Twentysomething

The Age of API's

Today's web application world is much different from a couple years ago, and dramatically different from the 90's. Most major companies would have agreed in the 90's that a closed system was the way to go.

Today, most startups and even some corporations are shifting towards open systems. A lot of the "web 2.0" sites have boosted their success by allowing their data to be free and spread out. Software becomes much more powerful when we adopt the open source mentality into the web applications we create.

Flickr's API is an example of how it's done. My Moo cards were very easy to order and edit. To me, Google's Map success is not based on it being the best mapping solution available. However, by providing developers with an incredibly simple way to create maps, the web has embraced it.

Recently, developers have built some really cool apps on top of Twitter, especially the Twittermap, a strangely entrancing google map and Twitter mashup. We are coming to a time when it's nice to share and it makes buisiness sense to share. E-commerce is another great example of where API's make sense. Amazon has been able to spread it's content throughout the web, give a small percentage through affiliates and make more sales.

One major issue that stands in the way of major API adoption is widespread monetization. The conventional wisdom seems to be that if you it gets you more subscribers or traffic - great! There seems to be a lot to learn from Amazon.

Twitters rise & Founders At Work

Twitter is on it's way to big success. What started off as a side project back in March '06 for Obvious Corp, makers of the not so succesful Odeo, has grown into the next big thing. As it rose, it took awhile for me to comprehend what made it so special.

A couple of dugg articles later, such as this one, have helped me get that it's an evolution of social networking, with rapid fire responses, as well as a live blogging tool, as well as anywhere instant messenger. The interesting dichotomy here seems to be that you need to invest a lot of a little in terms of posts, to create value from the app.

Having a presidential candidate use the thing has definitely helped their appeal, but the real closer seems to be their inclusion of SXSW. Some are speculating that the influx of messages conference will kill the service, but I think that it will actually keep the ball rolling, as it helps create more press. I give it a few more weeks until the mainstream press gets ahold of it.

What's fascinating to me is how Twitter's founder, Evan Williams, has twice evolved his businesses, as he was previously the founder of Blohowgger, which started as a project management tool. I stumbled onto his chapter last night in "Founders at Work", one of the best books I've ever read. Evan isn't the only one with that ability, and it seems to be a prevailing case for many of the founders which are interviewed in the book (the exception being Ray Ozzie, who seems to have future goggles).

Max Levchin, the Paypal founder shared the same story, as he started Paypal as a PDA money transfer tool. The ability to adapt and evolve is a skill that isn't typically highlighted when people talk about entrepreneurship, and I think should be spoken about more often. It's something I've personally had to go through already and can be an interesting dilemna to tackle.

Andy Sacks, Judy's Book founder, has been a prime example of this evolution, and has graciously let everyone into the process on his blog.

UPDATE: Lots of other bloggers took notice:

Vallewag: Twitter blows up at SXSW
Micro Persuasion - Steve Rubel - Twitter, Human Attention and Moore's Law

Clearwire is everywhere

Clearwire seems to appear out of everywhere these days in Seattle. One block away from our office is a huge sign, commercials abound online and they seem to have a store in every major mall here. They appear poised for an IPO later this year and have set the terms this week.

Although finding mixed reviews online, we are considering going with Clearwire as our ISP. Some of their customer support issues need to be resolved, for instance, today we called to inquire about service and were put on hold for 30 minutes.

If they can fix these problems, and some of the update problems I've heard of, I think they'll be able to give the telcos and cable companies a real run for their money.

Is Jobs over the top?

Brier Dudley over at the Seattle PI has an article concerning Steve Jobs recent attitude. Here's what he has to say about the now infamous memo:

"It was a clever way to repurpose legal work. It curried favor with DRM-hating consumers and positioned him as an instigator. But music companies were already thinking about new approaches, such as selling copyable songs in lower fidelity MP3 formats."

While Brier is pretty negative about the whole thing, Steve's timing was very suspect. The fact that one of the most closed companies is arguing for open licensing is pretty humourous. Jobs has also opposed licensing Apple's software or products, now he's arguing for the record companies to do so.

This is a smart move overall though. EMI is now reporting it's considering going DRM free, and Jobs is taking the credit! Wow.

The Tipping Point of Web Apps

I started this off as a post on Flixster, and why they're a great example of a solid niche social network. They focus extensively on movies and have received a ton of press. It's a simple and fun site to use.

As I was chicking out their tipping point which seemed to appear around December 2006, I began to question if other sites may have a similar tipping point, perhaps more pronounced.


This is Digg's 3 year:

It's easy to spot this one. Wow. This is when they released a new version.

Now look at digg's competitor, reddit:

It's almost the same tipping point.

Flickr's looks similar and even more extreme:

What causes these tipping points? My guess looking at the examples above are a new version, the blogosphere, adding viral tools such as Digg did in February 2006, or getting purchased, such as Flick above.

It certainly can't be traditional marketing. Whatever it is, it has a great and lasting effect on traffic. There doesn't seem to be a "crossing the chasm" portion to web apps, or at least these succesful web apps have made it appear that way.

Web 2.0 in Five Minutes

Great video demonstrating what this web 2.0 business is all about in less than 5 minutes.

The Valley is more like me

Andrew Chen, who worked at Bellevue based Revenue Science has a great post about the differences between Silicon Valley and Seattle, most of which are fairly obvious. He notes that Seattle and the Valley have the similar groups of nerds:

"...except here, they wear Google shirts and not Microsoft fleece jackets."

I also found this interesting:

"Another interesting factor has been the sheer number of 20-something entrepreneurs running around, many of them with venture funded companies. Let's face it - in Seattle, smart people from Stanford and MIT only go there for one reason: Microsoft. So by the time they go in, buy a condo in Kirkland, do some skiing, and go from Program Manager to Group Program Manager, they're pretty old! And definitely more risk-averse. The kids here come from Berkeley, Stanford, UCSF, and numerous other schools around here, and start companies from an early age. Young folks here are treated as equals here, and taken very seriously, whereas in Seattle I constantly got advice to "get more years under my belt.""

I have trouble finding many entrepreneurs in my age bracket here in Seattle, and constantly hear about young guys in the Valley doing their thing. It seems very tempting for most college grads in this area to take the easy route and go work for MS. In fact, a large majority of local entrepreneurs have!

Take almost any local company, and they have some relation to Microsoft. Zillow/Expedia were Microsoft veterans. Valve Software, makers of Half Life, were Microsoft guys. Even recent startups such as BlueDot were funded by Microsoft guys.

Having no clear juggernaut (although Google is rapidly approaching this status), the Valley seems to breed an open system of entrepreneurship.

Thanks to John Cook who posted about this first!

Startup Resources

My friend Alan Leong runs the entrepreneuship program at UW Bothell. He's had some great speakers come in and has most of their slides online:

http://www.uwbcse.org/2007/01/06/first-lecture-bonus-slide

I don't typically enjoy looking through slides without the presentation but some of these are absolutely worth it. Look at "Marketing for Entrepreneurs" by Jen Hall, who helps my company, Trendi. Great stuff that entrepreneurs should learn to live by.

Eric Mattson, one of the speakers he hosted, is a friend of mine and runs a marketing/podcast directory for entrepreneurs. His blog is over at http://www.ericmattson.com and he's now starting what he calls a "long tail media company" over at http://www.jenerous.com. He's interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs, marketers and smart people, and still has a long list of interviews to add!

He gave a killer speech last week to the class and I'm looking forward to watching more great content for entrepreneurs.

Social Music - Where's the Long tail?

I've reviewed all the sites listed on TechCrunch's Social Music review by Seattle blogger Ryan Stewart, who I met last year at the Venture All Stars Event. Congrats on getting to TechCrunch status Ryan!

I'm a huge fan of electronic dance music, as are many others involved in technology, and I was excited to find some new artists I hadn't heard of. I thought their may be an up and coming artist somewhere in Europe that I had never heard of. So I was very surprised to find that after going to each site, I had a lot of trouble finding an artist I had never heard of, these were all the top 100 dj's in the world.

All these services (at least in electronic music) seem to largely ignore the long tail of music and those purveyors of it. Popular artists are great, but how do I find out about the new stars? MySpace seems to have figured out how to promote new artists, why can't these services? I absolutely love the feeling of listening to the latest and greatest, so someone should look into this service.

I think their is a wide open market for a social music service that recommends newly or semi popular artists and integrates them with popular artists. Granted a lot of the long tail sucks, but there must surely be at least one artist that's great and not huge but growing for each artist that is huge. Why isn't anyone doing this yet?

Vista noTunes

Looks like the press has confirmed something which I've noticed the last week using Vista: iTunes doesn't work on Vista. In fact, I've seen the blue screen of death 3 times attempting to play a Quicktime video, and starting up iTunes may or may not work.

The last time I tried it, Vista crashed again. Is this a ploy by Apple to discourage purchasing Vista? Check out this quote :

"Apple said iTunes may work with many Vista computers, but the company knows of some compatibility problems and recommends that users wait until it resolves the issues with an iTunes update in the next few weeks, the company said in a statement provided Friday by spokesman Derick Mains."