1. The iPad Will Transform Online Conversations (and not in a good way)

    I love my iPad. I’ve had it for less than 72 hours, but already it’s become disruptive to my everyday routine.  Traditionally, the first thing I did when I woke up was look at email on my blackberry, then head over to my laptop to check the WSJ, Twitter, Google Reader, Hacker News, Facebook and ESPN, usually in that order. Where I used to do all of this on my laptop, I now do it all on my iPad. 

    However, to me, the iPad’s greatest weakness is exposed when I try to type. Let’s face it: the iPad really isn’t suited for writing more than a few sentences. I’m sure some will disagree, but it remains that to me (and my guess a large portion of the iPad userbase) it is a whole lot easier to type on a keyboard than a touchscreen.  In fact, I’d argue that it is much easier to type on my BlackBerry than on my iPad. Theoretically you could solve this problem by adding a keyboard via Bluetooth, but this detracts from the value of the iPad: its touchscreen, simplicity and portability.

    The iPad is fine if I want to craft a witty tweet or jot down a note. Its not fine when I want to produce a new blog post, a comprehensive response to an article I’ve read, or a long email.

    Many have noted that in its present form the iPad is a consumption, not a production, device. Most can accept this. When they want to go on a binge of information or media consumption they grab the iPad. When they really want to get something done that requires a large amount of text input they move to their laptop. The iPad is bifurcating consumption and production in a way that we haven’t really seen before, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing.

    When I read Hacker News on my iPad it is an entirely passive experience. But, isn’t the point of the Hacker News online community to read and interact? The iPad makes it incredibly unlikely that I will read an interesting article and write a thorough response. Similarly, when I read interesting articles on my laptop, I might email it to a few friends along with some commentary, or maybe respond in the comments section of the article. Again, on my iPad commentary of more than a few sentences seems like a chore. 

    Online interaction around content, I believe, will see the effects of this. In fact, we might see the “Twitterization” of online communities, comments on blog posts or articles, and email discussions with friends. Where people are much more likely to write a quick, two line response on their iPad, they are much less likely to write several paragraphs of insightful content that make Hacker News, the comments section of AVC.com, or an email thread with my friends enjoyable.

  2. The Accidental Billionaires

                                            

    I just finished reading The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, who also authored the book-turned-movie Bringing Down the House. I bought the book at the suggestion of a friend who is in Pheonix S-K, the Harvard finals club that the book describes in detail (Facebook co-founder Eduardo Severin was a member). My friend alerted me a few years ago that Mezarich was conducting research on campus and that I should look out for the book.

    So, when I saw it at Barnes & Noble I decided to pick it up. The book describes the founding and rise of Facebook, and pays significant attention to the company when it was in its nascent stages at Harvard College.

    I was looking for a behind-the-scenes look at the founding and rise of Facebook and deep insights into the mind of Mark Zuckerberg and the key players that contributed to its rise.

    To be honest I was pretty disappointed by the book. Mezrich is a fabulous storyteller, but the book really lacks substance. It is written more as a novel, paying more attention to painting a scene than giving the reader fact and insight. The book is extremely sparse on the details of the actual events and reaction from the key players. When evaluated for its ability to shed light on the development of Facebook, it’s written more from the perspective of an outsider than an insider.

    The book is also a bit misleading because a solid ½ of the book is devoted to the story of Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the twins who sued Mark Zuckerberg after they hired Zuckerberg to complete a site similar to Facebook. When I bought the book I wasn’t ready to spend more than 2 pages on this topic. As it turns out every other chapter is devoted to their story. 

    I’ve read a few preview pages of David Kirkpatrick’s The Facebook Effect (set for release June 8). Already I can see the dramatic difference in the insight into Facebook that these two books offer. From what I can tell, in contrast to The Accidental Billionaires, Fitzpatrick’s account is heavy on the details and sparse on the fluff.

    I expect that Fitzpatrick’s book will be more of what I was expecting from Mezrich’s book. The Accidental Billionaires whet my appetite for this story, and hopefully The Facebook Effect will satisfy it.

    Grade: B-

    Next book I’ll review: Mastering the VC Game by Jeffery Bussgang

  3. Foursquare’s Growth Dilemma

    Crossing the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream market poses significant problems for foursquare. It’s a classic Catch-22. How does foursquare engage a mainstream audience - we’ll call them “normals” - without alienating the core group of early-adopters who catapulted them to 1 million users?

    To recap, the debate so far has been around which of the following foursquare features will be most attractive to the mainstream consumer market:

    1) Discount

    2) Game Dynamics (badges, points, etc.)

    3) Tips related to location (See Chris Dixon’s post)

    Though these features are not mutually exclusive, I believe discounts are the most attractive to the mainstream market, and will be necessary for foursquare to cross the chasm. Normals may come for the novelty of the product, but eventually will want a return for their patronage; otherwise they just don’t have, or won’t make, the time to use the service. I’ve written about this previously, and a recent Dave McClure blog post echoed these sentiments. He writes:

    Without financial incentives or discounts, there is absolutely no reason on god’s green earth to “check-in” for your stoner cousin, your luddite penny-pinching aunt, and certainly not your clueless grandmother. they could give a rat’s ass about your stupid little iPhone app with the pretty pictures and clever auto-discovery that barely works while draining the hell out of the battery… that is, until you give them $5 off their next beer or 5-dollar foot long…. at which point guess what? HELLO, MAINSTREAM CONSUMER MARKET! while there may be ways to s[t]imulate financial incentives & discounts with virtual goods, frequent flier miles, or other point-based systems & psychological motivations, nothing works better to increase conversion than a cool $5 bucks in yr digital wallet, or 20% off yr next offline purchase.

    While I don’t agree with everything he wrote (specifically, that rewards programs are more similar to game dynamics than to discounts) I do agree on the basic premise: that “normals” do not care about shiny badges, they care about saving money.

    However, venturing into discounts could pose a problem for foursquare. I was speaking with an analyst at a VC firm the other day who pointed out that early-adopter users often react negatively to being “given” something in return for using a product. Early-adopters use the product because of the intrinsic enjoyment it brings them. This value is diminished when they are given something tangible for using the product.

    It’s kind of like students receiving money for getting A’s in school. Though on the surface it sounds like a good idea (why not add another motivating factor!), this actually has been proven to reduce student performance, because enjoyment switches from intrinsic (or internal) motivation to extrinsic (or external) motivation. Intrinsic motivation is more powerful and sustainable than extrinsic. When motivated by intrinsic factors, a user is willing to act irrationally, giving more than he or she receives materially from the service; the user is compensated by inherent enjoyment. They do not see usage of the product as a market transaction governed by market rules: rather, it is an emotional decision.

    However, when motivation switches to extrinsic factors, the user will adopt logical market expectations that are associated with a market transaction and expect a 1:1 correlation of what they give and what they receive. It is no longer an emotional decision. If what they receive in discounts does not compensate for the effort of checking-in, the user will not use the product.

    Giving discounts to users could prove devastating in foursquare’s efforts to keep their core users engaged. The internal motivation subsides, as it is replaced by external motivation and likely an increasingly apathetic core user base. Also, the thrill of early adoption no doubt fades as more normals become regular users. It’s not so cool to blast your locations and insights about them when you find your archeology professor or sweet aunt chatted them up some time before you.

    So, on one hand foursquare needs discounts to attract a mainstream market. How can they grow as a company and increase monetization if they stall at 1 million users? On the other, they may alienate their existing user base if they move too much in this direction. Early-stage technology companies are extremely reliant on their initial users. A striking example on point is Aardvark, acquired by Google. For the social search service, 20% of users accounted for 85% of all answers. So, which way to go? It’s a fine line, and the outcome cannot easily be predicted. But I’ll leave with one idea: the Roger’s Innovation Adoption Curve (pictured below).

             Rogers

    The curve classifies users of innovative products on the basis of when they start using the product: some will adopt early, most will adopt mid-stream and others will adopt later. It is a normal distribution curve, and identifies innovators, early adopters, the early majority, the late majority and the laggards. In this model, 2.5% of users are innovators, 13.5% are early adopters, and the other 84% are what we would classify as “normals.” Right now it would appear that foursquare is just crossing the chasm between innovators and early adopters. The foursquare service is most powerful when used on a large scale. My best guess is that they will do all they can to capture the remaining ~97% of the market through discounts, but will do everything they can to keep their early adopters engaged through game dynamics. We may very well see an increasingly segmented foursquare user base; core users attracted for the game dynamics while largely ignoring discounts, and mainstream users attracted by discounts while apathetic to badges and points.

  4. Joel on Twitter

    I still have mixed feelings about Twitter, but I generally agree with the points that Joel makes. In particular I think that if you can do more listening than you do talking you can maximize its usefulness as a tool. He writes:

    Although I appreciate that many people find Twitter to be valuable, I find it a truly awful way to exchange thoughts and ideas. It creates a mentally stunted world in which the most complicated thought you can think is one sentence long. It’s a cacophony of people shouting their thoughts into the abyss without listening to what anyone else is saying. Logging on gives you a page full of little hand grenades: impossible-to-understand, context-free sentences that take five minutes of research to unravel and which then turn out to be stupid, irrelevant, or pertaining to the television series Battlestar Galactica. I would write an essay describing why Twitter gives me a headache and makes me fear for the future of humanity, but it doesn’t deserve more than 140 characters of explanation, and I’ve already spent 820.

    The other day I was having a conversation with my parents about the purpose of Twitter. I argued that it was to attain useful information. I use it to find interesting articles and conversations. I think the key here is that it helps me find them. The entirety of these conversations does not actually occur on the Twitter platform. My parents argued that it was yet another tool of my generation that provides entertainment to the ever-growing portion of the population who have a short attention span. The difference between “learning” and “empty enjoyment” may help illuminate the segmented market of Twtitter users. So, when you use Twitter, do you find yourself gaining knowledge; do you “learn” something of interest or value? Or is it just a way to pass them time; a vehicle for empty enjoyment? I think the answers to these questions are important for the impact Twitter will have on my generation.