So, this could be a decision I regret, but this morning I made some plans to head to LA in April. Coincidentally, this evening TechCrunch announced their latest party, Geek Goes Chic, in Hollywood while I'm there. Since that doesn't happen often, I decided to pick up a ticket.

This could turn out to be the douchiest thing I've done in a long time, or it could actually turn out to be fairly cool. I'm hoping since it's not in Silicon Valley that it'll be a little better.

If you're going to be there, and you're worried about the same thing as I am, shoot me off an email -- iseff@iseff.com -- and we'll hang out.

Labels: geeks gone chic, hollywood, los angeles, party, techcrunch

I'll be up front: I don't get social networking. That said, I like watching the progress of what I call the web-ization of social networking (things want to be free, things want to be open, etc).

But perhaps the most interesting thing I've seen so far is this quote from Brandee Barker of Facebook:

Despite reports, Facebook has still not been briefed on OpenSocial.

You mean to tell me that after weeks of negotiations on a hundreds of millions of dollar deal, Google never told Facebook about its plans?

My guesses as to what happened:

1. Google had been planning this as a contingency to losing the Facebook deal. If the FB deal went through, they may not have released this so soon.
   
2. Or, perhaps, just perhaps, Google took the more-evil route. They knew Microsoft had more to lose (they really need to spur growth to their advertising business and show a big win), so they intentionally bid up the valuation on FB with no interest in actually winning, let MSFT close at a more expensive price, and then steal their thunder just a week later.
   

Just thinking out loud here..

Labels: facebook, google, Microsoft, opensocial

A long, long time ago (March, 2004), the tech-world was abuzz about a startup in breakout mode named Google. Rumors were floating about if and when the company would go public when an SEC loophole was found. It was only a short time later (April, 2004) that Google did file for an IPO which set the tech world on fire.

Today the geeksters are all abuzz about another startup in breakout mode, named Facebook. The same hype circle is flowing and people are now speculating on its IPO. Let me put that to rest and predict that it will happen within 12 months.

Why 12 months? Let's revisit Google. A primary motivator for Google going public when it did was the SEC loophole. The rule is going to hit Facebook in the same way:

Under securities law, U.S. companies that have $10 million of total assets and more than 500 stockholders must file a Form 10 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Tonight at the Web 2.0 Summit, Mark Zuckerberg stated, according to SAI:

Facebook has 300 employees (all with equity) and will have 700 in a year.

One can only imagine that at least half of the next 400 employees will also have equity. The $10 million in assets is practically a given.

Given this, it seems that Facebook will file by this time next year. At the latest, it will file April, 2009 (assuming no acquisitions) because the rule states that if your fiscal year ends December 31 and you are above the thresholds, you must file by April 30.

Labels: facebook, google, ipo, mark zuckerberg, markzuckerberg, sec, web 2.0, web 2.0 summit, web2.0, zuckerberg

This is a post I've been wanting to write for a while, but the Mozy deal just brought it back to my attention. I'm surprised that all the talk of "the web as the platform" hasn't led to this already.

Mozy, Carbonite, and others are all great for backing up your hard disk. Ultimately, though, backing up is dead. It's no secret by now that we're moving our lives online. In a few short years we'll be producing all our documents, spreadsheets, etc on the web. We'll be happily collaborating and sharing on the web.

Knowing this, I can't understand why all these online storage companies are so focused on providing consumers backup opportunities. There's no point. If all our documents are online and stored by online file systems, they'll be backed up automatically. And available. All over the world, from any net-connected computer.

There's a level of trust which needs to be obtained of course. But, I generally trust Flickr, Yahoo, Google, Openomy, etc. I know that once my files are stored, they're safe. They'll be replicated across many hard drives. Many machines. Many data centers throughout the world.

Once we've killed backing up in favor for keeping our files in the cloud, the next step will be keeping those files out of silos. But that's for another post...

Back in May, I bought a fun domain name: featureorbug.com.

After debating for a few days, I decided I was going to make it a tumblelog for all things I enjoy-- technology, code, some business, and even some finance. I mostly post quotes and links of things I find around the web.

I've told a few people about this site already, so there's at least a couple readers, but I think it's time to open it up to the public.

So, if you're interested in programming, technology, business, etc, definitely subscribe to the RSS feed. There's a lot of gems in there with many more to come.

Feature Or Bug

P.S. Feature Or Bug is made possible by the great tumblr software.

Labels: business, code, featureorbug, finance, technology, tumblelogs, tumblr

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about Mahalo.

I think Mahalo has great results. Especially for non-techies. I asked my friend yesterday whether she'd rather look at the results for Mercedes Benz S-Class at Mahalo or at Google. She instantly wanted Mahalo. Me too.

For the fat head of results that Calacanis is aiming for, he's going to get great results. There's no question a human touch will help.

The issue is the average user won't know the distinction between the fat head and long tail. Moreover, I don't think they'll care enough to use two search engines for different purposes. Google provides alright results for my example above, it's just not as pretty and easy to understand as Mahalo. But Mahalo doesn't provide any useful results for Openomy, while Google does. Sure, Mahalo is trying to use Google here, but their "More results from our friends at Google" thing just doesn't cut it from the user experience (performance, grouped results, etc).

I'm trying hard to find out where the sweet spot is for Mahalo, then. Jason wants to ensure his service is used by the mainstream web users, but are those users really going to be able to know when to which search engine? Are they even going to want to use two search engines when one can provide average results for all terms, but the other doesn't even provide any for half of what they search for? Even the average user dips into the long tail quite often.

I think Mahalo can do well even if they don't figure this out. Search is such a large market that even the smallest success is pretty good money. But it won't be a Google killer, that's for sure. I don't know what the answer to this is yet, but it seems likely that an innovative solution in their upcoming platform could help them bridge the gap and hit their sweet spot.

Labels: calacanis, jason calacanis, mahalo, search

Facebook RSS feeds really scare me!

Hey Dale Lane, it's really great to know about your friends info.

At the very least, couldn't Facebook use a robots.txt file here? At least make someone work for it a little bit.