"Standing next to Clarence was like standing next to the baddest ass on the planet. You were proud, you were strong, you were excited and laughing with what might happen, with what together, you might be able to do. You felt like no matter what the day or the night brought, nothing was going to touch you. Clarence could be fragile but he also emanated power and safety, and in some funny way we became each other’s protectors; I think perhaps I protected “C” from a world where it still wasn’t so easy to be big and black. Racism was ever present and over the years together, we saw it. Clarence’s celebrity and size did not make him immune. I think perhaps “C” protected me from a world where it wasn’t always so easy to be an insecure, weird and skinny white boy either. But, standing together we were badass, on any given night, on our turf, some of the baddest asses on the planet. We were united, we were strong, we were righteous, we were unmovable, we were funny, we were corny as hell and as serious as death itself."
Muck Rack’s Facebook Page 1,000th Liker
| “ | Congrats to @JJMalina on being the 1,000th person to like Muck Rack on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/muckrack Someone send him a toaster. | |||
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| “ | @muckrack well, you’re down to 999 again. I’m jumping on the opp. Somebody send me a toaster. #opportunity_knocks #toast_it | |||
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 | UNBELIEVABLE. @muckrack team sent me a toaster! Now I hafta be the 300th like on some page to win some bread. #toast_it http://yfrog.com/gyzufmcj | ||
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| “ | Not sure how today could possibly be better than yesterday, considering I received a toaster at my desk yesterday. cc: @muckrack | |||
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[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
I interviewed Reid Hoffman for my podcast Venture Voice back in 2006. You might have been able to guess the year the interview took place by my description of his fledgeling website, LinkedIn, as “Myspace for professionals”.
The file sadly had gone missing for over a year due to a server error and bad backup procedures on my part. I put a plea out for help on the VV Facebook page, and Jason Brady of Play Entourage came to the rescue.
The interview’s back up for your listening pleasure here and on the Venture Voice interview page.
My favorite antidote as a recovering philosophy major is that Reid’s original career aspiration was to become a public intellectual. Smart pivot!
Hey, they took my iPad
I was having dinner yesterday at a sidewalk table at a restaurant in the far West Village enjoying the delightful New York spring weather. I propped up my iPad at a near 90 degree angle using its case so I could read on Instapaper while eating my meal.
All the sudden my iPad disappears and its formerly magnetically attached case goes flying. I look up and see three guys, one of whom snatched the iPad, running away.
I immediately give chase, running after them yelling “hey, they took my iPad”. It quickly started to sink in how hopeless my cause was since they had a pretty good lead. After a block we turned a corner and I yelled again. One guy on that street who was closer to them heard me and started chasing them and yelling too. As they turned the next corner, another two guys who heard our shouts and was in front of the thieves stopped them and got the iPad back. The iPad snatchers then ran away.
Amazingly the iPad was completely undamaged — not even a scratch. More importantly no one was hurt. The only victim was my shirt that got a little tomato sauce on it. Did I mention I was at an Italian restaurant?
I thanked the guy who helped chase them and the guys who stopped them. I shook their hands and asked if I could buy them dinner or do anything else to thank them. One of the guys just told me he’d just ordered an iPad himself, and with that they were all off on their separate ways. I went back to the restaurant and was congratulated by most patrons and lectured by one old lady about how I shouldn’t have chased them for fear they’d have a gun. Maybe she was right. Did I mention it’s an iPad 2?
While the incident was startling, I left the restaurant feeling even better about New York City than when I started. All it took was asking for help and my fellow New Yorkers sprang into action. What more can you want from a city?
Eat your heart out Punxsutawney, NYC’s where it’s at on Groundhog Day!
I’m loving this artwork @YiyingLu made for the art show we’re hosting for her on Feb 2. I first met Yiying two years ago when she won the #Design Shorty Award in our first year, which was also her first trip to the US. She recently called me and I told her the day we’re hosting her happens to be Groundhog Day. Being an Australian, Yiying had never heard of the day but she said she always wanted to draw a groundhog.
I hope all my Tumblr peeps can join us.
Making digital holiday cards matter
I emailed this holiday card to my friends last year (apologies if I missed you!):
Prior to 2009 I sent printed holiday cards simply because digital cards cost next to nothing to send and therefore have little meaning. (Thanks for putting no marginal effort into wishing me a happy holiday!)
In December, 2009 it occurred to me its ridiculous to give money to the greeting card industry and USPS just to show my friends I care. Why support an “army of men in wool pants running through the neighborhood handing out pottery catalogs, door to door,” as a wise postmaster general once said?
The solution to ecards’ triviality is to make it cost a nontrivial amount of money to send each card. But why give that money to a service provider when it can go to charity?
Now I’m wondering how attaching a donation to an ecard can be taken to the next level. One of the more innovative ecards platforms like PaperlessPost, Jib Jab or Someecards could allow users to attach a verified small donation to each card sent. Charity platforms like Causes, Pinkdingo or DonorsChoose could add an ecard feature, even allowing the recipient of the card to choose where the donation goes. Or perhaps it’s an opportunity for a new startup.
Two phrases every startup should adopt
The term for a mob boss “godfather” was invented by Mario Puzo for his book of that same name. After Francis Ford Coppola turned The Godfather into a hit movie, the mafia actually adopted that term for their bosses.
Sometimes it pays for life to imitate art (what is good art if not one step ahead of real life?). There are two movie phrases from the last year that every startup should adopt.
“Wired in”
In The Social Network, whenever someone tries to talk to a programmer working with headphones on, Sean Parker (as played by Justin Timberlake) discourages disturbing the person by yelling “He’s wired in!”.
As any technical or creative professional knows, there’s work to be done that requires complete focus. Even a short interruption can cause a major setback. Yet in the open offices of most startups, it’s very tempting just to go over to a programmer and start asking her questions as they arise. How’s one to know if someone’s in the middle of working on complex code or just reading Hacker News?
Programmers are placed in an awful position. If they’re interrupted from programming they either have to be rude and say “Don’t talk to me now, I’m in the middle of something” or lose a disproportionate amount of productivity.
For all its inaccuracies, The Social Network highlights an elegant solution used by many programmers — putting on headphones — and coins a perfect term for it — “wired in”. A good programmer is wired in in more ways than one while working.
“Inception”
I thought Inception was a pretty good film but I absolutely love the premise behind it. In the movie a group of criminal specialists have figured out how to literally get into people’s dreams and steal secrets from them, but no one has yet planted a new idea in someone else’s mind. Inception is the ultimate challenge, and the protagonist played by Leonardo DiCaprio spends most of the movie trying to do it.
An entrepreneur must perform inception on dozens, or sometimes millions, of people. We currently call this “pitching,” which implies that your goal is to effectively communicate your idea. But no one wants to work on, fund or buy something because it’s someone else’s idea that they should do so. A pitch meeting really exists to cause the other person to have the idea they should do something.
Inception is often needed on a wider scale too. Twitter caused millions of people to have the idea that they should post short public status messages. Steve Jobs gave millions of people the idea that they needed a device that put design ahead of features to play music on the go.
We need our vocabulary to evolve and flourish along with our technology. If we all spent more time wired in rather than being interrupted, and more time performing inception rather than pitching, we could be much more effective.
Autopsy of the private meeting
The private meeting was pronounced dead last night, approximately 7:39pm est. The autopsy report showed some signs of struggle. There are several suspects, but none have been apprehended yet.
It all began when Michael Arrington wrote an entertaining post about a meeting he wasn’t invited to of about a dozen unnamed early stage investors. Allegedly these well known angels are colluding to set terms for future deals with startups.
This accusation unsurprisingly set off a wave of controversy over what the topic of the meeting was, but what I’ve found most interesting is the ability to piece together who’s at a private meeting using social media. A thread started on Quora that now lists everyone who’s thought to have been there along with sources. Business Insider pointed out that one of the angels tweeted he was there and then deleted his tweet “to try to cover his tracks”.
This story really uncovers that it will be almost impossible to have a meeting that only invitees know about in the future. Someone will unintentionally spill the beans using Twitter, fourSquare, Tungle.Me or Plancast. And even if they don’t, they may be tagged by any friend they run into on the way using Facebook Places.
Last December I predicted the end of lying. I’m adding private meetings to my list of things that the next generation will never experience.
Building viral apps on the social web for fun and profit
I presented “Building Viral Apps on the Social Web for Fun and Profit” last night at the NY Viral Meetup. Thanks to my friend Jon Steinberg for inviting me to present with such a great group and posting the slides (my slides are #4-25):
Phil Michaelson posted some great notes from my talk, so rather than regurgitate what I said I’ll just quote his notes:
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Social Action – Enjoyment of the app or experience REQUIRES sharing
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Star Vehicle – Usage of the app or product enhances user’s career or social life, perhaps helping them better communicate with fans or friends. For example, Formspring and Twitter offer celebrities and self-promoters a new way to get their message out
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Ruckus – The app or product has something special or noteworthy. Perhaps it sparks imagination or disgust. Maybe its first to market. Maybe it has some simple hook that can easily be passed on. My mom can’t explain why people Tweet, but she knows its a public message of 140 characters or less. People who don’t use FourSquare still know you canannounce where you are and become mayor.
Bringing the ruckus to TV
It seems obvious that people should check in to TV shows/books/movies/etc just like they do places on Foursquare, yet so many smart people have tried in well-financed efforts (Hot Potato, Get Glue, Miso, TV.com, TV Guide and Philo) and no one’s seen an exciting level of traction.
While checking in to media makes sense to me intellectually, I’m starting to question if people will actually do it. The competition is just to tweet or FB status update about a television show. And that’s a great experience. I can’t make it though an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm without commiserating over Larry’s antics with fellow fans by following #curb.
Foursquare had a really creative answer to the location problem — Foursquare brought the ruckus to location. I don’t feel anyone’s brought the same level of original thinking to the second screen experience for TV as Foursquare did for location — most are just attempting to literally be the “Foursquare of TV”.
I wonder if there’s some entirely different way to help people communicate around TV shows and other media that we haven’t thought of yet. It’s time for the internet to bring the ruckus to TV.
Obituary: the bookcase
A well-stocked bookcase has been the most romantic sign of intellect for centuries, yet little is known about its origins. The bookcase likely got its start thousands of years ago, but only came into high demand after the invention of movable type in 1040 and the printing press in 1440.
It’s clear now with devices like the Kindle and the iPad that the bookcase is going the way of the LP. It will be a slow death, with paper enthusiasts holding on for decades. While the LP lived for less than 50 years before it started to be dwarfed by newer technologies, the book and bookcase had an extraordinary life.
The bookcase served three main purposes to us humans: to show status, store knowledge and help people express themselves.
Now that it’s possible to order any book with a few clicks of a mouse for a bargain price, a private library of books doesn’t show much status in life. The knowledge contained in dozens of bookcases can fit on a Kindle, if it’s not already searchable on the internet for free.
Yet there’s no replacement yet for the expression one can make with a bookcase. Showing off what books you read tells the world your interests, politics, philosophy and even religion. It’s acceptable for any houseguest to peruse your bookcase and even yank out a few books, while snooping around your Kindle or iPad at length would be intrusive.
To combat the risk of being too sentimental as we humans often do at sad times like these, it’s worth remembering that the bookcase as a form of self expression has always been paradoxical. Too many people left books they hadn’t read or didn’t like on their bookcase. If a book was really good, you’d have sequestered it to your bedside or insisted that a friend take it to read rather than greedily stockpiling it on your shelf. The best books didn’t last long on a bookcase. But the bookcase’s flaws are besides the point, it’s the best we had and we will miss it.
While remembering what a good and long life the bookcase had, we can do it no higher honor than to invent its successor. Innovative purveyors of electronic books such as Amazon and Apple have not made it easy to promulgate the library of books we’ve read. If you want to get to know someone, you can view their last 20 tweets in an instant, but you might need to hack into their account to know their longterm reading habits. Moreover, borrowing an ebook out of its device is impossible.
We won’t find a replacement for the bookcase at Ikea, but I think that the bookcase would have appreciated this irony. We’ll need to use our minds to devise a new way to showcase our intellect.
Photo credit: Writer’s Retreat by Gianni Botsford
Ben Franklin on patents
I’ve been enjoying reading Ben Franklin’s autobiography (free on my Kindle). Most of it feels like it was written today. As we all argue about software patents, it’s useful to read Franklin’s views on stove patents:
Gov’r. Thomas was so pleas’d with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin’d it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.
