Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success
Posted on July 2, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
I’d go with that assessment. Connect has made identity/authentication so much easier for third party app providers and at the same time has struck a serious blow to Google in that these relationships are not transactional and it is a zero sum game. With FB adoption where it is and so much momentum on the Connect initiative, there is little incentive for third party service and app providers to go with any alternatives.
As much as Beacon was Facebook’s low point, that service’s replacement, Facebook Connect, is vaulting the company to new heights six months after its November 2008 launch.
[From Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success -- By The Numbers]
The long term strategic value of Connect is in layering on additional service offerings that can slipstream into application services. Identity and authentication are clear wins today, profile data is increasingly accessible, and long term that ability to build in payment services, advertising network extensions, analytics, and CRM capabilities is entirely within their grasp.
Protect the Abusers By Punishing the Rule Following Majority
Posted on July 2, 2009
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There’s a lot of this going around this year.
An FDA panel’s recommendation to withdraw Vicodin, Percocet, and other opioid-plus-acetaminophen painkillers seems calculated to “sacrifice the interests of consumers who follow instructions for the sake of consumers who don’t”, says Jacob Sullum.
[From “”If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you”]
The Federal government has pushed for mortgage bailouts for people who borrowed money they could not afford to pay back, as evidenced by Fannie’s recidivism rate of 70% on their HomeSaver Advance program which was aimed to help people overcome hardship in making their loan payments. These programs are paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, who by an overwhelming majority does not default on their mortgages.
Next came credit card “relief” which is proving to be anything but relief as lenders jack interest rates in anticipation of the new rules and contract lending as a result of the Federal government’s intervention. The chargeoff rate for credit card companies is about 12%, really high, but 40% of American credit card holders still pay off their balances monthly. The interest rates hikes won’t affect that group but it will dramatically increase the cost of borrowing for people who maintain reasonable balances on their credit cards, and the fee increases that banks are instituting more broadly affect everyone. In effect, Congress and the President created a law to protect that abusers of credit cards that is ending up costing everyone who uses credit cards.
Now we have the FDA stepping into multi-ingredient painkillers because a small percentage of people abuse them. Not to make light of any single death, but the fact remains that 400 deaths a year in a nation of over 300 million people is a rounding error on a rounding error… on a rounding error. It’s almost like they want to create reason to intervene and project regulatory power when in fact the cause is not the drugs themselves but people who refuse to follow the instructions. Getting beyond acetaminophen for a moment, what does this suggest for future medical advances that are premised on personalized drugs which combine many ingredients based on the unique physiology of a single patient.
Why Did I Unfollow You
Posted on July 1, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
I’ve been cleaning up my Twitter-roll and unfollowing a bunch of people, here’s why:
1) You don’t tweet. I don’t think anyone really needs to pump out 50 tweets a day to be interesting… but the corollary is true as well, if the only tweet you have posted in the last 2 months is “going for lunch, indian food” don’t be surprised if you get unfollowed. Twitter is a stream, not a feed.
2) You pimp your company, and then do it some more. A lot of people seem to think that Twitter exists solely for them to tweet out press releases about their company, or every tweet is cheerleading on behalf of their company. Balance people, balance. It’s all well and good to tweet out news about the great things your company is doing, but balance it out with interesting links to news from around your industry. The odds are pretty damn good that you know more about what your competitors, partners, and other interesting companies are doing than I do, and that’s why I followed you in the first place. I would expect a company twitter profile to be exclusively focused on company news, but not a person working for that company.
3) You are rude. It’s okay to disagree but to do so in a condescending or offensive manner is not appropriate, and just because it’s online doesn’t mean you can say things to me that you would not say to my face. Interestingly, this is the least frequent cause for unfollowing… most people I encounter online are actually more polite and civil, even if in violent disagreement, than the average person walking down the street in SF.
4) Serial retweeters. I’ve noticed that some people are following thousands of people with the intent of getting followed themselves, and then retweet nonstop to gain prominence. I’m not sure what the end game is here beyond building an authority ranking on third party services but it is not interesting. Some of this behavior is bot driven.
5) You tweet about inane bullshit. I really don’t care that you are “going for lunch, indian food” but if that is mixed in with interesting links, substantive tweets, good retweets, and other meaningful stuff, well I can skip over the meaningless stuff… but if the only thing you are tweeting about is inane bullshit, I’m unfollowing you. Signal to noise ratios, too low is a problem.
Tyrannosaurus Debt
Posted on July 1, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
via The Corner
What Went Wrong With Joost?
Posted on July 1, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Om very succinctly yet thoroughly lays out what has led to the demise of Joost. One point that I disagree with my good friend Om on is that a white label strategy is the last refuge of a failed strategy when you don’t set out from the beginning to become a white label business… Brightcove has done well white labeling streaming video services.
When I read about all the planned changes at the company earlier today, the first thought that crossed my mind was: Stick a fork in it; Joost is done. After all, this whole white-label video strategy is like a leaky lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The NewTeeVee crew sums up the situation very succinctly: “Becoming a white-label video provider was what a business did when all other strategies failed.”
[From What Went Wrong With Joost?]
I’ve written about Joost a couple of times since it launched in 2007 and my experience apparently mimics that of what the broader majority of their users experienced. The service began with great enthusiasm among consumers because at the time it was apparent that Youtube had reached an apex in terms of quality and distribution of feature content. Joost promised to improve on both and the video experience itself was pretty damn sweet and given the early phase of the company I was willing to be patient on the content front… yet mainstream feature content never arrived and the result was that there was no reason to stay with the service.
At the end of the day Joost was a content business but they never seemed to understand that, which is reflected in their management team which strategized around a technology roadmap. In many ways Joost is a textbook example of so many things that a startup should not do, and whatever strategy they have now is tantamount to capitulation because as Om so aptly puts it, stick a fork in it. Done.
Standardized Power Chargers
Posted on June 29, 2009
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This is a great idea, I would love to see a standard sized device charger (doesn’t have to be limited to mobile phones) adopted by hardware manufacturers much in the same way that USB was embraced. Not only would this be convenient for consumers, but the charger could be unbundled from the device, as in you buy one charger to support the full range of devices that you have which results in lower BOM costs for the manufacturer and less waste from a consumer standpoint.
The agreement by Nokia, Sony Ericsson and other industry majors will mean phones compatible with standard charging devices are available in Europe from next year, said the EU executive, which has pushed for such a deal.
[From Telecom firms back standard phone charger in Europe | Technology | Reuters]
This is a totally doable concept because all mobile devices rely on chargers that are within specific output voltages and amperages, which can be auto-sensed by the wall unit, meaning that standardization really takes the form of standard cabling to connect the device to the charger unit… and as Apple and Blackberry, among others, demonstrate, USB is an ideal cabling for moving not just data to the device but also power.
Not surprisingly, Apple has taken a lead in smart designs in this area and the latest generation iPhone wall power unit is about as small as possible and the utilization of the USB cable means that there is less “stuff” that the iPhone requires. Unfortunately, Apple’s departure from USB standards, relying on the proprietary iPhone connector on one end, means that the iPhone itself will also require a proprietary component (even if someone else makes it there is still a licensing component which is, as far as I know, a flat fee of $4 per unit), but ignoring that for the moment, the Apple scheme that relies on a small wall plug in and a USB cable to connect the device is ideal.
A standard device charger is a big step in the right direction but it’s still only a half measure to something that would truly revolutionize how power is delivered to mobile devices and that is wirelessly. Nikola Tesla demonstrated the wireless delivery of electricity over 115 years ago (Tesla coils were not invented solely for use as movie props), which leaves me wondering why this technology has not been commercialized for consumer devices.
The (il)Logic of Krugman
Posted on June 26, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
Paul Krugman echoes President Obama’s rhetorical attack on critics of government run healthcare (and that’s pretty much what happens when the Federal government determines what care you are eligible for) as an example of the brilliant side of the President.
Both Baracks were on display in the president’s press conference earlier this week. First, Mr. Obama offered a crystal-clear explanation of the case for health care reform, and especially of the case for a public option competing with private insurers. “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal,” he asked, “then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”
[From Op-Ed Columnist - Not Enough Audacity - NYTimes.com]
Unfortunately for Krugman, and he should know better, is that the government trumps private insurance in this instance not because they are more efficient but because they can print money and run a system that is insolvent in perpetuity. This is precisely what the private insurance industry is rightly concerned about because if any of them ran a system in such a manner they would be hauled into court by the Department of Justice for anti-competitive activities (dumping).
Media Strategy 3.0
Posted on June 22, 2009
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Really interesting summation of how media has evolved rapidly into the digital distribution age and what the current generation capabilities and shortcomings portend for the next generation.
This third stage is about the balance between targeting, which reduces waste and increases campaign efficiency, and creativity, which takes into account the message and the placement relevance. Just as in traditional marketing, our goal is to reduce the waste against an untargeted audience and focus dollars on the audience that is most likely to resonate with the message. The difference is that digital media has the capability to get to a 100% targeted effort, whereas traditional media does not.
This stage of media strategy requires data, and data is something that we have in abundance. The issue is not whether we have the data, but how we use it to be effective. There are numerous ways to slice the data, but the most important metrics are the ones that correlate to actual increases in consideration, intent and sales.
[From MediaPost Publications Media Strategy 3.0 06/17/2009]
Media and advertising has always believed itself to be an industry built on data but the fact remains that the data has been used as a blunt instrument, not a scalpel. Media buyers obsess about two dimensions, demographic data and impressions while publishers respond with, not surprisingly, a focus on demographics and impressions. I think this formulaic approach to media strategy drives the creative side of the industry bonkers, which is one reason why an increasing number of brands are looking beyond their advertising agencies as a primary means of engaging consumers.
Treffiletti is correct in asserting that we have the data, for the most part, what is lacking is the fine grained analytics that go beyond clicks to intentions. As media becomes further disaggregated this challenge will only grow larger, a consequence of universal reluctance by people to provide detailed information about themselves and of the increasingly disaggregated nature of media where visitors are not shuttled through a defined site map (e.g. inbound links to pages, search, etc.).
Lonnie Johnson, Inventor
Posted on June 20, 2009
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I love interviews with inventors, it’s a rare window into the mind of someone who just things differently than the rest of us. I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with the inventor of the Super Soaker, but there was one response that really captured the essence of why this guy is so brilliant.
There are maybe three inventions I have that I rank as my top inventions that I’m most proud of. The robot I built in high school, the memory-protected circuitry for the Galileo and the Super Soaker.
[From Lonnie Johnson Quotes - Interview with Super Soaker Inventor on Gun's 20th Birthday - Popular Mechanics]
You simply have to admire the sincerity of someone who puts a robot they built in 1968 while in high school, a memory circuit for a probe deliberately crashed into Jupiter, and a water gun all on the same plane.
Blogging Has Been Light
Posted on June 20, 2009
Filed Under Uncategorized |
For no particular reason, I just haven’t felt compelled to write in spite of finding a bunch of really interesting nuggets in the daily news. I think my writers block is passing… today’s post is a compilation of the small items that have caught my attention this last week.
California Eggs, Consumer Protections and Special Interest Groups
An egg fight has broken out in California over what else, the egg business. Last year the Humane Society sponsored a ballot initiative effectively requiring all egg producers to go cage free… it wasn’t written that way but that is by their own admission what they are targeting.
The ballot initiative was poorly written from a compliance standpoint, deliberately it would appear, and now the egg producers (a $300 million a year business in CA) are crying fowl (pun intended and yes I did misspell “foul”) because they are not getting any guidance about what they need to do in order to comply.
My first reaction is that it’s pretty shitty that the Humane Society, a group with a noble purpose and point in fact is a special interest group, could push through a feel good measure that saddles a food industry with yet more costs that get passed on to consumers. I wondered what would happen if CA egg producers said “fuck it, we’re leaving” knowing full well that the out-of-state producer mandates are difficult to enforce, or how would voters feel if eggs were suddenly 50 or 100% more as a consequence of increased costs being passed on across all producers. What would the state do if egg producers boycotted the state?
However, as the above is unlikely to happen, what does present itself is an interesting opportunity for CA egg producers to focus on the high end of the market, in effect dominating national (international?) supply for cage free eggs and leaving the low end of the market for out of state producers that fall below the threshold required to trigger the cage free mandate. Bet that isn’t what the Humane Society had in mind but an example of the law of unintended consequences that stems from interest group sponsored legislation.
RIAA Scores a Big Victory in a Civil Verdict
Ars Technica did a bang up job covering the retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset for illegal downloading of songs. I won’t get into my particular opinion on the bigger issue of the RIAA pursuit of downloaders, but this trial was interesting on several levels.
First a little background, Jammie Thomas-Rasset was convicted in an earlier trial for illegally downloading 24 songs and assessed a penalty of $220k. Her legal team persuaded the federal judge that the penalty was excessive, among other factors, and a retrial was ordered. The retrial concluded this week and a new penalty of $1.9 million was levied… to the shock and dismay of her legal team.
It appears rather conclusive that the defendant did violate the law and despised as they are for going after downloaders, the RIAA does have a right to pursue legal remedies against downloaders. Whether or not they SHOULD is a different discussion and not particularly relevant to why I am writing about this case.
Thomas-Rasset proved herself to be a nightmare for her defense team, not only from an attitude standpoint but also having implicated herself on the stand in several outright lies. This serves to reinforce what any first year law student knows, a defendant has to be sympathetic for the jury to find favorably for them, in this case it appears rather clear that the jury found Thomas-Rasset rather dislikable and skewed their damage award accordingly. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, it just is what it is.
CA’s Treasurer Pissed at Ratings Agencies
California Treasurer Bill Lockyer is pretty upset with bond ratings agencies, in response to a threatened multi-notch downgrade of California, Lockyer’s spokesperson said the ratings “don’t mean squat”. He may be right.
I have always found it curious that municipal agencies are required to buy insurance on their bond offerings, the cost of which is passed on to taxpayers, when municipal defaults are so rare. There was a time when the complexity of information about state finances, as well as the opacity of it, meant that ratings agencies actually performed a service… but can anyone really say that the ratings analysts know something about California’s finances that well informed investors don’t already know?
As much as it would be a mistake for states to be allowed to effectively self-rate, I’m wondering to what purpose to ratings agencies serve in this day and age, and to a lesser degree what the bond insurers role is. Indeed it would be catastrophic for the bond insurers to have to cover as much as $100 billion in defaults by California alone, they could cover the default but the industry would never be the same again and because every state would see bond insurance skyrocket as a result of a CA default, the Federal government would surely step in with yet another bailout.
So while Lockyer is probably right to say the ratings “don’t mean squat” that doesn’t change the fact that CA is insolvent and the bond markets know it. He has proposed new approaches to ratings in the past but when his only allies are states in equally dire financial condition, well he is likely to suffer the fate of a petulant child being punished for misbehaving, which is to be ignored.
Welcome To California, Highest Taxes in the Nation
While I am on the subject of CA, it’s again worth pointing out that we feature a tax system that has few limits on the small percentage of taxpayers to fund personal income tax payments to the state, yet still have a $24 billion hole in our budget. Anyone who suggests that higher taxes are the solution for CA really should not be taken seriously.
We can argue all day about this loophole or that (unless you are talking about lower economic tiers where “loopholes” are more commonly referred to as “tax incentives” and wealth redistribution schemes are called “subsidies”) but the fact that a small percentage of taxpayers supports the state income tax receipts disproportionately is just that, FACT. 15% of taxpayers pay 83% of the personal tax receipts that the state collects… more taxes are not the answer, a fair tax system is.
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About
My name is Jeff Nolan and I write Venture Chronicles. These are my thoughts on technology, innovation, management, public policy and pretty much anything else that I find interesting.
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