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Real Time Terrorism Captured on Twitter – Mumbai Attacks Mumbai India Attacks November 26, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in social media.
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Terrorists are killing people at western hotels in Mumbai India of what people are calling the Mumbai attacks. This is real time and being captured on Twitter.

Here is the twitter search string that you can follow. This is tragic but it shows how the best resource in real time communications is people. People provide the human seed or meta data (aka folksonomy) that machines can scale with. You know what the content is great and gets better when the machines (search and social discovery) take over.

We had the London Bombing and before that the Tsunami. Here is some info on Mumbai India.

Silcon Valley Story: Twitter Please Don’t Be Web 2.0 Pointcast – Don’t Pull a Pointcast November 25, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Twitter was offered $500 million from Facebook as reported by Kara Swisher (who has an accurate reporting record).

Let me get this on the record: I love Twitter. From the day that my friend Dan Bricklin showed me Pyra I’ve been watching Ev and his team at Pyra, Odeo, and then Twitter I have been a big fan of those product guys.

Twitter has been a ‘whale of a hit’. I remember when I started PodTech we moved the needle with Twitter at SXSW in 2007 not only was it fun, but it was effective. Since that time in early 2007 Twitter has gone and continues to go mainstream. Many people use Twitter as a way to communicate to peers and friends while some use it to promote their wares (PR firms and social media wannabees).

Here’s my point: I hope that Twitter doesn’t become the Web 2.0 version of Pointcast. For all you not familar with the storied company they were a big Web 1.0 company with massive hype and viability. In fact their product paradigm was awesome. Except for some minor fatal flaws – like price of bandwidth and massive changes in clients software (browser) – it was a great product.

The final nail in Pointcast’s coffin was their blatant turn down of a $300 million+ offer from News Corp. Pointcast’s hubris reject the News Corp offer. Why? They were drinking the Web 1.0 kool aid – they thought they were on the verge of riding the wave of the Dot Com gold rush. That bubble popped and Pointcast was sold for like $2 million (mainly IP) a few years later.

Now here we have Twitter having a ‘whale of time’ enjoying their success and constant outage. Facebook offers $500 million and they turn it down. I love Twitter but I think that you’re on the verge of pulling a Pointcast.

Twitter’s Business Model – Real Time Alerts and Keywords July 30, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Ok way back when we had the tsunami, then the London bombing, and today earthquake in SoCal. Why does it take a disaster or potential disaster to wake up the masses.

Hey people Twitter is real or should I say the twitter’s value proposition is real. MG at Venturebeat has a post nailing the real time nature of Twitter. Big Biz Stone at Twitter opens the curtain to show us the stats (Biz we love stats – keep them coming).

What came out of the blue was David Dalka (one smart guy in Chicago) who brings in his perspective to the Twitter business model question.

David writes: “Graphs and/or alert spikes of user defined keywords – ie ones that are important to oneself personally or to one’s business or clients. I would dare to say this might actually be business model that could lead to meaningful monetization – I think alot of web services haven’t thought this through nearly enough. Organizing real-time data for useful decision making as a business model worked out OK for Michael Bloomberg if I recall correctly. Some might say Google Trends does this already from a search perspective, but it doesn’t break down the word clusters to core words with “sidekicks” and is not the leading indicator that Twitter is by an uncertain but definite time margin.”

The triple net is this: take MG’s post, Big Biz, and David’s and you have the Twitter business model. It’s a communication system about real-time but with asynchonous logging as well. It’s a data mining “quantjock’s” dream. Expect some real innovation around this new twist on Unified Communications.

That is why convergence is happening around presence and why I believe that the Unified Communications (covered on my other blog BroadDev.com) sector may be a pipe dream if presence paradigms like twitter continue to provide real time and non-linear value.

Future of Online Advertising – Clearspring Raises Big Round – Social Media and Social Advertising May 21, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Clearspring just secure what is being talked about is a big round. Ok I have an opinion on this. At PodTech we were one of the early players in having a deployable widget (player) with content emebbed. I can tell you that there is a big revenue model coming. Some just don’t see it yet.

I think that Clearspring could have fetched a much higher number like $30-40 million. Why because it’s about infrastructure and analytics. Online advertising is changing. Just look at Twitter. Clearspring has a bigger monetization opportunity than Twitter yet Twitter has all the VCs in a raging auction. Clearspring has a deeper opportunity.

Readers of Furrier.org know my opinion on the changing online advertising market. A new metric will emerge. Alot of us insiders know this and are racing to build the solution. Who will win? Clearspring has a great chance and is more than viable. It’s a billion dollar business.  Oh yeah Clearspring has big media companies adopting as well – that’s all upside.

I think that this financing represents the growing trend of convergence within online advertising and social networks.

I won’t even talk about the media and search opportunity that I see with widgets and infrastructure data. Hmmmm..

Twitter is Rising Not Falling – They Still Need To Innovate April 29, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Eric Eldon is reporting that Twitter traffic rising not falling.  Kara Swisher challenged everyone yesterday and posed the question will Twitter fail.  That got the elite in the blogosphere talking.  I believe that I was the only one who took the bold position that twitter will FAIL.

I immediately got twitters from folks like Danny Sullivan and others like Danny who know what they are talking about.  Fact is my prediction is this:  Twitter the company will fail but not Twitter the paradigm.  Why do I say this?  Because Twitter’s innovation (product gurus) could be their downfall.  They need to think like infrastructure or operating systems people not AJAX developers – meaning get some core IP defined and owned it fast otherwise the core asset runs out of control.

Some may disagree with me and that’s fine.  I’d love to debate it anytime here at 654 High Street, Palo Alto, CA – the new home of the Social MediaHaus or on Twitter: @Furrier

Kara Swisher Leaves EchoChamber for Weekend – Twitter will Fail April 28, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in Technology.
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Bold Prediction:  Twitter will fail.

Kara Swisher asks for a prediction on Twitter.

I love twitter and use it daily but what strikes me is the lack of ‘technical competitive strategy’.  Twitter runs the risk of being so open that it might not ever make money.  Ok so everyone is talking about monetization, but my take is different.  If I worked at Twitter I could have that business at $100m fast – it just seems an easy thing to do.  The key to their success is the platform and the concept called ‘value leakage’.

Everyday when a new twitter clients comes out Twitter loses value.  This may seem counterproductive but in a systems business the main vendor needs a ‘core’.  It seems that Twitter might just lose their core value if it  doesn’t implement some technical competitive strategy – meaning lock in a value core and build on it.  Twitter to me just seems to be a runaway success and out of control from both a scale and sustainable perspective.

I love Twitter but their braintrust needs to jam on a value core to build on their openness.

Twitter is the Ultimate SmartMob – The Money is in the Collaboration February 24, 2008

Posted by John Furrier in social media.
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It’s no surprise that Howard Rheingold loves and is addicted to Twitter.  I have been at the center of social networking and social media from day one and have seen tools come and go.  Twitter is the real deal. 

Many people don’t get it and will never get it.  Where’s the business model – they cry.  Many see Twitter as a geek utility – a low cost to run utility.   It is clearly a solid communication utility. 

Where’s the Beef people ask?   Two Areas: 

1)  Communication and Coordination:    At PodTech we did many social media experiments and one of them was implementing Twitter mobs to drive brand awareness – we used as a communication tool to create an engaged ”smart mob”.  Did it work.  It sure did. 

2)  Smart Collaboration:   Another area that Twitter rules is what I call the “smart collaborative mob”.   This is the Web 2.0 “holy grail”.   

Let me give some examples:  I have been personally using it this way for sometime in vetting out my next venture.  Also, more publically take a look at Seesmic and Loic Lemur.  He is actively using Twitter as a collaboration tool to build his business – I love that about Seesmic.  Just this weekend Loic Lemur was going through 900 feature ideas from the community – talk about smart mobbing for collaboration.  It’s open source entrepreneurship – high quality, efficient and low cost.

Twitter is one major component for Social Media but it can’t be used unless it has a community.  

Where’s the big business model in Twitter? 

Answer:  “Smart Collaboration”

Who owns it:?  Everyone

Who makes money:?  Everyone and Twitter