I use twitter to share interesting resources, new stories and blog posts that I come across. I am a little perplexed at how the media portrays twitter (and it’s older sibling blogging) as primarily a channel for mundane chitchat about pooping, etc.
Anywho, here are some links that I have stumbled on during the last few weeks. I haven’t had the time or inspiration to write a longer blog post in a while, so this is my somewhat lame attempt to update the content on my blog. There are some good nuggets, so please enjoy!
A few links that were highly received by the twitteratti:
Gadzooks! Kindle Books Now A Shocking 35% Of Sales When Kindle Version Available - link
Another FaceBook phishing scam. Avoided it myself w/simple rule: Don’t enter your PW anywhere but Facebook.com (duh). link
Irony alert: Newspaper Association of America cuts 50% of staff, kills print edition of magazine: link
Great info by Forrester about the growth and size of the social media advertising: $500MM in 2008, 34% CAGR thru 2014 link
And a longer list of everything else:
Watching: “Chris Sacca, Startup Whisperer” Especially starting at 4:15. link
FriendFeed: beyond aggregation to real-time conversations. Still too clever by half perhaps? link
Can you imagine JP Morgan expressing such personal emotion? Larry Page’s University of Michigan Commencement Address” link
OK, I think I am going to experiment with blip.fm to replace Last.fm for how I discover new music: link
Coldplay + Buena Vista Social Club? Really? It’s pretty awesome! via openzap.com: link
The possibilities of the open stream API of FB are pretty awesome. I’m a big fan: link
Interesting bet by hi5 on digital goods not social ads. “Why hi5 Might Have an Edge on Facebook” - link
Be lean. Avoid overproduction (making things unwanted features) and inventory (making things that aren’t used NOW)” link
The ugliest houses on the market / what you can buy for under a $1,000: link
Interesting ideas how to create & improve a marketing web site: link
Playing with the newly launch Facebook adobe AIR desktop app. Yeah, open activity streams! link
Thanks for documenting the event w pics, @johnmccrea, sad I missed the ‘tasting’! link
A nice article about how social media can help you cut through the clutter: link
LA Times nails the story about the open stream by FB. Complicated but good move by FB, imo: link
“Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market.” NYT:link
He deliberately skips the ball across the pond and onto the green during the par 3 contest before the Masters tournament. (He’s the second player to tee off in the video.)
Young funds go through a period where the first handful of deals test the proof of concept. Can these cats pull this off? Then, you’ve got another bunch of deals that ask the question, can they scale their strategy without blowing up? Then, there’s the next stretch of transactions — a larger number, not unlike the larger patient populations of Phase II trials — where you really start to get a sense for whether a fund is going to work or not. And then you get to the metaphor for Phase III (which, interestingly, often coincides with fund III) in which you can see a robust test of the hypothesis. Is this thing better than the alternatives? (Of course, by then, it’s typically too late to get on the bandwagon, so the sweet spot is usually somewhat earlier.)
Although he is talking about General Partners who are raising private equity funds, I think that it actually applies more generally to anyone raising funds (e.g., for research, for non-profits, for candidates, for new ventures,etc.) Test concept. Try to scale. Ramp up. Don’t screw up your new institution!
So, I’m a month into my twitter experiment. (Plug: follow me at @weiks on twittter.com.) It’s been pretty interesting, although time- and attention-consuming. Here are some of the links that I’ve shared and tweeted about. (I got the idea from Andrew Chen.) I am not sure how valuable this post will be. I suppose if just one reader finds just one link valuable, then I know it will have been worth it.
A VC who still wants to invest in FB co’s (Dave McClure) link
The right way is to post your status updates to twitter. You can target only some to appear on FB with this app: link
Clay @shirky’s interesting historical analysis of the demise of newspapers link
Instead of his normal comedy routine, Jon Stewart played the prosecution in the trying of Jim Cramer. Stewart has bemoaning the role that the media played in allowing the financial bubble to get so big. He tried to build the case that Cramer and others intentionally and knowingly played games with our retirement accounts for their own profit. It an awkward and revealing segment, and difficult to watch because Cramer is trying to plead for mercy and Stewart is going in for the kill. You can watch it here:
I think Cramer did a reasonably good job. He didn’t say it, but I think that he used to be on the dark side but he is now on the up and up. And he certainly did not suffer the terrible performance Tucker Carlson put in.
So, I say: Cramer is a good guy. But I also think Cramer is on notice: put up now, or shut up.
Bernie Madoff has pleaded guilty today, and will be released from prison no sooner than his 220th birthday. What is he up to in his final deal?
My cynical self has the answer: fall guy. He is shielding his family and perhaps other employees from damage by taking all the blame. In his final deal of his life, he has done a masterful job of painting himself as the lone wolf. He kept all the attention on himself, and it look like any accomplices to his massive fraud will get away scot-free.
At StephanieBamBam.net, I learned that Skittles.com has revamped their web site to be a weird social media experiment. Essentially, they are scouring the internet (in particular, twitter and wikipedia) for any mentions of ’skittles’ and putting them, without any editing, right on their homepage. Indeed, when I clicked “chatter” on the site, one of the top tweets displayed was “Unicorns fart skittles.”
But the key thing is whether it sells more candy or not. As she says:
In the long run, is this going to make me buy more candy? Absolutely not. But I will be pointing to this as an example of UGC [user-generated content] gone bad for years to come. So for that, thanks Skittles!!
And she is quite negative about the experiment!
I, however, have a different take on the site. Although posters may be interested in seeing their tweets go on skittles.com, their messages are carried to their followers too. These messages far outweigh the exposure on skittles.com, and they are matched to their audience. I know that some of my readers, like Eric say, will *love* the title of this post. It will not reflect badly on skittles at all! And any negative connotation of “unicorns fart skittles” that one sees on skittles.com must be taken with a grain of salt.
I would be interested in seeing if the campaign has any impact on sales or not, because I am bit more bullish about the impact than Stephanie is.
My aunt forwarded me this video. It’s fun to watch. Interestingly, it’s an ad created for t-mobile. Some people think that future will be ads that are engaging that you will *want* to share with your friends. Well, this video is at least one example of such an ad. Enjoy!
Jason Calacanis has some great thoughts about what to do when you think your startup is about to fail. I’ve gone through this experience once as a founder of e-thepeople.org, and I’ve seen it at a couple of companies that my friends have been involved in. This advice is bang on. Let me summarize, and you can read his long but highly readable original missive here.
1. Test your funders. Tell them you believe, and that you are going to stretch things out but you want them to put in more now (even though you still have a ramp).
2. Test your employees. Make the cuts. Consider salary reductions, but make sure that the employees who remain are still happy.
3. Test your landlord and vendors. Negotiate for a little free rent, subletting permission and other discounts. Losing you completely is not in their interest.
4. Put yourself to the test. Offer to sell your car to put the money into the company! Take the same reductions as the staff.
5. Put your product to the test. Make sales calls yourself. Celebrate the process of sales: new leads, pitches, etc.
6. Know when to quit. Use your last 120 days of burn to wind down honorably.
Increasingly, A-list celebrities like Shaquille O’Neill and Demi Moore are actively updating their fans through twitter. In Demi Moore’s case, she has nearly 50,000 people following her! Even Congress is getting into the act, as 20 Senators and 50 Representatives have started twitter accounts. A friend from college has launched yardbarker.com, an amazing site that has gotten hundreds of professional athletes to blog on a regular basis and has the inside scoop on sports in general.
Why are so many celebrities and public figures “wasting” their time on social networks? Disintermediation. Now, they can offer tidbits directly to their fans bypassing the gossip rags and traditional media. By offering the personal tidbits of their own choosing, they can simultaneously help satiate their fans while controlling the spin about their lives.
Is this disintermediation a good thing? My brother-in-law, Sam, is a sport reporter, and he was bemoaning the fact that Tiger Woods issues press releases directly to his fans through his web site but does not do press conferences. Sam worried that ultimately fans were getting a disservice because they lost the chance of indepth, knowledgeable follow up questions on potentially sensitive subjects. His concern translates into a more alarming question when we turn to politics. Can we really imagine a “Watergate moment” by a blogger?
At the present time, I think the disintermediation trend is very real. We are losing our traditional “fourth estate” in the process, and hopefully entrepreneurs will create new institutions that are native to the new media to speak truth to power.
Perhaps it wasn’t a bold prediction, but I picked Slumdog Millionaire to win Best Picture and it did. Bravo! (Win #1) Although Sean Penn was indeed terrific in Milk, I was sad that Micky Rourke did not win Best Actor for the Wrestler. (Loss #1)
But the unexpected win for the Oscars: the new format. (Win #2) I loved having previous winners make the case for each of the nominees. The new format was much more compelling than the short clips and voice overs they had in previous years. (Although Halle Berry did make a somewhat awkward speech by talking about herself, rather than the nominee.)
I’ve never watched the Awards ceremony before because I found it unwatchable. I enjoyed it this year’s ceremony, which befits one of the best crop of movies I can remember in a long while.
