Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Apple and “1-Click Sex”
Over the last few days, Apple has removed a number of apps from the app store that have, as the New York Times’s Jenna Wortham put it “sexually suggestive” material. There is plenty of speculation on the motives, such as VentureBeat’s idea that this is about winning over educators to the iPad. I think the actual explanation is likely to be simpler.
Browsing and discovery are broken in the app store. If these were working well, then there would be no need to remove apps like this (for any reason). Instead, they would be visible only to those specifically searching for them. Imagine coming to the Google home page and finding a list of the most popular web pages in various categories. Unfiltered I am pretty sure that would include a bunch of porn. This could be one source of complaints but I suspect that access by children is more important.
Theoretically parental controls are supposed to help keep this content away from children, but that of course requires some non-trivial configuration, as this tutorial shows. I believe that most people buy iPod Touches or even iPhones for their kids and simply hand them over without ever going through these steps (we didn’t — but that’s because we don’t believe in filtering for kids — more on that in a separate blog post). Without these controls “questionable” apps are just 1-click away for kids.
Phil Schiller cites “customer complaints from women” in his NYT interview as the reason for the app removal. Based on the above, I suspect many if not most of them are mothers who discover that their children have actually purchased “inappropriate” apps (as opposed to just browsed the web). There were a huge number of iPod Touches given as Christmas presents this year and the timing of this removal could be the result of that.
I am surprised that Apple did not solve this problem by defaulting to a “safe mode” (and fixing app store browsing/discovery), but instead resorted to removing the apps. This suggests that there are technology issues behind the scenes that prevent them from making sufficiently rapid changes to the App Store.
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Tags: apple iphone app_store
Monday, February 22, 2010
Unemployment and Structural Change (2)
I have written previously about unemployment and structural change in the economy, arguing that we are facing a particularly bad outlook for employment. The New York Times on Saturday had a good article on this subject that combined some chilling statistics with a couple of stories of individuals suffering the consequences. Probably the most important chart from the article is this:
The dramatic growth in long-term unemployment is the surest indicator of structural change. To the extent that there are jobs, they are in different areas of the economy (both geographically and more importantly in different sectors). The accompanying stories make the same point that while some jobs are available, the long-term unemployed live in the wrong place (and lack the resources to relocate) and/or have the wrong skills and experience.
I believe the magnitude of this problem will eventually become so large that it will force us to reconsider many of the most basic ideas about how society is organized. My thinking on this was spurred by reading Brad Feld’s post on a book call “The Lights in the Tunnel” which considers a future of 75% unemployment. I have started to read the book itself, but can’t recommend it as the writing strikes me as muddled at best — instead, I am planning to write more blog posts on the subject. What’s critical is to keep in mind that at the same time that employment is disappearing, we are also heading towards an age of abundance (starting with digital goods).
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Tags: unemployment economy employment structural_change
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Staying Young (Turning 43)
So I am turning 43 today - an age that at one point I considered ancient! Yet in many ways I feel younger today than a decade ago (OK - that does not include my speed for clearing the snow off our driveway). I attribute that to spending so much time with entrepreneurs. It is not just that many of the teams in our portfolio are young, it is that all entrepreneurs seem young in a fundamental way: they have retained their sense of possibility. That sense that the world can be changed, new things can be created and that the future will be better than the past. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have this influence in my life. My only birthday wish is for more of the same. That and contributions to http://mycharitywater.org/albert
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Some Thoughts on Google Buzz
I got Google Buzz last night in my gmail account and have started to play around with it a bit. Here are some initial thoughts.
First off, I agree with Andrew that the integration of Buzz with Gmail will turn out to be a net positive for adoption at least initially (and if it takes off there is always a way to make it available standalone).
Second, this roll out at scale is a very clear example of Google’s impressive infrastructure and how it enables innovation. Buzz is a big service with lots of features (e.g., likes, comments, payloads and private groups) and yet google is capable of making it available to its large global user base.
Third, it is another example of Google’s willingness to have potentially competing products/services move forward in parallel (here Wave and Buzz). Some people have seen this as a weakness, e.g. in complaints that there is no “roadmap.” I instead see this as a strength and mentioned that when Google announced Chrome OS (which has significant overlap and potential to compete with Android).
Fourth, Google is already doing some interesting things on the Buzz API side, both with how it is making updates from Buzz available (including PubSubHubbub notifications) and how information can get into Buzz (with apparently more programmatic access coming soon). This approach based on emerging standards is appealing.
Overall, it is way too early to tell whether Google Buzz will succeed, but I for one am impressed by this launch.
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Tags: google google_buzz
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Email Killer Feature: Reply Processing
If you needed yet another reason to switch from operating your own MTA for transactional email to using a service provider, SendGrid recently introduced a killer feature: reply processing. No more need to send emails from “no-reply@thatsoundsrude.com.” Instead, let people take actions simply by replying to emails. This is a feature that I have absolutely loved about disqus from day one: being able to reply to comments by replying to the email I get from disqus. Tons of others should do this. Accept a friend request? Just reply “yes” to the notification email. SendGrid’s reply processing API takes all the hard work out of this. I can’t wait to find the time to switch DailyLit over to SendGrid for just that reason.
P.S. If you need yet another reason why you don’t want to operate your own MTA, try squashing the backscatter problem by properly configuring Postfix (and then realizing that Thunderbird no longer works). Spent two hours on that this weekend — a total waste of cycles that could be used for creating value for endusers!
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Tags: sendgrid email service_provider
Monday, February 8, 2010
The EBook Wars
I was away last week and so am late to the party when it comes to commenting on the fight between Amazon and book publishers. Here are a couple of observations.
First, I was surprised it took so long for this fight to start. It is a great example of what I call “fighting over the digital pie.” What was most fascinating about it is that none of the publishers even made a mention of how much authors would receive. At present, this is all about trying to support the existing cost structure of publishers with strong parallels to the fight between networks and cable.
Second, there has been some discussion around what it actually costs to put out a book today and how that might change with ebooks. The debate seems to be largely between two extremes: either that ebooks should be much much cheaper (often unsubstantiated) or that the only cost to actually go away is PP&B (paper, printing & binding) which makes up only a small portion of the total cost. Looking at several actual breakdowns of costs, not surprisingly the truth is likely to be somewhere in-between. Pre-production costs will remain for ebooks and depending on the number of formats and additional markup could actually go up a bit. But marketing costs are up for grabs as authors can start to build their own audience via blogging and books can be discovered via social networks. Wholesalers should go away and retail margins should be highly compressed. Publishers’ cut too is likely to get compressed as their value-added diminishes in a world where authors can be directly in touch with readers. Taken together, I believe that at least 50% of the existing cost basis of the book business could be obliterated for ebooks.
Third, even with a reduced cost basis, if ebooks are to be traditionally priced (which is to say the same price for each copy), they need to succeed with DRM, something that the music industry failed at. Personally, I abhor DRM because of its implications for computing devices (closed, not hackable, not trust worthy). But I am afraid that for the first time we are getting close to highly DRM’d general purpose devices succeeding in a mass market due to their superior design and user experience. It would be quite a Faustian bargain for all of us to accept DRM in the name of convenience and design. More on that in a separate post — until then I suggest reading Alex Payne’s post on the iPad.
Fourth, nobody seemed to suggest that charging the same price for a book to each reader is an antiquated idea. A literal adaptation of the historic price discrimination model of starting with a hardcover and then moving through softcover to mass market paperback shows a lack of imagination. There are many better and more effective ways of capturing consumer surplus for digital goods. Think Farmville!
Fifth and finally, throughout most of the discussion there appears a presumption by publishers and authors that there is some kind of god-given right, or short of that a cultural mandate, for them to be able to cover their costs. That view seems to ignore most of the history of publishing during which great works were authored but very few people made a living off it. I am convinced that we will see great books published in the future completely independent of the business model (or lack thereof) of the publishing industry and the income from book sales to authors. Whether it is mico-patronage a la Kickstarter, or income from a day job a la Rowling during the early Harry Potter work.
I am hopeful that in the end we will make it to a DRM-free ebook future with a new renaissance of content but for now it looks like we will have to watch the titans battle it out.
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Tags: publishing e_book amazon apple
Friday, January 29, 2010
What Do AAPL and AMZN Have, that GOOG, Twitter and FB Need?
Each has more than 100 Million credit cards on file to enable 1-click purchases of content, apps, and virtual goods. When I compare doing anything involving payment on other platforms the experience is cumbersome to the point of being useless. My 10-year old son had no trouble hijacking my Kindle, finding the store and getting a book for himself. And that’s on the Kindle! On his iPod touch he blew through the app budget we had set for the month within the first two days of having it. It will be interesting to see who figures out how to catch up with Apple and Amazon and how they do it. In the meantime, companies like Zong with their Zong Plus offering are trying to get there independently. If they get to 10s of millions of linked credit cards, they will make a juicy acquisition target.
Tags: payments credit_cards apple amazon facebook twitter google
Thursday, January 28, 2010
iPad: First Overhyped, Now Underestimated
Yesterday’s “reveal” of the iPad was predictably anti-climactic. With the hype that had built up, anything short of a mind-reading, teleporting device had to be a bit of a letdown. But we are now likely to enter the phase of underestimating the iPad. People are already obsessing about such flaws as the omission of a camera. Or the lack of support for Flash. Or the absence of multi-tasking. These critiques mostly miss a couple of crucial points. First, this is of course extremely similar to the history of the iPhone - what, no Cut-and-Paste? Apple very quickly came out with significant product improvements for the iPhone. I expect that it will be no different for the iPad. Second, while Apple wants you to have a great web experience, they want you to have an even better experience for certain categories (games, videos) through native apps for which Apple takes a cut. If they get enough devices out quickly that will succeed. Third, out of the gate the iPad meets four of my five personal requirements, which I had set out here http://continuations.com/post/321509690/slates-my-personal-requirements . It is much cheaper than had been rumored, making it possible to get more than one for the house. It looks like it would survive a coffee spill and 10 hrs of battery life would be an entire week of occasional usage around the house. Because it doesn’t have multi-tasking it is much simpler to operate. There is a Wifi only option. The only thing that seems to be missing out of the gate are user profiles that would make it easy to share. Bottomline, this is very much the device that I anticipated and I believe that it would be a mistake to dismiss it as an XXL iPod Touch.
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010
More Great News for NYC’s Startup Ecosystem: NYC SeedStart
Congrats to Owen Davis and everyone else involved for launching NYC SeedStart 2010. I have long argued that there is no such thing as too much seed capital and SeedStart is a terrific addition. It is amazing that until now New York City did not have such a program, given the success of YCombinator, TechStars, Dreamit, Launchbox, SeedCamp, FBFund Rev and others. I am also thrilled to see that NYC SeedStart has adopted a simple financing model - $20,000/team for 5% of the company. Now very much looking forward to the first crop of companies!
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Tags: seed_capital new_york_city
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
DLD10
Heading to the Munich airport after 2 days at DLD - a thoroughly enjoyable and productive conference. Here is my report from last year: http://continuations.com/post/73536016/dld - I was happy to see that the biggest nuisance from last year had been addressed: there was now a wall between the lobby and the main presentation area. I spent even more time than before in the lobby meeting people - some pre-arranged but mostly spontaneously. I only saw a few sessions/panels - which were all quite good. The mix between media/Internet and science/art worked very well. The party at the P1 was a blast and despite the incredibly loud music I met a bunch more really interesting people there (including a German entrepreneur with a US-based startup). Definitely planning to come back next year.
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