Google+ Can't Die, I Have Posted Too Many Pictures

Geocities died and I lost a lot of my articles I had published there. Google Video died and I lost hundreds of my videos, most of them hour long. And now this rumor is unnerving me. I have thousands upon thousands of pictures on Google+. Not only that, it is my favorite photo sharing app. I really like its tight integration with my phone. I am squarely in the Android camp. ("I am a man of the people!" -- Laloo Yadav) Why would Google even think of killing Google+? Not only is it my favorite photo sharing app (I really like how photos from my phone upload themselves) I also greatly like the Google+ Communities.

Google+ Is Dying. What's Your Exit Strategy?

Wait, I did a search on "paramendra bhagat geocities" and look what I was able to dig up.

About Paramendra Bhagat (my first website)
Paramendra Bhagat
Writings by Parmendra Bhagat

I guess they are still there. Now if I only I could find my Google Video videos. But I doubt it. At the time I remember opting for Google Videos over the newly launched YouTube. I figured Google is a company that will still be around decades from now, and so my videos will be "safe!"

google video and nepal movement for democracy

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New York Tech Scene: Thriving

Technology Review: Fred Wilson

his first big deal was an investment in the Web community GeoCities, which Yahoo bought for about $3 billion in 1999. He went on to back startups including Twitter, Zynga, and Foursquare .... because VCs often shy away from technologies that take a very long time to bear fruit, such as many in energy or biomedicine, some critics contend that VCs flood the world with too much money for ideas that don't solve big problems. ..... the returns haven't been very good in the venture capital industry for a long time ..... There are a lot more places to go for money, which I think is a good thing for venture capital, because it allows more entrepreneurs to get going. We see more projects. There are more quality opportunities for us to invest in. At first blush, you might think that more capital means more competition. But I think what more capital really means is more entrepreneurs. ..... I don't think there's too much money sitting around. I think there's too much money in too few hands. So when six white guys in suits control two and a half billion dollars, that's not a good thing. Instead of being allocated just to one firm, it would be better if that two and a half billion dollars was allocated to 25 firms at $100 million each. It would lead to more diversity or people trying more things: data sciences, urban sciences, transportation, energy, materials science, and many others. ..... people who invest in venture capital like to go into deals together, and they like to invest in firms that have brand names and have long track records. That's what leads to a concentration of money in a few big-name firms

If You Don’t Know Your Co-Workers, Mix Up the Chairs

I learned early on not to feel badly about reaching out for help, and not to feel embarrassed about saying that you’re in over your head. We have a fantastic group of investors, and I’ve always felt comfortable asking for guidance. Early on, everyone in the organization became really comfortable with the idea that if there’s something you can’t do, just talk to someone about it or find someone to help you........ The importance of overcommunicating .. it’s taken me a while to realize that just because I understand things doesn’t mean that everyone else understands them. In our company meetings, I’ll say things that sound repetitive, but you have to do that. ...... As the company has grown, I can sometimes start to feel disconnected, and I’ll decide to randomly meet with one person a day, and we’ll go out for a half-hour coffee. You do that for six weeks or so, and then all the channels of communication are open again. ...... I always ask them for feedback, too. “Is there anything that I can do better to make your job easier? Is there anything I can do to make the company better?” ..... creates a really healthy environment so that people aren’t running off to a conference room and saying, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.” If you want to talk about that, talk about it in public. That’s one of the things that have made it easier for us to be 120 people and still feel relatively small. ..... I keep a notebook in my pocket and I write down all the stuff we could ever do with Foursquare. ..... I’ve learned when to bite my tongue about things I’m excited about. ..... We mix the seats up occasionally so that everyone gets to sit next to other people. And I’ll move my seat around so I’m sitting next to different people. They can ask me questions, and I get to know everyone better. ...... I started to feel a bit disconnected from our San Francisco office, so we got two big screens with cameras there and here in New York. They’re on all day long, so you just walk by and say: “Hey, Pete, what’s up? Can you get Ben?” It works so well. ....... this idea of weekly snippets. Every Monday, you send in a bullet list of the stuff you’ve been working on, and the software compiles a list and mails it out to the entire company. So you can quickly scan them to find out the status of a project or what somebody is working on. It gives you a nice general overview of the company. So you follow the people you want to get updates from, but we make sure that everyone automatically gets them from me and our C.O.O. and our head of engineering and our head of product. ....... When I send out mine, the first heading is, “Things I’m Psyched About,” and the next is, “Things That I’m Not So Psyched About” or “Things I’m Stressed About.” The next thing is usually a quote of the week — something I heard from one of our investors or maybe overheard from an employee — and then I have my snippets below that. ...... I get a lot of feedback from employees. It only takes them a minute or two to read, and it’s like a bird’s-eye view of what I think is going well at the company and areas where I think we could improve. It’s also a good way to start a conversation. ...... We always talk about when the company feels broken — let’s say you have 10 employees, and suddenly you have five more, and the stuff that worked at 10 doesn’t work at 15. So we’ll say, O.K., the company is broken — let’s step back and figure out how to fix it, and it might happen again from 20 to 50, from 50 to 70, whatever the numbers are. ...... The teams might be too big. Maybe there are too many reviews. There are all these little levers that we can tweak, and that’s how you take something that’s feeling a little bit broken, or not as efficient as it could be, and right it.

The Rise of the New York Startup Scene

"We never even had a conversation about, 'the only way to make it succeed is to go to California—should we pack up our stuff?' " ...... a pool of engineers who have come to or stayed in the city as companies like Facebook and Twitter built offices in New York ..... the amount of New York City-based startups that received venture funding rose 34 percent between 2007 and 2011, while deals in Silicon Valley declined 7 percent and those for the country overall dropped 8 percent. Last year, venture investors plowed $2.75 billion into 390 startups in the New York City area—the most money and investments since 2001 ..... So far this year, $942 million has been invested in 182 startups in New York. .... the Silicon Valley scene is still many times larger (1,202 companies grabbed $12 billion last year), and is nowhere near being eclipsed. Still, New York's startup growth is palpable ..... Like Crowley, Zach Sims decided to set up shop in New York when he cofounded Codecademy, a startup that teaches people how to write software code—even though his company's early days were spent in Silicon Valley as a participant last summer in Y Combinator ..... Sims and cofounder Ryan Bubinski had attended Columbia University in Manhattan, building up a network of people they wanted to hire, and their main investor, Union Square Ventures, is based in the city. Sims also thinks working in New York is a good way to be in touch with the kinds of people who would use Codecademy, since the startup's offerings are geared toward people who aren't entrenched in the tech scene—and those people are easier to find in New York than in Silicon Valley. ..... there's New York's always-on atmosphere: she'd worked previously in Silicon Valley and "felt like a weird person" leaving the office at 2 or 3 a.m.—but New York is always buzzing. "You can get food here any time of night," she says. "You can get anything."

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Google Is Mind Blowing

Image via CrunchBaseGoogle conquered search. I remember the days when I used to fondly display the Google search engine on my personal homepage on Geocities. This was when Google had just launched. The company has come a long way since.

It conquered search. It floundered on social, the next big trend, for a few years. But now it seems to also have mastered social. Google Plus is a big hit.

It has conquered the mobile space with Android.

Big Data is the next big thing after social, I think, many think. Google is doing some really interesting things in that space. Facebook is not, Apple is not. Microsoft might, but is not. Many new startups are doing better work than Microsoft in that space. Just like social belongs to Facebook, Big Data deserves to belong to new names, not Google. But Google is proving surprisingly resilient.

People talk about the magic of Apple. I never really got it. For me the magic has always rested with Google.

And that is not even talking about Google X. Google thinks long term like no other company I know. I think Google more than Apple is poised to end up the most valuable company in the world. Google X has been working on entire new industries of the future. Much of it comes across as sci-fi.

I love Google like some people love Apple. But that is no news. That has always been true for me. But I have always been fascinated by the Steve Jobs life story.

It's a buy from me on Google stocks.

If I were forced to choose between Gmail and Facebook, I would pick Gmail. But I am glad I am not being forced.

Gender And The Wilson Household

Cover of John LennonOne thing I appreciate about the Fred Wilson family is that all of them blog. I really, really like that. It is not like they are odd, and I salivate for juicy details - although, as for some of Joanne's food posts. None of that. They are very normal as people. I have not met the kids (and that's fine with me), but I have met Fred and Joanne. I do visit Fred's blog near daily. The guy just recently got called officially the top VC in the world for the kind of return he has shown for the money he has raised. But I have followed him at his blog for two years before that admiring his excellence, and the quality of his mind. He is also just a good person. I have blogged about him a few times. More than a few times.

I have reblogged their three children on Tumblr multiple times. I have taken pleasure.

This crew is like the First Family of the NY tech ecosystem. And they are accessible. One day, some day, I am going to ask for Joanne Wilson's autograph.

One thing the Wilson couple talk frankly about is gender and gender roles. And I really, really appreciate that. We might or might not disagree, but I get suspicious of people who simply don't believe in bringing it up as a topic of conversation.

Yahoo Doldrums

Image via CrunchBaseMike Arrington has relentlessly gone after Carol Bartz from day one. Some of that I have attributed to sexism. Some I have attributed to the media's need for conflict and drama: that is partly how they generate page hits. Some I have attributed to Mike angling to get bought by Yahoo's rival AOL: that happened. But Yahoo does have serious problems.

Yahoo's problem is not that it is not number one, or that it is not going to get back the crown. Yahoo's problem has been that it has messed up being number two. Yahoo bought Flickr, and look at Facebook: photo sharing is the number one thing that happens on Facebook.

Mark Suster: The Social Network: Facebook To Fragmentation

Image via WikipediaMark Suster's three pieces on TechCrunch are a nice summary of what has happened, and what is happening, although if any of this is news to you, I have to ask, where have you been?

When he starts talking about the future, it gets trickier. Social has so much buzz right now that it is hard to imagine the post-social buzz. But that there will be is for sure. There always has been. Social itself will morph. Social is one thing. Social and mobile as a combo is a case of two plus two being five. To that cocktail add local and global and you end up with two plus two equals 22. And it is not easy to figure out.

One good news is I see many, many players emerging.

Priority Stream

Image via WikipediaGmail came up with the idea of a Priority Inbox. People have loved it. Finally a cure for the common cold, aka too much email.

My Gmail Prayers Heard: Multiple Inboxes

Image via CrunchBasePeople kept saying, but you can already do that. You can set up filters and all. To that I said, Geocities allowed for a lot of what Blogger allows for, but you needed a Blogger to come along. Simplification gets in the crowds. Your average user wants multiple inboxes, not complex filters that you have to keep tweaking like you were some kind of a software programmer.

Real Time Search: Where Google Can "Get" Social
Reimagining The Inbox The Simple Way

And now we have it. It is here. Multiple inboxes are here in Gmail. This is my idea of Google "getting" social. Before this the inbox had become scary to many people. Now the inbox is back with a vengeance. Email is the original social application.

The Official Gmail Blog: Email Overload? Try Priority Inbox

At this rate I am going to be sitting on the Google Board some day. I'd love to.

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Zuckerberg Has Stature

Image by deneyterrio via Flickr

The Hoodie
D8 Conference Speakers

Mark Zuckerberg is the Steve Jobs for his generation. 10 years from now he is still going to be CEO of Facebook, and he is still going to be doing wonderful things. The Facebook of today is the Mac computer. He still has the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad in him somewhere.

I admit to totally having missed out on the brouhaha surrounding him and his company the past few weeks. One reason might be because my privacy settings on Facebook have been set to Everyone for a long, long time. I have hundreds of friend requests from people I don't know. I did that for them. If you want to take a look at my pictures of New York City, be my guest. On the other hand I have one photo album that I have shared with only three people.

Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison's 1995 Network Computer Vision

Yesterday I added the Like button to my three blogs. I have been meaning to do that since the Facebook F8 Conference. I would like to see that Like button next to every article I read on the web. Before this button I had to bring articles of interest to me that I wanted to share into my stream using clumsy techniques. It felt like trying to blog on the Geocities platform. Having the Open Graph feels like having access to the Blogger platform, finally. I really like the Like button. Is there a button for that I can click on?

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Fred Wilson

Larry Ellison
JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta
JP Rangaswami, Utterly Confused Of Calcutta (2)

I got excited about Geocities when it came along back in the days. You mean I can have my own homepage? To this day my Geocities homepage is the first page I go to when I go online ea

Image via CrunchBase

ch day. When I jump to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail or Google Search, it is from my Geocities homepage. I was saddened to learn a few weeks back that Yahoo plans to shut down Geocities by the end of the year. I think that is a bad decision on the part of Yahoo.

I have been excited about Twitter most of this year.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

I got taken by Disqus and Zemanta a few months back. They have taken my blogging to a whole different level. There is no blogging without Disqus and Zemanta as far as I am concerned.

Before Disqus came along, blog comments sections were a wasteland. Now it has becom

Image via CrunchBase

e valuable real estate. The blog comments sections are microblogging territory just like Twitter. They are a better way to meet new people who might share your interests than even Twitter. And Disqus is the reigning monarch there. And it is one of those things where having the first mover advantage makes all the difference. Twitter has had that in its turf.

A few months back I came across a blog called AVC.com. A venture capitalist with a blog, and not a ghostwritten blog, or a blog because it was cool to have a blog. This was a guy who was really into blogging. This was no vanity blogger. This was a genuine blogger who also happened to be a venture capitalist. At that point I did not know of what stature.

Recently I started reading that blog regularly and commenting in the comments sectio

Image via CrunchBase

ns. The blogger/VC replied to some of my comments, and even left a comment at my own blog.

I am a Deaniac from 2004. I moved to NYC summer of 2005. Howard Dean got to know me through DFNYC. I have been fast friends with the MeetUp CEO Scott for a few years now. And I am eFriends with Joe Trippi. Today I learned Fred Wilson is also associated with MeetUp.

Scott 2.0, MeetUp.com 2.0
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds
NY Internet Week: NYTM Showcase

Image via CrunchBase

I have been honored to have exchanged a few emails with Fred Wilson this past week.

MeetUp is a Web 5.0 company. I could argue Geocities was a 2.0 company before that term got coined. Twitter needs no introduction, soon Disqus and Zemanta will not either.

NY Tech MeetUp Mailing List Web 5.0 Controversy
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Competing For the Web 3.0 Definition

Mine is a 3.0 company. The semantic web is 2.1 as far as I am concerned.

JyotiConnect Inc.
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