Does Path Stand A Chance?

Path is a new social network - much talked about - that has some of the early, key Facebook people on board. Facebook limits you to 5,000 friends. Path limits you to 50 friends. Facebook does photos plus. Path does photos only.

My first reaction is I agree with Robert Scoble.

Facebook Messaging Event: My Favorite Question

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So I am watching this event - the event of the day, the event of the week - and the talk this past week has been that Facebook is about to release a Gmail killer, and the talk this past month, maybe this past year has been that Facebook is eclipsing Google, and there is some talk Facebook might make it hard for FourSquare - FourSquare stole an engineer from Yahoo months back, Facebook stole an engineer from FourSquare recently - and Mike Arrington never stopped harassing Carol Bartz, TechCrunch recently put out an "infographic" laying out how Yahoo is hemorrhaging, and Time Armstrong made news when his company is not even 1/10th the size of Yahoo but he wanted to buy out Yahoo, and people have been on a lookout for Jerry Yang - where is David? - and one person at the event asks Mark Zuckerberg this question, so, my Facebook friends are not my real friends, they are just casual friends, and all my closest friends are on my Yahoo Mail account, and how is this new Facebook Messaging going to alter my life, are you telling me all these not so real friends I have on Facebook are going to be able to message me now?

Facebook Messaging: Awesome

You don't go after Google with search like Bing did. You go after it from an angle. Call it social, call it Facebook. And so I had no idea what Facebook's Gmail killer application would look like. That was the metaphor that had been making the rounds. Facebook is not calling it email. Facebook is calling it messaging.

Facebook Blog: See the Messages that Matter: Between mobile devices and the Internet we can be more connected today than ever before, but there is still a feeling that the technology can also act as a barrier between us. .... the next evolution of Messages ..... You shouldn't have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message. ..... All of your messages with someone will be together in one place, whether they are sent over chat, email or SMS. You can see everything you've discussed with each friend as a single conversation. ..... From "hey nice to meet you" to "do you want to get coffee sometime" to "our kids have soccer practice at 6 pm tonight." .... It seems wrong that an email message from your best friend gets sandwiched between a bill and a bank statement...... Instead of having to worry about your email address getting out, you're now in control of who can actually reach you. ..... Relatively soon, we'll probably all stop using arbitrary ten digit numbers and bizarre sequences of characters to contact each other.

Facebook has not disappointed. The expectations were high. They have been met.

Facebook's Gmail Killer Email: The Expectation Is In The Air

Image via WikipediaThis day - Monday - is going to be all about Facebook's email service. It has been touted as the Gmail killer. That is a tall wall to climb. If they deliver, that will create a new wave for them.

I think they will present something that is pretty compelling. This is Facebook, after all. But as to how much of a departure from Gmail it will be, that is anyone's guess.

I personally am very glad that a company the size of Facebook is tackling the inbox. The inbox is so raw. And I hope this step by Facebook will make Google sit up a little. It has been lazy with Gmail.

Voice Is Not Dead, Dumb Voice Should Be

Image via Wikipedia

TechCrunch: The Phone Call Is Dead: Text is just easier.

I have a few different phone numbers. I think I have three. Does that mean I am a huge fan of the telephone? Hardly. The opposite is true.

I tried to cancel my Yahoo Messenger number. I think I did. And they billed me anyway. My bank filed a complaint on my behalf. They gave me a new debit card. But that transaction went through. Felt like Carol Bartz was balancing the Yahoo budget on my back.

What Gmail/Yahoo Mail/Hotmail Can Learn From Twitter

Image via WikipediaThis is a feature request.

When you get into compose mode - and that is a mindset, a killer mindset - you should have two options. One option would be that your message - no subject line allowed - would be limited to 140 characters. The upside would be the receiver would not have to click to read it. Your entire message could be read and replied to immediately from the inbox.

What Gmail Can Learn From Yahoo Mail

Image via CrunchBaseThere is this feature in Yahoo Mail, you click on the Sender column title at the top, and all your emails get organized by who sent you the email. You click on Date and all your emails in the inbox get similarly organized.

This feature comes in very handy when you are out to massacre emails. You want to save that rare email. On the other hand you don't want to have to delete emails one at a time.

I Fixed The Budget, You Can Too

My plan for the deficit http://t.co/veqyQyX
New York Times: Budget Puzzle: You Fix the Budget

Should FourSquare Be Scared Of Facebook?

Facebook's recent poaching of a major FourSquare engineer gave me a moment for pause, the backdrop being Facebook's aggressively going after Google. Microsoft never went after IBM like that. FourSquare is no Google. It is still a very small company. And Facebook Places has been decently successful.

Mark Suster At Columbia

CVC Discussion With Mark Suster from Tobin Schwaiger-Hastanan on Vimeo.

(Source: Mark Peter Davis)

Happy Chhath

Kanye West: Blame Game

Does Google Have An Innovation Problem?

Image via Wikipedia

Robert Scoble: Why Google can’t build Instagram: (I was working at Microsoft as Flickr got bought by Yahoo, Skype got bought by eBay, etc etc). ..... Google, internally, knows it has an innovation problem .... is looking to remake its culture internally to help entrepreneurial projects take hold...... how Larry Ellison actually got efficiencies from teams. If a team wasn’t productive, he’d come every couple of weeks and say “let me help you out.” What did he do? He took away another person until the team started shipping and stopped having unproductive meetings. .... At Google you can’t use MySQL and Ruby on Rails .... Google Wave failed, in part, because it couldn’t keep up with the first wave of users and got horribly slow .... Small teams rule

Google is going to fail in the innovation department if it feels like it has to be number one in every emerging trend. On the other hand, it could keep going into new sectors of the economy like it has shown a tendency to do. Google can't beat Facebook on social, but it can beat Facebook and every other web company on wind farms and clean cars.