Reflections & analysis about innovation, technology, startups, investing, healthcare, and more .... with a focus on Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes. Blogging continuously since 2005.

Tag: Twitter (Page 4 of 6)

Tim O’Reilly Asks Jonathan Schwartz the ‘Missed Questions’

In case you didn’t catch this, a couple of days ago Tim O’Reilly asked the Twittersphere if they’d like to put any questions to the CEO of Sun, about an hour before he was to interview him on-stage at the Web 2.0 Expo in SF this week. 2441268833_fee85854a1
(Photo by James Duncan Davidson.) Well, Tim was wondering why he wasn’t seeing any questions coming through on Twitter, till he realized (too late) that he had his Twitter app settings wrong on his smart phone! (Unfortunately, he was only getting replies from those he was following.)  Well, I wasn’t on Tim’s follow list, so my question, which I submitted within minutes of when he Twittered about this, was missed … along with a whole bunch of other people’s questions.

A few hours after the session ended, I saw a tweet from Tim where he graciously had decided he would do a blog post to ask those Twittered questions of Schwartz via email, after the fact. That exchange took a day or so, but Tim just posted the resulting Q&A yesterday, here: Missed Twitter Questions from Jonathan Schwartz Interview at Web 2.0 Expo.

So, as you’ll see on Tim’s post, my question (about blogging and Twittering, of course) did get asked, and answered — and, thanks to Twitter, I didn’t even have to go the conference! 🙂  There were several other good questions that Schwartz answered as well. The hint about what’s to come regarding Sun’s "network.com" offering is especially interesting. Thanks, Tim, for the great recovery — you’re forgiven!

Blogging Less, Twittering More…Plus YHOO & GOOG Are Up to Something

In case you haven’t noticed, my blog posts here are fewer and farther between these days, just because I’m so damn busy. (I’ll tell you why soon.) But thank god somebody invented microblogging(!), because it sure is easier and faster. I’m sure many of you have seen the accompanying cartoon strip. Twittertwittertwitter_2

But it’s true — Twitter has definitely allowed me, with my crazy schedule, to keep putting forth some of my observations and perspectives on the world around me. I’m grateful for that.

Latest case in point: I Twittered earlier today about how Yahoo’s already reporting positive results from its test with Google to outsource search to the latter. Well, it’s not really the company directly reporting that — rather, it’s the proverbial "people familiar with the matter," according to the WSJ. (But that would most likely be Yahoo or Google employees who asked the reporter not to identify them.)  A Citigroup Global Markets analyst even said this deal could increase Yahoo’s cash flow a whopping $1 billion per year.

Some would say this latest "leak" is all about Yahoo trying to get a better price per share from Microsoft. I don’t agree. Google has more to do than help Yahoo shareholders get another buck or two. I think Yahoo very seriously wants to avoid the Microsoft deal and is working overtime to find a better alternative.  And Google obviously has the incentive to help them do that. I don’t think the latest Yahoo move is just posturing at all. As the Journal says, the only other tie-up that seems to be possible right now is a deal with Time Warner’s AOL, wherein the latter would become a 20% owner of Yahoo. However, the matter of who will win Yahoo seems far from over to me yet. I like to think that News Corp. hasn’t really played its ultimate hand, for example. And, of course, being that they now own the WSJ, I don’t find it surprising that the writer of today’s article didn’t quote anyone on that possibility.

GSP West 08: Hot and Cold

It’s a hot conference, and what do I get?  A damn cold!  And I just had a doozer back in January, too.  Is this the worst, hellish year for colds and flu that you can remember, or what?  It sure is for a lot of people I know….

Anyway, I’m sucking it up (oh, god, that’s bad), tryin’ to keep up…. I did my live-Twittering thing yesterday, after getting well practiced at DEMO. Gspopeningscene
See my 40 or 50 something tweets (I lost count) here.  Then chatted over wine with Aaron Fulkerson (MindTouch), Dan Carroll (Somr.org, former Twin Citian, now Mountain View), Chris Messina (DISO guy), Maria Sipka (Linquia, a fellow Aussie and surfer), Chris Gammill (a buddy from LA), and others — all while uploading my pix on Flickr. Gspplatformwars

Afterwards, attended part of AppNite (couple of cool ones!), then managed to hear most of Tim O’Reilly’s keynote at 8:00 — it was good, very inspired. Tim is amazing. Took a lot of notes, but was all out of Twitter juice by that time. So, dragged myself back to my hotel (a very cool little boutique place called the Sophia). Now it’s Tuesday morning, and I’m seriously looking for a Walgreens so I can load up on cold medicine…  🙁

Three Important Points Dan Gillmor Made the Other Night

I attended an event Monday night sponsored by the Society of Professional Journalists/MN Chapter, billed as "New Media, New Standards? Ethics in Online Journalism."  It was held at the very impressive MPR facility in downtown St. Paul, and I was surprised to see about 200 people showed up. Gillmorwideshot
It was mostly members of the local traditional media — reporters, editors, producers, etc — and I’d say it skewed toward senior-level people. There were some academics in the audience, too. And I’d estimate a good 30 to 40 of us independent bloggers came out as well, even though we weren’t really actively invited (to my knowledge, anyway). The event was open to the public, and I actually learned about it from the featured speaker, Dan Gillmor. I just happened to notice on his blog that he had Minneapolis listed in his upcoming travel plans, so I asked him was that was about. Dan was the main reason I wanted to be there, because I have a lot of respect for the man. I’ve met him on a couple of occasions, most recently at DEMO in January, and I always enjoy reading his columns in PR Week.Gillmorcloseup

I Twittered live from the event here (scroll down to a series of posts dated February 25). But I thought I’d also do a little followup post here, as I realized there were three very important takeaways from this event that deserved calling out (and all three confirmed my own suspicions):

1) The New York Times is in state of bigtime decline. Gillmor says the Times "screwed up" on the McCain insinuation story. "They’ll pay for it, and I’m most disappointed they still aren’t admitting it." How many occurrences of editorial screwups do people need to see from this paper to realize it’s dying?  And the fact that Marc Andreessen has declared a "NY Times deathwatch" on his blog is only more evidence of that. Of course, his argument is more from a business standpoint, since they’ve become the best example of the dying newspaper business model. But, for me, the combination of Andreessen’s call and Gillmor’s shock at their editorial demise is enough. Stick a fork in it.

2)  Transparency.  Dan said bloggers understand and practice it, but traditional journalists
don’t. I was heartened by Gillmor breaking this to the audience (not that they shouldn’t have known it already). I started what I think was one of the best discussions of transparency way back in November 2006, when Mark Glaser picked up on something I said and posted about it on his very well respected MediaShift blog at PBS.org. I spoke my piece pretty well there. I’m starting to realize that the fact the mainstream media is widely perceived as biased may largely be due to its journalists not being
transparent as individuals, about their own biases, whether by choice or
because their employers’ policies don’t require them to be. But, net-net, because Dan Gillmor pointed this out, I’m gathering that this
notion of transparency still hasn’t sunk in with the traditional media crowd.

3) Readers are smarter than writers. I’ve heard Dan allude to this before. But I think it merits more attention. He said he first realized this early in his career as a technology writer for the San Jose Mercury News. And it certainly applies to the world of blogging, he said. But he also said that doesn’t mean commenters can be rude or obnoxious. Civil behavior must still be the rule. "Your blog is your living room, and you have every right to not let people come in and spit on your rug."  Right on, Dan.

Feeding Frenzy’s Started on FriendFeed

Or so declares Fred Wilson. And I see Josh Kopelman’s on it, too. (Wonder which guy funded it, or both?) Friendfeedlogo_4
A buddy of mine gave me the heads-up in a comment a couple hours ago, to my previous post (see below), saying this could be the next big thing at SXSW. 

What is it about this time of year?  The Web 2.0 crowd just needs something new to get ’em talking?  Okay, I’m tryin’ it — gotta see what this is about.  Only took me a minute or two to set up my FriendFeed account. Looks kinda like a Twitter that ate its Wheaties…  🙂

Except, this year, aren’t they jumping the gun a bit?  ETech and GSP come first, next week, ahead of SXSW.  Anyone know how far in advance of SXSW it was last year when Twitter went live?  Should be fun to see how long this one will take to break… 🙂

UPDATE (1:30 pm CST): Well, we now have the skinny on who’s behind this one — my friend Brian Solis just posted.

 

« Older posts Newer posts »