No Kidding

The Art of War (Photo credit: kainet)

"A 1999 book by two Chinese colonels put it more aggressively (albeit in a sentence as verbose as it is apocalyptic): "If the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nations being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets," wrote Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, "then, after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent's computer system in advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis." No kidding."

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Related articles

• Why China Is reading Your Email
• Ambulance calls diverted to Scotland
• These text messages could be the difference between war and peace in Kenya
• Smart Grid Technology Market is Expected to Reach $80.6 Billion by 2016 at a CAGR of 28.7% - New Report by MarketsandMarkets
• Has Northern Ireland electricity network simply lost its power?
• Power Grid Corp developing grid security system

Twitter Is A Technology Company

SUN VALLEY, ID - JULY 10: Jack Dorsey, creator of Twitter founder and CEO of Square, arrives for the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference on July 10, 2012 in Sun Valley, Idaho. Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have been invited to attend the conference which begins Tuesday. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company?

Twitter is some variation of both. “I think of the company is a technology company that is in the media business,” Mr. Costolo told a room full of editors and reporters. “Our business is an advertising business, we don’t sell technology.” .... the company does not have any reporters or a newsroom, and almost half of its 1,300 employees are engineers, focused on building the technology that runs Twitter and inventing new features for the service. .... “I don’t need to be or want to be in the content business.” ...... Twitter employees who work with celebrities, politicians, athletes and media outlets to hone the best use of the service. “We call them V.I.T.’s internally, Very Important Tweeters .... Costolo still sees the company as a communication platform above all else.

Twitter pours almost all its resources into engineering. And so it is a technology company. Twitter users produce content. True. But Twitter Inc. does not.

But that answer is true only when you ask to pick. If you don't bother asking if Twitter is a technology company or a media company, then you realize those demarcations are perhaps not that relevant. It is both. For Twitter Inc. it is a technology company. For the hundreds of millions of Twitter users it is a media company. It is a communication company. Twitter does many things that a telephone days, only better.

To ask if Twitter is a technology or a media company is a false question.

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Is Twitter a pillar?

Related articles

• Is Twitter a Media or Technology Company?

  ---

• Twitter CEO Dick Costolo wants 'a world where people build into Twitter,' not off of it

  ---

• Twitter Is Working on a Way to Retrieve Your Old Tweets

  ---

• Twitter has a garden, now it's working on the walls

  ---

• Twitter to add way to download old posts

  ---

Facebook Going After Disqus Now?

Image by skidder via Flickr

Caroline McCarthy: Facebook's next big media move: Comments: Facebook is planning to launch a third-party commenting system in a matter of weeks ..... This new technology could see Facebook as the engine behind the comments system on many high-profile blogs and other digital publications very soon....... it's an obvious and direct competitor to start-ups that provide commenting technology, like Disqus and Echo. With Facebook Places adopting much of the "check-in" methodology that smaller competitors Foursquare and Loopt offer, and Facebook Questions operating in the same space as Quora

Facebook Places did not kill FourSquare. Actually the day Facebook Places launched, FourSquare had its biggest day to that date. I expect something similar to happen to Disqus.

On the other hand, I really like the idea of comments sections at blogs where people necessarily have to use their real names. I think that would enhance the quality of comments.

More Entrepreneurs Should Blog

OnStartups.com: Why Every Entrepreneur Should Write and 9 Tips To Get Started: If you asked me to tell you a list of three of the best decisions in my life, I can certainly tell you that regularly writing is one of them...... Writing on a regular schedule takes a lot of discipline, just like going to the gym or practicing a new martial art. ..... If you keep yourself dedicated to writing on a consistent schedule, those important values will carry over to other facets of life including startups. ..... By putting yourself out there and making yourself open to meeting as many people as possible, serendipity is much more likely to happen. ..... The majority of good things that have happened to me in business can be traced back to my writing

There are more great VC bloggers than there are great entrepreneur bloggers, and I have long wondered why. I have also long felt that situation needs to be rectified.

Social media is so essential. You need to do your own getting the word out. Most of your communication will be small group and perhaps intense. There will be a lot of in group communication. That is why social media is called social media and not mass media.

Updates that can sound bizarre to strangers are necessary staple to intimates.

But then there is also the matter of reaching out to people you might not be able to meet in person. Long form blogging is my favorite social media platform. It allows you to dip into far flung conversations. Meaningful participation becomes possible.

The VCs just have done a better job. I feel like I am half way to becoming a VC myself just from reading the many VC blogs. I have a pretty good feel of the churn that is going on in the VC industry right now.

Even former entrepreneur VCs will tell you, the real action is in creating companies, not in funding them. "All I do is write checks," Fred Wilson once said, which is an understatement, but it is the half truth.

I would go so far as to say every tech entrepreneur ought to blog. None of the top ones do. And I wonder why.

The list is not all that big. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Wordpress/Blogger, and FourSquare, and I think you are all set. If you are active on those five platforms I think you are really into social media. And you are reaching out to people you need to be reaching out to.

Regular writing is like working out for the mind. When you blog regularly, you read your news differently. You also read more.

Related articles

• Alexa Hirschfeld: CNN 2010 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• Difference Between Branded Profile and Personal Profile (personalbrandingblog.com)
• Silicon Alley Insider: An Entrepreneur's Take On The Social Network (businessinsider.com)
• Branding Rules for Every Entrepreneur (personalbrandingblog.com)
• Tell Us About Your Blog Business and You Could End Up on the News! (blogworld.com)
• Why Should an Entrepreneur Brand Themself? (personalbrandingblog.com)
• Cup of Joe: My Talk With The Legendary Copyblogger (marketingpilgrim.com)
• WomanzWorld Top 20 Business Women To Follow On Twitter (blogs.forbes.com)
• Different Types of Articles That Bring Blogging & Advertising Together (madrasgeek.com)
• A Beginner's guide to Social Media (dailybloggr.com)
• ActSeed is the Next Generation in Social Media for Business (eon.businesswire.com)
• Wineries and social media: time to take a deep breath (steveheimoff.com)

Space, Time And Twitter: Are There Plant Twitters?

Wyclef Jean via last.fm

Imagine a newspaper or a TV station that has a bureau in every town on earth, in every capital city. Can you imagine one step further? Imagine a newspaper or network that has someone covering every human being. That is what Twitter is. And Twitter is not a newspaper or a network. Evan Williams is not my Editor In Chief. I don't report to the dude, cool as he is. I don't even report to the world. I don't report to me. It is not important to say out loud who if anyone I report to. But my thought fragments matter. They are fundamental to the social fabric of the world. I matter if or not I want to participate in the jamboree. To twitter is to say you don't need to get on TV, you don't need a microphone, you don't need a gathered audience, you don't

Image by richard.pyrker via Flickr

need a special day, or a special moment. Every moment is special if you think it is. That is Twitter.

The 140 Characters Conference: twitter as a News Gathering Tool
Chris Sacca and Wyclef Jean at 140 Characters Conference
The 140 Twitter Conference Is Over…Say It Is Not So!!
Twitter, Twitter, Twitter Everywhere…

What Twitter captures is the basic building block of our social reality. A tweet is an atom. The social reality already existed. Even with old media and with mainstream media, the reality still existed, and the building block was still the atom, the tweet. But now, with Twitter, we get to map that social reality, one tweet at a time.

Twitter is about power to the people where power should have been all along. I wondered o

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

ut loud once in the late 1990s as to why people talk of term limits for politicians but not for the talking heads on TV. Some of them stick around for decades. And they have power over opinions.

Democracy means the political power rests with the people. Social media - it should really be one word like democracy - means the media power rests with the people.

My Twitter Suspension Lifted
Can Tweet Google, Can't Tweet Twitter
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

Related articles by Zemanta

• Who will be the next Twitter millionaire? (hubdub.com)
• Obama's Tech Twit Conference Will Destroy Us All (gawker.com)
• Iran's Protests: Why Twitter is the Medium of the Movement (time.com)
• How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live (time.com)
• TED talk by Twitter founder: How spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses (casesblog.blogspot.com)
• Twitter: Masters of the Media Spotlight (markevanstech.com)
• Twitter Gives TinyURL the Big Boot (thecustomercollective.com)
• Obama seeks econ advice from Web2.0rhea king (theregister.co.uk)

Microsoft, Google, Facebook: NY Tech MeetUp Has Arrived

The November NY Tech MeetUp had shifted to a new location. This place was fancy. This was Diller country. There was this huge screen. The demos could be seen on three screens within that huge screen.

There was this other huge screen when you first stepped in. Looks like the building hosts a few different companies. Or are they all owned by Diller? The first display was for Match.com. There was this huge globe that showed where all its page hits were coming from.



Page hits are all the rage all over again, but this time that is less fluffy because ad models are tied to page hits. If nothing else, you can always add Google ads to your page.

I think one thing that goes kind of unnoticed is how good Scott is in doing presentations himself. He is comfortable, succint, funny. He is a non techie in the tech field. He brings a lot of the soft skills to the table. And the dude is now even rich after his share of hits and misses in the roaring 90s.

Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

Of all the social events I go to in town, the NY Tech MeetUp stands out. There is nothing else like it. And now this things just went to a whole new level.

Perceptive Pixel
Sleep.FM
Vimeo
Tumblr
Drop.io
Facebook
Google
Microsoft

These were the companies that made presentations. Perceptive had multi touch display technology. From the mouse to the hand, quite a leap. Vimeo had high def video stuff. Cool. I asked a question to the Drop.io guys. "The .io in your name, what country is that?" That was my way of telling Adam I was there. We had arranged to meet after the MeetUp. We are cooking something together. We walked to Union Square talking it up. It was good talk. He had one big surprise for me. Or perhaps more than one. The day ended on a happy note. I walked over to Times Square and ordered three slices at the 99 cent pizza store. That is one great business model. You make money on volume.

The Microsoft presentation told me the PC era will not end. PCs will stick around. You are looking at an ecosytem. There is room for more than one organism.

Silicon Alley Insider

NY Tech Meetup: Startups Meet Giants
Facebook Ads: The Devil's In The Details
Facebook's Social Ads: Field Notes
Welcome To The Googleconomy Nine years ago, Google was two guys in a dorm room. Now it's a $17 billion global behemoth with a $225 billion market cap. ....... Bigger than Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and Citigroup ..... 70-times the size of the New York Times ..... Apparent operating profit margin of 50% (on net revenue) ..... Annual revenue per employee of $1.1 million ...... Google's market share is 50% in the U.S. and 90% in France ...... Google Then: $85 Now: $730
Facebook Ad Platform: Revealed!
Sorry, Google (GOOG) Not First $1 Trillion Company

TechCrunch

Liveblogging Facebook Advertising Announcement (Social Ads + Beacon + Insights) Facebook is getting into the advertising business in a big way. ...... three things: Social Ads (ads targeted based on member profile data and spread virally), Beacon (a way for Facebook members to declare themselves fans of a brand on other sites and send those endorsements to their feeds), and Insight (marketing data that goes deep into social demographics and pyschographics which Facebook will provide to advertisers in an aggregated, anonymous way). These three things together make up Facebook Ads. ........ "the next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today. As marketers pushing our information out is no longer enough. We are announcing anew advertising system, not about broadcasting messages, about getting into the conversations between people. 3 pieces: build pages for advertisers, a new kind of ad system to spread the messages virally, and gain insights." ........ "Where Facebook really excels is in helping you keep up with all of your connections at the same time. It is making the cost of communication so low ........ "More than 80 applications have more than one millions users." ...... "Once every hundred years media changes. the last hundred years have been defined by the mass media. The way to advertise was to get into the mass media and push out your content. That was the last hundred years. In the next hundred years information won't be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. Advertising will change. You will need to get into these connections. ....... A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising. ...... "Have already passed 50 million users, doubling once every 6 months. only active users who have used facebook last 30 days. More than 25 million people are using Facebook every single day. Each person is viewing more than 40 pages a day, more than 65 billion page views a month."