Is Silicon Valley Really Coming to an End?
By now you probably know that David Sacks, co-founder of PayPal and founder of both Geni & Yammer made some observations on Facebook that Silicon Valley “as we know it” was coming to an end. He says “In order to create a successful new company, you have to find an idea that (1) has escaped […]
Facebook, Part Deux
Nearly two years ago, I asked the question, “Did Peter Thiel Make The Single Best Investment In History?” Today, now that Thiel has sold most of his remaining stake in Facebook, it’s a good time to re-examine the math surrounding his investment. Two years ago, I wrote: In 2005, Peter Thiel paid $500,000 for a […]
The Shift has hit the Fan – Microsoft, Facebook Slides, Google Rises
In what seems to be from the lower paleothic period but in fact was about a year and a half ago, I wrote a post about the Mean Girls phenomenon and Shakespeare. This in turn was not actually about mean girls or Henry IV, but about the interesting relationship of…
GigaOM Pro report on Hadoop and cluster management
My latest piece of work for GigaOM Pro just went live. Scaling Hadoop clusters: the role of cluster management is available to GigaOM Pro subscribers, and was underwritten by StackIQ. Thanks to everyone who took the time to speak with me during the preparation of this report. As the blurb describes, From Facebook to Johns […]
Primadesk Brings One Interface to Cloud Content
Those who call ourselves early adopters have a tendency to sign up to services on a regular basis. If I think about where my own content sits – I have images in Picasa, Flickr and Facebook. Documents in Google Drive, DropBox, Box and Syncplicity, contacts in at least a couple
The Most Obvious Mobile Ad Unit and What the New York Times Got Wrong
The New York Times recently ran an article titled, “Tech Companies Leave Phone Calls Behind.” I love the NY Times and am a paying subscriber. But this article missed the real trend. The premise of the article is that in an increasingly online world ruled by techies who don’t want to talk on the phone, […]
NASDAQ CEO blames CIO over Facebook IPO
NASDAQ CEO, Robert Greifeld, blames staffers and IT for the Facebook IPO debacle. Where was his own accountability?
Arbitrary censorship and unevenly applied rules at Facebook and Smugmug
When Facebook logged me out everywhere, including social networks like Klout, Kred, Empire Avenue, and Facebook feeds into other systems, the amount of hysteria caused by automated connections, and the Facebook SSO sign on multiple sites failed
Facebook Censorship really happens
Really now, how does this violate community standards? Just asking.
The Farther You Go, The Tougher It Gets
Something many entrepreneurs don’t realize is that the farther you go with your startup, the tougher it gets.When you start with an idea, it’s easy to be excited. Since it only exists in your head, it morphs every day, possibly even with every convers…
Is There A Social Media Bubble?
Of course there’s a social media bubble. All over the map, everyone ranging from seed-stage investors to the public markets are paying inflated prices for social media assets. But while the current frenzy is a bubble, it doesn’t even come close to the magnitude and madness of the Dot-Com bubble. Back in those days, “eyeballs” […]
Don’t Try to “Pull an Instagram.” Here’s Why …
Instagram. It’s understandably on everybody’s mind these days. Clichés abound about, “You know what would be cool? …” I’ll write soon on my views of why I believe Instagram took off as a social network and what I think comes next. Instagram happens to be one of the few social networks I regularly use along […]
Why API’s suck, and what they lack
The Social Media Movement is slowly moving towards monetisation. Social Business, yes even Social Enterprise, is neigh. Infographics bite the dust in an ever-increasing frenzy to prove that social is here to stay, to rule, to conquer the world! And as yet another evidence of that, API’s are brought forward – by the hundreds, no […]
Facebook, Employers, and your username and password as a federated identity
This has been a very interesting week for employers and Facebook. I have been writing about this story over on Toolbox, here and here if you are interested in reading, but on this site I want to go a little deeper into the idea of asking prospective employees for a username and password to any […]
