There is no doubt in my mind that venture valuations have become incredibly stretched. I have been thinking about why that is and what will come of it. First off, here are the factors contributing to the stretching of valuations. It starts with the genuine potential for building hugely valuable businesses, which is based on four key factors: 1. The immense possibility for scale on the Internet – global businesses with millions of customers can be created in relatively short time periods. 2. T...

There is no doubt in my mind that venture valuations have become incredibly stretched. I have been thinking about why that is and what will come of it. First off, here are the factors contributing to the stretching of valuations. It starts with the genuine potential for building hugely valuable businesses, which is based on four key factors: 1. The immense possibility for scale on the Internet – global businesses with millions of customers can be created in relatively short time periods. 2. T...

Heyzap’s API announcement is technically yesterday’s news, but there is so much to like here that I figured I would write about it today. First, they announced this on their newly launched developer blog. Etsy has had a developer blog for some time and I think those are a terrific idea. Engineering tends to be a big part of startups and yet often doesn’t have an external voice. A developer blog is a great way to address that and to share accomplishments and techniques with the world. That is ...

Heyzap’s API announcement is technically yesterday’s news, but there is so much to like here that I figured I would write about it today. First, they announced this on their newly launched developer blog. Etsy has had a developer blog for some time and I think those are a terrific idea. Engineering tends to be a big part of startups and yet often doesn’t have an external voice. A developer blog is a great way to address that and to share accomplishments and techniques with the world. That is ...

Very short post as I am about to get on a plane to fly back from London to New York (and Virgin Atlantic does not yet have wifi on its flights). Reading the papers in London and talking to people it is clear that the European debt crisis is very much on everyone’s mind while we at home seem to be enthralled with either the latest startup valuations, or Rush Limbaugh and maybe the Republican Primary. Here the discussions are about Greece and Spain and the fact that the European Central Bank (E...

Very short post as I am about to get on a plane to fly back from London to New York (and Virgin Atlantic does not yet have wifi on its flights). Reading the papers in London and talking to people it is clear that the European debt crisis is very much on everyone’s mind while we at home seem to be enthralled with either the latest startup valuations, or Rush Limbaugh and maybe the Republican Primary. Here the discussions are about Greece and Spain and the fact that the European Central Bank (E...

Over the next three Tech Tuesdays we will cover the three essential technologies that together make up the bulk of most web sites: HTML, CSS and Javascript. This is Step 7 of the web cycle where the web browser uses these three (which were all retrieved from one or more web servers) to construct a web page. The easiest way to think of how these three make up a page is as follows: HTML is the content of the page, CSS is the look-and-feel of the page and Javascript is the behavior of the page (...

Over the next three Tech Tuesdays we will cover the three essential technologies that together make up the bulk of most web sites: HTML, CSS and Javascript. This is Step 7 of the web cycle where the web browser uses these three (which were all retrieved from one or more web servers) to construct a web page. The easiest way to think of how these three make up a page is as follows: HTML is the content of the page, CSS is the look-and-feel of the page and Javascript is the behavior of the page (...

Evan Williams apparently recently said that there is an issue with all of us being stuck in a kind of “continuous present” on the web (ironically, I can’t find that quote right now). I am certainly stuck in that all powerful present many days. There is so much new output hitting the web every day that one can barely scratch the surface of it, let alone delve into the past. Google has only aggravated this problem by tilting their search algorithm more heavily towards recency. Techmeme – one of...

Evan Williams apparently recently said that there is an issue with all of us being stuck in a kind of “continuous present” on the web (ironically, I can’t find that quote right now). I am certainly stuck in that all powerful present many days. There is so much new output hitting the web every day that one can barely scratch the surface of it, let alone delve into the past. Google has only aggravated this problem by tilting their search algorithm more heavily towards recency. Techmeme – one of...

Earlier today I participated in an Oxford-style debate in London of the motion “Facebook Is Not Your Friend.” I argued for the motion together with Baroness Susan Greenfield. Taking the opposing view were Ben Hammersley and Lewis Iwu. This was a lot of fun as the Baroness and I have very different takes on this subject. She came at it from a neuroscience and cultural perspective with a concern over what a shift away from time spent in person to time spent online will do to how people think of...

Earlier today I participated in an Oxford-style debate in London of the motion “Facebook Is Not Your Friend.” I argued for the motion together with Baroness Susan Greenfield. Taking the opposing view were Ben Hammersley and Lewis Iwu. This was a lot of fun as the Baroness and I have very different takes on this subject. She came at it from a neuroscience and cultural perspective with a concern over what a shift away from time spent in person to time spent online will do to how people think of...

First there was the Path address book tempest. Now there is a concern about apps being able to access photos without permission. It would be a shame if this resulted in more centralized control over apps and longer review processes. What we need instead is some kind of peer produced approach to app security. What I have in mind is something along the lines of what Chris Dixon did with SiteAdvisor for web sites. Some people will (voluntarily?) run software on their mobile handsets that monitor...

First there was the Path address book tempest. Now there is a concern about apps being able to access photos without permission. It would be a shame if this resulted in more centralized control over apps and longer review processes. What we need instead is some kind of peer produced approach to app security. What I have in mind is something along the lines of what Chris Dixon did with SiteAdvisor for web sites. Some people will (voluntarily?) run software on their mobile handsets that monitor...

We moved back to the city some 6 weeks ago. Since then we have done entirely without traditional television. So admittedly that’s less than two months, but the initial results are encouraging. The only show that I watch with any kind of consistency is Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, for which full episodes are available at the Daily Show site. Other than that we now have streaming accounts with Netflix, Vudu and Hulu Plus. Between those three there is no shortage of things to watch. Of course it he...

We moved back to the city some 6 weeks ago. Since then we have done entirely without traditional television. So admittedly that’s less than two months, but the initial results are encouraging. The only show that I watch with any kind of consistency is Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, for which full episodes are available at the Daily Show site. Other than that we now have streaming accounts with Netflix, Vudu and Hulu Plus. Between those three there is no shortage of things to watch. Of course it he...

Yesterday I tweeted out this fascinating chart about what has happened to newspaper advertising revenues: The chart comes from this blog post by a professor named Mark Perry. In the comments to the post there is a brief discussion that points to the shift away in classifieds to Craigslist and other outlets as a primary reason. I went to be shortly after tweeting that and couldn’t help but think about which industries are up next for that level of disruption. I believe a chart showing textbook...

Yesterday I tweeted out this fascinating chart about what has happened to newspaper advertising revenues: The chart comes from this blog post by a professor named Mark Perry. In the comments to the post there is a brief discussion that points to the shift away in classifieds to Craigslist and other outlets as a primary reason. I went to be shortly after tweeting that and couldn’t help but think about which industries are up next for that level of disruption. I believe a chart showing textbook...

We have now reached step 6 of the web cycle and are back at the web browser. The web browser is receiving an initial HTTP response from the web server. The first part of this response tells the web browser is whether or not the web server is delivering some useful information. That happens via the response status, which will be 200 OK if the HTTP request is being properly fulfilled. The second part are additional so-called response headers which provide information about the content that is c...

We have now reached step 6 of the web cycle and are back at the web browser. The web browser is receiving an initial HTTP response from the web server. The first part of this response tells the web browser is whether or not the web server is delivering some useful information. That happens via the response status, which will be 200 OK if the HTTP request is being properly fulfilled. The second part are additional so-called response headers which provide information about the content that is c...