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- Abolish The Reference Check
- Foxconn Plans New Iowa Plant, Will Hire 10% Of State’s Population
- Fragmentation? Open Source? Buzzwords For Android, And Also Google’s Latest Effort, Google Campus
- Google’s Sergey Brin To Retire: “I’m Really Into Blues Guitar”
- Defining The Television Experience In A Single Word
- Funding Circle, a Kickstarter for SMBs, Picks Up $16M From Index, Union Square Ventures
- Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them
- A Fistful of Smart Media Dollars
- Hackathon Planning In Less Than 10 Steps
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- The ‘So What’ Of The Quantified Self
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| Posted: 01 Apr 2012 08:25 AM PDT  Editor's Note: This guest post is written by Nir Eyal, a founder of two acquired startups and an advisor to several Bay Area companies and incubators. Nir blogs at NirAndFar.com It's time to abolish the reference check. The unpleasant process of calling up a job applicant's former boss to gab about the candidate's pluses and "deltas" is just silly. Maybe if we all just agree to stop doing it the practice will go away, like pay phones and fanny packs. Instead, I've learned a better way to hire that leverages a universal human attribute—namely, the fact that we're all lazy. What's my beef with reference checks? They don't accomplish the job we intend them to do. In a startup, you can't afford to hire B-players. But reference checks, which are intended to do the screening, fail to eliminate these candidates who are just so-so. This happens because the person giving the reference has no incentive to say anything but good things about the candidate. Telling the whole truth, warts and all, could expose the former boss to a defamation lawsuit. And legal action aside, no one likes to speak poorly about an ex-colleague. It's bad karma and just feels icky. Instead of asking a reference to call you and spend an awkward half-hour chitchatting about pretty much nothing, try a technique I've come to call it the "average-need-not-apply" method. Though I'm not sure who invented it, the approach was taught to me by Irv Grousbeck at Stanford. THE EMAILFirst, send the email below to people who have worked with the candidate. This can include the references he or she provided, but it's a good idea to find other people who've worked with the candidate as well. LinkedIn makes finding former co-workers a snap and the more people you send it to, the better it will work. — Dear (past colleague), I am considering hiring (candidate) for the role of (job function). If you're like me, the last thing you have time for is a reference call. Therefore, unless you found (candidate's) work to be EXCEPTIONAL, please just disregard this email. However, if you found (candidate) to be an exceptional employee, in the top 10% of the people you've worked with, I would certainly appreciate hearing from you. Again, if you found (candidate's) work to be less than exceptional, go ahead and disregard this message and have a great day. By the way, as a smart professional, you should subscribe to this wonderful blogger named Nir at NirAndFar.com. He's swell! Sincerely, — THE REPLYAfter you send this email, one of the following three things will happen: Congratulations! You saved yourself from hiring a B-player, or worse. You also saved yourself and the reference from having to conduct an uncomfortable, time-wasting phone call. Scenario B – You receive an email back from the reference informing you that the candidate was in fact exceptional and they'd be happy to tell you more. Congratulations! Looks like you found a star, now it's time to have a chat to confirm the candidate is as great as you think they are and learn more about your soon-to-be employee. Scenario C – You receive a call within 5 minutes of sending your email asking if the candidate is on the market for a new job, and if so, can you have the candidate call the reference back ASAP. THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCESo why does this method work? It leverages the power of choosing a default option. Research by Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein demonstrated how opt-in versus opt-out decisions dramatically affect participation in organ donation programs; using a default option in reference checking allows you to affect results in a similar way. Unlike the traditional reference check method, which elicits an overly positive response in order to preserve social harmony, the "average-need-not-apply" method uses the opposite bias. By giving the reference an easy default — in this case doing nothing — this technique gauges just how great the reference thinks the candidate is. Those who have a strong positive opinion of a candidate take the time to write back. By using this method, an employer can collect more data points on the potential hire with just a few emails instead of scheduling phone calls. In my experience, the results are binary. Most of the emails yield glowing replies or radio silence; both speak volumes. By utilizing a bit of behavioral engineering, employers can make better hiring decisions and make the hiring process better for everyone involved – except maybe the B-players. Photo credit: Omarukai
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| Foxconn Plans New Iowa Plant, Will Hire 10% Of State’s Population Posted: 01 Apr 2012 07:44 AM PDT  After a highly visible meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Foxconn’s founder Terry Gou announced plans to open a sprawling Foxconn factory in Guthrie Center, Iowa, essentially replacing the approximately 2,000 residents of that small town with workers from in and around Iowa. The company will hire 300,000 employees for the new factory, about 10% of Iowa’s population. The plant will include dormitories for workers, multiple swimming pools and Internet cafes, and meal seating for 100,000 employees. The new plant will subsume most of Guthrie Center as well as potentially thousands of acres of farmland around the area. Experts expect further economic growth as small parts manufacturers begin building, importing, and exporting from around Guthrie Center. A local farmer expects the plant to be a windfall. “I hear they eat 200 pigs a day at the plant down in China. We can probably eat double that, easy,” said Harlon Williams, a pig farmer in nearby Fanslers. Apple has not confirmed whether they will request that all of their products be made in Iowa, although a source says the company is assessing the economic impact of building “local” products. “It just makes sense,” said Apple Piper Jaffray Sr Research Analyst Gene Munster . “Maybe this move will make Apple buy RIM and install BlackBerry OS on the iPhone. You know, for business.” Iowa Governor Terry Branstad called the plan a boon to Iowa’s workforce which, along with Google’s data center in Council Bluffs, has turned Iowa into a “high-tech hub” of the Midwest. Manufacturing in Iowa has been in decline since the late 1990s. The Foxconn factory will more than double Iowa’s total manufacturing workforce. Not everyone was pleased with the news. “I’m not moving,” said one Guthrie Center resident Paul Timmins, 56. “And I’m not going to work there.” Timmins was spending a long afternoon at the local coffee shop where he comes each day for lunch. He has been out of work since a disability left him unable to work for the Guthrie Center Golf Club. “I was born here, grandmother buried here, mom is buried here. We want jobs out here for the kids, sure, but this is too much.”
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| Fragmentation? Open Source? Buzzwords For Android, And Also Google’s Latest Effort, Google Campus Posted: 01 Apr 2012 07:08 AM PDT  London's claim to being the hub for tech startups in Europe got a boost last week, when Google opened the doors of its latest effort, Google Campus, a seven-story centre for startups, which it has launched in partnership with several existing organizations, and big ambitions to galvanize some of the tech activity that has already marked out London to take it to the next level. The company is keeping much of its corporate profile at arms length from the project, but ironically, in describing Google’s aims, Campus’ head, Eze Vidra (pictured here), falls back on some of the terminology that has marked out one of Google’s other, massive efforts, Android: the building, he says, is “open source.” And the aim is to do away with some of the “fragmentation” in the London tech scene. Does that, in effect, lay out both the challenges and opportunities that Campus faces going forward? For those who aren’t familiar with the lay of the land in London, Google has taken a 10-year lease on a seven-story building in a part of the city just east of the traditional financial district, in the heart of an area that is already home to many startups. In doing that, Google is not pretending it’s creating something out of nothing: rather, it is trying to make something more concentrated around which the rest of the startup scene in London can revolve. "Let's not kid ourselves. There is already a great emerging cluster of tech in London, but it's been pretty fragmented, with not enough regularity," Vidra told me. He believes Campus could become the greatest concentration of startups under one roof in the UK, and even Europe. To that end, Google has partnered with four existing organizations already focused on building up startups — co-working space Central Working, early stage mentoring and investment program Seedcamp, community and workspace TechHub and accelerator program Springboard — to sublet and help manage some of that space and to bring promising companies on board. TechHub, for example, is migrating a large number of its members to the new building and will use hire out its existing space to companies that are in the next stage of development and need to take out larger digs. (Disclosure – TechCrunch’s European Editor Mike Butcher is a co-founder of TechHub, but the facility is run day-to-day by MD Elizabeth Varley). So far the Google Campus concept has picked up a lot of interest, with 800 initial applications for workspace, 90 percent of it already allocated, 4,500 registered users and 60 permanent residents on site. But Vidra says he wants to add more than just physical proximity into the equation. In addition to offering a communal cafe space, Google plans to program events "every day", not just for those who are residents there but others, too. "In San Francisco, there is stuff going on every day. There is more of a defined community. Now we are the London community. I want to create that kind of regularity. I want every entrepreneur passing through London, instead of working from Starbucks, to have a place to go. I want this to be where angels grab a coffee, and VCs come to seal deals." In Eze Vidra, Google has picked a guy who says that he has startup culture in his blood — blogging about, speaking to, being involved in and mentoring startups for years before taking this role. (Previously at Google he was in charge of strategic partnerships, spearheading services like Google Shopping in Spain and Local Shopping in the UK.) "This is what I do for fun," Vidra said. "You can't fake passion." (And, I should add, his enthusiasm is infectious. He even got me to agree, in theory, to the idea of helping out with and going on a bike ride from London to Paris. Startups on wheels for a good cause being the basic idea.) Google Campus also represents one more instance of Google trying to get closer to its own original roots and away from its leviathan, corporate image that has led some to compare Google less to cool Internet upstarts and more to Microsoft, an analogy that has even seen Google become the subject of antitrust investigations for its dominance. If you think about it, said Vidra, thirteen years ago Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in a garage: "This is just a better garage and a good way to give back. Any success from Campus will be about the success of the startups." And Google has tried to put a bit of the thrown-together nature associated with startup ventures into this project, too. "Four weeks ago, this was still a construction site!" Vidra exclaimed to me. He described Campus' oversubscribed opening party the other week as a "beta" event: some issues with trash and two broken toilets, "but at least the WiFi held up." That's been manifested in other unflattering ways, too: Others I talked to around the building noted the not-always there Internet connection and the fact that there is still no direct Ethernet in place for residents as yet. And the cafe — which Eze told me is envisioned as the "hub" of all activity, with dark, cushioned nooks for coders to hack away; big open tables for collaborative working; and your usual mix of tables and cushioned chairs — had nary a soul in it when I sat down for a latte. These are things that are, of course, likely to evolve over the coming weeks. You might quite naturally ask, "What's in it for Google in all this?" Indeed, while Vidra talks about the ethos of Google for putting people first, another has also been about creating products and services that help advance its own business model — specifically around advertising. Vidra brushes off questions of whether Google is just creating a space to make it easier for Google itself to find the next big thing a little more easily. "We bought and invested in companies before Campus," he says. "We didn't need to sign a lease for 10 years to find them." And for those hoping that coming into Campus will help catch Google's eye, it apparently won't be any easier than it was before. Vidra says that at this point there is "no plan to invest in any of these companies. Not at the moment. It was not the intention behind why it was set up." But he does also point out that, while he is the only full-time Google employee at Campus, it will be a great way for other Googlers to also touch more of the startup scene: he said that a full 25 percent of Google's London office (in a totally different part of town, intentionally) said they wanted to get involved with Campus either as volunteers or mentors. Naturally, that will mean a whole lot more help and suggestions for how to use Google products…if that's what developers want to use: "If you're doing anything like A/B testing on Android, Google+ or Maps, then speaking to the right people can be very useful." But that does not mean there will be Google shoved down people's throats. "I am operating campus as an open source building," he said. "Google has created a platform here and is making sure that platform is robust. Then we are partnering with great partners to make it even better." On the subject of investment: interestingly, Google has kept VCs — the focus of so much attention from the startup community already, and clearly an important part of it — out of direct involvement with Google Campus. "I think investors are an integral part of the community, and I'd like to have a lot of interaction with them through pitch nights and office hours and have them being involved as mentors," Vidra explained. "But choosing one or two [as partners] sends the wrong message to the rest." It could also mean potentially more expectation on securing deals with resident startups, which might also be a conflict of interest for Google itself. So what’s next for Google and its Campus concept? It looks like more of these could be in the cards in the future. Vidra says that London was chosen for this project because of two big and apparent problems: the price of real estate and the community lacking a "density" in its network — but these are problems other cities have, too, and they are problems that should be addressed by other companies as well — not just Google: "If this succeeds I hope to see more campuses opening up, but the playing field is wide open for other companies to get involved too."
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| Google’s Sergey Brin To Retire: “I’m Really Into Blues Guitar” Posted: 01 Apr 2012 06:12 AM PDT  Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin has expressed interest in retiring “in a year or so” to take up the intense study of blues guitar, sources inside Google say. The decision places the company at a crossroads in terms of management succession and a replacement is already being groomed. Brin has been learning blues guitar from a number of major players including Eric Clapton (who was given $40,000 for a series of three lessons in a Palo Alto park), Keith Richards, and Ralph Macchio. Those closest to Brin noticed a change in the billionaire as he began toting his electric guitar, a Fender Stratocaster he called “Beulah,” to many staff meetings along with a portable Pignose amp he had attached to his belt. He traded a number of riffs with VP Marissa Mayer at a recent off-site all-hands meeting that Brin called in order to show off how he learned to play Cocaine. Mayer is an accomplished slide player and plays at Mountain View clubs under the stage name “Lady M&M.” Brin’s decision is an open secret at the company. “He has a little belt clip for the amp. It’s one of those small ones that runs on batteries. It’s on his waist most of the day. That’s where he used to carry his Blackberry,” said one Google exec who asked to remain anonymous. Brin has been known to grab his guitar during meetings and wail out a long, expressive series of notes evoking the concepts of hard-travelin’, women who done him wrong, and the green light being Brin’s baby and the red light being his mind. He has led a joint Google/NASA project to identify Robert Johnson’s crossroads and has hooked up small, sensitive microphones to Google Self-Driving Cars that prowl the Southern states in order to pick up snippets of “real” music played at fish frys, juke joints, and honky-tonks. In a leaked memo, Brin explained that the pressures of Google have become too much and that “don’t be evil” doesn’t mean “don’t be soulful.” Brin plants to quit by 2015 and “maybe go down to Baja” to listen to real “people’s music” and then move to Nashville where he will open a small recording studio focused on roots acts. “I’m going down the road feeling bad,” wrote Brin in the email. “And I ain’t gonna be treated this way.”
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| Defining The Television Experience In A Single Word Posted: 01 Apr 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Editor’s note: Jeremy Toeman is a founder of Dijit Media, a startup whose vision is to create the ultimate "hyperpersonalised social TV guide." mobile experience. Jeremy has over 11 years experience in the convergence of digital media, mobile entertainment, social entertainment, social TV and consumer technology working with companies like Sling Media, Mediabolic, Boxee, Clicker, VUDU, and more. Follow him on Twitter @jtoeman. Escape. Yes, that’s it, escape, that’s whole secret right there. Some say “entertainment” but I believe that is merely a subset of escape, as an experience. And to be clear, I do agree that people choose to watch television as a form of entertainment. But when you consider a “typical” 4+ hour session of watching TV in a “typical” North American household, I think it’s a little beyond being entertained. Why are reality shows so popular? Especially the trainwreck ones? You escape your life to watch someone else’s – oh, and the other person seems to be fighting more than you, more likely to end up in jail than you, and you are certainly, definitely, positively never ever going to get voted off some island. Escape! Swing around to the other end of the spectrum, shows like Planet Earth on Discovery. You escape by watching hours of beautiful scenery and animals floating by. Plus the occasional alligator eating anything it wants doesn’t hurt either. It’s dreamlike in a way. Escape! Now on to technology and the race to the “future of TV.” So far, the future bodes… poorly. Based on the three key pillars of the future of TV, as we define it today: Smart TVs: Rather than turning on TVs and escaping into the programming, Smart TVs take time to boot up, then let users escape into the menus. Where they navigate and navigate and navigate to find some piece of content they want. And then they do it again, and again, and again. It’s interruptive, frustrating, and far from escape (in a word: sucky). And hence will have to evolve (or more hopefully in my opinion, devolve) into less “smart” and more “simply connected” TVs. Social TV: Instead of letting users escape into their shows, Social TV mandates that users “pay attention” to Twitter, Facebook, or some dedicated wonderful app, all for the benefit of chatter with other users. While this certainly does contribute to the social connection factor, which is a key attribute of the overall TV content lifecycle, it’s hard to see how this becomes sticky in the long run. Social TV needs to put less demands on a “real time” interaction, and instead find ways to create community, conversation, and discovery in a more passive, asynchronous fashion. Second Screen: Thanks to second screen apps, instead of escaping away from interactivity, users can, in some way, play along with the show they are watching. I’m as much of an IMDB/Wikipedia nut as they come (then again, I’ve been known to watch DVDs while listening to the director’s commentary tracks), but even I don’t feel the need to know who every actor is, what other parts they’ve played, and what other nuance about each and every scene happened. And I certainly don’t think it needs to happen while I’m watching. Yes, I like many others pull out a second screen device (hint: iPad) frequently while watching TV. And just like many others, I’m using it to play Draw Something (another form of escape), not read obscure trivia (effort/work). The moment someone pulls out their phone or iPad to “interact with” the show they are watching, they stop watching the show. My newest golden rule of creating TV technology and experiences is this: If the product doesn’t take “escape” into account in a major way, it is utterly doomed to fail. So to TV, device, service, and app makers – think about how people really do watch TV. They aren’t changing, no matter how much you try to force it down their throats. Yes, you can get some limited adoption, and hopefully that’ll be enough to build a business around. But more likely is it’ll be a novelty, gimmick, or fad, and won’t last as many seasons as Fletch’s amazingly disappointing talk show.
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| Funding Circle, a Kickstarter for SMBs, Picks Up $16M From Index, Union Square Ventures Posted: 01 Apr 2012 12:48 AM PDT  Some great news for small business owners, and perhaps a sign of more crowdsourced funding coming to the U.S.: the UK-based Funding Circle — a kind of Kickstarter for lending to smaller enterprises — has just announced that it has raised a $16 million round to further build up its business of enabling non-bank lending to small enterprises. The investment included participation from existing investor Index Ventures as well as new investor Union Square Ventures — a sign of how Funding Circle may have its sights set on taking advantage of new crowdfunding laws and expanding to the U.S. This Series B round takes the total raised by Funding Circle to $21 million. Funding Circle has made some impressive strides since launching in the UK 18 months ago: it’s facilitated lending to 670 small businesses in the UK, with funds totaling £28 million ($45 million), representing annual growth of over 400 percent. More than 10,000 people have registered on the site to date; the company claims “inflation-beating average yields of 8.4 percent” for investors. Funding Circle says it is collectively currently lending £1 million ($1.6 million) to small businesses per week through its site. The startup is a sign of the times not only in its crowdsourced, P2P roots, but also in the fact that it is aimed at bypassing banks, the subject of so much criticism for their practices over the last several years — the thinking goes: why give them the benefit of making money off of lending when you can find others to do that instead? And there is something decidedly more efficient-sounding about Funding Circle compared to banks: whereas it can take months to finalize a bank loan and get the money flowing, Funding Circle claims that a deal can be secured and funded through its site within days. There is also a big opportunity there to take some business away from the banks: Funding Circle notes that currently some 90 percent of small business lending in the UK still goes through the traditional bank channel. There is some state impetus behind Funding Circle in the UK that is somewhat similar to what we’ve been seeing in the U.S. Whereas the Senate in Washington has been trying to make it easier for crowdfunding to become a more legitimate way of kick-starting small business enterprises, in the UK the government has also proposed a plan in its most recent Budget to create facilities to lend £100 million ($160 million) through “non-bank channels.” Funding Circle has not said whether it plans to take its business outside of the UK at this point, but the fact that they’ve signed on USV — which funds Kickstarter, among others — as a backer is a strong vote of confidence that this project may try to grow beyond its current borders. For now, Funding Circle is saying that the capital from this round “will be used to continue to innovate around Funding Circle's service, increase marketing presence and drive recruitment.” The company wants to double headcount in the next year. Interestingly, Funding Circle has chosen to keep any references to Kickstarter completely out of its own statements on the new round of investment: “This deal represents the next step in the growth of Funding Circle and will help us to create a lasting alternative to banks for small business loans. Index has been a prominent supporter and advocate of what the business is trying to achieve, and we are delighted to continue our partnership together. We are also excited to welcome Union Square Ventures as co-investors. They bring with them a wealth of expertise and experience having worked with some of the most recognisable technology businesses in the world, including Twitter, Zynga and Foursquare,” Samir Desai, co-founder of Funding Circle, said in a statement. Another co-founder, James Meekings, meanwhile, says that the UK small business lending market is currently worth about £70 billion in total. “I don't see a reason why we couldn't eventually get to a stage where we had about 10% of that market,” he told the Sunday Times (behind paywall). Funding Circle offers a couple of basic models to would-be users of the service, taking a £1,200 transaction fee in the process: one person can fund many different projects; and one business can borrow from several people based on what interest rates people are offering in an auction/bidding process. The loans can cover working capital, expansion capital, asset finance and one-off business expenses and range in value from £5,000 to £250,000. "We believe this approach of financing businesses – away from banks and towards a marketplace model – is powerful and more beneficial to all participants,” Andy Weissman, partner at Union Square Investment, added in the statement. Other participants in this most recent round included existing angel investors Jon Moulton (founder of Better Capital), Edward Wray (co-founder of Betfair) and Charles Dunstone (founder of The Carphone Warehouse).
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| Creating Victims And Then Blaming Them Posted: 31 Mar 2012 11:41 PM PDT  Girls Around Me is a perfect storm of everything too many people find creepy about the new mobile age. Download an app to your iPhone, link up your Facebook account and Girls Around Me will find girls around you who’ve recently checked into Foursquare near your location and return their Facebook profiles. Before Foursquare shut off access to their API and they were pulled from the App Store, Girls Around Me met your 21st century stalking needs, complete with in-app purchases. It is an undoubtedly fascinating story, raising too many issues to discuss in one article. But I found myself with a growing sense of discomfort after reading much of the coverage and discussion surrounding the app. This stemmed from two points that were raised again and again:
It was the first point that initially raised my hackles, because the tone was too similar to statements I had heard before. Not from those writing about this, but from those who believe that young black men shouldn’t be wearing hoodies, or that single women with two children shouldn’t be out at nightclubs. Those who believe in acceptable standards of behavior for groups of people, and that victims of crimes who deviated from these modes of behavior brought these crimes on. Victim shaming simmers throughout the coverage, unsaid and unintentional, but so does the worst-case scenarios of sexual assault that remain largely unspoken but very clearly imagined. Unsurprisingly, as this a deeply uncomfortable and controversial subject. Perhaps my ears were too finely-tuned by years of education at a liberal college campus. I may be alone; the majority of opinions formed in the last two days seem to agree that people, especially women, must be educated about the privacy implications of Facebook. There is a discussion to be had about the default privacy settings of Facebook. But when I hear people proclaim the importance of educating these presumably ignorant young women about the dangers of Facebook, it is just a little too close to comfort to those seeking to educate women about the dangers of hemlines that end above the knee. I do not mean to paint these people as villains. My purpose in writing this is not to call out anyone, but to think of how we are perhaps perpetuating a dangerous way of thinking about these situations. Consider what these statements about education imply. What is the result the educators want after these people have been educated? And what if those educated choose to continue their behavior? What of those who decide to live in public? The camgirls we have met? The ones that share their lives with abandon? What is the lesson being imparted? What is the grade women get if they are victims of a crime after choosing to ignore the clicked tongue, the waggled finger, the raised eyebrow? We are focusing our education on the wrong people. We do not blame the victims. It is not their fault. The fault is with the perpetrator. That is where educational efforts should be directed. But here’s where it gets tricky. Because to me there are two perpetrators in situations like these. Those who committed the crime, obviously, but also those who make apps like Girls Around Me. In this situation there is no first perpetrator. The horrific tableau is entirely imagined. That does not absolve the second. How much blame do the developers of Girls Around Me deserve? Some give them a pass. They have been described as nice. To which my only response is, really? I submit to evidence that these nice guys present women as shiny metallic objects, targets to be taken down, complete with radar imagery. These nice guys developed an app that made some who first saw it think the women within were prostitutes. I argue that these nice guys couldn’t have been ignorant that many of the Girls Around would have been horrified to know they were on it. Why is it reasonable to not blame gun manufacturers, or cigarette companies, or McDonald’s, but Girls Around Me? Because these developers are treating others as objects they have the right to use and manipulate without their permission or their knowledge. I’m sure it’s all very legal according to the terms of service we accepted when we created accounts on Facebook or Twitter or Foursquare. That does not excuse the clear moral failing that the makers of Girls Around Me demonstrated. But, you may argue, the women signed up to be a part of this when they signed up to be on Facebook. No. What they signed up for was to be on Facebook. Our identities change depending on our context, no matter what permissions we have given to the Big Blue Eye. Denying us the right to this creates victims who then get blamed for it. “Well,” they say, “you shouldn’t have been on Facebook if you didn’t want to…” No. Please recognize them as a person. Please recognize what that means. This is all part of a larger problem right now, not just limited to shady apps like Girls Like Me but exhibited frequently by the supposedly-reputable companies springing up that seek to tap into the vast troves of personal data we have given to the Facebooks of the world, hoping to strike it rich mining this data from servers around the world. These companies make assumptions about the permissions we have supposedly granted them because of permissions we have granted another. No. Stop it. Stop collecting money on other’s behalf. Stop promising the time of people who had never agreed to give it. Stop creating profiles of people and assigning them a score they never asked for. Stop speaking for us. Stop denying us agency. “Others find value in our service…” No. People have different motivations. “We’re trying to make you money…” No. You are trying to make money and assume people will be fine with your methods as long as you share some of that money with them. “You can always opt-out…” No. Please. No. Wait — I’ve reconsidered. That’s fine. Just tell me when you want me to stop hitting you. Stop speaking for me. There is an extremely fine line to be walked in these situations involving identity and too many companies are on the wrong side of it, which makes me think that it must be very fine indeed if very smart people can’t see it. They can’t see the difference between a person finding a site that collects their most favorited tweets harmless and that same person being irritated that a profile was created for them on a site that seems to do something very similar. The line is this: when you begin speaking for another person without their permission you are doing something wrong. When you create another identity for them without their permission you are doing something wrong. When you make people feel victimized who previously did not feel that way you are doing something wrong. Please. Stop. Amit Runchal blogs at Interactioned.
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| A Fistful of Smart Media Dollars Posted: 31 Mar 2012 06:00 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Jay Fulcher is CEO of video technology company Ooyala. This is a follow-up to his columns “Fear And Loathing In Online Video” and “One Screen To Rule Them All“. Follow him on Twitter @jbfulcher. The rise of smart, multi-screen streaming media is fundamentally changing the TV experience. This year, for the first time ever, Americans will watch more movies over the Internet than on physical media like DVD and Blu-ray. Ooyala's Video Index Report found that non-desktop video plays doubled in the fourth quarter of 2011. Tablet sales continue to explode. People now spend more time on Xbox Live streaming movies and TV shows than playing video games. And consumer electronics manufacturers are gearing up to ship 125 million Smart TVs in 2014. Simply put, TV is no longer constrained to a single box, a single screen, or a single UI. Smart networks, broadcasters, studios and service providers recognize that there's real money to be made as TV moves into the information age. People are not only watching more movies and TV shows online, they are paying for access to premium video content. Recent studies reveal that over half of American tablet owners paid to watch a movie in Q4 2011 and more than 40% paid for TV content. These are strong signs that we've come a long way from Jeff Zucker's "digital pennies" remark back in 2008. To make the most digital dollars, new TV technologies should securely deliver media to viewers on their terms. Audiences today have personal, portable ways to consume content. There are more screens, platforms and devices to display their favorite shows, and more ways than ever to rent, purchase, gift and download video content. It is an exciting time for both TV viewers and TV content providers. Innovation is a tricky business, however, and change can be hard. There are bound to be a few missteps and failures as we invent the next generation of TV. This isn't a new phenomenon. For every VHS recorder there is a Betamax; for every DVD, a Laserdisc. But there will also be key victories and new revenue streams as media and technology combine to create the TV experience of tomorrow. Here's how forward-thinking media companies will profit from the new TV. Big Data & Analytics More than a buzzword, Big Data is changing the way we look at information — and the world around us. The ability to quickly extract actionable insights from vast sets of data has already become a business imperative in some sectors. This trend can only grow. Corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations will all leverage distributed computing to gain insights into their operations and their constituencies and maximize efficiencies. Big Data and analytics will become mission critical for major media companies as TV moves to IP delivery. Firms that fail to invest in data-driven solutions will be at a severe disadvantage in the marketplace. Putting analytics tools in place to collect and analyze key metrics enables video publishers to see how people interact with their content — and understand where and why it's underperforming (something that was impossible before). These insights will inform critical business decisions that impact audiences and drive revenue. Intelligent Monetization As we all know, the easiest way to make more money in media is to sell more advertising. But simply inserting more pre-roll ads into a video stream, for example, quickly falls prey to the law of diminishing marginal returns. An initial uptick in revenue is followed by a substantial dropoff in ad completion rates, as viewers quickly grow weary of the oversupply of irrelevant ad messages. Smart monetization strategies go hand-in-hand with analytics. With the right tools in place, video publishers can analyze how variables like ad load (the number of ads served per video) and ad placement (where ads are inserted within the video) impact viewer engagement. It's even possible to find the optimal rental price for, say, a feature-length movie. And soon it will be commonplace to match ads to viewers based on social graph interests, location, device type, and viewing history. Smart video publishers will use analytics to simultaneously accomplish two somewhat conflicting goals: (1) maximize digital revenue, and (2) create and/or maintain an optimal viewing experience for their viewers. Personalized Content A streaming media strategy based on Big Data computing, powerful analytics and smart monetization results in a personalized viewing experience across all connected screens. Content producers and providers will attract and retain more viewers when they deliver highly relevant content to their viewers, and presented in a way the viewer prefers. Insights derived from vast data collection ensures that the right content is delivered to the right viewer at the right time. The future of personalized television is geo-targeted, interactive content. Viewers who opt to share data will receive a better experience: location-specific ads, augmented reality media experiences, interactive games and content targeted for their viewing history, network and device. Content publishers will also tap into social networks to deliver meaningful content that is informed by viewer interests. As social media continues to evolve, expect video to play a bigger role in how we relate to one another online. In Sum… The TV of tomorrow will be smart. It will understand who is watching, where they are, and what shows they enjoy. The end result will be a more personal TV experience that spans multiple screens and locations. TV is changing quickly. There is a real need for companies to recognize and get out ahead of this change. With the right tools (like those offered by my company Ooyala), fistfuls of digital dollars are there for the taking.
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| Hackathon Planning In Less Than 10 Steps Posted: 31 Mar 2012 05:15 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Erin Tao is a business development associate at Aviary — and, yes, its hackathon organizer. Follow her on Twitter @etaooo. It’s been about a month since Photo Hack Day 2, and I’ve recovered sufficiently from my hackathon hangover – a very legitimate ailment, though less literal than a SXSW one – to put some coherent thoughts together. A number of people have reached out, asking for tips, thoughts, and advice on throwing hackathons; only now that the second one is under my proverbial belt do I feel slightly more qualified to speak on the subject. There's so much involved in terms of planning that I can't adequately address the important points in a single post. The emphasis of this article is the requisite planning, whereas the follow-up will focus on best practices for actual execution of demos, which are the most challenging and stressful element of hackathons. Why organize hackathons? You want a strong showing of local technical talent, who will presumably use the next 24 hours to create awesome things. You also want to establish your company or organization as a thought leader and community mobilizer in a particular space. In lieu of cash, the currency of hackathons is the collective goodwill that builds relationships and carries on long after the event; though possible, it’s not the ideal shindig for turning a profit. Why attend hackathons? If you’re a company: Nothing gives your API the same degree of exposure as providing a room full of developers with the opportunity to do some tinkering firsthand. Better yet, you have the ability to be present for the duration of the hacking process. There are very few chances to get such immediate, fresh feedback on what's confusing, what's awesome, and what you can be doing better. If you’re a participant: You need an arena to demonstrate your coding prowess. You don’t mind missing out on sleep. You also don’t mind subsisting on pizza, beer, and flat soda for 24 hours. Most importantly, you want an opportunity to participate in an event that really brings your local developer community together: you’ll meet fellow hackers, see what they’re up to, and show what you can do. Why would companies want to get involved in the first place? I've gotten this question (which I consider absolutely fair) a number of times. Nowadays, hackathons possess a much broader appeal; in fact, they provide one of the most direct forms of exposure to the startup scene and the technical talent in it. No longer are they niche events that are only relevant for a university computer science department: a perfect example is how the original Photo Hack Day was the first of NASDAQ’s many event sponsorships, such as Shelby.tv’s hackday.tv, the foursquare hackathon, and the hackNY benefit / fashion show, Raise Cache. Nokia’s headline support of Photo Hack Day 2 enabled them to reach mobile developers and showcase the platform to the Windows Phone community – in addition to New York City startups – as a whole. Big companies are beginning to understand that hackathons offer the brand visibility they desire as well as the audience they're trying to target – and that audience is quite receptive. Yes, developers aren't exactly fond of being pitched to, but they're undeniably curious: what new APIs are out there? How they can build on them, and what can be made? Each Demo Day I've had the pleasure of attending has proven that these answers are limited solely by the imagination and technical expertise of the hacker. This begs the question "Where else does – or can – this sort of thing happen?", which encapsulates everything that is awesome and slightly magical (yes, seriously) about hackathons. Interested in throwing a hackathon of your own? Organization and the pre-event legwork are everything. Here are the major points you must cover: 1. Pick a theme. A good approach is to explore existing verticals: at Aviary, we picked photos because of their relevance to our API / SDK in addition to the abundance of companies building awesome products in the space. If community is your primary concern (and it should, at a minimum, be a key motivation for throwing one in the first place), keep your role explicitly neutral. Don't name the hackathon after your company (this is why we opted for "Photo Hack Day" rather than "Aviary Hack Day"). Most importantly, don't privilege your own product. 2. Leave ample time to plan. Depending upon the scale of the event, you need anywhere from three to six weeks to properly prepare for the event. The first Photo Hack Day was organized in three incredibly frantic weeks, and Photo Hack Day 2 – a much more extensive endeavor, in terms of attendees, offerings, and general scale – took over two months. 3. Lock down a venue. For obvious reasons, nothing substantive can happen until this is taken care of. General Assembly is the go-to hackathon destination in New York City, but other alternatives exist: the Spotify hackathon was held at SPiN, hackNY continues to be held at NYU, and plenty more take place in a range of corporate venues such as Microsoft, Google, or Aol ventures. 4. Secure sponsorships. To be sure that the broadest range of potential sponsors can participate, use tiered sponsorships and keep price points relevant to what you can provide in exchange for support. This consists of varying degrees of product / API exposure, as well as branding opportunities. Generally speaking, the most expensive elements of a hackathon are venues, food, and prize money – contributions from a headline sponsor should cover the cost of at least one of these. That being said, as an organizer, it's crucial to strike a balance between making an event worth a sponsor’s time and preventing the weekend from degenerating into a pitch-fest. Your priority is to throw the best event possible for hackers and the tech community. After all, when builders and innovators are exposed to sponsors in ways that don’t feel forced, everyone wins. 5. Rally the interested parties. Tap into existing developer networks – Meetup is perfect for this – and make the appropriate reach-outs to sponsors and companies with cool, useful APIs. If a company with an irrelevant API contacts you, it’s perfectly okay to tell them that the event may not be the best use of their time. You save them the time, effort, and the risk of being disappointed, while sparing developers from demos of technology they won’t use. Figure out who can help you on the day of the event: coworkers, volunteers, or friends alike. If the venue offers on-site help, be sure you establish, in writing, who is taking care of what, and what time you can rely on them to be where. When you don’t know how the hell the A/V system works or where extra power cables are stored, these people will help fend off the waves of potential panic attacks. 6. Market like heck to potential attendees – and don't forget students! In addition to the obvious press reach outs, look for influencers who can spread the word via social media and word of mouth. Attend events, happy hours, and contact listservs: a few great places to start include StartupDigest, Gary’s Guide, or incubator mailing lists. Ask sponsors for help with cross-promotion and leverage their networks; after all, it’s in their best interest to have the widest audience. We've had great success with student-hackers, so reach out to the computer science departments at local universities. At Photo Hack Day 2, Columbia senior Yufei Liu created Synviary and walked away with the Aviary company prize, People’s Choice, and First Place, winning a grand total of $7,500. Abe Stanway and Misha Ponizil, students at Rutgers and NYU, respectively, won People’s Choice and Second Place at Photo Hack Day for Honey Badger. Their bounty? $4,000. If, according to one redditor, neon wayfarers, American Spirits, and PBR are ingredients for the hipster beartrap, then free pizza, free beer, and the potential to win hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars over the course of a weekend is the student developer equivalent. Their attendance is absolutely worth the time it takes to reach them. For those of us a few years removed from college, we can't allow ourselves to forget that the next wave of members in the New York tech community will be new graduates. 7. (Slightly) over-order on food. I can speak on this matter as someone who has epically over and under-ordered. If you over-order, it sucks to see food wasted (especially if you're footing the presumably expensive bill), but it's nothing compared to facing a maelstrom of empty, angry developer bellies. There should be two golden rules concerning hackathons and food: (1) don't f*ck up the coffee, because nothing is more endearing than dragging developers out of bed on a Saturday morning and depriving them of caffeine, and (2) don't f*ck up the meals. (In the interest of full disclosure: I have done both.) If you think it is remotely feasible for a room of over 200 young men and women to finish the spread, trust me – they will. Also, it helps tremendously to ask attendees to note any special dietary needs when they sign up for the event. To give you an idea of why you should oh-so-slightly over-order on food, here's what hackers at Photo Hack Day 2 consumed in a span of thirty-two hours: 250 bagels, 300+ tacos, 300+ burritos, 12 buckets of BBQ chicken, 20 quarts of pulled pork, 12 pans of cornbread, 20 quarts of mashed potatoes, 150 cookies, 80 boxes of pizza (640 slices total), 27 cases of water (432 bottles total), 384 beers, and 28 cases of soda (448 cans total). Hackathon organizers, do yourself and your hackers a favor by including an extra pizza (or ten) in your catering order. 8. Make sure there’s (a wide range of) cool stuff to give away. There’s a strong correlation between the quality of prizes and the quality of hacks. For the first Photo Hack Day, Twilio gave away an 11″ MacBook Air, while Shutterstock gave away a Nikon dSLR. I’m sure you can guess whose APIs were well represented on Sunday. Push participating companies to sponsor a prize and give them the freedom to choose the winner. It’s a win-win situation for everyone: companies want developers to hack on their APIs, developers (like the rest of us) don’t mind material motivation, and attendees want to see cool hacks. 9. Remember that, regardless of how much you prepare, sh*t may – and probably will – go wrong. It's just a matter of figuring out what constitutes an acceptable mishap and what is debilitating, and building safeguards to ensure that the latter doesn't happen. Mishap: an order of twenty Hawaiian pizzas, when you meant to order pepperoni. Percolators end up brewing what looks like dirty water, rather than coffee. Not enough small or medium tees to go around. Compare this to the disastrous counterpart: the wifi cuts out. Projector breaks during demos. Not enough power outlets. See what I mean? Once all of these moving pieces are in place, the foundation is set for a solid hackathon. Solid does not mean smoothly run, by any means – execution of the actual event is an entirely new beast. (Credit must be given where it is due. Everything I learned about building some semblance of order and structure came from John Britton, whose knowledge once existed as a seven-page Word doc that he kindly shared with me. John's thoughts have since turned into a more cohesive article by Ben Doernberg, which I would absolutely recommend as a starting point.) [image from Hackers]
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| OMGPOP Draws Zynga’s Daily User Traffic Up By 25% Posted: 31 Mar 2012 04:25 PM PDT  As the dust settles after Zynga’s purchase of New York mobile social game developer OMGPOP, the company is visibly taking on a new shape. A 25% larger and more mobile one. That’s the percentage growth of its total daily active user base, when you add in the 14.6 million people playing mobile sketching app Draw Something to its existing 55 million players. The game has gone from 1.7 million to 14.6 over the month of March, based on app tracking service AppData. Today, it’s nearly the combined size of Zynga’s two biggest hits on Facebook, CityVille and Texas Hold’em Poker. Which means Draw Something’s share of the market is likely to grow in the coming months. CityVille was launched at the end of 2010, and Poker years before. Zynga has milked them along, and will no doubt continuing doing so far into the future. But, they’re never likely to grow significantly beyond their current sizes, based on the overall life cycle of these games. Draw Something is a blank slate. It’s been out for around two months, and could keep growing. Zynga has the analytics and marketing skills to help with that. And it also has the experience keeping traffic up across its games on social and mobile platforms. Its core mobile franchise to date, Words With Friends, has the second-most daily active users out of any Zynga game, with 8.1 million daily actives. The user count comes with a caveat here. Only Zynga knows the non-deduplicated daily unique user number. It’s quite possible that users of other Zynga games are already playing Draw Something, particularly with Words With Friends. That’s still good, in that they might be paying for virtual goods across titles. But it also means the total traffic is lower than it looks here. The big long-term potential isn’t just that Zynga has all these users from this game. It also has the ability to promote its other games, including any it’s planning on launching in coming months, to this vibrant user base. That could extend the value of the game far beyond its own cycle. The $210 million bet on OMGPOP has the obvious risks, too. The acquired company has never made a hit even close to this big. And Draw Something may have a shorter life cycle — Zynga hasn’t had a chance to see how long this type of sketching-sharing game can stick around.
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| Tech Jobs And Airbnb Are Squeezing The SF Housing Market — Here’s What To Do Posted: 31 Mar 2012 03:30 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Jon Sterling has been in the real estate business since 2002. Follow him on Twitter @mistersterling. Have you been searching for a place to live in San Francisco lately? You're not the only one thinking @$#%&! on a daily basis. Forget the speculation about a tech bubble. This is a real estate bubble. It's a common scene on a weekend morning: A line of people waiting for an open house at an apartment that just hit the market, with rental applications, credit reports, and certified checks in-hand. The first one who qualifies wins the prize. SOMA condos under $600,000 (now considered "entry level") are going under contract in a matter of days, often with multiple offers. So far in 2012, the median market time for sold condos in SOMA is 42 days. That's 42 days from the time it goes for sale to the time the title changes hands. In the past month, that number has dropped to 34 days. When it comes to real estate transactions, 34 days is fast. Very fast. I have a client who wanted to see two condos that hit the market last week ($589,000 and $599,000). Both were under contract before we had a chance to see them, and both had multiple offers. New tech jobs are increasing the housing demand and causing pain for buyer and renters, but that's not the only way technology companies are adding to the Silicon Valley housing woes. The success of short-term rental companies like Airbnb and HomeAway are contributing to the lack of inventory as well. The short-term rental companies have provided liquidity for homeowners and renters by making it convenient for them to rent out rooms, apartments, and entire houses. Owners and renters are now able to subsidize some (or all) of their monthly payments, which limits the number of units on the market. If a tenant loses his job, he can rent his bedroom and sleep on the couch to generate some cash. If a condo owner quits her corporate gig to launch a startup, she can stay with friends for the weekend while visitors rent her place. A few years ago, those units would have gone on the market out of necessity. Today, the classic illiquid asset — real estate — has a new kind of liquidity. The San Francisco Business Times reported that 8,000 new tech jobs are expected to be created in San Francisco this year. That much job growth is great news for the local economy, landlords, and home sellers, and will have a positive trickle-down effect. At the same time, that is very bad news for renters and buyers. Many of the new jobs will be filled by people who already live and work in tech in San Francisco, so 8,000 new jobs does not necessarily mean 8,000 new residents. Nonetheless, aggressive hiring by tech firms is contributing to the housing scarcity. The war for engineering talent has expanded across the country, and often includes hefty relocation packages. So what should you do? If you are a renter, use your network — Facebook, Twitter, Path, co-workers, and anyone else who is connected in San Francisco. If you can nab a place before anybody else knows about it, you win. Also, walk the neighborhoods where you'd like to live and look for "For Rent" signs in windows. Not all landlords use Craigslist. Have a current copy of your credit report handy and move quickly when you find a place that might work. If you are a buyer, find a great advisor. Most of the time that will be a real estate agent, but it doesn't have to be. A great real estate agent will bring your properties as soon as they hit the market, and maybe even before they hit the market, in addition to helping you navigate the home buying process. Also, be smart about your bidding strategy. This is not a market where low-ball offers are going to work. If you are a seller, thank your lucky stars. Most sellers in the country are not as fortunate as you. Just don't gloat, okay? If you are lucky enough to have an awesome place at a decent price, do your best to lock-in your current rental rates for as long as you can stomach it. You may be able to negotiate with your landlord if you're willing to sign an extended lease. Try something like, "I will commit to this apartment for the next three years if you will commit to the current monthly rental rate for the next three years." If you are a landlord, make hay while the sun shines. Rainy days will be upon us again. We will remember the landlords who treated us well, and those who didn't. And even if we forget, the Internet doesn’t. [photo via flickr/J_P_D]
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| We’re Going To This Super Happy Block Party In Palo Alto, And You Should Too Posted: 31 Mar 2012 03:02 PM PDT  Who throws a party in Palo Alto?! Well actually … Today Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors, Talenthouse, Super Happy Dev House and the City of Palo Alto itself have joined forces to give nerds a place to play on University Ave for 12 hours. So why should you stop coding and jump on the Super Happy Block Party bandwagon? Well a gaggle of VCs have occupied the 3rd floor of the High/Alma South Garage, committing themselves to hearing your ideas until 7pm tonight. Poor things! Full list of VCs Mark Goines, Morgenthaler The organizers are expecting more than 2,500 people and have a contingency plan in case it starts raining and they have to move the Popup Innovation Parking Lot, Hack the Future Tent, the Day Star Yurt & Silent Disco, the Soap Box Stages, and the Techno Petting Zoo of Robots indoors. Whatever those things are, they sound pretty trippy and cool. Which is why I’m about to get in my car, and go pick up my colleagues Kim-Mai Cutler and Josh Constine (if he ever wakes up from whatever party he was at last night) and drive their butts down south. Because way to let your geek flag fly Palo Alto; Your move SF. Pics via/Amir Youssefi
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| Tired Of Straight Tech News? Check Out Techcrunch.com/Drama Posted: 31 Mar 2012 02:20 PM PDT  We know that many of you visit TechCrunch on the regular for a hearty dose of startup coverage, general tech news and opinionated coverage of the tech zeitgeist. But we also know that the trainwreck posting on our hirings and firings, Aol spats, tech gossip and quibbles between staff is what really gets your fingers clicking and blood boiling. I mean, it’s like a car accident, you can’t help but stare. So to cater to everyone who just visits here just for the drama, we’re today launching a drama-only new channel, TechCrunch.com/Drama, where you can find such conflict-infused fare as “I’m Leaving TechCrunch. Here’s Why” or “How The Hell Is It My Fault?” or “CrunchPad Federal Lawsuit Filed; Some Additional Thoughts.” But it’s not just about navel-gazing and staff changes (though there’s plenty of that) certain actual news also qualifies as dramatic, simply by virtue of the spools and spools of comment threads it produces, e.g. the leaked Twitter documents. There’s not really a way to define what constitutes a “dramatic” post, other than when it hits it causes an Internet explosion. We’ve heard time and time again that you’ve missed TechCrunch’s “swagger,” and we agree; So the next time your eyes glaze over while reading the umpteenth re-written press release, click on the “Drama” link up there on the navigation bar and relive some our site’s most superfluous, gut wrenching and annoying coverage. You know you love it.
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| Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson On Social Media And His Favorite Tech [TCTV] Posted: 31 Mar 2012 02:03 PM PDT  Editor's note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and startup enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing. Follow him on Twitter @jpuopolo. It’s the eve of WrestleMania 28, and I got a chance to meet with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. What does that have to do with tech? Well, in the video interview, Johnson shares his thoughts on how social media has changed the game, what is his favorite tech and how he uses it to engage his fans. Johnson says he launched his Twitter account a little more than a year ago, and that it’s “one of the greatest things” he’s ever done, because it gives him a way to connect directly to fans. “A lot of people would have had a team coming in … these great business minds, but I wanted to strip away the business of it all,” he says. You can see more, including a peek at Johnson’s iPhone, in the video above. (The background noise is a little loud at first, but Johnson comes through loud and clear.)
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| The ‘So What’ Of The Quantified Self Posted: 31 Mar 2012 12:41 PM PDT  Editor’s note: Tim Chang is a managing director at Mayfield Fund. This is the second in a three-part series about the Quantified Self movement. Follow Tim on Twitter @timechange. Assuming that each of us has a picture of the "real world superhero" we want to become someday, then the optimal way to level up and reach that goal begins with the ability to measure and score our lives. Thankfully, new technologies in mainstream gadgets like iPhones and the Nike+ enable this kind of measurement, and are fueling the so-called Quantified Self movement, starting with the continuous tracking of various aspects of our physical bodies. Using sensors in our smartphones and other wearable devices, we can chart how many calories we burn, our body fat percentage, how many steps we take in a day, how long we sleep — even how many hours a week we spend commuting or sitting at a desk. Soon we'll be able to access the same kind of statistics on our digital selves: Social reach and influence; tastes and preferences; achievements; credibility and reputation; habits; expertise. All that information at your fingertips at all times theoretically allows you to carefully chart a path for improvement—and share your winning strategy and stats with others. On a grand scale, that makes for an interconnected world of healthier, happier people making much more informed decisions. Make it Seamless, Make it Mainstream The Quantified Self movement is made possible by ubiquitous, low-cost, and always-on connected sensors. The real key for successful measurement and tracking solutions is to make them seamless, meaning that there's minimal friction and initial behavior change for the user. Consumers don't want to wear clunky, ugly, embarrassing, or uncomfortable devices, nor will they tolerate products that require them to change their daily routines to input lots of stats or data themselves. If behaviors and signals can be measured in the background or with minimal disruption to existing habits, then users can be on-boarded easily and are more likely to accept the idea of being tracked continuously for long periods of time. Once users are being measured and quantified, the data must be interactive and easy to understand. The users need to be able to look at their data in ways that are interesting to them, but also know what to do to influence their measurements and scores. Basis cleverly embeds a heartbeat sensor in a watch (a form factor that's already familiar to people and non-disruptive to wear) and then offers analytic tools that motivate them to make changes based on the data. When I tried out the Basis demo, it overlaid my heart rate with my Outlook calendar and even told me which meetings (and people) were stressing me out the most (!). There were other surprising insights: I learned that when I hit stop and go traffic on Highway 101, my heartrate often spikes into the 90s from silent, internalized road rage. Those are the sorts of self-discovery insights that make the Quantified Self experience so rewarding. Numbers, presented with useful context, provide an immediate path to better control over my own life. Zimride, a service that pairs up car drivers and commuters looking for rides, also uses the Quantified Self to incentivize users. If I frequently commute down to San Jose and I'm known to be on time, I build a reputation score through my riders that makes me valuable and desirable to other potential riders, who pay me for the trip. My punctuality is quantified, I feel good about myself by seeing my score go up, and I'm motivated to keep increasing my status and show it off. I can also see a running tally of how much pollution I have spared the atmosphere by eliminating another vehicle from the road. Insight, Not Data, is the Key When it comes to productizing these solutions for consumers, it's important for entrepreneurs to remember to package their offerings not as Analytics, Data or Tools, but instead to sell Insights from the numbers. That's where I think Quantification can move away from just efficacy and become about taking control of your own life. The emotional value of that is what people pay for. Astrologists, fortune tellers and even management consultants remain popular today for a simple reason: Most people would rather be told what the big takeaways are, what they really need to worry about and what exactly to do next. This kind of "so what?" is ultimately more valuable in the eyes of the consumer. (Anecdotally, I've seen enterprises pay 10 times more for business insight reports and consultations than for self-service analytics tools). Furthermore, the richer the data set one can draw from, the more interesting the potential insights to be gained, which leads me to my new business mantra: "proprietary data equals power, but insights equals gold." So while it's important to build up a data set comprised of useful and complementary signals, it's the "so what?" that allows you really make money from the numbers. Hungry Games? Despite the growing buzz and proliferation of new gadgets and apps in QS, I have found that much of the initial innovation and entrepreneurial activity has been around tracking physical activity ("calories out"). However, I'm personally on a quest to tame what I think is the most elusive beast of all: "calories in." Most common medical problems stem from our eating habits, but there really isn't an easy way to seamlessly and accurately capture the data about the food we ingest each day, short of implanting a sensor into the body to track caloric intake (which violates the low-friction requirement for an effective QS solution). Many food-tracking apps ask users to input or tag each item they eat (too much work for most people), and some even attempt to identify nutritional data from photos (not accurate enough via automation). If we can't find a seamless, automatic method to accurately quantify what we're putting into our bodies, then perhaps we can leverage the interactive, social and fun aspects of Gamification to get users to play along and enter the data needed? As an example, each day I play a game of "Foodville" with myself: I set a target # of points (calories) each day, and I get to spend them however I like for as long as I don't exceed my 24 hour limit. As I'm about to eat or drink something, I think about the number of calories I'm about to spend on that item (usually glancing at the product packaging, or doing a quick Google mobile search to look up approximate nutritional info), and then take a mental note of my remaining point budget. At the end of the day, I feel great about meeting my target and advance one day closer to weekly Cheat Day, or else push off Cheat Day until I qualify again. Each week that I stay on plan I count towards my "winning streak," which culminates in an Amazon shopping splurge that I treat myself to Although it was a pain at first to look up caloric values for everything I ate or drank, I found that after several weeks I developed a sixth sense for nutritional data, and could pretty much ballpark the point count for most everything I ate. As I got deeper into Foodville, I layered on advanced missions to maximize lean protein and fiber, and minimize net carbs and sugar. It turns out that this is the same approach that Weight Watchers has been using for decades – I simply think about it as a game and try to layer in "boss battle" and "epic win"-style levels and rewards for myself. Unfortunately, I'm only playing Foodville in my mind, and don't have a simple, gamified app that I can share or play with others. Perhaps a slick app encompassing elegant use of social and game mechanics would enable multiplayer modes, P2P pressure/obligation/guilt loops, use of Seven Deadly Sin motivators, progressive and adaptive leveling, and other tools to make Foodville palatable and easier to begin playing for mass audiences? I'm hoping to see clever QS + gamification designers team up to come up with such apps, and someday seeing the Top 25 charts dominated by titles like:
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| Gillmor Gang: Daddy, What’s Microsoft? Posted: 31 Mar 2012 10:00 AM PDT  The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Rob La Gesse, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — rode out of Dodge and straight into an ambush. Well, no, but in service of the OverAggregator Lord here are our talking points: Microsoft trembles at the alter of irrelevance, Google doesn’t get TV but may sneak into the tablet market by giving them away, and HTML5 still can’t get a date. I snuck in the usual mentions of Mad Men and push notification, the first a reference to the return of the mesmerizing prequel to Seinfeld, and the second the technology that ensures that you don’t have to watch the stream all day to stay up with what’s going on. Combining delayed gratification theatre with premature notification will produce the next big hit of the iPad Age. @stevegillmor, @scobleizer, @jtaschek, @kr8tr, @kevinmarks Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
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| So Long, And Thanks For All The Quantum Research Posted: 31 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT  I’d like to be an optimist, like Matt Burns. I really would. Like Research In Motion itself, I was born and raised in Waterloo, Ontario. Like its former co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, I studied electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo. I’ve seen RIM transform my home town over the years, giving it new parks, new buildings, huge bequests for the university, and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. I’d love to see it survive its current dire straits and somehow thrive. But I just can’t see it happening. I guess it’s still just barely possible to maintain optimism. This was the first quarter since their rise that they’ve reported a loss; they can still spin that into a Rocky-esque down-but-not-out narrative, as long as they rearrange a few deck chairs. But as Paul Graham recently pointed out, “revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business.” Revenue down 25% year-over-year, for a tech company of RIM’s size, in one of the hottest markets in the world? That’s not a setback, that’s a catastrophe. Realistically, what are their possible futures now?
Any other options? Not that I can see. We can write number 1 off immediately. Apple did it! people say. Yes, but that’s the exception that proves the rule. Even if BB10 is to RIM what OS X was to Apple, that won’t be near enough. OS X alone wouldn’t have turned Apple into a winner. Apple transformed itself from doormat to behemoth by creating not one, not two, but three megahit brand-new markets — iPod, iPhone, and iPad. It’s hard to imagine RIM coming up with even one new game-changer. I suppose it’s possible, just, but I sure wouldn’t bet on it. Limp on with a 5% market share? How? They’re not even the third choice any more; Windows Phone is. Their only bright spots are emerging markets, where cheap Android devices will be eating their breakfast, lunch, and dinner before long, and those businesses so security-conscious that they still see RIM’s private secure network as an advantage rather than a liability. But secure email, even if it’s the best secure email in the world, just isn’t enough to be competitive these days. You have to be able to do more, and to do it at least as well as the competition. RIM’s most fundamental problem is their technical ineptitude. Remember when they released the PlayBook? I do: my very first TechCrunch post was about its inevitable doom. How sadly right I was. Remember David Pogue’s NYT review?
Note that last line. That review was written in April 2011. When did those “missing apps” finally arrive? That’s right: last month. Let’s not even talk about the ongoing debacle of their third-party apps. How about the BlackBerry Colt, the new BBX – I’m sorry, BB10 – device that was supposed to have launched by now? Oh, that’s right; it was cancelled. So when will those BB10 devices arrive? In the second half of this year. Maybe. You know, just in time to compete with the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III. Meanwhile, bring-your-own-device policies grow ever more popular, and Android/iOS enterprise solutions get better and better. Every passing month feels like another nail in RIM’s coffin. I keep hearing people talk about RIM as if a management change, or a strategy change, might be enough to save the company. But I believe the reason their products are vastly inferior to their competitors, and are regularly crippled by huge schedule delays, is that RIM’s technical braintrust is simply not up to the job of competing with Apple and Google. It’s not a question of direction, or focus; it’s a question of ability. And that’s a predicament no new CEO can solve. "BlackBerry cannot succeed if we try to be … all things to all people," he says — but their real problem is that they’re well on their way to being nothing to anybody. So forget about them coming back like Apple. Forget about them maintaining third-choice market share; Microsoft — which knows a thing or two about selling to businesses — is busy elbowing their way into that role while RIM dithers, swoons and languishes. So we’re left with survival option 3, someone buying them. But who? Their patent trove, sure. But their operations? Who wants to splash out billions of dollars to catch this falling knife, especially after HP’s WebOS debacle? Samsung apparently kicked the tires and walked away. Who else? I can’t think of a single name. Which leaves us only option 4: softly and silently withering away, until they’re small enough for carrion eaters to pick over the bones of the carcass. It’s a damn shame, but it now seems to me inevitable. You had a great run, RIM. Thanks for all your good work back home. Sorry it couldn’t last. Image credit: Dodo bird, by mwanasimba, on Flickr.
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