Interesting Reading 10/21
Start-Ups Test Dot-Com Business Models
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/21/technology/start-ups/21twitter.html?hp
In the aftermath of the dot-com bust, many chastened venture capitalists
pledged never again to finance an idea scribbled on a cocktail napkin with
no viable business model. Too many poorly conceived companies like
Pets.com and Webvan had flamed out. The new breed of Internet start-ups
needed to have a clear path to profitability.
The discipline did not last. Successes like YouTube, the online video site
sold to Google for $1.65 billion in 2006, convinced some venture investors
that building a Web site with a large number of users could still be more
valuable than making money from paying customers.
Now, as the global economy enters a severe downturn, the relative merits
of these two philosophies will be tested again.
The two poles of the debate are apparent in the world of microblogging,
where people use the Web or their cellphones to blast short updates on
their activities to a group of virtual followers.
Twitter, a start-up company in San Francisco that has become a household
name, is the leading microblogging outfit. At least three million people
have tried its free service, according to TwitDir, a directory service.
But Twitter has absolutely no revenue not even ads.
Yammer, a new and much smaller copycat aimed at corporate customers, has a
mere 60,000 users. Unlike Twitter, its founders set out from the beginning
to charge for its service. Just six weeks after its public debut, Yammer
is already bringing in a modest amount of cash.
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Get Rid of the Performance Review!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122426318874844933.html
You can call me "dense," you can call me "iconoclastic," but I see nothing
constructive about an annual pay and performance review. It's a mainstream
practice that has baffled me for years.
To my way of thinking, a one-side-accountable, boss-administered review is
little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It's a negative to corporate
performance, an obstacle to straight-talk relationships, and a prime cause
of low morale at work. Even the mere knowledge that such an event will
take place damages daily communications and teamwork.
The alleged primary purpose of performance reviews is to enlighten
subordinates about what they should be doing better or differently. But I
see the primary purpose quite differently. I see it as intimidation aimed
at preserving the boss's authority and power advantage. Such intimidation
is unnecessary, though: The boss has the power with or without the
performance review.
And yes, I have an alternative in mind that will get people and
corporations a great deal more of what they actually need.
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From Pepys to Your Peeps, Finding Your Voice as a Blogger
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=152471
"I'll step out onto the limb and declare my belief that blog writing is
more of a mode than a genre. By that I mean that its use of language is
intended to bring about a broad purpose, which includes the calling
together of a community of interest, the establishment of codes or
no-codes of good and bad behavior, the celebration of the self-governing
wisdom of the crowd, and the lowering of thresholds of participation."
"...Another famous proto-blogger is Samuel Pepys, the 17th century diarist
who could not keep his peeps to himself. Featured as a character in the
movie "Stage Beauty," Pepys is portrayed as an omni-present figure in the
daily life of London's courts, theaters, and public houses. Sometimes a
fly on the wall, sometimes the elephant in the room, Pepys records the
coming and goings of princes and paupers with a distinctive style and an
unquenchable curiosity.
In his diary entry of Sept. 2, 1666, he is awakened by news of a great
fire in the city:
"So down [I went], with my heart full of trouble, to the Lieutenant of the
Tower, who tells me that it began this morning in the King's baker's house
in Pudding Lane, and that it hath burned St. Magnus's Church and most part
of Fish Street already. So I rode down to the waterside, ... and there saw
a lamentable fire ... Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and
flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor
people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them,
and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the
waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I
perceive, were loth [sic] to leave their houses, but hovered about the
windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell
down ..."
I'm no expert, but this work feels like live blogging to me, what James
Fenton (thanks, Josh Benton!) refers to as "reporting in its natural
state," a form of eyewitness testimony that creates its own narrative
energy and style."
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AppLoop Transforms Blogs Into Native iPhone Applications
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/20/apploop-transforms-blogs-into-native-iphone-applications/
Two-man startup AppLoop has added to its suite of self-service tools for
iPhone developers by launching App Generator , which automatically turns
any blog with an RSS feed into a native iPhone app modeled after that of
the The New York Times .
To create an app, all you have to do is answer a series of questions for
the App Generator's setup wizard. These include your blog's address, name,
icon and logo, as well as how much you'd like to charge for your
application (if anything) and what color scheme you'd like to use. Once
you finish the form (and verify that you are indeed the owner of the
domain in question), AppLoop will submit your application to Apple for
approval and, once approved, you can start promoting it to your readers.
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