“The boiling of the ocean begins with a single puddle.”

my phone
Originally uploaded by benbarren

While Podtech (after raising $5.5m which was heaps a year ago, but now $20m is common) seem to not yet have been able to progress past the second stage of a 12 step problem : Denial, EarlyStageVC has a great post on Enterprise 2.0 Co Teqlo ('“The boiling of the ocean begins with a single puddle.” We had to define our puddle. So we did.'), and it's a lesson of when you cut, cut deep, and unlike in corporates, dont let the world just pass you by, because you don't want to rock the boat. You started the company to rock the boat didn't you ? Rocking isn't always fun, it's an upndown the seesaw experience. Hope you don't get sea-sick.

Forget what 60m blogs and conference advocates say; Do not quit your day job. Do not do a startup. Keep your job, annual performance review, coffee shop bitching, mortgage and watch it on YouTube. Unless you are bi-polar and no-one will employ you.

The Prequel : What is the Twitter Business Model ?

curvey paris
Originally uploaded by benbarren

In not unexpected news, Union Square we liked the product so much we bought some of it, have invested in the how much cheaper must the valuation be vs Facebook, Twitter.

Obvious'ly the post pyra-blogger-odeo'd crew could have shortened the race and GEMAYA'd, but having already been there done 'dat, and increasing motivation from VC's to hold longer than a flickr flip + get more zeroes, I'd bet that twitter is going to go in for the longer haul, and look for a more Skype like exit than Kazaa/Odeo.

It's often said in the m.echochamber that there are two types of people : Those that don't get twitter, and those that use it. It's a post blogging hourly used beyond web utility that allows ambient intimacy as Leisa called it, and for myself it's the only app (along with blackberry/gmail) that I use on the road / in the supermarket.

The naysayers will ask "What is the business model?" (as have their own investors) but their pathway to profit is far richer than most websites inserting google/federated ads, and much closer to a (Hardware-Carrier-Portal + Consumer level) SkypeOut meets Premium SMS world of opportunities. To quote Union Square : "As we stated when we made our investment in Delicious, The question everyone asks is "What is the business model?" To be completely and totally honest, we don't yet know."

So for some fun, my ideas on what drives The Twitter Business Model :

1. Sell to Google/Apple/Motorola/Nokia etc - Well none of the parties here seem motivated by the early flip, with delicious and other lessons in mind. Mainly though they don't need to personally (pyra sale) and are probably placing a bet on being able to scale this closer on the continuum to a X% valuation of Facebook/Skype.

There is an interesting multi/tens of-billion dollar market cap adjunct driver here too, that the iPhone will accelerate hardware players need to creep much further into the great mobile web services on your cell space. Apple's weakness is it doesn't own/control the youtube/google maps type services on the phone, so telco and hardware players with twitter like offerings (integrated at the hardware/OS and billing level, can compete by changing the whole silo'd sms, email + social networking on the phone experience. I luv my Blackberry, but there should be a better solution than m.twitter or having twitter as a sms contact. Wonder if Motorola/Nokia are interested in the Union Square/Charles/Angels' Twitter funding ?

2. Targeted viral direct mobile behaviourial advertising, blah blah - yup. Tacoda meets Twitter on your phone, kewl. Ad feed inserts, hyperlocal geo-targeted coupons, product placement robots, all that stuff. Yellowpages/Plazes stuff.

3. The Rivers of Rich SMS Texting. My bet is over time, twitter sees sms traffic as a revenue clipping the ticket driver, not a cost. Billions of messages, millions of dollars. Just as AT+T pay Apple a $200 bounty for new iPhone customers, telcos/yellowpages biz' will pay and invest in new twitter type services as a means of customer acquisition/retention. Gesturenomics is going to drive merged email/sms/status type applications. And who doesn't want to deal with the network effectd leader. The rest will get pownced.

4. Enterprise Blog/Collaboration/CRM Applications - If twitter is just a feature within a Automattic/SixApart world, then blog platforms (as they already have) will start having "What are you doing now?" mobile phone plug-ins. Wonder when the Newsgatorish commercial twitter API and professional services business will come out. I know I have customers for it. And then there is the whole wiki collaboration, salesforce light, crm on the road thing. I'd be amazed if there isn't a developer somewhere creating an on the road CRM app on the twitter api which could do to Salesforce what they did to Siebel if they're not careful. Salespeople never liked PDA CRM apps, 140 characters as a maximum I'd sure they'd grok.

5. Wall Street Journal Twitterings - In a Fox Business Channel on Cable with Wall Street Journal meets MySpace and the Twitter world, the closest interface with the customer is the mobile phone : When Twitter (and its developers) goes Shozu and extends twittergramming, pictureblogging, as well as structured tweets about their stockpickr, wesabe, yaptas and so on, there will be alot of commercial transactions that Twitter can make money from. Basically another layer on web services. Media companies sense they have already "lost" the conversation, and want to get it back. Twitter gives them mobile content contributors, and allows their readers to interact with the news of the day while on the train ride home.

A good example of twitter today in my little universe, is in Melbourne, Australia where I live (for Sydney inclined check stedmonds lab podcasts from the first twitter meetup there this week); Our premier's (equivalent to a Governor) son a fortnight ago crashed his car and was caught drink driving. Premier was shamed, and son who had bad pr advisors, left his myspace page public for the first few days, which the press proceeded to feed on and publish in the weekend papers. Today the premier resigned. I found out about it on twitter, as did many other people, and ironically the paper of the day's website: The Age, went down at the same time. Twitter gets you the news from your friends, and yours back to them, before anywhere else, in your pocket, in a 140 characters or less.

So it's a good to great investment, depending on valuation ? (any guesses/range....) I would guess $75M or 1% of Facebook. Maybe more these days, it is a Ning $200m + post private equity money 2007 not a buy flickr for $35m pre 2005 after all. Not sure what prices they pay there in NY! Some nice arbitrage to be had though once users are scaled, ruby tech platforms stabilised, salesforce hired, and the offer goes out to the general public who outside Mountain View, are still generally unaware of what it is. Compared to an iPhone that is. That may change too.

8800 vs iPhone.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

My Blackberry 8800 goes up against Kinger's iPhone on Techcrunch: "For starters, a BlackBerry set up with Microsoft Exchange Server sports intelligent push email while the iPhone does not. When an email is sent to an account on a BlackBerry, the message is downloaded immediately and an LED on the phone notifies the user that he or she has a new message. The iPhone, on the other hand, recognizes new messages at most every 15 minutes and must be checked actively to see if anything has arrived. This deficiency makes handling email on the iPhone slower and less efficient; it also translates into wasted battery power as users need to perform the extra step of opening the iPhone’s email program every time they want to check for new mail."

Kicknback Eyeballs are the $400 Gateway to the iPhone Soul.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

I've been sitting here pressing refresh on perezhilton.com (latest from her lawyer : "Unfortunately, late yesterday I was informed that Lindsay had relapsed. The bracelet has now been removed."), justjared, tmz, wesmirch, idontlikeyouinthatway, pinkisthenewblog, my celebtard g-reader feeds, to check on that story.

But it's 1:48am so I should sleep a few hours. Skeletal Lindsay passes on her best. Wishes, kisses and a 2 finger peace salute Linds. (who until yday was more focused on banging LA galaxy's 13 minute per game beckham for 25k pounds by december, esp while posh was away on the spice grrls tour! no joke “She wanted cash,” says one source.)

As her Dad has said : “I want to withdraw everything — court wise — sit down with Dina as Lindsay’s parents and figure out how to help her.. Lindsay can’t do this on her own … when we were together, none of this was happening.” TMZ : "We're told cops did administer a walk-the-line test, and Lindsay flunked." (yup they use some advanced technology out in LALA land to test DUI drivers)

I think Lindsay might prefer to hear from Steve Jobs than her Dad though, who is getting $400 back per iPhone (was it 1m iphones sold already, kaching), maaaybe alreaaady, sez The Street : "People close to the companies tell TheStreet.com that AT&T is paying Apple a bounty of between $150 and $200 per phone -- plus $9 a month per phone over the life of the typical two-year customer contract.. "This is unheard of," says one money manager who is long Apple. "No one has this plugged this into their models."

Seven Network Can Afford a Few Pairs of Vintage Lohan Sunglasses.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Seems Seven Network has broken the billion dollar ad revenue target for the first time ever for an Aussie TV network. Google Australia should be doing that within 4 years. The Australian : "The Seven Network is set to smash the record for the most revenue ever to go to a single network in a calendar year, as the $2.8 billion metropolitan TV market records its strongest advertising growth since 2004."

REWARD : A barely used post rehab iPhone, signed by Lindsay Lohan
FOR RETURN : Of Lindsay Lohan's Sunglasses*
DESCRIPTION : They kinda look like Mary Kate Olsen's aviators.

* Unhappy with mugshot, where are my damn sunglasses ? I must have lost them when I was chasing my assistant Jenni Munro's mom before she called 911.

It's All About Me says Lindsay to Police 2.0 Enterprise Apps.

a thriller
Originally uploaded by benbarren

This is a great fn post by Joshua Porter and pretty much summarises my whole approach to enterprise day job projects I work on (Personal benefit trumps social) From Bokardo : "The Cold-Start Problem is when you launch your site and nobody uses it. When this happens, you’re probably focusing too much on the social value and not enough on personal value. You’ve made a bet that you can convince the masses to all sign up for your service at once, so that there is suddenly lots of value for everyone, sharing, commenting, and generally supplying user-generated content by the bucketful. I’ve talked to many folks who imagine this state of nirvana, and it rarely, if ever, actually happens."

In other news Lindsay arrested with charlie and driving under the influence via the everywhere the undercover police and Lindsay is TMZ is : "Lindsay Lohan was popped for possession of cocaine, driving under the influence, transporting a narcotic into a custodial facility and driving on a suspended license. Sources say her blood alcohol level was between .12 and .13, well over the .08 legal limit. Cops tell TMZ cocaine was found in her pants pocket."

Perez sez she's going to jail update (and ppl wonder why i use hollywood starlet images etc, well lohan is more interesting than scoble duh and the LA paparazzi are more hardcore than the SF echo-chamber - "Before her arrest earlier this morning, Lindsay Lohan was reported to be involved in a chase with another car.") : "California has a DUI / DWI “washout” period of 10 years, calculated from arrest date to arrest date. This means that anyone arrested for drunk or drug driving within 10 years of the last arrest date will be charged with a second offense, with increased penalties and punishment. The punishment in court for a second or third drunk driving conviction is much harsher than for a first offense – a multiple-offense drunk driving conviction carries mandatory jail time, an 18-month alcohol education program, a required ignition interlock device (such as Smart Start), and more.")

You can just see the Law + Order episode : "Lohan was driving a white Denali and she had two female passengers in her car. She was chasing a black Cadillac Escalade. The latest reports are that black Caddy was being driven by the mother of Lindsay’s personal assistant. Lindsay was arrested only one block from police station where the car she was chasing was driving to in fear."

"Dear Eric: $10 billion and we're yours."

yes-yes
Originally uploaded by benbarren

So the Facebook scuttle is Google's for around $7b, up to $10b. Not bad work. Internet Outsider says Peter Thiel, the Facebook funder has "rejected several lowball offers that have reportedly come over the transom--$3 billion range--and essentially offered to sell the company for $7-$10 billion. The announcement would not have been any more direct if Facebook had written an open letter to Google saying: "Dear Eric: $10 billion and we're yours."

" ANNOUNCEMENT: @kosso and I are engaged to be married!!! We fell in love in 140 characters or less! Thank you Twitter!! :)"

twitter engagement
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Twitter's not yet in the top social networking sites which Jeremy Liew has some good analysis on, but there are people getting engaged in 140 characters or less (who were at the Melbourne Twitter Meetup #2) I'm sure the wedding invites for Kosso and Efisia will have to be sent out as direct twitter messages.

Lightspeed Ventures : "Its interesting to see that Orkut, generally thought of as a Brazilian and Indian focused site, has more pageviews per user per month from US users than even MySpace and Facebook. Myspace continues to dominate Facebook on all three key metrics, suggesting that reports of MySpace’s death are greatly exaggerated, Facebook apps notwithstanding. There is also a pretty marked step between the top 5 sites (500+ PV/UU/mth) and the next 6."

Do I Need to Port my Dont Call it a Social Operating System to Facebook ?

friday morning
Originally uploaded by benbarren

So like Scoble, do I grab the feeds from my blog, twitter, flickr and what else I have lying around (676 feeds in g-reader) and find a just click here, how easy is this*, and upload everything to facebook ?

I'm really not motivated to if I can be honest, but who is one to stand in the way. Scoble (who links to a good post on this by Jeremiah Owyang) : "I added the Wordpress Facebook Application a few days ago. Now my blog, and your comments, are showing up on my Facebook Profile Page. Along with my Twitters. My Flickr photos. My Google Reader items. My Kyte videos. And a bunch of other things."

* Do I need to do google searches for RSS/Facebook mashup companies or will this be something standard within the Facebook dashboard ? Feel free to recommend. I need some automagic one click "Yes, upload all my RSS to facebook and let people add me as their friend... and engage in (robot powered) sardonic conversation with them" so I can continue looking out the window.)

The Big Elephant in the Room Comes Out to Play with the Whales @ The Churchill Club.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Arriving in a North Melbourne townhouse with catering, aboriginal art and a reflective feng shui'd Japanese pond, the dinner party meets roast setting included a crowd equally curious about Web 2.0, Alan Fels interest in google, and picking a potential aussie 2.o whale. Heck lets bypass that whole small is big, arthouse, bootstrap, organic thing and go straight into a Jerry Bruckheimer production. The Billion Dollar Home Run. Become a big brand went the what do you guys think mantra. Bring in the agency, this could be big.

Rather than the standard panel format in which panellists take turns saying increasingly outrageous soundbites, or the long form corporate designed powerpoint monologue, it was a quick 5 entrepreneurs (well 4 + a VC!) doing 10 minute shootouts (scenario planning the futurists call it?) about (it wont happen overnight, but it will happen) Web 2.0 Aussie success stories.

You can tell alot by an audience about whether they laugh in the first 8 seconds, and generally this one did, not bad considering the mixture of of professional services folk, company directors, and the odd crikey is that a journalist from NEXT. As well as some 3eeps, 2vouch's, linkingme's, a bit of smartcompany yes, and I think I saw a lawyer i did. Did I mention the lovely Cutler walls, and that aboriginal art has appreciated over the past decade at twice the standard return for angel and vc investors ?

At one point the crowd did ask what an API was, after deep philosophical points had already been made about the inevitable (should aussie startups emulate the Facebook API) question, and how do you bottle the network effect and distribute it to the 2.0 drought downunder.

At the end of proceedings The Man with the Top Hat slammed down his solid wood hammer, and the front row Master Feng (i swear his card said something to that effect) who had asked a question about "How would I build something like Youtube or Digg" ran up to the table and said "I must buy you lunch". He left, imparting a secret handshake, although I'm not sure it's the official Churchill Club one, but it was close enough. Master, I have much to learn, show me my destiny.

Your Hourly Twitter Ratio and How it Can Save the Australian Startup Market.

Aussie2.0-Matrix
Originally uploaded by benbarren

There's been some talk among the vc's who eat the dog food / liked the company so much i bought it / about how much twittering is too much; A few times a day has been posited. I love a lively twitter stream as long as it's from people I kinda, almost, preferably know or have some vague connection to. It's a bit more real life. Anyway, I was thinking about how much is too much (not an area i've ever really been good at controlling if the question ever needed to be asked, yes we have a problem..) but what happens when you twitter like 20 times between Friday night and Monday morning, but only another 20 times between Monday morning and Friday night. Is it OK* to take the overall average ? eg 6 daily posts or 1 every 4 hours.

*I'm off, this isnt actually a post. It's just filler for my little desktop skitch application (which I'll be porting to the iphone soon) where I've matrixised the Aussie web 2.0 industry. I guess if we are going to talk about the success stories or not (i think it will be alot of future projecting if we are going to discuss success, given the earlystageness of this sector locally) I thought I better identify the relevant companies and industry segments.

Churchill Club. 530pm Tonight. Australian Web 2.0 Success Stories; Question Mark.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

I was reading some Winston Churchill today, well I wasn't but I googled his quotations ("Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public."), as I'm having my virgin outing to the Churchill Club, where we'll be tossing around the hot potato of Australian Web 2.0 Success.

Among the serious questions we'll be discussing (guys from 3eep + Atlassian there) are "Are there Australian Web 2.0 successes? Does the tyranny of distance matter? Does Australia have critical mass for communities? Is there finance available? What executions are working?"

The best line from their website pre-amble is "Note there will be "No spin, no hype, and definitely no Powerpoint". This is always good to hear the day of a panel/conference/presentation, and are wondering* whether you need to whip out the old .ppt, and get a little steve balmer with pictures.

I did take my sushi, m.twitter and a permanent marker, along with an index card, and scribble down some notes@greville park at lunchtime. I'd say come along, but it's sold out!!! Or attempt to infiltrate under an alias...

* in between dealing with having your gmail blacklisted because they think u r a nigerian scammer who uses gmail with godaddy to help liberate their blood diamonds.

Will I get my 24" Brushed Metal Core 2 Extreme Razor Thin Macbook Like Keyboard HD Friendly Imac by August 7th ?

ill takeit
Originally uploaded by benbarren

So it seems August the 7th may be the day I have to wait* to put in my order for a new 24" iMac work machine, pretty please Steve. From 9to5Mac.com : "What seems to be known about the iMacs is that they will support a brand new metal enclosure which is much more sleek (under 2 inches thick) than the previous revision and lose much of their "chin". Contrary to popular belief (that the 17 inch version was a goner) they will be available in 17, 20 and 24 inch varieties. The keyboard is also redesigned to be much more mobile and gain additional media controlling functionality (remote control anyone?) - oh and it is RAZOR thin. This will be something designed more for the living room or family room (or bedroom or dorm room) than the office. It would also make sense that Apple would include the fastest processor available in an enclosure this small - likely Intel's new Core 2 Extreme Mobile that was just announced. It would further make sense that some form of High Definition optical disk technology (HD-DVD or Blue Ray) will be included, however, these details can't be confirmed."

* I have separated my ibook 14" and imac 20" (non-intel brethren) and am working on a 14" ibook during day which is so painful, I cant even blog about it. I just wince surrounded by 30" Cinema Displays and 17" Santa Rosa Matte Screen Macbook Pros. So I cant really wait any longer than August the 7th. So Fake or Real Steve make it happen.

"If you look at most web services that have been bought, they've lost their mojo once they were acquired."

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Will 2008 be the year we start seeing IPO's instead of flips to googhoosoft ? AVC : "If you look at most web services that have been bought, they've lost their mojo once they were acquired. What has YouTube done lately that is so great? Skype? MySpace? Delcious? Flickr?"

"Users are giving us three words at a time and we're able to give back a lot of info.."

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Damn it's cold in Melbourne today. Coldest July day since 1998 the radio says. Google's Peter Norvig in MIT's Technology Review on search : "We're in a situation in the main Web search where there's a real imbalance. Users are giving us three words at a time and we're able to give back a lot of info: 10 links with titles, snippet of text, and other information about the page. So we're able to present a lot at once. If the user has a big screen, they can consume what we're giving them quickly. So it's a fast interaction but a very imbalanced one. One of the things we're looking at is finding ways to get the user more involved, to have them tell us more of what they want. People type the query "map," and then they get upset if it's not the map they were thinking of. So, people may be willing to talk more than type. Or maybe they're willing to take a suggestion if we offer something that they didn't type a query for, but is related."

"Half the time we are out, we forget to take business cards. We don’t keep track of hours."

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Congrats to Tara (and Chris) on Citizen Agency, I score close to 7 out of 10 when INTJ'g her self-assessment points when I look at my own fledgling* business : HorsePigCow : "We don’t do anything that conventional wisdom would say could lead to success. We didn’t have a business plan. We refuse to use any traditional ways of marketing/advertising. Our website pretty much sucks. We don’t even keep our company blog up to date. Half the time we are out, we forget to take business cards. We don’t keep track of hours. We don’t have a process (patented or not). We are clueless when it comes to prioritizing. And we don’t have any business goals. We don’t get back to people very fast. We turn down big, lucrative contracts. We give more away than we keep. We don’t really care too much about growth. We value our leisure time over efficiency."

* at end of the day if you take out the exception that proves the rule fly to skiers, many consumer based internet businesses will like most blogs, be personal passion endeavours that don't go the way of gootube etc. after "last time" there is always money in selling shovels to miners, not that it means one should not attempt to have their own little icarus inspired moment.

Advertising is the $10B Plastics of 2007.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

So it's lovely Saturday with no obligations, listening to Cats vs Pies 80K people at game, and the talk is all $6bn, $10BN, IPO time Facebook. Some interesting quotes from Jim Breyer VC Accel, via (gigaom) + Barrons : "We don’t want pitches all about advertising, advertising, advertising. That’s where you run for the hills. It’s the plastics of 2007, no doubt. Most plans have advertising as core revenue stream…when you see that kind of froth, you know bad things will happen. Too many companies being formed where there will be an erosion of returns, no doubt about it. We are very interestd in new product companies; new platforms; new experiences; taking advantages of new social networking platforms; improve people-to-people communication. Just so much advertising that can sustain advertising; Googles of the world are perfected advertising machines."

Scripting.com : "The next evolution of the web is to deconstruct social networks into their components. I'm tired of building networks of friends, over and over. Next time I do it, it'll be for keeps. It'll be the "real" social network, the one all future social networks build on, just as the format and protocol designed by TBL was the one we all built on for basic machine-level networking.. If Facebook has the guts and vision to become this network, then it's worth everything, even $10 billion isn't enough. Instead of Yahoo or Microsoft acquiring them, they will be in the buyer's seat. And Facebook has a clear shot at doing it. But there's no evidence that they get this, and no evidence that if they do get it, that they're going to move aggressively to fill the need."

"so what is your twitter username?"

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

So we had a very kewl twitter meetup last night. The numbers seem to be doubling, and following the twitter growth curve. There was a projector showing the tweets from people there which was fun; "What is your username?" is the default opening line (which actually is a better leveller than your normal "So what do you do?" - which you get at (web2'n'all) networking events.

Following my selfish folksonomy meets structured data in verticals on the edge, I cant help but continue my fandom of Wesabe who covered by Mashable have "provided an API for all the bank accounts they support, meaning you can take your banking data wherever you like, mash it up, automatically download it to Excel, aggregate it on financial sites and the rest. It’s not limited to the US either: Wesabe supports banks and credit card companies in 30 countries. Meanwhile, they claim that the REST API is as secure - or even more secure - than what banks already offer."

From Wesabe's blog, they really are impressive : "We believe that the best way to get to this goal is by putting that powerful data in the hands of every consumer who wants it. If you’ve been using Excel for years and you have your reports just the way you like them, great: the Wesabe API supports Excel downloads and can be called from within Excel using VBScript. If you’ve developed your own tools already, great: you can use our API to automate download of your data to your own system, and take advantage of our automation work and the community editing the people on Wesabe provide. Or, if you use the Wesabe site all the time but really want a report we don’t yet provide, this is a way to get that for yourself (or, we hope from other developers will to share their work). As the database grows, our ability to make better and better recommendations for great values and financial strategies does, too — no matter what tools people are using. In a way, it’s almost inconceivable that a bank would open an API. Banks and credit cards make so much of their money from consumers who are bad at managing their own finances. Why make it easy for people to see the problems they can overcome? That’s why we believe Wesabe has a role to play, advocating for consumers and their finances directly, and that’s why we believe that opening an API is different in our industry than others. We’re freeing a set of data that otherwise might have remained locked away."

As I'm about to get my new engineering team, the acronym API is getting pretty close to the top of priorities; Build it and others can Build it so they come. As Brad Feld aptly notes : "This is not a new idea nor am I suggesting it is. But it’s a phenomenon that has become key to what’s going on around the web today. Some people – like the fine folks at the Programmable Web – are even cataloging this. Remember the phrase “information wants to be free.” Your computer programs do also, and an API is the way to help them."

"However, the bulk of the content on the Neighborhood Pages we have left up to you, the Zillow community."

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

Zillow, the US realestate slayer has beefed up its social networking capabilities. I like the personalisation lite module : "We added a “My Snapshot” module that, when you’re logged in as a registered user, provides some key information about your activity on the site - questions asked and answered, homes posted for sale, etc."

And while there is much more to like ("We’ve created more than 6,500 new Neighborhood Pages in 134 cities"), the fact that the social networking is separate to the listings, and there arent substantial new home buying (folksonomic) tools related directly to the property you want to buy. This is the build it and they will come problem I posted about a couple days ago : Where there is an adjunct silo of content that end users are meant to contribute for the community's benefit, which historically isn't a compelling enough reason or personal pay-off. From Zillow Blog : "However, the bulk of the content on the Neighborhood Pages we have left up to you, the Zillow community."

The Jesus Walks Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade Meetup # 2.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

So the Jesus Phone, via Fedex, with help from DVD-Jon made an appearance at The Office today. If you're lucky + The King turns up this time on Thursday this week @ 5:30 PM, you may see the little device, which while not the 3 in 1 products that Jobs talks about when used downunder, it does all the 2 for the price of one stuff you care about (rather than wait till late 2008): Ipod, wifi, and email. Who needs an iPhone for the phone capabilties. It's all about the Gesture(s) you give it, and more so receive from adoring public !

Thursday this week 530pm
Horse Bazaar
397 Little Lonsdale St
Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Upcoming.org details on event....

So if you do have a phone, with twitter dialled in as an SMS friend (because u cant use an iphone for sms twittering remember), then you should turn up to the Second Coming of Melbourne Twitter Underground Brigade. We're doing it on a Thursday instead of a Friday, because well people just couldn't wait, to see Jesus, maybe, um Kinger u coming with your littl' gal-pal ?

Verticals aren't All Bad, If you go deep, folksonomic + selfish.

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Originally uploaded by benbarren

I've been spending alot of time working on where high value verticals meet UGC. (auto, realestate are 2 verticals where little innovation has happened globally and locally....) There are some really interesting opportunities here if you move beyond the (post/upload/share/review/comment/avatar/theme) this street, restaurant, artist, stock etc - and move into deep folksonomic tools, attention mining and personalisation.

And I'm focused on high involvement decisions, that necessitate lots of research, involve large financial amounts, and have major negative consequences if you choose the wrong house-investment-education-retirement plan. Not talking about sharing the latest degustation fusion joint. (any engineers with secret interest in this space, feel free to contact me:))

To play in the Web 2.5 verticals, you need strict objectives not to fall for the "build it and they will come.. and write great review, upload stuff etc" or go for low value genx-y/web2/fanatics.

While I like (love) wesabe for finance planning and yapta for travel deals (also what TripAdvisor is doing with it's holiday planning tool) - there are so many (more) verticals lacking players with these deeper approaches (esp finance and classified categories), with the trap being not to offer the standard commoditised social networking functionality. Why would I want to review a house for sale if I'm interested in getting it at the lowest price ? What tools can really help me manage my funds/stocks/car-property-holiday search etc. When you nail the product spec on these types of tools, you can really see why people would use them. (and mini-focus groups of mainstream folks seem to confirm it)

If you take auto-realestate-finance as primary categories where little innovation has happened, but large established on and offline players exist, there is a great potential for disruption, and ultimately bucks. As per the del.icio.us MBA 2.0 case study, these new types of services need to merge the private drivers of the end user with public benefits of the community.

First and foremost they appeal to someone's primary/private/selfish/productivity motivation, not some fuzzy communal benefit. (even if the aggregate, often anonymised meta-data and attention mining ala facebook can become a major site traffic driver and be the basis of successful community sustainability) In fact, the main driver hidden behind the behaviorial private motivated clicks-tags-comparos-track, may be risk minimisation : Preventative post-purchase dissonance, which I guess could also be defined as pre-purchase dissonance elimination; For any "social network" that revolves around decisions worth more than $10k, that's the primary "consumer problem" that needs to be solved. Should I make this investment ? Which house to buy ? What school to send my kid ? Which retirement fund plan ?

Once you get to the functional/technical spec, you (reassuringly should) end up quite a ways from the latest upload and post about this (cake, morgue, etc) standard vertical social networking spec. You end up allowing members to balance their private optimisation based behaviours, with their "civic" responsibility and willingness to share little particls of knowledge (in return for free access to many times more knowledge than your own) To be able to harness those (previous) unique users that faced a similar decision, and to see what they did/clickedon/tagged/rated (individually and in aggregate thats relevant to you, depending on what they marked private) This can really help you in the pre-purchase research stage of a decision. Especially if you only do it once every few years, and greatly affects your future.

VentureBeat : "Yapta works through a downloadable plug-in for Internet Explorer (support for FireFox is on the way). Once it is installed, whenever you select a flight from Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, or one of the eight US airlines Yafta supports, a button that says “Tag with Yafta” appears below the price. Clicking this will add the flight to a list you can access later on Yafta’s site. Yafta then automatically checks the airfare multiple times per day for all of the flight’s you’ve tagged, so if any of prices drop, it will let you know before it’s too late. If the price goes down after you’ve made the purchase, Yafta will inform you of this, as well, and will tell you how to get a refund or travel voucher from the airline."

Brad Feld on me-too Verticals : "If I hear another person with a plan to be “the MySpace for” (now people are saying “the Facebook for”) I’ll puke (not really, but this isn’t an effective way to get my attention.)"

"MySpace China will merge with MSN Live Spaces China."

first impressions
Originally uploaded by benbarren

This deal is very interesting, imagine MySpace Australia merged with ninemsn's (Live?) Spaces ? Well, that's what happening in the much bigger China market. From the CWRBlog : "MySpace China will merge with MSN Live Spaces China. Luo Chuan, who used to be head of MSN China, will be in charge of the merged business. It is said the deal will be announced on July 26th." Friday night, back to the footy, and later on Series 3 of Love My Way thx to Nikski.

Also reading about the 1.0 archetype Ellison and his Netsuite IPO (a company his interests have 74% of) From The Ponderings of Woodrow : "Post IPO, Ellison will retain majority control. As a result, public shareholders will not have a material say in the governance of the company. Larry will still be able to make quasi-unilateral decisions and is under no obligation to create a truly independent board of directors."

Or for the classic iPhone doppelganger Helio and their YouTube free release for those so lucky (who must be miffed that Apple sold more phones in it's first weekend, than any model has ever sold in a month I think I fed'read) From MyItablet : "Helio have not only introduced their own YouTube Mobile service but added extra functionality such as being able to upload your own footage direct from the handset. Relying on the same H.264 encoding as the iPhone - which means the full YouTube back-catalogue of videos won’t be available until the Fall - Helio’s client doesn’t need to perform the on-the-fly quality downcoding as the iPhone does (when using EDGE) since it supports the far higher speeds of 3G; not only that, but all contract customers get totally free access to YouTube."

Bonus Link : At the other extreme of iphone mania ("Patrick and I dropped in on the San Francisco Apple store tonight before our walk with Dave Winer. Photos on my Flickr feed of that. The San Francisco store was sold out of iPhones. Every few seconds another person would enter the store and ask “when are you getting more?” The display with cases was mobbed. Could hardly get close to it. Someone ripped off an iPhone from the display right before we got there, too.") see what this dodgy ol' dude is asking for on Craigslist in exchange for the sold out IPhone. NSFW text :)

Founder Beware : Liquidation Preferences.

lolita lohan
Originally uploaded by benbarren

Devil is always in the detail.* But in this case, it's more common sense (which can go out window when people offer "your" "company" not you) funds, which they want back, with interest. And if there ever is a payday. They will get it back. So dont raise too much, unless you are sure you are the next YouTube, which is nearly impossible to be sure of, until it happens.

Basically know what your likely exit is (best to assume there will be a market correction and look at what other assets "regularly" go for in normal times), then get your lawyer to scrutinise liquidation preferences, minus the related interest rate ROI repayments to investors X times by likely percent you (as founder will own eg 13% is common:) and continually monitor that the amount to be paid back to investors through the liquidation preference, isn't going to mean all your hard work results in 4-10 years work to pay back your investors, with little/nothing left for you. Quite a few Aussie dot coms went down because of this the first the time round; All because you raised too much dough and bought Aeron chairs/attended web2 conferences to network etc.

Blog.Pmarca.com : "There is one additional consequence to raising a lot of money that you should bear in mind, although it is more important for some companies than others.That is liquidation preference. In the scenario where your company ultimately gets acquired: the more money you raise from outside investors, the higher the acquisition price has to be for the founders and employees to make money on top of the initial payout to the investor. In other words, raising a lot of money can make it much harder to effectively sell your company for less than a very high price, which you may not be able to get when the time comes."

* This is also a classic areas where investors/VC's/angels will have alot more experience in regularly planting these clauses into contracts "it's the way it's done. it's standard" and then verballing the entrepreneur "trust me.. the business will be worth alot more and this clause won't come into play." Repeat, get a good lawyer. If necessary play dumb/good cop and blame him when marking up terms sheet/contract. Or just don't raise too much money already.

Apple buys iPhone.com

Originally uploaded by 0x000000

To conclude the weekend and my Apple iphone posting distraction, it appears Apple has just bought iPhone.com - Price not disclosed, or even that it happened, but my guess would be $1m and the seller knowing Apple wont sue them ? (which would be ironic given they "share" the iPhone brand rights with Cisco, who thought they owned the name until Steve decided otherwise) Frank Schilling : "It looks like iphone.com was acquired in the last 24 hours by apple. The site is now on apple servers and pointing to http://www.apple.com/iphone/. ..."

Iphone Problems : Speed + Activation on the Carrier Side : Font Size + Keyboard on the Handset

YouTube
Originally uploaded by mike3k

The reason the idea of the open source meets commercial ethos in the Chumby is the ability to self select website widgets and turn the interface into a reflection of the services you use. Similarly, the Google/Apple partnership while manifesting both sides of the do no evil implications, is made for mobile web youtube, gmaps, greader, gcalendar and so on.

Compare this to the apps and experience of Blackberry and Windows Mobile (or compare directly to Apple's lack of real office/web suites) and the battle for the mobile desktop will have a big say in the attractiveness of the hardware (assuming there is some catchup on the touchscreen gestures side)

Check the Youtube/Iphone picture mike3k uploaded, and this is a glimpse of the future experience esp once google fuse Jotspot, Writely, Reader, Calendar, Docs etc into a schweet on the go interface. What is there, 3.5 Billion Mobile Phones ? 1 in 2 people in the world, and growing !

At a basic reengineering level, the mobile web looks crap in existing pda/phones. So while Apple's beautiful appearance and screenshots of its Iphone attracts, this may only be skin deep once you start reading Dave Winer and Scoble's experience 24 hours in. On the other hand, these problems should be solvable, and in the end the consumer in 12 months will be able to browse a mobile web much more similar to the one they're used to on their computers.

Scripting News : "When I click on a link in Safari on the iPhone, before I can read anything, I have to futz with the display resolution of the browser to make the text visible. This may not sound like a problem, but what a distraction, when following a link, before getting the idea, your mind has to take a detour into managing the device. In reading as in the movies, suspension of disbelief is broken when your mind has to exit the space of ideas and manage the projection device. It's wrong for the device to ask you this, even as a setup issue it should be usable out of the box, but it's unacceptable that it make the user configure the browser every time it displays a new page."

Scoble : "Seriously there’s one customer who REALLY should think about not buying an iPhone: someone who uses a thumb keyboard phone like a Blackberry. The keyboard is frustrating to use if you are a heavy Blackberry user. That’s the one case where the iPhone’s other benefits will have a tough time counteracting those flaws.. My #1 frustration this morning with the iPhone? Fonts. Dave Winer’s right. I want to change the default view on the Web browser to always be zoomed in."

But as Umair says, the Iphone is a trigger point, where all the other mobile players will need to play feature catchup. I wonder what Razr 2.0 + N95 3.0 will look like ?

BubbleGeneration on Apple's Strategy :
1) "...Pick an industry which sucks (ie, imposes significant nuisance costs/menu costs/externalities on consumers)
2) Redress the imbalance by making something consumers love
3) ...Which disrupts the long-standing industry equilibrium, and shifts market power
4) Use said market power to redesign (a hyperefficient) value chain.."

"Typing on this thing in portrait mode with 100% accuracy requires the hands of a adolescent girl."

SMS
Originally uploaded by silvermeteors

The reason I was quite happy to stay in Australia (and not move to the US to get the iPhone early) and buy a Blackberry 8800 is the QWERTY keyboard. Even when some suggested the Pearl (or wait for the pretty fn kewl spec'd Pearl 2) I wanted the qwerty factor. Also wanted the device in black to match my Lumix ultra-compact camera. (probably the one reason I'm glad I have the 8800 over the Blackberry Curve 8300 which also isnt out in Australia!)

So back to my point - the keyboard, esp with my phat fingas, that'd krunk it up using touchpoint inputs. I use this device to write 500 word emails and blog posts (altho i have to remember not to do so in the gmail app as it seems to crash on long emails) So TUAW have the joost on the iphone typo automagik world : "Typing on this thing in portrait mode with 100% accuracy requires the hands of a adolescent girl. When typing a 27-letter phrase ("This little piggy went to market," if you must know), I made 5 "errors." That's not a whole lot, but it's enough to be kind of annoying."

iPhone Lifestyle Portraits Start Hitting Flickr.

Originally uploaded by 0x000000

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs is having a shot at the high profile waiting in Iphone line, talking to Scoble, Apple CoFounder The Woz : "First he went out telling everyone he invented the Mac. As if. Then he lifts my brand name and calls his book iWoz. Then he comes sniffing around looking for a free iPhone. Forget it, Captain Segway. Look. You did some nice work -- back in the seventies."

It will be interesting with Apple's Google love in these days how the iPhone Long Tail will be monetised. As the Open Garden blog (which ironically has been helping Nokia with their strategy in the space) says : "Because the Mobile Web is fragmented, you need to unite it across some dimension across Operators. We see this with admob and screentonic .. both of whom have individually a billion ad impressions (across Operators) on the Mobile web."

Iphone 3G.0 : Apple's Handset vs Carrier's Networks.

Open the SIM Tray
Originally uploaded by bryanchang

I really just wanted to show this kewl pic by bryan chang of the sim card in the iphone, so to fill the post I'll add Scott Karp on the underlying power subtext of Apple's choice to go 2.5GPRS-Edge : "The real battle for control is between Verizon, which has hands down the best network, and Apple, which now has hands down the best handset. The tide will turn when die hard Verizon customers start switching in significant numbers to AT&T to get an iPhone. People like me, who stood firm on the network is more important principle, will crack under the pressure. There will come a tipping point, then, when the cost to Verizon of refusing Apple’s terms will be greater than losing customers to the iPhone."

"VCs are normally reluctant to fund ventures where the management team is looking to replace their salaries that they had at larger companies."

OneTrip.org on iPhone
Originally uploaded by Neven Mrgan

After all the talk about "how old" funded entrepreneurs should be, the textbook HD exam answer is detailed at AskTheVC - who note a barrier which stops many people starting, or working for startup businesses - is not being paid equivalent to their plush corporate "just got to be able to sustain my outgoings.. mortgage, car, credit, schools, gadgets etc" (thus making salaries below $75k/$100k very unlikely for good people)

Downunder this is compounded by a lack of 5yrs+ online experienced candidates (often left online industry around 2001-3), as well as lack of early stage funding (The circular "There is nothing to invest in / Weak management teams" being the primary reason + where funding does happen it often moves the business offshore hence negating local labour issues) : "VCs are normally reluctant to fund ventures where the management team is looking to replace their salaries that they had at larger companies. Cash is a scare resource in a startup."

As Close As I'm Getting to the iPhone

BB8800 iBerry
Originally uploaded by benbarren

As the English suffer terrorism attacks as part of the Coalition of the Willing, Australians have been unfairly deprived of the GPRS iBrick. (Especially for those Vista users such as Brad Feld and Ryan of Mobius who have been stuck in an iTunes infinite loop - Not sure if running Parallels can help) Anyway, I spent $7 on the iBerry 8800 theme @ blackberrythemecentral.com. I'm liking the blackness of it all. As for the iPhone, I hear they are coming downunder in 2008, is that right Steve ? Dont you want my $7 ? OK Steve, I'm off to do some non-iPhone qwerty tactile BB 8800 flickrn.