The results are all over Twitter. But the race won't air on TV in America until tonight. This is 2012, not 1996. NBC has put all of the events live online, provided you have a cable subscription, but won't have them available recorded online and won't air many events, including the most high-profile ones, until a primetime tape delay. This isn't a new strategy, just a dumb, outdated one.
 
BlogFrog Shows The Power of Women Bloggers But Trust Critical As Influencer Marketing Programs Rise In Popularity Top
LogoIt's of note to mention that BlogFrog has developed a platform that would not be possible without women bloggers. The newly available platform has a network of 100,000 "social influencers." Women represent 95% of that community.  These are women who write about parenting, food, health, fashion and home and garden.
 
Bitly Announces Realtime, A Search Engine For Trending Links Top
bitly fishToday Bitly announced a new Bitly Labs project called Realtime, a service for finding the most clicked on Bitly links. Realtime, now in private beta, allows users to filter searches by social network, keyword, subject and more. For example, here are the results for a search for the keyword "startups" in technology on Twitter:
 
Stranded Vessels Top
stranded_vesselsThe 20th century was owned and operated by middle men. Industry began as the creation of something for which would be traded other goods, services, or cash. As production centralized, distribution (as always) rose to close the distance between the product and the consumer. Facilitating consumption became a business unto itself: printing, shipping, packaging, and all the rest. A respectable, powerful, and necessary business. More recently, when certain products became capable of being distributed without this mighty infrastructure, that business ceased to become necessary, and correspondingly their power and respectability are now in decline. Words and media being the most portable data, the huge industries that have long facilitated their consumption are dying, slowly and poorly. How long before the present titans of technology find themselves in a similar position? It's hard to imagine exactly how it will happen, but the trends are easy enough to extrapolate.
 
Kickstarter: Meet The Vers 1Q, A Stunning 2-inch Battery-Powered Bluetooth Speaker Top
vers-1qI'm in absolute love. From the gorgeous wood cabinet to the technical capabilities, the little Vers' 1Q is simply perfect. The $120 price ($99 for Kickstarters) is just icing on the cake. It's rather refreshing to see a warm, nearly alive device in our world that's generally filled with modeled plastic and faux chrome trim. Simply put, the 1Q is a battery-powered Bluetooth speaker. A 2-inch driver provides the audio while, packed inside the walnut or bamboo casing, a 6.5W amp powers the audio provided from either Bluetooth or the 3.5mm jack. The included battery charges via microUSB and should last 10 hours on a charge. What more can you ask for from a small speaker?
 
TechCrunch PSA: Olwimpics Blocker Blocks The Olympics Top
Screen Shot 2012-07-28 at 1.18.15 PM If you're like me, you never real got into spectator sports. Maybe it was the jock-induced swirlies or maybe it was the pointlessness of ball-based games, but I couldn't give two shot puts about the Olympics. Thankfully, there's the Olwinpics Blocker from FFFFF.at.
 

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