Disqus - Latest Comments for Bob Warfield

Re: My Thinking on YHOO

Bob Warfield — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:59:04 -0000

I agree on the new CEO. What you're describing as that CEO's course of action is exactly on target. What Yahoo needs is another Mark Hurd.

See my blog for more:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/quot...

Cheers,

BW

Re: Video interlude: Evolution and clocks

Bob Warfield — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 03:49:34 -0000

Fantastic!

Anyone who has played with genetic algorithms very much has no trouble believing evolution can work miracles.

Best,

BW

Re: Ganging Up On The Leader

Bob Warfield — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:36:40 -0000

I think this could be even more interesting than "gang up on the leader", although that is certainly an opening gambit.

I noted the number of business related partners and started to wonder what can happen if specialized business social networks could be linked. For example, suppose companies in the future have you join their social network, built on OpenSocial, instead of registering you product. Joining the network accomplishes the registration. Now suppose all these can collaborate for various purposes and they know full well how to collaborate because of your profile information. Let's say for example that your office supplies outfit knows via these networks which printer you own, so when you need more toner, it cheerfully presents exactly the right cartridge. Or perhaps your a wine lover, and join a comminities associated with each of your wine merchants. Over time, they use Google to pool profile information and help hone in on what sorts of wines you prefer.

More on my blog, but there are lots of possibilities here in the fullness of time:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/31/for-...

Re: SquidWho - When A Product Becomes A Platform

Bob Warfield — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:14:40 -0000

There are many reasons why great products and platforms are intertwined. More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/grea...

Re: Who Owns Your iPhone?

Bob Warfield — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 17:51:02 -0000

Apple are control freaks and they have great taste in User Experience. This has been a good thing for a long while, but this incident (and other past unpleasantness) proves its only a Proxy for what people really want:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/appl...

BW

Re: A Two Year Old Feature Request Fulfilled

Bob Warfield — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:46:17 -0000

Very cool!

So now we can tie Blackberry to blogs. I've proposed Blackberry and Twitter ought to merge and go after mobile access to all of these kinds of things, it would make sense to have this capability too:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/twit...

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Bob Warfield — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:38:52 -0000

You've gone and used the "C" word here, which is seldom a good thing for most markets. I don't know where it will end, but there's been a lot written about how the web is unusually tolerant of experimentation at the moment. That is what drives the "me too" Michael Parekh describes. The question is where we are on that cycle of experimentation because real commoditization says we will eventually tail off the experimentation and let just a very few benefit.

It's a good strategy to cover the particular niche of social web startups, but woe unto the firm that decides this is all it has to worry about. When the real commoditization happens, most of the deals will be worthless. Woe unto the market too, because it currently pushes an unwholesome amount of the overall attention to this arena. I am reminded the contrarianism is often helpful when investing. Failing that, securing a portfolio that covers more niches than just cheap web startups seems prudent.

OTOH, I don't think it signals the death of VC either, as some have suggested.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/05/the-...

Re: Techmeme: A Cautionary Tale

Bob Warfield — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:53:15 -0000

Fred, if you want to stay plugged in and really on top of things as they develop, you'll have to get past curated feeds like Techmeme. Simply put, they're always doomed to be late to the part because they're just the echo chambers of the real blogosphere. I know it's hard, but it's worthwhile to seek out 100-200 blogs (nobody can keep up with Scoble's 800-1000 and it isn't even clear he's very happy doing that) really unique blogs.

Keep reading Techmeme, but start winnoving blogs that never say anything new that isn't on Techmeme. I went through the exercise and discovered that it takes very few blogs to stay on top of what's going on in Techmeme because of all the duplication. Once you've eliminated all that duplication, you'll have a lot more time to resonate with fresh new ideas that haven't been Techmemed to death.

This is all natural. We see the same behaviour in evolutionary systems. It's what led me to write about punctuated equilibrium and the Internet:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/the-...

Cheers,

BW

Re: Zuckerberg is smarter than I thought

Bob Warfield — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 16:49:19 -0000

It's a good move for all concerned if the consensus is to swing big for the fences. Taking enough off the table not to worry about liquidity leaves Zuckerberg ready to focus on the long haul.

Cheers,

BW

Re: Economic Policy: Don’t Fight The Next War With The Last War’s Tactics

Bob Warfield — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 18:17:22 -0000

Fred, there's no evidence whatsoever that our current economic woes have anything to do with the deficit. That's a total Red Herring to tack on here. If anything, the economic situation improves the deficit by devaluing the debt. I'm all for reducing government spending, but to wring our hands and say if we can't do that we must raise taxes is ridiculous. Eliminate the waste that goes on and on with our government and leave taxes alone, especially in a time like we face now. People don't have it to give, and it would be a disaster raising taxes.

As far as monetary policy goes, yes, we do need to cut rates, but making it easy for banks to make a lot of money lending is contradictory to your view that we have to quit borrowing so much. There need to be some regulatory changes on lending to go along with rate cuts to prevent more untenable mortgages from being issued.

At the very least, limiting the amount of a house's value that can be borrowed would be a start. 100% financing was never a good idea. 80% is more prudent.

Best,

BW

Re: OpenID: Still not quite there yet

Bob Warfield — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:21:22 -0000

Absolutely agree with your "relying party" points. Otherwise its the sound of one hand clapping.

I think another major missing piece is an OpenID service from Amazon as part of their Web Services offering and preferably with "relying party" built in. Given that they have some 300,000 developers and growing, that would add huge momentum to the movement and possibly compell the others to step up support.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/wher...

Best,

BW

Re: What happens when the cloud is down?

Bob Warfield — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:52:59 -0000

We've gotten so good at reducing adoption friction, that we'll see a lot of this kind of thing. It just isn't possible to plan for it.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/goog...

Best,

BW

Re: Meetup - The Original Web Meets World Company

Bob Warfield — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:52:13 -0000

Great story, and great timing on the part of your firm. It does feel like the punctuated equilibrium of the current Web 2.0 wave is giving way to a period of consolidation and retrenching. Focusing on deriving more than just attention and on an audience beyond the early adopters is a wonderfully focused way of describing how to succeed during this period.

I've written quite a bit more on this topic on my blog: http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/the-...

Best Regards,

BW

Re: The Rise And Fall Of The Venture Business

Bob Warfield — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:24:36 -0000

It seems to me that a lot of funds made another change: distribution could happen well after the perceived liquidity event of IPO. The last company I was at, Callidus, IPO'd in 2003, yet many of the original VC's still haven't distributed all of the funds 4 years after the event. Hence there are hidden returns that won't be reflected until all those shares are distributed. How many other IPO's are still not reflected in these numbers?

At some point these VC's evidently wanted to make even more money on the appreciation post-IPO as they watched portfolio companies soar after an IPO. There may be other motivations at work too.

Cheers,

BW

Re: My Facebook Ad

Bob Warfield — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:56:16 -0000

The low numbers when you get to targeting keywords seems really bad for this ad model. The promise was precise targeting based on profile information, yet when you try to get precise, the numbers fall off a cliff. "Technology" might have been too odd a word to be in many folks profiles, but I tried "Beer", "Music", and "Cars" to get more mainstream and got very similar results.

It seems to me there is either something not quite working right yet on the system, or there just isn't that much valuable information in the profile. You can see more of these breakdowns in my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/face...

I'd encourage anyone to try it. Facebook makes it extremely easy.

Best,

BW

Re: Kindling This Blog

Bob Warfield — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 16:12:54 -0000

I can't understand the non-stop preference to read books on iPhone over Kindle. Screen size alone sours me on the idea. I love the iPhone, and it needs to be as small as it is so I can stick it in my pocket. Nevertheless, it stills requires a bunch of finger pinching around to really read a web page. I can't imagine enjoying a paperback novel on an iPhone, but I have no trouble seeing it on a Kindle.

Incidentally, apparently you can read this blog on a Kindle (it has a web browser), and those who have them don't see it as big or heavy. Some have remarked that it is a lot lighter than it looks like it would be.

Now we see why UI designers have a tough job. You can talk about UI all you want, but until you can try it, people don't get it.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/11/19/kind...

Cheers,

BW

Re: Failure

Bob Warfield — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 16:58:42 -0000

Fred, your post on why startups fail helped me to put 2 and 2 together on something I knew intuitively, but hadn't been able to express. It is seemingly counter intuitive at first glance, but you will greatly reduce your risk of faiiure if you build a tool instead of an application.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/11/30/maki...

Best,

BW

Re: Our Newest Portfolio Company: Meetup

Bob Warfield — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:51:20 -0000

Re: Techmeme eats Technorati’s lunch

Bob Warfield — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:21:25 -0000

The interesting stuff is all after the Top 100 anyway:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/the-...

Re: Will the real Dave Winer please stand up?

Bob Warfield — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:13:29 -0000

The leaderboard is only moderately interesting, gamed or not. What makes it there is so pasteurized and homogenized that it's just a double check that the real blogs you read might have missed something urgent, or at least interesting.

What I want to access is all the stuff just off the edge of the leaderboard. It's in the dark, so it can't be gamed. Yet.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/01/the-...

Re: It’s not the eyeballs, it’s the brains

Bob Warfield — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 18:08:14 -0000

This fits broadly with my view that the blogosphere is generally more about brains than eyeballs. Let's just hope the vast unwashed don't invade us any time soon!

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/10/the-...

Re: Amazon patent foiled by lone gunman

Bob Warfield — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 21:37:52 -0000

Fabulous story! I had no sooner finished ranting about Google's frivolous search widget patent and using Amazon's 1-click as an example than I heard about this on ycombinator:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/10/17/goog...

I think patents should be at least partially a function of the cost of developing the idea and less a function of who happened to slam an application through on an obvious idea soonest.

Re: Would you pay for no Facebook ads?

Bob Warfield — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:05:58 -0000

You'd be surprised how little you'd have to pay if all you need do is replace the value of your "eyeballs" for the media owner. I made this proposal a while back and think it's viable in all sorts of places:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/28/memo...

The question is whether anyone will try it or whether they fear angering the advertisers. As a user, I'd love to pay to supress ads in a variety of places.

Re: Scoble on the Future of Search | Oliver Thylmann's Thoughts

Bob Warfield — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:54:23 -0000

Social Graph Search is workable, especially if you take the next step and structure the whole process of Search as a Social Network that includes the AltSearch engines. See my post for how Yahoo could pull this off:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/soci...

Re: Open Source and Business: a Precarious Partnership

Bob Warfield — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:47:39 -0000

Great essay!

Thanks for wrapping it all up with a bow in one article. I linked to it from my blog.

Best,

BW