Month: April 2009

an angry diamond

~ ginsu ~ Leave a comment

p. 56:

One of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks – at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond and hissed ‘You promised!’ into his ear.

Gatsby revolves around young couples in relatively early, fragile relationships.  Here is a rare, flashing view at an older couple, in an old relationship with fragility that age has not dissipated, but crystallized into a frozen spiderweb.  Fitzgerald is known as a chronicler of the young and carefree, but this is a pitch-perfect snapshot of a couples’ argument that has developed through many years of betrayal.

In truth Fitzgerald’s heroines were never carefree, regardless of their age.  Though often misunderstood as shallow, these young female characters were engaged in poignant struggle to define a new womanhood in a time before feminism.  Those who lost – or worse, missed – the struggle could do nothing but harden their pains into an angry diamond.

the webz for realz

~ ginsu ~ 1 Comment

The “real time web” is a phrase that’s coming dangerously close to buzzword heaven, to the point where formerly-Web-2.0-guys will start saying it’s a key feature of Web 3.0.  I’m not sure that the people who are so fond of the phrase are entirely clear on what it really means.

Some folks seem to say that “real time web” basically means everything more and faster.  It’s been a common tenet for at least a decade that the value in the Web is found in aggregating and analyzing information, and delivering the result to the right audiences.  Today we simply have more information, from more sources, and more techniques to analyze and filter the info flow.  Creation, collection, analysis, filtering and distribution of information happens so fast now that we can call it “real time” – but that’s just a fancy phrase for “really rilly fast.”  In this view, “real time web” is an inapt phrase if it’s meant to describe a new benefit – what we really have is just a new expression of an old (in Web terms) problem.

Another view is that the Real Time Web is not just a faster Web, but a new medium.  I don’t think I can articulate this view in brief, but the general idea is that fundamentally different sensory experiences are implicated by this new kind of personalized information that is delivered and filtered nearly concurrently with its creation.  This view is sexy sexy sexy:  it’s always so sexy to declare a new medium.  It’s so sexy that somehow the tone of new media declaration infuses the works of even the commentators whose words clearly describe nothing more than a faster Web.  When you read just about any writing that uses “real time web,” it seems that the author is striving to discuss new tools for new problems, rather than new tools for old problems, and would be aghast if it turned out that it’s actually just a discussion of old tools for old problems.

So is the real-time Web really just a faster Web, or is it a new medium, as different from the Web as the Web is from TV and radio?

That’s a deliberate question, since I think the fascination with ”’real-time”’ often represents a yearning for old media forms – especially broadcast media like TV and radio.  Ironically, people who have seen a lot of media evolution tend to race to declare every older medium dead, while they simultaneously pine for the familiar patterns of old media.

The idea of broadcasting – getting the same information out to many users at the same time – might be a familiar pattern that people are seeing when they think of the Real Time Web as a new medium.  Early Internet businesses like Pointcast and Broadcast.com were simply about using the Web to get the same information to as many people as possible at (roughly) the same time.  But at this point, thinking of the Web as a broadcast medium requires perverse ignorance of the distinct characteristics that make the Web interesting as a new media format.

What is distinct about the Web versus other media is the extent to which information can be aggregated and analyzed, the low cost and ease of creation of content, the application of both computer algorithms and social means to filter and personalize delivery.  When people began to understand that, they stopped trying to broadcast and instead built businesses like Ebay and Amazon and Google – and it so happens that those businesses were built on aggregating and analyzing asynchronous information.

I guess I’m asking:  Is the asynchronicity of information creation, collection and analysis also an important distinct characteristic; and if so, does that mean that doing those things in real time makes the Web a different medium?

Another way to gauge the relative importance of the real-time concept:  Which would you rather have at your disposal, everything on the Web that is older than one hour, or everything that is more recent?  (Picking It Depends is not a choice.)

loving and leaving linden lab

~ ginsu ~ 8 Comments

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up” (1936)

I love Linden Lab.  Over the past four years, I’ve poured everything I had into the company.  Leaving was a tough decision.  But at the same time, it was easy to see that it was time for me to go.

Departure missives are a tricky thing.  This is actually my third for this same departure:  I said goodbye to the company internally, I posted to the company blog, and now here’s one for my own blog.  Why so many?

I’ve studied the art of the departure memo, it’s really quite interesting.  The business world sees many comings and goings, and in certain companies, internal communications are destined to get leaked – and you can see that the authors know this.  Compare two examples from the same company, Yahoo:

  • Stewart Butterfield’s resignation was bizarre, funny, and ultimately a scathing indictment of a place that overdiversified and lost the love of innovation.
  • Sue Decker was more restrained, with a classic and classy goodbye that nevertheless could be read as a defensive listing of all the progress made under her watch.

In their own way, each goodbye note took pains to remind people of the author’s special qualities and accomplishments.  I avoided doing that in my earlier announcements.  It’s not that I’m especially modest –  I just didn’t want to muck up messages to colleagues, customers and company commentators with shameless self-promotion.  There’s a time and place for self-promotion.  Like right here, on my own damn blog.

Ah, but I’ve never been great at claiming credit.  I’m struck by the wisdom that one mentor told me earlier in my career, which I’ll paraphrase as:

Success has many fathers, and even more virgins trying to claim paternity.  No one who wasn’t there can really understand the full story, and even the ones who were there didn’t see everything.  But you’ll know what you did, and so will the people that matter.  Let the others play their guessing games.

So then here’s a game to play.  When success really does have many fathers, how do people claim any successes for their own?  I thought about what successes I’d want to highlight from my time at Linden, and I realized that any of them could have at least two opposing interpretations.

my would-be claim one idea opposing idea
key exec in managing company growth from early revenue to profitable phenomenon can spot and guide a winner just along for the ride
lead exec in many areas through company history: international markets, legal, finance, HR, developer relations, enterprise segment, business and corporate development multifunctional business executive short attention span to the point of personality disorder
led finance through early revenue, raising $15+ million equity and debt financing, accurately projecting 2+ years of revenue growth within 10% talented early-stage financier and prognosticator wild-ass guesser
early leader of international growth from 30% to 70+% of audience makes worldwide progress with limited resources strained the organization beyond its ability to grow
established basic legal and regulatory policy and strategies, with humor insightful thinker on social and governmental issues paper-pushing policy dork, with wicked streak
architected Linden Dollar as unique virtual currency and multimillion real dollar business fearless and creative new product innovator reckless and dispiriting goon
wrote, tweaked, and rewrote the Tao of Linden sensitive guardian of company culture feckless appeaser of management fads
executive sponsor of startup-within-a-startup initiative for enterprise segment constant pioneer in new markets and strategy focus-diluting disruptor
negotiated and managed acquisition and integration of several businesses accomplished M&A dealmaker heartless crusher of helpless entrepreneurs
helped recruit and integrate new management team before departure selfless assembler of talent ruthless operative in reorg-and-run

Can I claim any of these successes as wholly my own? Where does the truth lie? Would the modesty of my saying that all opposed ideas could be true be undercut by the implication that I would then be claiming a first-rate intelligence?

Ah well, that’s about the best I can do for self-promotion.

social networks and the dunbar break

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A couple of months ago, The Economist noted that the Dunbar number appears to apply to online social networks like Facebook.  I’ve since been thinking about the threat this represents to Facebook’s business, and all social networking businesses.

To recap:  The Dunbar number is a theoretical limit to the number of social relationships that one person can maintain – this number is often estimated at 150.  Facebook’s “in-house sociologist” confirmed that the average Facebook user has 120 “Friends” (i.e. other Facebook accounts linked to the user’s account).  Moreover, when measuring the interaction between users, such as comments on each others’ accounts, men average regular interaction with only four people, while women average six people.

You see the problem?  It’s too easy to leave social networks:  you’ll leave as soon as your six closest friends do.  From Tribe to Friendster to MySpace, no one has been able to hold on to their users.  Given that history, Facebook and Twitter have to fight more than just faddishness – they have to fight the cognitive limits of the human brain.

Ironically, social networks do not have the full benefits of network effects.  A really robust network effect means that each additional user of a network adds value to the network for all users.  In social networks, once all of my friends have been added, I don’t really care if any more people join the network.  And that means that the converse is true:  once all of my friends leave, the network has no value to me, no matter how many other users are still on the network.

The ”’Dunbar break”’ occurs at the point at which so many of your contacts have left a social network that you no longer value the network.  Dunbar’s number suggests that this point might be as high as 150, but looking at the actual interaction on Facebook, your personal Dunbar breaking point for Facebook could happen when as few as half a dozen of your friends leave.

That’s why Facebook and other social networks must paddle furiously to try to add value that scales across all users with a true network effect.  But with advertising and applications and ”’lifestreaming”’, they haven’t quite found the magic formula yet.

Does current media darling Twitter hold the key to defeating the Dunbar break?  As a combination of social media and broadcasting, it has some intriguing possibilities.  Ask yourself:  Once all of my friends are on Twitter, do I care if anyone else joins?  And would I care if all my friends leave Twitter, while the rest of the world joins?  A lot of people are answering those questions differently for Facebook and Twitter, which is why Twitter is such a popular dance partner these days.