Why Facebook Timeline Is Made For Its Youngest Users

For many older users, myself included, it is doubtful that we will go back to the time before Facebook (for me, late 2004) to fill in the gaps on my Timeline. From talking to other people my age since the announcement, it seems more likely that people of our generation will sanitize stuff that resurfaces rather than adding more content to the stream. But for younger users, they don’t need to fill in any gaps — their Timeline is already more or less complete.

via mashable.com

Nice opinion piece that captures something I was taking about at our Korrio exec team meeting this morning. For those of us that joined Facebook in our post-college years the idea of going back to "fill in the blanks" may not be that appealing. For younger users, including those who have grown up with the Internet, Facebook has been their constant and consistent companion. They've switched phones and schools, but Facebook has always been there collecting their thoughts, photos, accomplishments and events.

Why Netflix Just Cut Itself in Half

There's also this point raised by Bill Gurley today: Netflix has this whole time been paying studios for streaming rights based on its total number of streaming subscribers, including those with streaming + DVD plans that never watched a movie online. By partitioning streaming and mail-order, Netflix can hand studios a more accurate picture of how many people are downloading their content—which will hopefully mean more favorable studio deals, and more options for your queue.

via gizmodo.com

I've been saying all day that Bill Gurley is right on this. People, who don't understand the twisted and consumer unfriendly logic of Hollywood, can't see why Netflix would voluntarily do this to itself. It was either cut off it's arm or allow Hollywood to strangle it over streaming content deals.

Honestly I'm glad that Netflix has done this. It will make them a smarter and more nimble company in the long run, despite all the drama it's creating for them in the near term.

These eight Amish men are in a Kentucky jail over orange safety triangles

The Kentucky Department of Transportation requres slow-moving Amish buggies to sport an orange, reflective triangle to warn oncoming traffic — just like those on tractors and other farm vehicles. But some Amish believe their religion forbids the displaying of bright colors, and so several of them now sit in a Kentucky jail.

via jalopnik.com

Fight for your right to wear dark colors and drive slow buggies.

Breakneck growth thanks to social sharing platforms (or How Instagram Is The Future Of Startups)

Kleiner Perkins partner and early Zynga investor Bing Gordon just tweeted that he's declaring "'Zuckerberg's Law': [the] quantity of social sharing doubles every 12 months. [The t]rend has held at [Facebook] for 4 years." Whatever the numbers, it's absolutely clear that the new social platforms enable breakneck growth. Instagram is growing twice as fast as Foursquare which is growing faster than Twitter did which grew faster than Facebook did. This is because as social platforms grow, the amount of sharing that goes on them grows exponentially, which means new services can be distributed even faster. And you can't even find Instagram photos on Google: you can find the app's site, but if you search for a particular user's Instagram page, you can't find it on Google. Google was once the overwhelmingly important platform for a startup's growth, and no it's not just #2 but utterly irrelevant to the fastest-growing notable startup.

via businessinsider.com

Here did he go?

via sierraclub.org

I wonder what happened to the child to left their bike chained to this tree, only to never return. Now the tree has claimed the bike in it's own way.

Kicking a new ball

Back before Labor Day I made a few tweets and status updates about my last day at Screenlife. It may have seemed I was being cryptic since I didn't offer any new details. That caused a lot of friends to email for confirmation that I'd really left Screenlife and ask what I'm going to be doing next. After taking a week "offline" after Labor Day it's time to fill everyone in.

Growing up in Kentucky if you had a round ball with air in it, you tried to dribble it and shoot jumpers, not start kicking it around the yard. I never learned how to play soccer as a kid and have to shamefully admit that despite living in Pioneer Square and seeing the march to the stadium several times, I have yet to make it to a Seattle Sounders game. As you'll see, it may be time to start learning how to dribble with my feet.

Tomorrow is my first day as Chief Product Officer at Korrio. Korrio is a startup that launched in January 2011, though in reality our founder and CEO Steve Goldman first starting working on it in 2009. Steve's vision is to create a platform that transforms the youth sports experience for organizers and administrators, coaches, parents and players. The idea of "more sport, less hassle" is driving Korrio to create a system that makes it easier for do everything from sign up for a league, organize teams, arrange carpools or even share photos from game day. With 45 million kids in the US playing team sports with millions of parents and coaches participating as well it's a huge potential market that has been really underserved.

Korrio launched earlier this year and is already generating revenue with key partnerships with youth soccer teams and associations in Washington, Massachusetts, New York and many more. Korrio's raised funding from Ignition Partners as well as some key angels. 

So how did I get involved? Brad Hefta-Gaub who I've known and respected since we worked together at RealNetworks, is Korrio's CTO. When Brad and Steve started talking about how they wanted to expand their exec team by adding someone with a consumer products focus, Brad suggested me. Steve and I met for lunch soon after and the rest, they say, is history. I was really impressed with Steve and the entire team at Korrio. It includes top flight board members like Ignition's John Conners, former CFO at Microsoft, and Martin Coles former COO at Starbucks and CEO at Reebok. The exec team has some great folks with experience at Unisys, Oracle, F5, Crescendo Networks and I'm excited to be a part of it. 

As the Chief Product Officer my role will be to help drive forward Korrio's PlayFlow platform's industry leading feature set. Our focus is to make sports management easy, integrated, safe and mobile. They team has a huge set of ideas from customers already so I'm going to be busy helping to prioritize those in addition to looking for new opportunities to make a great consumer service even better. While PlayFlow has been built today with soccer in mind we're setting our sights on other sports like baseball, football and yes, basketball. 

I had a great time at Screenlife. It's a company full of passionate people with a long history with the beloved Scene It? consumer brand. While I was there at SVP of Digital and head of the games studio  I helped expand their mobile products, launched Scene It? Daily the first truly cross platform Screenlife game, and put in motion new game projects for IPTV and downloadable console. While I hated to leave the team and all the great opportunities Screenlife has in front of it, the opportunity at Korrio was just too exciting. I couldn't pass it up.


So that's the story behind my new job. Korrio is located in SODO so I'm staying close to home. If you're in the neighborhood let me know. Would be great to catch up and show you more about why Korrio got me excited enough to start kicking a new ball.

I, Cringely » Blog Archive » How Not to Run Yahoo - Cringely on technology

I’ve written about this many times over the years. These are companies built purely on intellect — companies where there are a few individuals who are capable of doing things that are unique in their enterprise.  Imagine a General Motors where there was only one worker who could make really fine exhaust systems. That wouldn’t work in Detroit but it does work in Silicon Valley because the output of that one person can be amplified a thousand or a million times.

Look at Google and its acquisitions, for example.  Google notoriously buys companies only to discard their products. This is clearly because Google is acquiring the people for their potential. Yet analysts wring their hands over the lost products as though that was what really mattered and the acquisitions had somehow failed. The truth is the products were inconsequential all along.

Are some individual contributors worth $100 million?  Yes, though Wall Street gets that backward, too, thinking CEOs are worth that kind of money, which they aren’t.

via cringely.com

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Some of Sarah Palin's Ideas Cross the Political Divide - NYTimes.com

This is not the capitalism of free men and free markets, of innovation and hard work and ethics, of sacrifice and of risk,” she said of the crony variety. She added: “It’s the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest — to the little guys. It’s a slap in the face to our small business owners — the true entrepreneurs, the job creators accounting for 70 percent of the jobs in America.

via nytimes.com

Oh. My. God. I just agreed with Sarah Palin.

G.O.P. Candidates’ Stances on Health Care Mask Their Records as Governors - NYTimes.com

When Mr. Perry succeeded George W. Bush in December 2000, about 22 percent of Texans had no insurance, second only to New Mexico. After Mr. Perry’s decade in office, Texas now claims the highest uninsured rate, at 26 percent, as well as other distinctions like the lowest rate of prenatal care.

Regardless, Mr. Perry has offered few initiatives to extend coverage. Instead, under the banner of state sovereignty, he has waged a running battle against the ballooning cost and structure of Medicaid, which covers more than a third of Texas children. At various points, Mr. Perry and the Republican-controlled Legislature have cut Medicaid benefits and provider reimbursement rates and made enrollment more onerous.

via nytimes.com

Instead of the politics of what they are going to tear down, I'd love to hear someone start talking about what they are going to build.