“Technology—no matter how well designed—is only a magnifier of human intent and capacity. It is not a substitute.”
—Boston Review — Kentaro Toyama: Can Technology End Poverty?
November 2010
27 posts
“Academics have a word for what the neighborhood has become: a nightscape. Bars and restaurants were once peripheral to the main drag’s primary economic drivers: supermarkets, coffeehouses, boutique shops, record stores. But in post-industrial cities, nightlife has grown into an industry in its own right. As in any industry, shop owners tend to cluster. A century ago, that meant the creation of a Garment District. Now it means the creation of a Party District.”
—Mulling over the rise of bars and nightclubs on Upper Avenue A
Caterpillar Cowboy: Tumblr as one giant human relevancy filter and how e-commerce might save them →
caterpillarcowboy.com
This is a bit of a self-serving reblog, but I think David’s ecommerce background (Amazon + Etsy) allows for a different spin on one of Tumblr’s opportunities.
Back in 2008, David Karp and John Maloney visited me and my friend Bre Pettis at the Etsy offices to discuss an idea we had*. David shared with us this idea that Tumblr could be a new kind of search engine for the internet.. a search engine whose index only contained content a human had deemed…
“Well, as it turns out, the media business is tricky. Finding the balance between producing quality content, attracting and nurturing an engaged audience, selling that audience to advertisers, elegantly integrating advertising messages into the content, and doing all of this in a way that builds loyalty and long term brand value within a cost structure that produces 25 percent profit margins is really very hard work.”
—This sentence from Bo and Bryan’s opinion piece on Demand Media is hilarious. And - I think - really, really true.
“The fear that ran through the seventh annual Web 2.0 Summit is that the days when the Internet was a playground for startups with unlimited potential are disappearing. Instead, we are moving into an era dominated by a handful of new Internet titans more interested in fighting each other for power and influence than in delighting users with new innovations.”
—O’Brien: A dark trend runs through this year’s Web 2.0 tech summit - San Jose Mercury News
“Phusion Projects was formed in 2005 by Messrs. Freeman, Hunter and Jeff Wright, all friends and recent graduates of Ohio State University. The three obtained a loan from the Small Business Administration and racked up debt on their credit cards. Their first product, Four Regular, struggled to catch on. In December 2007, the company nearly went out of business. But the next year, Phusion came up with Four Loko. Its launch received a significant boost when the two biggest beer marketers in the U.S. vacated the caffeinated alcoholic drinks category.”
—The FourLoko founders are Buckeyes! So proud.
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So yesterday’s announcement that Andreessen Horowitz was following up a seed investment with a venture investment in Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg’s new company Picplz was a bit of a surprise, given the firm’s existing investment in Halloween-costume-capturing-darling Instagram. The two are essentially direct competitors. I asked Marc Andreessen about it today, and he was quick to point out that’s not how the two started, and if they had the firm wouldn’t have invested in both of them. What’s more– now that the firm has made the decision to do a venture capital round in Picplz, it has essentially picked between the two. Without another pivot, the firm will not make another investment in Instagram, he said …
… It’s gotta be awkward though. And given the huge increase in seed funding this kind of thing will happen more and more.
” —Yup. Seems like this will be (part of) the world of venture funds in seed rounds, capital-efficient startups, and pivotes. (Quote via TechCrunch)
“We are experiencing the decline of the American age. But how does national or imperial decay influence the lifecycle of a world city? Modern-day Berlin is a cultural metropolis on the make, despite being the capital of a medium-sized and rather self-absorbed nation. Meanwhile, Paris retained its allure for nearly two centuries after the onset of French national decline. New York — a city more at home in the world than in its home country — may do better still. As a European, I feel more myself in New York than in the European Union’s semi-detached British satellite, and I have Brazilian and Arab friends here who share the sentiment.”
—To counter my Berlin Sehnsucht with something from New York
David Noël: On This Day Today: 1989 →
david-noel.com
On the evening of this day today in 1989, East-Germany opened the first border checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing citizens to travel to West Germany. On this day today, the Wall fell in Berlin. This key event led to the eventual reunification of West and East Germany after being divided for…
If there was ever a day for my Berlin nostalgia to kick in (again), it’s today.
