Netizen

Friday, April 16, 2010

Managing Al, Brad, Fred: An Opportunity To Jump For

"I am interested in understanding why you chose the title General Manager. It does not seem that you need one person to manage the small and largely self-motivated team."

Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring "we have envisioned an Investment Analyst and a General Manager of the Union Square Ventures Network"

Albert Wenger, Brad Burnham (@BradUSV) (Tumblr), Fred Wilson.

Fred Wilson: Talent Overload

Fred Wilson and USV first put out a post weeks back saying Farewell Andrew Parker, or something along those lines. And someone commented, in all earnesty, who died? He did not say who died, he said I came over here huffing and puffing hoping noone had died or anything like that. Oh no, Andrew is thankfully alive and well, Fred had to respond.

And now this even more earnest comment on the management position. These two comments have so far stood out as the hiring process rolls on at USV.

Albert Wenger
Brad Burnham
Fred Wilson

Andrew Parker
Dorsey Stinson
Eric Friedman

USV Investments

The USV Focus

Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Real Time Is Real Time, Today Or Last Year

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

Time 1937: Richest man In The World.

Look at this article from Time 1937. The richest man in the world at the time was an Indian. Hello Bill Gates. It was empowering to get to read the article in the raw. I think this is the model I have in mind when it comes to Twitter. What is being said right now in real time is important. But the Twitter archives are also important.

And finally I got it.

I knew Google needed to step in.

Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google

Mashable: Google Upgrades Its Twitter Search Features
Google Blog: Replay It: Google Search Across The Twitter Archive
CNet: Google Launches Twitter Timeline Search

This is not Twitter giving the farm away. This is Twitter bringing in Google to enhance the value of every single tweet. Suddenly every tweet in the Twitter archive has become worth so much more. This is a huge boost to Twitter's monetization efforts. (Twitter Does The Deed: Ads)

Being able to search every tweet ever is great. But there is one missing link: visualization. Tweets are not meant to be read one at a time. And visualization is perhaps the best way to read many tweets at once. Google has work cut out for it in the presentation department. Searching through tweets is not the same as searching through webpages. Tweets are a different animal.

Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once

What I say today about Obama's victory in November 2008 is a different animal from what I said about Obama's victory as it happened. It is still me saying it, but real time is a different dimension.

This ability to dig through the Twitter archives is going to be a great tool for many players to go out there and see what people are saying about them, or how what they have been saying has changed over time.

Right now the archives go back only to February. It has to go all the way back. And Google has not even started work on doing the best possible job on presentation. Don't treat tweets like they are webpages. They are not.

Why Will Facebook Itself Not Do Facebook Enterprise?

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Fred Wilson: Software Is Media

Why will Facebook itself not do Facebook Enterprise? That is a question I have asked a few different times. The Salesforce guy had a guest post in TechCrunch not long back. A friend of mine emailed me that post through Google Reader. (Ignite, Set It On Fire) And I posed him the question on Buzz. Why will Facebook itself not do Facebook Enterprise?

The dichotomy between consumer software and enterprise software is vapid. It is unreal. It is an inconvenience that ought not last too long.

In his post today Fred Wilson is making the point that software should be as easy to use as media. He has not quite spelled it out, but I don't think he is trying to say he is only talking about consumer software. Software should be as easy to use as media also applies to enterprise software.

Salesforce trying to imitate Facebook to offer enterprise software: is that better than Facebook itself offering an enterprise version of itself? I don't think so.

The inbox was not copyrighted by Hotmail. The status update has not been copyrighted by Twitter. Similarly the stream is not Facebook property. Check in is similarly going to be a commodity feature.

Twitter should offer a Twitter Enterprise, and Facebook should work on a Facebook Enterprise. It just makes sense.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Arrington
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
Facebook Landgrab: A Friday Midnight Call
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different

Twitter Has To Scale The Signals

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter Does The Deed: Ads
Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

If I have five friends, and all of them are on Facebook and all of them have my number, and we party every other week, we are talking. But what if I have 500 friends? What if I have five friends and 5,000 fans? What if I have two friends and 20,000 online contacts? What if I am being followed by 50,000 people? What if I end up with five million followers?

Twitter has to make sure that at no point do the signals turn into noise for me. At no point should I get overwhelmed. I might have 500,000 followers, and if all of them tweet me, I should still be able to hear what they are saying. (Twitter Visualization: Reading Many Tweets At Once)

The power users will tell you, if you really want to make the best of Twitter, you got to wade into the ecosystem and find all the right apps for you. I am cool with that suggestion, but Twitter should not be. If Twitter envisions a billion users, as it should (Goal: A Billion People On Twitter April 2009) - heck, I think Twitter could beat Facebook to that magic number, but not the Twitter of today - then Twitter has to make sure all the action is at Twitter.com. Twitter bought Summize, Twitter bought Tweetie, it could easily buy 20 more such companies today. Buy or build, buy or build, buy or build.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Twitter Does The Deed: Ads

Image via CrunchBase

Netizen, June 2009: Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
New York Times, April 12, 2010: Twitter Unveils Plans to Draw Money From Ads

....finally answering the question of how the company expects to turn its exponential growth into revenue.....Promoted Tweets....in the stream of Twitter posts, based on how relevant they might be to a particular user.....Twitter.com had 22.3 million unique visitors in March, up from 524,000 a year ago.... the first significant step toward a business model..... and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow. .... chatter on Twitter can forecast box-office revenue for movies ....“Media like Twitter and Facebook are so enormous that it’s very hard to imagine it would be easy to manipulate the conversation.” ...... Twitter will measure what it calls resonance, which takes into account nine factors, including the number of people who saw the post, the number of people who replied to it or passed it on to their followers, and the number of people who clicked on links......Once Twitter figures out how to measure the number of people who read posts other than on Twitter.com, it will also allow third-party developers to show ads and share revenue.

"....and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow...."

That color coding was an idea I had promoted at my blog. The tweet ads have to look different from the regular tweets, obviously different. And color coding is the best way to achieve that.

Google did not do banner ads like Yahoo. Similary Facebook could not do Google ads. And Twitter ads have to be specific to the Twitter platform. Tweets are it.

Resonance. I like the term.

Twitter has taken its first big step in the monetization department. This might be the only step necessary. They could spend a few years just getting this one right and scaling it. Ultimately the process has to be automated just like for the Google ads. Most of the money will come from small businesses targeting locals.

Now I am going to bug Twitter a little less about going IPO, just a little less. It could now take its sweet time.

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO

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Friday, April 16, 2010

Managing Al, Brad, Fred: An Opportunity To Jump For

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Thursday, April 15, 2010

Real Time Is Real Time, Today Or Last Year

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Why Will Facebook Itself Not Do Facebook Enterprise?

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Twitter Has To Scale The Signals

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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Twitter Does The Deed: Ads

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