Reasoning and decision making biases are not new – they have been extensively studied and reported.  Committing the same biases are not new either – for academics and new media specialists alike. It should come as no surprise to see the same mistakes committed by very smart  thought leaders like Mr. Anderson and Mr. Om Malik when they write about how Freemium  would help startups and other businesses alike.  I have written previously about biases committed by Anderson in his book Free, now let me discuss Mr. Om Malik’s case for freemium.

To be clear, Mr. Malik’s post is titled  How Freemium Can Work for Your Startup , in which he discusses three startups, EverNote, RememberTheMilk and DropBox and on their ability to generate revenue with a freemium model. Based on these an on a NYTimes article on EverNote Mr. Malik offers 10 commandments of a successful freemium app. Let us look at the biases and flaws in the overall case for freemium and flaws in one  specific “commandment”. His rest of the commandments are actually quite good and applies to any business model a startup chooses.

1. Survivorship Bias: – Mr. Malik looks only at those that “succeeded” (by his definition I understand, generating some revenue, not necessarily profit). What about all other startups that failed despite? Did he closely look at all those that failed to say that these did not have the same characteristics as the three he declares to be successful? This is not new, we have seen this flaw before in the business best seller Good to Great by Jim Collins (who later followed through with Why the Mighty Fall).
2. Availability Bias: Mr. Malik’s post came after his query to his readers for services that they find indispensable.  So we can hypothesize that his argument is based on information that is available to him and vivid in his memory.
3. Ignoring Other Options: EverNote may be making $79,000 per month from a fraction of the free users who upgrade to paid service,  but could they have generated equal or more revenue  through other marketing options available to them including offering only paid versions? I do not have data to say either way, neither does Mr. Malik offer any to support that Freemium was the best of the available options to EverNote. After evaluating all options if freemium still offers the best chance to succeed, then by all means do it but not without exploring other options.
4. Can the business wait? In a follow up post, Mr. Malik writes,
   

   I used Evernote as an example of a freemium application that’s successfully converting its free users to paid ones. Indeed, the more people use an application like Evernote, the more likely they’ll be to pay for a premium version of it.

   Mr. Malik recomends patience as a virtue, waiting for customers to fall in love and find the service indispensable not to mention switching a hassle. Customers, enamored by the free service will try it and start using it and this may take a long time before they upgrade to the paid version. Can businesses know or model this conversation rate? Without this, it is incorrect to assume that this conversion will happen and will do so before your startup runs out of cash. Customers can stay on free version longer than your startup can stay solvent (hat tip to Keynes).

5. Free is Free marketing? One of the 10 commandments is
   

   Free is free marketing. Instead of advertising, the service should sell itself.

   How true is this statement? Where is the data? Does free sell better than marketing/advertising? I have some data,  a paper published in Marketing Science Aug 2009 studied the impact of marketing actions like exhibits, print ads, PR. Of these marketing actions, all but PR and Exhibits yielded better long run sales than free as the marketing action.  Another problem is when there are many similar free services available to the customers – what will be your share of mind and wallet?

To repeat, if after evaluating all options  freemium still offers the best chance to succeed and maximize your profit, then by all means do it but this is not a generic solution as it is touted to be. Do not accept, without challenging, statements like “freemium works” or “it worked for 3 and hence it will for every startup”.

“For example is not proof”

We just read an article by Om Malik about a growing segment of iPhone App users that Flurry terms, “App Addicts.”

According to Flurry, an App Addict is someone who uses an app three or more times per day or more than 100 times per month. We don’t support addiction, but given how some people are using Mobile Receipt, they may need to talk to someone.

Image from Flurry Analytics

Our suggestion? Embrace your use.   Or better yet, icnrease your efficiency with the app, which would free up time to try another one. May we suggest Mobile Phax?

Earlier this year Wired’s Editor in Chief, Chris Anderson, wrote an article and then published the book called Free.  (You may recall that I mentioned last weekend that Chris was presenting the idea at ycombinator’s Start Up School).

Free is all about a business model called Freemium.

The idea that giving away free product is not only good marketing it is a great way to build an online business.

The general idea is to give all or part of your product or service away for free, with or without the support of advertising revenues, and then offer these new customers the chance to step up to a newer, improved model (at a price) later on down the road.

In marketing parlance you are in the business of  creating a network of product champions - and where you have champions then loyal customers will follow.

The idea of using a free sample is not new to advertising and promotional professionals. It has long been recognised that free offers is one of the most effective ways of attracting a market. The only better way is through word or mouth – but Advertisers don’t really like to talk about that one too much for obvious reasons.

Nor, as Fred Wilson has pointed out, is Freemium a new idea in software circles. Many profitable software houses have been built over the past 2 decades using the shareware model.

Om Malik at Gigaom and Andrew Chen have both provided some invaluable advice on how Freemium can be a great way to bootstrap a start-up web business.

You should also take a look at Freshbooks. The Canadian based Freshbooks is one of the great Freemium startups of recent times. Here in his recent post milestones to cross before raising venture capital  Mike McDerment, the CEO and Co-Founder of Freshbooks, provides some advice and insight for budding startups looking to bootstrap their idea into a business.

Freemium, of course, represents something of a paradox for tradition Venture Capital thinking. The pyramid below illustrates how difficult it is to get the market to pay for a new innovation based on the Big Problems Small Solutions scenario we discussed in the much earlier post: Don’t think Strategy: Think like a VC!.

The VC Investment Pyramid

The general rule of thumb in VC circles is it is always easy to get customers to pay for information about the problem (think: Magazines then Conferences) than it is to get customers to pay for the solution (think: Industry Reports, Management Consultants or Specialist Training and then Product).

The Freemium paradox says quite simply you don’t need to pay for any of these steps. It’s all available for free.

As Chris Anderson says…

The trend lines that determine the cost of doing business online all point the same way: to zero.

So life on the web is just a free lunch.

The question is: Is this model sustainable over long term?

Think of a future today where you launch your brand new web 2.0 site or iPhone App for free thinking that in 6 – 12 months time you’ll be able to launch a better subscription version to your newly acquired market of Free Champions.

However, when the time comes to launch the new improved version you discover that 10 maybe even 100 other bootstrap startups have now launched their new Freeware offering and it is has more features and benefits than your paid offering.

What is going to happen to your Free Champions? Do they stick around or do they move on? Do they go in search of the next free lunch or do they start paying you for the free lunch you have already provided? What do you think?

The reality is Freemium is a game of diminishing returns as each new entrant has to offer the industry benchmark just to gain traction with the Influences and Free Champions.

Today software developers are discovering that, if the database is the new media, then applications are the new content.

Applications are fast becoming fashion items, disposable and of limited lifespan. This means developing software apps today is no longer about changing the way people do business but about tapping into how people see and project themselves.

This means, although they don’t know it yet, software companies and their developers are now facing the same crisis that is afflicting newspapers and their journalists.

If this really is the case then it is only the customers’ data that offers us a true measure of the value of the Freemium business model. – And the value of that data all depends on how much it reflects where the customer has been, how much it reflects where the customer is going and how much the customer need access to it tomorrow.

So if your thinking about investing your time, energy and money into a  Freemium business think Data First because, after all is said and done, functionality is just the hook to get the customer in.

Further Reading:

• Why putting ads on the menu won’t pay for lunch
• This is how you make money out of a free lunch!

That’s enough Spotify news for now. Back to reviews, car rentals and gaming! Let’s take a look at some interesting iPhone info here.

A few days ago, the idea of Firefox coming to the iPhone saw a glimpse of hope from Mozilla and mobile broadband fans everywhere, as Om Malik explains here:

Earlier today when I interviewed Mozilla CEO John Lilly onstage at the Play conference, an annual confab organized by the students of the Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley, he hinted that the company was going to launch a brand new application for the iPhone, though he declined to reveal any details. “Mozilla will release an app to the iPhone App Store in the next few weeks,” Lilly said. “It’ll surprise people.”

Could we finally be seeing a replacement for Safari? Or is Om Malik correct in thinking it could be Weave:

Later, I sat around gabbing with Lilly and Jay Sullivan, Mozilla’s VP of Mobile, talking about Weave and the Awesome Bar, which is a way to get access to all your browsing history and bookmarks by just typing them in the URL bar on your browser. And while we were talking about Weave, I asked them if it was going to be part of this new, mysterious iPhone app. Lilly and Sullivan smiled and remained silent. Interestingly, they didn’t correct me.

Sounds interesting, but would Weave sync with Safari? I have no idea. It would be awesome to be able to sync the iPhone browser to Firefox though. We’ll have to sit tight for now.

I think Om Malik is very on target in his recent summation of the state of the voice industry, republished on BusinessWeek online.  With the  US wireless biggies finally conceding  weakly justified defenses to mobile VoIP apps,  it appears to be a major milestone in the 15 year slog towards the “death of distance. ”    Its nearly to the stage , where just about everyone in the industry views voice as a commodity and gear their business models towards value added applications built around free voice and  flat rate broadband plans.

Interestingly, Malik goes to the next step to briefly reference the implied  business and technology drivers for voice peering , stopping short of the drivers for multi-lateral vs. private interconnection approaches.  After helping guide XConnect for its first three years when peering was rarely discussed in public outside of 8:00 AM conference sessions on day 2 for an audience that barely outnumbered the panel;  its nice to see the theme of Free Voice and Peering written in the same keystrokes.

GigaOm’s Mobilize is live streaming right now (19,000 viewers), so if you can’t be there, tune in at http://www.livestream.com/gigaomtv.  If you can be there, drop by the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco where close to 1000 industry execs are discussing the future of the mobile web. Great networking with Accenture, Adobe, Adaptive Path, AllThingsD.com, Ars Technica, Benchmark Capital, Business Week, CBS Market Watch, Cisco, CNET, Economist, Engadget, Finanical Times, Flixster, Forbes, Foundation Capital, French Maid TV, frog design, GameFly, GDGT.com, Geek Sugar, GetJar, Gizmodo, Google, Granite Ventures, Handango, HP, InfoWorld, Intel, InterWest Partners, Khosla Ventures,LG Mobile, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mashable, Mayfield Fund, mig33, Mobile Monday, MEF, MobiTV, Moconews, MocoSpace, Motorola, Mozes, NATPE, NYT, Nielsen, Nokia, Opus Capital, Palm, PayPal, PC World, Qualcomm, Samsung, SF Chronicle, SJ Merc, Scobleizer, Sony Ericsson, SVB Capital, Sprint, Sun, TechCrunch, Thom Weisel, T-Mobile, USVP, Ubergizmo,  USA Today, Venrock, Venture Beat, Verizon, WSJ, WF, Wired, Y!, Zannel, ZDNet and others.

Om Malik opened the conference.  His research venture, GigaOM Pro, which provides subscribers research on-demand, reports that the US is on track to produce by end of 2009:  280mm wireless subscribers, $160B in service revenues, $45B of that in data revenues, 2.3T minutes of voice use and 1.7T text messages, translating to $160 per subscriber of data plan spending per year and 829 minutes per user.  A huge opportunity.

MONETIZING MOBILE APPS

Raven Zachary, Small Society
Considering Apple’s event yesterday it seemed fitting to have Raven lead with the first panel who advises companies like ZipCar and Whole Foods on their mobile strategies, and is known well to these parts as one of the pied pipers of iPhoneDevCamp – Seeing more carriers wanting to have their own app store, look at Verizon with VDC, it makes sense, they have the billing relationship with the end user.  Vodafone ramping up too.

Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic
There’s been a dramatic rise in popularity of the freemium model, free monetize with ad network although CPCs and CPMs have come way down in this economy, belive in time mobile ad marketplace will be massive.  See freemium as a walk in the park, every now and then you’ll want an ice cream, it’s nice to have the option.  At Flirtomatic, have had great success selling users greater visibility on site, they’re willing to pay if there profile will be seen by more women, experiencing 4x the CPMs from user-based ads.

Mark Jacobstein, iSkoot
There used to be enormous expenses associated with porting/QA of mobile games.  Focusing just on iPhone makes things easier, and yet for all it does so well (powerful SDK, screen real estate) there is so much that iPhone doesn’t do.  iPhone can’t multitask, apps don’t run in the background.  Few client based apps like time-wasting games.  Not going to make much selling a $2 app, money is in client/server services, free to end user like Skype (big applause from panel). MMS limitations, photos via SMS from a friend are sent with password and link – that’s a huge turnoff.  Mobile increases web engagement, those that access sites via phone are twice as engaged.  Developers now building in social context/gifting of virtual goods into game mechanics to take advantage of in-app commerce.

Dorrian Porter, Mozes
Most marketers not sure what to do with the mobile consumer, have yet to see mobile as a point of inspiration for impulse buy.  Most market with voice and SMS.  (Recently became a huge fan of SMS, now can text kids whenever he wants.) Mozes focuses on the browser-based experience.  There are SMS limitations to web-clipping

Adam Zbar, Zannel
ATT networks are slammed with data.  Will see services becoming more interoperable than islands.  Carriers for the longest time wanted to be entertainment companies and content creators, now some like Comcast are starting to see themselves more as a distribution platform – good for the developer community.

LOCATION:  CONTEXT IS MONEY
4000 LBS apps today, a small % but impressive considering 18 months ago there were only 5 LBS apps in the world.

KEYNOTE:  Innovation on Android – Introducing MotoBlur
Dr. Sanjay Jha, Co-CEO, Motorola
Number of mobile users doubled between 2008-9 from 10.8mm to 22mm devices accessing daily.  20% access web via mobile device.  Going from 1:1 SMS to 1:Many Social collaboration.  Ubiquitous availability of wireless broadband.  Rapid expansion.  Mobilizing the internet is the single biggest opportunity today.  Netbooks, eBooks, gaming devices, smartphones.  Smartphones being the backbone where mobilization will occur. Broadband definition – minimum 500kb data connectivity to mulitple users without regard of location.  What makes a smartphone – larger high-res display, anytime anywhere broadband connectivity, over the air updates (key), rich media, voice quality, coverage, multi-thread, multitasking operating system.  Android gives us a platform to mobilize the internet, enhance consumer experience, mulitple simultaneous transaction, competitive differentiation, Motorola supporting development of Android, have put meaningful resources behind the Android ecosystem, consumers overwhelmed by options.  Half of US mobile traffic is 180mm social networkers, will grow to 800mm (Gartner).   Aggregate media, music, address books, email addresses.  MotoBlur service allows your entire life to exist on a single stream, enables you to focus on being social, syncs contacts, posts, media, photos, FB, Twitter, Myspace, Gmail, Y!, corporate email customized on home screen and integrated deep into corners of device, so consumer can focus on being social not on how its sent.  Have it all one finger swipe away.  Widgets:  Social status, happenings (feeds, tweets, updates), messages, weather, Android marketplace and browser.  Create rich text email.  Easy to navigate streams, syncing push contacts into address book photos, birthdates. Integrates contact info through device, receive a call and caller’s profile info pops onscreen, get turn by turn direction to where they are, and it’s worry free – phone can be found by GPS in case its off on a cab ride without you – remote wipe – wipes device but keeps data in the cloud, set up once, good to go.  Phone as primary computer device, if it doesn’t fit in your pocket, the consumer won’t use it.  price points and memory costs are drivers to computing becoming mobile.  Regarding palm, it’s not a zero sum game, all boats float, with 300mm smartphones, its the biggest technology opportunity there is, MotoBlur will eventually evolve, this is just the starting point, the first step in a long journey.   Motorola is excited to integrate location, social graph and web info in an easily digestible way, Motorola does both sw and hw and can decide how to integrate, solve problems and deliver experience that simplifies life, health, fitness, media, build trust to share info, no rationale for 4G if its not for multimedia.

Cole Brodman, T-Mobile
Watch for Cliq with MotoBlur in time for the holidays, next chapter in Android innovation, open highly customizable platform, inviting 3P innovation to the network, first phone with social skills, always on connection, glance on the go, network can handle the traffic, T-Mobile has invested $9B in last 4y, has 200mm US customers with 3G coverage, T-Mobile customers text more than anyone in the world started with Sidekick, connected socializers 30-somethings like to stay in touch, have lead the smartphone adoption. T-Mobile will have product out in time for holidays with the best value, coverage, must have alwayson devices, Cliq in two colors white and titanium, with google browser, video capture.

(Very cool demo – if only iPhone would push birthday reminders to home screen when turned on, and autoemailed birthday wishes)

Andy Rubin, Google
Smartphone is a communications device first and voice device second, data differentiates the smartphone but still need voice to carry it around with you at all time, interface with mobile internet, as powerful as a desktop PC from 15 years ago, internet is the destination, the window to the world, now cloud computing, network connected devices, we’re all personally participating in the ecosystem, what is good for the internet is good for Google, the bigger the base the better it is for Google’s primary ad business, the modern os brings the webto people’s pockets.  As for Palm and Symbian, let the best OS win.  Regarding which came first Android or iPhone OS – os developers have long history and have worked everywhere, who knows which came first, the important thing is that they came together to develop an open system.  Moving web forward as a platform, modern browsers more capable with HTML 5.

ULTRABAND:  Fast Platform for Innovation
How will we be at 100mbps or 1gbps wireless broadband by 2012.  In 1991 Xerox ParC stated its vision for pervasive computing.  18 years later still discussing what broadband is, what bandwidth is needed to be broadband, always there, omnipresent, delivering compelling user experiences at the speed of thought, a world in which the consumer knows that they desire it and suddenly it’s there.

Phil Asmundson, Deloitte
Exciting time for mobile, phones are our remote control to the world, look out 5-10y, fundamental changes to the marketplace, will find that apps that require ultraband eat up spectrum, as we watch video, primary entertainment devices for the millennials and gen xers, mobile mobile and fixed mobile still dont play with each other, two separate worlds, need to play together, cause of spectrum issues.  (Chetan Sharma:  The term smartphone will be an oxymoron in 5 years)  There is an innovation iceberg, the more broadband you provide, the more they’ll use, sw is driving the market, advances far faster than hw, then there are FCC challenges around spectrum, cells are going to be gone, need something more powerful than finite spectrum.  SW is driving force for mobile, need more partnerships, not one company can do it alone.  carriers rpus will increase, innovation cycle will advance, great new world coming sooner than you think.

Ken Denman, Openwave Systems
An all IP world is slave to consumer experience, beyond phones and smartphones there is a data tsunami coming, all things non-phones, all connected devices including things not mobile, appliances, cars , netbooks, wonderful soup coming up, exciting times, the key enabler is all IP environment, convergence will absolutely happen with mobile as the default.  Ethernet will appear to have more relevance.  There will be tiering of price around bundled services for a particular experience like Kindle.    As market evolves and consumers get snappy apps they may not have a problem with price tiering.  Offloading of multiple networks is key middleware solution, #1 RFP of CXOs.

Abhi Ingle, ATT
Increasing speeds and feeds with wireless broadband, 5y widely deployed LTE 100mbps, 10y fungibility of networks become more transparent switching the networks, evolve beyond cell tower, go way beyond phones to connected devices, internet of things, explosion of innovation, ATT Austin lab, connectivity extend to things never even imagined before, connected 30-somethings used to cloud computing environments, ATT has 38 data centers for cloud computing alone, powerful networks.  You need massive amounts of capital to achieve 1gbps, there is not enough spectrum to achieve those speeds, need capital, spectrum and transformation of network, unimaginable costs ($100B?).  One approach is to blend the networks, make it transparent to end user.

Rick Keith, Motorola
Underlying principle of delivery of apps (Twitter, FB), what is broadband relative to those apps, taking experience already familiar with moving to airwaves, to that thing previously known as cell phone, broadband is a marketing term, we’ve had wimax since 2007, for Pakistan and Brazil its the first connection ever had to home, what is broadband to them is not broadband to us.  Its an issue of latency, needs to be a subsecond from send to receive, must be snappy, cost doesn’t stop at capex, there is enormous operating expense as well. Hybrid networks need be transparent to user, right now if you have Boingo can use ATT wireless at airport, that doesn’t make sense.  Must be a bridge service.

THE NETBOOKS & ULTRAPORTABLE BOOM

Mark Spoonauer, LAPTOP Magazine
1 of 5 pcs sold are netbooks, not funny Apple yesterday showing pocket ripping from Dell Inspiron not fitting, netbooks outgrowing notebooks 2:1.  Cheap notebooks have existed before, small, easy to carry, low cost, voting with dollars due to economy, is there a cannibalization threat, netbook integrated broadband 3g attaching $60 fee to go unlimited data makes it not a low cost, carriers need to subsidize netbooks to take off

Noury Al-Khaledy, Intel

Price point needed for internet use, compact, companion, evolving of the mobile web, different form factors and uses, dependent on different devices for different needs, infrastructure to provide bandwidth is key, bill monthly per user or per device, majority shipping are wifi, open econsystem platform, battery life better and better CPU not draining battery, netbooks with 8hrs, sw ecosystem will grow,chrome runs best on pc, better battery life, integration, lower power, new processors handle full flash.

LOCATION, MEDIA & MONEY:  The Next Enablers

Len Lauer, Qualcomm
Qualcomm is starting with Smartbooks moving to broader consumer electronics category.  Problem with netbooks is that they don’t last all day.  Want a Smartbook that lasts all day, always on, email pushed, no need for fan to cool off, very sleek design.   (Three kids (18/16/13) and three netbooks not enough) Right now Smartbooks do not have full support of office environment, Microsoft not porting XP86 yet.  Adding connectivity to everything.  Amazon Kindle makes network connectivity invisible, built into price of book.  Opportunity of machine to machine.  Smart Grid technology, energy companies putting in mobile radio into thermostat in home, intelligence in smart cars where to recharge, digital cameras, navigation devices.  Lots of opportunities.  US/Europe carriers embracing machine to machine arpu higher, Verizon, ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile.  Start out with thin file apps without user involvement (not large PPT decks or media files) 4-5% royalty rate on CDMA for 3G (830mm of 4B are 3G, 3.25% royalty rate for 4G when LTE comes out.)  Interconnectivity multimode when not connected on 4G still get 3G, voice will run out on 3G til 2020.  Rate needs to come down from $60 for mass adoption, balance economics, higher cost of bandwidth costs.  Amount of data being consumed going up.  Qualcomm helping operators with network offload, Media FLO sits on its own network.  Data traffic up 400%, half from video streaming.  FLO is 1:Many, can push out top ten YouTube videos over broadcast/datacast network, or P2P if two are within a kilometer to have handsets talk to each other and send info to each other different spectrum band, low power and fast – new radio technology – going point to point via phones.  Longer R&D project.  Can also get it on to cable networks to offload but need to manage interference.  Media Flo $10-15/month subscription – 15 channels of linear feeds – Qualcomm pays for content from ESPN..  (CDN offload)  700mhz auction 10 years to get that spectrum out.  Think about lots of devices in your home being connected should be P2P, better to manage on a licensed spectrum basis.  Where its most populated is where its free – Korea, Japan, China – 45% devices watching tv.  Italy, Germany, US not hitting expectations, Qualcomm doesn’t have nationwide network yet, need to be on more devices, expand next year, platform capability not just restricted to mobile devices, should be on other consumer electronics like MP3, live tv in car (on fridge?).  Launching with AudioVox this month for cars, rear screen videos in cars will go live tv.  Watch for MP3 device with FLO coming out soon.

INNOVATION THROUGH OBSERVATION & DESIGN

Denise Gershbein, frog design
Take products from strategy to market, brand, design, physical, digital.  Augmented reality has a lot to do with context that’s the moment when you move from looking down at a device toward holding up a lens to the world.  Likes Evernote.  Looks to Twitter for creative sources, inspiration, follows interesting people.  Envisioning LTE 4G, look at parallel and analogous paths make meaning out of cultural chaos so you can meet the market.  Arthur C Clark, Childhood’s End – getting into one universal consciusness.  What does it mean that you can be connected and have access to knowledge at the same time.

Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path
Observational research can be misused to dictate design and not room for innovation.  Design is a greater differentiator to stand out in crowded marketplace.  Integration of mobile platforms into larger universe as barriers to technologies and networks breakdown will start seeing new opportunities to be exploited for services to work across platforms.  Uncovering patterns in people’s behavior and psych, extend beyond how they interact with your product.  Be inspired by things beyond the technology space.

Crysta Metcalf, Motorola
Team tying different devices to each other, tying mobile device to tv.  Looking at how you would use mobile device in social tv experience.

Prashant Agarwal, Fjord
Noone has cracked mobile marketing yet.  Context is huge.  My phone knows my tweets, contacts..  Best experience is Amazon Kindle, get it, turn it on and there is nothing else to do except buy books.  Last time you bought a phone, just to get voice is not that simple.

Robin Boyar, thinktank research and strategy
Don’t always have a pencil but always have your phone.  Mobile device can monitor your health, use as tool to make life easier, better.  Young kids aren’t using smartphones, using the free feature phones.  Apps need to match 30y+ audience who own the smartphones.  How do you beat Apple at its game – recognize how to make user experience easier and cooler – build the brand experience – with Apple have extended relationship with them via iTunes, the store.  Used to head up research for gaming company, to get holistic view need all stakeholders in the focus group. If 7 year old and 70 year old gets it, you have a great product.

CARRIER PERSPECTIVE ON THE EVOLVING MOBILE ECOSYSTEM

Cole Brodman, T-Mobile
Social communications root of T-Mobile.  Largest per user text base than any other carriers in the world – 600 messages per user per month – more texting than calls.  Update FB status many times a week.  (Om asks if its possible we one day see voice as an add-on)  Android 10,000 apps, average T-Mobile user 40 apps per user in last 11 months.  Abundance use of apps.   Front home screen always on with context and location so info is relevant is very powerful, allows user to act quickly without logging in to web page.  Too many apps, over 60,000 apps, only a few make money.  Google working on how to make apps more discoverable as app store inventory grows.  T-Mobile to use retail footprint, 1700 stores, sales reps can aid discovery.  Paid and new apps, categorizing and merchandising stores need to be improved.  Once they discover an app make it easier to recommend to friends and family, word of mouth is key.  Not setting up T-Mobile app store, working with Android for an open marketplace but playing a role in discovery, and of course improve ways for app developers to leverage carrier billing, make it more frictionless, to pay with one click, next accelerant for app store consumption.  Phone company has to evolve from closed telco mindset to open web-based infrastructures to allow more rapid development to get things to market, allow application innovation.   T-Mobile is a communications company, it’s what occurs on the desktop, internet, devices we haven’t even thought of yet, need to breakdown the way we’ve traditionally gone to market.  Mobile internet 3-5y from today, starts with ubiquitous wireless broadband network $9B investment in 3G married with increasingly open operating systems, open APIs, increases in memory, battery life, processing power.   Front screen access mashed up with location and context, social graph, offer smarter network in the future, won’t have to keep re-entering data.  Likes Android as the first one to live up to expectations – open to carriers, manufacturing partners, developers to innovate.  Give consumers opportunity to personalize and customize, make it their own.  Apple viewpoint – everything is the same.  (Om – PCs guys don’t make that much money, Mac guys makes lots of money on same product) Consumers will have viable choices, different price points.  Customization without fragmentation.  That’s the work the ecosystem needs to do.  (Om – problem with iPhone is ATT network)  T-Mobile network will hold up, existing customers over-consume, set us up for increased capacity to handle increased consumption.  No announced plans for LTE in US, but its a natural migration, T-Mobile International leader in LTE early on. Thoughts on VOIP – not a threat, wireless pricing will continue to evolve, future consumption is moving away from voice, can only talk so much, first carrier to launch voice over wifi, concern so far has been quality, 3G not built for latency needed for VOIP.  Forgone conclusion, matter of timing, T-Mobile has embraced voice apps in Android market.  Front counter for services, thoughts on DRM – makes it easier if there is no DRM, important to share with others (limit time-sharing), leans toward a DRM-free world to allow sharing, subscription models naturally fit that way consumers want to consume media vs. transactional formats.

FACEBOOK PHONE AND SOCIAL MOBILE

Frank Meehan, INQ Mobile
GSM Wolrd Congress winner of best handsets designed around Skype and Facebook.  Carrier developed phone that aloowed you to make Skype calls.  Old voice and text handset manufacturers are stuck  - got to be fast, stay ahead, have to be able to put next FB on your phone quickly.  Brand naming has to be cool and catchy, need great distribution, retail, marketing – Apple does it very well, not many others.  Nokia is a very big company, they’ll fight their way back, what’s going to happen operators are keen to differentiate, each carrier has segmented behind a handset, INQ gives operator great customization.  Sony Ericcson and Nokia nder $200 feature phone market are competitors – boring, dull, most users don’t get data, INQ phones very easy.  INQ is now also moving into Android.  Android phones has struggled to compete on networks that carry iPhone.  User experience has to be better to get that iPhone out of user’s hand.  Need a hit handset every year.  Owner of INQ is investor in Spotify, Meehan sits on board of Spotify, huge in Europe.  (Om: $50 Peek email device, BB for everyone) Location not there yet but coming.  iPhone sells well to 35y+ who buys Macs.  But iPod market is under 35y, sell INQ phones to that market.

JUST A BROWSER OR FUTURE OF MOBILE OS

Jon von Tetzchner, Opera Software
Browser has potential to be a unifying force to deploy across wide range of mobile devices without having to create a whole bunch of native apps.  80% of phones not running OS, thus web is natural choice for these phones, HTML 5 local storage and drag and drop, deliver rich app experience.  Browser started as a document viewer, then added Java, developers moving faster than that, now running applications.  Scalable vector graphics is coming in the browser.  Microsoft held the browser market back for years.  If doing it web-based, it will run everywhere.  Widget is a web app running in a separate window, can run everywhere, PC, Wii, TVs, media players. Webkit vs Opera mini.  Opera Unite service – there is just one web, see all devices working together.  People haven’t really taken to MMS, hard to get photos over to PC, bluetooth is a hurdle.Opera 10 downloaded 10mm times in the first week.  More than 700ees in 10 countries.  Still focus on the end-user, make peoples lives easier, FF, rewind, speed dial..people expect that, now 40mm active users.  In some countries, #1.  Touch based gestures, mouse gestures very popular.  Take pride on running on 10 year old PCs.  Core of the browser hasn’t changed.  Apps will be web-based, more power to play with.

INVESTMENT OUTLOOK:  THE VC PANEL

Lawrence Aragon, Venture Capital Journal
Panel raised $2B need to invest.  Seed and Series A not looking good for 2009.

Mitch Lasky, Benchmark Capital
Infatuated by iPhone comes out of being burnt.  App store has been great for developers and Apple but not venture, opportunity to aggregate market share hasn’t materialized, will soon be back in multi-platform world, will need to be on more than just iPhone.  Would invest in a company contingent on partnering with carrier.  Did 200,000 store keeping units serving global wireless market.  Now 27,000 games on iPhone, noone can make money.  Don’t mind high-friction environment. ARPU has been flat at $50 for years.  Will see higher RPUs when virtual goods comes to iphone apps.  ATT $18B to built out network to support data consumption.  Network build out is a significant issue.

Dixon Doll, DCM
Portfolio includes mig 33.  Series B in mig33 last mobile investment, in the midst of a Series A not announced.  Can’t justify monetization on advertising – wont get VCs excited.  Must look beyond US, US carriers at best are 3rd best in the world, lots of innovation in China and Japan.  Cynical about business model where carrier determines outcome of business, better to create competitive environment, e.g. MLB.com doing well with its subscription on multiplatforms, competitive dynamic is useful.  Economist talks about innovative mobile apps:  augmented reality.  DC does not understand job creation role of the VCs.  Primitive emerging market nations live off their mobile phones, creating microeconomies, money transfer payments exciting new applications.

Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures
Portfolio includes Eye-Fi.  Prefer companies that don’t require carrier relationship, then can focus on value of partnership instead of imbalance of power.  When both parties have alternatives, its best.  People get hung up on ARPUs, want revenues higher than cost, voice down, data up, wave of growth around the corner, some new business models of advertising and promotion enabled by location and intent, can be explosive, developers can write to a platform without talking to carriers to see if it will go on a deck.  New features (accelerometers, touch screens) to get to a multibillion dollar industry.  Seek to build a portfolio of 25 exciting companies.  Plays Foursquare, gaming + location drives explosive adoption.

Bob Borchers, Opus Capital
(Fmr Apple iPhone exec) Portfolio includes Eye-Fi.  Mobile startups don’t require as much capital as before.  Can easily get fulfillment on your own, may need capital for awareness.  Venture community is so burned by the 500 feature phones they tried, soured on the space.  Many have great proof of concept. iPhone 2+ years old and App Store 1 year old.  Traditional carrier-focused metrics voice RPU, data RPU may be $50, other ecosystems $80 ARPUs on iPhone apps.  All do seed deal, have to have money to add people, need capital to keep company going.

John Balen, Canaan Partners
Last Series A India mobile company.  Series A is down because the whole market is down.  Seeing now an upswing in deals.  Activity level will rise in 2010.  Coming out of recession.  Every web app has to have mobile window because browser is so prevalent.  Not everything is showing up as mobile, might be categorized as web app.  Change is happening.  Need leverage with carrier.  Carriers operate differently abroad.  iPhone best over the top payment system and the outsourcing of cell phone business.  Watch the unbundling of what a cell phone company is.  Disaggregation of cell phones towers.  Win-win for consumer.  Happened in India even with low RPUs.  Augmented reality is next.  New ventures around location, cameras..

What a way to kick off the 4Q with words from Disney, Hulu, Fox, Apple, YouTube, Mitch Lasky, and more:

Tu 9/8 HRTS Digital Chiefs Luncheon
Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, Los Angeles
11:30-2, Bob Iger, Disney will be chatting with Jason Kilar of Hulu, Jonathan Miller of News Corp, Chad Hurley of YouTube, and Chris Anderson of Wired.  You can attend in person for $105 or remotely via live streaming for $29.95, more information at www.hrts.org

W 9/9, Apple’s Only Rock and Roll Press Event
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
10am, Apple shows off its music offerings and everyone is expecting Steve Jobs to walk on stage with Paul McCartney and a Beatles video capture iPod Touch – Flip’s worst nightmare.   Even if that doesn’t happen, talk about the new iTunes album format Cocktail should be worth a listen.  I’m going to try to tune in via Leo Laporte who did such a great job streaming WWDC with iJustine.  Sites expected to stream the event live include live.gdgt.com/2009/09/09/live-apple-its-only-rock-and-roll-event-coverage, live.slashgear.com,www.macworld.com/article/142674/2009/09/appleevent.html, news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10323196-37.html, arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/09/liveblog-rock-and-roll-apple-ipod-event.ars, www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-liveblog-999, @macrumors, live.gizmodo.com,www.engadget.com/2009/09/09/live-from-apples-its-only-rock-and-roll-event and @theappleblog, theappleblog.com/live.

W 9/9
MOBILE MARKETING FORUM
Berlin, #mmf09
http://twitter.com/MobileMktgForum

W 9/9
999 SOCIAL MEDIA CONFERENCE
Iceland, #999conf
http://tweetmeme.com/story/167330583/999-social-media-conference-icelandic

W 9/9 Mobilize VIP Reception
217 Second Street, 4th FL, SF, #mobilize
5:30-8:30, Pre-party

Th 9/10 Mobilize
Mission Bay Conference Center, #mobilize
7:00, Registration/Breakfast
7:55, Opening Remarks by Om Malik
8:05, Mobilizing the Internet with Pankaj Kedia of Intel
8:25, Monetizing Mobile Apps with Raven Zachary, IPDC3, Dorian Porter, Mozes, Adam Zbar, Zannel, Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic, Amir Hosseinpour, Juice Wireless, Mark Jacobstein, iSkoot
9:05, Break/Location: Context is $$ with Greg Sterling, Sterling Market Intelligence/Opus Research, Sanjeev Agrawal, Aloqa, Ted Morgan, Skyhook Wireless, Balaji Nataran, Capgemini, Tasso Roumeliotis, WaveMarket, Rahul Sonnad, GEodelic Systems, Sanjay Vakil, LuckyCal
9:45, 3G Evolution and LTE with Samir Khazaka, Qualcomm (Level 2)
10:25, Innovation on Android with Dr. Sanjay Jha, Motorola
10:55, Fireside Chat with Dr. Sanjay Jha, Motorola, Om Malik, Andy Rubin, Google
11:10, Ultraband: A Fast Platform for Innovation with Phil Asmundson, Deloitte LLP, Abhi Ingle, ATT, Rick Keith, Motorola, Ken Denman, Openwave Solutions, Chetan Sharma
11:50, The Netbooks and Ultraportable Boom with Mark Spoonauer, LAPTOP Magazine, Noury Al-Khaledy, Intel, Keith Kressin, Qualcomm, Don Paterson, Microsoft, Brian Pitstick, Dell
12:30, Lunch
- Future of Mobile App Stores with Christopher David, Sony Ericsson, Alex Bloom, Handango, Todd Brix, Microsoft, Craig Dalton, Mplayit, Colin Gibbs, GigaOM Pro, Ilja Laurs, GetJar (Room 1)
- Mobile Analytics with Mike Fyall, AdMob, Peter Farago, Flurry, Phil Hendrix, immr, Vincent Hoogsteder, Distimo, Greg Yardley, Pinch Media (Room 2)
1:30, Location, Media & Money, Len Lauer, Qualcomm, Stacey Higginbotham, The GigaOM Network
1:50, Innovation through Observation & Design with Denise Gershbein, frog design, Crysta Metcalf, Motorola, Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path, Robin Boyar, thinktank research & strategy, Prashant Agarwal, Fjord, Yuri van Geest, Mobile Monday
2:30, Carrier Perspective on the Mobile Ecosystem with Cole Brodman, T-Mobile
3:15, Just a Browser or the Future of Mobile OS with Ryan Paul, Ars Technica, Jon von Tetzchner, Opera Software
3:35, Break
- GetFugu with Richard Jenkins and David Warthen, GetFugu (Room 1)
- Windows Marketplace for Mobile with Todd Brix and Anand Iyer, Microsoft (Room 2)
4:15, MIT NextLab: Launching Mobile Ventures for the Next Billion Consumers with Jhonatan Rotberg, MIT
4:35, Social Attention in the Mobile Age with Bernardo Huberman, HP
4:55, Investment Outlook: VC Panel with Mitch Lasky, Benchmark Capital, Lawrence Aragon, Venture Capital Journal, John Balen, Canaan Partners, Bob Borchers, Opus Capital, Rob Coneybeer, Shasta Ventures, Dixon Doll, DCM
5:35, LaunchPad: Pageonce (real time travel management), metaio (augmented reality platform for mobile), Waze (social mobile generated traffic updates), Toktumi Line2 (second number and PBX on your phone), Glympse (social updates of your location), Ondeego (platform and storefront for enterprise apps), Square Connect (mobile as a remote control), Locle (location services enabler for social apps), IQ Engines (auto labeling of images), Distimo (analytic engine for all app storefronts) with Anand Iyer, Microsoft, Quinn Li, Qualcomm Ventures, Eric Zimits, Granite Ventures
6:25, Closing Remarks
6:30, Canaan Cocktail Reception

Th 9/10 – Su 9/13
D23 DISNEYFEST
Donny Osmond, Bob Iger, Betty White, Tom Bergeron, Timothy Dalton, Modern Family preview
Anaheim Convention Center, #D23
http://d23.disney.go.com/index.html

Th 9/10 – Sa 9/19
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Megan Fox, GEorge Clooney
Toronto, Canada, #TIFF
www.tiff.net

F 9/11 6-10pm – Sa 9/12 1-5 – Su 9/12 1-5pm
FIND YOUR STORY
San Francisco Film Centre, Presidio
http://www.sffs.org/classes-and-workshops/schedule.aspx

Su 9/13  8-11pm
EMMYs
Nokia Theatre, Los Angeles (CBS)
www.emmys.tv

These are some of the blogs I regularly read…

Life in the Cloud, ElasticVapor, by Reuven Cohen

Reuven Cohen - ENOMALY

Reuven Cohen

Founder Enomaly

Cloudcamp

Cloud Interoperability Forum

Cloud Interop Magazine.

Known to many in India. Conducted cloudcamp in Bangalore on March 29, 2009.

CloudCamp

“CloudCamp is an unconference where early adopters of Cloud Computing technologies exchange ideas. With the rapid change occurring in the industry, we need a place we can meet to share our experiences, challenges and solutions. At CloudCamp, you are encouraged you to share your thoughts in several open discussions, as we strive for the advancement of Cloud Computing. End users, IT professionals and vendors are all encouraged to participate.”

*******************************************

Cloud Computing, David Linthicum

Davic Linthicum, Infoworld

David S. Linthicum works for Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, DC. He is an internationally recognized industry expert and thought leader, and the author and coauthor of 13 books on computing, including the best-selling “Enterprise Application Integration” (Addison Wesley). Dave keynotes at many leading technology conferences on cloud computing, SOA, Web 2.0, and enterprise architecture, and has appeared on a number of TV and radio shows as a computing expert.

This is one his blog that I read twice:

http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/busted-three-myths-cloud-computing-098

*******************************************

Om Malik, Gigaom, For almost all of us, no introduction required about Om Malik and Gigaom.

Om Malik, Gigaom

Gigaom is one of the top 10000 sites in the world with about 70% viewership in USA and 20% in India.

Om Malik has more than 15 years of experience as a journalist covering technology and business news. He was a Writer at Red Herring during its glory days, then went on to be part of the founding team of Forbes.com as a Senior Editor. Most recently, he was a Senior Writer for Business 2.0, covering telecom and broadband stories.

Best of the WEB FOR TECHNOLOGY NEWS! MOST IMPORTANT NEWS!!

Personally his blog, business strategy is an inspiration to me.  Gigaom: Committed Expertise and BEYOND IT.

Malick.Md.PMP

Things are starting to get heated in what seems to be the wake of some heavy competition in the smartphone industry:

“Eric has been an excellent Board member for Apple, investing his valuable time, talent, passion and wisdom to help make Apple successful,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Unfortunately, as Google enters more of Apple’s core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, we have mutually decided that now is the right time for Eric to resign his position on Apple’s Board.”

SOURCE.

This just after the FCC’s investigation of Apple and AT&T after Google Voice Apps were rejected. GigaOM’s Om Malik raises a good point: Google is a growing company, and with lobbying power in Washington, Google could have silently initiated the FCC’s investigation. Is Jobs merely responding by dropping Google CEO Eric Shmidt off the board?

One can only assume.

Sramana Mitra’s Bootstrapping: Weapon of Mass Reconstruction is a book for our time, because it’s something real out of Silicon Valley. No more stories about legendary VC fundings or startup-to-IPO in six months. In this, the second volume of Entrepreneurs Journeys, her focus is on doing more with less, in tune with the times. The book comes out June 1, but I got an advance copy because this is my passion: starting up companies without outside investment. Unfortunately, this is another one of the books Buppy read first, so the photo isn’t what you might expect it to be:-)

Sramana Mitra has herself been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. She founded three companies: Dais (off-shore software services), Intarka (sales lead generation and qualification software) and Uuma (online personalized store for selling clothes using Expert Systems software). Two were acquired, while the third received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren that the company did not accept. Now she interviews entrepreneurs to find out what makes them tick. It’s quite interesting to read some of the stories, especially those of entrepreneurs you think you already “know,” like Om Malik, in my case.

The very first entrepreneur in the book, Greg Gianforte, begins by saying he doesn’t believe in raising money from investors. “The best money comes from customers, not investors,” he says, echoing what Stealthmode’s partners have always said to our own entrepreneurs. And for the same reasons. Boseman, Montana, where Greg started RightNow, a customer service software company, isn’t a tech hotbed anymore than Phoenix, Arizona is. And bootstrapping, Gianforte says, ” is a discovery process.” He goes on to say that if you got a bunch of MBAs in a room and asked them how to start a company, they’d say write a business plan and go get funding. And then they’d build a bonfire and throw the money into it. Admittedly, RightNow took expansion capital after two years.

Both Om Malik and Rafat Ali, who have found ways to monetize content online, were also bootstrappers in the beginning. Both came from India, where VC money wasn’t an everyday occurrence but hard work was, and both are writers. Ali tells of how he named his blog PaidContent.org because the .com name was taken, the Internet bubble had burst when he started in 2001, and he had nothing else going. Om has worked so hard at being a successful entrepreneur that he had a heart attack last year, when only in his early forties. He has had to learn to let things go a bit.

Ramu Yalamanchi’s father was an entrepreneur, and was the FFF (Friends Family and Fools) who gave him the first $10,000 to start the social network Hi5. To avoid mistakes, he watched Friendster. If you start a business that you think will get very big, plan for the scaling issues in advance, he says, because that’s what Friendster did not do. He watched that company in the days when people couldn’t get on the site and couldn’t register.

Mitra points out that Silicon Valley now is where Silicon Valley has been many times in the past: the IPO window is closed, the M&A market is adrift, and the VCs who can’t see an exit will not make an entrance. The economy sucks, and the layoffs have happened. The talent is out there looking for something to do. The last interview in the book is with Lars Dalgaard, CEO of SuccessFactors, who decided during the last downturn to buy companies that were struggling and turn them into successful businesses. Two of them he actually bought at an auction in Redwood City. From the portfolio of “stuff” that he bought emerged the company that’s now SuccessFactors.

This book has some fascinating histories of the different paths people take to entrepreneurship, and the difficulties they face. I would only have wished each of the interviews to be longer and deeper, because every story is worth the telling.

2009 is the year of BuddyPress. It’s also the year where online content providers have to figure out how to make money outside of the flailing “get a lot of views, sell ads” model. For the past couple of months, I’ve been working on a project that tackles both of those things, and I’m really proud to present it to the world:

GigaOM Pro is a WordPress/BuddyPress-powered premium research membership site, focused on four initial verticals: Mobile, Green IT, Infrastructure, and the Connected Consumer. A network of independent analysts provide in-depth research papers and research notes, which subscribers can view on the site or download as PDF documents. GigaOM Network contributors provide “long view” posts — topic-focused long form posts. And each of the topic verticals has a curator who provides weekly updates on the topic, as well as a constant stream of curated links to relevant external stories. Subscribers can access all the content, comment on the content, have a profile on the site, and send messages to Analysts, Contributors, Curators, or other subscribers using the BuddyPress messaging system.

Here’s what it looks like:

GigaOM Pro home page

The content is incredibly compelling. I’ve been especially impressed with the quality of the Long View posts. More than once when developing the site I would get distracted by one of these pieces and have to read the whole thing. The GigaOM writing staff and the analyst network are very talented people, and I think that $79 a year is a steal for this calibre of hyper-focused content and this sort of access to industry analysts.

From a technical perspective, it was interesting to create a site with such distinct content types. The Write screen for Curated Links looks nothing like the Write screen for Weekly Updates, or Research Briefs. The system makes heavy use of the category system, and custom WP_Query objects and loops. category__not_in, category__and and post__not_in are very powerful tools for getting the correct entries from the system.

Naturally, there are no core WordPress hacks — everything is implemented through plugins and the custom theme!

Let me know what you think. And don’t subscribe — I put in a lowball prediction in the internal betting pool for how many subscribers there are in the first week, and I think I’m going to lose.

Om Malik has posted an insightful article over at Gigaom For the iPhone App Store, Future Holds Chaos & Opportunity. In the accompanying video (below), Mailk interviews Omar Hamoui, founder and chief executive of AdMob, a San Mateo, CA mobile advertising network. Nearly 20 percent of AdMob’s 2 billion monthly ad impressions are coming by way of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Click over to Gigaom for the full article > HERE

Horiwood.Com digs Om Malik’s analysis and practical problem solving spin on the potential identity crises that Face Book must address in order to grow at this juncture in the life of servicing its online community and stake holders. Here he goes…

When I first wrote about Mark Zuckerberg, his young startup was called TheFacebook.com and he had just moved to Palo Alto, Calif., from Boston. The site had signed up some 2 million students at 430 colleges. Fast-forward to today: Facebook has a hundred times as many members, including parents and grandparents of those hyperactive college students. What was once a convenient way for college kids to hook up has now become the newsfeed of our post-Google lives.

Facebook’s rapid growth is, to put it bluntly, an astounding achievement. Yet as the company stands on the verge of greatness, it’s facing an identity crisis. Zuckerberg & Co. have let themselves turn green with envy over the latest Silicon Valley phenomenon, Twitter — and in the process, have set out to mutate Facebook’s own DNA.

Facebook, by its very nature, is mostly about our past, sometimes about our present, but very rarely about our future. Being symmetric, it’s important that we have some sort of a prior relationship with a person in order to friend them on Facebook. Your classmates, neighbors and the folks you met at a party — these are all relationships from your past. Facebook doesn’t really allow you to discover new people — and that has been the part of its charm (and utility).

On Facebook, photos, videos, and news items about folks in our social graph (address book) allowed us to keep in touch with tens of people all the time without so much as dialing a phone. We immersed ourselves in each other’s lives, serendipitously. By developing technologies that provided context to the information coming from our network, Facebook saved the most elusive modern commodity: time.

Facebook’s recent redesign brought Twitter-style updates into its service, a move that’s been met with considerable opposition from Facebook members. Twitter allows almost anyone to follow (or discover) anyone else based on their celebrity, interests or location. Twitter is about infinite affinity circles. Facebook is not. By allowing a torrent of status updates into our Facebook pages, the company has destroyed what made it special: its ability to construct a constantly updated newspaper about us. With Twitter-like updates, the site has lost its intimacy, flooding us with a lot of white noise. It’s become less personal — and less social. (Read: Facebook COO’s attempt at justifying the recent changes and spinning them as great advertising opportunity.)

Back in 2005, when I profiled Facebook for Business 2.0, Sarah Williams, a freshman at Berklee School of Music in Boston told me, “What makes it (Facebook) so much better than Friendster is that it’s your peers rather than a random assortment of people.”

Maybe this blast from the past is something Mark, Chris Cox and some of the smart young people who make up Facebook should think about.

ENDS

by Om Malik

Jeff Bezos, chief executive officer and founder of Amazon, is a proponent of a Japanese philosophy called kaizen — which loosely translated means continuous improvement. As part of this belief, he has been working alongside folks at his company’s distribution centers in Lexington, Ky., perhaps to find out what else can he do to make Amazon better. This news was widely covered in blogs. What caught my eye was the comments in response to Saul Hansell’s piece in The New York Times blog.

Some of them pointed out the difference between Bezos and Bailout CEOs, who are good at offering excuses. Or others, like Auto Industry executives, who are often compared to lazy, brainless lumps. As someone points out, the bailout money is going to companies that are big, not necessarily the best. The best companies wouldn’t need to be bailed out because they would be good at what they do. Part of running a good company is knowing how each little part works and recognizing the importance of every person who contributes to the effort. Bezos clearly gets that. The bailout CEOs don’t.

(Source: GigaOm)

Michael K of dlisted is the East Coast's Perez Hilton - Forbes doesn't know of him yet?

Let’s check out web brilliance again. Peeps with influence on the web, according to Forbes magazine’s rankings are: these clowns! Enjoy checking out their blogs.

1Perez Hilton 2Michael Arrington 3Kevin Rose 4Frank Warren 5Cory Doctorow 6Pete Cashmore 7Beppe Grillo 8Heather Armstrong 9Guy Kawasaki 10Jason Calacanis 11Robert Scoble 12Will Leitch 13Jeff Jarvis 14Wil Wheaton 15Nate Silver 16Om Malik 17Matt Drudge 18Owen Thomas 19Dave Winer 20Seth Godin 21Brian Lam 22Mark Frauenfelder 23Steve Rubel 24John C. Dvorak 25Leo Laporte

One question remains: WHERE IS MICHAEL K’S BRILLIANCE ON THIS LIST? Forbes, if you’re going to list Perez Hilton as number 1, then at least have Michael K in this  list at number 2!!!! He’s Perez’s secret teacher, mentor, muse in NYC! Nice Web Celeb choices list tho! Enjoy the surf.

THE HORIWOOD TOP 10 POSTS OVERNIGHT WERE:

1. WHETU #2 – MR TIGER WOODS

2. YOUNG, FAMOUS, TALENTED & ABUSED – THE RIHANNA & CHRIS BROWN HOLLYWOOD STORY

3. ORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN IDOL, GUY SEBASTIAN HAS MOVED TO US

4. TIME MAGAZINE LISTS ITS TOP 25 BLOGS -2009

5. VALENTINES DAY CAME SO SWIFTLY WITH A LOVE STORY THIS YEAR

6. MICHAEL PHELPS HAVE YOU TALKED TO FRANK

7. SPIN THIS TRACK!

8. FORBES TOP 25 WEB CELEBS OF 2009

9. COURAGE TO LOVE

10. OBAMA’S CONGRESS RHETORIC – 10 INFLUENCES

here’s three suggestions:

1. TIME MAGAZINE LISTS ITS TOP 25 BLOGS -2009

2. Forbes Top 25 Web Celebs of 2009

3. FORBE’S TOP 100 CELEBRITIES

24/7 Wall Street just released it 25 Most Valuable Blogs list. Gawker, Huffington Post, GigaOm and Politico were among the leaders. This year’s list excludes blogs which are part of larger companies, those which are used as fronts for other businesses,  and blogs  that do not have revenue.  To assess financial value,  24/7 looked at unique visitors, pageviews, estimated CPMs, audience growth, revenue and operating income, among other criteria.

Here’s the list:

1. Gawker Properties — $170 million.
2. Huffington Post — $90 million.
3. The Drudge Report — $48 million.
4. Perez Hilton — $32 million.
5. Sugar, Inc — $27 million.
6. TechCrunch — $25 million.
7. MacRumors — $21 million.
8. SeekingAlpha — $11 million.
9. GigaOm — $9.5 million.
10. Politico — $8.7 million.
11. SmashingMagazine — $7.7 million.
12. SearchEngineLand — $4.5 million.
13. Boing Boing — $3.6 million.
14. ReadWriteWeb — $3.4 million.
15. SB Nation — $2.7 million.
16. Destructoid — $2.5 million.
17. Mashable — $2.5 million.
18. Alley Insider sites — $2.25 million.
19. /film (slashfilm) — $2.1 million.
20. The Superficial Network — $2 million
21. Neatorama — $1.5 million.
22. Daily Kos — $2 million.
23. Talking Points Memo — $1.2 million.
24. VentureBeat — $1 million.
25. Wowowow.com — $1 million.

The complete story provides a lengthy description of the methodology used to evaluate the sites as well as more details about each of the top blogs.  Personal congrats to Om!

Hat Tips:

24/7 Wall Street

The Business Insider

Right now, I am in Adobe Inda office in Alps Hall of theirs, attending India’s first wordpress camp. Somehow unable to upload the picture. Main attractions of this event are two people i.e. Matt Mullenweg, the starter of wordpress and Om Malik the Gigaom founder who will both be presenting their tips and tricks on wordpress and general blogging.

I am pretty excited to hear these people in reality as I regularly blog on my personal blog which you are currently reading and my pofessional blog http://cellstrat.wordpress.com Will post pictures soon.