February 2012
“My favorite personalities stopped speaking to each other and started speaking to...”
– One day I woke up and twitter sucked « Jordan Cooper’s Blog: startups, venture capital, Hyperpublic (via msg)
I stopped using Twitter in 2010 for exactly this reason. Tumblr, Techmeme, Facebook, and NYTimes.com are where I get news on current events and engage with people I care about.
...
Watchgsiener:
Impressive story.
Original weekend project mvp link on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614
(via Gumroad Gets $1.1 Million From Chris Sacca, Max Levchin And Others To Turn Any Link Into A Payment System | TechCrunch)
Holy shit this is brilliant. Wow. Changes everything.
How Tumblr Should Do Promoted Posts
Thoughts expressed in this post are derived from conversations with Julie Fredrickson and Greg Battle.
As you all have seen, Tumblr recently began playing with the idea of publishers paying $1 to highlight posts in the stream. As I said then, I’m glad Tumblr is experimenting, and every time a community-based site makes changes, it always runs the risk of backlash, so kudos to them for...
“Pinterest already is driving buyers to some websites. In the last six months,...”
– How Pinterest Is Becoming the Next Big Thing in Social Media for Business — Entrepreneur.com (via courtenaybird)
Wish they posted some absolute numbers here. Pinterest’s growth has been so fast that 446% increase sounds silly because it is silly (it was still tiny 6 months ago). But kudos to...
parislemon: Path, Not Pathological →
parislemon:
As an iOS lover and Path champion, a number of folks have asked for my take on the Path address book situation of yesterday and today. I’ve avoided weighing in for two reasons: first, I wanted to talk to some other actual developers about the situation. Second, the fact that CrunchFund is…
Actually, it does call into question Path’s company culture with respect to...
Blip is Hiring!
evangotlib:
I’m looking for an Account Director for my New York sales team. Apply here or contact me on Tumblr.
“There’s no denying that Pinterest is fun, looks great, and a lot of people love...”
– Pinterest is over-hyped — Forrester Blogs (via courtenaybird)
Wake up Barnes & Noble!
likesandlaunch:
Growing up, my parents often took us to Barnes and Noble. Whether it was Friday evening after dinner or a rainy Sunday afternoon, trips to the bookstore were a rare occasion that fed the curiosities of everyone in my family — something they believed should be practiced often.
These trips to B&N planted seeds to learn something new. My sister would head over to the fashion...
“And this community wasn’t imported from another network like a facebook’s graph....”
– This answers the One Network To Rule Them All question for me. I’ve always said that I like keeping my “graphs” separated (SoundCloud, Instagram Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare, etc) and for that reason I find myself participating in a variety of other networks, ten times more than I do on Facebook.
...
IAmA Former FullTime Zynga Engineer => quit 6... →
Zynga sounds like the Monsanto of the web. Jesus.
“Basically, if Tumblr were a city of 42 million,” Ms. Bennett said, referring to...”
– Jessica Bennett
This is exactly why Tumblr’s decision to add a dedicated writing and editorial staff feels rather different to me from what Buzzfeed and Facebook are doing with their similar hires.
Tumblr is not trying to create additional content for their site in order to get more traffic or...
On Finding A Roommate
section9:
jennyjennybobenny:
I’m getting many emails from Craigslist about the apartment, and that is great! So, I’ve made a list of qualifications. It’s actually more like, “if these things apply to you, you will not be getting a response”:
you can’t write a complete sentence
your email to me contains ZERO capital letters
you are an actress, model, bartender, yoga instructor, or all of...
Why did 2379 people repin this dress?
noupside:
This is a dress I pinned on Pinterest. I like vintage dresses, and sometimes save pics of awesome ones that I’ll never be able to buy. 2379 people have repinned this so far.
This isn’t a #humblebrag. Seeing all of the repin notices got me thinking about what kind of curation experience Pinterest facilitates, why it resonates, and how monetizeable curated boards really are.
There have...
“The fundamental economic problem with local / SMB-oriented businesses is the...”
– Crash Dev: Top three reasons NOT to do a local online startup (and what to do instead)
THIS x1000000000.
I Paid, Now What?
parislemon:
In the don’t-call-them-comments notes section on my post about Tumblr’s new Highlighted Posts feature, Jenna Wortham brings up a good point:
Def agree its smart of Tumblr to try new things - but the return here seems minimal. You aren’t broadening yr audience by highlighting content to people who already read you. Best case: Someone spends an extra 5 secs looking at your post. Then...
Only one highlighted post per day?
The Dirty Little Secret Of Silicon Valley's... →
Thesis here is that angel investing is a great business because it’s easy to flip startups as talent acquisitions to Facebook / Google / Twitter / Amazon if nothing works out, so at a minimum you’re going to 2-3x your money. Speaking from experience, I can say it’s harder than it sounds, because there is a disconnect between the hacker skills startup engineers need (“Just...
Rebalancing the Venture-Backed Index
noupside:
Above is a screenshot of the SharesPost Venture-Backed Private company index. It’s composed of seven Companies of Interest, which have changed several times this year as the big names in private tech companies have IPO’d. Since FB is obviously going to be removed from the index fairly soon, I thought it’d be fun to do some Russells-inspired guessing on what the replacement company...
Hope is not a strategy.
Watchevangotlib:
huffingtonpost:
Play along.
‘Lunch Scholars’ Video Reveals American Teens Can’t Answer Basic Trivia
“Name a country that starts with the letter ‘u’”.
“Europe”
I am home schooling Chloe.
“Name the countries that border the United States”
“South America?”
If you met me for AngelList advice
Here’s what I’ll tell you: - AL is for finishing your round. Don’t bother until you have 25-50% of your raise already committed. Since you shouldn’t raise less than $500k*, $200k should be minimum. Except in rare cases, you should also be launched with meaningful # of users or customers. My rule of thumb is 1000 users or 100 customers but that can vary. - AL is an exercise...
“When [Sheryl Sandberg] joined Facebook in 2008 it had 130 employees and no cash....”
– How Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg Became one of the Most Powerful Women in the World (via courtenaybird)
Amazing. Network effects are king.
“On February 6, National Frozen Yogurt Day, Yogurtland will swirl complimentary...”
– Mother of god…
Freebie Alert - Eater LA (h/t @Kesila)
Kinda jealous.
Dublin
So I just got invited to be on the program committee for this year’s ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, held this year in Dublin, Ireland in October. I’m hugely honored for the invitation, as this conference is tops for academics who focus on this space. My duties are to peer review 2-3 Computer Science PhD level research papers.
The only downside is I have to cover all travel,...
“Sales > R&D. It is somewhat surprising that sales expense is greater than...”
– -“Why Facebook Clearly Belongs in the 10X Revenue Club” by Bill Gurley
From an analysis of the Facebook S-1, it is clear is that advertising is what is driving growth in the Internet space. What was less clear is what it has taken to achieve that growth. From this analysis, despite the power and...
Did Facebook do $1 Billion in profit last year? →
Am I reading this right? $1B in net income on $3.7B in revenue? Jesus.