Is Twitter a fad or the next Facebook? June 30, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Social Networking.Tags: facebook, twitter
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The faster a fad rises in pop-cultural consciousness, the faster it falls in the popularity ratings. Thus says a recent study that surmises that “people believe that items that are adopted quickly will become fads, leading them to avoid these items, thus causing these items to die out”. Weird, uh?
Besides baby names, the symmetry between popularity rise and fall can carry over to other cultural items. For example, the scientists noted that similar outcomes have been observed in the music industry, where new artists who shoot to the top of the charts right away also fall quickly, and so have lower overall sales than those who rise more slowly. While this finding seems counterintuitive, since a quick rise in popularity would seem like a good thing, it shows that a backlash to perceived fads should be taken into account. As the researchers explain, people who want to ensure the persistence and success of particular items should seek to popularize the items at a slow but steady pace.
I’ve read a bunch of articles in the recent past, that talked about users’ disillusionment with Twitter after signing up en masse, thanks to (maybe) Oprah. But my experience has more closely mimicked that of TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld who explains Twitter’s adoption curve thus:
Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.
But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.
p.s. And if you’re wondering what the chart above means, read the entire article here. (via Rex)
How Obama and Transformers 2 crossed the chasm June 28, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Marketing.Tags: barack-obama
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As I was reading that “Transformers 2″, the much reviled movie (critically at least) made $112M on their opening weekend, I couldn’t help but think back on Seth Godin’s excellent post earlier today on the paradox of the middle of the market.
This is obviously a movie that caters to that audience precisely:
“The paradox is that it’s almost impossible to make a product or service for this segment, because they want the tried, the true and the boring.”
However, with movies we’re talking about making movies solely for this segment because they want the tried, true and boring sequels, because of the brand recall factor. Godin goes on to explain the phenomenon:
“The middle of the market is a paradox because of the inherent contradiction between the ease of reaching the nerds and the geeks and the need to reach the middle. The solution, if there is one, is to enter a market to the enthusiastic cheers of those in search of the new, but to build a product/service that appeals to those in the middle. After the initial wave of enthusiasm, you hunker down and ignore those that first embraced you, obsessing instead on the needs and networks of the middle. It’s a difficult balancing act, but it’s the only one that works.
Ultimately, you end up disappointing the hard core that first found you, but because of their initial enthusiasm (and more important, because you designed your work for the masses in the first place), your product crosses the chasm and reaches a larger group. The formula starts with a service or product that’s purple enough to spread, but not so hyper-fashionable that it merely entertains the insiders. ”
I think this relates equally well to brands. Take for e.g. the brand called Obama. He too started niche, catering to his rabid group of followers or “the base” as they call it in politics. In Obama’s case his core supporters were obviously those on the extreme left. But soon during the elections itself he started “obsessing about the needs of the middle”, and at some point after the election resulted in disappointing that hard core base. But by that time his brand had crossed over the chasm and had seeped into the nation’s consciousness.
What other brands do you recall performing a similar feat? There are tons out there. Leave a comment.
What it’s like being an AD in a movie set June 28, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Miscellaneous.Tags: scary-cow
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For those wondering what these pictures were all about. This was at a test shoot for a scary cow documentary, that I was a part of earlier today.
Scary Cow is an independent movie co-op that brings together amateur talent (such as myself) in pursuit of creating a movie, documentary or short film. Unfortunately, I can’t share much about the documentary I’m a part of right now, but I’ll continue sharing tidbits on the movie making process in subsequent posts of mine.
How are movies made? Here are my first impressions from today’s shoot: 1. There are three key people running day-to-day operations of a shoot. We’re a small crew so this is just a microcosm of what one would experience on a feature film’s shoot. Today’s shoot had three key players ably assisted by the crew: a. Executive Producer who also plays a key role in the documentary. b. Director c. Director of Photography or DP The DP is supported by x number of camera operators who are helped by production assistants (admin stuff – tracking time, etc.)
The AD is the key liaison who helps connect these different individuals on the day of the shoot. I was helping the AD today and have also volunteered to help with various aspects of promoting the film. 2. The devil is in the detail: Seriously, this is key to the success of a day’s shoot. Period. It’s the role of the AD to plan a day’s shoot well in advance, being the administrative lead on keeping every team informed and aware of what’s happening (talent, DP, and others) both before and on the day of the shoot. 3. Murphy’s law rules: If something could go wrong on a day’s shoot, it will. Given that we’re doing a documentary there were problems with sound, obstacles in your line of sight, etc. but none too serious. That said, planning helps mitigate problems and deal with them effectively. These are my initial thoughts from today’s shoot and I wish I’d taken more pictures, but hey, when you’re on a set, it’s go-time and there’s not much time to goof around. Stay tuned for more from the world of movie making in the months to come.
The Top 100 Networked VCs (Reid’s at #18) June 28, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Social Networking.add a comment
Is it any surprise that the 18th most connected venture capitalist also founded the world’s largest online business networking site! 
BTW, I do work at that company and consider working with Reid, one of the many perks LinkedIn has to offer.
If you’re wondering how TechCrunch came up with the #s, check out the rationale below or feel free to skim through 52 pages of analysis embedded above.
If this is true, then who are the most connected venture firms and angel investors today? Vijay Dondeti, a graduate student in bioinformatics, applied the analysis in the Hochberg paper to about 2,700 investors in CrunchBase who participated in over 3,300 startup funding rounds between 2006 and 2008. He scored each investor based on how well connected they are to other investors as well as how well-connected their co-investors are to other investors. “In summary,” says Dondeti, “to get a high score, you need to co-invest often with others that also co-invest often.”
And, why do you think being a networked venture capitalist is important, besides the obvious? Better Returns.
The more co-investors a venture firm has, the better its network. The better its network, the better its overall returns. The correlation between the size of a venture firm’s network and its returns may have something to do with better access to deal flow, talent, advisers, potential customers, and potential exits.
Read more here.
Deconstructing the Addiction to Twitter June 26, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Social Networking.Tags: twitter
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I couldn’t have explained it better. It pretty much explains how I got hooked onto it, but in my case, it was the events that drew me in at first, and real-time search and the fact that many of my friends and colleagues were using it.
Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch explains the phenomenon:
The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an account out of curiosity or a fear of being left behind. They try sending out a few Tweets, look around, get bored by the initial banality of the service and abandon it for other pursuits.
But that is not the end of it. A lot of them come back, either because they keep getting links from friends or keep hearing about it on TV or whatever, and then they slowly start to see the usefulness—a funny Tweet from a friend, a link to breaking news, a way to keep an eye on the general zeitgeist. Twitter is the kind of thing that is easier to experience than it is to explain. But it is an acquired taste and often requires repeated exposure before people get hooked. Once they do get hooked, there is no going back.
How I learned to quit “blogging” and love Posterous June 26, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Technology I Love.1 comment so far
I guess the simplest answer would be that I'd lost my passion for "blogging".
Part of the problem was "writers block" which I fought and lost regularly – a condition that worsened with each passing day. To complicate matters, Twitter and later Facebook (when they copied Twitter) opened my eyes to the real-time ecosystem of micro-posts rather than the essay style blog posts I'd grown tired of. Plus, looked like my attention was fragmented across four or five social networking sites and I could no longer I keep track of which sites I had posted to and which ones I hadn't.
Enter Posterous
Posterous can be viewed as the "one ring to rule them all". It's the one site I create content on that can then be re-routed to all other channels seamlessly. To me they have taken the stress and hassle out of cross-platform content maintenance while letting you focus on content creation as you go through your daily life in real-time.
Still confused? Here are my five reasons for switching:
1. Seriously, I wasn't "blogging" and it was becoming more difficult to get back on the bandwagon.
2. Ease of use – email any type of content (text, pics, audio, video) – just anything to post@posterous.com and boom! it's published after formatting.
3. Multimedia – The future is in real-time user generated multimedia (pics, audio, video) creation. And the future has arrived with the iPhone 3GS. Now, Posterous makes it painfully simple to email the video / picture you take with your 3GS phone, formats it for you and posts it on your Posterous site within seconds.
4. Cross-posting capability – This is killer. Posterous allow you to automatically populate your twitter, facebook, friendfeed, youtube, flickr and blog so you don't have to worry about cross-posting it across these different channels.
5. Participation – they have facebook and twitter connect on posterous, so your friends can leave a comment on your posterous site through their twitter / facebook feed. You can also choose to feed that status update or tweet back through those respective sites.
In its most simplest terms. It's easy creation of real-time multimedia creation that attracted me most to Posterous. Now, all I have to do is buy the iPhone 3GS.
Can Corporate Culture be changed? June 26, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Marketing.Tags: corporate-culture
2 comments
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about company values and culture. Our new CEO (Jeff) and founder (Reid), shared LinkedIn’s mission and values at a recent all-hands (pics here – http://is.gd/1dTtD).
Defining corporate culture is an extremely arduous task: part art, part science, part mystery. And redefining corporate culture may well be the Holy Grail in organizational management science.
Can it be done?
HBS’ Peter Bergman thinks it can be done – with stories. Yes, stories! As community evangelist, my role encompasses external evangelism. For e.g. letting our users communicate how LinkedIn has impacted their professional success, which we then chronicle on the blog –
http://blog.linkedin.com/category/success-stories/
And, Peter’s suggestion indicates that internal company culture can be changed with such stories.
“To start a culture change all we need to do is two simple things:
1. Do dramatic story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then let other people tell stories about it.
2. Find other people who do story-worthy things that represent the culture we want to create. Then tell stories about them.”
How To Filter Out Facebook “Friends” Without Them Knowing June 25, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Social Networking.Tags: facebook
3 comments
I’m probably one of the very few who actually has friend categories set up on Facebook, but frankly I’ve never used it. What I didn’t know was that if you move any category above your “News feed”, FB.com auto-loads with only updates from that group. Sweet!
Corporate Blogwell in San Francisco June 25, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Conferences, Corporate Blogging.Tags: corporate-blogwell
2 comments
Thanks to Andy Sernovitz and team for the invite. It gave me an opportunity to meet Lionel from Dell, Ken from Intel, Mark from SAP, and Kira from Intuit. Too bad I missed meeting Nicki from Yahoo! Next time, maybe.
Google brings Sexy back with a Wave! May 29, 2009
Posted by Mario Sundar in Technology I Love.2 comments
Bringing Sexy Back to technology! And, you thought that was solely Apple’s prerogative. Today was one of those “I was there” moments. It took me back to the day I watched Jobs demo the iPhone, when he had us all at “scrolls like butter“. Yes, I’ve watched that demo quite a few times since then.
Today, Google demoed a technology that has been 4+ years in the making to an adoring crowd of 4000 developers. A collaboration and communication platform that makes traditional email look like the abacus in terms of instant gratification. So enough with the teasing, you say.
Surfing a Google Wave?
Participating in a Wave is a little like an email chain, and a little like instant messaging; you can embed documents, Google Web Elements, photos and other multimedia, and the whole bailywick is presented as one stream of conversation. People can jump in or jump out at any time, and they can track back in conversations to see where things got started. [Source: Fast Company]
What Google continues to do is completely turn on its head the traditional understanding of a mainstream technology (with the iPhone it was stuff like visual voice mail and with gmail it was threaded conversations and tagging) and provide us with a radical, new way to get stuff done.
But, I digress. So, let me cut to the chase and outline for you the 5 key moments in the really long demo below that had 4000 developers cheering like they had just heard Steve Jobs announce the next version of the iPhone (read Arrington’s great piece on Google’s impeccable launch timing). Key portions in the video are highlighted after the jump.
Yes, at an hour and 20 minutes, the video is way too long. So if you’ve five minutes and want to catch the most interesting parts, check out the following timestamps in the video. And, could somebody slice-and-dice these clips together to create a succinct 3 minute video.
The Basics
5:05 – 7:05 The philosophy of Waves
The Components / Demo
7:35 – 12:05 The metaphor of hosted conversations. Quick usage scenarios on how a Wave takes multiple elements and fits it into a Wave.
10:10 – 12:05 How a real time conversation within a wave mimics Instant Messaging
15:20 – 17:20 Sharing multimedia. How it’s done in a wave.
27:30 – 33:05 Inline discussion, content collaboration and the playback button. Oh, yae! it’s pretty cool.
35:05 – 37:42 Multiple individuals collaborating real-time on a single doc. It’s even better than what Google Docs does today!
And, two more things…
44:00 – 46:04 Spell checker. It’s different this time. Pretty impressive!
1:12:00 – 1:16:00 And, one more thing. Real time translation demo, followed by (what I think was) an extended standing ovation.
So, I’m way past my bedtime having taken a couple of hours to revisit the video embedded above. And, one thing’s for sure, Google put on an Apple’sque show today and totally wowed us all with what they believe is the future of communication. I can’t wait to try out the product.
