Netizen: Andrey Ternovskiy

Monday, April 26, 2010

2010: Location, Random Connections, The Inbox, Frictionless Payments

I am not suggesting all four spaces carry equal weight; they don't. Location carries more weight than all the rest put together. 2010 is location's year. By now that is conventional wisdom. I can see why, and I buy into it. But these strike me as spaces to watch for this year. One of the other three might claim 2011 as their year. And I am open to adding other spaces to the list if I can find them, read up on them, imagine them. This list of four is by far not exhaustive. Charlie (@ceonyc) had a blog post a few weeks back (my comment) that ranked high on my vision grid, and he talked about some spaces he would like to see action in as an early stage investor. And he does not even touch upon these four spaces. So what you are looking for impacts what you see. There's plenty of exciting stuff happening in many directions. The 2010s will be what the 1990s should have been but weren't. We will dream big again, only this time there will be less fluff. Real businesses will get built. Old industries will get reinvented. New industries will see light of day. These are exciting times.

(1) Location

I'd be rooting for FourSquare even if it were half the size of Gowalla, but it makes it easier to root for because it is crushing the competition. But like the Google and Amazon people will tell you, don't spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror. Focus on customer feedback more. Grow.

Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

The mobile web is bigger and is growing faster than the old web. Location is key to the mobile web. FourSquare has itself a sweet, sweet spot. All the best to Dennis (@dens) and Naveen. (@naveen)

(2) Random Connections

Chatroulette Is For Real

We could have had Mark Zuckerberg, but instead we lost him to the Valley. We should try better with Andrey. We want people all over the world to be able to meet random New Yorkers. There's the fun in sharing.

(3) The Inbox

ReadWriteWeb: Gmail Becomes an App Platform: Google Adds OAuth to IMAP ....Syphir, which lets you apply all kinds of complex rules to your incoming mail and then lets you get iPhone push notification for your smartly filtered mail.
Rapportive - an incredible GMail contacts plug-in.
Your Inbox as Platform: Google Calendar More Closely Integrated With Gmail

Everything is email, if you think about it. When I first started blogging, I was like, great, I no longer need to flood people's inboxes. All I have to do is send them a link to a blog post. Facebook is email. People who don't know you don't email you, and people who email you are only one click away if you want to know the latest in their lives. No need to call them up, or ask them. Twitter is the ultimate email. Eric Schmidt even called it that, but he was a little miserly in the description. A poor man's email? I am poor, everyone is poor by Eric's standards, but hey! FourSquare is email. I am emailing you my location.

Don't give up on email. Email is here to stay. There is so much that can be done with the inbox. I am glad some startups are looking into it.

For now all I want is about four different inboxes. Inbox 1, emails only from individuals whose addresses I have saved. Inbox 2: emails from those people that are going out to more than me. Inbox 3: emails from mailing lists I have subscribed to. Inbox 4: everyone else.

(4) Frictionless Payments

Venmo is my FourSquare in this space. I take hometown pride in Venmo. But then supporting FourSquare and Venmo is like supporting Obama. (Jupiter And Obama) It helped that the guy was outstanding. I get the impression Venmo is also a leader in this crowded space. It was listed in Time magazine as one of the top 50 sites of 2009, along with Drop.io, another hometown goodie. (@lessin)

It is like this, there was barter trade back in the days. Then they had coins, some coins were as big as cart wheels. Then paper money. Then plastic. Then PayPal. We are about to hit the next phase. That is where Venmo comes in.

In my homevillage in Nepal growing up, I saw rice used as currency. Farm workers got paid in rice. Vegetable vendors would give you vegetables for rice. And it was pretty smooth, as in frictionless, enough to give Kortina a run for his money. (@kortina)

What I am telling you, Kortina, is rice as currency is pretty cutting edge, and there was major trust involved.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chatroulette Is For Real

We are all sold on location, and for the right reasons. But random connections as a space is not garnering the same respect, and I am going to call that a case of adultism. Because the founder of Chatroulette is a 17 year old, a lot of people are having a lot of fun talking about penises that supposedly sprout out during the Chatroulette experience. Guess what, sex is in the mind. Penises sprouting out do not take away from the basic Chatroulette promise, that random connections is a new web space, and Chatroulette has a bright business future.

Once I got a hang of Twitter, I said many times you can take Facebook away. I feel like both a high school and a college dropout. Most people on Facebook remind me of two institutions I do not want to be particularly reminded of. I liked it that on Twitter I could interact with people I did not know. Chatroulette takes that to a whole new level. Note: I have not tried Chatroulette yet, but I don't have to, I am sold on the space.

Chatroulette has to iterate. It is already at 30 million hits. That is a great point at which to roll out the future versions, to add new features. What could some of those new features be?

Once I roll the dice a few times, and I find someone I like interacting with, I should be able to bookmark that person, but only if that person agrees to get bookmarked. Once I build a library of a certain number of bookmarked people - and I don't need to know anything about them to that point - I should have the option to roll the gun only inside my library.

On the other hand, I should also have the option to block people. If I see a penis, and I don't like it that I had to see a penis, I hit a button that says Block For Nudity, and if a person accumulates 10 or more such blocks, they should enter a special zone. As in, people should have the option to say keep me away from people who have been blocked for nudity 10 times or more.

Voila. The penises are gone.

When I am thinking Chatroulette, I am thinking world peace. Seriously. We need more people talking to more people to get at that utopia called world peace. I want Chatroulette on all Israeli and Palestinian screens. Get those buggers talking to each other. And let them show penises to each other when they are pissed instead of blowing each other up. The 2010 version of make love not war?

Ever heard of people to people interaction programs run by governments? This is it. Chatroulette is the ultimate people to people interaction program.

But it is important to keep the randomness intact. You should be able to bookmark me, but I should not have a profile on there, no name, no location, nothing about me. If people volunteer such information to each other during conversations, fine, but Chatroulette should keep the randomness very much intact.

The next big filter jump would be to allow for geographical filtering. So I go on Chatroulette and I want to meet random people from Africa, I should be able to do that. (Nfodjo, is that you?) Or go to the country level. Or maybe even city level. I feel like meeting people from Moscow, how about it? Hello Olesya.

Just a few filters and the bookmarking and blocking options, and a lot of the caricature of the service vanishes.

Fred Wilson (the first person to tell me about Chatroulette, through his blog.... I accused him of now having got into the breaking news business)
What To Make Of Chatroulette?
Some Interesting Facts About Chatroulette

TechCrunch
Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me

AllThingsD
Chatroulette Creator Andrey Ternovskiy Gets an iPad, Gives Us a Peek at Version 2.0
Chatroulette Dude: I Don’t Want to Sell. But I’d Like Google to Pay.
Jon Stewart Plays Chatroulette, And We All Win

New York Times
One On One: Andrey Ternovskiy, Creator Of Chatroulette

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