Netizen

Friday, July 13, 2012

A GroupOn Pivot?

groupon (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

The CEO’s focus now is on building what Mason calls the “operating system for local commerce”—a suite of software and technology services that would embed Groupon into every facet of every transaction on Main Street. (BusinessWeek)

I was excited about GroupOn early on, and even when it got hammered after IPO, I kept thinking at least it is in the right space. I was strongly opposed to it getting bought by Google. And I feel like they are making the right next steps, at least at the vision level. And I like it that they are in Chicago. Which means New York City is a good place to be for high tech, high touch companies. GroupOn emphasizes writing skills and comedy. I like that also. It employs writers, salespeople.

Karp Cracks Advertising

Image representing David Karp as depicted in C...

Image by Matthew Buchanan / Flickr via CrunchBase

New York Times: Can Tumblr’s David Karp Embrace Ads Without Selling Out?

good design is not just about how a thing looks but rather about how a thing works. But maybe design is also about how a thing feels..... The design of Tumblr, the blogging tool and social network, is guided by feeling. ...... “Tumblr is David.” ...... Karp likes to talk about Tumblr less as a business than as a “platform for creativity.” ....... “Pretty much every large tech company today,” Karp said, is essentially “metrics driven.” ...... Karp chose not to operate that way. ...... He just feels that he sees something everyone else has missed. ..... “There is absolutely no learning curve.” ..... I sat in on the “all team” meeting Karp recently implemented as a Friday-afternoon ritual. I agreed to keep certain details confidential, but it was clear that Karp is thinking pretty hard about profitability. Tumblr has learned to assemble some data that advertisers want (and that it had previously not bothered to collect). ......... In the past year he has become engaged with the challenge of designing not just a product but a business. It’s quite distinct from the Zen experience of solitary problem-solving that is coding, but, he continued, “I’ve really gotten a kick out of trying to make running a company as Zen an experience as it can be.” ...... the kind of creative advertising that is “intended to make you feel something for the brand.” ...... “Can you remember the last Twitter ad you’ve seen, the last Facebook ad?” And so, he concludes, there is a huge, untapped opportunity. ...... Karp has said Tumblr could be “wildly profitable” overnight by simply incorporating conventional online ads into the platform, but he believes that would spoil the community and the creativity that have taken shape there. His proposed solution entails advertisers’ being just as creative and expressive as Tumblr users. For now, that means that a spot on the Tumblr dashboard generally used to highlight the company’s picks for the coolest stuff happening in its network will include occasional content from paid sponsors. The first participants included Adidas, Calvin Klein and the movie “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” generating more than $150,000 in revenue within a month. .......... “But I think I can make a pretty good case for — ” uncharacteristically, he stopped and gazed at the floor. Karp is rarely at a loss for smoothly delivered words, but now he seemed to be searching for something precise. He started and stopped again and then said what it is he believes in: “Following our hearts.”

In short, the Tumblr ads have to be part of the Tumblr experience.

Why Can't I Simply Speak Into My Tumblr Audio Post?

Either I have to upload a file already created elsewhere, or I have to submit a URL, or I have to search for a soundtrack on Spotify/SoundCloud. Why can't I just speak and create an audio post? Hello World!

SMS: Nowhere Close To Done

SMS Flickr Dene Voss (Photo credit: katielips)

SMS is great for communication. The message is short. Chances are it is being sent to someone you know well. It will get read. It is instant delivery. It is efficient. It is natural to how you talk to people. You don't talk in paragraphs.

But it is more. I think of SMS as command. Before GUI (Graphical User Interface) you had to input commands. After the cursor came the touch. There is gesture, there is 3D. I think SMS is going to emerge something cutting edge like that. You should be able to talk to the most complex of your machines through the simplest of your phones.

Power To The Cloud: Twilio Takes Its SMS Messaging API Global, Adds Dozens Of New Languages, 150+ Countries

Brewster: Is It Green?

One day while Dropio was still a company - before it got bought and put to rest by Facebook (Dropio entered the space before Dropbox) - I tweeted everyone working at Dropio with a twitter account. Only one of them tweeted back, some dude called Steve Greenwood. A few days later I found myself in front of him at the final Social Media Week party, it was a fancy party. (That was two years before I snatched the crown.) I was just standing there, he had walked over. I thought it was random, now I think not. I said hello, then I found out he worked at Dropio. Obviously I had not connected the dots. He startled me by talking of Dropio as "a trillion dollar opportunity." This was way before Google hit 600 billion, or wherever they are at right now.

The last time I met Steve Greenwood was a year and a half ago at the Barack Obama State Of The Union Watch party. I did not have the faintest idea both Greenwood and I had a mutual friend in the organizer of the event.

In between one day I met Greenwood at a New York Tech MeetUp after party. It was minutes after some random dude never seen before and after called me Sean Parker.

We are not close. We don't have each other's phone numbers. We have not exchanged emails. His first tweet was his last to me. But he has been one of those undefined guys in the New York tech ecosystem. Someone with obvious raw potential, but you did not know if you did not know.

And now the dude reveals himself. It is entirely possible I never made it to his spreadsheet.