Netizen

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Inbox Could See New Life This Year

Fred Wilson: Social Networking Vs. Email

(I was writing this as a comment at his blog, but it became long enough that I decided to make a blog post out of it.)

Social networking has surpassed email, search and is doing great in the news department. Those three were just three of the biggest web activities before these social networks came along. That is really something. (Email, Search, News)

But don't count out the inbox. I'd say location, random connections and the inbox are the three big things to look for this year. There is some interesting stuff going on in the inbox territory, I just have not had the time to figure out who the leader there is.

The inbox will rebound. That is not to say it will take back its lead. China was once the leading country on the planet.

Curiously Twitter might lead the revival of the information graph. But not the Twitter of today. (Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem)

The email inside Facebook is still Facebook. It is not email. Only people in your network can email you, for the most part, and do. And they do so rarely.

I don't mind being on mailing lists as long as they have a one click unsubscribe option at the bottom of each email they send out. If I am going to delete without reading anyway, why bother sending it to me? But then those dictators in Nigeria just seem to need 0.1% to respond, and that keeps them in business. So.

Even in social networking I don't believe Facebook has the final word. I have a feeling we will see a swing from the we to the me in a few years. (The Next Big Thing In Social Networking)

Monday, April 12, 2010

Union Square Ventures Job Opening: I Am Applying

Fred Wilson: We Are Hiring At Union Square Ventures
Union Square Ventures: We Are Hiring

Intra-Portfolio Evangelist. Now that is a title that could work for me. I could argue I have already been doing that for USV for free. I believe Vint Cerf is Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. (Vint Cerf, Craig Mundie, Steve Wozniak)

Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama
Twitter Need Get Work Done
Fred Wilson's Gift To Me
Net Neutrality Is The Internet's DNA
Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem
Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea
Startups And Immigrants
Fat Can Work, But Lean More Often Does
Who Is Andrew Parker?
Measuring Your Twitter Influence
Facebook And Twitter Suck When It Comes To Searching Their Own Sites
Tumblr: Casey, Nina, David, Fred
Silicon Valley Vs. New York City
Fred Wilson's Insight
Fred Wilson: VC
The Foursquare Rap: Badges Like Us
Location! Location! Location!
Fred Wilson: A VC
Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever
Mark Zuckerberg, Mike Arrington
Craig Newmark, Dennis Crowley, Jennifer 8 Lee: Koreatown
Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising
Dennis Crowley: I Underestimated Him
Finally, Twitter Ads
My Talk On Social Media At The Science House MeetUp
Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO
Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google
Union Square
TechCrunch Has Linked To A Blog That Stole My Material
Bye Bye Geocities
Fred Wilson
Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas
Facebook Landgrab: A Friday Midnight Call
Facebook And Mashable: Social Media And Social Media Blog
Facebook's Ad Space Is Different
Social Networking: Where The Internet Comes Down From The Clouds

My LinkedIn Page. (Email: paramendra at gmail dot com)

..... the successful candidates will spend a couple of years with us and then move on to a start up.... the GM of the USV Network will focus primarily on supporting our portfolio of 28 web services companies. ....... Because of our focused approach, many of our portfolio companies face similar challenges as they work to create and sustain user engagement, recruit talent, build relationships with partners, or design, code, and operate web services at scale. So it's no surprise that our portfolio companies are learning from each other. We have tried to facilitate that learning by hosting meetups and mailing lists, but we believe that we can do so much more. .......build on our early work to create a useful and sustainable connection between the portfolio companies. Think of it as a community manager for the USV portfolio. The community is small, and private, but populated by people and companies who are having a big impact on the web...... Build on the current platform of mailing lists and meetups by identifying and implementing social tools and services that create value for USV portfolio companies.....Identifying best practices in areas like social media, search, and online marketing and sharing those in the network.....Helping the portfolio companies recruit and hire great employees.....Organizing events like the annual portfolio company CEO summit...... Fostering connection online and offline between the functional disciplines (marketing, sales, finance, etc) in each portfolio company....... Strong interpersonal skills ..... Proven ability to foster communication and cooperation among diverse individuals online and offline...... Hands on experience with light weight tools such as Wikis, mailing lists, etc...... Several years of management experience in flat, matrix, or loosely coupled organizations...... At Union Square Ventures, we basically do two things. We try to make the best investments we can and then we do everything we can to help our portfolio companies succeed....... At the end of the day, we will hire two people who will help us make investments and support the portfolio. If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point....... very important to us that the candidates for these positions share our conviction about the transformational potential of the web......be prepared to forcefully defend thoughtful positions on potential investments, but to also consider carefully the positions of others and to be intellectually honest and open to persuasion....... "net native" .....

Ideally, I would do one year, but I could do two. But two would be max.

Vision and group dynamics are my major strengths.

I got myself elected student body president at the number one liberal arts college in the (Bible Belt) South within six months of landing as an international student. When I landed I could not have told you the cultural differences between Kentucky and California. I spoke so fast, people asked me if I was from New York. One friend who voted for me later told me, "I did not understand a word you said, but you sounded so excited I figured you might do something, so I voted for you." They had to change the constitution so I could run as a freshman.

In 1999 I was one of the founding members of Chaitime.com that raised 25 million dollars before it succumbed to the nuclear winter. We were trying to be the premier South Asian online community. We had offices in Philadelphia, Toronto, London, Mumbai.

There is a concrete mathematical theory called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon forest could be the reason a cyclone hit Bangladesh. What happened in Nepal in April 2006, January-February 2007, and February 2008, and more recently in February 2009 were political cyclones. I was the butterfly flapping my wings in New York City. In April 2006, over a period of 19 days, about eight million people out of the country's 27 million came out into the streets to shut the country down completely to force a dictator out.

And I see things. I got vision.

I am a Net Native.

I don't live in America. I live on the Net. I am a Netizen. America is Europe, the Internet is America. I said that over a decade ago.
I did Nobel Peace Prize quality work a few years back for the democracy and social justice movements in Nepal. I did my work entirely online. Nepal is the poorest country outside of Africa.
I am the second richest farmer in my neighborhood on Farmville. Was the richest. A few weeks back someone with more XP than me befriended me, but he has a few weeks at best.
I am more than a Net Native. I am a Net Entrepreneur. I don't want to just live online. Online is where work is. After USV it is a startup for me, my own startup.
I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter.
I am all over social media. (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, Tumblr, Blog: Netizen)
I was early on Geocities. I was also early on Hotmail, Flickr, LinkedIn, Friendster, Gmail, Wave, among the other obvious names.

"If you think your skills would be a better fit in a slightly different alignment, feel free to make that point."

I think I am a great fit for the Intra-Portfolio Evangelist position. Other than what you have already mentioned, and what you have mentioned does cover what I am about to say, but I'd like to go ahead and specify nevertheless.

I want to make a case that Twitter needs to go public before Facebook, and it needs to do so this year, earlier the better. I have a few ideas on how FourSquare can cement its number one position in the location space. I think it is very important USV get into Chatroulette early and help it cement its number one position in the random connections space. And I want to help find the next FourSquare, just be on the lookout.

I hope this is not a salary only job. I hope you can add elements that give it an entrepreneurial feel. I am assuming there is a decent six figure salary, but that there is also some kind of a performance-based percentage cut of sorts. I'd be eager to suggest something on that pertaining to Twitter. And I hope you are not too rigid on office hours. Working long hours is second nature to me. But this job feels pretty citywide to me, and also bi-coastal. And I expect to be reading a ton of books on the clock in preparation for some specific projects I have in mind. A Kindle as a business expense item?

I am excited. What can I say? I feel like Bill Clinton when he was applying for colleges. The dude applied to just one school. Georgetown was in DC, it was a good school, and it had a strong foreign service program. I hope you hire me. Summer is absolutely beautiful in New York.

This video is from 2005.

LinkedIn tells me all five USV people are circle two to me: Fred Wilson (3 shared connections), Brad Burnham (2), Albert Wenger (4), Eric Friedman (2), and Andrew Parker (5 shared connections). Looking forward to bringing all of them into circle one.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Twitter Acquires Tweetie: The Drama

New York Times, April 9: Twitter Acquires Atebits, Maker of Tweetie

Fred Wilson, an investor at Union Square Ventures and a longtime Twitter board member, stoked those fears in a blog post in which he wrote that many third-party Twitter services, including mobile clients like Tweetie’s, are features that Twitter should offer itself......Twitter, which raised $100 million in September, has the cash to go on a shopping spree..... the most popular mobile Twitter client

Evan Williams, April 9: Evan William's Message To Twitter Developers

“It’s a question of what should be left up to the ecosystem and what should be created on the platform.” Twitter will continue to buy or develop apps and features it needs, even if third-party developers already provide them, Mr. Williams said.

Fred Wilson, April 7: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point
Netizen, April 7: Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

When Fred wrote his blog post, it was one blogger blogging away: The Twitter Platform's Inflection Point. That is what he has said, and of course I believe him. He vastly underestimated the reaction. The Silicon Alley Insider called it a "bombshell." UK's Telegraph was talking about it. GigaOm was all excited. There was a post on TechCrunch about it. There was some major buzz at several lesser blogs.

I really appreciated Zemanta - one of Fred's portfolio companies - during this drama. I put out my echo blog post within hours, and Zemanta gave me a good idea of all the dust Fred's blog post had raised: Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem.

Of course Twitter acquired Summize a long time ago, so it is not like Tweetie is Twitter's very first acquisition.

I have said to Fred the 2010s will be his best decade yet as a VC. I have said that in his comments sections.

He was offended - rightly so - by some of the things that got said about him by inference on TechCrunch back in December, basically that he was an investor in the social game Farmville, which is a scam game, hence the term scamville. (Anu Shukla Has Found The New Frontier In Advertising) That is like saying FourSquare is designed to help burglars rob your homes. By the way that is also something TechCrunch said. (Location! Location! Location!)

I am all for free speech, but Farmville and FourSquare just so happen to be cutting edge web properties. You can't be the top tech blog if you don't realize that. Traffic levels can not take long to vanish.

Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad, and FourSquare is the next Twitter, that cutting edge. (The iPad Is No Laptop Killer)

What I have also said to Fred is expect nastier things said about you in the future. It is the nature of being a public figure of sorts. It is like Hillary said about her husband in 1991 towards the end of an event, "He still does not realize they can't leave until he does." The Gotham Gal might have something to say.

It is a man bit dog impulse of the media. They will sometimes say it even where is no man around, no dog around.

Fred's entire family blogs. There is a section on my BlogRoll called Fred's Family. It has been up for months.

The iPad Is No Laptop Killer

The iPad

The iPad is an important addition to the computing experience ecosystem, touch is an important addition, touch on a bigger screen than what a smartphone offers is important, but the iPad is no laptop killer. The iPad is a high end product designed to do a limited number of things.

The real story here is Steve Jobs. The man is a living legend. He has had a fascinating life story. After weeks and months of all the strong, inescapable buzz around the iPad I found myself leaving this phrase as my comment at several blogs: Steve Jobs, The Pied Piper. The guy's pull is magnetic. He sure has charisma.

I have never to date bought an Apple product, but I use many Google products. The company that has me gushing is Google. I am more of a web person. Talk of HTML 5 excites me. I can't wait for the Chrome OS, Chrome browser combo to show up later in the year. I would want that piece of hardware. Even on the smartphone front, I find myself leaning towards the Nexus One. (The iPhone, Nexus One, Or Droid?) I might get a Windows 7 laptop in a few weeks, it will likely be a Toshiba.
Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keeps one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life. (Tagore's Gitanjali)

I am a Sam Walton, Michael Dell, 99 cent pizza kinda guy, as far as business models go. Take me where the masses are. Good enough is often good.

Wired: The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

That space between the PC and the smartphone is not the iPad. Pluto is not a planet.

Cory Doctorow: Why I Won't Buy An iPad (And Think You Shouldn't Either)
Danny O'Brien: CD-Roms And iPads

Bill Gates will - and did - cling to Windows as long as possible, Steve Jobs will cling to the desktop for as long as possible. The iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad all feel like pre-web devices to me. The iPhone is a smaller desktop, the iPad is bigger than the iPhone.

Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad. 99% of Farmville users don't pay. I never heard Mark Pincus complain about that. 99% of the users not paying is his business model. (Farmville Farmer's Market: My Idea)

Fred Wilson: Thoughts on the iPad

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Breaking The Glass Ceiling With Ann Curry

Vint Cerf, Craig Mundie, Steve Wozniak

Charlie Rose: Technology

A look at Apple's iPad
Large Hadron Collider with Lisa Randall of Harvard and...
Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning
A discussion about Google's book scanning project
Paul Otellini President CEO Intel Corp
The Future with Eric Schmidt, Marc Andreessen and Bill...
A conversation with Harold Varmus, Nobel prize winning...
A conversation with Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu.com
A conversation with Michael Arrington, TechCrunch
A conversation Ivan Seidenberg, Chairman and CEO of Verizon
A conversation with William Gates Sr. and Bill Gates...
A conversation with Steven Chu, United States Secretary...
A conversation with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
A conversation with Marissa Mayer, V.P. of Search Product...

An hour panel discussion about the Asian economy from...
A conversation about eBay A discussion with Steve Case
A conversation about Intel
A rebroadcast of a conversation with Jerry Yang
An interview with John Doerr
An hour with Intel chairman Andrew Grove
A conversation with Yahoo! Founder Jerry Yang
A conversation with CEO of AOL Steve Case
A conversation with CEO of Intel Andrew Grove
An hour with Microsoft CEO and Chairman Bill Gates
A conversation with CEO of Intel Andrew Grove
A conversation with CEO of Novell Eric Schmidt
An interview with Bill Gates
An interview with Nathan Myhrvold
An interview with Andrew Grove
A discussion with Andrew Grove

A conversation with Lawrence Ellison
An interview with Lawrence Ellison
An interview with Lawrence Ellison

Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin

Friday, April 09, 2010

Twitter Need Get Work Done

Measuring Your Twitter Influence

You read more posts on TechCrunch about FourSquare than you do about Google, but that does not mean FourSquare has become bigger than Google, or ever will be. It is just that location has been all the buzz this year. The buzz might have shifted from Twitter, but that in no way means Twitter's utility is less now than it was in the Spring of 2009.

I am so glad I don't have to choose, I log into Facebook every day, often several times a day, but if I had to choose, I'd pick Twitter. I want to be finding new people, new info, I want to access people who I otherwise can't access.

Twitter has not realized its potential. It has not even come remotely close to realizing its potential. Twitter has work cut out for it.

(1) Simplify

If you are a SEO Optimizer in a small town in Kenya, I am going to consider you part of the tech elite. Twitter right now is at the level of the tech elite. Twitter has to simplify and appeal to the average person.

Learn from Tumblr. If I were a new person, and I showed up on the Twitter homepage for the first time, I'd get scared and I'd leave. If I were a little more gutsy, I'd sign up, and then leave, and not see the point in coming back.

The first page has to be dead simple. Okay, so here I give you my email address, and I put in my password here, and, wow, now I can send out my first tweet? Cool. And based on my email address, you are telling me these people in my circle are already on Twitter? Can I follow them? Wow. Here are five topics of interest to me, or three. Based on that you are suggesting three celebrities on Twitter and three lists. I'm excited.

(2) Eat Into The Ecosystem

Twitter Needs To Eat Into Its Ecosystem

Buy or build. Both cost money. Here's money: Twitter Should Go For A Netscape-Like IPO. Twitter has to go public, and with that money it has to go on a buying spree.

A site known for 140 characters, look at how long the URL for a tweet is: http://twitter.com/paramendra/status/11872417573

That is too long. It should be more like http://tw.tr/1r

That long. Anything longer is too long for a tweet URL.

Photo and video can't be separate services. I am one of the top 100 people in NYC on Twitter, and so far I have never used Twitpic. Am I supposed to create yet another account?

Some of the obvious services have been stated by many. Integrate them into the Twitter site itself.

(3) Link

Why can't a phrase in a tweet be a hyperlink? Bit.ly throws people off. It scares people. The name does not help. It is as if it will bite. If you can't just go ahead and hyperlink a word or a phrase to the desired web address, you will save on space, for one. 140 characters will feel like more space.

(4) Search

This is my number one gripe with Twitter. Google searches the entire web. You should be able to search just your site, just your servers. That is not too much to ask. Every tweet that was ever sent out has to be searchable. That way I'd not need a separate bookmarking service. I already don't need a separate RSS service. Twitter is my Google Reader. I go to my Twitter page in the morning to skim through the headlines of the day.

Real time search is not only real time as of today or the past few days. Real time as it happened a year ago is also relevant.

Twitter Should Hand Over Search To Google

(5) Visualization

Tweets are meant to be read a thousand at a time, a million at a time. Make it possible. Make it possible, fun and playful for individuals and small businesses to play around with the tweet database.

(6) Scale

Get rid of the fail whale.

(7) Monetize

This is where Twitter is going to break away from the Netscape model. Twitter will make a lot of money. It has already started. The tweet is to the web what the atom is to the universe. Prove that. And then go make a ton of money.

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

It has to be the ad model. The Twitter ad is going to look like a tweet, but it is going to look different. It has to be obvious it is an ad. Color coding maybe?

Thursday, April 08, 2010

April 2010 NY Tech MeetUp

HackNY Segment
Dropioke: Easily set up and share gatherings or "hangs". (http://dropioke.com,http://music.qoobster.com/)
Aviary Tennis: Add props to images and swap with friends. (http://aviary.techatnyu.com/)
Foursquare Candidates: Search Twitter for Drop.io music. (http://manhack.com/)

Student Segment
CabSense: Find the best corner to hail a cab. (http://cabsense.com)
Where do you go?: Heat map of where you've been. (http://www.wheredoyougo.net/)
Project Noah: Collaborative field guide. (http://www.networkedorganisms.com/)
Hangalong: Easily set up and share gatherings or "hangs". (http://www.hangalong.com/)

5-minute Demos
Parse.ly: Personalized content aggregator. (http://parse.ly/)
BantamLive: Social CRM for your business. (http://www.bantamlive.com)
Whistlebox: Augmented reality children's games. (http://www.whistlebox.com,http://www.docrew.com/)
ThinkTank: Ask your social graph questions; connect with the issues that matter. (http://expertlabs.org/thinktank.html)

Announcements
2010 Entrepreneur's Census: Measuring the entrepreneurial landscape in Boston, New York and Silicon Valley. (http://entrepreneurcensus.wordpress.com/)
Why 2K?: Petitioning the senseless $2,000 fee hurting entrepreneurs in NY. (http://nytm.org/2010/03/17/why-2k/)
Wikimania: Help bring Wikimania to NYC! (http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)

Speakers
Game-based Marketing by Gabe Zichermann: Inspire customer loyalty through rewards, challenges, and contests. (http://www.amazon.com/Game-Based-Marketing-Customer-Challenges-Contests/dp/0470562234)

Pages

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Monday, April 12, 2010

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Related articles by Zemanta

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Friday, April 09, 2010

Related articles by Zemanta

Thursday, April 08, 2010