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Category: money

Aggressive weeds in the garden of your social graph?

Published November 7, 2007 by cgerrish

It’s a cold world out there. In the beginning there was the walled garden. AOL was a safe place, but in the end it couldn’t  compete with the wider network of websites. But once we were out in the cold cruel world, we needed someone to help us find our way around. A personal start page like MyYahoo, or a search engine like Google provided an orientation point for any journey into the network.

Social networking sites like Facebook seem to provide a new entry point that filters the larger network using one’s friends as editors; transparantly journals friend activity; and provides the opportunity to create facets, or nodes of connection, through the assertion of interests (preferred modes of attention) within the social network.

The battle for monetizing the network revolves around which company can provide the best orientation point for entering the network. Facebook puts you into the stream of your friend’s activity. Techmeme puts you into the stream of technology news and opinion. Twitter puts you into an edited collection of small moments, stream of consciousness and conversation. MyYahoo is a personal newspaper. Google is ready to show you whatever you’re interested in. Google Reader puts you in an edited stream of blogs. Del.icio.us puts you into an edited stream of categorized bookmarks and pointers. Mahalo is a variation on Google, it’ll show you whatever you’re interested in, but edits the search result to make it more human readable. Where do you want to enter the network today? Perhaps, I’d like to enter through my teleputer…

Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. This is the primary lesson for social networking sites, what was so painstakingly created and nutured can be destroyed very easily. The structure of a social network is biological, it’s growth is organic. But it is subject to disease (viruses, the madness of mobs, etc) and environmental factors. For instance, you could introduce social objects (nodes) that aren’t individuals, but representatives of corporate entities. You could ask people within the network to vouch for these new objects. You could have just figured out the best way to monetize the social network as an entry point, or you could have introduced an aggressive weed into your garden. In any case, the ecology of the system is irrevocably altered. Trust is hard to win, easy to lose.

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It’s Never about the Technology

Published October 8, 2007 by cgerrish

It’s always about the uptake. Interesting to see that Mint, after it’s big win at TC40 and other publicity was signing up a new user every 5 seconds. Mint isn’t that different from the aggregators who launched the idea in 1998. But the idea was too early back then. Now it’s easier to aggregate, and easier to create an interface better than a financial institution. But getting people to try Mint is much harder than providing ongoing value. You can build anything, but getting people to use it and keep using it— that’s a different matter.

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There’s Money, and then there’s Money

Published October 8, 2007 by cgerrish

dollars

Of course, it’s cheaper to start a web app company these days. But certain kinds of companies still require serious start up money. Mark Andreessen makes the point nicely when he calls for all companies after his should no longer receive funding because we’re in a bubble and no one needs money to do a start up anyway. But from what I hear, working under a VC in a start up environment still kinda sucks. Kinda like owing money to the mob.

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Amazon’s MP3 Store Rocks

Published September 26, 2007 by cgerrish

I’m an iPod and iTunes user. While I know how to drag files to a player and manually manage them. I find it easier to let iTunes do the work. The great part about Amazon’s MP3 store is that it integrates seamlessly with iTunes. It does require the download and installation of an application, and for some people that will be a bridge too far. But for those able to overcome that hurdle, if you’re already an Amazon customer, that’s about it.

Find a song or album and download it. It shows up in iTunes. Make a playlist and sync it with your iPhone or just sync it to your iPod. Nice. It’s the beginning of competition in the digital download market. It’s the first serious competition because it works well with Apples products. Some think this is a big problem for Apple, personally I think it’s exactly what Apple needs. They’ve had no competition. Competition will be good for both Amazon and Apple. Perhaps they can show the rest of the industry what the user experience needs to look like.

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