Facebook Doing Location Is Like Google Doing Social, Almost

Image via WikipediaChecking in is not the starting point of your Facebook experience, and that is why Facebook is not a threat to FourSquare in the location space. If Facebook is smart, it will just help its users more closely integrate FourSquare into their Facebook experience. One thing I would like is to have the option to have a much greater control over who I share my check-ins with.

But chances are Facebook will try and offer a FourSquare substitute. I am looking at Twitter here. Facebook "learned" features from Twitter and FriendFeed. It outright bought FriendFeed. Buying FourSquare is not an option. Copying FourSquare is harder than copying Twitter.

This Is Not Happening: King Dennis

FourSquare is inherently a mobile web thing. You could add blogging features to my Gmail account, but Gmail is a different experience. You could argue Facebook has also thrived in the mobile web environment. But it started as a big screen web native. The mobile version is Facebook Lite. There is no FourSquare Lite. I have felt stupid every time I have visited the FourSquare homepage on the big screen web. It feels like sitting in a bus that is not moving.

I have no idea how Facebook will roll out location. It was inevitable that it was going to, but the details have not been obvious to me personally. It is because there is an inherent conflict in what I think Facebook should be doing in the location space, and what I suspect it might end up doing instead in that space. And so I have decided to just wait and watch.

Facebook could not have stayed away from the location space, but it has the option to do it right.

TechCrunch: As Facebook Location Looms, Has Foursquare Entered The Pantheon Of Services?: it seems highly likely the Facebook is going to take a platform approach to location. That is, they’re more likely to federate other location streams (such as Foursquare’s) while they themselves remain fairly cautious with their own location services..... Facebook likely has a deal in place with Localeze to build out a massive place database that they’ll then populate with all this data they’re federating and creating on their own.....I remember very well when it seemed like just about everything I read on the Internet said that Twitter was the dumbest service ever imagined and it would never go anywhere .....they run the risk of becoming the Friendster of location
AllThingsD: What Will Facebook Be Announcing Wednesday? Location, Location, Location!: Facebook will finally be rolling out its own geo-location offering .... a long time coming, as Facebook has noodled on how to incorporate the hot trend

Related articles by Zemanta

• What Will Facebook Be Announcing Wednesday? Location, Location, Location! [BoomTown] (kara.allthingsd.com)
• Why Location-Based Social Media Needs to Get "Passive" Aggressive (mashable.com)
• As Facebook Location Looms, Has Foursquare Entered The Pantheon Of Services? (techcrunch.com)

Hulu Still Struggling With Business Model

Image via Wikipedia

New York Times: Hulu Is Said to Be Ready for an I.P.O.: Hulu, the rapidly growing hub for online television and movies ..... the company currently makes little in the way of profit..... plans to add a $9.99-a-month subscription service soon alongside its core advertising-supported business ....rival video-streaming services like Netflix .... its three-year history .... Hulu aimed to be a counterweight to YouTube and other free video sites..... Demand Media, a publisher of articles and video based on search engine inquiries .... features content from most major TV networks .... Hulu’s powerful content providers have pushed the company to offer a more traditional subscription model, concerned that its ad-supported business is not generating enough revenue

Saavn's Great Business Model For Movies

There is something to be said of subscription models, but having to rely on them too much tells me there has not been as much innovation with business models as there has been with technology.

Hulu has attempted to be an answer to the wild west that is YouTube. Although there has been some convergence as YouTube has done a much better job lately of the platform being able to respect copyright, and letting content creators make some money.

Video use will only grow online. And hopefully business innovation will happen. But mind boggling business innovation has not happened yet. We are still in the early stages.

In The News

New York Times: Dell To Buy Data Storage Company For $1.15 Billion: 3Par
Telegraph: Adobe Chief Shantanu Narayen Believes He Doesn't Need Apple Or The iPad: Apple, the $223bn (£143bn) big-hitter that is the world's second largest company ..... Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen began his career at Apple ...... . It's the future of mobile that's at stake here ..... Adobe has cemented its role as a partner to other technology groups in recent years, working with 19 of the world's 20 top mobile phone handset companies, including Motorola, HTC, RIM, Hewlett-Packard WebOS and Google, to bring Flash Player to their mobile devices. ..... Some 23 of the top 25 European companies, as measured by Forbes magazine, use Adobe products, as do 23 of the top 25 global banks and all the top 10 European banking groups. ..... nothing to do with technology and everything to do with business models .... We're mission-critical to the companies we work with." ..... Adobe Systems was this year ranked in the InterBrand survey as one of the top 100 brands in the world for the first time. ..... He grew up in Hyderabad, India ..... he began his career at Apple, then worked as a director of desktop and collaboration products for Silicon Graphics, before co-founding Pictra, a company that pioneered the idea of digital photo-sharing over the internet. ..... his mission is to make Adobe critical to the products of all digital content providers, as technologies converge in the next stage of the internet. Steve Jobs wants that as well, of course. Watching this duo fight it out promises to be fascinating.
Boy Genius Report: Motorola DROID Pro, World Edition And Tablet All Found In Verizon Wireless Systems: Verizon Wireless is gearing up to launch a barrage of Android handsets and devices
VentureBeat: An Atom Bomb Aimed At Intel: Smooth-Stone Raises $48M For Low-Power ARM Server Chips: which consume small amounts of power....data center computers, where energy use has become the biggest expense..... “Our goal is to completely remove power consumption as an issue for the data center. Imagine that change for companies with a large presence on the Internet”
TechCrunch: VCs And Super Angels: The War For The Entrepreneur: Publicly everyone gets along just great...... the disruptive force of a new breed of angel investors ..... Pick the wrong investor and you’ve closed the door on others...... Until very recently there was an established pecking order with venture capitalists. ...... the rise of the cheap startup. ..... Often there’s no need to go past an angel round of funding until it’s time to decide between selling and doing a big marketing push. ..... These angels are fast and nimble and they are hanging out with the entrepreneurs at events, incubators, etc. They are in the fray, while many of the old VCs remain above it all, waiting for the entrepreneurs to come to them, hat in hand. ...... Y Combinator, which has spawned some 200 plus startups in just a few years, could be considered the king of this ecosystem ...... McClure has a $30 million fund. Dixon has a $50 million fund. .... it’s easier for a good idea to attract the cash it needs
TechCrunch: Wireless Is Not Different. You Can’t Be Half-Open:the future of the Internet, the wireless Internet....There is no such thing as being half-open (it’s like being half-pregnant)..... The broad principles should be the same: whenever possible, all bits should be treated equally ..... Google’s and Verizon’s proposed rules ... would prohibit broadband providers on the wired Internet (like DSL, cable, and fiber) from discriminating against any kind of “lawful” Internet content or application over another. They also would prohibit wired broadband providers from taking payments to deliver Internet traffic from one Website faster than anyone else’s. ...... One man’s prioritization is another man’s discrimination.....Net neutrality does not mean that everybody gets to download an unlimited amount of BitTorrent movies onto their cell phones. It simply means that all bits are treated equally, even when they are blocked.
GigaOm: Foursquare’s Future Slowly Takes Shape:Foursquare wants more folks to use its application-programming interface (API), and thus build an ecosystem around Foursquare’s data..... bring a cost-per-action business model to the real world, perhaps either supplanting or complementing traditional forms of advertising. ...... if there is a possibility of retail outlets, such as J.Crew, using Foursquare as a beacon for flash sales. ...... 21st century equivalent of loyalty rewards .... Adding a reward to checking-in turns the somewhat frivolous activity into something more valuable. ..... a growing number of startups that are trying to reinvent what is essentially the coupons business ..... Everyone from Yahoo to Google has viewed local advertising (long the preserve of newspapers and yellow pages) with lustful eyes, with little or no success. ..... By marrying geo-location to behavior targeting and adding commerce on top, one can finally start to see some answers
Fortune: Google's Motives For Abandoning Net Neutrality: Google underestimated the public's desire for true net neutrality over both wireless and wired services ..... Google's PR department, from people I've spoken to, seem to have been taken aback by the reactions. ..... Google has products in development that are going to need even more support, from all carriers. ..... AT&T (T), T-Mobile and Verizon's next generation networks are LTE, which doesn't carry voice separately like traditional 3G networks. The carriers are going to have to use data in the same way that Vonage or Skype currently do, over IP. Packet prioritization is a must in this case. ...... Google will soon be its own ISP as well. ...... So when Google's interests were only in data centers, it was completely beneficial to be net neutral. Now that Google is moving out of the data center into your house with devices and OSes and even wires, the priorities are realigned. It would be realistic to expect their stance on net neutrality to realign as well.

Related articles by Zemanta

• China Is The Reason Google Did Verizon (technbiz.blogspot.com)
• Is Google's Brand Equity In Danger? (searchengineland.com)
• Adobe CEO: We don't need Apple's iPad, on the side of open ecosystems like Android (mobile.venturebeat.com)
• Adobe CEO: We Don't Need Apple's iPad, on the Side of Open Ecosystems Like Android (nytimes.com)
• The Google-Verizon Deal: An 'Evil' or Pragmatic Pact? (dailyfinance.com)

Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com

China Is The Reason Google Did Verizon

Image via WikipediaWhile I have been busy blogging for Reshma 2010 over at my other blog Barackface, the biggest tech story I seem to have missed is the Google-Verizon pact on Net Neutrality. For the longest time Google was the loudest voice for net neutrality. What gives? What has brought about this about turn?

I think Google's losing fight in its China tussle is the reason. Google did the right thing, but it did not get the tech industry support it expected. China kept hammering Google, and kept hammering some more. Soon enough the tussle was no longer even news. That loneliness got to Google. And so this is Google saying to the American people, if the Chinese people being denied free speech does not bother you, maybe it would not bother you either if you were yourselves denied net neutrality. How do you like them apples?

Sergey Brin's Is The Right Stand

Google, Verizon And Net Neutrality

New York Times: The Google/Verizon Payment Plan: The F.C.C. should have an expanded role in regulating what is rapidly becoming the most important channel of communication in the world. ...... The Google/Verizon proposal gives broadband providers lots of leeway to offer preferential treatment to some and to choke off others. ..... the two companies propose to exempt wireless communication from most government regulation — a serious error ...... the Verizon-Google proposal ..... Google, Verizon And Net Neutrality ..... propose freeing wireless broadband — the fastest growing part of the Internet — from any antidiscrimination restrictions..... Verizon and AT&T control about 60 percent of wireless subscribers and 80 percent of Americans live in areas with only two wireline broadband providers. Consumers will lose if wireless goes unregulated.....ensure that the open Internet survives into the future.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Criticism Intensifies Against Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Plan (wallstreetpit.com)
• FCC should reject the Google-Verizon net-neutrality plan (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Facebook Enters the Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Debate (mashable.com)
• Wacky Google/Verizon Net Neutrality Theory [Voices] (voices.allthingsd.com)
• FCC Commissioner doesn't love Google-Verizon net neutrality proposal (downloadsquad.com)
• Google & Verizon's Real Net Neutrality Proposal (yro.slashdot.org)
• Facebook at Odds With Google, Verizon on Net Neutrality (Jennifer Valentino-DeVries/Digits) (techmeme.com)
• Great article on the Google-Verizon net neutrality story this week (craiggunderson.com)
• Google/Verizon Net Neutrality pact: It really is that bad (alternet.org)