Weeks back (Redesigning My Blog) I got rid of GoogleAnalytics (and Google Ads) from this blog to speed up the loading time. Every micro second matters. The faster the better. Readers like it fast.
Today I learn Google has integrated stats into Blogger itself. That is a good thing.
For yesterday I have a peak around midnight - that must be India - and another, bigger pick around noon, more like 2 PM - that is America. Bollywood, Hollywood.
Last week my most visited post has been this: Larry Ellison. That just so happens to be one of my favorite posts.
Brazil has a special place in the soccer universe. It still is my favorite country to root for. Pele still is the best soccer player the world ever saw, the most famous athlete the world will ever know.
But Brazil lost today. It was going to treat this game like it were the finals. I did not see much evidence of that.
Coach Dunga made two obvious mistakes even before the games began. He refused to put on the team some very obvious names, some star players. Why? Because Brazil was too big, there were too many good players to choose from. The coach is not the most important person on a soccer team, a VC is not the most important person on a tech startup team.
And he picked a wrong guy for team captain. I still do not know his name. His personal game was mediocre. But that can not be a deal breaker as long as you can exhibit leadership qualities. The dude got himself a yello card in a previous game, today he earned himself a red card. The yellow card rang alarm bells in my mind. The guy has a character flaw.
Instead of saying, we now have 20 minutes to even it out and still go win this game, let's go do it, the guy reduced the team size to 10 and brought the morale down for the team. 20 minutes were enough time. Kaka alone made two good attempts in those 20 minutes.
Brazil, great soccer country, lousy team captain, a coach lacking humility.
There was this pervasive overconfidence on the Brazilian side that prevented them from going for the small opportunities, learning the small lessons, treating the other side with sufficient respect when they had a one goal lead, and succumbing to frustration when that other side evened that out, and finally ended with a one goal lead.
Maybe the goalkeeper should have been the captain of the team on the Brazilian side.
Okay, so I am still rooting for Argentina. I am nervous the way I was not today. I was expecting to see Brazil win. But between Germany and Argentina, that is a hard one.
Last night at Digital Dumbo I had an Argentina shirt on. One of the organizers invited me to the Dumbo Breakfast. Invite me for Dumbo Dumplings instead. (My Secret Sauce) Breakfast is a little too early. And, sorry, but today was Brazil's day, not Dumbo's, much as I love that place. I walked over there! Took me only a little more time than a train ride would have taken. But I hear flying is even faster.
There has been tremendous buzz today about FourSquare's new round of funding. This process has gone for a few, long months now. It has been one drawn out process. There has been drama. There has been intrigue. The sweet spot for me was when after months of talk Yahoo might buy FourSquare, FourSquare instead went ahead and stole a key talent from Yahoo. That's the way you do it.
When there was talk it might get bought, I strongly argued selling FourSquare would be a mistake. I was not saying, do the right thing, don't go after the money. What I was saying was, think about money, big money, do not sell.
I am not the first person to draw FourSquare-Twitter parallels. But I sure am one who gets the parallel. The two have had similar trajectories. At first sight a tweet feels as lightweight as checking in. What the.
Twitter had enormous buzz. It scaled but not as well as I would have liked. It made monetization moves, but much too late for my tastes. And it has done a lousy job of adding new features. FourSquare has scaled well. What is the FourSquare version of the fail whale? I don't know it. And FourSquare has been very impressive in the monetization department. But FourSquare has not impressed me in the features department. And I have to say that out loud because, unlike Twitter, FourSquare has competition. I hope this new round of funding allows FourSquare to cement its lead. I wish Dennis (@dens) and Naveen (@naveen) all the best.
Like Andy Grove said, only the paranoid survive. Checking in is the starting piont of the FourSquare experience. Companies for which that is not true - Yahoo, Facebook, Google, Twitter - are not serious threats, although all of them could use that key feature. Checking in in the mobile space is like the inbox in the email space, it is basic. But that check in as the starting point space has a few different players, and checking in is an activity that leaves much room for imagination. Could FourSquare ride that imagination wave? If it does, it goes IPO in a few years. If it doesn't, it should then go ahead and sell off. I am betting it will ride the wave. We shall see.
FourSquare has a shot at going IPO before MeetUp.com, a more senior tech company in town, senior in terms of years. Unless we get a few solid IPOs, New York City has not really arrived on the tech scene. Until then we should brag about our subway instead.
Dennis not only created the vision for the company, but for the entire product category. Beyond that, he is very clearly the thought leader in the market. This is not at all surprising as he has been working on the problem for a decade and has highly refined his thinking through that period. ...... . He’s the kind of leader that great technical minds will be excited to follow: visionary, righteous, and competent. I am really excited to work with Dennis to help him on his path from being a great leader to a great Chief Executive of an incredibly important company. ...... at Foursquare is growing faster than Twitter did at this stage. ......Dennis and team have identified over a dozen different dimensions of the Foursquare product that must interact with each other in precisely optimal ways to achieve user delight. Years and years of research and sweat equity went into cracking the code, and the results are magical. ....... over 4.6B people have mobile phones and there are 1.7B people on the Internet. Already, over 200M people worldwide have smart phones and that number is headed north fast. ...... , major brands such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Zagat, Bravo TV, Starbucks, C-SPAN, Marc Jacobs and over 10,000 businesses are currently working with Foursquare to build customer loyalty and drive traffic. Not many companies have their users turn into their sales force, and it’s definitely a good sign that this is happening around Foursquare.
Check this out. Each of the four quarter-final matches has one Latin American team in there. Is that something or is that something? Soccer is Latin America's game. Hats off to the continent of Latin America.
When the whistle blows and the match begins, jog around the pitch slowly, laconically, grinning the entire time. Your body language should express an indifference to the game itself. In fact, let your opponent control the pace, let them have possession, let them think they’re in charge. When you do get the ball, pass it around a little, just to see how it feels. Isn’t the stadium pretty under the lights? Smile. Mostly, though, wait. Be patient. Don’t run hard unless it’s absolutely necessary. Just for fun, let the other side have a few shots on goal, so they get their blood flowing. Then, after twenty minutes without a single scoring opportunity, manufacture one out of thin air—a broken play in the midfield, a counter-attack, a foul and a quick restart—and once in front of the rival’s net, be merciless........ Playing against Brazil is an absolute nightmare. ...... My entire life, I’ve been watching Brazil play poorly and win consistently. They are the rare team that never seems to be in control of the game, though they always are. The truth is they’re not playing the same game as their opponents. They’re playing something else, a sport related to soccer, but entirely different. In their version of the sport the rest of us know, if they score one on you, they’ll score three. Once you’re forced to chase the game—as Chile was today—they’re more than happy to tear you to pieces. ....... You can’t beat Brazil squandering opportunities. You have to score early, and often. You have to make them come to you. You have to force their defenders to play defense full time, without giving them a chance to make those lethal runs up the wings. And most importantly, you have to beat them for a solid ninety minutes. How many times have I seen Brazil be thoroughly dominated for eighty-five minutes, and walk off the pitch smiling and victorious, as if they found the entire spectacle amusing? ........ This team is stronger on defense than any Brazilian side I can recall, and they’re remarkably consistent in the attacking third. Luis Fabiano is a straight-up murderer. ...... the Brazilian bench is deep.
Image via CrunchBase
