Archives / November, 2007

Facebook and Privacy

I hate just doing linkblogs, but Fred’s thoughts this morning on Facebook and privacy around the beacon issue are spot on.  Two highlights I couldn’t agree with more: When the internet knows who you are, what you do, who your friends are, and what they do, it goes from the random bar you wander into to your favorite pub where your friends congregate and the bartender knows your drink and pours it for you when you walk in the door and These privacy backlashes do some good though. They keep big companies like Google and Facebook sensitized to the issue. And so we hope that they ‘do no evil’ with this data they are collecting Read the full post here.

The Facebook Fad

The Facebook Fad I’m sure someone will shoot me for saying this, but I don’t get Facebook.  I mean, I get it, but I don’t see what all the fuss is about.  I made similar comments before about Gmail (here, here), and people told me I was an idiot at the time.  Three years later, Gmail is certainly a popular webmail service, but it’s hardly changed the world. In fact, it’s a distant fourth behind Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.  So I don’t feel so bad about not oohing and ahhing and slobbering all over the place about Facebook. Facebook reminds me of AOL back in the day.  AOL was the most simple, elegant, general purpose entree for people who wanted…

VCs Are Full of It

VCs Are Full of It …at least that’s what Brad says.  Well, he says a lot more than that, but certainly makes for a good pre-holiday headline, doesn’t it? Brad’s brilliant advice is not to confuse data – or even worse – anecdotes – with fact.  I’d add to the axiom my own observation that “just because someone says something with extreme conviction doesn’t mean it’s true.” His whole post is very worthwhile – one of the best ones I’ve read in a long time.  Read it here.

Academic Inspiration

Academic Inspiration I just read in my alumni magazine that at Opening Exercises for incoming freshmen this year, Princeton President Shirley Tilghman closed her remarks with the following: For the next four years, you will be encouraged – and indeed sometimes even exhorted – to develop the qualities of mind that allowed Katherine Newman, Simon Morrison, and Alan Krueger to change what we know about the world.  Those qualities are the willingness to ask an unorthodox question and pursue its solution relentlessly; to cultivate the suppleness of mind to see what lies between black and white; to reject knee-jerk reactions to ideas and ideologies; to recognize nuance and complexity in an argument; to differentiate between knowledge and belief; to be…

In Search of Automated Relevance

In Search of Automated Relevance A bunch of us had a free form meeting last week that started out as an Email Summit focused on protocols and ended up, as Brad put it, with us rolling around in the mud of a much broader and amorphous Messaging Summit.  The participants (and some of their posts on the subject) in addition to me were Fred Wilson (pre, post), Brad Feld,  Phil Hollows, Tom Evslin (pre, post), and Jeff Pulver (pre, post).  And the discussion to some extent was inspired by and commented on Saul Hansell’s article in the New York Times about “Inbox 2.0” and how Yahoo, Google, and others are trying to make email a more relevant application in today’s…

Saying Goodbye

Saying Goodbye Seth Godin’s post yesterday of the same title has this good advice for businesses who are shutting down: It seems to me that you ought to say goodbye with the same care and attention to detail and honesty you use to say hello. You never know when you’ll be back. The same should be said of companies and employees.  We always try in interviews to be as kind as possible to candidates who we are not going to hire.  I’m sure we don’t always get it right at all levels, but I always make a personal phone call and usually send a handwritten letter to finalists for senior jobs.  Once, when I had to “ding” a candidate for…

It's The Little Things

It’s The Little Things My credit card expires at the end of this month, so Citibank just sent me a new one.  I’d guess that about 50 web sites, maybe 75, have my credit card on file and know that it’s about to expire.  Only two of them — that’s right, only two — Typepad (my blogging software from company Six Apart) and Mobil Speedpass sent me reminders to come back and update my account.  And at that, Mobil sent its reminder via snail mail.  Typepad’s was an easy one-click right to my account’s profile page on the web site. How is it that only one or two companies got it right?  This is one of those little opportunities to…

The Social Aspects of Running a Board

The Social Aspects of Running a Board I’ve posted about the the topic of Boards of Directors a couple of times before, here and here.  We had one of our quarterly in-person Board meetings yesterday, which I always enjoy, and one of my directors pointed out that I never posted about the social aspects of running a Board.  Since this is a critical component of the job, it is certainly worth mentioning. A high functioning Board isn’t materially different from any other high functioning team.  The group needs to have a clear charter or set of responsibilities, clear lines of communication, and open dialog.  And as with any team, making sure that the people on a Board know how to…

In Defense of Email, Part 9,732

In Defense of Email, Part 9,732 I commented today on our partner Blue Sky Factory’s CEO, Greg Cangialosi’s excellent posting in defense of email as a marketing channel called Email’s Role and Future Thoughts.  Since the comment grew longer than I anticipated, I thought I’d re-run parts of it here. A couple quick stats from Forrester’s recent 5-year US Interactive forecast back up Greg’s points con gusto: – 94% of consumers use email; 16% use social networking sites (and I assume they mean USE them – not just get solicitations from their friends to join).  That doesn’t mean that social networking sites aren’t growing rapidly in popularity, at least in some segments of the population, and it doesn’t mean that…