September 2011
1 post
“In 1996 I was covering spot news from a closet in The Wall Street Journal’s San...”
– Another Steve Jobs anecdote from Quentin Hardy of Forbes.
August 2011
2 posts
Not bad for an online bookseller...
I’m sharing with you two great posts (see links below).
Will IT-aaS result in a better IT service and Cloud Architects?
The authors make completely different points but there was one common context: the threat of Amazon Web Services. Surely AWS has played their part in motivating IT shops and incumbent IT vendors to push toward the so-called private/hybrid cloud.
July 2011
2 posts
Why Netflix Wants You to ‘Just Say No’ to DVDs →
This Wired article talks about why Netflix is raising its prices… for example, the 1 DVD + unlimited streaming plan will get 60% price hike.
“…We often make product decisions based on strategic alignment, partner...”
– Select excerpts from RIM’s own anonymous version of peanut butter manifesto.
June 2011
5 posts
“For Microsoft, this is about more than just responding to the iPad. It’s...”
– Said Michael Mace from Mobile Opportunity blog
The Contrast between Adobe and Salesforce.com's...
James Governor wrote a nice post that I paraphrased below:
Geoff Moore said that while the last 30 years of business automation have been about creating Systems Of Record, the next years will be about creating Systems of Engagement: getting closer to employees, customers and partners, encouraging greater participation in company ecosystems… The key buyer for Systems of Engagement will...
“Blockbuster lost because its leaders couldn’t see beyond their retail...”
– Quoted from a Stonebridge newsletter by Larry Gorkin. What business are you in?
May 2011
1 post
On this day 16 years ago...Bill Gates predicted... →
In his Internet Tidal Wave Memo.
January 2011
1 post
Watch
December 2010
1 post
“Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry… and...”
– Said a skeptic Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. when asked about a deal with Spotify, a popular European freemium music-as-a-service that ironically may help solve piracy and save the industry. His model needs updating to account for: 1) new sales resulting from new music discoveries that...
September 2010
3 posts
“At a certain point in the process, no credit will be given for predicting rain....”
– Ben Horowitz
“You either grab the bull by the horns and get better at doing the stuff you want...”
– Jeremy Schoemaker
“Not many people remember now, but there was a time when even the idea of Xbox...”
– Andre Vrignaud’s experience in trying to build and evangelize something new to a skeptical status quo community resonates with me very much today.
August 2010
1 post
June 2010
1 post
“If you think of management as a systems problem where your task is to design and...”
– From Ben Horotwitz’s blog, an old post about whether getting an MBA makes someone a better entrepreneur.
March 2010
1 post
Enterprise Apps User Interface – the wrong... →
Can we learn from game UX design? How come gamers can intuitively figure out how to play?
December 2009
2 posts
AOL is Independent Again →
“There is just not enough advertising to go around for all the sites on the...”
– Rupert Murdoch, talking about his thoughts to offer Kindle-inspired eTablet-based news subscriptions to offset decline in print business. Interesting, but… the above quote is even more so. Ads-based business model anyone?
October 2009
1 post
WSJ the "Drug Dealer"
I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite addicted to WSJ Mobile Reader - I read their articles on my BB incessantly.
Recently, WSJ Mobile Reader started charging subscription fee for access to most of its articles.
To my surprise, I am actually considering to subscribe.
As I look back, I realized what a smooth calculated process WSJ has driven to get me to this point. About one year...
September 2009
2 posts
WatchWhile we’re on the subject… why Netflix’s big salary approach may be the way to go.
WatchAmen - I never knew Netflix is such a cool company to work for. Thanks Bob.
May 2009
1 post
RSS readers modeled after email clients are... →
Look what I’ve found…
March 2009
1 post
Some Links to Share...
A good story about YouSendIt’s transition from ads-supported business model to subscriptions. Free to Freemium: 5 lessons learned from YouSendIt.com | Futuristic Play by @Andrew_Chen
Good advice, Joel-style. But sounds like a product owner in Agile? How to be a program manager - Joel on Software
A short historical perspective on the Internet law pendulum. Technology & Marketing Law...
February 2009
1 post
You know Friendster is near the end when...
… its Southeast Asian users are moving en masse to Facebook. Proof? I’ve got a lot of new friend requests from my Indonesian buddies as well as my teenage sister on FB in the last couple of weeks.
Friendster, as you know, has just moved headquarters to Bay Area and opened new offices in Singapore and Sydney last month. The management finally came to terms with the fact that their...
January 2009
3 posts
Internet Asperger’s Syndrome →
A thoughtful piece by Jason Calacanis, in the wake of Arrington’s spitting incident.
Everyone stopped Googling when Obama spoke →
Watch he who stops Google here.
December 2008
4 posts
4 tags
Google App Engine's pricing: progress or throwback...
Google App Engine is going to offer Adwords-style pricing - my first question was: if an additional 1000 people want to visit your website and as a result you go over the limit, what happens?
I found Google’s answer in one of the preview screenshots:
“As this budget represents the maximum you will be charged in one day, we recommend setting it higher than expected to buffer against...
Tweeting is like joining a party line. →
Brilliant description of Twitter’s value by Stuart Miniman. Read up on party line here.
WatchThe French deciphers the strategy behind all of Google’s recent moves. A must read.
2 tags
Twitter's Asymmetrical Follow
bmje: @timoreilly @monkchips Asymmetric follow is a hack in social software to enable ‘relationships’ to scale. It is broadcast, not conversation”
timoreilly: @bmje Not so. I follow 400; am followed by 16,000. But I respond to lots of people (like you) who I didn’t know before. Not just broadcast.”
November 2008
5 posts
TechCrunch’s New Search Engine: Powered by Yahoo... →
Looks impressive; however, it took two of their developers 6-8 weeks to implement it. Yahoo! probably needs to make it much faster and easier than that.
SAP's Dilemma
Recently co-CEO of SAP Leo Apotheker talked about the company’s decision to slow the rollout of BusinessByDesign (BBD), their ERP as-a-service product.
He gave valid reasons:
Changing the business model from traditional license sale to subscription sale will result in revenue drop in the short-term.
Running a SaaS business requires capex investment upfront, increasing costs and supressing...
“I think what gets in the way, Sarah, is business school professors.”
– Clayton Christensen when asked why very few companies are able to reinvent their business models successfully.
Microsoft Store is in Business →
I wonder how much volume they are driving from this channel today…
October 2008
7 posts
Akamai buys ad targeting firm →
Akamai jumpstarted a new business unit called Advertising Decision Solutions through its acquisition of Acerno, with the intent of leveraging Web data gleamed through its own CDNs for better ad targeting.
“We continue to blend more and more of those - books, video results - into the...”
– Sergey was quoted as saying during Google’s Q308 earnings call today. First it was Ask, and now even Google is validating AOL Search strategy that Ron Grant discarded. Making strategic decisions by relying solely on intuition can be very risky indeed…
WatchQuick, flip it!
WatchCourtesy of Sequoia Capital.
Amazon S3 Introduces Lower Prices →
The race to bottom has begun - see my post on investing in clouds.
Whither the Portals?
I was chatting with my friend the other day about portals - Yahoo, AOL, MSN and the like - and whether or not a merger between any two of them will significantly change the game. My take is probably not.
Many people’s starting point (to borrow Yahoo’s term) on the Web these days is Facebook, not portals. This is especially true for younger generations. If you remember Geocities...
“In the old days, electrical engineers focused on getting computers to work not...”
– Excellent post by Brad Burnham at Union Square Ventures on why consumer web is leading the innovation wave. It’s also a good theory for explaining why enterprise web user experience is inferior to the consumer web.
September 2008
5 posts
How Much $$ Do You Want?
The post Raising Venture Capital: How Much Money Matters by David Hornik at VentureBlog is roughly a month old but is top of mind for me these days.
I’m involved in a project proposal in which the ask is millions of dollars of funding. I notice that whenever we get to the ask slide, the potential investors we’re trying to line up tend to become doubly attentive. They would not only...
“I was meeting with a few entrepreneurs from Playfish who told me they...”
– Sharon Wienbar of Scale Venture Partners on how little it costs to run a startup these days, courtesy of Slate Moneybox.