Netizen

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Farmville Has Not Been Loading For Me

Over a week back I called Steve Jobs a Pied Piper. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer) My farmville game has not been loading since. Did Steve Jobs get someone to mess with my Flash?

I got started with Farmville in December. I was reading about it a lot. Finally I gave in. Obviously I started the poorest farmer in my neighborhood. Soon I was the richest. I was hooked to the game. I entered the fray out of business curiosity, and I ended up really appreciating some of the social aspects of the game.

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

Then not long back a friend of mine who I did not know had more points than me befriended me and now he was the richest farmer in my neighborhood. I was working hard to win back my title, and that is when the Pied Piper episode happened.

I tried the usual remedies like uninstalling and reinstalling Flash. No effect whatsoever.

I am thinking perhaps I attained Farmville nirvana somewhere along the way, and there is nothing more left to do for me at Farmville. That is an explanation I could live with.

In the mean time I have focused my energies on blogging and actively commenting at other people's blogs. That also feels like farming.

Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea

Selling FourSquare Would Be A Mistake, Partnering Would Be Genius

Dennis, Fred, Scott: Tweet Boom Tweet Boom
4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night
If The Tweet Is The Atom, What Is Location?
Location! Location! Location!
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown

First there was talk that Vinod Khosla wants to pump 10 million dollars and above into FourSquare at a 80 million dollar valuation. Vinod Khosla, mind you, raised half of all money all VCs raised last year. He is a top dog in the game. (I Just Became Friends With Anu Shukla, Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising)

Then there was talk Yahoo wants to buy FourSquare for over 100 million dollars, some figures put it at 125 million. More recently there have been reports other big fishes are also looking, namely Microsoft and Facebook. These stories are relevant whether they are true or not. It is entirely possible the different players are exploring their options. Feelers might have been sent out. Formal talks might or might not have happened.

I think selling FourSquare would be a mistake. Selling Hotmail was not a mistake. Sabeer Bhatia sold it to Microsoft for 400 million. But Hotmail was pretty much a finished product. FourSquare is nowhere close to being a finished product. I could argue it has not even started to start. And if it is about money, waiting a few years makes money sense too. Sell for more in a few years if you really, really want to sell it. But I am going to argue against that as well.

For me it is not about price. I am not saying don't sell to Yahoo for 125 million, but if they give you 200 million, then maybe. I am saying don't sell it, period. Google buying Facebook would have made no sense. Facebook could not have digested Twitter and instead would have ended up with constipation.

I can't think of one company that could buy and digest FourSquare and do the location space justice. Facebook could not do it, Twitter could not do it, and I am not even thinking about any other name.

The mobile web is bigger than the old web and also is growing faster. With the mobile web, location is key. Where you are when you are playing with your smartphone is so very important. And for FourSquare location is not an afterthought, location is the beginning point, and that makes all the difference.

FourSquare should be flattered by all the attention. Things have not always looked this rosy for FourSquare or its two founders. So they should take all this attention as ways to boost their self-esteem.

But flat out saying no might also be a bad move to make. The attitude should be, selling to you would be injustice to the location space, but let's work together, let's see if we can add the location feature to your many web properties wherever they make sense, and pay us for that instead. I think that would be the smart thing to do.

FourSquare has only a million users. That is nothing. The FourSquare team knows better than to wallow in all of the buzz. It is always safer to stay focused on the fundamentals of the business. Buzz comes and goes, ask Twitter. Twitter is in a better shape as a business today than ever before, but it does not have the buzz it had a year back.

FourSquare should use all this offer talk to expand its user base. Google expanded its user base dramatically by becoming the search engine for web properties like Yahoo and AOL. FourSquare should make similar moves. Create location space where it does not exist, and inhabit that space. It makes a ton of sense to talk to the big dogs in town. Cut deals.

2010 is location's year and FourSquare has the clear lead in that space. I see FourSquare never getting sold. Just like I never saw Facebook or Twitter getting sold. FourSquare has IPO potential, not now, I don't know when precisely, but it has IPO potential. If I had my way, Twitter would go for an IPO this year, before Facebook. (Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO) I can see FourSquare going IPO somewhere in the mid 10s.

FourSquare is a business. For a business it is about money. The big money is in going IPO. FourSquare has reached that rare threshold for a tech company that it will never have any problems raising money ever again. That gives the FourSquare team the luxury of superb execution.

FourSquare will not get bought. FourSquare will buy. It could makes its first major acquisition later this year or early next. Stay tuned.

Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

Fred Wilson: DJ

Image of Fred Wilson

When I first came across the FredWilson.FM web address, I "accused" Fred of flashing a vanity URL. If FredWilson.FM is not a vanity URL, I don't know what is, I said.

Fred Wilson: VC

A little later I started following Fred on Tumblr, and ends up he is quite a music man. I was not surprised. Books, movies, music are mind food. We are in the middle of a fundamental transformation akin to the one from an agricultural to an industrial one. We are heading toward a decidedly post-industrial age where mind food plays a pretty central role. Fred, owing to his vocation and interests, has a front seat to much of that change. He had to have had a huge appetite for mind food all along.

Fred Wilson's Insight

I also figured Fred might help me go one layer beneath the top layer I have stuck to for the most part. (Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred) There was this promise of richness, novelty, discovery and plain good music, although our tastes are slightly different. Some of the songs on the list are a little too soft for me, and when I say soft, I am not talking lyrics here, I pay attention to the lyrics only much later into liking a song, I am talking about the tempo of the musical rhythms; but I like all kinds of music, I could even name you a few country songs that got me truly excited. (Lady Gaga) I don't like all songs on Fred's list, although I'd be hard pressed to skip any. But I like most of what I hear. (I'll Be Gone)

Fred Wilson: A VC

So earlier today for the first time I ventured over to FredWilson.FM, and the site is a treasure. There are 881 songs liked enough by Fred that he was compelled to share. And I really like the streaming concept. You turn the music on and go do something else. 881 songs, how many days of music is that? I think I just listened to about 20.

Fred Wilson

I went over to the Streampad site that supposedly powers FredWilson.FM and FredWilson.FM is prominently displayed on their front page. I am not surprised. I guess Fred is a celebrity user of the service. If Fred Wilson is using it, it must be a good service. Good marketing. It is a good service.

Fred Wilson: VC

I wonder if during my second visit to FredWilson.FM I can go to say song number 46 and start from there. Or do I have to begin at the beginning again? I know I can skip songs, but having to start at the beginning and then skipping one song at a time would take away from the experience.

Fred Wilson's Insight

One feature that is lacking or that I did not discern during my first 10 seconds at FredWilson.FM is the shuffle feature. I want the system to jump randomly from song to song. Then repeat visits would be more likely. But even now I am definitely coming back. Something in me wants to listen to all 881 songs over months. No pressure, no hurry, just something to end up having done some day.

Fred Wilson: A VC

Now that I have found it, I realize I have been looking for something like FredWilson.FM for a while now, a good music collection of mostly never heard before music that I can simply turn on and listen to end to end. Now there is a link to FredWilson.FM from my private homepage that is my jumping point to most of my daily web experiences. That is not to say I will be visiting daily, but I'll be back.

Fred Wilson

(Update: 40 tunes down.)

Friday, April 23, 2010

Graphic Reality

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Albert Wenger: Facebook And The Net
Fred Wilson: One Graph To Rule Them All?

Both Al and Fred are saying Facebook runs the danger of repeating Google's mistake in some form or fashion. Google made several attempts to "get" social. None of them have succeeded in a dramatic way so far. But Google was the company of the decade, and for good reasons. An obvious example of a Google social failure has been Buzz. Gmail already had tens of millions of users. And aren't people who you email back and forth with the most your closest people socially? Let Buzz present to you your social graph. That thinking bombed in a big way.

For Google the starting point is information, and it is the best in the game with that. For Facebook the starting point is the social graph, and it has been taking the lead there. You could argue for FourSquare the starting point is location, and since that can not be the starting point for either Facebook or Twitter, FourSquare does not run the danger of getting under the Facebook, Twitter bus.

Yesterday I watched Mark Zuckerberg's keynote at the F8 conference. Today Fred Wilson was talking about it at his blog, and looks like he got inspired by a blog post by his partner in venture capital crime Al Wenger.

Since Facebook has taken over Google as the most visited site in the US, you can not blame Zuck for trying to suggest PageRank is b.s. That what really matters is the social graph. I think all the Facebook initiatives are robust and good ideas to take Facebook to the next level, but only if Facebook keeps the criticisms of the likes of Wenger and Wilson in mind. Respect that there is not just one social graph. LinkedIn a few days back came out saying they will also now allow for the sharing of updates, news items and links in general, and I am thinking, great, this can be the Facebook for your coworkers and bosses. Your work social graph looks different from your friend social graph. Your family social graph looks different. And what are the chances I will find a friend of mine read the same Time magazine article as me. The chances are minimal.

So I say, march forward, but march with caution. Always be iterating means always be listening.

(Al just got promoted to the A1 section of my blogroll. He is very good about replying to the comments you leave at his blog.)

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Chatroulette Is For Real

We are all sold on location, and for the right reasons. But random connections as a space is not garnering the same respect, and I am going to call that a case of adultism. Because the founder of Chatroulette is a 17 year old, a lot of people are having a lot of fun talking about penises that supposedly sprout out during the Chatroulette experience. Guess what, sex is in the mind. Penises sprouting out do not take away from the basic Chatroulette promise, that random connections is a new web space, and Chatroulette has a bright business future.

Once I got a hang of Twitter, I said many times you can take Facebook away. I feel like both a high school and a college dropout. Most people on Facebook remind me of two institutions I do not want to be particularly reminded of. I liked it that on Twitter I could interact with people I did not know. Chatroulette takes that to a whole new level. Note: I have not tried Chatroulette yet, but I don't have to, I am sold on the space.

Chatroulette has to iterate. It is already at 30 million hits. That is a great point at which to roll out the future versions, to add new features. What could some of those new features be?

Once I roll the dice a few times, and I find someone I like interacting with, I should be able to bookmark that person, but only if that person agrees to get bookmarked. Once I build a library of a certain number of bookmarked people - and I don't need to know anything about them to that point - I should have the option to roll the gun only inside my library.

On the other hand, I should also have the option to block people. If I see a penis, and I don't like it that I had to see a penis, I hit a button that says Block For Nudity, and if a person accumulates 10 or more such blocks, they should enter a special zone. As in, people should have the option to say keep me away from people who have been blocked for nudity 10 times or more.

Voila. The penises are gone.

When I am thinking Chatroulette, I am thinking world peace. Seriously. We need more people talking to more people to get at that utopia called world peace. I want Chatroulette on all Israeli and Palestinian screens. Get those buggers talking to each other. And let them show penises to each other when they are pissed instead of blowing each other up. The 2010 version of make love not war?

Ever heard of people to people interaction programs run by governments? This is it. Chatroulette is the ultimate people to people interaction program.

But it is important to keep the randomness intact. You should be able to bookmark me, but I should not have a profile on there, no name, no location, nothing about me. If people volunteer such information to each other during conversations, fine, but Chatroulette should keep the randomness very much intact.

The next big filter jump would be to allow for geographical filtering. So I go on Chatroulette and I want to meet random people from Africa, I should be able to do that. (Nfodjo, is that you?) Or go to the country level. Or maybe even city level. I feel like meeting people from Moscow, how about it? Hello Olesya.

Just a few filters and the bookmarking and blocking options, and a lot of the caricature of the service vanishes.

Fred Wilson (the first person to tell me about Chatroulette, through his blog.... I accused him of now having got into the breaking news business)
What To Make Of Chatroulette?
Some Interesting Facts About Chatroulette

TechCrunch
Chatroulette Founder: All Your Chats Are Belong To Me

AllThingsD
Chatroulette Creator Andrey Ternovskiy Gets an iPad, Gives Us a Peek at Version 2.0
Chatroulette Dude: I Don’t Want to Sell. But I’d Like Google to Pay.
Jon Stewart Plays Chatroulette, And We All Win

New York Times
One On One: Andrey Ternovskiy, Creator Of Chatroulette

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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Tech-Talch - Chatroulette

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