Who is Farhan Lalji?

Umair’s been spending quite a bit of time talking about good and evil, open and closed, Microsoft and Yahoo, and Facebook and Google. A very basic synopsis would be that open is good, Microsoft, and increasingly Facebook, have bad DNA and this will prevent them from sustaining success in the long run. Whereas Google has being good in it’s DNA and this will enable them to succeed in the long run. It’s a pretty smart analysis and I think its pretty spot on.

However, one company that has kept its doors closed and managed to succeed is Apple. iTunes has to be the most closed bit of software I know. And DRM is just plain evil, very evil. But yet Apple kills in this market and is showing no signs of letting up.

So my theory is that design can trump good and evil in the short term. If you ensure that users have a great experience, and that it’s simple, efficient and effective users and the community in general will overlook the fact that it’s closed, proprietary and evil - how else would you explain DRM? The iPhone is another example of closed and well designed but yet super successful. The fact that Apple was bricking unlocked phones is another great example of evil but well designed.

Is this sustainable? I don’t believe so. I believe if someone comes up with a really useful, easy, super smooth system that has a wide variety of content and is good, open, basically DRM free, then iTunes could go down. And if someone (RIM/Nokia I’m looking at you) comes up with a phone that meets the standards Apple has set for usability for browsing and interacting online on your handheld device and is open as well, well then Apple could go down there too. It’s not easy, because Apple’s set the design bar so high, but it’s not impossible.

I blog on my own site and - with Facebook’s notes import feature - my notes get reprinted on Facebook. This works well in some ways as (assumption) most of the people who read me on Facebook don’t use RSS so when they login to Facebook they see that I’ve written a new note. For people who read the blog through RSS or visiting the blog directly they (assumption) prefer using readers and commenting directly on the post. The problem is this separates the conversation and instead of comments being shared and great conversation taking place there are comments in two places and the conversation is in parts and not as great as I think it could be.

Examples, my play and work posts got comments on both Facebook and on my blog and my government posts got a ton of comments on my Facebook page and I know that people who read my blog would have added to this conversation.

So that’s the dilemma, what’s the solution? Some visitors on the blog aren’t Facebook friends, don’t think there’s a way to keep the Facebook posts open to people who aren’t contacts, is there? Should I just ask people to comment only on the blog? Facebook readers click on where it says “View original post”. I don’t think I can block comments on Facebook and force folks to comment on my blog, can I?

Any tips? Suggestions?

Acquisitions and strategy

Web acquisitions are not strategy. Acquisitions are usually financial gymnastics showing value. Personally, I think when a big company buys a smaller innovative company there’s a good chance that innovation in the acquired company dies. Google was guilty of this with its acquisitions of Blogger (nothing new there, Wordpress, six apart innovative), Yahoo’s been guilty as well. And AOL, AOL is probably the guiltiest of the lot.

When I read that AOL had bought Bebo my immediate thought was, well they’ve just handed the social networking industry to Facebook. Facebook’s kept its independence and as a result has been cutting edge. Bebo was showing some fight, but my guess is that this purchase is going to kill any incentive Bebo has to fight and innovate.

Strategy is seeing where there are gaps, filling those gaps with a superior product or service. Strategy means seeing where you can add value and create value and then executing like crazy, it’s not acquiring a company that does a decent job filling it with cash and then watching as its motivation to innovate disappears.

I found it really interesting to see that Union Square Ventures was recruiting their new analyst through their blog. Fred and his crew really get it. I really like the evaluation methodology - candidates were asked to send a link showing their web profile.

Personally, I think the best way to tell if someone gets the internet is to see their web footprint. Which is why I’m always surprised if someone in the space doesn’t have a solid blog, delicious, facebook or Linkedin profile, even worse is when I search for someone who claims to know the internet industry and I find little or no results.   I call this a web footprint and someone who get’s the web should have a sizeable web footprint. If not do they really know what they speak of?

I like Jeff Jarvis.  I think he’s smart, articulate and he usually has some really interesting things to say around technology, business and journalism.  I used to read Buzzmachine, his blog, quite a bit, but in recent times it’s fallen off my radar a bit.  So when I read his comment piece on the Guardian about advertising, I felt like I was catching up with a good friend.  Until I started to think about what he was saying, and realized that he’s way off on this one.

Jeff, and the good folks at Advertising Age whom he cites, believe that advertising spend will decrease.  They both talk about supply increasing and demand meeting it somewhere with prices paid and spend dropping.  Interesting and totally plausible, but I don’t see the game unfolding like that.  Here’s how I see it.

Targeting will get better and suppliers will be able to reach the right audience in a more targeted manner.  Spend will increase because the supply of targeted ads leads to an increase in the market advertisers can attract to goods and services.  I see spend increasing overall in advertising – especially when you take into account things like social networking and the creation of things like groups and networks, although these might be fiscally free, they have an opportunity cost and a people and time investment.

I don’t see the new advertising model and age being a classic case of supply and demand, I see it more the pie – potential industry earnings – increasing a lot, and as a result spend increasing to try and capture more of that pie.  Sorry Jeff.  But it was nice seeing you again.

Miss N and I went to hear a debate featuring Andrew Keen, author of the “Cult of the Amateur” at the RSA. Keen is a critic of Web 2.0, claiming that its radical democratization is undermining real quality.

He was joined by Tim Montgomerie of the Conservative Home website, a pro web 2.0 guy.

The debate was lively with Keen using Huxley’s infinite monkey’s theorem as a parallel to what’s happening online today. He went on to bash You Tube (paraphrasing: where is our culture, what about the professionals) and Wikipedia (paraphrasing: no editors, just a bunch of good for nothings with time on their hands) He also talked about the suffering of mainstream media, and the lack of a gatekeeper and blah blah blah.

Montgomerie and Matthew Taylor of the RSA did a good job of rebutting Keen, Taylor particularly was a great moderator. Their points about the relative youth of the medium and the fact checking phenomenon the web has fostered, not to mention the empowerment of the masses, were all excellent points. And it was clear the majority of people were behind this side of the debate, mind you there was a clear age difference in the way people tended to feel about the internet.

One of the highlights for me was when the MD of Encyclopedia Britannica – a self proclaimed silver surfer himself and sitting a row behind me and Miss N – took Montgomery’s side and said that Wikipedia had actually helped Britannica up it’s game, and that competition was a good thing.

Miss N made a great point about the fact that this debate is not new and that it happens with every technical innovation (dating back to the move from hand written manuscripts to print in the 15 century). I’m sure she’ll make the point and have a great review when she get’s around to blogging about it – but she’s got a job now so her blogging has to wait

My opinion is that Keen is a bit of a sensationalist, doesn’t really believe the excrement he’s pedaling, and is just looking to make a quick buck or two off of book sales. The fact that he himself blogs confirms it in my opinion!

Nevertheless, I think the debate is important, I just think Keen is the wrong person to make it. The wife did a much better job when I got home; her point was that it’s difficult for the misinformed and the young to distinguish between the valid, true and right content and the crap that’s out there. That there’s so much information now, how do you ensure that people are going to the right sources.

I still believe that the community acts as a gatekeeper and that if a blog post or a video or whatever doesn’t have anyone reading it or anyone linking to it or engaging with the content then it doesn’t really exist – kind of like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around.

The one point that Keen made that I did see some validity in was that we’re all spending too much time talking and not doing enough listening. But with me and Miss N having a good 500 news feeds between us, I’d say there are some of us who are listening more then talking… hmmm guess I didn’t agree with him on that point either.

UPDATE : the RSA has the mp3 from last nights session on it’s audio page now.

I read a posting on mashable for chess.com a few weeks ago, and I can’t shake the thought that vertical social networks are a waste of time.

I know that some vertical social networks are turning a profit and closing vc rounds and getting a lot of pub (like Dogster and Catster getting a $1Million), but I just think the absolute user numbers benefit the big social networking sites and the groups on these sites.  I took a look at chess.com and it claims to have 5000 members since it’s soft launch, compared to facebook: with 24,480 users with the chess application installed, and over 500 groups created for chess enthusiasts.

No body has one passion, everyone has many.  I love basketball, but I also am passionate about technology, business, politics, hockey, golf, music and various other interests.  Personally, I like to keep all my interests and passions together and can’t see myself ever joining a vertical social network.

Mashable had a post outlining LinkedIn’s plan to introduce APIs on its “business networking platform” in reaction to the growth of facebook and its application popularity. This really got me thinking about how mature social networking is today?

If we consider social networking an industry, then we would assume that it goes through the normal industry life-cycle, with introduction followed by growth, maturity and then decline. We’ve seen social networking sites (companies) rise and fall, grow and now innovate and follow on.

The way I look at web industries is by comparing it to my family and seeing who’s using it. So when my younger cousins are onto something but I’m not, I consider it in it’s introductory phase. When I’m on it but my wife isn’t, it’s in its growth phase. When both the wife and I are users then it’s mature. When everyone, including my mom is on it, it’s probably about to tip from mature to decline.

So by that rationale, social networking is still growing. My wife has resisted the temptation of joining facebook – and for that matter any social networking application/site/tool – to this date, but temptation’s growing and she’s coming close… I think.

Growth is an interesting time in industries; we’re seeing some real innovation and some real problems being worked on. Personally, I’m finding it difficult to see beyond the application and widget noise and see some real value in applications built on facebook. Feels like someone new every day is using a new application – telling me what their mood is or what books their reading or what their toilet habits are like, okay actually that last one is an app I’m developing. The point is I’m not sure which applications add value and which ones are just clutter on my profile. Is this rapid application development on facebook sustainable? Will it filter onto other social networking sites? Will LinkedIn be able to create a similar buzz around its api and applications built by the community?

My gut instinctive reaction to all of these questions is no. But I’m definitely enjoying the ride. It will be really interesting to see where social networking is at this time next year or even in three years time. Maybe by then the wife will have joined.