The Gong Show

Burningman ‘06 is up and running. I have always wanted to go to this event, but it’s going to be harder than ever now that I’m in NYC. Not going is one my biggest regrets while at Stanford (second to not going abroad). Here’s a highlights clip from last year to live vicariously though.

Photo Credit: Hebig on flickr.  Checkout this slideshow of his Burningman photos; so hot.

Side Note: My blog went down (due to a MySQL crash) today for 30 minutes tonight with no explanation or response from my hosting service: Dreamhost. Boo Dreamhost! I take back what I said earlier about strongly recommending them.

We need a new system of measurement for site popularity. The standard right now is pageviews (some people use other metrics like unique visitors to paint a fuller picture, but the elevator pitch for popularity almost always quotes monthly pageviews).

The Pageviews metric completely ignores user experience; it’s nothing more than a proxy for the number of clicks on a site (and a bad proxy at that considering the recent AJAX boom and how all AJAX application interaction counts as just one page view to load the javascript).

One of the worst examples of this pageview fallacy is MySpace. Jason Calcanis recently posted on Netscape’s new Sitemail feature. He was boasting about the fact that he didn’t artificially boost pageviews like MySpace does because he made his Sitemail app using AJAX, unlike MySpace.

While I commend Jason for making an intuitive interface; I don’t think it’s cause to celebrate that Netscape took the “higher road” over MySpace. MySpace is incredibly popular, and it has nothing to do with pageviews. In fact, MySpace is popular IN SPITE of it’s pageview bloat and clunky, multi-click interface. I don’t need Alexa to tell me that MySpace is more popular than Facebook; I can just ask the first 10 teenagers I see on the street. They all are hooked on MySpace like a rat hitting the feeder bar for a food pellet, and they’ll be happy to tell you about it all day. In fact, the first 10 teenagers would give me a much more accurate representation of popularity through a qualitative interview.

I’m not saying lets completely ignore pageviews from now on; I just wish it wasn’t the standard proxy for popularity when it’s only an incredibly small piece of the popularity picture. I’ll bet on a qualitative contextual inquiry as a proxy for popularity over pageviews any day.

I recently got a new laptop, and I have been spending the last 24 hours staring a installation progress bars creeping slowly from left to right (at least they’re creeping less slowly than on my old computer!). After Norton AntiVirus, the second piece of software I installed was Google Desktop. Considering how directory structures tend to slide toward a chaotic mess on my computers; I cannot over-emphasize how helpful my Google Desktop index has been in helping me find long-lost college term papers and missing email attachments. But it’s not quite enough… I want Google Desktop on steroids:
I want a search index for all my communication and personal information. I already do this to a small degree: I log all my IMs in Gaim, which Google Desktop crawls, and I have Google Desktop index my gmail so I can usually find messages written and received through those two means of communication with a Google Desktop search, but that’s only a fraction of the communication I use. I want a service that will aggregate and, more importantly, filter all the various ways I communicate. By communication I do not mean only dialogues. I mean all transfers of information. A short list of what I’m talking about:

• Dialogue Communication:
• Blogging
• Commenting
• Site Messaging / Site mail (e.g. facebook, ebay questions)
• Skype
• IM
• E-mail
• Snail mail
• Online photo apps
• Calendar Appointments
• Usenet
• Phone conversation
• Face-to-face meetings
• One-way push/pull communication:
• Service Announcements
• Offers from retailer or other companies
• Technical difficulties from companies (like my hosting provider telling me that my website is down)
• Feeds/RSS
• Web History
• Bookmarks
• My static homepage
  

Google handles some of this stuff already (indexing usenet, blog search, etc), but they currently fail in two ways:

1. There isn’t a single point of access. I have to go to various portals and perform the same search.
2. It’s not complete; for example, Google can’t index voice (yet), they’re not OCRing my snail mail, etc…

I know that the big picture outline I have described is a crushingly large project, but like any big project, one can chip away at it with small breakthroughs from the bottom-up. For example, I would love to see a service that allows me to save, index, and search my voicemail. GotVoice is on the right track to solving this voicemail problem, but it leaves so much to be desired.  As small pieces of the puzzle are developed, the big picture implementation that mashes together the small pieces with a top-down approach will look more realistic over time.

Fred wrote a similar post entitled Exploding Messaging.  He mentions that Feeds can be a good tool to manage this problem.  I agree, I love that I have a feed that tells me when my website is down and a feed that will update me on my calendar appointments for the day, but this solution is only manageable right now because I only have about 80 feeds.  If I actually had feeds for all the services I want to index (every site with sitemail, every store I like with sales feeds, every person I talk with over IM…) then any signal would be lost in a sea of noisy feeds.

Index and search feels like the best existing implementation for this problem, and perhaps feeds are the best way to populate the index.  I would love to hear other theoretical approaches to this problem using existing technology because I don’t anticipate some novel structure for organizing information coming out of the blue to solve this problem anytime soon, so we need to take the pieces we already have and string them together in a way that could work.

The skeptic of Dead2.0, always being a contrarian, pointed out that RSS has only achieved 2% adoption… furthermore, only 11% of the public even knows what RSS is (The original source of these statistics is emarketer.com’s article called Really Seldom Syndication). His main argument is everyone would be better off is RSS vanished behind a wall of abstraction.

The Dead2.0 post got Scoble all riled up. Refusing to be frustrated by the staggeringly-small, current RSS adoption percentage, Scoble took refuge in a prediction of continued exponential RSS adoption growth.

I get the impression from Scoble’s post that he thinks he disagrees with Dead2.0, but I think they’re talking past each others points, and in the end they are both right. Dead2.0 is right because RSS usability is a disaster. Scoble’s right because there’s no reason to think that RSS won’t continue (or increase) its current adoption growth rate.

That RSS adoption is on the brink of an even-more massive explosion in growth, in spite of the fact that RSS usability has hardly budged since its inception. A quick survey of RSS usability problems:

• Clicking on a shiny orange RSS button still makes the average user’s browser barf XML. I don’t know how RSS popped up so high up in the stack, but it should be pushed back down along side its cousins: XHTML and Javascript standards. An XML standard has no business displaying raw in anyone’s browser.
• RSS implementations are buggy at best; industry leading aggregators (Bloglines, Google Reader…) constantly screw up feed presentations and timelines.
• The soup of acronyms and need to know the difference between Atom, RSS 0.92, and RSS 2.0 certainly doesn’t help. Implementations don’t even attempt to speak the user’s language.
• Lack of consistency in implementations, which is attributable mainly to the lack of a single, unified format.

Companies, most notably Feedburner, are resolving each of these issues, which is a big step forward for RSS adoption; Improved RSS usability will help ensure that RSS will become the next killer app, comparable to email. My long term dream for RSS is similar to that of Dead2.0: total abstraction so that users are harnessing the power of RSS without even know it.

But, as I said earlier, Scoble is right too. Even if usability doesn’t improve, strong growth will continue; usability problems hasn’t stopped RSS so far.

Digression: For skeptics who believe that RSS adoption will not see continued strong growth, I only have (and only need) one argument for you: IE7/Outlook2007 with built-in RSS support.

Disclosure: Feedburner is a portfolio company at Union Square Ventures, where I am employed. I would mention another company along side my mention of Feedburner, but they have such a huge lead in this sector that it doesn’t make sense to do so.

This picture is awesome (original source and explaination).  How does one inspire such zeal in one’s users and advocates?  Go Firefox!

I had the opportunity to see Blake Ross in action while at Stanford (I was his RA in his freshman year).  Considering the energy he threw into every task he undertook, I’m not surprised by what Firefox has become.  Rock on Blake!

Actually, as I write this post, I recall a funny story about Blake.  We took Internet Technologies (CS191i) together.   Our first assignment was to build a rudamentary web browser in Perl; all it did was take in a URL and print out the result of a GET request by opening a TCP connection… The creator of Firefox was getting “build a web browser” as a homework assignment!  Ridiculous.  As I recall, Blake took it well… he just rolled his eyes and laughed.

Lately it seems like you’re not a real blogger if you don’t write about Google at least once a week. It’s been awhile since my last Google related post, and I wouldn’t want Technorati to think I’m not one of the cool kids, so I have two things to say about Google today:

1) My reading habits online when I’m procrastinating typically start with Bloglines, then Techmeme, and finally NYTimes. I read about the Google Apps for Businesses release on this NYTimes story today, and I thought for certain that the NYTimes was reporting on some old soggy story that managed to squeak by me on the blogosphere weeks ago. There was no mention on Techmeme at the time, so I just assumed that the story had already fallen off the front page. Since when does old media get the scoop on a Google story? Never! I genuinely thought I was out of the loop, and it wasn’t until Scoble posted on this unusual leak that I realized I wasn’t just behind on the news. Why would Google go straight to old media sources with a leak and not include even Techcrunch? It completely difuses the echo chamber effect of the blogosphere buzz around their product launch if everyone has already read the news in the morning paper. It’s like Google PR is actively trying to downplay the launch on the blogosphere… so old school… so 1.0… so un-Google.

2) It seems like ev-ery-one is taking a stance on whether or not start-ups can compete with Google (and how). I think tech bloggers should put badges on their sidebars which clearly state their opinion on this issue: “Yes, a scrappy startup stands a chance vs the Google steamroller” or “No, a scrappy startup vs Google has worse odds than Bambi vs Godzilla.” Bloggers taking a clear position on this issue would really help me as I read their other blog posts. I should add the “Yes” badge to my site because it most-accurately represents my feelings on the issue. I really resonated with the Signal vs Noise post on this issue, so I’ll just link to their post (again) instead of restating their argument.

I tried to buy a new cellphone today on Cingular (I have Verizon now). I was well into the sign-up process when the sales rep asked if I would like to port my number over. I confirmed that I wanted to keep my number, so the sales rep asked for it. It’s a 650 number, and I was in Boston at the time, but I didn’t think that would be an issue. Apparently it is… the rep told me that numbers can’t leave their market of origin. Brutal! I thought this whole lose-your-number-when-you-change-services problem was resolved years ago.

Aside from getting a new phone number, here is my only option right now (according to the sales rep): Get a credit card tied to an address billable in the bay area, then sign up and port my number to my new service. Taking this route, I can have the phone and all paperwork shipped anywhere in the country, and then I can immediately change my billing address to a new location of my choice. No Cingular paperwork ever needs to be sent to my Bay Area address. This is an interesting hack, but I still have the problem of getting a credit card tied to an address in the Bay Area.

The option I like best is eliminating the archaic area code system. I see no value to area codes as a consumer. All they do is mark my geography, which is an involuntary release of my private information. Why does everyone who knows my phone number also get to know my hometown?

I understand that some phone users still depend on area codes to know whether or not they are making a long distance call, but that’s just a sign of how old and dusty our phone system is. I think it’s silly that I have been able to connect to a server in China for days on end with zero additional charge since 1994, and yet twelve years later I’m still stuck wondering if 617 numbers can call 781 numbers without additional charge. I’m not saying that VOIP or Skype or whatever is the answer… I don’t know enough about telecom infrastructure to know what the solution is, but as a consumer I am baffled why I still need to deal with area codes.

One thing I really like about blogging is that when I complain about a tech problem that has been bugging me, one of my commenters always pulls a good solution out of nowhere. Anyone know how I can move from Verizon to Cingular and keep my number?

The Kiko Calendar auction closed yestarday. The auction opened 10 days ago for $50,000 and closed for $258,100. It has been fun to watch Kiko’s wild, highly-publicized exit. I don’t know what Paul Graham’s initial investment was, but it couldn’t have been much considering how much he pays the average kids he picks up for startup school. Paul’s investments come with a valuation. I wonder what Kiko’s initial valuation was when Paul initially invested. Here’s a guess:

As explained in the YCombinator FAQ, Paul typically invest $6,000n (where n = number of founders). This investment usually gets him close to 5% of the company. In the case of Kiko, n = 2. Therefore, Paul’s post-investment valuation was probably around $240,000 (which is $6,000 * 2 * 20). That’s almost exactly the amount of the final auction price.

Paul’s initial valuation obviously includes optimism and potential which no longer exists, plus it was made in a marketplace where Google Calendar didn’t exist… so it is an impressive feat for Kiko to keep it’s value. I wonder if the purchaser bought Kiko for the code or for the pagerank of 7… both are of significant value.

I wish the Kiko guys the best of luck on their next startup, as Dharmesh expects that they will double-down.

This post on Boing Boing today about “Mao Tung” Dew reminded me of the subtle Christian imagery in the Jack in the Box sign (Credit to Lisa for originally pointing this out to me).  It’s Jack in the B-Fish; the O and the X form a fish.  See it?  Between the bible citations hidden on the wrappers and cups of In N Out and the Jack in the B-Fish sign, it’s hard to eat fast food in California without supporting Christianity.