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Facebook Connect is awesome. Connect let’s you take your friends with you to any site. You go to PerezHilton.com, suddenly you see that the VP at your company reads it too! And you didn’t have to do anything! The “you didn’t have to do anything” part is quite important.
I think the Yelp.com scenario is a better one. You’re looking for a restaurant for your dinner date and you see that your friend Chris Fargo eats there with his rich lawyer friends. And that he takes Dena there for romantic dinners. Perfect! You no longer have to rely on strangers. Plus you are sharing an experience with your real friends. Suddenly the internet is personal and not lonely and creepy!
Facebook Connect will dwarf Facebook Platform. Facebook Platform is for apps that live inside Facebook.com. Connect is for the web. The web dwarfs Facebook.com and so will Connect.
As my friend Paul McKellar says, the web always wins.
The major concern entrepreneurs have with Facebook Platform is that Facebook owns the user. And they really do own the user. With Facebook Connect, you own the user and augment your site with Facebook goodness.
If only I owned Reddit.com or, say, the New York Times.
I’m super excited about this!
Oh, and the truly brilliant entrepreneur will figure out how Facebook Connect is disruptive even if you don’t own the New York Times yet. Have any good ideas? Let’s collaborate!
Read more on Facebook’s official site: http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php
If I was Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, I would:
1. Own the job market. Class it up just a little bit, but own a big chunk of it. Make several times as much money as Facebook and smile. Especially at Social Networking conferences.
You might say you’re already doing this, but I don’t think you’re even trying. Do a CNBC/LinkedIn Poll and ask users if they know they can search for open jobs on LinkedIn. 50% will tell you they didn’t know.
2. Get people to log in more frequently. I think LinkedIn is great but it’s something you go to once a month to accept/find connections.
Perhaps the thinking was that Answers would do this. It’s a nice try. But people with interesting questions are rare. And I don’t want to help people that much.
I think the best way to do this is digg-like news integration. Show me news for the vertical I work in. Replace news.ycombinator.com for me.
I personally love Tech/Business news and would love to see what my professional contacts are reading. And I’d love to have them comment on stuff I post up there.
And go ahead and leverage all those fun business development deals you’re making with CNBC, the NYTimes, and WSJ…send traffic to the best content on those sites.
3. Improve your navigation. It just sucks. You look more like a NYC based company than an SF one. Hire a UX designer from Facebook who played a pivotal role in the Profile Redesign. They get how to optimize for content creation/how to seduce users into expressing themselves.
Today, I log into the home page and, above the fold, see nothing actionable.
(Needless to say, I do not mean to imply I’m a tenth the man Reid Hoffman is…I just like catchy titles.)
One of the biggest concerns/questions when considering a software venture (or really any venture) is how will you get customers?
In all the hype about Facebook, Twitter, and Web 2.0, I forgot about one of my favorite methods of distribution for consumer software: OEM bundling.
I love the idea of coming up with a subscription service, getting Dell to bundle it, giving users a 30 day trial edition, and then using either love or fear to get them to pay you.
Interestingly, as the price of computers comes down, the price of Windows isn’t. And the cost of Windows is becoming a larger and larger percentage of the price of a computer. (Forget Microsoft Office which costs more than 3 computers).
OEMs supposedly pay twenty-some dollars for a copy of Windows. They make some of that back with money they get from Google, Norton, and AOL. I once thought a day might come where Dell bundles enough trial editions in that Windows is “free”. I thought this might be an effective, market-driven way to incent OEMs to never ship Linux computers.
Think about it! You get a PC and are already signed up for eBay, Match.com, have $5 in PayPal, have $5 on Full Tilt Poker, and have 1 message from a secret crush!
It’s going to be interesting to see when and how the desktop OS is simply a thin client….it’s already increasingly so for me personally…
Let’s say you have a billion dollars. And you’re charged with taking a 3rd world country with a stagnant economy, how do you systematically bring that economy to life? How far does that $1B go? Where does it go furthest? Are your changes sustainable?
Craigslist thinks it’s great. Craig Newmark loves to strut around and talk about how he’s not making money. How they only charge users where they feel it’s “appropriate”. And how they have a soul.
I tend to disagree. I think Craigslist is not a good steward of their users. I don’t think what their doing is noble or altruistic.
They’ve built a service that is just good enough. They’ve got a relatively captive audience. And instead of making money so they can funnel that money into innovation and making their service better (like, say, Google does), they’re happy keeping the product just good enough. Who pays the price? USERS. In wasted time and missed casual encounters. Oye!
Hire an ex-Googler (perhaps Mike Sego!) and make your search work.
All this said, Craigslist is pretty amazing. I’d die a happy man if I had the impact CL has and will on the world. Not to mention all the funny stories of what people have used CL for…
It’s absurd that the New York Times print and online editions look identical on the front page.
I once heard Greg McAdoo (who is awesome) say that the first thing people do when new technologies emerge is: figure out how to do the old things with the new technology. That’s precisely what’s happening here. The NY Times and most other newspapers aren’t leveraging the new technology like they should.
Don’t even get me started with CNN.com…or any Hearst magazine website.
Why aren’t they stealing the best from TV? From Digg? From Facebook? Where’s the convergence between user generated content and old school journalism? Why isn’t the front page personalized to show stories I’ll like? Why can’t I comment on a single thing I read? AHHHHHHH!
I don’t understand why the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate rears it’s ugly head in all Presidential elections. As a matter of law, isn’t this a resolved issue? (That’s a real question not a rhetorical one).
I don’t think people think of it as a proxy on other issues (like stem cell research AKA science).
What up, yo?
I do wish Obama had picked Hillary as VP. I wish he’d believed enough in the “this election isn’t about me, it’s about you” rhetoric to look beyond his sense of pride, his ego, and his personal feelings to allow the movement he’s started to be all that it can.*
*But perhaps Obama didn’t like Hillary on the merits…if so, then I have no strong opinion on the matter.
My brain is exploding with ideas, information, and worry. I’m so utterly confused and overwhelmed that I can barely put my pants on in the morning.
Seriously. That’s not hyperbole. If you run into me and I’ve forgotten my pants, be compassionate.
In moments like these, when my brain drowns in fluid, I make lists.
Here’s my list of things to do this year:
1. Travel to and learn about China. China’s going to change a lot in 20 years, I’d love to boast 20 years ago how I saw it before all this happened.
2. Figure out how to get into HBS. Cause Business School is where all the cool kids hang out.
3. Do a startup. Startups are hard work but what else is there in life?
4. Get a step closer to finding my platform. Tiger Woods found golf. MJ basketball. Steve Carell The Office. Obama oratory.
5. Do something I find personally meaningful and memorable. Ideally something that lasts for a while. Shit, this is pretty ambiguous. And it’s already September.
