My friend posted pictures of his kids,
And all I could post was pictures of my cribs,
He shared his daughter got a brand new report card,
And all I got was a brand's new sponsored ad, oh,
And my cursor keeps spinning,
Can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
And my cursor keeps spinning,
I can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
Dad shared a joke, all the kids laughed,
But I couldn't hear him according to Quantcast,
Chased the good 'like' my whole life long,
Look back on our life and our life gone,
Where did Zuck go wrong?
And my cursor keeps spinning,
Can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
And my cursor keeps spinning,
I can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
I've shared it, I've shared it before,
I've shared it, I've shared it before,
I've shared it, I've shared it before,
I've shared it, I've shared it before,
Oh my God, sister getting married by the lake,
But I couldn't figure out a good status update,
Bad enough that I showed up late,
I forgot to RSVP if I could make,
Welcome to heartbreak,
And my cursor keeps spinning,
Can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
And my cursor keeps spinning,
I can't stop adding these friends, I gotta get with it,
And I and I can't stop,
No, no, I can't stop,
No, no, no, no, I can't stop,
No, no, no, no, I can't stop,
Can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop,
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
No, no, no, no,
No, no, I can't stop,
I can't stop adding these friends,
I gotta get with it.
I find it strange that the 'Apple Fanboy' term is still in use, particularly by those one would imagine should know better. It's as if there is a psychological repression preventing purveyors of the term to recognize the pleasure of Apple products as possibly more than a fetish.
In 1960, Tom Monaghan and his brother, James, purchased DomiNick's, a small pizza store in Ypsilanti, Michigan near Eastern Michigan University. The deal was secured by a US$75 down payment and the brothers borrowed $900 to pay for the store. Eight months later, James traded his half of the business to Tom for a used Volkswagen Beetle. As sole owner of the company, Monaghan renamed the business Domino's Pizza, Inc. in 1965. In 1967, the first Domino's Pizza franchise store opened in Ypsilanti. The company logo was originally planned to add a new dot with the addition of every new store, but this idea quickly faded as Domino's experienced rapid growth. The three dots represent the stores that were open at the time (1969). By 1978, the franchise opened its 200th store.
Dustin just highlighted an important part of Facebook's IPO registration statement. I've changed one word.
We believe that mobile usage of Instagram is critical to maintaining user growth and engagement over the long term, and we are actively seeking to grow mobile usage, although such usage does not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue.
Instagram is fun and the acquisition is brilliant for them. Yet I feel Facebook are compounding rather than solving the problem of revenue here.
A close friend of mine shared with me an article entitled 'Two Young Creatives of Equal Talent' by David Lubars. In it Lubars offers sage advice to anyone on the pursuit of creativity. I will highlight a few passages.
Fallon account manager Rob Buchner says, “Stamina is a constant virtue I see in the best creative people; emotional and intellectual stamina. Without perseverance, their talent surrenders to the uglier dynamics of the business.”
A truism.
Another Fallon partner, Rich Stoddart, says, “The successful creative is totally objective about his or her own work. If it’s not working, if it isn’t right, they just move on. Bad creatives only think ‘protect, protect, protect.’”
There is little in this world that irks me more than those who refuse to even entertain the possibility of 'better' . This is the most accepted and troublesome of all characteristics, watch out for those who will surely belittle your ideas.
Our planning director, Anne Bologna, observes, “The awesome ones are extraordinarily curious and ask ‘why?’ all the time. They’re part planners in that they’re empathetic to the human condition. They don’t see the world through their own eyes only.” Stoddart adds, “They’re sponges. They read everything they can get their hands on. Two or three newspapers, novels, business magazines—everything. When they sit with clients, they’re better able to understand the context of people and business.”
Yesterday I climbed Killiney Hill, one of Dublin's most beautiful attractions. This was a great opportunity to snap a few shots and so I did, with Instagram, naturally. Subsequently, I shared one of these photos on Twitter.
A few minutes later I was asked for the location info, I remembered geotagging the photo so I couldn't understand why he asked, perhaps he missed it. Either way, this got me thinking about the growing expectation of geographical context. I feel that as we proceed into a new era of predominantly mobile personal computing, geographical information will be as ubiquitous as timestamps. Your phone is beginning to understand your habits and personality, in many ways it allows you to accurately represent who you are. Despite what you've been sold in the past, the computer is personal for the first time.
A number of years ago I would have taken a photo, waited until I was home, transferred it to my desktop computer and then I'd have uploaded it. Now I can take a photo and upload it from the location it was taken, on the device it was taken with. Sharing photos online has become less about the image, but the data surrounding the image, the entire story of the image. I suppose in many ways, the story has always existed but it's only now that we can communicate this with less friction. The first photo ever taken has a geolocation and timestamp, we just don't know what the values are.
Typically when I share a photo, I share the following story:
An image
Where I was when I took the image
The time of day
A personal remark about the image
So, what other data could we share to better tell our stories?
Orientation
Upon sharing the photo I was also telling people where I was when I took the photo. However, it wasn't until later that evening when I was home and no longer at the hill, that I was able to experience the story of this photo from the position of 'everybody else'. When I saw the pin on the map, I felt it didn't communicate the story, the point of view I was trying to capture.
This lead me on a train of thought, if we're going to use something as specific as a map, why don't we really use the map? Phones are capable of all sorts of magic; understanding navigational heading being one of them. So why not reveal this? After all, it's a critical part of the story; had I been facing the other direction I would have captured an entirely different story. I faced 187° South for a very specific reason.
Perhaps fifty people have taken photos on that hill but how many were standing where I was and facing south? I hacked together this comp and it appears me and one other person enjoyed that view. Maybe I should say hi?
I feel something as simple as this could add an incredibly compelling layer of context to the photo. This kind of detail would allow us to greater understand what catches peoples eyes? What is everyone focusing on? Think about how insightful it would be to understand what monuments or attractions your visitors (by age, gender, race, sexual preference, political views, and so on) enjoy the most — and by elimination what they are ignoring or missing.
It's imperative we build software that's sensitive to the subtleties of our personality, because as the network grows so must it's ability to differentiate between each and every person at a very granular level. People always want to feel understood and the greater this understanding the stronger the bond.
This is a good move by Google. The redesign is unoriginal but it's encouraging to see they're not afraid to kill their darlings.
Last month I wrote:
… how well positioned Google were and still are to do something amazing with social. I imagine they’ve gone back to the drawing board to rethink their approach. I’m expecting an overhaul or redesign at some point in the near future.
It's not easy to admit when you were wrong. Admirable even. Yet I have to wonder, how many times can you be wrong before people lose faith?
If Zuck was wise – which I'm sure he is – Facebook would focus on mobile and use it as an opportunity to right many of their wrongs.
Today Mark Zuckerberg announced this:
I'm excited to share the news that we've agreed to acquire Instagram [for $1 Billion] and that their talented team will be joining Facebook.
Job well done, but $1 billion?
I have to wonder what affect this valuation of folly will have on the industry. Enter the legions of misguided overnight entrepreneurs and VCs, both out for a piece of the pie. For those out of the industry (or rather, yet to enter) we are turning the industry into some kind of slot-machine spree; whereby a few lucky players hit the jackpot, inordinate jackpots. Add to this decadent soup a reality show and it's hard to deny that a crash of some description is increasingly probable.
Note: I wrote this piece on 31 Dec 2010. It was a response to Why isn't the human race advancing faster? by Dustin Curtis. I've decided to publish it here again as I feel it's the best thing I've ever written.
You had a thought, so you wrote it up and instantly shared it with over 20,000 people. I read your thought and decided to respond. You are now reading my thought on your thought, all the while we are thousands of miles apart. Dustin, I think the human race is advancing faster than you or I can comprehend.
To contextualise what you said, I can pull a device out of my pocket, press my finger on it a few times, and be in contact with practically any person in the world, instantly. I can access any book ever published, within 20 seconds; and I can ask it any question I can think of and get the correct answer within 30 seconds. The human race has advanced very quickly indeed.
However it is only over the last ~20 years that all this has become possible; that, in and of itself is progress. Being able to instantly share ideas, cross reference thoughts and sort through billions of files of data in seconds is an amazing feat for mankind. While these advancements are still so young, they do and will continue to serve us with the forum we need to tackle the issues which face us.
To address your point on transport costs, I use a mode of transport that would allow me to travel from SF to LA for about $2.65, which is in-line with the price of a Manhattan subway ticket. I ride an electric powered scooter which has a range of about 45Km (28 Miles) at a rate of 20¢ a charge. Admittedly the capacity of the charge is not enough to make the journey in one go but this is a clear indication of the direction transportation is taking. True innovation exists in the face of true complication, which would explain the slow but steady increase in electric vehicles. As the oil begins to deplete we will see an increase in alternative energy and thus a forced innovation in transport patterns. There is no chance I would have had an electric scooter in 1970.
You and I were born of the same generation. The internet began as we began, it was simple when we were simple and so it is becoming more complex as we are too. In fact, you could say, we weren't the only ones to experience those awkward pubescent years. We are the internet generation, the fundamentally different internet generation. No humans before us have had lives like this; it is bizarre and wonderful.
The world is advancing at an incredible rate and until we find a constant among all this change we will find it hard to funnel this power into something more unified and meaningful, a more perfect union if you will. Like any generation, we are constantly living on the cusp of the future, except I imagine our future will demand much more of us than it did our ancestors.
I did not tell her that. (… Someone else told her)
I did not tell her that. (… You said I did. or… but now I will)
I did not tell her that. (… I did not say it; she could have inferred it)
I did not tell her that. (… I told someone else)
I did not tell her that. (… I told her something else)
