DISQUS

ImageShack definitely gearing up - recently brought on a great partnerships guy who had previously been at Clearspring and eBay - http://www.linkedin.com/in/harkey

the "organize" questions are all heady, tough problems but fortunately the first few steps actually aren't that hard because often they're information asymmetry issues, not information collection or behavior change.

At Google I'd look for small projects which could help make our users 5% happier, 5% healthier, 5% wealthier, 5% more knowledgeable, etc. For example, a few of us did a small project to ensure we were getting medical/drug clinical trials indexed quickly and correctly -- that's a pure information asymmetry issue - you have people with illnesses searching on google and accredited research studies looking for volunteers. Our hypothesis was that the velocity of research could be increased proportionately if you could just fill studies 25%, 50%, 100% faster.

+10000 Internets for Charlie!

in the new youtube offices we named our printers after wu-tang clan members

but presence of risk can also be freeing. A founder i once worked for suggested that i'd only realize my full potential to create something magical if my safety net was removed - i think he suggested i should "wake up on a beach in brazil, naked and penniless" which sounded a little extreme but i got what he was going for :)

i basically spent high school playing tecmo and super tecmo. Ahh memories:
1. LT being able to block any extra point or fieldgoal
2. Unstoppable short dump from Montana to Rice
3. Defenders bouncing off of Christian Okoye
4. Dennis Gentry's kickoff return ability
5. Broncos' Karl Mecklenburg's weird bug where he's sometime just start sliding horizontal across the screen

Charles -

really interesting question and one i've been debating with people as well. Some products which are early to market actually do represent the eventual mainstream because the early adopters aren't fundamentally different than the mainstream, but as you note, sometimes they are.

Products like Twitter are evocative of what people want to do with one another, although there are power user use cases which won't trickle into mainstream.

Before Google/YouTube, i helped get Second Life off the ground. At the time everyone thought we were crazy - that mainstream users would never be interested in creating or interacting in a 3D space. Now perhaps SL isn't mainstream but it was evocative enough of a user need to be directionally correct.

So i think that's ultimately what you see with lots of early technology that gets popular - directionally correct in ID'ing a mainstream need. Then it becomes a challenge as to whether that business can go mainstream or see the need met by other products. i.e. does Twitter become the messaging platform or will your Facebook status message broaden to be Twitter-like.

is this the right moment to swipe a line from George Peppard?

"I love it when a plan comes together"

I too like these features but here's my slightly contrarian view: until Twitter also adds more tools for me to manage the way i want to follow people (for example, the ability to create groups and a separate feed), there's actually a noise level which starts to appear with one's ability to connect with too many people.

What i mean to suggest is that some folks are likely to ruin their twitter experience by over-following. Twitter works for me today because of the high signal:noise ratio. Unbridled discovery and "add to follow list" action on my part will lower that quality. Of course, this is all in my control - i don't have to subscribe to those 17 people the "search my gmail address book" just discovered. But if you were to ask me what feature should come next after enhancing address book, it would be to think about the different tools which are needed for consumption when the average # of follows per user jumps from, say, 10 to 100. Because it does change.

fare thee well!

>> you decide whether you want to be male, female or something entirely different, like a bug

one clarification - you have to be a man or a woman but can use the Second Life system to essentially turn yourself into other creatures by "dressing up" (uploading new clothes, "skins," attaching different objects to your body). The act of becoming a "bug" for example isn't like you select "be a bug" from a menu but more similar to dress-up. This actually makes it much cooler because everyone is unique and a true expression of the person piloting the avatar.