Disqus - Latest Comments for Carlosrb

Re: Targeting disqus

donbarzini — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 20:00:08 -0000

My though is that they are waiting for this crisis thing to stop, and then they'll start buying again

Re: Velib Is Awesome

Carlosrb — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:41:17 -0000

Seems like Paris is really pushing a lot of these initiatives forward. Check this out: http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/06/24/transportat...

Similar program but using electric cars (also in Paris).

I agree, aside from geographical barriers (mountains, etc), this model should work in all large urban areas.

The idea of extending public transportation to areas that have traditionally been private is, to me, very cool.

Re: Hyperlocal Has To Be Peer Produced

Carlosrb — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:20:26 -0000

Hyperlocal is going to be huge. No doubt. If I were to bet, I’d say it’s something that Google is afraid of; it’s a battle they haven’t won yet, and it’s a battle they can’t be sure they will win.

I like Outside.in but it’s far from perfect. Outside.in can track your blog posts and aggregate info that way, which is cool but how much good local info can you get that way? A whole bunch I’m sure, but not nearly enough. If you are going to be digging for local info you need to get granular. In that sense I think Twitter would be a good platform to begin building a Hyperlocal news or search site. I know Twitter gets a bunch of local information, but that’s only half of the equation. The piece that is missing is the filtering – sifting through that data and organizing it to allow people to pull stuff they need when they need it. Hyperlocal will only take off once it’s as easy to pull local stuff out as it is to post stuff in (or tweet it). That will be truly wicked.

Re: Your food has… software?!

phbradley — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:49:04 -0000

There's certainly a lot of room/potential for innovation in the micro-/p2p agriculture sphere, however it really doesn't fit into our current society and infrastructure, so I suspect if it does happen, we'll see it coming from South America or Asia (maybe the African continent) - whichever is the most innovative/least reliant on developed countries for urban/social planning direction

Re: Your food has… software?!

Carlosrb — Thu, 29 May 2008 13:41:22 -0000

Sweet post. I've seen some articles claiming that the future of agriculture is "vertical-farms" (farms in high rises), and that is somewhat in line with what you posted too:
More production on smaller land areas; more control; higher yield; and yes, the ability to "upgrade" food quickly.

Re: It's About Time We Saw...

Carlosrb — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:28:22 -0000

Agree completely.

Re: Targeting disqus

Carlosrb — Sat, 10 May 2008 14:50:03 -0000

You may be right. Time will tell. I personally disagree, what leads me to
believe that they will ramp acquisitions up is the fact that it seems they
are growing their corp. dev. team.

Re: Discussing Disqus

Carlosrb — Fri, 09 May 2008 09:33:14 -0000

Well, as Borat would say: Yakshemash for the link Howard!

I never really got into digg either. I thought it was cool for about 10 minutes and then forgot to keep digging... there just wasn't anything to pull me back in.

Disqus on the other hand... well, I'm responding aren't I?

Re: Targeting disqus

Carlosrb — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:43:54 -0000

Thanks much. So you agree my logic is flawless... 8)

But seriously, great investment pick. Did you come before or along with Union Square?

Re: Triangulating For Insight

phbradley — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:54:34 -0000

it's definitely not native to the Internet, agreed. Anywhere it can find equilibrium with other sources of revenue generation, it represents a stable and sustainable future. But during the last dotcom bubble, a steady state couldn't be found, and businesses that had toyed with 'free' crashed and burned a lot of their investors' money.

An unfortunate effect of supportive VCs is to shield weak (fledgling) businesses from natural selection - just like a welfare system, some argue, 'dilutes' the gene pool by curing genetic defects that are passed onto future generations. Note: I abhor eugenics and believe that in the long term a diverse gene pool is more resilient against epidemics and other challenges than a narrow one - but as a short term point of view, eugenics is correct - the species becomes less well biologically adapted to its niche; more inefficient; protection from natural selection causes evolution in reverse. Just like during the last bubble, and perhaps now, terminally sick businesses polluted the economy to a point where their inefficiency at generating money was an unsupportable load on their ecosystem - hence the crash.

Like everything in like, this is all about 2 things: equilibria, and feedback. There is an equilibrium between parents protecting and educating fledgling children through to maturity (the role of angels and VCs), and supporting leeches through to population crash. It's the same reason my parents are cutting me off as we speak - for the benefit of society, I need to learn to gather my own food.

Back to your question. The concept of the freevirus emerged because Alan and I saw profitable businesses, successfully getting people to pay them for a service they provided, attacked by novice upstarts at way, way undercut prices (free) - not just squeezing them on margins (note the big difference between $0.05c and free - as explained by Dan Ariely; well I believe that also works in reverse - if you're not free, you care about margin and equilibrium is gradually restored). These free businesses, even if run by someone who history will show grossly overestimated his ability to run his business at a profit, is still alive long enough (thanks to the overly protective financial backers) to force a response in the profitable business - and 'free' is so powerful, so disruptive, that often the only (perceived) defence against free is free (Kevin Kelly argues there are other responses. That's definitely true). Hence WSJ dropping pay wall, etc.

I see a bit too many businesses being sieged by free for so long that their reserves are weakened before the free idiot perishes. The result is a situation where both die, the customer gets used to the luxury of free, and any new entrant to the sphere, most likely his confidence boosted by some perceived 'increment' (usually to the service, not to the free business model - such is the legacy of Paul Graham and co), therefore also has to be free. The customer is the winner, bouncing from free to free service - thanks, DataPortability.org!

The problem, also, is that the Internet is the most globalised economic sphere man has ever known. And the differences in wage demands (but not skills) means that the US is a terrible place to play with fire/free. It just can't sustain a freevirus epidemic nearly as long, unless it starts outsourcing big time. And as we see from the paper on Google's internal prediction markets, physical proximity is very important.

Because the Internet isn't a US-hermetic ecosystem, I don't think free can ever find a stable equilibrium there (or here in the UK - or anywhere in the developed world) - certainly not on the scale we're experimenting with it at the moment. The economy needs to be generating companies in need of advertising, as well as eyeball farmers. Someone, at some point, has to dip into my pockets for cash. I'm the Napster generation - we're idealistic hackers in the most plastic (as in, ability to build tools) environment man has ever known, and we're hooked on Free. If for-profit enterprises some day soon find they can't offer their service for free, and ask us for money, and we can't find another VC-funded startup that will - we'll just build it for ourselves and run it as a nonprofit.

These are exceedingly fertile times for innovation and experimentation - as is any period in nature when natural selection is paused; weird and funky mutants nobody imagined can come about whereas they couldn't - so let's celebrate it, and the VCs betting on coming out of the freevirus epidemic with winners amongst the rubble. But let's enjoy it whilst it lasts. China and the rest of BRIC may not give us the opportunity for a third bubble. Two Renaissances in the space of 2 decades is pretty luxurious for any civilization, don't you think?

Re: Triangulating For Insight

Carlosrb — Thu, 08 May 2008 10:48:07 -0000

Quick question:

I have not read your exchange with Alan Patrick, but why do you think that the ad-supported model is unsustainable? Are you referring to the entire model or just the application of the model to specific businesses?

The model has existed for a while now, and its not native to the internet. I would argue that it has proven itself sustainable.

Carlos

Re: Conversation platforms will make blogs increasingly redundant

Carlosrb — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:32:16 -0000

Hey. I wrote a blog post that ties back to this brief exchange. I thought I'd drop it here in case you care to read it.

http://mymemestream.blogspot.com/2008/05/i-thin...

Cheers.

Re: Conversation platforms will make blogs increasingly redundant

phbradley — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:44:41 -0000

Interesting points! I do accept that for a while the host/parasite relationship will be mutually beneficial (in my post, I classify it as symbiotic). Parasites only kill off their host once they can exist outside of it or once they can merge with it (like mitochondria are thought to have been bacteria before they became an integral part of the cell); in this scenario, this means that a conversation platform a la Disqus will need to be able to be self-sparking (be able to create conversations, not just host the conversations sparked on blogs) - this is why I propose the assimilation of a blogging platform like wordpress.com - i.e. vertical integration from the comment platform upwards.

I don't think comment-based identities are much more fixed than blogs are at the moment - how many people go back and edit/delete old posts? They're there, they're recorded for me to disagree with in future, etc.

Think about your identity in your friends' eyes - can you edit their memories? No, you just build on old identity in new directions - apologise for that nasty jibe you said last week, etc. I see no reason why that shouldn't be the same with identities thru conversations online.

In fact, you could argue that the process of evolution/mutation/change in your identity is as important to a curious viewer as your current state. I'm reminded of the favourite saying of one of my lady friends, a quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Ulysses":

I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.

Re: Conversation platforms will make blogs increasingly redundant

Carlosrb — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:21:33 -0000

Great post, especially the comments=parasites analogy. Great visual and I think it rings true; the emergence of parasites in a given ecology is evidence of its thriving dynamics.

One thing I do not agree with completely though. I don’t necessarily see blogs as a dying medium. To use your parasite analogy: parasites typically do not wipe out their hosts. They are, after all, dependents and therefore equilibrium is necessarily reached.

I suppose you could argue (and you might have been heading there) that the evolution of online identities is the merging of blogs and conversations. I would agree with that.

I don’t think identities will be solely based on comments or conversations because these are largely static. It’s not very feasible to go back and change you comments, especially after others have commented back. Since a big part of any given identity is learning and change, it is nice to have a central repository where you can update your identity and which can be tied back to your comments.

Perhaps the future of identities is not so much a swarm of individual parasites, but is more like a central hive (not unlike a bee's hive) that uses countless drones (comments) to go out and cross pollinate with other hives.

Carlos
I am not a biologist… not even close.

Re: We Need A New Path To Liquidity

Carlosrb — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:09:42 -0000

I don't agree with the premise that "because startups languish after an exit" entrepreneurs (and investors) should hold out for the long haul. Practically speaking, as Fred said, VC's have a timeframe to work with. In addition, I think many entrepreneurs thrive on the new. When the time to exit comes along the company is no longer that new, and I think many entrepreneurs see this not only as a wealth extracting opportunity, but also as a means to start something new again. It takes a different kind of leader to take what has been built and create a large cap out of it. It also takes a different investor. A VC is different from a private equity executive in risk profile, personality, etc.

Probably for both sides (entrepreneur and VC) the rush is in being part of the new.

I agree that it would be beneficial to have another means of liquidity for startups. But after any given exit, any startup will languish unless it’s a priority for the acquiring/ controlling stake. That is always going to be difficult to predict.

Re: I Saw The Future Of Social Networking The Other Day (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch)

Carlosrb — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 12:36:36 -0000

I agree with the general vision- and can't wait!
I wrote something somewhat like this a few weeks ago:
http://mymemestream.blogspot.com/2008/03/walkin...

Re: ... when energy costs zero

Carlosrb — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:54:12 -0000

Jeremy,

Thanks for the message. I disagree and, very simplistically, this is why:
The bistro downstairs recently increased the prices of their sandwiches by 20%. Justification: marginal costs of production have increased due to ethanol subsidies and oil price increases. That small business downstairs feels the impact of energy cost pressures on their bottom line. Energy costs, therefore, are not zero. What is true is that these costs are ultimately passed down to the consumer.

Carlos