Posts filed under “Business”
Is anybody out there? (Why replies matter)
Alex Krupp has a great post on his blog about the role that responses play in encouraging repeat participation from members in online communities. I recently saw Bob Kraut present a paper on the mediating variables for Usenet participation. The study looked at how getting a reply affected the chance that a poster would return [...]
Happy vs. Willing
A basic truth of startups is that there are many important tasks that aren’t always fun to do. Another basic truth is that no matter what role you play in the organization, you’ll find yourself doing a lot of these. One great example is partner category mapping. One of the really fun parts of aggregating [...]
Facebook in Charge (via Valleywag & VentureBeat)
If there was any doubt remaining in your mind about who’s calling the shots, here’s an excerpt from a post at VentureBeat that I found via Valleywag. Facebook completely removed the Audio music-sharing application from its platform last night, saying it violated music copyrights. Audio was developed by a third party using Facebook‚Äôs platform for [...]
Impressions from Seattle Facebook Developer Garage
I just got back from the Facebook Developer Garage in Seattle. These are local events started by a local sponsor for people interested in Facebook apps. There were a handful of people from Facebook including the Senior Platform Manager who spoke. Overall, a really interesting event. Some of my impressions: Facebook is an incredible phenomenon [...]
The Opportunity in Local
Tom Evslin has a great blog and I just came across his post about the opportunity in the local internet. While I’ve written before about the challenges in building a local business that scales, Tom makes some great points about why the potential in local online is so great. grown ups full hd Tipping points [...]
Great Post on Social Bargain Hunting (via Probargainhunter)
I just came across this great post on ProBargainHunter about Modoshi and Dealspl.us. Yan talks about the time needed for community building and the commission vs. the flat fee approach to getting users to submit and scrub deals on the site. There are some great ideas in this post that are especially topical given that [...]
Setting Information Free
Fred Wilson gave a talk entitled “Does Information want to be Free?” in which he talks about the value shift from information to attention. He makes some great points and I would urge anyone in and around the content business to take a look at his presentation which is available on the web. Creating ways [...]
Penny Wise Pound Foolish – Are you focused on the right things?
There’s an interesting article in the WSJ today (As Costs Rise, Whirlpool Makes a Dent in Dings By Ilan Brat) about the cost of damaged inventory vs. the cost of packaging. Basically, appliance manufacturers have been finding ways to trim the cost cardboard and foam used in packaging their products. Sort of makes sense – [...]
On failure and success
I was told about two great posts today. The first is by Peter Rip at Crosslink Capital about “failing fast and failing often.” You have to get into the market, see what works and adapt. The classic venture model has been to fund to milestones 12-18 months out. In consumer web services, there are only [...]
The truth about Free APIs (via Nat Torkington, O'Reilly Radar)
Nat Torkington has a great post about free APIs. Like, the elusive free lunch, there’s no such thing as a free API. Given Google’s decision to deprecate the Search API and the Alexa/Statsaholic situation, Nat’s post is timely and spot-on. For these reasons, there’s no such thing as a free API if you’re looking to [...]