The Gong Show

I like pretending I dislike Pitchfork as much as the next socially-awkward shoegazer, but I haven’t found a decent substitute. I think back nostalgicly on the early days of Pitchfork when record reviews could be as short as a single paragraph and ratings were based more on whether or not the reviewer had sex the previous night instead of the merits of the album.

So, I did this search on the WaybackMachine. Pretty fun to see the dated design and dated bands. It’s remarkable that in this finkicy indie market many of the bands listed on the really earlier versions of the site are still relevant today.

Union Square Ventures invested in Outside.in last week, but the lid finally came off the pot today. I’m really excited about this investment, but I certainly don’t want to sound like a broken record… my excitement is best reflected in the posts at USV and by Fred on his personal blog.

To keep things novel, I want to mention one of the cool, slightly hidden features of Outside.in, the “+” sign in the URLs.

I live in zipcode 10025 in New York. It’s one of the smaller/quieter sections of New York where Morningside Heights hits the Upper West Side. I like reading about what’s going on in my neighborhood (restaurant openings, apts for sale, controversy in the park) by going to http://outside.in/10025, but sometimes it’s a little too small. For example, there’s only a few small live music venues in my neighborhood, so this view of Outside.in doesn’t give me many nightlife stories.

I can expand my view of the world, but adding a “+1″ to the end of the Outside.in URL, like http://outside.in/10025+1. With the “+1″ I now get news for 10025 plus the zipcodes that are within a one mile radius of 10025 (If i put +2 or +3, the radius would be 2 or 3 miles). It turns out that Columbia and Harlem are within this “+1″ radius, so I can still get my local neighborhood news, but it’s also colored by stories and events that are a bit further off the beaten path for me.

I like this feature because the rule behind it is very simple, but out of this simple rule I get some very interesting results. Try it out with your own neighborhood. The highest number you can add after the “+” sign is 10.

Or, if you’re not into fun URL tricks, just go check out my profile at Outside.in.

A true story:

A very social college senior at Stanford was deciding what to give up for Lent. She thought long and hard about temptation and her self-discipline. She decided she was going to give up Facebook. Then, after some honest internal reflection, she realized that giving up Facebook would be too hard. So, she decided to give up booze instead.

I wonder if we will start seeing “Face-aholics” and FA meetings?

Wow! Dramatic dating-site search decline reported by Markus Frind (CEO of PlentyofFish.com).

I have been tracking domain name searches on yahoo for the big paid dating sites. Domain name searches translates into word of mouth and signal trends in paid membership about 8+ months from now.

I’m comparing Jan 06 to Jan 07 and here are the results.

Eharmony 29% decline
Americansingles 68% decline
match.com 71% decline
cupid.com 21% decline
mate1.com 37% decline
perfectmatch.com 78% decline
Lavalife 70%+ decline

Nielson says that traffic declined 20% last year. I think the hit this year will be a lot bigger and many dating sites won’t be around for 2008.

I have trouble believing that people are actually dating less online, unless the user experience is really that bad… (note: according to Markus, the average length of a user on any given dating site is 3 months… pretty pathetic compared to Facebook, I’m sure).

Do you think this behavior has moved away from the dating sites and more towards social networks? Also, what effect is Craigslist having on this sector? Have they “scorched the earth”, like in other forms of classifieds?

I’m very excited about the lastest USV investment, AdaptiveBlue.

I am most excited about the product roadmap, and where AdaptiveBlue can take us all going forward.

However, I want to highlight the way in which I get the most utility out of AdaptiveBlue right now. The BlueMenu, a part of the right-click menu anywhere in the browser, allows me to instant mashup two services which surprisingly large flexibility. Here’s an example of something I’ve recently done.

Just recently I was on IMDB reading Quentin Tarantino’s filmography and I notice that he is listed as a Director on Four Rooms, which which this cool collection of four short movies all about the same hotel employee. I have not seen Four Rooms in years, so I right-click, went to “BlueMenu” -> “I’d Like to” -> “Rent on Netflix”. The movie was then instantly added to my Netflix queue. Instant IMDB/Netflix mashup. Awesome!

I attended a meeting of the Social Media Club here in NYC for the first time last night. It was an interesting debate about how both we (the voters) and campaigns can use social media to engage in the 2008 elections that let me “get my geek on.”

A few interesting points that I recall off the top of my head. I apologize in advance that I cannot properly attribute all these points. If you want credit, feel free to leave a comment.

• Age 60+ voters have the biggest control in terms of voting power (because they actually turn out and vote). Social media usage has a high coorelation with youth, so social media is unlikely to directly impact votes. However, youth enthusiasm and social media has the power to sway the mainstream press, which in term affects the age 60+ voters. So, social media’s impact on the 2008 election will likely be significant, but it will also likely be indirect.
• Unlike Howard Dean leveraging Drupal in 2004, none of the candidates in the 2008 election cycle thus far are using open source technologies. All of them are on proprietary platforms.
• YouTube had ZERO impact on the ‘04 election. Why? Because it didn’t exist. Jim Webb is the senator from Virginia largely because of YouTube (the Macaca incident). It will be interesting to watch YouTube’s role in the first presidential election cycle of it’s existence.
• Nate Westheimer pointed out at the end of the night that we spent 2 hours talking about social media in politics and no one mentioned “MoveOn.org.” It’s remarkable, but the explaination is simple: MoveOn does not implement social media. They work by mailing lists, which is simply a form of broadcast media. It’s a one-way monologue, which inherently is not social and, thus, is not relevant to the conversation.

Though it was often difficult actively participate in the conversation with so many strong personalities in the room, it was an engaging night, and I’m glad I attended. I would recommend the Social Media Club to like-minded others.

Update: A podcast of the event will be available here shortly.

A choice cartoon from the latest New Yorker:

Also, make sure to read the Susan Orlean piece on Origami. Who knew paper folding could be so interesting?

I love playing with systems that are supposed to “give you the answer.” Some examples to explain my fascination:

1. The old Ask.com
2. Financial portfolio balancing services
3. Babelfish

My favorite example is Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize feature. When I put my resume in AutoSummarize and ask for a 2% summary I get:

9/01 – 6/05:Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
3/02 – 3/03: Stanford Tree, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

Not bad; most people that know me really well would say this summarizes most of my conversations ;)

Here’s some fun with AutoSummarize and monumental documents from our past.

Now lets apply AutoSummarize to Hamlet.

Hor. 16 Mar. Mar. Hor. Hor. 36 Hor. Hor. 52 Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. Hor. 124 Hor. 16 Hor. 156 Hor. Hor. 180 Hor. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham.
Hor. Ham. 164 Hor. Ham. 168 Ham. Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. 180 Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. Ham. Hor. Hor. Ham. Hor. Ham. 200 Hor. Ham. Ham. 220 Hor. Ham. 228 Hor. Ham. Ham. 236 Ham. Ham. Hor. 240 Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. Ham. 256 Ham. Ham. Ham.
Ham. Ham. 8 Ham. Ham. Ham. Lord Hamlet!

Looks like AutoSummarize choked on my formatting, but the “Lord Hamlet” at the end is a nice touch… Very entertaining.

Credit to Paul Kedrosky for reminding me what fun AutoSummarize can be with his more recent posts.

I started using OpenDNS today. I’m not sure if I like it or not…

Pros: It’s snappy. I feel like I notice a difference in the time it takes for sites to load. The DNS misspelling auto-correction feature works as advertised. I don’t think I need the anti-phishing technology because it’s now built into FF and IE, but I’m glad it’s there for those who are less savvy.

Cons: What are they storing? What am I giving up in the way of privacy by using this services? I’m certain they are storing every DNS query I make along with the originating IP address… so, if I have a static IP address, they are essentially getting my browsing history. That feels like an awful lot to give up just for snappier DNS requests. I wonder if my ISPs DNS service tracks my request history too.

I wish they did one of two things: EITHER, tell me loud and clear that they do not store and track individual DNS requests that then map to IP addresses (so the government can’t subpoena this this information, or worse…). OR, store all the data, but say explicitly that I, THE END USER, own all the data and can host it on my own if I desire.

One of those two steps would make me much more comfortable with the service. That being said, I’m getting a lot of value from it, and I think our aging DNS system is ripe for disruption/improvement. This is a great step in the right direction.