Mike Arrington, Race, And HTML5

Image via WikipediaTalking about race is not negativity any more than talking about HTML5 is positivity. It is just plain objectivity. Group dynamics is more cutting edge a thing than anything we have seen in tech so far. (My Web Diagram) And race and gender are some of the most cutting edge topics in group dynamics, gender even more so.

Race, Gender, Tech
Race, Gender, Tech (2)
Tech, Women, Diversity
Mike Arrington Is A Sexist Pig: Say PeeeeG!

But right now the controversy is race. Months back it was gender, thanks to the same character Mike Arrington.

Mike Arrington: Idiot

Is Mike Arrington a racist? He is a character, that's for sure. As for if he is a racist, that question assumes the label racist is an easy one to pin. I don't think Mike Arrington is capable of hate crimes. But that does not mean he is not a racist. Racist behavior is a spectrum. Racist thinking is a spectrum. There is a relationship between the seemingly benign racist joke and hate crimes. And race is not a matter of individual opinion any more than medical research is a matter of individual opinion. Mitch Kapor touches upon that.

In this debate Mike Arrington comes across as clueless and defensive.

Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter
The Need For A Race Gender Coalition
Black Cop Shot Down In Harlem By White Cops: The Race Angle
Race, A Few Different Angles

And then there is this old media, new media tension in this debate, but there Mike Arrington is no holy cow. As a former blogger he has been guilty of all that he now accuses of: sensationalism, playing gotcha, etc.

Mike Arrington: Idiot

Mike Arrington: "I don't know a single black entrepreneur ... There aren't any .... Silicon Valley is a meritocracy. Success here depends solely on your brain size and how you use it."

CNN: War of words breaks out over Silicon Valley diversity debate

Mike Arrington is an absolute, total motherfucker. There is no other adjective for this guy. This guy is like, okay, noone is talking about me anymore. The AOL thing, well, people have already moved past that. I no long write for TechCrunch. So I don't have any comments to read. What do people think? That I have disappeared? I have not. Here, let me make a blatantly racist comment and get back in the news. And so it goes.



Arrington, Calm The F____ Down
Tech, Women, Diversity
Race, Gender, Tech (2)
Race, Gender, Tech

Brett Martin Of Sonar

So there is this guy called Brett Martin.

He looks like the actor Matthew McConaughey.

He presented his app Sonar at the TechCrunch Disrupt. We exchanged a few tweets and a few emails. The guy is buying me lunch during Internet Week.

Mike Arrington Liked My Comment

Image via Wikipedia

On a big blog like - say TechCrunch - it might not make news that Mike Arrington liked your comment. But this blog is small enough that liking my comment makes Mike Arrington a big fish in a small pond.

Whining Is Not The Word

Image via Wikipedia

ZDNet: 2010: The Year of Whining About Women In Tech: Whining about the inequality of women in tech has been big for page views this year..... Arrington said women in tech have more “equal opportunity” advantages handed to them than men. He delivered cracked-out lines about “the nurturing and risk tolerance needs of women,” and in closing he called us “you people.” ...... Arrington framed his argument with the opening set-up that the tech arena is a meritocracy. ..... And every person in tech knows that nothing could be further from the truth. ..... Kara Swisher .... blasted Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare for not having any women as directors ..... the top quarter of Fortune 500 companies with gender diversity outperformed those in the bottom quarter with a 53% higher return on equity. And that firm outperformance seems to happen once there are at least three female directors in the boardroom ..... Tech is not a meritocracy, and it does not run on the right thing to do.

What you are saying is so absolutely ridiculous. So you think the best way to make progress on gender is by NOT talking about gender? How come you don’t apply that same logic to rocket science and software and what have you? The best way to make progress on a software project is by NOT talking about the software project. How about that? How do you like them apples?

Super Angels, The Churning VC Game, And Catch Up Tech

Image via WikipediaThere's web services - aka dot coms - and then there's clean tech, bio tech, nano. Dot coms have become much less pricey. Anyone can rent server space with Amazon. Pretty much anyone can write code.

"You can learn the basics of Ruby in two days," a techie told me a few days back. "And it is all on Google, all the material is free."

Clean tech, bio tech and nano are still capital intensive.

But the biggest returns are in what I am going to call catch up tech. This is the world of microfinance and global infrastructure projects. An annual 10% return is the floor when it comes to these opportunities. If the wise guys - and they were guys - on Wall Street had known to pump excess capital a few years back into catch up tech rather than housing, we might have skipped the pain of the past few years. You pump up housing value, and you sell mortgage based securities to each other. That was like setting the house on fire starting from the basement.

Mike Arrington, TechCrunch: So A Blogger Walks Into A Bar…
Master Of 500 Hats: Fire in The Valley, Fire in My Belly... and Yes, Mike, I Have Stopped Beating My Wife.
Fred Wilson: Collusion
Quora: Who are the Super Angels that Michael Arrington is talking about in his 9/21/10 Techcrunch post, "So a Blogger Walks into a Bar..."?
Silicon Alley Insider: Hooray For Mike Arrington

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A Soft Spot For Mike Arrington

I have a soft spot for Mike Arrington. I think it is because we put down the same first four letters when naming our blogs: tech. Michael seems to think technology is a four letter word.

http://techcrunch.com
http://technbiz.blogspot.com

Kevin Rose once said on TV that Mike Arrington was a "d____." Sometimes he is, but I would not make such a blanket statement. At the end of the day he is a great guy with a great blog.

Location! Location! Location!
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

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Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising

Image via CrunchBase

Michael Arrington going after Anu Shukla a few months back would be like Michael Arrington saying Google is an evil company because click fraud happens, link farms happen. Click fraud happens despite Google's best efforts. Crime happens in New York City despite Michael Bloomberg's best efforts. "The safest big city in America just became safer."

First Anu has to work within the FTC guidelines and she does, or she would not be in business very long. Then there are the Facebook guidelines, and Facebook has chosen to have higher standards than the FTC because they don't want to compromise the user experience in any form or fashion. And if Anu did not follow those Facebook guidelines, some of the games Anu is involved with will no longer be on the Facebook platform. But they continue to be. That is to say they follow the Facebook guidelines. And Anu's company Offerpal Media has strict guidelines of its own. Because they know not compromising the user experience is good for their bottom line. And Anu's company allows its vendors to kick out individual advertisers from their platforms without having to explain why. You don't have to be a fraudulent advertiser to get kicked out. If a particular game does not like you, you are no longer welcome on their platform.

Despite these half dozen layers of policing, some slimey stuff does end up happening. And that can be talked about. That has to be talked about, sure. But to make that slimey stuff the center of the focus is to miss the fundamental point, which is that Anu has done nothing less than found the new frontier in advertising.

Image via CrunchBase

Yahoo used to do banner ads. Then Google came along and said no to that. They said, we don't want to have any ads on our main page, and we want to offer contextual text advertising. At some level that was like going from color movies to black and white, from colorful ads to text ads. But Google had hit the new frontier in advertising at the time. Zuckerberg said search contexts are less relevant than the social graph. And that was the new frontier all over again. Anu has come along and said, wait a minute. Banner or text, context or social graph, you are missing the point. The real action is that people are interacting. That is what gaming is about. The ads and the money transactions have to be part of that gaming experience, not a banner apart. Now that is fundamental insight. That is a paradigm shift.

More than 160 million people and counting play Farmville. Of those less than 100,000 file complaints. Most of those complaints are people saying I paid real cash for virtual coins, and I did not get my coins. Farmville takes care of all those complaints. Usually it gives players more coins than they paid for but say did not get.

Michael Arrington wrote 22 posts on TechCrunch about those 100,000 people. I look forward to seeing 35,200 posts on TechCrunch about the rest of the "scamville" users.

I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla

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Arrington's Thanksgiving

• Microsoft and old media: Not the best way to compete with Google.
• 1997 Steve Jobs. A great way for Arrington to celebrate Thanksgiving.
• Chrome add-ons.
• Facebook has been lousy with search so far. It has to treat each update as that unit that we should be able to search. It has to be more than about looking up people.
• Facebook updates did not kill Twitter. Twitter geo tagging will not kill FourSquare. I think FourSquare might be upto something.
• Angel investing is not for the chicken hearted.
• 999 business ideas.
  

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