Christopher Herot's Weblog

Impressions of TechCrunch40

Looking back on TechCrunch40:

The conference was a credible first time out for the team of Michael Arrington and Jason Calcanis.  There was a high level of energy and creativity in the meeting room and the "Demo Pit."  Although many of the 140 companies will probably not be around in a year (only one quarter are financed and many are in unproven markets or have unproven business models) they were a good snapshot of what Web entrepreneurs are doing today, not just in Silicon Valley but across the world.  The breath of applications was impressive, including tools for creating music and video content, information sharing, personal finance, communications, and software tools.   In many cases, the companies showing in the Demo Pit were are promising as those on stage, illustrating the difficulty the organizers had in winnowing the list of submissions.  I won't try to summarize all the companies here - there are many places I've listed below who have already done so.

There was a lot to see in two days, since the breaks were short and the demos were frequent.  You could say that was a "high class problem" since there was never a shortage of things to see or people to talk to.

There were a host of logistical problems which undoubtedly will be fixed if they do it again next year:  not enough seats for all the attendees, a hotel that "sold out" of rooms at the conference rate well in advance but had plenty at a much higher price, a wireless network that only worked intermittently, a wired network that didn't work in a large part of the room, no cellular coverage for the people demonstrating mobile apps on the stage.  The organizers didn't contract for all the space in the hotel but then complained to the audience when a local VC set up their own, unsanctioned demo area.  And the first day ended with a 6:00 - 7:30 "Browse the Demo Pit" without so much as a bottle of water, not to mention the refreshments and other conference would provide during such an occasion.   More importantly, as Shel Israel has pointed out, the conference had changing expectations on the type of presentations and level of preparation expected.  Not all of the presenting companies gave live demos, and many of those that did could only promise attendees access to a "private beta" some time in the indefinite future.  The presentations themselves were not as polished as at DEMO, but in return we got to see companies in an earlier, more formative state of development.  The net effect was one of being at the beginning of something, both for the conference and for the companies presenting.  The meeting room was packed right up to the end of the two-day event, which is unusual for any conference.  If Michael and Jason do it again I'm sure they'll attract an even bigger crowd and an even more stellar group of companies.

Other coverage:

• TechCrunch covered itself extensively.
• VentureBeat covered every presentation in detail
• Renee Blodgett covered the events in detail and has great photographs.
• Christine Herron divided the presenters into 6 problem areas they addressed, with tracking personal data heading the list.
• Shel Israel discovered Twitter right before the conference and went to town with it.
• Ars Technica thought the event may have been over-hyped but ultimately lived up to its billing.

MIT Sophomore Arrested at Logan For Wearing LED Device

MIT  electrical engineering sophomore Star Simpson was arrested at gunpoint today after showing up at Logan Airport to pick up her boyfriend.  It seems the electronic artwork she was wearing on her sweatshirt looked like a bomb to an airline employee who has seen too many Hollywood movies.  While the State Police quickly determined the circuit board was harmless they still insisted on charging her with Possession of a Hoax Device. It hard so see how they are going to make that stick since the statute clearly defines the offense as placing a device "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person or group of persons." According to The Tech, Suffolk District Attorney Wayne Margolis said during the arraignment that Simpson showed "a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she’s in, which is an airport post 9/11."

The Boston Globe incorrectly reported that Simpson was asked by the airport employee about the circuit board and walked away without responding.  The Tech quoted Margolis as stating Simpson "said it was a   piece of art" before walking away.  Other press accounts sensationally headlined "MIT Student From Hawaii Arrested With Fake Bomb."

Mark Zuckerberg at TechCrunch40

This afternoon, Mike Arrington interviewed Facebook CEO  Mark Zuckerberg at TechCrunch40.  (Most of the audience has a Facebook account.  Many were on it during the talk.)  Arrington started by asking where Facebook's future growth would come from.  The answer: outside the USA.

Then the discussion turned to opening up the platform, starting with the mini-feed.  Asked if he was afraid that offering the information in one place would reduce page views, Zuckerberg answered that the feature made the site more useful, with the result that page views actually increased by 50%.  On the topic of the Social Graph, Zuckerberg said they took the view that the network of relationships already existed outside Facebook and they saw Facebook's goal as modeling it, not creating it.

Arrington asked about the growing pains of launching the API, starting with applications that used "black hat" techniques such as sending unsolicited messages to users.  Zuckerberg said their intention was to have a platform that imposed its own rules and allowed a large number of developers rather than have Facebook hand-select the applications.    They figure they will be continuing to adjust things, for instance changing the way activity is reported so as to emphasize engagement.  Similarly they are looking for other ways to reward engagement rather than merely accumulating users.  That's one reason they don't expose a way for applications to leave messages for other users who don't have the app installed.

Zuckerman remarked about how Facebook was one of the first sites to push people to use their first and last names, phone numbers, etc, offering better privacy settings along the way.

What about improving Facebook's messaging facilities?  They understand the frustrations and plan to make improvements, but don't see themselves as an email platform.  For instance, they are concerned not just about spam but also about preserving the feeling that messages are usually from an individual and not part of a stream of mass-generated messages.

Zuckerman announced that Accel Partners and the Founders Fund have started a $10 million FB Fund which will make grants of $25,000 to $150,000.  The fund will not be taking an equity position but will have the right of first refusal on subsequent investments.  No web site yet, but send email to [email protected].  The critera: innovative and disruptive things.

In response from a question from the audience about when Facebook would support OpenID and other open standards, Zuckerberg said Facebook only had 300 employees but would be moving it that direction.

Humble Beginnings Panel at TechCrunch40

At TechCrunch40 this morning, Michael Moritz interviewed Marc Andreessen (Netscape, Loudcloud, Opsware, Ning), David Filo, (Yahoo) and Chad Hurley (YouTube) about their experiences and advice for the entrepreneurs in the audience.   What was striking was how modest their expectations were in the early days of what ultimately became billion dollar companies.  Marc Andreessen said his primary ambition was to get out of the midwest when he moved to California.  At the time he joined Netscape no one had any idea that there was a way to make money on the Internet.  Similarly, David Filo and Jerry Yang were bored with graduate school and started Yahoo in their spare time.   No one had any idea how they were going to make money, as web-based advertising had yet to be invented.  Chad Hurley and his two partners started YouTube to solve some problems they had and build the first version in a few months.

Marc Andreessen pointed out that a startup needs an idea that is "crazy enough" that no established company is already doing it.  He also pointed out that 999 of every 1,000 such ideas really are crazy.  Thus, he too recommends starting out with something the entrepreneurs would use themselves.

On the question of what tips they would give to entrepreneurs:

• Make sure one of the founders can be a CEO, since hiring an outsider is very risky.  (Andreessen)
• Don't hire too quickly - wait until you have a product-market fit.  That keeps the burn low (Andreessen) and makes the company more nimble (Hurley).
• Look at how you are using the product yourself.  (Hurley)
• Attract people who are passionate about the space the company is in.  (Filo).

As much as all the panelists agreed on the idea of staying small, the one regret they have is that with the hindsight of seeing how fast they would grow, that they should have hired faster.

TechCrunch40 Conference

The TechCrunch40 conference opened this morning at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.  Organized by Michael Arrington and Jason Calcanis it is similar to the DEMO conference in that it consists of 40 8-minute stage demos and 100 companies in the "demo pit" next door.  Arrington and Calcanis mae a big point about how the selected companies (750 applied) were not asked to pay for the privilege,  As a result, many of the presenting companies are in early stages of their development - 30 are as yet unfunded.  Some of them are so new, e.g. Powerset, that there web sites are not yet open for business.

It looks like there are more than 500 people in the audience, including 100 standing along the walls.  For those who are not here in person, there is live blogging at TechCrunch.

The presentations are followed by a panel of judges.   In the first session on Search and DIscovery these were Marc Andreessen, Ryan Block, Om Malik, Marissa Mayer.  They ask some tough questions, such as which companies will be around, or acquired, in the few years.

One interesting side note: Calcanis had to ask the members of the audience to turn off the WiFi mode of their iPhones.  Turns out that many iPhones in one room can disable even the most robust wireless network.

Whither Facebook?

It seems you can't open a blog these days without reading a post about Facebook.  Some marvel at the growth in membership (and wonder what all those old people are doing there), some cover the number of applications (or conferences devoted to people who want to build one), but the most interesting are those that deal with some of continuing controversies, such as:

• Is Facebook adequately protecting privacy
• Is it really a good platform for building applications
• Can one product serve them all

Privacy

Facebook initially was available only to students at Harvard.  As it gradually opened itself up to other Ivy League schools, then other colleges, high schools, and eventually the world, there were complaints from people who wanted to preserve the lost exclusivity but they were drowned out by the millions of happy newcomers.  Similarly, the introduction of the news feed was initially met with howls of protest but is now seen as one of the most useful features of the site.  The resulting application of Metcalfe's Law has done wonders for Facebook's valuation, but the company's continued success is also a function of how with each expansion of the community and each new feature to share information they provided, sometimes belatedly, tools to control how widely and with whom that information is shared.  Some have complained that these controls are not granular enough but others have pointed out that they are already more complicated than most members can understand or are willing learn, with the result the defaults chosen by the platform are most important.  And some of the privacy controls are just plain weird.  I don't understood why Facebook thinks I am willing to share personal information with absolutely everyone in the Boston area where I live but not with people in San Francisco or Silicon Valley where I spend a lot of my time.  If anything, I should be more fearful of stalkers and criminals in my back yard.  Perhaps by arbitrarily limiting the region they give their members the illusion of control.

Danah Boyd makes the case that unlike Robert Scoble, most people want to be anonymous to all but their friends.  Leaving aside that Robert has a more expansive definition of friends (4,990 today) than does Danah, I think anonymity is greatly overrated.  It takes one chance encounter with the law (getting a speeding ticket, or even being a victim of a crime), the government (paying property taxes), or the public (playing a sport, attending a charity event) to put oneself in the public eye and create an indelible electronic artifact.   Danah herself points out that it is better to get out in front of the problem and take control than to hope to remain forever anonymous.

The fact that Facebook's users are not anonymous is an underrated aspect of its success.  The design of the site and the conventions of the community encourage people to provide their real names and photographs and to display their list of  friends.  I find this refreshing after dealing with other on-line services which put the burden on me to figure out if "Soobie28" is someone I know.  Also, the lack of anonymity discourages the sort of irresponsible behavior that pollutes services such as
MySpace.

Platform

Like all social network software, Facebook provides a mechanism for maintaining a social graph of identities and relationships.   They set themselves apart last May by releasing an API that allowed independent software developers to build applications that had access to that data.  The Facebook platform is not really open in the sense of Marc Hedlund's manifesto  but instead is administered by a benevolent despot who has cautiously provided access to Facebook's members and their data, but also
has instituted restrictions on how those members can be contacted, what information is available, and how it can be used.  This practice has largely kept the platform free of spam, but the rules are sometimes arbitrary, undocumented, and subject to change without notice, raising the concern that a developer's hard work building an application or a member's hard work building a network of friends be lost ex post facto.  In a recent incident, the comedian Baratunde Thurston built a Facebook group of over 600 fans.  Even though  they each joined the group for the explicit purpose of hearing about concert dates, etc., Baratunde found that his mailing list suddenly stopped working due to an undocumented  limit of 500 members.  While some may argue that Facebook did intend its members to use the platform for group messaging in this way, such unexpected use is a key attribute of open systems, demonstrating that Facebook is not really open.  On the other hand, it can be argued that it is more important to build a compelling set of features and a sizable user base before worrying too much about openness.  That approach may explain the popularity of the iPhone among the techies who otherwise would disdain such a hermetically sealed system.  As Stowe Boyd put it: 

The path to openness requires collections of independent applications to start sharing common services. Until that happens, openness is an abstraction, and one that has basically no traction in the minds of the average user.

Breadth

With each expansion of the breadth of its community, Facebook has acquired cohorts of users who have different expectations.  Now it must balance the needs of

• College students who want a place to experiment with new activities (e.g. drinking) and tell their friends about it vs. people in the workforce who want to manage professional relationships and may be hiring some of those college students.
• Scobles and Baratundes who for personal or professional reasons need to build an audience and communicate with its members vs.people who want a private place to share details of their lives with a few friends.
• Technological sophisticates who want lots of fine-grained control over how their information is displayed vs. people who will just use whatever defaults are set for them.

Note that these dichotomies are only loosely related to age, geography, or economic status.  As the recent downsizing at Eons demonstrates, grouping people along a dimension that those same people don't recognize as defining is a shaky business strategy.  There is some data that suggests younger people are more open with sharing information about themselves, but this may be less an issue of youthful naivete and more a function of where the trend started. Unless and until someone offers and everyone joins a truly open social network, Facebook may benefit from having the critical mass of subscribers and their data.  Even the technorati are getting tired of reestablishing their friends list with every new social networking site they join.  While their response may be to clamor for more data sharing, the rest of the population may just settle in to where their friends already are.  On the other hand, social networking sites could end up following the night club model:

1. Close old club, redecorate, and open under new name.
2. Hire promoter with Rolodex of attractive people he/she can invite.
3. Put bouncer and velvet rope outside (even if club is empty) to create illusion of exclusivity.
4. Get listed in all the guidebooks so after the attractive people leave the tourists will still show up.
5. When the tourists stop coming, go to step 1.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook performs this balancing act - growing into a product used by the mainstream without becoming, as Yogi Berra once said, a place where "Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded!"

Open Platform Manifesto

Thanks to Ian Davis I came across this list  from Marc Hedlund of criteria for calling a platform open.  While it was written in the context of comparing the iPhone with the Treo, it is equally applicable to the current discussion about the openness of Facebook.

Extracted from four paragraphs of Marc's original post:

An open platform

1. allows developers to implement functionality the platform provider hasn't gotten around to yet
2. allows developers to reimplement and replace functionality the platform provider has gotten around to, but has failed to do well.
3. allows developers to meet needs that scare the platform provider, and allows consumers to have those needs met where otherwise the platform provider would block a capability
4. allows its users to get far more done, and latches them to that platform far more tightly as a result.

Point #3 is often the hardest lesson for platform providers to learn, but if they do so they can reap the benefits of point #4.

Sports Trash Talk

At Zingdom we've been working on a new application of the One Minute Friend technology I described a few weeks ago, called Sox-Yanks Trash Talk in honor of the traditional rivalry between the fans of the Boston and New York American League baseball teams.  It's a Facebook application (is there anything else these days?) and it is simplicity itself: you declare your allegiance and specify whether you want to talk to someone from your own or the opposing team.  Then it rings both your phones and bridges you together.  You get to yell, celebrate, or commiserate with your fellow fan for two minutes.  If you found that satisfying and want more, you can reconnect for another ten minutes.  If not, more on the the next person.  What more could you want?

Sources of Information on Facebook

Loic Le Meur asked (via Twitter) what were the top 10 sources of info on Facebook.  Here's my list.  If you have more to add please let me know.

• Official Facebook Blog
• Facebook Developer Application
• Facebook Developer's News
• Inside Facebook
• Adonomics
• FaceReviews
• And of course the continuing debate (or mutual admiration society) of Danah Boyd and Robert Scoble

Boston Web Innovators Group

The Boston Web Innovators Group came into their own tonight at the Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge as 400 entrepreneurs came together to hear presentations from local startup companies and to network with their peers.

Presenting were:

• Fafarazzi -Fantasy celebrity leagues
  
• TheUpDown - Fantasy investing leagues
• SNIF Labs - Social networking for dogs
  
• Mobleo Better mobile surfing and bookmarks
• Oncero - Job sharing service
  
• AdME - Adverting-driven mobile entertainment
  
• Frame Media - Wireless picture frames
  
• GoLoco - ride sharing
  
• DesignMyRoom - interior design

My personal favorite was SNIF Labs. For fans of The Secret Lives of Dogs, here's a way to find out what your dog has been doing all day while you were at work.   A small tag attaches to the dog's collar.  Its accelerometers record the dogs activities and transmit them to a base station and then to the SNIF servers, allowing the pet owner to use a web browser to track the pet's activities, including encounters with other SNIF-tagged dogs.  It doesn't track positions with GPS, but can tell whether the dog is eating, sleeping, or running around the house.