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.

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.

Web 2.0 in Five Minutes

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

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?

2007 - Year of IPTV

2007 is lining up to be the year for IPTV. Microsoft got the most recent round of buzz started at Bill Gates CES announcement of IPTV for Media Center. Microsoft has been in this game for awhile, ever since the inception of WebTV a few years back.

Apple reintroduces AppleTV, with Jobs discussing IPTV for what seemed like an eternity as the rest of us awaited the introduction of the iPhone.

The story to get the most press/blog time for this week seems to be the Joost (aka the Venice Project). Joost is the latest venture from the Skype guys. I had a chance to try out the beta last night, and although I was thoroughly unimpressed, the idea is novel in itself. Joost is an application that runs independently of a browser, and hosts a variety of online channels through a slick interface.

Today Netflix introduces it's own free product to download and view tv shows and movies online to rival Blockbluster's latest attempt to take them down. Blockbusters service is basically a Netflix clone, only you can bring the movies back to your local store and they will match that movie to a free rental instore.

It looks like its come down to this for Netflix:
"Netflix is budgeting $40 million to cover licensing and overhead costs of the service over the next year, which will, by the way, wipe out most of their operating profit of $17 million or so per fiscal quarter. Unless of course this service results in millions of new subscribers."

Wow, we've come a long way since 2005, when the networks and the MPAA wouldn't even discuss online distribution. It seems the catalyst for this change is due to the hype and numbers YouTube created.

How the iPhone should help innovation

Steve Jobs keynote was worth staying late for (over here in Asia). The man is the best business orator on the planet and continued to shine yesterday morning. The delivery was impeccable, the cameos were from none other than Google's CEO and Yahoo's cofounders, and the product looks amazing.

Steve's oral skills were highlighted when Cingular's CEO stepped on stage, and looked as he is an old telco chief, spouting unoriginal rhetoric and stats.

Will this mean the beginning of an innovative streak in cell phone development? Jobs did mention they had a lot of patents, and no one has really been able to recreate an iPod, much to Microsoft's discontent.

This should motivate Microsoft to update Windows Mobile and add some sort of matching functionality but that's unlikely to happen for a couple years.

I do expect the second gen Zune to provide some sort of real competiton. Peter Moore did mention games will be able for the Zune in '08, and that's a market Microsoft has cornered.

Steve's demo is one of the best pitches I've ever seen and it will probably be remembered and studied in the future. I know I sure will next time I'm looking to pitch!

As Valleyway noted, Steve managed to introduce a revolutionary new product and steer all attention away from CES, not disclose any new information about current Apple products (that are most likely late or delayed), and still wow the crowd. There has been some backlash regarding the lack of updates for Leopards development, as well as any other Apple products, but overall this was a strategic masterpiece.

Social Shopping

Read/Write Web has a great article on the different Social shopping sites out there today.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_shopping_faceoff.php

The most notable portion of the article is the conclusion:

"Most notably, there is still big room for innovation in this market. Kaboodle has nailed the basic feature set, but much more can be done based on the power of masses and technologies like RSS. We expect to see many more innovations in 2007, such as personalized recommendations, product alerts and interactive chats based on where you are shopping."

Who's up for a buyout?

Now that the media fanfare over YouTube has died out to some degree, except for the Time article, it's time to look ahead to 2007, to the next company to buy out.

Front runners are Facebook and Digg. They've both received an incredible amount of press, their user base is increasing and their scope is ever increasing. I think Facebook will go before Digg though, as their monetization seems higher than Digg's.

Apple is still cool

A few months before the Zune launch, I predicted in a previous post that Microsoft would have a lot of trouble competing with Apple, due to Apple's coolness factor. How did they upstage Microsoft this time?

Not by unleashing a new iPod with tons of super neat features, but by reinventing their least popular one, the Shuffle and making it look cool again. As soon as I saw this commercial, I knew who it was, and it wasn't just the white headphones. Apple makes it look easy to be cool.

So the Shuffle is now the hot item of the season, and meanwhile the Zune looks like a far second.

Bob Lefsetz has even more here.

eMusic gives less for more

I signed into eMusic today, a service that I've used a couple times before with their enticing 30 free downloads marketing plan they did everywhere and got this very interesting message from them:

"On November 21st, 2006, eMusic will begin offering new plan options to new members. While the price of our eMusic Basic, Plus, and Premium subscription plans will remain the same, the number of downloads in each plan will change:"

It took me a couple times to read that correctly, but what they are saying is, beginning in November, we will give you less for the same price. I think that sucks, and it should be the other way around. Instead of reducing the number of songs, they should be focused on expanding the features for their customers. At the very minimum the price should be lowered if you are getting less. This is a very bad way to tell users they are increasing their pricing.

Goodbye eMusic.