Hmmm ... I wonder why people are setting up groups on Ning when they didn't on Tribe?
The functionality looks to me to be pretty similar.
August 04, 2007
August 03, 2007
Read/Write Web Netvibes Launches Facebook Widget
(Platform Wars reference nothing to do with me ... call it synchronicity)
Update : Umair pitches in and calls it an "anti-platform war" in that suppliers aren't trying to lock-in the users to their system against others, but are desperately trying to be as open as possible (and co-operative / inter-operable with other players).
(Platform Wars reference nothing to do with me ... call it synchronicity)
Update : Umair pitches in and calls it an "anti-platform war" in that suppliers aren't trying to lock-in the users to their system against others, but are desperately trying to be as open as possible (and co-operative / inter-operable with other players).
August 01, 2007
July 25, 2007
Interesting interview with one of the founders of Facebook. Sensible points : continuing to look at Facebook as a platform and as as tool to enrich existing social relationships rather than create new ones (that makes it more like LinkedIn than Tribe)
June 28, 2007
June 25, 2007
LinkedIn going the platform route in response to Facebook?
I think they're going to have to change the perception of what LinkedIn is quite dramatically to get away with this. LinkedIn isn't an online place the way that Facebook or Tribe or MySpace are. It's organized around part of your life which is offline : namely your CV, your job, the company you work for and your (ex) colleagues. Its strength is letting you keep track of these things, while otherwise staying out of sight and out of mind.
Simply opening up the LinkedIn API isn't really going to do much unless someone can dream up some widgets that somehow engage this offline life.
I think they're going to have to change the perception of what LinkedIn is quite dramatically to get away with this. LinkedIn isn't an online place the way that Facebook or Tribe or MySpace are. It's organized around part of your life which is offline : namely your CV, your job, the company you work for and your (ex) colleagues. Its strength is letting you keep track of these things, while otherwise staying out of sight and out of mind.
Simply opening up the LinkedIn API isn't really going to do much unless someone can dream up some widgets that somehow engage this offline life.
June 17, 2007
Marc Andreessen (remember that Ning is now a social networking service building platform?) looks at Facebook's platform.
Meanwhile, some people seem to be doing well on it.
Veterans of the software industry have, hardcoded into their DNA, the assumption that in any fight between a platform and an application, the platform will always win.
...
what Facebook is now doing is a lot more sophisticated than simply MySpace-style embedding: Facebook is providing a full suite of APIs -- including a network protocol, a database query language, and a text markup language -- that allow third party applications to integrate tightly with the Facebook user experience and database of user and activity information.
And then, on top of that, Facebook is providing a highly viral distribution engine for applications that plug into its platform. As a user, you get notified when your friends start using an application; you can then start using that same application with one click. At which point, all of your friends become aware that you have started using that application, and the cycle continues. The result is that a successful application on Facebook can grow to a million users or more within a couple of weeks of creation.
Finally, Facebook is promising economic freedom -- third-party applications can run ads and sell goods and services to their hearts' content.
Meanwhile, some people seem to be doing well on it.
June 01, 2007
Robert Cringely has a fun article about Google and its policy of letting internal geniuses work on their own projects.
He says :
I'm not so sure ... "too many good ideas" looks like the kind of problem that Google ought to know how to turn into an opportunity. (Maybe someone's already is using their 20% time in this direction?)
Firstly, "sort the good stuff from the rest" is Google's raison d’être. There must be dozens of variations on internal prediction markets / social routing networks / ranking algorithms which Google's internal community could use to discover the great ideas.
Second, Cringely's "the number of ideas that a company the size of Google can throw all its weight behind per year is about 10" smells suspiciously like "hit" based, rather than long-tail, thinking. This is a company that specializes in a) having smart, entrepreneurial people inside, and b) supporting large, liquid markets for micro-businesses (via AdSense, Google Checkout etc.) Why, having encouraged 4000 flowers to bloom, would it force them through a vicious filtering to become an official Google product? The answer to the problem of everyone has a product they want to launch ought to be "launch them all", with various degrees of Google official endorsement for those which the company wants to promote.
He says :
First there are those thousands of ideas and technologies that are being developed by Google employees in the 20 percent of their week devoted specifically for that purpose. That number of new ideas is far too high to be practical and too high even to be considered safe.
Say the Google Geniuses come up with 4,000 business ideas or technologies per year, which is probably around the current number. Let's guess that one percent of these ideas are truly great -- boffo ideas that one could easily build a company around. That's 40 world-beating ideas. And after the 40 absolutely top ideas, let's say there are another 360 ideas that are pretty darned good -- certainly good enough to pitch to the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road. The remaining 3,600 ideas are, of course, crap, and can be forgotten by everyone except their inventors, whom I'll get back to in a minute.
Assuming Google executives have the insight to know which of their 4,000 proffered ideas are world-class, they then have to decide which 40 to pursue. Such an assumption is giving even Google too much credit, believe me. No matter how smart they are, issues of loyalty, prejudice, and the odd hangover will result in some less-good ideas making it through but mainly great ideas being eliminated. But this doesn't really matter because the larger question is: How many good ideas can Google pursue vigorously per year? The number isn't 40. It isn't even 20. The number of ideas that a company the size of Google can throw all its weight behind per year is about 10, of which five will probably not be the right ones.
I'm not so sure ... "too many good ideas" looks like the kind of problem that Google ought to know how to turn into an opportunity. (Maybe someone's already is using their 20% time in this direction?)
Firstly, "sort the good stuff from the rest" is Google's raison d’être. There must be dozens of variations on internal prediction markets / social routing networks / ranking algorithms which Google's internal community could use to discover the great ideas.
Second, Cringely's "the number of ideas that a company the size of Google can throw all its weight behind per year is about 10" smells suspiciously like "hit" based, rather than long-tail, thinking. This is a company that specializes in a) having smart, entrepreneurial people inside, and b) supporting large, liquid markets for micro-businesses (via AdSense, Google Checkout etc.) Why, having encouraged 4000 flowers to bloom, would it force them through a vicious filtering to become an official Google product? The answer to the problem of everyone has a product they want to launch ought to be "launch them all", with various degrees of Google official endorsement for those which the company wants to promote.
May 30, 2007
In general Dave Winer isn't too enthused about Facebook-as-a-platform. But here's a throw-away, but wise comment : "For extra credit, relationship-defining should be part of Facebook's open architecture."
May 25, 2007
May 24, 2007
May 22, 2007
May 21, 2007
May 08, 2007
As predicted :
The new SkyPal 3.2 beta :
The new SkyPal 3.2 beta :
What's new in this version?
Send Money with PayPal
Send money to friends and family direct from Skype.
May 04, 2007
May 03, 2007
Personally, I gotta agree with Mark Pilgrim.
In pure platform-warring terms, Silverlight is an almost smart move by Microsoft, although I still think they should have directly tried to get their hands on and embrace and extend Flash / Apollo rather than make their own competitor.
The crucial question for them is how much they are willing for the VM to float freely vs. whether they'll tie it into Windows Vista.Seems like it's planned for MacOS, but not Linux. Will they encourage the Mono guys to clone it? Is this actually a sneaky attempt to wrap MacOS in their own VM?
If I was, say, YouTube, why would I switch from Flash to Silverlight? (Actually, now I'm owned by Google, of course, I wouldn't. Full stop.)
Maybe there are two ways of looking at this.
On the one hand, Silverlight is going up against two strong incumbents : Flash and QuickTime. Both are going to fight back hard, and Flash can position itself as the "already platform independent" platform, because it has no Operating System to peddle (Nevertheless it may acquire a powerful strategic ally in GoogTube.) Clearly MS, rightly, understand that Apollo is a serious and bold attack on their ownership of the desktop (everything that Java tried to do but with a better programming language, a huge existing user-base and cuter graphics). At the same time there's Apple taking over the home entertainment zone with QuickTunes.
Can MS make something so compellingly better that it makes much headway here? Can it be so much better that Adobe or Apple couldn't match it?
On the other hand, maybe the best way to look at this is as MS trying to unbundle some of the multimedia functionality of Windows Vista and give it a more independent life, creating value in other contexts, such as a downloadable component for XP and MacOS.
Or maybe MS will be unable to resist tying in with Vista in the long run to try to sustain their monopoly.
In pure platform-warring terms, Silverlight is an almost smart move by Microsoft, although I still think they should have directly tried to get their hands on and embrace and extend Flash / Apollo rather than make their own competitor.
The crucial question for them is how much they are willing for the VM to float freely vs. whether they'll tie it into Windows Vista.Seems like it's planned for MacOS, but not Linux. Will they encourage the Mono guys to clone it? Is this actually a sneaky attempt to wrap MacOS in their own VM?
If I was, say, YouTube, why would I switch from Flash to Silverlight? (Actually, now I'm owned by Google, of course, I wouldn't. Full stop.)
Maybe there are two ways of looking at this.
On the one hand, Silverlight is going up against two strong incumbents : Flash and QuickTime. Both are going to fight back hard, and Flash can position itself as the "already platform independent" platform, because it has no Operating System to peddle (Nevertheless it may acquire a powerful strategic ally in GoogTube.) Clearly MS, rightly, understand that Apollo is a serious and bold attack on their ownership of the desktop (everything that Java tried to do but with a better programming language, a huge existing user-base and cuter graphics). At the same time there's Apple taking over the home entertainment zone with QuickTunes.
Can MS make something so compellingly better that it makes much headway here? Can it be so much better that Adobe or Apple couldn't match it?
On the other hand, maybe the best way to look at this is as MS trying to unbundle some of the multimedia functionality of Windows Vista and give it a more independent life, creating value in other contexts, such as a downloadable component for XP and MacOS.
Or maybe MS will be unable to resist tying in with Vista in the long run to try to sustain their monopoly.
May 01, 2007
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