DISQUS

Matt, you're linking to failblog.com, a spam link farm. The actual website is failblog.org.

ericrice, I think the comparison is valid. People weren't comparing video mail to Seesmic, they were comparing video mail to regular (e)mail, and stating that it isn't more compelling. In the same way, you compare Seesmic to traditional forums, and in the same way, I prefer good old forums.

Maybe it's just me, but I would never comment on this if I could only do it in video; text is faster, more convenient, and (for those in offices) quieter.

veverkap, I'm in the same camp. My webcam gets used only when my family overseas wants to see me. Other than that, I explicitly DO NOT want to be seen when chatting or Skyping or whatever. I know a lot of communication is visual, but somehow this never translates over video, only in real life face-to-face situations.

Matt, you almost make it sound like Loren Feldman likes Seesmic. Have you seen this? http://www.1938media.com/seesmic-review/

I think Jesse talked more about "tyrannical" IT departments more than he said the word "cloud", and that's saying something. He needs to realize that IT doesn't block web apps like Facebook because they're on a power trip. For the most part they are simply enforcing usage, data security, and secrecy policies set forth by the people in the legal department who live in perpetual fear of the Submit button.

"but try searching for any online dating term and I don't think you'll see any PoF ads."

Have you tried typing "dating" into Google? There's a POF ad right there.

But he could do well without AdWords, the site is sticky and I'm sure he gets plenty of organic traffic. Revenue makes sense based on numbers, and with smart caching and limited DB calls the load could be handled by only a few servers.

Besides, one nice benefit (or goal?) of releasing the numbers means stories like this, which mean free publicity and page rank boost.

While I'm iffy on the idea, there are major differences between this and the CueCat.

1. The CueCat required the user to have a separate piece of hardware - no such problem exists with software embedded in cell phones.

2. The CueCat required you to go to your desktop and then go to the website. Again, with web browsers on cellphones, the user can immediatelly go to the landing page after scanning the barcode. It's an even better proposition with GPS location; you can snap a picture of a Starbucks ad (with your cell phone's camera), the software decodes the barcode, and uses embedded GPS to show you a path to the nearest store. Note that this is not limited to print ads, the barcode can be anywhere since the user doesn't have to physically scan it, they can simply snap a picture and let software do the rest.

The biggest problem that I see is that people in North America are not accustomed to browsing the web from their phones, mostly because of the exorbitant rates charged by the few available carriers. No such problems exist in Japan and hence the barcode idea can work there. In my opinion Google is putting the cart before the horse here.

Facebook is "valued" at $15B simply because of the Microsoft investment, which was simply a play to keep Google away. Social networking is here to stay, but there are already signs that it is waning, and it has yet to find a successful monetization model like Google Adwords. If it can't turn it around in a year or two, or if Microsoft stops seeing it as a critical wedge in its fight against Google, the value if of the company will drop significantly.

It will be hard to monetize all those page views for Facebook. Adwords works best when there is purchase intent demonstrated by the user who enter a query into Google, there is no such intent in Facebook - people go there to waste time. Only a radical new advertising (read: user tracking and profiling) scheme will do, and it's not Beacon.

Microsoft is probably overvaluing the strategic significance of Facebook anyway. With Facebook's recent decision give outside developers access to the social graph, it is no longer the walled garden Google couldn't penetrate.

And what on Earth are they planning to do with a 1000 employees? Google can afford the luxury of brainstorming and trying out new things, it has the Adwords cashcow to float it. Facebook's VC money is not exactly a reliable source of revenue.