The Ten Spot: Apr 26, 2010
Back to the basics of the the Ten Spot – quick, relevant New Medici reads with an exact dose of interpretation.
1. For Web’s New Wave, Sharing Details Is the Point – NYT DealBook
The transparency brought about by Google search and Facebook community/beacon/(end of) privacy has created a slew of startups who cater to ripping open the social graph and letting everyone peek in, follow and link to your daily activities and habits.
From the likes of DailyBooth.com, Blippy.com and Groupon.com, the concept of “socially challenging” others to share interests in online creation and consumption is trending. The next logical step will be a return to a new and improved Facebook Beacon that extends the group mentality while providing multi-level marketing incentives to the individuals who create interest in new items, i.e., transactions (think ThisNext.com meets Groupon). This allows group rewards and either revshare or ranking points for the individual curators or arbiters of taste.
Blippy, which opened last fall, was the first site to introduce the notion of publishing credit card and other purchases. Last month it attracted around 125,000 visitors and closed an investment round of $11 million from venture capitalists. It hopes to one day to make money by, among other things, taking a commission when people are inspired to imitate their friends’ purchases posted on the site.
To Silicon Valley’s deep thinkers, this is all part of one big trend: People are becoming more relaxed about privacy, having come to recognize that publicizing little pieces of information about themselves can result in serendipitous conversations — and little jolts of ego gratification.
Steve Jobs defies the odds (recovering Apple), the gods (surviving cancer) and yet his consumer design “sculpting” and management fearlessness are really the two definitions he will be known by. In this above must-read link, an insider opens up about the mindset and fearset of the leading Designer CEO out there.
From secrecy to ordering the best-of-the-brainstorms (in terms of his managed teams), Jobs is building a line of devices that separate the chaos, the noise and the hacks of more open systems to bring its users a little hardware clarity (and style)… Read more >>
Social Media vs. Privacy on the Web
I’ll admit it. I’m a social media junkie. And it’s not difficult to satisfy my addiction, considering the large number of social media sites that are quickly popping up as of late. But it has also got me thinking – considering the popularity of social media sites these days, should we be more concerned about our privacy? 5 years ago, it was only the early adopters who were on sites like MySpace and Friendster and most people were weary of sharing too much on the internet. These days Facebook has well over 100 million registered users, and over 222 million visitors per month. After the jump, a list of some of latest and greatest social media sites, along with ways you can ensure that the whole world knows everything about you… Read more >>