The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Evite Cries Y(h)elp! Copies Paperless Post Pixel By Pixel
Mike Arrington still has that thing that made him build the top tech blog in the world. Now no longer with TechCrunch, look at what this dude has dug out!
Mike Arrington: Uncrunched: Embattled Evite Clones Startup Paperless Post In Quest For Survival: For the last few years, though, a small startup called Paperless Post has emerged that lets people create beautiful event invitations online. Paperless Post isn’t free. In fact, that seems to be part of the attraction....... There’s been very little tech press about Paperless Post ...... The company has sent some 50 million invitations, has raised $6.3 million in funding and is break even with 35 employees in New York and San Francisco. Marissa Mayer uses Paperless Post for her events. Metropolitan Museum of Art, The White House executive branch, The National Gallery and even The Prince of Wales have all used the premium invitation service. ...... It’s a fascinating case study against the notion that people will always choose free over for pay online services. ..... an outright rip off of Paperless Post’s business. Evite’s Postmark hasn’t officially launched yet, but they promote it on the evite home page and people have noticed it. ...... “Evite’s Postmark looks like someone hired a programmer and told them to copy every aspect of Paperless Post,” says the person who pointed it out to me. And that’s true. The business model is identical – charge for every invitation sent, plus optional fees for specialized designs and other customizations. The pricing is nearly identical. ...... Evite has also copied the exact look and feel of a number of the Paperless Post invitations as well. ...... I particularly like the line they use at the bottom of the Postmark website – “The comfort from knowing that Evite Postmark is as reliable, effective and innovative as Evite.” .... Innovative, indeed....... And I certainly don’t weep for Paperless Post. In fact, this is great for their business. As much as Postmark has retreated from the stain of the evite brand on its website, most people will still understand where this service came from and remember the years of horror using the evite service.What is happening to Paperless Post now has happened to FourSquare several times over, and they are stronger than ever before. Paperless Post knows this space, and Evite is just imitating. It feels like a total copy and paste. When you did that with term papers at college, you got into trouble.
In elementary school the guy sitting next to me in an exam copied everything I wrote down without my realizing he was doing so, including my name! That is how he got caught! Hello Mohan! You want to know how Evite got caught? Check out this video.
I agree with Mike Arrington's conclusion.
My guess is Postmark will just raise awareness of Paperless Post, and even more people will flock to the service when they want to send a premium event invitation.The day Facebook Places was launched FourSquare had its best day ever. That's there, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth. Somebody explain why! Mikie?
Evite is Plaxo, no disrespect for Sean Parker intended. This stunt will not save them. I think this episode, at the end of the day, will go down in history as someone else having launched a PR campaign on behalf of Paperless Post.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Meeting David Karp
Paramendra Bhagat@davidkarp It was good to meet you in the 1 train on the Upper West Side a few hours ago. I am glad you liked my hat. :-)
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David Karp "90% of the mail I get is positive and encouraging, and only 10% is death threats." - Jimmy Justice on... http://t.co/3wqGeNRv
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David Karp "I know Nick Gray!" - If I had a dollar… http://t.co/c2nXvsAQ
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David Karp "I don’t want to hang out with other programmers. I want to hang out with Jay Z. I want people to be..." http://t.co/kDSBRhax
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David Karp: Tumblr Or Hipstr
Tumblr: Ease Of Use?
The Music Tag On Tumblr
Meeting Kevin Slavin: Tumblr's Brilliance
My Tumblr Just Got An Upgrade
So Proud Of My New Tumblr Theme
Tumblr Explore
Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn
Why Raissa Nebie Loves Tumblr
My Tumblr Style
Tumblr Down, Tumblr Up
How To Monetize Tumblr?
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
I was wearing my hat which is not the fanciest hat around.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Did Zynga Go IPO?
@davetischDavid Tisch Wonder what's under @fredwilson jacket... #raisecachehttp://t.co/amMUwweN
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davetischDavid Tisch
@paramendraParamendra Bhagat@davetisch I've never seen @fredwilson so razmatazz, in person or in picture. Did Zynga go IPO? $$$$$ http://t.co/prk9WD2q
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The Wilsons Were In Cairo Recently
Breakfast With Albert (Wenger)
Friday, November 18, 2011
Relationships
Image via WikipediaRecently I read this article. I think it could inspire conversations. The Atlantic: All The Single Ladies
Some observations I made:
(1) Having a job and paying her own bills is still such a big deal for this woman. This is 2011. You'd think having a job by now would be something to take for granted for women.
(2) There is no one right lifestyle. True. But a lot of people end up with default lifestyles rather than the one they would actively pick for themselves. If you are to stay single, make sure it is an active, conscious choice.
My favorite part of the article was this one:
In her new book, Unhitched, Judith Stacey, a sociologist at NYU, surveys a variety of unconventional arrangements, from gay parenthood to polygamy to—in a mesmerizing case study—the Mosuo people of southwest China, who eschew marriage and visit their lovers only under cover of night. “The sooner and better our society comes to terms with the inescapable variety of intimacy and kinship in the modern world, the fewer unhappy families it will generate,” she writes.This is exotic, don't you think?
The matrilineal Mosuo are worth pausing on, as a reminder of how complex family systems can be, and how rigid ours are—and also as an example of women’s innate libidinousness, which is routinely squelched by patriarchal systems, as Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá point out in their own analysis of the Mosuo in their 2010 book, Sex at Dawn. For centuries, the Mosuo have lived in households that revolve around the women: the mothers preside over their children and grandchildren, and brothers take paternal responsibility for their sisters’ offspring.
Sexual relations are kept separate from family. At night, a Mosuo woman invites her lover to visit her babahuago (flower room); the assignation is called sese (walking). If she’d prefer he not sleep over, he’ll retire to an outer building (never home to his sisters). She can take another lover that night, or a different one the next, or sleep every single night with the same man for the rest of her life—there are no expectations or rules. As Cai Hua, a Chinese anthropologist, explains, these relationships, which are known as açia, are founded on each individual’s autonomy, and last only as long as each person is in the other’s company. Every goodbye is taken to be the end of the açia relationship, even if it resumes the following night. “There is no concept of açia that applies to the future,” Hua says.
The Censorship Bill Is About The Nation State
Image via WikipediaIn a few swift decades, faster than most realize, the Internet is going to be literally the first country most people on the planet belong to. The Internet is beginning to challenge nothing less than the very concept of the nation state itself. And that is what the censorship bill on Capitol Hill is primarily about. Look how both parties are in agreement! And this goes way beyond old media companies buying out politicians. No. This is the politicians themselves feeling threatened. They can feel the ground shift, and it is not China knocking on the doors. There are those who play this countdown game of where China has become the number one country. Does that happen in this decade? Two decades from now? Or in 2050? The entire paradigm of that debate is foolish. In 2050 there will be no China, not the China we know today.
The political class feels threatened. Because they are wed to the nation state. A future where the nation state framework recedes to the background makes them feel irrelevant. And they would like to fight back to keep the status quo for as long as they can. They know they are fighting a losing fight. They are fighting a tsunami with a spoon. But they will not be the first batch of people in history to take a last stand.
Old America is Britain. The pioneers of the Internet are like America's Founding Fathers. The battles can not be avoided. I am glad it will be a war of words.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Amit Gupta Favorited My Tweet
Paramendra Bhagat Sent this out to 600 plus Nepalis in NYC, 9,000 Nepais globally http://t.co/MFV2RrGO@nickgray@superamit@tonybgoode#4amit
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The Global Outpouring For Amit Gupta: This Is Touching
Super Amit, Super Swabbed
Mike Bloomberg, Amit Gupta
The Global Outpouring For Amit Gupta: This Is Touching
@TrendsBangaloreTrendsmap Bangalore#4amit is now trending in #Bangalorehttp://t.co/DpMCGlFD
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@paramendraParamendra Bhagat Sent this out to 600 plus Nepali email addresses: http://t.co/MFV2RrGO@nickgray@superamit@tonybgoode#4amit
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412 Broadway, Floor 2
New York, 10013-3594
Friday, November 18, 2011 at 6:00 PM (ET)
Super Amit, Super Swabbed
Mike Bloomberg, Amit Gupta
@paramendraParamendra Bhagat Sent this out to 600 plus Nepalis in NYC, 9,000 Nepais globally http://t.co/MFV2RrGO@nickgray@superamit@tonybgoode#4amit
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@paramendraParamendra Bhagat@tonybgoode@nickgray Saw stacks of @superamit flyers at a grocery store in Jackson Heights. 11/5 event, Flushing, Ganesh Temple #grassroots
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Wednesday, November 16, 2011
The Spotify Event Was Great
Image via WikipediaThe Spotify CTO TalkSpotify is in the same building as Google. I show up and there is Melissa. She is with Barnes & Noble. They are also in the same building. I did not know. I met her at a NY Tech MeetUp after party a few months back.
Free pizza is a great start to an event, I think. Good thing I don't drink beer. Otherwise they had plenty of those too.
The CTO Oskar Stal - who I got to talk to at great length after the formal event was over - started the talks. It was amazing to me how he was obsessed with company culture. He wanted Spotify's engineers to feel like there were many small team startups inside of Spotify. That seemed to be his number one concern.
Later I asked during the question answer session: "Should you not have the Chief Culture Officer title instead?" He said he did culture and many other things.
Henrik Landren gave a great talk - replete with great slides - on all the immense data Spotify collects. I got to see a side of Spotify I had not seen before. Artists get to see where their fans are. That would really help them plan their tours. Magic. Hadoop came in handy.
That made me think. Otherwise I told Oskar, I feel like Spotify is a finished product. What is there to add except more songs and more countries? He is like, oh no no no. There is so much to do.
The Spotify CTO Talk
Image via WikipediaSpotify USA, 76 9th Ave., Suite 1110, 11th Floor, New York, NYWednesday, November 16, 2011, 6:30 PM
Have you been wondering where Spotify's going both technically and as a tech organization? How do we get the music tracks to play so quickly? What's up with Spotify's data analytics and the data processing stack? What are Spotify's general architectural principles?
Come and hear about the 'big picture' of Spotify from the guys running the show. It's not often that they're all in town from Stockholm!
Speakers:
Oskar Staal - Chief Technology Officer
Mikael Krantz - Chief Architect
Henrik Landren - Head of Analytics
Wouter de Bie - Team Lead, Analytics Infrastructure
Agenda
6:30pm Mix and Mingle
7:00pm Presentations
8:00pm Q&A
GigaOm: Pandora: Spotify is our friend, not a competitor
Vimeo: Spotify – the story
The Register: Spotify looks for local spin guru: They really must be launching downunder
ZDNet: Spotify tops the charts for multi-platform support
TechNewsDaily: Spotify Hands-on: Worth the Hype?
Global Post: Swedish tech has its ABBA moment
Time: Today in Least Necessary Purchases: ‘Spotify For Dummies’
TechCrunch: Spotify Lands Major Studio Deals, Prepares To Launch Movie Service
Forbes: Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
AllThingsD: Spotify’s U.S. Score So Far: 1.4 Million Users, 175,000 Paying Customers
Mashable: Spotify Eyes European Expansion [REPORT]
The Next Web: Spotify Opens for Business in Belgium and Switzerland
Mashable: Spotify Comes to Facebook [PICS]
LifeHacker: Spotify Is the Best Desktop Music Player We’ve Ever Used
New York Times: Spotify Loss Widens Despite Higher Revenue Its subscriptions, which cost about $10 to $15 a month, brought in $71 million, and the company also had $28 million in advertising. But its losses for the year totaled $42 million, up from $26 million 2009...... pays labels each time a listener streams a particular song. That system brings in lower royalties per song than downloads, but with a large enough listener base could in theory bring in substantial amounts ..... The company was believed to have more than 10 million total users.
TechCrunch: Welcome To Belgium, Spotify. (And To Austria And Switzerland)
Reuters: Spotify now has 250,000 paying U.S. users: sources
Forbes: Spotify Tries To Soothe Angry Users Over Facebook Conditions
AllThingsD: When Will Spotify Finally Come to the U.S.?
CNN: What's this Spotify thing all about?
ReadWriteWeb: Here's What Spotify's New Facebook Integration Looks Like
BusinessWeek: Record Sales Rise as Lady Gaga, Adele Find a Future With Spotify Music lovers are doing something they haven’t done in years: They’re buying more albums...... The number of albums sold this year has increased for the first time since 2004 .... Industry wide, sales of record albums, which include digital downloads, compact discs, some vinyl LPs and cassettes, are up 3 percent ...... Consumers who over the last several years rejected album prices of $14 to $15, and purchased singles instead, are now coming back to albums at lower prices. ..... “There is a significant market for the download of a total album for $9.99” ...... Levy and other industry executives see the pricing strategy as an investment. By making it easier for customers to buy albums they hope to gain market share and generate more interest in the music, eventually allowing them to profit from sources such as digital music platforms, merchandise, and concerts. ...... Adele’s “21,” for example, has so far sold 4.3 million copies in the U.S. this year, more than any other artist. ...... “An album like Adele’s is a concept album, enjoyed when the songs are not disaggregated,” Donio said. “She is doing well selling individual songs, but in cases like hers, the album is a work of art.” ...... Single track sales are up 10 percent to 1.055 billion so far for the year ..... When Lady Gaga released her second album, “Born This Way,” in May, Amazon.com held a one-day 99 cents sale that was so popular it overwhelmed the company’s Web servers. ....... Consumers also discover music through the growing popularity of services such as Rdio and Spotify. Though consumers can get music for free from these platforms, the services engage consumers and encourage them to make purchases, making them less likely to take part in illegal downloading ...... The Spotify service, Parks said, is helping to turn one- time music pirates into paying consumers. ....... “What Spotify has done is re-energized the base of music lovers,” Parks said in an interview. “Data shows that in all of the markets where Spotify operates, digital music sales have grown. We’re generating a lot of revenue for the industry from a generation that wasn’t buying music.”
NPR: How Spotify Works: Pay The Majors, Use P2P Technology
LA Times: Spotify's plan: get users hooked, then ask them to pay for music
Spotify - Wikipedia
Chicago Tribune: Spotify killed the radio star?
GigaOm: Indie labels stage another Spotify walkout
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
My Take On AirTime (3)
Image by Getty Images via @daylifeMy Take On AirTime (2) My Take On AirTime
Sean Parker's AirTime Could Net Him Tens Of Billions
AirTime will stand at the intersection between software/internet and group dynamics in the raw. That is an exciting proposition to me.
My Web Diagram
Also the timing will be right. As broadband's speeds get faster we will increasingly feel as casually about videos as we do about photos today. I am predicting an Instagram for short videos, for one.
AirTime's launch will open a whole new era of web innovation. This will be new territory. It will be almost as fundamental as Google's search and Facebook's social, if it is done right. AirTime's social will be of a vaster scope than Facebook's social.
But it has to be done right, and I am angling for a formal advisory role. I have been "advising" all sorts of startups for free here at my blog. But now I seek an advisory role, something formal. It is because when it comes to group dynamics, I am as good as they come. I know group dynamics like Bill Gates knew software. Or, rather, I know group dynamics like Sean Parker knows music and software. I am that good.
Bits And Pieces
White Male Conspiracy To Drive Me Homeless
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