Facebook is Advertising for You

My daughter turned 13 last week and wants a Facebook page.  So we were talking about it and had a very interesting conversation.  In the end I agreed that she could have a Facebook page as long as she remembered this:

• Facebook makes money by selling your information to others
• People will form impressions of you by the way you present yourself on Facebook
• Once your information is on Facebook you can never take it back

It was an interesting conversation and as with many interesting conversations I came away with some realizations including the fact that a young person probably cannot opt out of Facebook.  By the time she gets to college, the admissions people will be looking at all applicants in the context of their Facebook presence. Without one an applicant could be at a disadvantage.

So my final wrap up was the idea that Facebook is an advertisement to the world of you.  Use it to your advantage.

While you are thinking about Facebook. You might want to check out the 60 minutes piece from last week.  You may want to pick a different segment on the CBS site -- but after looking at a few of them, it is hard to find one that shows the whole Zuckerberg segment.

Groupon - Another Advertising Company

I have said the Google and Facebook are advertising companies.  So is Groupon.  Sure they have smart engineers and they build internet enabled tools, but they get paid by their clients for delivering advertising that works.  They are advertising companies.  These companies are not internet companies any more than General Electric is an electricity company.  

Whether or not you think Andrew Mason was crazy for turning down six billion dollars (like I do) you have to respect the guy for building a business that is adding 3 million subscribers a week.  

Here is a great video of his interview last week with Charlie Rose.  Clearly a smart guy.  And also very funny.  Check it out here.

Are Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Liu Xaiobo Safe?

What do you get when you combine governments that oppress their citizens, the unrepressable nature of free speech, the Nobel Peace Prize, and citizens that are committed to freedom?  A very interesting week in the news.

Manning, Assange, and Xaiobo are probably safer in jail than they would be if released.  Accidents happen frequently and these three courageous men would be in danger of falling prey to an accident if not under the protection of their captors.  Their captors are obligated to keep them alive by the bright light we are all shining on these events.  I shudder to think of what would happen if that light went out.

Our mistrust of government, the foundation of our constitution, is what makes our country resistant to the corrupting influence of power.  If we are going to prevail as a nation it will be because we support people who are willing to put themselves in harms way to end a war or end a governments oppression of their own citizens.

The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war we have ever fought.  

If you are interested in this subject, here are a few links you may want to follow:

Bradley Manning Wikipedia Page

Daniel Ellsberg Wikipedia Page

Daniel Ellsberg Speaking in Bradley Manning's Defense

Wikipedia Page on Article Three of the Constitution

Huffingtong Post on Liu Xaiobo 

New York Times on the Nobel Prize 

New York Times on Keeping Secrets Wikisafe

LeWeb 2010 - An Incredible Event

As you know I did not go to Paris.  I was here in Seattle with my team working to learn as much as we could about observing awesome events like LeWeb over the internet.  And learn we did.  

We have now watched the live stream or the video for 45 sessions, and we still have 16 to go.  We have provided notes on these sessions, links to the videos, and links to as many other blog posts as we could find.  

We are very interested to know if you think we are in fact making it easier to follow events on the web.  Please take a minute to check out our new web site and give us your feedback.

The Site:  www.shownotes.co

Twitter Feed: @show_notes

ShowNotes is Live in time for LeWeb

Today we are launching our new web site to help technology people follow events from a distance.  Check it out at www.shownotes.co.  

There is so much content flowing out of leading technology events that following over the web has gone from impossible: before the tools were there; to possible: as live blogging, live streaming, and Twitter gained momentum; and back to impossible again: because the volume of content is overwhelming.

Shownotes.co is our attempt to answer this challenge.  We are going to do our best to help people watch LeWeb in Paris -- starting tomorrow.  The organizers have live video streams of both stages, and there are dozens of people blogging and writing about the event as it happens.  

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Borker is a Bad Guy - Is This News?

The mainstream media, lead by the venerable brand of the New York Times, and new media are all abuzz about a bad person on the Internet.  There have always been bad people on the Internet, and Borker is hardly the worst.  There are bad people in the offline world too.  This is not news.

The most disappointing thing in all of this is that the editor at the NY Times did not do what an editor should have done and said:

If you only have one person to site, it is not fair to draw the generalization that Google's search results can be gamed by bad people inflaming customers with their bad behavior.

OR

You cannot do a story about Google if you do not have a response from Google.  The whole article is about Google.

I hope the next time the New York Times gets a story like this the editor stops it and tells the reporter to go get a job in the tabloids.

I have not put links in this story on purpose.  If you have somehow missed this whole episode, consider yourself lucky.

The Contra China Argument

There is an article in Fortune magazine this month about short seller James Chanos and his big bet against China.  I have written a fair amount about China, one of my first posts is still my favorite:  Do We Want China to Fail?

The competitor in all of us wants to win, and China failing would be one way to accomplish that.  Despite this, I still think a failure in China would be bad for everyone.  Certainly it would be bad for the Chinese, but here are a few reasons why it would be bad for those of us in the technology industry:

1. IP Theft.  The work that the Chinese government is just now starting to do on piracy and IP theft will be the first thing abandoned if things turn for the worst.
2. Aggressive Cyber Behavior:  The Chinese government is already allowing or maybe even sponsoring efforts to compromise computer networks in the US.  A stable and prosperous China will give us the chance to address this diplomatically.
3. Nationalization:  Fear of a Chinese economic collapse could drive nationalist factions inside China to take control of foreign investments in China with government support.
4. Loss of a Market:  While there is sufficient evidence that China wants the domestic consumer market to be served mostly by domestic companies, there will always be opportunities for US companies to benefit from a rising China.  A declining China would remove the opportunity for either domestic or foreign technology companies.

So we want China to continue to succeed in raising itself up in the world economy.  We absolutely want to stay ahead by making ourselves more competitive.  James Chanos has some good arguments about why China may be in trouble.  Let's hope he is wrong this time.

Not What it Seems

I read a study once that said if you want to change the culture of a company it will take 7 years -- unless you replace 50% of the employees.  Have you ever watched a company move its headquarters more than a few hundred miles and wondered -- why are they doing that?  It must be an incredible distraction!  And think of all the people that would quit..... Ahhhhh.... I get it.

A similar thing happens when a company decides to buy an enterprise level business application.  The reasons are not always what they seem.  Senior decision makers buy Salesforce.com because they want their salespeople to sell.  Selling is hard work and many salespeople would rather stay in the office and work on reports than go out and do the heavy lifting.  Standardized reports from Salesforce.com can fix that in a minute.  When someone else is producing the reports -- salespeople have nothing else to do but sell.  Salesforce.com does not even have to be good.  It just has to take away all of the excuses for not selling.

The proliferation of cloud based business applications that just work, and enable knowledge workers to focus 100% of their effort on their actual jobs, will produce the next 10x jump in knowledge worker productivity.  (see my post yesterday for more on this thought).

Part Time Computer Operator

For the past 25 years every knowledge worker has needed a certain amount of technical skill in order to work.  Knowledge of operating systems, general business applications, and job specific tools have been required in order for a knowledge worker to add value and justify getting paid.  So work has been a combination of operating the computer and doing the actual work.  

Initially, the increases in productivity were astounding.  Moving from a hand written ledger to a spreadsheet application was at least a 10x increase in worker productivity.  I am no productivity expert, but my own personal experience would lead me to conclude that over the past 10 years this trend has flattened.   Once computers got sufficiently powerful to do the work normal knowledge workers needed done, the tool makers just added complexity -- which may have even reversed some of the productivity gains.

The last big improvement in knowledge worker productivity was probably the widespread adoption of email with attachments.  this would have been in the mid to late 90's.  Since then computers have gotten smaller, faster, and cheaper -- but they have not given us a 10x improvement in productivity.  We can stay in touch with our friends using social media, and watch movies anywhere anytime, but these have not been leaps forward in worker productivity.  We are overdue for the next big step forward.

I bet there was a time when drivers of automobiles could drive without having know anything mechanical.  They just got in and turned the key.  Soon the knowledge worker will not have to know anything about computers in order to add value and justify getting paid.  Computers will just work and knowledge workers will be able to spend 100% of their energy on their jobs.  

One could argue that the time spent now on keeping a laptop running is less than 10% of a knowledge worker's effort.  So removing this would not produce a 10x productivity improvement.  I propose that many workers confuse the time they spend serving as computer operators as a value added activity.  Building spreadsheets is work -- right?  Once a knowledge worker can dedicate all effort towards the actual job -- big gains in productivity will occur.

I can give my daughter an iPad and she just knows what to do.  No time spent being a computer operator.  Soon we will be able to do the same thing at work.  A new person to the team could contribute value on day 1 -- 100% of the time.

Book Review: Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

It is a formula I am naturally drawn to.  A young smart protagonist (or two) is up against the establishment with every reason to fail.  Add in a rich historical context with a hit of actual facts and I am hooked.  Ken Follett delivers a satisfying ride through the war to end all wars in the Fall of Giants.  I will leave the literary criticism to the experts at the New York Times and the Washington Post who have done an able job summarizing the story and pointing out the shortfalls of the author.  

Here are a few notes on what I took away from the book:

• There were so many characters losing their virginity that I lost count.  I suppose this could be a metaphor about the nobles losing their innocence -- but sacrificing virgins to the dragon is likely a better parallel.  I don't remember there being so much sweaty smut in Pillars of the Earth or World Without End.  It makes me wonder if the author is compensating for something.
• In Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, the guilds (labor unions) were standing in the way of progress, in this book the labor unions save the day.  This is an interesting switch.
• The idea that big changes cook for a long time before they surprise their victims is quite applicable to our world today.  
• There is an Ayn Randian thread that runs through these three books that I cannot quite put my finger on.  Clearly Ayn Rand would not have been a fan of the labor unions, but Billy, Ethel, Merthin, Caris, Jack and Aliena all have the genes of Howard Roark.

In reviewing Ken Follett's Wikipedia page today I realize that he has written an entire shelf of books since Pillars that I have never heard of.  I am going to have to check those out.  Hopefully it will take him a year or two to write the next 1,000 pages of this trilogy.

One other thing.  I listened to this book as an audiobook from Audible.  The narration by John Lee was incredible.  

Predictions Season is Open

This week the Economist Annual predictions issue hits the news stands and I am really looking forward to it.  Here is a preview from the Editor, Daniel Franklin.  The Economist podcast also had a terrific installment on 11/23 featuring Paul Saffo from Stanford, one of the people to be in the Annual this year as a futurologist.  

I found his comments fascinating.  Here are some paraphrased notes:

• When looking at change there are three types of things:  constants, cycles, and novelties, and the novelties are a tiny minority.  One novelty to watch going forward is the fact that more people live in urban environments than rural environments for the first time ever.  A trend that has been underway for maybe 5,000 years.
• It takes 15 years to become an overnight success.  If you are looking for something that is going to be big next year, look for the thing that has been failing for the last 15 years.  Robotics fits the mold for next year.
• Pessimism is the new black.
• The nature of capitalism is changing.  There could be three flavors going forward:  Entrepreneurial in the US, Community in Asia, and Cultural in Europe.

He rounds it out with the prediction of a totally new religion.  We have not had a new god in 2,000 years.  Here is the print version of that part.

Missed It By That Much

Product designers live in a cruel world.  The distance between delightful and disaster is very small, but like an egg balanced on the peak of a roof, it only takes a fraction of an inch to be rolling the wrong way.  I have had a Droid X for a few months now and there is no doubt it is a well engineered device and that Android is a viable operating system.  Unfortunately for Google and Motorola, it is not a delight to use. 

I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have an iPod Touch and it is a delight to use.  I first got it in 2007 and it still just feels good when I pick it up.  I rarely ever find myself staring at it without knowing how to do what I want to do.  Even after three years I am still regularly amazed by the elegance of its design.

This is the mastery of Steve Jobs and he is so very far ahead of everyone else.  If you want to be inspired, read this great blog post about Steve Jobs and Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid.

The idea is that great designs already exist in the universe and people like Steve Jobs and Edwin Land discover them.  

Where Do You Work?

Getting work done is an illusive thing.  I get my real work done early in the morning -- everyone has their way of getting the uninterrupted time they need to do something useful.

Jason Fried from 37Signals has this great TEDx talk on the subject.  

In the presentation he talks about the two Ms: Managers and Meetings, from which come all things that prevent getting real work done.

Here are some good quotes:

• Managers are people whos job it is to interrupt people.  
• They don't really do the work so they have to make sure everyone else is doing the work -- and that is an interruption.
• The thing that is worse (than interruptions) is the thing that managers do most of all and that is call meetings.
• Meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day.
• Meetings procreate.  One meeting leads to another meeting...

What to do?

He goes on to suggest three ways to make the office into a place where work gets done:

• No talk days -- so people can actually do some work
• Switch from active communication (meetings) to passive communications (email)
• Cancel the next meeting -- you will find that everything is just fine.

Jason Fried runs 37 Signals, a company that provides elegant web based tools for getting work done.  They have a pretty good blog called Signal vs Noise that I recommend to anyone interested in this subject.

Which Publisher to Support? Consider Wikipedia

There are many things we have to be thankful for today.  If I were running a print magazine, I would be particularly thankful for my loyal subscribers.  People who actually pay for printed magazines are a rare breed, have to be extremely expensive to acquire, and taking good care of them must be a high priority for publishers.

However, there is some evidence that the industry has adopted some "best practices" that drive away subscribers.

I subscribe to three magazines.  All three of them regularly send me notices that my subscriptions are about to expire.  National Geographic is the only one that indicates when my subscription actually expires.  This is a good idea and as a result, I have had uninterrupted delivery of National Geographic for over 10 years.

Sailing World and the Harvard Business Review make no mention of the expiration date of my subscription.  So I don't renew until I notice that I have not been getting the magazine.  If I never notice then I am a customer lost forever.

Jimmy Wales has been making an appeal to all of us to make donations to his foundation that runs Wikipedia.  This annual fund drive, presumably copied from public radio, must work for him.  I give to public radio but before now I have never given to Wikipedia.  I use Wikipedia at least as much as public radio.  

So this Thanksgiving I am going to send my money to Jimmy Wales.  I may not notice if my mailbox has fewer magazines in it, but I would certainly notice if I could not go to Wikipedia any more.  If you agree, here is the link to the Wikimedia giving page.

 

The Media Mob and Middle School

Often these days I find myself in the situation of explaining grown up things to my middle school aged daughters.  Now that we are beyond the delicate issue of procreation, long considered by me as the highest hurdle, I realize sex was a chip shot when compared to explaining politics and the media.

Today's opt out fiasco is a great example.  I challenge anyone to defend a national call for citizen action that intentionally makes the job of protecting us from suicidal terrorists more difficult.  If you think you are up to the task -- try your arguments out on a room full of 7th graders.  

Yes, we all know that many security measures are more show than anything else, but is it rational to try to mobilize the people of our nation against the TSA?  Like everyone else I am crossing my fingers that the crazy anti Americans don't figure out how to exploit this event.  If they do, our hysterical media mob will have one more reason to think about their real responsibilities.  (But they will probably blame the TSA anyway).

Two weeks ago the Chinese decided that Americans were so lame that they could drive a submarine up to Los Angeles and shoot off an ICBM.  We were either too embarrassed, or too incompetent to do anything about it -- or maybe we put all of our effort into burying the story.  Either way, when North Korea saw that the Chinese were right, they decided to fire artillery at a South Korean positions.

If anyone out there has any suggestions about how I can explain to my kids that our leaders are actually trying to do the right thing -- I am all ears.

A Tale of Two Restores

About a week ago I had been playing with the passcode lock settings on my iPad -- and the thing stopped putting itself to sleep.  So if I left it overnight it would be 100% dead in the AM.  I worked to change the setting back, searched online, but could not figure out what to do about it.  

So I clicked restore and just like that, Apple rebuilt my iPad in about half an hour.  Asside from a few minor issues where I had to download apps over again -- it worked like a charm.  My email set up was undisturbed, my paid apps were all there.  

About every quarter or so I completely rebuild my Windows 7 machine.  I have set the machine up to make this as easy as possible -- with two partitions on the SSD drive, one for my data and one for the OS.  This way I can re-format the OS partition, reinstall Windows 7 and all of my programs (I keep an external hard drive with a folder I call program installers just for this purpose).  Each time I get 10 GB of disk space back -- and on a 36GB SSD that is a big deal.  Each time the machine runs like a dream afterwards.  The only problem is it takes me about 10 days to really get back to a place where everything I need is installed on the computer.  Not 10 days of non stop work, but 15 minutes here and there when I find a program that I need for the first time and have to find its installer, install it, update it...  I am sure you have been there too.

Luckily I have an older Vista machine that I can work on while the restore is going on.  Also luckily, more and more of my work is being done using online services like Socialtext, Evernote, Squarespace, LinkedIn, and Twitter -- so it doesn't matter all that much that my Windows 7 machine is sidelined for a while.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that each time I go through this, I have a reason to migrate more of my work to the cloud.  

I wonder if anyone at Microsoft is working on this problem.  I would love to have a restore button that works like the restore button on my iPad.

Wait!  Before you post a comment saying that Microsoft already has restore points built into Windows 7, here are a few questions:

• Has going back to a restore point ever actually worked for you?
• Did it give you back space on your hard drive?
• Did it accurately create restore points per its design (before each install or dll change)?

Unfortunately, like the comical troubleshoot window that offers to help fix problems but never can, Microsoft has over promised and under delivered in this area.

I will wait eagerly for someone to close the gap between these two restore experiences.

New Trade Routes

Every so often there is a big enough change in the way business is done to make evolution look like a revolution.  If we are not in one of those times, it is just around the corner.  

The process of evolution may seem slow and hard to follow.  The thing to remember is that no species actually changes during its lifetime.  The adaptation occurs when the combination of two different sets of DNA create a new set that just happens to be better equipped to compete.

The better equipped being lives to reproduce, the others do not, but a single being does not genetically "adapt".

There are many new companies starting right now that may represent a new way of doing business.  Some will create value and survive, others will not.  The result is surely to include new routes to market.  These new trade routes will illuminate the winners and the losers.

So just like the lost city of Petra pictured here, some once prosperous companies formerly on the main trade routes will be long forgotten.

If you want a quick look at a company that drives the point home -- check out Gnip, and Brad Feld's thoughts about Gnip.

Gnip is Twitter's first authorized reseller.  

This is going to be interesting.

Sarah Palin vs Tina Fey for President

The New York Times is all about Sarah Palin today with a good post from Frank Rich and the cover story in the Magazine both proclaiming that not only could she run for the highest office, but she could be a contender!

Given the following she has on social media, and the fact that she is getting paid millions to campaign in her TV show where most competitors have to pay for TV ads -- she does seem formidable even if her competence makes it hard to think she could win.

What to do?  Let's get Tina Fey to run against her!  Tina has all of the same assets and she would probably be a better president.  Not only that, it could really confuse the electorate.  Imagine the 18% of voters that think Obama was not born in the US -- trying to remember which one was which.  The debates would be awesome.  Tina could employ spies to figure out what Sarah was going to wear, dress the same, and siphon off half of the Tea Party votes.

Next I have to figure out what country to move to should Sarah Palin actually win.  Any suggestions?

Ten Secrets to Keep From Google or Facebook

I am a big believer in Transparency.  So big in fact, that we have developed our own definition at CSG:  "We tell the other party everything we would want to know if we were them."  The other party we refer to could be employees, customers, partners, and vendors.  There are some people however that don't gain admittance to the "other party" group.  Certainly competitors would not obtain this status.  In fact, we are quite careful not to expose information about our company to competitors.

Both Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt have declared that the only people not interested in transparency are those with some bad behavior to hide.   This is preposterous.  Here are the first 10 things I can think of that I would not want Facebook or Google to know about me with the reasons:

1. Anything that would aid someone trying to steal my identity:  Surely the Social Security number is top on this list, but also credit card numbers, passport number, date and place of birth, mothers maiden name, drivers license number, bank account numbers.  Identity theft is big business and very harmful to its victims.  I think anything on my business card is fair game.
2. Anything that would aid other criminal behavior with me as the victim:  The number one thing here is location.  There is a very real threat of burglary and even peaserobme.com has stopped contributing to the problem.  In many countries kidnapping is a threat.  So I don't want Google or Facebook to know where I am, what I am doing, my travel dates, or information about assets people may want to steal (VIN number on my car...).
3. Anything that would aid criminal behavior with my friends as victims:  Location is big here too.  If I indicate my location and who I am with -- I also indicate their location.  Being male and 200 pounds, I really don't worry that much about being attacked.  But in most parts of our country it is not advisable for a female to walk to her car alone at night.  I would not want to do anything that would broadcast such a walk to persons with criminal intentions.  Many tech savvy women around the world do not participate in location based services in real time -- for this very reason.  (they make a habit of checking in on FourSquare well after they have already left)
4. Anything I don't Want the Government to Know:  Our country was built on a deep suspicion of the government and a belief in the right to privacy.  I do not have to have illegal or immoral intent to want privacy from my government.
5. Anything about sensitive business relationships:  Managing relationships is hard work and there are many opportunities for misunderstandings.  I would not want my performance reviews, my salary, or the terms and conditions of other business dealings I have with my employer shared on the internet.  Facebook hires people from Google every day -- but is not posting on Facebook who they are pursuing or what they are offering to pay. 
6. Future business deals:  In business we often engage in conversations about potential future relationships.  When interviewing candidates for a job, we talk to more than one person.  When hiring a new vendor, we talk to more than one.  When engaging with partners or pursuing new customers we are constantly in conversations in parallel.  The content of those conversations, or even who the parties are, should not be shared with Facebook or Google.  There is nothing unethical about interviewing for a job or requesting a salary of a certain amount.  
7. Intellectual Property or Business Know How:  Google does not share its page ranking algorithm, or the innovations it has developed in running large datacenters.  Facebook does not share how it extracts from the Facebook stream the information it sells to advertisers. 
8. My Deepest Fears:  If I wake up in the middle of the night with a pain in my abdomen and I start doing searches about cancer -- I don't want Google or Facebook to know.  Particularly when in the morning it turns out to be indigestion.
9. My Biggest Conflicts:  If I get sideways with my best friend or my spouse, I want time to work it out before the whole world knows.
10. My Dreams: Talking pie in the sky with my friends is great fun.  Is there something evil in wanting to keep my dreams close to my vest?  I may want to climb Mt. Everest, bring education to Afghanistan, or start a company that makes a nickel every time someone clicks on something, and not wanting to broadcast it indicates nothing unsavory.

There are many people who proclaim that the march to transparency is inevitable and that we should not resist.  Some even proclaim to live their own lives in public.  I suspect neither those people, or Eric Schmidt, or Mark Zuckerberg would have a very different list than this.  

America In Decline?

Here is a great post by Umair Haque about the decline of America.  If you are not inclined to read the whole thing, I will offer up these quotes to spur you on:

"In 2010, Chinese companies: 391 I.P.O.’s, worth $89.5 billion. American companies: 99 I.P.O.’s worth $15.69 billion."

"America's creating two kinds of jobs: McJobs and MegaJobs--with nothing in the middle."

"...you get a Ponziconomy. One where it's possible to "profit" without having done anything of enduring value."

Needless to say he puts his weight on the side of America in Decline.

I agree that our current course and speed point to a doomsday.  However, I do not think we are done course correcting and am not inclined to count Americans out.  We have been doing a good job of raising awareness and with any luck we will all agree soon that we need to do something drastic.  

It is going to be a long road back.