The Golden Road (to Online Distribution)

The technology industry has a seeming lack of institutional memory - the constant cycle of invention and reinvention while barely looking to the past. It's so optimistic in nature.

But we sometimes need to look to the past to sharpen our pattern recognition. We started betaworks by specifically looking at the past, and using that look back to come up not only with a specific and focused view of online media but also a corporate structure to enable us to optimize our participation in future innovation.

Don't yet know how fully right or wrong we are, but we believe we are in the very beginnings of the fourth major road (or phase) of online media distribution and innovation (where the words "online" "media" and "distribution" are each broadly defined). Each of these roads bleed into one another, to the point where its hard to tell when one is transforming into another, but generally each phase seems to last 10 years before the next emerges at scale:

1. The first phase was the ISP phase - where content and distribution were optimized (monopolized?) thru the ISP onramps. ISPs provided access and attempted to provide services and content.

2. The second phase was characterized by portals (AOL and the like) - the idea and philosophy that all your services and content are located under one roof ("come here for everything").

3. The third road IS search (characterized by the idea “you don't need to remember anything, you just need to know where to find it”). This is why the Google UI is so much more radical than given credit for, it represents a media philosophy that was materially different from everything that came before it.

4. And the fourth road - which is barely just beginning now - is real time social distribution. The idea that “if something is important it will find me” - a constant flow of content and ideas with applications and services supporting the distribution of content ("content" again broadly defined) from person to person initially and then with intelligence, filters and who knows what else. This represents the final breakdown of the traditional media content producer/distributor/consumer buckets, which now blend into one another. Indeed, there are no more consumers, there are only “users”. As a result, this transformation is utterly disruptive to the whole media value chain. Think Twitter and Facebook obviously, but also think Boxee, pubsubhubbub, Etsy, Kickstarter, 20x200, PostSecret, Dogster, and many more.

This is where distribution - the linchpin of content - gets flattened, pushed to the edges.

I don't think information (content) wants to be free. I think it just wants to be distributed friction-free. Which is why this fourth road - social distribution - has so much potential. It opens up distribution in ways that never existed before.

I Want To Be A Platform

We all want to create or invest in platform businesses - those that enable other businesses or participants to add features, content, build other things into/onto the platform, extract associated but not directly related content therefrom, thereby creating infinite scale and value. And valuation.

But it doesn't work so easily. I submit that the best platform businesses evolve, they are not created sui generis. Further, they evolve from applications - applications as representative of specific pain points and use cases.

Applications can and do become platforms. It's extremely hard for platforms to begin as platforms and at the same time find the specific problem they are solving, in a way that encourages usage and enhances the users' experiences and leads to growth.

So another core betaworks philosophy: it is infinitely harder for a platform to spawn value added applications than it is for an application to evolve into being a platform.

We've seen this many many times before, for example:

AOL - began as chat/email application, then evolved into "portal" platform.

Yahoo - initial pain being solved was navigation - application was a directory, also later evolved into portal platform.

Twitter - application= messaging, now becoming a communications and media (news, links, more) platform.

Google - search application into media platform.

More specifics: we built switchabit as a content routing platform, a way to move any piece of content from its base format (mp3. jpg, blog post) and location to another service. Nice, decent usage, but too many and varied use cases (flickr to twitter, tumblr to blogger etc etc) which I believe got in the way of mass adoption. It did, however utilize a URL shortening service (bitly), which solved a very focused pain. Thus that application was born separate from the platform. Similarly, Twitterfeed does one thing - as a content routing application - moving one piece of content to one or two other places. Result: 350k publishers and about 600k feeds running through the service. Maybe it will now move to platform like attributes. Maybe not but it has proven it can solve a specific pain and scale.

In practice, then, for us when we build a service, or invest, we look closely at the use case to determine what kind of application it might become. We don't expect any evolution, though as dreamers we hope that there will be one. Show us an application, not a platform.

Don't Get High On Your Own Supply

"Lesson number two: don't get high on your own supply" -- Elvira Hancock

At betaworks we try to (over) simplify some key principles (no business development, for example) to operate our businesses, and look for inspiration for those ideas in disparate pockets.

One of our key learnings is that while it's really fun to live inside the startup bubble whereby your application is filling a huge problem and therefore is going to change the world, it's even more important to remember what happened to Tony Montana in Scarface when he didn't listen to the sage advice of his mentor Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia) and wife Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) - don't get high on your supply, i.e., don't believe your own bullshit; don't live in your own bubble; if you are going to use your own product do it as a user not as a supplier.

Innovation is happening at such a fast pace that if you can't step outside your own world you will not see it clearly. Stepping outside your own world can mean don't believe what other people say or write about your service - good or bad - it is the use case that matters, not the chatter. Experience your product as a user would - not as an insider. Don't believe that if you disappeared tomorrow anyone would care. Question the key assumptions you think are vital to your perceived success.

Most importantly, also don't forget Lopez's first rule, the corollary to the first:

Never underestimate... the other guy's greed

Your competition might be hungrier than you are, particularly if you are high on your own supply.

No Business Developement (or, Hackable Business Development)

We have a saying at betaworks - "no business development allowed."

Of course, it's tongue in check and we don't really mean it (well, maybe we do), but it represents the application of one of our core business scaling principles. Namely, find a way to scale usage of a service or application that doesn't rely on formal business deals. Those deals - "business development" as it were - take too many cycles relative to unknown value to be truly effective at the early stages. Too long to find the partner, get to know them, structure and paper a relationship, and then implement.

Instead, we focus on ways to work with other services, companies or applications at the data level. Where complementary data sets - utilized via API - can enhance or supplement or supercharge your service, and can be implemented quickly and without any company-company intervention or interaction (no human contact allowed). Jon Steinberg has an awesome piece called Hackable Business Development which is in some ways profound in its simplicity but represents something vitally important:

If you’re interested in a platform or service from an intellectual, career, or partnership prospective, you simply must build on it.

"You simply must build upon it." Just fucking do it.

Things to Do

Kortina implored me to do resolutions, like him, instead I will just write down what I want to do more of next year:

1. Help spread the joy of Tipjoy. Of course I am hopelessly biased and financially motivated, but I think that what Abby and Ivan have created has the potential to be the right solution to alot of problems, in an open, distributed way, at the right time. Don't be evil indeed.

2. What with betaworks motoring and a couple of growing kids, our travels will likely involve the beach and then the beach. But I will be thinking about my three favorite places in the world - Dublin, Juan-les-Pins, and Ko Samui - and at least planning on visits to each in the next years.

3. Less multi-tasking, more focus and concentration. Got way too much going on in 2008 - need to organize and focus, pay more detailed attention. It's all about the details. Omnifocus to the rescue.

4. Eat at more small local NYC (and other cities') places, such as Dil-E-Punjab , and especially finally take advantage of Alex Lines' outerborough eating club. Small (and local) is the new big (and international).

5. Similarly, I created a list of 10 people I want to spend more time with in 2009. I'm gonna try to see all of these at least quarterly. Some of these peeps I've never met, but know through various social channels, so need to move those relationships into meals at small local NYC (or other cities) places.

6. Hope hope hope (and help help help it become a reality) that at the end of the year Topspin Media and Hypemachine are the two leading companies in the music world, because what they are doing is right, and more importantly their respective proprietors are righteous.

7. Continue posting a song a day over at tumblr.

Wwoof (ebay for farming) and others

Latest things I am tracking:

WWOOF - world wide opportunities on organic farms - ebay for farming - "WWOOF is an exchange - In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles."

Devo - keyboard command launcher (thanks Kortina)

Twitter Influencer - twinfluence

World names profiler - just try it

Random

CDARS - "When you place a large deposit with a network member, that institution uses CDARS to place your funds into certificates of deposit issued by banks in the network. This occurs in increments of less than $100,000 to ensure that both principal and interest are eligible for full FDIC insurance."

Where is your username registered? See Usernamecheck

Pastie - “it's the only pasting app that doesn't suck”

Wordia (love this one) - redefining the dictionary -" a democratic ‘visual dictionary’. A place where anyone with a video, webcam or mobile phone can define the words that matter to them in their life"

Songbike

More

Lazyweb links:

http://www.fuspy.com/ (via kortina)

Dave Cancel's invisible web

Twitter Counter

Daytum - what is it? I like anything that greets one with a "Hello"

Recomm.me "a simple Twitter bot with memory"

Stevienickshasnever

the prison burpee

Latest batch

What is the song of the summer? (via mediaeater)

songmeanings.net and lyricwiki - total repeat usage on these

Very Loud - b/c it needs to be louder, sometimes

Backtype - comment search, see, google can't find everything

github "social code hosting"

gutbots

A few more things

Whuffie

drop.io - "simple private sharing"

twistori "wish" (I want this as a screen saver)

WTF is Twitter

Play Crafter "a place where you can easily play, make and share games"

slydial

More Things I Like Lately

14 tracks - great design and concept - online music sales grouped around concepts of 14

TiltViewer

Twitter search for "WTF is up with" (via mediaeater)

Twitter acquiring Summize

Poketo

Zemanta

Trendrr

conversational search

Things I Like Lately

Tipjoy

AdNectar

Seedcamp

Bit.ly

Tinydb (and Quickerly built on top of it)

Structuring unstructured data

Placetweeting

Screw all manner of betaworks' objectivity, this is pretty cool - John Geraci:

Don’t have time to start a placeblog? Neither do I. But now, thanks to outside.in Radar, Twitter and Summize, we can placetweet. Placetweeting? I’ve got time for that.

How does it work?

You just twitter like you normally do, but include the neighborhood you’re twittering about, and if you want to take it a step further, the name of the venue you’re twittering about.

Then, via the magic of the summize api and outside.in’s place detection algorithms, your tweet will be detected, matched to those locations, and will show up in people’s Radar in those areas.

So for example, this recent tweet:

ericgardenfork tweets: even people in the Tea Lounge Park Slope Brooklyn are talking about Tiger woods

just popped onto the Radar of everyone in Park Slope, and it got attached to the cafe Tea Lounge in that neighborhood. It’s being read right now by everyone in that part of Brooklyn, informing them about their local area.

That’s a pretty low bar for getting involved in the hyperlocal scene. I may not ever really be a placeblogger, but I’ve already become a placetweeter.

Three services being interconnected in ways that I don't believe any of them initially thought about could create value. Now once they start using switchabit . . . .

The Velocity of Data

While eating Chicken Adobo at Cendrillion every other day for the past 6 months, we talk constantly about the value of data - how can an application or a technology create value to an existing or new group of users through the creative aggregation, manipulation or structuring of data.

One of the favorite theoretical examples we use is the ability of an application to add structure to unstructured data. And, in particular, in ways that add value to end-users, publishers or advertisers, three specific groups we seem to care about at betaworks. We seem to be attracted to those examples, but in any event this can get pretty heady and theoretical and wonky.

And then sometimes the theoretical turns specific in a way that validates all the lunchtime chattering. A few months ago Summize turned their search application toward Twitter - in a way Twitter is the very definition of a mass of data -- conversational, casual, and totally unstructured. By adding search to that mass of data - and including including things such as trending analysis and other ways to search - by user, geography, sentiment, places and dates, for example, the unwashed mass of Twitter info becomes . . . structured data. Today I found out about Plurk and that Firefox RC3 was released, to name just two minor and immaterial examples from the trending topics.

So maybe this is an example of where adding structure creates new ways of even thinking about a data set. Or, much more broadly, where adding structure can take an application and make it into a platform.

Post-Americanism

This week, I traded alot of emails with a great hacker in Barcelona, had a skype call with a CEO in London, and had lunch on Friday with a South African and a half British/half French guy (at a Filipino restaurant, natch).

I personally feel provincial, what with a simple NY pedigree. At betaworks we're trying to create a different seed stage business model (John wrote about this a little more here), at least a bit, and though we might be "obscure even among Web insiders," by nature of being located here in New York we tend (and are right now designed) to have more activities here. And though as part of our network we do cover San Francisco to New York to London, I can't help but wonder about the implications right now of having too much of a geographical focus.

For example, Fareed Zakaria writes that "the world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism," to wit:

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

Or, as Adam Gopnik put it last September:

Now, for the first time, it’s possible to imagine modernization as something independent of Americanization: when people in Paris talk about ambitious kids going to study abroad, they talk about London. (Americans have little idea of the damage done by the ordeal that a routine run through immigration at J.F.K. has become for Europeans, or by the suspicion and hostility that greet the most anodyne foreigners who come to study or teach at our scientific and educational institutions.) When people in Paris talk about manufacturing might, they talk about China; when they talk about tall buildings, they talk about Dubai; when they talk about troubling foreign takeovers, they talk about Gazprom. The Sarkozy-Gordon Brown-Merkel generation is not unsympathetic to America, but America is not so much the primary issue for them, as it was for Blair and Chirac, in the nineties, when America was powerful beyond words. To a new leadership class, it sometimes seems that America is no longer the human bomb you have to defuse but the nut you walk away from.

Then again, good business models are flexible, and are made to be molded and shaped and even broken and reassembled. We'll see how much of that is needed in a post-American era.