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The challenge to entrepreneurs is to solve this problem:
I’d like to pose a challenge to all entrepreneurs or established companies who are looking to increase their distribution (and business) in the digital media world. I’m friendly advising someone/company that has legal access to over 750,000 US Internet users and we are trying to come up with new ways to monetize the audience.
Distribution will come from access to a ‘portal’ like page and thru email announcements. How can we monetize these better and/or release a new product/service/solution to this audience.
So, do you have an idea for what you would do with 750,000 users? Fill out this form and you could win!
Now, this is no ordinary personality test… this is a career-oriented personality test. So, as a newly minted “Entrepreneur in Residence” I was curious to see what what kind of personality I had. Here are my results compared with someone in Law:
So, for all you folks asking me “how to be an entrepreneur,” take one heap of “confidence” (you’ll need this to beat the odds), a bucket of “love of thinking,” a hearty scoop of “extrovertedness” (get the kind mixed with “openness”), and top it off with “idealism.”
Of course it helps to be “agreeable,” “empathetic” and to be a “relativist,” so put those things in there if you can.
A lot of people reach out to me when they move to New York City and ask about the New York tech community. In the past, I’ve sent them a nice long email of information. But I’m getting tired of that, so in the future, I’m just going to send them a link to this article.
If you’re in the web tech industry, and you’re new to New York City, here’s everything I think you need to know:
The first thing you should do when you move to New York City to work in web technology is join the nextNY community and get a Meetup.com account.
nextNY
nextNY was my first introduction to the New York Tech scene. It’s a wonderful group of 1,700+ people who self-organize using just a wiki and a Google Group email list. While there are old-timers who hold the passwords, the beauty of nextNY is its lack of hierarchy. Join the group tomorrow and you can be posting away.
The best part of nextNY, though, is just how high level the discussion is. On many lists, you find people posting random bits of unrelated info, typing IN ALL CAPS and self-promoting like crazy. nextNY is different. You’re more likely to read threads featuring advice about hiring for startups or how to get Angel and VC financing.
Finally, nextNY is great because when discussions show enough interest, someone eventually organizes an event where the topics are discusses in more detail. In the last year, the nextNY community has self-organized events on hiring, getting investment, new advertising strategies, sports marketing on the web, financial startups, and more.
Tech Meetups
Clear your calendar every first Tuesday of the month becayse the Original NY Tech Meetup is the must attend event in Silicon Alley. Month after month, 500 or so technologist pack IAC or Cooper Union and sit through 6 (hopefully) interesting demos of new, local technology. Afterward, folks inevitably find themselves in a nearby bar and talk about what they just saw, or about anything else that gets discussed in a bar. It’s one of the best ways to meet people in your industry in your new City.
Among other important Meetups are the NextWeb Web 2.0 Meetup and the NY Video 2.0 Meetup (web for video enthusiats). Both are super high quality and have a great mix of attendees.
Who’s who in Silicon Alley? Check out the Silicon Alley 100 for a list of everyone you need to know. Notable people missing from the list: David S. Rose (Chairman of the New York Angels, among other things) and Clay Shirky (esteemed NYU professor and author of Here Comes Everybody).
Geography
So, where is Silicon Alley?
Silicon Alley 2.0 is much like back in the Web 1.0 days, with most entrepreneurial activity centered around Broadway and stretching from 23rd Street and the Flatiron District down to Canal Street and SoHo.
Now, you’ll find companies all over, including DUMBO in Brooklyn, where the rent is cheaper, the spaces are bigger, and there’s easy access to Manhattan.
Money
Money, ahh, money. The New York Angels is the largest, most active angel network in town. However, with as many rich people in town as there are, it’s not the only game in town. For a list of others, check this list.
It’s a great place to work and colllaborate with other entrepreneurs.
Recently, Mary Kathleen Flynn, of TheDeal.com’s Tech Confidential, came by our space, took a tour, and interviewed David Rose about the space. She also got to chat with some of the residents, like Alex Baydin, CEO of PerformLine, Paul Sciabica, Director of the New York Angels, and Josh Green, CEO of Panjiva.
Soon, we’ll have an “official” launch of SparkSpace with a proper party and all; however, we’re already showing the space to interested startups and taking applications. For more information, visit rose.vc/sparkspace and fill out an application.
If you’d like to schedule a time to check out the space, contact me and we can set that up too.
Since late last week, there’s been an echo-chamber, mini-buzz around a new “micro-blogging” service called Identica.
Usually, I’m quite weary of such buzz. For instance, you won’t see me write about a service that starts with the letter “P” and ends with “urk” because there’s no “there there.” Even though I used BrightKite for a few weeks, I never wrote about it for the same reason. Cool, but not cool enough.
And, quite frankly, I’m not writing about Identica as a “Twitter killer” because I don’t think the “there” is with Identica itself.
Instead, I believe the “there” with Identica is the open source platform Identica runs on, called Laconica.
Laconica is, on the surface, “Twitter in a box” software. With the exception of SMS integration (coming soon), it has all the same bells and whistles, and was (supposedly) built with many of the lessons learned from Twitter’s well documented problems, which is why folks are hoping it can be a bit more stable.
The real significance of Laconica, though, is its interoperability other installations of itself. Since it’s an open source platform, this allows people to now create a federated network of “micro-blogging” services.
The point about BBS’ I want to make is that while they came in all shapes and sizes, and while a few were very general, most were very niche; and in their niche, they were also very often very locally-oriented (kids: there used to be something called “long distance” phone calls!).
Nonetheless, and no matter how niche, FidoNET (first software and then a protocol) came along and allowed individual BBS’ to connect with one another, effectively federating themselves.
So, what does this have to do with Laconica?
If you think Twitter-style communication is a new form of communication (I do); and if you think that it’s a form of communication which will stick around for a while (I do); and you think distributed, open systems are generally more durable than even the most API friendly centralized services (I do); then, your mind can quickly become attracted to the implications of a platform like Laconica.
Implications
If Identica continues to attract people to its service and developers (also people ;) to Laconica, I imagine a world where we go back to a federated system of services, all offering Twitter-style messaging.
Also, I imagine these federated communities to have niche and especially locally-flavored tints. Last week, for instance, I bought the domain “yorking.net,” imagining a New York-oriented micro-blogging service. With a service like “Yorking,” a micro-blogging outfit could automatically tie-in niche local services, information, partnerships with other content providers, etc — a lot of stuff Twitter itself can’t really do from a global, centralized position.
Now, before I continue, you’re probably wondering what kind of stuff you could do with a federated micro-blogging service vs building on top of Twitter (who gets major points for great APIs). Even putting aside reliability and control issues (as big as they are), think about the freedom to integrate core services people have. Heck, they could rearchitect the entire stack, as long as they abided by the same protocols as the other Laconica providers.
There are also business model implications. Last week, I wrote that Twitter’s best business model would be implementing a mobile P2P payments system. However, with a distributed system, there’s no long a “single best” model, and instead there’s room for business model diversity. Like with BBS’, many Laconica providers would remain free; however, some would have subscription fees, some would be ad supported, some would be private, etc, etc.
Who’s going to be the WELL of micro-blogging communities?
Who’s Poised to Win
Gawker, Gothamist, ApartmentTherapy, Going.com, Thrillist and — more than anyone else — Twitter.
There are two type of organizations poised to win in a distributed micro-blogging world: folks with an existing niche membership/audience who would derive use from the new form of communication; and, folks with who already have people using the new form of communication, like Jaiku, Dodgeball, BrightKite, and — most especially — Twitter.
Conclusion
Who knows whether Identica or Laconica will be around a year from now? One thing I do know is that the discussion surrounding a “distributed Twitter” isn’t going anywhere. If Laconica fails, something else will pop up with more or less the same compelling story. I guess the final question is, as with every eminent movement, when will enough people actually get on board to make something have legs?
UPDATE 1: Please also read my friend Eran Hammer-Lahav’s excellent 3-part series of posts called Scaling a Microblogging Service. He not only explains Twitter’s scaling problems well, he also tries to debunk (from an engineering perspective, rather than my “web trend” perspective) how beneficial a federated system would be.
Twitter should take full advantage of their messaging platform, user base and user disposition to lead in the P2P mobile payments space. They can become the next PayPal, and are more poised to become that than PayPal itself.
Let’s rewind for a second. Last year, I wrote an in depth analysis about mobile payments and concluded that, in order to move forward:
The best option is probably not doing a stand alone payment system. What I mean by that is that mobile payments need to be integrated into a larger online presence, especially if you have a site which is membership based.
…
With WAP and SMS having low penetration (again, sub-50%!), it will be the responsibility of those with an online presence already to move folks onto mobile platforms and mobile payment systems, as carriers and PayPal (VeriSign and Visa Mobile as well) can only do so much.
That was then. Now, Twitter has the growing social network, noteworthy penetration, and is building the core infrastructure to make this happen. Here’s how:
Ubiquity & Penetration
Forget infrastructure, forget great partnerships: the most important place a mobile payments system can start with is ubiquity.
Twitter is far from being a ubiquitous mobile platform, but they have more penetration and usage than any other mobile service and their current user base is the same important group of technology early adopters that PayPal enjoyed when it convinced the world that you could send money to an email address.
Twitterers Know/Learn Machine Language
One of the most missed facts in the mobile payments space is that users of a system have to be comfortable communicating using machine language. This is to say, one must remember and follow certain semantics so the system knows how much you’re paying and to whom.
Twitter users are already trained in this important action. Every time a Twitterer uses the “@,” “d” or even “#” to direct Twitter or annotate the messages it sends through the system, people are using the exact sort of machine language they’d need to use for mobile payments to work.
Having users already comfortable speaking in machine lanaguage is already a huge plus for Twitter. I already “d” you a direct message. Now I’d like to “p” you $5.
Carrier Independent Messaging Infrastructure
Forget, for a moment, that Twitter has had serious scaling problems and buy into, for a moment, to the fact that Twitter is currently rebuilding their entire infrastructure to function like a messaging system.
The significance of this is how Twitter will continue to wrap itself around (not to) the mobile carriers and further integrate with our mobile devices.
When the rearchitecting is all said and done, Twitter will be a carrier independent social messaging platform — one that can harness both the power of the social web AND mobile messaging infrastructure, which will be a powerful one-two punch in the mobile P2P payment space.
Conclusion
If Twitter had a P2P payments system in place today, it would become the most used mobile payments system overnight. Having the ability to send a message like “p innonate $5″ for that beer I just bought you would integrate seamlessly with the way Twitter’s users already interact with their system.
Layering on a payments system would not only make the feature instantly used, it would position Twitter to revolutionize how money is collected and exchanged on the Internet (think of what Twitter’s done for flashmobs and how it could effect fundraising).
Chris Messina is one of the smarter, forward-thinking guys I know. Here’s a great little presentation to flip through and imagine that you were in Copenhagen with him:
Anyway, I’ve written a lot about the AppleTV, and pointed out how I see it as something of The Future in media, advertising and entertainment.
Well, today, more evidence of this inevitability comes to us via The Google: they announced the Google Media Server.
Next to Apple, perhaps no one is more poised to bring web content into the living room in the uber-important lean-back setting than Google: they have the content, they understand the “discovery” aspects of thing pretty well (vast understatement) and, well, they’re damn good at most things they try to do.
Look for the Media Server to be a force.
Lastly, I’ll point you to this great post from Brian Litvack: The Interent Will Be Televised. Brian’s experience and insight in spot on in terms of how folks are discovering that the mix between the web and the livingroom has finally found its time.
Steve Perlman, now we can say you were right all along.
If you have a jailbroken iPhone, go download the Instinctiv app today (found in the Multimedia folder of Installer.app).
Instinctiv is an “instinctive shuffle” application, which changes forever the way you look at the shuffle button on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Before, you’d press shuffle and spend more time skipping through songs you don’t want to hear than listening to ones you actually are in the mood for.
Instinctiv, however, uses its powerful recommendation algorithms and some behavior technology to play exactly what you’re in the mood for. If it guesses incorrectly, only a skip or two will get in on the right track.
I’ve been using Instinctiv for the past day and it’s worked startling well for me. At my desk yesterday, I found myself go for over an hour listening to music on shuffle without pressing “next” even a single time. That sold me.
Anyway, here’s a cute video the team put together to show *why* shuffle without Instinctiv technology can be a disaster. This has happened to all of us, right?
Also as part of the product announcement, Instinctiv announced that it had raised $750,000 from angel investors, Cayuga Venture Fund, and Rose Tech Ventures.
Full disclosure: Rose Tech Ventures is where I serve as Entrepreneur in Residence and Instinctiv CEO Justin Smithline is one of my good friends.
So, where is Silicon Alley?
Twitter’s 
Talk about ideas which came too early and 
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