Comments

Ron: That is the one area where I agree. The competitive rejections are ones I question. I can see why they do it but I don’t like it, it spurns the spirit of innovation.

Chris: Overall, I agree with you. What core apps (when you set aside open principles) are we missing? It is a good question. The one thing I would say is that there is an element of "you’ll never know" what innovation could get blocked by it being closed. That is the danger of a closed system.

But from a business perspective. This strategy has worked for Apple, created a unique marketplace and works for them. Why should they change it?

Sounds pretty far fetched that we could develop a system to overcome a 75% unemployment rate even with stratospheric government subsidy, simply because I don’t see human nature of "wanting more" changing at the needed magnitude.

The first thought that came to me reading this post is that Ford and Ayn Rand should go bowling together. Would be quite the conversation.

Sounds pretty far fetched that we could develop a system to overcome a 75% unemployment rate even with stratospheric government subsidy, simply because I don’t see human nature of "wanting more" changing at the needed magnitude.

The first thought that came to me reading this post is that Ford and Ayn Rand should go bowling together. Would be quite the conversation.

It would seem this really works in two scenarios. First, where you have a good team but the business is not going to go. Second, and related, when 3.5% of the other company is going to be bigger than the total of your own.

Great post Raanan. I will admit, I think have sent my share of ‘intro’ subject line headers. I will try to refrain from doing that in the future.The one that made me laugh is the one where you are kept on the thread after the intro is made. How come you are never kept on the thread when there is something "really" compelling being discussed, like a multi-billion dollar M&A deal!

Does Amazon have "instant on" for all book submissions or only from reputable suppliers? This is the equivalent of letting anyone submit their own book to a Kindle ecosystem but in this case it is trickier because it is an app and actual code is runiing that could hose the device and device experience.

Niyi: you can do that by using the "send message" button. From there you can post to your profile, send directly to a contact or also post to a group which is neat functionality.

Still wonder whether it is the entrepreneur leaving to go back to their country is the biggest loss for the US or the same thing happening with people in the sciences who get their PhD’s in their respective discipline and doing phenomenal research to just have to go back their countries. This happens every year as well and should very much be part of this conversation.

Both are big losses for the US and are potentially very correlated.

This is a nice approach and one of those that seems "obvious" but is not b/c that is not often how companies think. The typical approach is "we built this API, they should thank us" when the real goal is "use" and a lift to overall engagement, whatever that may be. Very smart of have the developer community "participate" in the revenue model, it is a win-win incentive.

As David says below, it is like what Apple and FB does for apps. I’m not sure with the business model of Twitter’s API, but as revenue models gear up there, it will be interesting to see if this type of model takes hold and develops diverse set of revenue models on the communication stack.

Max: Matt and Toni have built a company in Automattic that is pretty remarkable that it builds such great stuff and is basically completely virtual. The have engineers all around the world. They have an office in SF which is normally empty except for socials and I think the last I heard their highest employee count in any one city was four.

Was feeling pretty confident this was going to happen until you brought universal health care up as a proxy. ;)

will it replace BackType. still haven’t really figured out how to use that service since it is standalone except for routing all of my comments across the web to a widget on my blog.

Absolutely agree, Atlas Shrugged moments are coming from all angles right now. I have to stop writing now or I am going to get upset.

that doesn’t seem like that much growth over the course of 3 years especially when you are talking about market size

that doesn’t seem like that much growth over the course of 3 years especially when you are talking about market size

can remember E Ink when I was at Sloan. actually surprised they sold for the number they did. another head scratcher when you see online companies go off at such high multiples but you get a low return on a company who is creating a material good.

tip: ice in zip lock bags, and put the bags into tube socks, tie the socks around your head; will help swelling

can’t wait to see Manningham get some serious reps this year, he is one we should be very excited about

why do I see a ‘moving meetings’ business launching, capturing travel time and espousing energy efficiency. it makes sense when you think about it.

I think cloud will take hold first as it is already but as costs stabilize, it will be a solid combination of both. There is no reason, your social experience and related media can’t sit in the cloud with pointers to either the media locations at third party storage services or if you are set up with local storage (say in-house NAS type equipment), that those same pointers can’t point back to hardware at your house but connected to the web. For example, we see already a logical movement of where people are going to be able to hook their own hardware and storage space to be available and leverage-able to cloud-based services.

Again, this will simply be a balance of the costs of bandwidth (both up and down) and the cost of storage overall. I just don’t see how there won’t be a healthy combination of both.