Category: Joints After Midnight & Rants

Set The Data Free, And Value Will Follow

(NB: Much has been written and said on this topic, and this post is in no way complete. We'll be exploring this issue and many others related to data at the Web 2 Summit this Fall). Perhaps the largest problem blocking our industry today is the retardation of consumer-driven…

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(NB: Much has been written and said on this topic, and this post is in no way complete. We’ll be exploring this issue and many others related to data at the Web 2 Summit this Fall).

Perhaps the largest problem blocking our industry today is the retardation of consumer-driven data sharing. We’re all familiar with the three-year standoff between Google and Facebook over crawling and social graph data. Given the rise of valuable mobile data streams (and subsequent and rather blinkered hand wringing about samesaid) this issue is getting far worse.

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Plato On Facebook

One of my first "big books" out of college was James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science and it still resonates with me, though it's been so long I think I'm due for a re-read. In any case, the next book up in my ongoing self-education is Gleick's The…

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One of my first “big books” out of college was James Gleick’s Chaos: Making a New Science and it still resonates with me, though it’s been so long I think I’m due for a re-read. In any case, the next book up in my ongoing self-education is Gleick’s The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. It’s long. It’s dense. It’s good, so far. In fact, there’s already a passage, a quote from Plato, that has struck me as germane to the ongoing threads I attempt to weave here on this site (even if all I’m really making is a lame friendship bracelet – pun intended, as you will see).

Early in the book, Gleick narrates the birth of the written word, which if you think about it (and he certainly has), is quite an extraordinary event. Turns out Plato, who was literate (and therefore quotable today), was not a fan of the written word. His mentor Socrates, Gleick reminds us, was illiterate. Well, OK, that’s not fair. Socrates wasn’t illiterate, he was, in Gleick’s words, a “nonwriter.” In any case, the passage that struck me is Plato speaking about the written word, quoted in “The Information”:

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A Funny Coincidence, or a Glimpse of the Future?

I took a ride today, and it was gorgeous as usual. That's not my story, but it's certainly a part of it. As I rode I used the AllSports GPS app on my iphone to track my progress (guys, if you're reading, your upload is busted). I knew I'd be…

I took a ride today, and it was gorgeous as usual. That’s not my story, but it’s certainly a part of it.

As I rode I used the AllSports GPS app on my iphone to track my progress (guys, if you’re reading, your upload is busted).

I knew I’d be able to see the whole ride on Google Maps later, which is cool. It also tracks stuff like distance, vertical, speed, etc. Tons of fun.

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Go Forth And Invest

This headline caught my eye this morning: US VCs Raised $7.7 Billion In Q1, Highest Influx In A Decade. Of course, if you've been following the news in our industry, you know there's a raging debate on over whether we are in "another bubble." This news will of course…

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This headline caught my eye this morning: US VCs Raised $7.7 Billion In Q1, Highest Influx In A Decade. Of course, if you‘ve been following the news in our industry, you know there’s a raging debate on over whether we are in “another bubble.” This news will of course be interpreted as evidence that, in fact, we are back to bubbly levels…after all, one decade ago was when we had our last big hurrah, right? When VCs gave mostly incompetent founders way too much money, and the whole thing came crashing down around us.

Well, yes….and ten years ago, there was no way our industry, social culture, or technological infrastructure was ready for the big ideas VCs wanted to fund.

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Everbody Forgets About the Power of Intentional Declaration

I love that Facebook is testing real time conversational advertising. In short, the idea is that the right ad shows up on someone's Facebook page when they declare some intention. As the Ad Age coverage puts it: Users who update their status with "Mmm, I could go for some pizza…

I love that Facebook is testing real time conversational advertising. In short, the idea is that the right ad shows up on someone’s Facebook page when they declare some intention. As the Ad Age coverage puts it:

Users who update their status with “Mmm, I could go for some pizza tonight,” could get an ad or a coupon from Domino’s, Papa John’s or Pizza Hut….With real-time delivery, the mere mention of having a baby, running a marathon, buying a power drill or wearing high-heeled shoes is transformed into an opportunity to serve immediate ads, expanding the target audience exponentially beyond usual targeting methods such as stated preferences through “likes” or user profiles.

Sounds great, but hollow – kind of like a 4/4 beat missing a bass drum. And what’s the bass? It’s the consumer, of course.

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Why Color Matters: Augmented Reality And Nuanced Social Graphs May Finally Come of Age

I read with interest about Color, a new social photo app that was much in the news today. The main angle of coverage was the size of the pre-revenue company's funding – $41 million from Sequoia and Bain. Hell, the company isn't just pre-revenue, it's pre-product….at least for now….

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I read with interest about Color, a new social photo app that was much in the news today. The main angle of coverage was the size of the pre-revenue company’s funding – $41 million from Sequoia and Bain. Hell, the company isn’t just pre-revenue, it’s pre-product….at least for now. Tomorrow the actual product launches.

If it works as advertised, it may well be the first truly execution of augmented reality that truly scales.

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Pandora’s Facebook Box

(image) I flew to Detroit today, and thankfully Delta had wifi. Since I'll be speaking at a GM conference later in the week, and the fine folks from Pandora will be there, among others, I went and checked in on the site, which I'll admit I haven't visited in…

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(image) I flew to Detroit today, and thankfully Delta had wifi. Since I’ll be speaking at a GM conference later in the week, and the fine folks from Pandora will be there, among others, I went and checked in on the site, which I’ll admit I haven’t visited in some time (I still consume music the old fashioned way – I buy CDs and rip them to iTunes). Now, the theme of GM’s internal conference is all about “the app economy” and fortunately, lately I’ve found myself thinking a lot about this samesaid phenomenon. Given that, allow me to digress. As usual, I have no idea where this is going, but at least I know where it’s going to start: With my first visit to Pandora in some time.

Here’s what happened. Pandora has done a “deep integration” with Facebook since my last visit (yeah it’s been a while), meaning that when I showed up (and was logged into Facebook already), Pandora went ahead and filled out my profile using Facebook data. To the site’s credit (and I hope based on some terms of service from Facebook), the service notified me of this, and asked me if using my Facebook profile was OK.

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KSJO 92.3 – Good Product, Bad Marketing. A Case Study

This is a story of a radio station – you know, those old school, pre-Internet media outlets that folks my age grew up listening to. I've always been rather fond of radio, in a nostalgic way, and I've had an off again, on again relationship with it over the…

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This is a story of a radio station – you know, those old school, pre-Internet media outlets that folks my age grew up listening to. I’ve always been rather fond of radio, in a nostalgic way, and I’ve had an off again, on again relationship with it over the years. For the past few years, it’s been mostly off – I only listen to AM sports radio (my beloved Giants) and NPR on FM. Whenever I get a new car, I get six months free of Sirius, and I check into Howard Stern, but then the trial period ends, and I just don’t feel like the subscription price is worth it, particularly given it’s not transferrable to any of my other cars.

Now, back in the day, radio really meant something. Remember the FM radio boom? If you’re over 40 or so, you probably do – the peak was the 1970s, where, according to Wikipedia “FM radio experienced a golden age of integrity programming, with disc jockeys playing what they wanted, including album cuts not designated as “singles” and lengthy progressive rock tracks.”

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The Internet Interest Bubble

A couple of days ago I was speaking with Reuters reporter Connie Loizos, who's been covering the Internet space since the days of the Industry Standard (she worked at the Red Herring). She was working on a story questioning whether there was a new bubble brewing in our space,…

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A couple of days ago I was speaking with Reuters reporter Connie Loizos, who’s been covering the Internet space since the days of the Industry Standard (she worked at the Red Herring). She was working on a story questioning whether there was a new bubble brewing in our space, a question that many have asked in the past few months, in particular as it relates to private financings of startups. You can find that story here, on PEHub.

As readers of this site know, I don’t believe we’re in a real bubble, at least not the kind that popped in late 2000 (or the housing bubble, which seems still to be popping). But that’s not the interesting part of our conversation. Connie asked if I thought the press was in part culpable for our collective obsession with sky-high private company valuations, “hot new startups,” and the like.

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The Rise of Digital Plumage

Before we go out, my wife will often ask "how are people dressing tonight?" I'm never quite sure how to answer – at least for her. In essence, she's asking me to read the room we'll be in, and then translate the social nuance of that room to her…

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Before we go out, my wife will often ask “how are people dressing tonight?” I’m never quite sure how to answer – at least for her. In essence, she’s asking me to read the room we’ll be in, and then translate the social nuance of that room to her choice of clothing.

While I certainly pay attention to what I wear, I’ve come to the point in my life where choosing clothes for a social night out isn’t that big a deal anymore. Women, or perhaps my wife in particular, seem far more attuned to the symbolism of social dress than I (perhaps that’s why it takes them so long to get ready!). It’s not that I don’t appreciate a well tailored jacket – I do – it’s just…well I know what I like, and I like things simple. If you’ve seen me speak at a conference, you pretty much know what I look like at dinner on a Saturday night. Instrumenting the nuances of my social dress pretty much comes down to “white shirt or black?” and “those jeans or these?” (Though I will admit to a weakness for shoes.)

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