Category: Internet (Page 3 of 8)

Why I like angel list

July 25, 2010 / elias

Feedback is now coming out about Angel list, a new service from the blog Venturehacks. It’s a simple concept: get a group of angel investors and promise you will send quality deal flow to them that’s been vetted; likewise say to entrepreneurs that all they need to do is fill out a form and they will get access to some of the smartest investors in Silicon Valley. It’s so simple that is hurts, and yet only people like Naval Ravikant and Babak “Nivi” Nivi would be able to pull it off as it takes serious credibility to get both groups involved. Venturehacks in my opinion is the number two blog on venture and investment in technology, after Fred Wilson’s blog.

Angel list is a special thing that I believe will transform Silicon Valley. Much like how Michael Arrington exploited the market dynamic to make TechCrunch the success it was, Ravikant and Nivi is doing the same thing by connecting entrepreneurs with investors. And not just any investors: the early stage investors that startups really need. Simply put, it’s reducing the costs of innovation in Silicon Valley – the ‘thing’ that has changed the world.

I really hope the industry rallies around this and collaboration opportunities with other high profile angels continue. Jason Calacanis for example is doing something equally impressive with the Open Angel forum, and I sense they both have equal motivations due to their annoyance at how other investor groups have abused their position in the industry. Even though I see them adding different value to the startup scene (they’re similar but different – and should stay different for maximum value creation), all I can say is “awesome – I want more”.

Manipulating numbers that don’t mean anything

June 7, 2010 / elias

Erick Schonfeld wrote a post today saying all the hoopla over Facebook’s privacy isn’t justified. I disagree for two reasons.

1) Awareness.
When Facebook announced their new changes, I tweeted why the hell no one was complaining. Chris Saad and I then wrote one of the first (if not the first) posts that criticised the Facebook move. CNN referenced our post and the entire industry has now gone over the top complaining.

Why didn’t anyone from the major blogs critique the announcement immediately? Why the time lag? For the simple fact there wasn’t awareness – people hadn’t thought about it deeply. And to validate my point, check this recent exchange with a friend in Iran when I asked him how the people of Iran felt about the changes. He had no idea, and when he found out – he got annoyed.

2) The monopoly effect
I love Facebook as a service. But I will also admit, nothing compares to it – I love it for the sole fact it’s the best at what it does. If there was genuine competition with the company, that offered a compelling alternative – I wouldn’t feel as compelled to use it. They win me over due to great technology and user experience, but I’m not loyal to them because of that.

I think Facebook has some security right now because no one is in their class. But they will be matched one day, and I think the reaction would be very different. Rather than tolerate it, people would move away. And whilst Facebook can lock my data and think they own me like I’m their slave, the reality is my data is useless with time – what they need is permanent access to me, and to have that, they need to ensure my relationships with them is permanently ahead of the curve.

How to build a billion dollar company

May 30, 2010 / elias

Matt Mullenweg made an excellent comment on a topic I’ve often thought about. The comment was made in the context of the anniversary of wordpress.

Has it really been seven years since the first release of WordPress? It seems like just yesterday we were fresh to the world, a new entrant to a market everyone said was already saturated. (As a side note, if the common perception is that a market is finished and that everything interesting has been done already, it’s probably a really good time to enter it.)

WordPress not only has become the most popular blog software and one of the most amazing content management systems around, but its become an amazing platform for innovation. (For example, Ron Kurti and I the other day tried to think outside-of-the-box for employee expense reports at Vast. So we hacked a wordpress blog to do so – and we could do it in minutes of effort.) Not only that, but the wordpress.org founder built a company around the software and it’s become a very successful company on the web. Thank God he entered at a time of market saturation.

But it doesn’t stop there. Consider the following stories as well, which highlight lessons in building amazing companies.

When Google launched as a search engine, everyone though the space had matured and had little opportunity. Google has now become one of the most influential companies in history.
When Apple launched the iPod, the MP3 player market had been well established. No one at the time would have thought another product from this yesteryear company, would be the product that help it reinvent the company to become the second largest US company today.
When Facebook launched, it was yet another social network well after Friendster (the inventor) and MySpace (the populariser). In fact, I remember analysts calling 2003 the year of the social network – a year before Facebook was even invented. And now, Mark Zuckerberg has created a company that will transform online advertising, has helped contribute to the new billion dollar virtual goods industry, and is going to lead the charge for the semantic web.
In 1990, hyptertext systems had saturated the market since the 1960s when Ted Nelson coined the term. That didn’t stop Tim Berners-Lee, who that year invented the web – yet another hyptertext system. The Web is not a company like the ones above, but the Web is in league that few inventions in the history of the humanity have ever achieved.

Naval Ravikant has told me that in the consumer web space, the first mover advantage is so great that a company can own the space – the logic being they are so far ahead in execution and their brand is synonymous with the industry, that they become impossible to topple. This fact is why I think a lot of entrepreneurs in the Internet space seem consumed with creating a business that introduces a new concept product, as opposed to a better product – which is what the above companies did..

I think there is something to be to be said about the last mover advantage: monitor the patterns of something new, innovate on the implementation, and then out-execute the guys that invented the concept. And out execute you can easily, as the inventors are probably caught up in organisational inertia due to conflicting innovations, not to mention a misunderstanding of what actually made them successful in the first place.

As it was said once: the guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot; but the guy who invented the other three was a genius.

Unfollow people on Twitter: it’s good for you

March 23, 2010 / elias

Since my first Tweet in April 2007, I’ve been using the service in different ways. In that time, my career has changed; the people using it are now beyond the early-adopted tech crowd which dominated when I first started using it; and more significantly, Twitter has added new functionality that has changed the pattern of usage.

In other words, I’ve changed; the people around me have changed; and the service has changed. So with that in mind, I’m asking myself now how should I use Twitter now? It’s become a new communications paradigm, and so our personal evolution in using it is an interesting thing to consider for the future of communications.

What has Twitter become
Put simply, people and companies use it to connect with other people. Not only that, but its become a means to discover information and people. The discussions on it have allowed communities to emerge (and organise), trends to be noticed, and people to be identified. Its created the social melebrity – the term I give to the trend of “micro-celebrities” – and created a new avenue to the consultant (online self-promotion), researcher (uncovering trends and breaking information), and business development manager (discovery of opportunities), among others

What’s different about Twitter now
Twitter was implicitly designed to encourage a gaming of human psychology based on the number of followers you had. The more followers, the more perceived status an account had and by extension a person or company. This status created perceived influence and authority – which in some ways was true, but true or not is not the point: it was enough of a motivator to get people thinking constantly “how can I get more followers”, a brilliant state of mind from the perspective of a profit-making company benefiting from usage.

Several new features have since emerged, one of which is lists. Lists themselves have become another way Twitter, inc has been able to game its user-base as it implies a sense of status. But from a user point of view, its also become a great new way to track people stream’s, which at core is what Twitter is meant to be about.

Foe anyone that follows a lot of people, tracking every Tweet can be impossible. I now hover around the 500 mark of people that I ‘follow’, but the reality is, I don’t actually follow them in the true sense of the world: only in the off-chance I check-into Twitter to see what’s happening. ‘Following’ these days is not a reflection of my engagement with that person, but simply, my interest (once upon a time).

Thinking about value
With all the above in mind, let’s now answer the question of who should you follow. Should it be people you’re interested in following, like how it’s always been no? I say nope to that, and here’s why.

I get no benefit following someone who is not following me back, other than the initial notification someone gets that I’ve followed them (and which I know can be quite successful as a marketing tool). The value we get, is if they follow us back, is the fact we can directly message each other. And this has real value: I know people who are impossible to reach via email, myself included sometimes, because of email overload. But, if someone sends you a direct message via Twitter – it can come to you via email, IM and SMS. And the conciseness of the message makes the communication more direct and pointed (a benefit in itself). It’s an efficient way of reaching busy people.

On the other hand, there is a real cost following someone who doesn’t follow you back. If you have an account where you follow more people than follow you, you are considered a spam account in the eyes of other users. If you follow more than a certain amount of people – say a few hundred – then you are not considered (rightfully) engaged in that person. And let’s not forget the cost to your attention: you get more value out of the Twitter stream when you can consume more of it – meaning, the less accounts you follow, the more engaged you are.

So what’s my point? Unfollow people and start using lists. Don’t be gamed by the Twitter communications platform, and start thinking about what value it can provide to you in your life.

A billion dollar opportunity with video

February 22, 2010 / elias

When Google made an offer for On2, I was dumbfounded. I wrote to a friend working at Google the following:

Phat. But I’m confused. How does Google benefit by making the codec free? I understand Google’s open culture, but for 100million, really? They help the world, but what’s the incentive for Google? (Other than of course, controlling it).

The reply: “incentive = greater adoption of HTML 5 = apps are written for HTML 5 = apps can be monetized using Adsense”.

Interesting perspective from a smart Googler who had no real insider information. But no cigar.

Newsteevee posted a follow up article today on what Google is going to do with this technology, quoting the Free Software Foundation. What really made me get thinking was this (emphasis mine:

Google‚Äôs Open Source Programs Manager Chris DiBona had previously argued that Ogg Theora would need codec quality and encoding efficiency improvements before a site as big as YouTube could use it as its default video codec. The FSF now writes in its letter that it never agreed with these positions, but that Google must have faith in VP8 being a better codec if it invested its money in it (Google spent a total of about $133 million on ON2).

The open source advocacy group apparently realized that Google wouldn‚Äôt switch codecs from one day to another, which is why it suggests a number of smaller steps to make VP8 mainstream. ‚ÄúYou could interest users with HD videos in free formats, for example, or aggressively invite users to upgrade their browsers (instead of upgrading Flash),‚Äù the letter reads, adding that this would eventually lead to users not bothering to install Flash on their computers.

Think about that for a second: video on the web finally becomes free for real and open, becoming a core infrastructure to the online world – but the default is crappy. Don’t like crappy? Well Mr and Ms consumer, if you want High Definition, you need to pay for a subscription to a premium codec by the already dominate Adobe or another rising star. Assuming you get the whole word watching video and only 1% convert – holy crap, isn’t that a brilliant business model?

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times the following recently:

The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files”

Simple but profound insight from the famed entertainer. So with this fairly obvious logic, why isn’t the movie industry (backed by Google and Apple) innovating business models in this area? Value comes from scarcity – and quality is the best way of doing it. The reason why box office sales and Blu-ray broke a record in 2009, is because the quality is worth the premium for consumers.

What’s the incentive for Google, to answer my own question? The return on investment to be associated with a default open technology that you give the option to upgrade to users, is a billion dollar business waiting to happen. Doing no evil to the world and securing future growth at the same time sounds like a Google business in the making,

Ubiquity – it’s coming

February 17, 2010 / elias

I applied to do a panel to SXSW on a topic I deeply believe in and want the world to get excited about: I call it ubiquity. My topic was rejected because it’s too broad a topic (fair point), but with The Startup Bus (that thing llaunched last week), I’m going to make it a live example testing the limits of ubiquity and a barometer of that progress.

Ubiquity relates to some long term trends in our society that are now converging: the fact we can access information and computing resources wherever and whenever we are. We can see it now with the changes to how we get the news. But here is a more dramatic example, as it’s the examples – not the rhetoric explaining it – that get me excited.

a) Contact lenses that contain a computer chip in them

b) Wireless electricity: it’s happening.

c) Google translate integrated into Google googles

a +b + c = awesome. We’re not there yet, but the future of our world is damn exciting.

One word explains the Google superbowl ad: Bing

February 8, 2010 / elias

Google, a company that used to pride itself on the fact it never had to advertise, put an ad in the mother-of-all advertising slots: during the Superbowl, the most expensive time you can advertise in television. And this was posted on the official Google blog by the CEO Eric Schmidt, a man that doesn’t all that often post to the company blog.

Why did it break tradition, with this cute emotional-brand-building ad? Because Google now has for the first time a real competitor, in the rising Bing – Microsoft’s rebranded search engine boosted by the $100 million Powerset acquisition. Bing’s search technology may still lag far behind, but it’s certainly ringing a bell on the marketing side and growing quite healthily as a result. And as well all know, the reason we search is less because we think it’s better technology, but more so because of the importance we place on the brand that we feel comfort in.

Google’s ad was cute. But capitalism is all about self-interest, and for the few million Google had to spend on this seemingly non-informative ad, what management are thinking is quite clear to me. That being, Google’s trying to revamp the emotional attachment we have with the world’s most loved brand. But more tellingly, from the very top, Google’s scared as hell and is now protecting what they know matters the most in the search engine wars: the emotional connection to a brand.

The best feature Facebook didn’t invent that it should invent now

February 2, 2010 / elias

Around 9.15pm last night after my first rugby training for the year (and in America), I sat down at the bus stop right by the football field, to catch a bus home. Playing on my iPhone, I noticed a woman walk past me and then run back. That’s weird I thought and it raised my awareness levels. Then, I noticed a hooded black kid approach the bus shelter from the back and entering from the left. I watched him turn and saw his arm raise with his jacket covering his hand. A second later, he pointed a gun right into the left temple of my head and mumbled: “ok man, hand it over”.

Luckily, I got away with my wallet, phone – and life – in tact. (I stood up, roared abuse at him, and he ran away – don’t ask why I did what I did, but it worked!) Minutes later, I shared the news on my Facebook account:

And I received a flood of comments, phone-calls and text messages over the next 24 hours. No ‘likes’ however.

The like feature
Friendfeed, a startup Facebook acquired last year, pioneered social media in the way people could collaborate and share information. One of its most brilliant innovations was the ‘like’ feature – the ability for a user reading something, to acknowledge the content being shared by another user. Rating systems are a hard thing to get right, and its been said by YouTube that the standard five-star rating systems are actually not quite five stars. Friendfeed’s simple but elegant approach took a life of its own as a rating mechanism and more. Facebook implemented the feature, and I’ve been observing how my social circle have reacted to it – and I’ve been startled at the way its been used. Just like the unique culture Friendfeed built, encouraged by this simple ‘liking’ activity, so to has Facebook’s users developed a unique kinds of behaviour. I’d argue its become one of the key forms of activity on the site.

So congrats Facebook – you copied a feature and your users love it. Now how about you evolve this remarkably simple form of communication, which has become a powerful way to have people share information (as it flags value, quantifies a kind of engagement and adds an additional level of communication to the originating message). How about a dislike feature? Do you think people would use that?

My friend Marty responded to my gun incident with the following:

And he wasn’t the only one. My Friend Kyle, who responded first, said:

Despite being an engaging piece of content and popping up on my friend’s homescreens, there were no ‘likes’. It just didn’t seem appropriate. But just like when you can’t speak a foreign language fluently but want to communicate a message, the lack of this feature prevented additional communication.

Social media is here to stay and is having a remarkable impact on our word. If by definition its about connecting people and communicating with each other, let’s evolve the way they can express their thoughts beyond simply text. It’s going to lead to a more interactive, engaging, and a far richer experience. This post may seem trivial because it’s like advocating we create a new word to communicate a frivolous concept, but like language, we gain a type of richness in the diversity we have to express ourselves.

Why I’m angry

December 16, 2009 / elias

Here’s why my blood is boiling: the Australian government’s Internet filter is getting the green light.

About two years ago, I got a whiff of a stupid policy by the newly elected government. So I wrote a letter to the Minister and complained. The Minister gave me a lame response six months later, and people in the industry didn’t think it was a big deal, like I did.

Turns out they were wrong. A year later after my letter, we received further word about the progression of this policy that would make us comparable to that shining beacon of democracy, China. So this time, I wrote a letter to all of Australia’s senators: http://www.siliconbeachaustralia.org/ruddfilter/.

My intended impact was successful: a group of senators holding the balance of power responded to me. What followed as the Silicon Beach community discussed it (which is an informal grouping of Australian tech entrepreneurs) was an uproar, that spilled into the mainstream media. It rattled the government, and so it should have – that’s how democracy works.

The government went into hiding, and now 12 months later they’ve now announced compulsory filtering of the Internet, despite its questionable trials. I’m embarrassed by my nation as this entire process has been a farce, and disgusted at the ignorant, corrupt, and politicking occurring by this government. And the most frustrating thing? Its been two years and this government continues with their lies. As I said nine months ago, this is a cancer that will slowly kill the Internet.. And two years on, its been proven there is nothing we can do but just sit back and watch.

Aussie startup Stalqer helps you find your friends when about

October 28, 2009 / elias

Over the last few weeks I’ve been alpha testing an innovative new iPhone app by an Aussie team led by Mick Johnson, innovating in an exciting space. Leena Rao at TechCrunch has written a brilliant post about the product, with another high quality article on CNET by Rafe Needleman. Both those posts cover more than enough so I won’t rehash, but I will share an interesting concept this product has that’s got me thinking about.

Stalqer has an unique viral dynamic at play. Your friends are on a map, and the technology behind it automatically tracks their whereabouts. The cool thing though, is that the technology can be overcome – for example, if I see one of my friends in a location that I know they aren’t, I can physically drag them to where I think they should be (like where I am now at a bar, as they are sitting next to me). This means that even if you shut off Stalqer, you are forced to have to deal with it if you care about your privacy.

This may sound evil, but it’s all relatively safe and you can control which friends see you. However, the fact other people can determine your location, forces you to interact with the app and at least be active with it.

All too common with web and phone applications, people sign up to them and then move on – often forgetting they had signed up in the first place. But Stalqer’s innovation is that it focuses on something people (claim) matters to them – their privacy – and requires them to stay at least alert of what’s happening if they care to protect it in any way.

It’s a simple concept, but it’s also sheer brilliance in my eyes. Admittedly, I haven’t been too phased by this feature and I still think it needs more work for it to truly be viral (like incorporating game mechanics to give people an incentive to move their friends frequently). But it certainly gives an interesting perspective and highlights a smart approach in creating engagement in this saturated market. That being, aligning peoples incentives to participate even when they get bored of it.