Well, it seems that I've put my name right in the middle of the latest Silicon Valley tempest in a teapot. I'm right there, in the un-deleted comments on the original post, full name in view. Just to be clear, since three points [3] can be construed to make a curve, I don't think Google is evil. I actually think Google is full of smart, sincere people trying really hard to create the future, and breaking a few eggs while making their omelettes. What really worries me is that the future is full of unintended consequences, and none of us have fully thought those consequences through.
On the one hand, all of us users of hosted software are trusting -- implicitly and absolutely -- that we won't be wrecked by the removal of that software. How many people trust their personal lives and/or their businesses to Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Gmail? Hundreds of millions. How many people trust their businesses to Salesforce, SocialText, JotSpot, or JigSaw? Tens of thousands. In the very near future, how many independent producers and actors will trust YouTube to bring them their daily bread? This doesn't even begin to touch on blog platforms, eBay, and Second Life.
Leaving aside all the basic issues -- terrorists, power failures, hackers; your basic Bruce Schneier territory -- there is a huge, dark continent of social mores and best practices around this emerging reality that has yet to be explored or mapped. Much of common case law, as painfully built up over the past several centuries, deals with the delicate ways that property rights can be ascertained in various bizarre situations. Aside from the occasional Congressional meat cleaver, we have no such body of thought or practice built up in this new new world. What is the right answer to Kevin and JotSpot, to downtime by YouTube or PayPal, to the downtime that some Zvents customer may well suffer sometime in the future? How should we guard ourselves against this in advance, defend ourselves against it in the present, and adjudicate around it in the past? I don't know. It worries me that no one is talking about this issue. Where is the council of SaaS? The W3C for ASP? If we're going to build this future, in all its wild entrepreneurial frenzy, someone has to lay out a few ground rules, so that the market can do its magic.
Who will lead? And how can I help?
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Was YouTube downtime scheduled?
YouTube has been down for about 24 hours now:
I don't exactly hang out there, but I wasn't aware this was scheduled. That's a very long downtime, and I haven't seen any commentary -- was it unexpected?
Expected or not, it raises an interesting point about the new distributed badge/widget ecosystem emerging on the web. It's not just enough to fail gracefully at your main URL -- you have to fail gracefully in the thousands, or millions of places where your functionality has been spread. How many websites would be affected if Adsense went down, and would they all fail gracefully? Would "Adsense is down, sorry" appear everywhere? Or just blank holes? I first became aware of YouTube's burp when a friend told me that there was no video at a link I'd forwarded -- the page was just blank.
I don't exactly hang out there, but I wasn't aware this was scheduled. That's a very long downtime, and I haven't seen any commentary -- was it unexpected?
Expected or not, it raises an interesting point about the new distributed badge/widget ecosystem emerging on the web. It's not just enough to fail gracefully at your main URL -- you have to fail gracefully in the thousands, or millions of places where your functionality has been spread. How many websites would be affected if Adsense went down, and would they all fail gracefully? Would "Adsense is down, sorry" appear everywhere? Or just blank holes? I first became aware of YouTube's burp when a friend told me that there was no video at a link I'd forwarded -- the page was just blank.
What would I do with a newspaper? Fix it!
Kevin Maney at USA Today apparently was wandering around the Web 2.0 conference talking to Silicon Valley folks about how to fix newspapers. I wish we'd had a chance to talk, since Zvents is partnering with major newspapers to reinvent local media.
First let's examine the problem. Newspapers have no online pageviews. That means that they can't make any money online, and their offline revenue-generating ability is cratering. What's a useful measure of online vs. offline? How about physical print pages (one sheet of paper in one newspaper) vs. one online pageview? Here are 10 major papers compared:
Now keep in mind that an online pageview in no way compares to an offline page. An offline page has perhaps 3 articles and some big ads; an online pageview is perhaps 1/3 of an article and some small ads. Add in a "like to like" impact/influence factor of 10X, and you've got the leading online papers (NYTimes) in the 5% range of replacing their offline traffic, and others (Tribune) at less than 1% of where they need to be. Maybe that's why Tribune is for sale, while the NYTimes is making smart web acquisitions like About.com?
So how do you get traffic up? The best answer is, "build a compelling product that people want to use." Here I am flabbergasted that Maney's techie interviewees totally missed the boat. He writes, "No one, for instance, proposed that newspaper websites, which generally look more crowded than a Mumbai flea market, pare down to a single, clean Google-esque local search box."
OK, Kevin, I'll bite: The navigation and presentation metaphor of newspaper websites is totally broken, and it's a big reason why their products don't get enough usage. There are dozens of subtle clues in a physical paper that tell you that there's lots inside -- the size and heft, the number of pages, the fact that your periperhal vision is picking up page 3 while you're reading page 2, the fact that the sports section falls out when you pick up the front section. None of these clues exist in a website, and thousands of great pieces of editorial content posted on newspaper sites get a fraction of the traffic they'd see if *anyone could find them*. This doesn't just mean Google-like active search -- it means passive discovery mechanisms like Memeorandum or Google News (which already drives about 30% of total newspaper pageviews -- yes, you read that right!) and it also means "sidways navigation" mechanisms like Aggregate Knowledge. Solving this problem is crucial to the future of newspapers online.
And then there's the content. Newspapers have created their content to match the physical and economic constraints on their business. The length, detail, and volume of news stories they create -- and their focus on text first, pictures second, audio and video never -- are deeply driven by their dead tree tradition. Even more importantly, their emphasis on data and the long tail has been very curtailed by their inability to publish a phone book every day. Zvents focuses on events, where newspapers cover perhaps 2% of what's actually going on in a metro area -- but there are dozens, hundreds, of other areas where newspapers have been forced by past realities to curtail the breadth and depth of their coverage. All those constraints have been blown away, and suddenly the entire shape and structure of their news-gathering, sorting, polishing, and dissemination has to change.
I haven't even touched the advertising side. That's food for another post.
There's a lot more... but that's a primer on how I'd fix newspapers. To find out more about how my company, Zvents, can help newspapers in this transition process, visit our site.
First let's examine the problem. Newspapers have no online pageviews. That means that they can't make any money online, and their offline revenue-generating ability is cratering. What's a useful measure of online vs. offline? How about physical print pages (one sheet of paper in one newspaper) vs. one online pageview? Here are 10 major papers compared:
Now keep in mind that an online pageview in no way compares to an offline page. An offline page has perhaps 3 articles and some big ads; an online pageview is perhaps 1/3 of an article and some small ads. Add in a "like to like" impact/influence factor of 10X, and you've got the leading online papers (NYTimes) in the 5% range of replacing their offline traffic, and others (Tribune) at less than 1% of where they need to be. Maybe that's why Tribune is for sale, while the NYTimes is making smart web acquisitions like About.com?
So how do you get traffic up? The best answer is, "build a compelling product that people want to use." Here I am flabbergasted that Maney's techie interviewees totally missed the boat. He writes, "No one, for instance, proposed that newspaper websites, which generally look more crowded than a Mumbai flea market, pare down to a single, clean Google-esque local search box."
OK, Kevin, I'll bite: The navigation and presentation metaphor of newspaper websites is totally broken, and it's a big reason why their products don't get enough usage. There are dozens of subtle clues in a physical paper that tell you that there's lots inside -- the size and heft, the number of pages, the fact that your periperhal vision is picking up page 3 while you're reading page 2, the fact that the sports section falls out when you pick up the front section. None of these clues exist in a website, and thousands of great pieces of editorial content posted on newspaper sites get a fraction of the traffic they'd see if *anyone could find them*. This doesn't just mean Google-like active search -- it means passive discovery mechanisms like Memeorandum or Google News (which already drives about 30% of total newspaper pageviews -- yes, you read that right!) and it also means "sidways navigation" mechanisms like Aggregate Knowledge. Solving this problem is crucial to the future of newspapers online.
And then there's the content. Newspapers have created their content to match the physical and economic constraints on their business. The length, detail, and volume of news stories they create -- and their focus on text first, pictures second, audio and video never -- are deeply driven by their dead tree tradition. Even more importantly, their emphasis on data and the long tail has been very curtailed by their inability to publish a phone book every day. Zvents focuses on events, where newspapers cover perhaps 2% of what's actually going on in a metro area -- but there are dozens, hundreds, of other areas where newspapers have been forced by past realities to curtail the breadth and depth of their coverage. All those constraints have been blown away, and suddenly the entire shape and structure of their news-gathering, sorting, polishing, and dissemination has to change.
I haven't even touched the advertising side. That's food for another post.
There's a lot more... but that's a primer on how I'd fix newspapers. To find out more about how my company, Zvents, can help newspapers in this transition process, visit our site.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Andy Sack: Reality a Luxury Good
Andy Sack is CEO of Judy's Book and a blogger whom I read regularly. He recently posted some thoughts about sending and receiving physical notes in this digital age that fit nicely with my previous post about reality being a luxury good -- though in this case, the reality is not presence at a physical event, but delivery of a physical good (the note).
I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's superb second novel The Diamond Age, where in the futuristic neo-Victorian Hong Kong community, the same news is delivered electronically to most people, and in hand-printed, hand-delivered newspaper form to the very wealthy few.
I am reminded of Neal Stephenson's superb second novel The Diamond Age, where in the futuristic neo-Victorian Hong Kong community, the same news is delivered electronically to most people, and in hand-printed, hand-delivered newspaper form to the very wealthy few.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Reality is becoming a luxury good
My personal definition of luxury goods is that they are exclusionary -- if one person owns them, then another person can't. Original works of art. Wineries in Napa. Antique Ferraris. Houses in Atherton. All exclusionary goods.
I was chatting with Brian Smith this morning about Second Life -- and it hit me that a lot of what goes on in Second Life is people expressing very human creative urges in virtual reality, because doing so in reality is (often) too expensive. In Second life, you can build a house, an orchard, furniture, a boat... owning the land and the machinery and taking the time to do all that in reality is simply beyond the means of most people.
I don't spend any time in 2nd life, because in real life I'm building a company, and I have a 2-car garage full of woodworking machinery which I use to make furniture, in my very limited time. I've also been working to create a citrus orchard on our patio. If I lived in an apartment in San Francisco, I wouldn't be able to do that last 2; and anywhere but Silicon Valley, the first would be vastly more difficult. Luxuries all. Exclusion runs on a personal timelie as well -- I have spent several decades of my life learning how to work in wood, and time is the ultimate exclusionary good. My ability to build furniture is inversely correlated to my ability to play the piano, hit a fastball, or any of a number of other ways I might have invested large slices of my life.
Tonight at 11:30pm, I am flying to Columbus, Ohio to watch the latest iteration of the awesome Ohio State - Michigan football rivalry. Thanks to my ex-OSU faculty father, my brother Ben and I have tickets at face value(score!), but I'm still spending 48 hours and nearly a thousand dollars to be at the game. Meanwhile, 500,000 people voted in an ESPN poll on who will win the game, and millions will watch it on television.
Reality is luxury, indeed.
Oh, and Ohio State wins, 16-9.
I was chatting with Brian Smith this morning about Second Life -- and it hit me that a lot of what goes on in Second Life is people expressing very human creative urges in virtual reality, because doing so in reality is (often) too expensive. In Second life, you can build a house, an orchard, furniture, a boat... owning the land and the machinery and taking the time to do all that in reality is simply beyond the means of most people.
I don't spend any time in 2nd life, because in real life I'm building a company, and I have a 2-car garage full of woodworking machinery which I use to make furniture, in my very limited time. I've also been working to create a citrus orchard on our patio. If I lived in an apartment in San Francisco, I wouldn't be able to do that last 2; and anywhere but Silicon Valley, the first would be vastly more difficult. Luxuries all. Exclusion runs on a personal timelie as well -- I have spent several decades of my life learning how to work in wood, and time is the ultimate exclusionary good. My ability to build furniture is inversely correlated to my ability to play the piano, hit a fastball, or any of a number of other ways I might have invested large slices of my life.
Tonight at 11:30pm, I am flying to Columbus, Ohio to watch the latest iteration of the awesome Ohio State - Michigan football rivalry. Thanks to my ex-OSU faculty father, my brother Ben and I have tickets at face value(score!), but I'm still spending 48 hours and nearly a thousand dollars to be at the game. Meanwhile, 500,000 people voted in an ESPN poll on who will win the game, and millions will watch it on television.
Reality is luxury, indeed.
Oh, and Ohio State wins, 16-9.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Google launches event search
Tyler noticed a "search public events" button in his Google calendar this morning, and now the official Google blog has a post about the launch.
As noted on GigaOm in their discussion of Google's announcement, my company Zvents announced a $7m funding round last week for our local events search product.
Event search is a great market. Welcome, guys.
-- Ethan
As noted on GigaOm in their discussion of Google's announcement, my company Zvents announced a $7m funding round last week for our local events search product.
Event search is a great market. Welcome, guys.
-- Ethan
Friday, November 10, 2006
Memo to Job Seekers Everywhere (PS to Entrepreneurs!)
Since our recent funding announcement at Zvents, we have been flooded with job applications. Thank you, and those of you who fit our current needs will be hearing back from us soon. This flood has inspired me to write down something I figured out during my own job-applying days:
When you send your resume to a company in MSWord format, the title of the document should NOT be "Resume.doc". I understand that in your own personal PC world, utterly centered around you, "Resume" is a self-obvious description. But in MY inbox, resumes folder, etc., it utterly fails to differentiate you. Call it MyNameResume.doc. Or better yet, MyNameResumeMonthYear.doc. Since this naming issue is a complete failure to think from the perspective of your "customer", I view marketing applicants that make this mistake with a particularly high level of dubiousness.
PS to Entrepreneurs: Exactly the same is true of your pitch deck. I *know* that VCPitch.ppt makes sense to you. Do you think it helps Mike Moritz tell your file from the 300 other ones on his laptop?
When you send your resume to a company in MSWord format, the title of the document should NOT be "Resume.doc". I understand that in your own personal PC world, utterly centered around you, "Resume" is a self-obvious description. But in MY inbox, resumes folder, etc., it utterly fails to differentiate you. Call it MyNameResume.doc. Or better yet, MyNameResumeMonthYear.doc. Since this naming issue is a complete failure to think from the perspective of your "customer", I view marketing applicants that make this mistake with a particularly high level of dubiousness.
PS to Entrepreneurs: Exactly the same is true of your pitch deck. I *know* that VCPitch.ppt makes sense to you. Do you think it helps Mike Moritz tell your file from the 300 other ones on his laptop?
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Dilbert's Creator is a Brain Surgeon
I read this amazing story about Scott Adams tinkering with his own brain, and all I can say is, the number of things we know about our minds is a tiny fraction of what we have yet to discover.
Fantastic. Hat tip, Evan Williams.
Fantastic. Hat tip, Evan Williams.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Matt Marshall on PowerSet: "Search has largely been solved"
Matt Marshall writes in VentureBeat on stealth search startup PowerSet:
"As much as some people want to deny it, search has largely been solved by Google and others, at least for the average person."
Matt, I hope for your sake that this quote doesn't become one of those "everything has been invented" c. 1895 or "the world needs three computers" c. 1950 kind of quotes. Today's search is miraculous by the standards of what's come before, and disastrous by the standards of what is yet to be done. Search has a tremendous distance yet to travel, and as I have written prevously, there are several distinct lines of search innovation that each will yield great consumer benefits. My company, Zvents, falls into category #1; PowerSet falls into category #3.
Barney is a friend of mine and I have known about PowerSet for quite some time, so I'll refrain from commenting on them other than to say they are very smart, very serious, and will either succeed or fail in an interesting and spectacular way.
"As much as some people want to deny it, search has largely been solved by Google and others, at least for the average person."
Matt, I hope for your sake that this quote doesn't become one of those "everything has been invented" c. 1895 or "the world needs three computers" c. 1950 kind of quotes. Today's search is miraculous by the standards of what's come before, and disastrous by the standards of what is yet to be done. Search has a tremendous distance yet to travel, and as I have written prevously, there are several distinct lines of search innovation that each will yield great consumer benefits. My company, Zvents, falls into category #1; PowerSet falls into category #3.
Barney is a friend of mine and I have known about PowerSet for quite some time, so I'll refrain from commenting on them other than to say they are very smart, very serious, and will either succeed or fail in an interesting and spectacular way.
Friday, September 01, 2006
You know you're too geeky when...
I was putting some paper in our recycling bin this morning and I stuck in in the container bin. As I realized this and reached to move it to the other bin, "Ctrl-Z" popped into my head.
I need to get away from the laptop more.
I need to get away from the laptop more.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
The complicated "Liberal thug-wimp" meme
Nothing delights the frothing portion of the Right more than an opportunity to paint liberals (and the one remaining American centrist) as wimps. They're wimps because they fail to "Support our Troops and President Bush."
Of course. They're wimps like this:
On the other hand, no outrage or indignity supposedly perpetrated by liberals must go un-reported, because it's all about hate, hate, hate, right?
So, in breaking news (and I apologize to the future that I know very few facts beyond the initial report as I write this) it appears that a National Guardsman has been attacked by persons unknown in Seattle, and Michelle Malkin and other feral pundits are in full cry that thuggish liberal wimps must be to blame.
Um... guys? A word to the wise. "Thug-wimp" is going to be very, very hard to maintain as a useful meme for misleading and enraging your electoral base. Because, you know, thugs are tough and scary. You might want to re-think this one, though your now-dwindling success with "Iraq, the central front in the war on terror" suggests that even this ludicrous extreme might get you at least a week's worth of gullibility from some folks.
Of course. They're wimps like this:
On the other hand, no outrage or indignity supposedly perpetrated by liberals must go un-reported, because it's all about hate, hate, hate, right?
So, in breaking news (and I apologize to the future that I know very few facts beyond the initial report as I write this) it appears that a National Guardsman has been attacked by persons unknown in Seattle, and Michelle Malkin and other feral pundits are in full cry that thuggish liberal wimps must be to blame.
Um... guys? A word to the wise. "Thug-wimp" is going to be very, very hard to maintain as a useful meme for misleading and enraging your electoral base. Because, you know, thugs are tough and scary. You might want to re-think this one, though your now-dwindling success with "Iraq, the central front in the war on terror" suggests that even this ludicrous extreme might get you at least a week's worth of gullibility from some folks.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Terrorism <> Iraq
The single biggest anti-terrorist success since 9/11 happened over the past few days, as the British, U.S., and Pakistani governments rolled up an apparently widespread conspiracy.
Latest Headline: "19 Suspects Are Identified in Britain"
How was this success achieved? Police work and international cooperation.
Iraq is the single biggest disaster since 9/11.
Latest Headline: "Blast Kills 35 Iraqis at Shiite Shrine in Najaf"
How was this failure achieved? Traditional military force and unilateralism.
The future is all about networks and fourth-generation warfare. When we recognize this, we win. When we don't we fail.
Why is Israel so determined to fail in Lebanon?
Latest Headline: "Israel Expands Offensive in Lebanon"
The Iraq model is a failure. The entire right-wing war machine that promoted it is now focused on justifying a lost cause.
Meanwhile, fighting terrorism works. And there are many important, obvious, sensible, anti-terrorist policies to be pursued, revolving around police work, international cooperation, and creating networks of peace and stability.
Let's get to work.
Latest Headline: "19 Suspects Are Identified in Britain"
How was this success achieved? Police work and international cooperation.
Iraq is the single biggest disaster since 9/11.
Latest Headline: "Blast Kills 35 Iraqis at Shiite Shrine in Najaf"
How was this failure achieved? Traditional military force and unilateralism.
The future is all about networks and fourth-generation warfare. When we recognize this, we win. When we don't we fail.
Why is Israel so determined to fail in Lebanon?
Latest Headline: "Israel Expands Offensive in Lebanon"
The Iraq model is a failure. The entire right-wing war machine that promoted it is now focused on justifying a lost cause.
Meanwhile, fighting terrorism works. And there are many important, obvious, sensible, anti-terrorist policies to be pursued, revolving around police work, international cooperation, and creating networks of peace and stability.
Let's get to work.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Kevin Burton: The Numbers Don't Lie
Kevin has an awesome post on blogosphere growth up today. I encourage you to go read it -- it's a great example of how hype can be deflated by applying a little math to the numbers at hand. All credit to Dave Sifry for what he's built at Technorati, but I strongly suspect he got trapped in this "doubling every six months" thing about two years ago, and now he can't get out of it without the entire punditocracy falling on his head.
There were some other guys who got caught in that kind of hype cycle, too, but they were running a public company. The guys at WorldCom -- several of whom are now in jail for their lies -- were possibly more responsible than anyone else for the inflation of Bubble 1.0 with their made-up claim of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days."
Web 2.0 is all about disruption of the existing media and creation of the new. It doesn't require magical thinking or puffery. The revolution really is here.
There were some other guys who got caught in that kind of hype cycle, too, but they were running a public company. The guys at WorldCom -- several of whom are now in jail for their lies -- were possibly more responsible than anyone else for the inflation of Bubble 1.0 with their made-up claim of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days."
"It was an essential ingredient of dotcom business plans and conference slide-shows: Internet traffic, went the industry's favorite statistic, doubles every 100 days. The claim assumed unimpeachable status when it appeared in a report published by America's Department of Commerce in April 1998. Unfortunately for the telecoms firms that rushed to build networks to carry the reported surge in traffic, it wasn't true. So where did the claim come from?..."folks from WorldCom”, typically Bernie Ebbers, its recently departed chief executive, or John Sidgmore, his replacement."
Web 2.0 is all about disruption of the existing media and creation of the new. It doesn't require magical thinking or puffery. The revolution really is here.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Zoli: Informed Comedy. Readable, Too!
Zoli Erdos posted a hilarious and informative follow-up to my earlier post about Microsoft and Nortel's press release. Zoli, I had never heard of the Gunning-Fog Readability Test, but now I am a better man. Thanks!
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Microsoft: Crimes Against the English Language
It's not just humanities PhDs who write incomprehensible tripe...
Nortel and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Transformation of Business Communications: Shared vision for unified communications to drive new growth opportunities for both companies.
The title of that press release has 25 words and 171 characters, for an average word length (aka bullsh*t index) of 6.84. The first paragraph, complete with obligatory soulless handshake photo:
scores a slightly-better-but-still-horrific 6.07.
Contrast that to the gold standard for communicating meaning without baloney, Winston Churchill. The famous final paragraph of his 1940 "We shall fight on the beaches" speech scores a 4.3. Recalling that the word 'the' scores a 3, that's astonishing.
Microsoft, you still have a lot of work to do. Nortel, I'm surprised to discover you're still in business.
Back to the revolution...
Nortel and Microsoft Form Strategic Alliance to Accelerate Transformation of Business Communications: Shared vision for unified communications to drive new growth opportunities for both companies.
The title of that press release has 25 words and 171 characters, for an average word length (aka bullsh*t index) of 6.84. The first paragraph, complete with obligatory soulless handshake photo:
scores a slightly-better-but-still-horrific 6.07.
Contrast that to the gold standard for communicating meaning without baloney, Winston Churchill. The famous final paragraph of his 1940 "We shall fight on the beaches" speech scores a 4.3. Recalling that the word 'the' scores a 3, that's astonishing.
Microsoft, you still have a lot of work to do. Nortel, I'm surprised to discover you're still in business.
Back to the revolution...
Monday, July 10, 2006
Zvents powers San Jose Mercury News
Today the first enterprise customer for my startup, Zvents, goes live. At Zvents, we've always had the vision of powering the complete local events ecosytem, from individual venues all the way through to major local media. This launch is a major step toward realizing that goal.
One of the constant worries of the startup experience is what I call "360 degree vision" -- the possibility that at any given time, you could be working on *anything*; and the related concern that whatever you're focused on at the moment might be 180 degrees opposed from what you should actually be working on.
It's a considerable effort to create the organization, the relationships, and the codebase to make an event like this partnership with the Mercury News possible, and I'm incredibly proud of how our team has not only made this huge deal happen, but managed to keep several other balls in the air as well. Zvents is really on a roll.
Check out the Zvents blog announcement for more details.
One of the constant worries of the startup experience is what I call "360 degree vision" -- the possibility that at any given time, you could be working on *anything*; and the related concern that whatever you're focused on at the moment might be 180 degrees opposed from what you should actually be working on.
It's a considerable effort to create the organization, the relationships, and the codebase to make an event like this partnership with the Mercury News possible, and I'm incredibly proud of how our team has not only made this huge deal happen, but managed to keep several other balls in the air as well. Zvents is really on a roll.
Check out the Zvents blog announcement for more details.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
The Sociology of the Sociology of Science
Before I dove into the startup life in '96, I was a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the history of science program. I overlapped there for a year or two with a smart guy named Alex Pang, who now works at the Institute for the Future and writes a blog called Relevant History.
As opposed to his regular interesting posts, Alex recently made a [thankfully rare] comment on academic sociology of science, which caused him to quote this passage:
Ye Gods. That's just painful to read. I don't know who wrote that, but they're never, ever going to be able to communicate with normal human beings unless they start speaking English. I thought it would be interesting to do a quantitative comparison between that ...stuff... and actual prose. Alex is a fully trained SoS practitioner who's broken free from his chains to rejoin the human race, so I compared the academic passage to one of his recent posts that I consider a favorite:
I don't have to tell you which is better by any rational measure. But here's a numeric measure:
* Passage 1: 509 characters, 77 words, average word length 6.6 letters.
* Passage 2: 1625 characters, 337 words, average word length 4.8 letters.
Winner: Alex.
Social science grad school: Add 37% to your word length and remove 99% from your prospective audience. And it only takes away four, er, six years of your life.
As opposed to his regular interesting posts, Alex recently made a [thankfully rare] comment on academic sociology of science, which caused him to quote this passage:
[C]onstructivist sociology of science offers case-based analysis celebrating contingency and locality, favors archival and ethnographic methods, emphasizes agency over structure, and often focuses on issues related to epistemology and knowledge. Neo-institutionalism, on the other hand, searches for patterns over time and space, is more enthusiastic about using statistical and quantitative methods, emphasizes how structure can constrain actors, and returns in part to a sociology of scientists and organizations that was more characteristic of the pre-constructivist, Mertonian era.
Ye Gods. That's just painful to read. I don't know who wrote that, but they're never, ever going to be able to communicate with normal human beings unless they start speaking English. I thought it would be interesting to do a quantitative comparison between that ...stuff... and actual prose. Alex is a fully trained SoS practitioner who's broken free from his chains to rejoin the human race, so I compared the academic passage to one of his recent posts that I consider a favorite:
As an historian interested in Silicon Valley, I'm fascinated by Castilleja. More than any other place, it's given me a sense of just how tightly-knit the area's elites are: for all its global reach and influence, the Valley is still a bunch of small towns, knit together by schools, churches, volunteer organizations, and all the things that turn groups of people into communities. I come to events here, and the parents include people who were recently on the cover of Business Week or Wired. The real power scene isn't Stanford or Sand Hill Road; it's the line of parents waiting to pick up their kids from Menlo or St. Joseph's or Casti.
The students are in their dress whites this morning. Since they're normally in dress blue, it actually isn't that much of a step up in sartorial splendor, but it's a nice gesture. It's hard to raise a bar that's already high. Friedman is pretty high-profile, but the school has a constant parade of Macarthur genius prize-winners, Nobel laureates, people who used to have Secret Service details, and other generally fascinating people who come and speak to the students. (It's hard to raise the bar....) If, as I've sometimes heard, middle school here is like high school in most other schools, the speaker series rivals that of many colleges.
Introduction.... actually being done by one of the students. That's cool. She started an NGO that does relief work in Africa. Okay, that beats my vice presidency of my high school chess club (two years in a row). Would my high school record even get me into community college today?
Friedman's up now. Some anecdotes... why the world is flat... some more anecdotes... references to Lexus and the Olive Tree... I've posted the rest of the talk on Future Now.
Q&A is restricted to students. Love it: I recognize half a dozen CEOs and VCs, people who normally are the center of attention, and they're sitting in the back, listening. And not grumbling. Here, they're just parents.
I don't have to tell you which is better by any rational measure. But here's a numeric measure:
* Passage 1: 509 characters, 77 words, average word length 6.6 letters.
* Passage 2: 1625 characters, 337 words, average word length 4.8 letters.
Winner: Alex.
Social science grad school: Add 37% to your word length and remove 99% from your prospective audience. And it only takes away four, er, six years of your life.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Zlango: Didn't we solve this problem 3000 years ago?
Techcrunch is reporting on the launch of Zlango, an SMS icon service from Israel. According to Mike:
Didn't the Phoenicians solve this problem 3000 years ago by inventing the incredibly flexible and efficient symbolic alphabet? Because it sure looks like hieroglyphics to me.
Zlango's millenium-busting innovation:
State of the Art:
"Zlango...has created a very interesting new language...that could change the SMS landscape. The language is based on icons, or pictures. Each icon has a specific meaning - a person pointing to himself for 'me' or a heart for 'love'. There are over 200 icons included in the Zlango language today."
Didn't the Phoenicians solve this problem 3000 years ago by inventing the incredibly flexible and efficient symbolic alphabet? Because it sure looks like hieroglyphics to me.
Zlango's millenium-busting innovation:
State of the Art:
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Zvents 2.0 is launching today
By the time you read this, Zvents 2.0 should be up and running.
Right now, hitting our site gives you this message, a portent of good things to come:
What's new and improved about this version of Zvents?
* Improved search relevance -- when you've got thousands of events in a metro area, relevance becomes a key to happy users. Our results are materially better than before, and we're committed to continuous improvement for relevance.
* Category navigation - refine or browse to events by category, reducing time and effort to find what you're looking for.
* Embeddable calendars are now CSSable version 2, vastly improved - a live example of a 1.5 version is Visit Marin.
* Much faster, lighter code -- less than 1/2 the size -- means faster response times.
* Improved navigation and look and feel
You'll also notice that we've got less features, not more -- we're running against the "features are king" silliness of Web 2.0 here, but we think that great design means focusing on what matters most.
Coming in the next 30 days - major customer announcements, plus bonus fun stuff!
Right now, hitting our site gives you this message, a portent of good things to come:
What's new and improved about this version of Zvents?
* Improved search relevance -- when you've got thousands of events in a metro area, relevance becomes a key to happy users. Our results are materially better than before, and we're committed to continuous improvement for relevance.
* Category navigation - refine or browse to events by category, reducing time and effort to find what you're looking for.
* Embeddable calendars are now CSSable version 2, vastly improved - a live example of a 1.5 version is Visit Marin.
* Much faster, lighter code -- less than 1/2 the size -- means faster response times.
* Improved navigation and look and feel
You'll also notice that we've got less features, not more -- we're running against the "features are king" silliness of Web 2.0 here, but we think that great design means focusing on what matters most.
Coming in the next 30 days - major customer announcements, plus bonus fun stuff!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)