Disqus - Latest Comments for Nic Brisbourne

Re: Customer Service is the New Marketing

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:06:43 -0000

Hi Brad,

Great post. I am with you that the smart play has been, and still is, to get a basic service out there and grow it with your users, and have blogged to that effect. That is a mindset which has taken hold better in the US than over here in Europe.

BUT

I am starting to think that the game may change. It could be that this approach has worked because rudimentary has been better than anything else out there and so was good enough to attract users. As web services get more complex and move mainstream it may be that for new products to get heard above the noise it will take $m in development (like the old days). For example I am forming the view that social nets and virtual worlds will start to collide, and if so it will become much more expensive to launch a new social network.

This could have a knock on effect of increasing the importance of time to market leading to increased marketing spend.

In fact I think this merits a full post, so if you are interested check out www.theequitykicker in a couple of hours.

best,

Nic

Re: Customer Service is the New Marketing

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:06:43 -0000

Hi Brad,

BUT

This could have a knock on effect of increasing the importance of time to market leading to increased marketing spend.

In fact I think this merits a full post, so if you are interested check out www.theequitykicker in a couple of hours.

best,

Nic

Re: When Crowds Aren’t Wise (and, The Failure of Crowds AND Experts WRT Cultural Discovery)

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 06:34:47 -0000

Great post.

I think the question of what sort of wisdom you are looking for from crowds is also important.

For example with music you might be prepared to tolerate a lot of noise in the recommendation engine because there is great personal value in finding an amazing new band and you can sample easily and quickly to make the final filter easily yourself. Last.fm could profitably add a feature allowing you to crank up or down the number of recommendations to vary the number of suggestions to relevancy function.

This is different from the guess the weight of an ox type examples that Surowiecki gives.

Re: European Startups vs the US Upstarts - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 11:22:23 -0000

Paul - good initiative, if I can help the Digital Pioneer programme with any VC insight (or any other way) let me know.

best,
Nic

Re: ‘Discovery’ augments ‘Search’

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 07:56:42 -0000

The beauty of a social net approach to bars and restaurants is that (once you have sufficient scale) updates get handled automatically

Re: On Trust

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:06:37 -0000

Test

Re: Getting Started

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:22:43 -0000

test

Re: Getting Started

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 18:23:28 -0000

lsdfa;sdf

Re: Facebook an enterprise2.0 app?

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 04:30:47 -0000

Thanks Liam. Jason makes the signal to noise ratio point I have mentioned before - the answer to this problem, for me, is to have good filters, not to give up on the game altogether.

Re: Facebook - value is in the interraction

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 09:31:11 -0000

Thanks for the comment Joe. I guess I would say that people will use the platform to chat, collaborate and do stuff. Kind of like email.

You are right that the initial ramp up is more about participation for participation sake than real activity, but I have seen enough already to be convinced that there is plenty of long term value in these platforms.

Re: Our deal with DFJ

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 02:36:41 -0000

Thanks guys.

leafar the way the deal works is that DFJ have acquired a small stake in Esprit and get an equivalent proportion of our income on both mgt fee and carry.

Re: Fun fact

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:47:30 -0000

edonkey is the underlying network and is accessible via a number of different clients. The RIAA has been trying to shut them down and has succeeded in closing edonkey and edonkey2000. Several others are still up and running though - try http://www.emule-project.net

Re: Mass collaboration - some big changes are underway

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 09:55:13 -0000

Thanks for the comments guys.

Nicola - I agree, most business books could get away with being 10% as long!

Mark - I kept thinking about you as I read the book. All this stuff is very close to your heart. I saw Kate the other day. Good to hear SearchRev is doing well.

Re: Understanding luck

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:11:00 -0000

Thanks guys. Now just to put some of this stuff into practice a bit more consciously!!

Re: Rate this blog - sidebar widget

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:13:24 -0000

Alan - I'd forgotten you did that. I see from your post that it did get used. Can you give an idea of how many?

Re: What are all these ‘conversations’ anyway?

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:38:19 -0000

Joe - I didn't receive your comment. I approve all non-spam comments, positive and negative, so don't worry about that.

In fact I often learn more from the negative ones.

Please send it again.

Re: Why are we concerned about privacy?

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:44:45 -0000

Hey Alan - thanks for the comment. Really. It is great to step out of the echo chamber. We learn so much more from disagreement.

Your point is well made - it would be foolish (naive even) to blunder forward sharing data indiscriminately. At the moment we share virtually no data though - and there must be some stuff we can share with limited risk. Perhaps done through a profile mechanism that keeps our email and IP addresses secret.

I'm starting to think that moving this debate forwards means going to the next level of detail. That means being explicit about what data would be shared, making some estimates of the benefits of sharing, along with the risks and how they would be mitigated.

Re: Conversational marketing - will it scale

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 08:56:13 -0000

It would have to be some pretty special software Martin. The language and dialogue would need to be much more varied than for customer service apps.

Re: Conversational marketing - will it scale

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 04:04:24 -0000

Martin - both these demos are quite impressive from a computer science point of view and I could buy into the idea that they might be able to handle some customer service functions. They are a long way from sounding like humans though - and this is the key for automating engagement marketing - your bots would need to pass the Turing test. It is a bit early to be saying that categorically, but I suspect that will be the outcome.

Re: Musings on micro-blogging

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:30:29 -0000

thanks guys.

Paul - thanks for this. I have had some conversations with Ken in the past. He has some very interesting ideas.

Ian - most of the 'microblogs' I read are Twitters and status updates from my Facebook friends. 99% of them are from professional rather than personal contacts.

This is another area in which there is an increasing need for a way of splitting work friends from other friends, but I think the argument works for both.

Re: Seedcamp - judges day

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:11:04 -0000

Folks - firstly sorry for not replying earlier - it has been a long weekend in the UK and my internet connection is down at home (arghh).

I'm afraid I can't help you with any info. We are following a strict process for communication which is spelled out on the Seedcamp website.

Good luck though.

Re: More musings on the effectiveness and necessity of ads

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 08:17:58 -0000

thanks for the comments guys.

Paul - companies look to click through as a measure of engagement. Levels are low, say 2%, but people do have an idea of what they are getting. I guess what this shows these heatmaps show us that ads won't be generating much positive brand equity, above and beyond the clicks.

Re: ‘Groups’ an important concept in enterprise2.0

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:55:37 -0000

Thanks guys.

Paul - what I am wondering is if the group management functionality can be/should be abstracted from the other elements of collaboration you list. Different verticals will have different requirements, and I guess the other big question re this as an opportunity around which to build a company, is whether the differences are small enough that you can serve them all with the same basic product.

Re: ‘Groups’ an important concept in enterprise2.0

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 04:42:54 -0000

In your example Facebook and ILike are applications that individual groups might use to govern their activity. Others are home grown sites like Slashdot or Digg. I am talking about software which could provide common functionality across all these platforms.

Re: ‘Groups’ an important concept in enterprise2.0

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:38:38 -0000

I think the distinction between social sites and enterprise use is disappearing - take a look at the widespread corporate use of Facebook.

Most users of social sites are members of multiple overlapping groups though, which makes it difficult to see how the groups themselves will help portability. If I go with one group from Facebook to Bebo then by default I have to leave all the other groups I'm a member of.

Re: You need features to manage groups - an example

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 07:57:18 -0000

Indeed James. And it has been a similar blogoshpere revolt against Apple that has forced Steve Jobs to offer $100 credit to anyone who paid the original high price for their iPhone.

Re: Google rumoured to be building a virtual world

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:12:27 -0000

Hi Paul - the current generation of virtual worlds will not be the final answer but I think there will be a lot of money made out at companies that don't end up being the final winners when the market reaches maturity.

Think Lycos, Alta Vista, and Inktomi in the early generation of the internet.

Re: More on randomness - and the case for plain English

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:16:24 -0000

Indeed Alan. And having just read the three comments you left on here last night I am feeling a bit unsure of myself. We don't usually find ourselves in such furious agreement!!

Re: Google rumoured to be building a virtual world

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 04:55:37 -0000

I think it will be interesting to see what they come out with. No one has done this brilliantly yet - arguably with the exception of the kids worlds - and Google doesn't have a great track record in building apps.

Re: Monetising Facebook apps

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 06:24:26 -0000

Hi Joe - I can see this happening, but not sure if it will be a big market?

You are already seeing companies start to specialise in building Facebook apps though.

Re: Some more magic to come out of Facebook?

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:09:46 -0000

Paul - one option is to use the profiles as a basis for targeting ads on other sites, or indeed for automatically customising services on other sites. Provided users agree of course - but if it starts in a small way and builds up you can see it working.

Re: Some more magic to come out of Facebook?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 05:28:14 -0000

OK Scott - I'll update

Re: Exit climate for consumer internet to remain benign

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 10:33:42 -0000

Hi Paul,

I agree we need to build companies for value and in the long run it doesn't help anyone when companies are bought for huge valuations which are then written down by 50% within a couple of years. My point is that those companies which look like they will generate value are likely to continue to get snapped up.

Re: Exit climate for consumer internet to remain benign

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:14:56 -0000

When it comes to big companies I guess fear and greed are never too distant from any big decision. Unfortunately.

Re: TALKING about fear of failure is the British disease

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 06:22:12 -0000

Thanks Paul!

Harry - I think big companies are a different kettle of fish altogether and are more risk averse the world over (Dilbert is American after all). That is often why entrepreneurs leave them.

Re: Facebook’s new advertising platform

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:02:25 -0000

Thanks guys. I hope that Facebook will be smart enough to prevent advertisers abusing the system. The early signs are they might be.

Re: Open Social to make life easier for new classes of social application?

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:05:19 -0000

Will - I don't think that Google wants to get into the money making side of this. The idea is that people would monetise their apps in the same way as they would have before, but the apps will be better because they can combine data from multiple socnets.

Adsense will be part of that story for sure, and at current market share a large part, but I doubt Google will be trying to force that on anyone.

Re: ‘Good wins out over evil’ - a cheery thought for the weekend

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:09:05 -0000

Thanks for your comments guys - a couple of thoughts in response.

1) You are spot on Sam that people need to get over their irrational privacy concerns
2) Also we all need to start understanding the trade off between value we give in the form of our personal information and the value we receive in the form of services. I agree that far - I suspect rather than going the way of getting cash back I think that it will be people choosing to pay for a service instead of having their personal data used.

Key influencers in the community will start to get paid somehow though. I have a little something in the pipeline on this front that I will be able to share shortly.

Re: Advertising will change more in the next five years than it did in the last fifty

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:04:27 -0000

Thanks James.

Some of the stuff going on in virtual worlds like Habbo is exactly as you describe (except for the CPA bit), e.g. in-world events to promote films that people are keen to attend (via their avatars) combined with promotional virtual goods which people buy and take to their virtual rooms to talk about with their friends.

Re: Advertising will change more in the next five years than it did in the last fifty

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 04:44:16 -0000

Don't get me wrong James, I'm a big believer in CPA, hence the investment in BuyAt. That said it isn't applicable in all situations - a lot of advertising is about building brand as well, and that means other forms of measurement become appropriate.

In the Habbo example the advertiser was looking to build awareness of the film (i.e. brand) - there was no purchase or other action that they could tie payment.

Re: The masses have collaborated - to buy a football club

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:13:40 -0000

Good to hear from you mspoke. You make two good observations - first the importance of marketing for mass collaboration initiatives, and second the difficulty of making them work over time.

In this case they certainly have their work cut out. It is hard enough for a single person with ten times their resources to do a good job.

Re: Brand power is on the wane so you’d better engage

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:56:56 -0000

Interesting thoughts James. I agree that the notion of a brand as "a good promised delivered" will endure. I guess my point was more about companies that try to use marketing as a substitute for product or service quality - i.e. a good promise, not-delivered. Moben falls into this category, and Dell used to.

With regard to internet recommendations - I think we will learn to filter these just as we do all other forms of recommendation. We will pay most attention to advice from people we know and whose opinions we generally trust. Due to the web we might see more of those than we do today, but the real power comes from matching us with people we don't know, but whose opinions we are likely to share.

To take your example - you wouldn't care which fleece Johnny Random bought for his holiday, but you might be interested in recommendations from people you can see are serious about their mountaineering (and maybe also share your geography and income bracket).

Re: ‘Mediated voyeurism’ - one use of social networks

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 13:46:34 -0000

Thanks Nnamdi - mistake corrected. Fred Stutzman's blog is great as well.

Re: Brand power is on the wane so you’d better engage

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:32:24 -0000

What I was trying to say here is that brands will have to change to survive. I agree that they will always play an important part in purchasing decisions.

In a nutshell my point is that in the old saying "a brand is good promised delivered" the delivery part is increasing in importance.

Re: Personality important on social media sites

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 04:33:39 -0000

I think all these things are important Nick. Success is tough to achieve and as well as personality design quality and high value evolving content will be critical.

Re: Buy.at and advertising in the long tail - including on TheEquityKicker

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:59:20 -0000

Thanks guys.

mspoke - thanks for the feedback - I will look to get something less distracting in place soon, but for now Lovefilm is the only programme I'm active on and the banner I chose is the only one that fits well in my sidebar.

Re: Buy.at and advertising in the long tail - including on TheEquityKicker

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:38:25 -0000

Thanks Phil - you make a good point, and maybe I should have written a longer post.

What we are trying to do at BuyAt on the blog side is make it easier for the small website owner - e.g. by using widgets to update the offers on their site.

On the social network side - the idea isn't that people will go profile surfing when they sit down to go shopping, but rather when they are profile surfing they might now buy things that there friends are recommending - things that they otherwise might not have bought.

This is definitely an experiment and we will see how it goes. Early results are good though.

Re: The user is in control

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:27:40 -0000

And I thought the world was changing Alan....

Re: Prioritising traffic over monetisation

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:30:22 -0000

Thanks Paul. Perhaps I should have been clearer - I'm talking about venture style returns in consumer internet businesses where the cost of scaling is negligible.

In that case I stand by my points. The examples go beyond Facebook and Google as well - Bebo, our own WAYN, Delicious, Skype and Mybloglog are equally good examples.

Re: Prioritising traffic over monetisation

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:17:43 -0000

Paul - I will look to implement an email comment feature - it is a very good idea.

James - you make a great point. There is probably an inverse relationship between the specificity of the business model and its potential reach.

Re: VC value add

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:05:02 -0000

I agree Mike. I'm not a big fan of stealth mode.

Re: Facebook will allow you to export your friends list

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:35:50 -0000

Good point Alan. It will be interesting to see if they all mean it, or whether we will descend into the sorts of standards fudge we have seen in other areas of tech.

Re: Changing your mind - I changed mine about open source and wikipedia

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:02:54 -0000

Thanks Jay. Putting your opinion out there where it is very visible if you have made a mistake is a new thing for lot's of people. Before the web people simply didn't have to deal with possibility of being visibly wrong before - and that is something that takes a bit of getting used to.

It is well worth it though, as you describe.

Re: Musings on mobile social networks

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:11:09 -0000

Thanks guys.

Paul - the point of mobile social networking is to stay in touch with people better - just like online socnets - but with a mobile twist. Status updates are part of that - but being able to quickly share media as you see/capture it is another example.

Mark - interesting comment and great to see you getting so much traffic. Java apps are attractive because of what they offer, including address book integration, but they are painful too. I think cracking that zero marginal cost of distribution problem is going to be the key here.

Re: Changing your mind - I changed mine about open source and wikipedia

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 10:11:17 -0000

Interesting thought Jeremy, but I'm not sure I agree. There is a difference between being having a bold vision to change the world and being closed minded.

Re: Macro-economic gloom and startups

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:55:41 -0000

Hi Alex - your point is a good one. Businesses started in the depths of recession are often the ones best placed to take advantage of the eventual upswing.

Joe - the investors in our funds like us to invest at a constant rate and leave it to them to judge the cycle so in theory our investment rate should remain constant. That didn't really happen in the last bust because there were so many first time funds who lacked the experience required to pull this trick off. Going forward I expect that to be less of an issue. The other dynamic relates to our time - we can only look after so many investments, particularly if they are underperforming and taking up a lot of time, so during a recession when exits take longer individual partners may not have the same bandwidth for new investments as they do when times are good.

Re: The mobile web is waiting to take off

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 13:21:24 -0000

tks Max. I was out with a friend on Friday who was raving about his iPod Touch as well.

Re: opportunity in casual games

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:07:44 -0000

Hi Alan - it is mostly the arrival of socnets on the scene - on the business model side they are stealing audience from the portals and otherwise changing the mechanics of distribution, as you have commented on yourself. On the gameplay side the relationships and extra info generally in the platform open up a whole new range of possibilities.

The other trends to 3d and more narrative are changes of the more general evolutionary kind.

Re: AOL acquires buy.at

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:09:32 -0000

Thanks Shak - next time I will try to get from 'not too painful' to something genuinely positive!!! Thanks again for your part.

Re: Microsoft, Yahoo! and what it means for startups

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:12:40 -0000

Hi Alex - could be Facebook, or maybe NewCorp?

Re: Of venture capital and bubbles

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 06:13:06 -0000

Hi Martin - totally agree, I would capture these under the organic strategy I didn't really talk much about in this post.

Re: Mobile internet usage increasing

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:21:05 -0000

Thanks James

Re: European venture increasingly favours hi-risk, hi-return investments

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:21:39 -0000

Hi Fabio,

In a situation like yours you need to find a VC who strongly believes that your solution of the problem will win out. Trying to think about how we would look at your situation I can see us making an investment if the supporting partner stood up and said there are a number of potential solutions in the market, but this one WILL WIN because of X, Y and Z. If the support for your solution was more equivocal it would be difficult.

As individuals making investments we need to feel sure, whilst acknowledging that we might be wrong.

Hope that helps.

best,
Nic

Re: VRM - vendor relationship management

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 06:19:04 -0000

This is a great point Iain. Data capture on the consumer side is prohibitively difficult at the moment. Companies like Amazon are starting to make it easier, but only very slowly.

Re: New look and feel on The Equity Kicker

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:21:29 -0000

Hi Raphael - tks for these links. None of them are quite right though - mind you, not 100% convinced with what I have either...

Re: Another evening of blog work comes to an end

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 03:38:56 -0000

Thanks Robin. I like the second picture a lot and will have a play to see if I can make it work. Thanks again.

Re: New header image

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 06:14:02 -0000

I think they extended it. Not sure for how long though.

Re: iPhone takes a big step forward

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:06:45 -0000

Thanks Mike - I will update the post.

Re: Will VRM be commercial?

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 05:08:49 -0000

Ian - thanks for the comments and also the event. My first instinct is that the personal data store will not be that simple. For it to grow beyond a few idealists it needs to combine easy set up, easy data capture, a great GUI for controlling how information is exposed, and finally something that makes it worthwhile before the second half arrives (to Adriana's point that could be personal data mining a la Wesabe and Kublax).

Right now I'm a little skeptical that open source can deliver on this sort of consumer proposition. For sure the infrastructure and architecture behind it, but not the consumer proposition.

Re: Will VRM be commercial?

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:21:39 -0000

Thanks for the comment Doc, and good to hear the commercialism running through your thoughts.

A couple of responses - firstly, I'm familiar with your writings and didn't mean to reduce the benefits of VRM purely to advertising. I guess I just see that as the first big pot of money to go after.

Nor did I mean to trivialise the importance of open source, which as you describe has made an awesome contribution to everything we see on the web (and indirectly to our fund...) - but that has been at an infrastructure level. I agree that it doesn't matter if the code used to create the VRM web app/GUI is open or closed, but my instinct is that what we need here is the kind of vision, design, drive and PR that is most often found in private companies with at least an element of proprietary code. For me the analogy is more with Skype or Facebook than the browser.

best,
Nic

Re: Blogfriends shuts down

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:34:44 -0000

Colin - I think the bottom line is that the user growth didn't come through quickly enough. Unfortunately 20,000 users is only a small number for a Facebook app. I would imagine that is the same in the US.

Re: The end of &nbsp erros

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:36:23 -0000

tks fred - I should really use more rich media. The thematic nature of many of my posts doesn't make it that easy though. Plus I have recently been having formatting problems when I embed video.

Re: The death of the destination site

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 05:41:13 -0000

JC - I think we will need data portability as well, then we have walled gardens with paths between them, if you see what I mean...

Adam - tks for the comment. That all sounds pretty cool, and it would be great to understand more about how you plan to co-ordinate your existence in multiple places.

Re: Internet retail growing fast but still tiny

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:19:38 -0000

Thanks Liam. Very useful comment.

Re: Content wants to be free

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:44:20 -0000

Good point Alan - I am absolutely talking about free access. Free pricing is another issue altogether and not nearly so straightforward.

Re: The Economist misses the point on social networks - they are platforms not comms tools

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:04:37 -0000

Thanks for the comment Scott. I agree that we are heading back into a distributed world, but I would think that if Facebook and Myspace play their cards right they could maintain their leadership positions. In this view of the world they are portals for social apps, some of which they will probably own and operate themselves, but most of which will be from third parties.

Re: There are over 300 ad networks

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:25:50 -0000

Scott - we may not be as far apart as you think. I'm with you in that there will be a lot of growth in aggregate ad network revenues, but my point is that absent some clever innovation I don't think we will see new companies being formed and becoming very valuable. Clearly there is some clever innovation at Lookery.

Re: State of the nation in social media

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 05:23:13 -0000

Thanks Alan. As you know I'm in violent agreement with you about the importance of filtering.

Re: Facebook maturing as a platform

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:51:14 -0000

Tks Alan - I agree, nothing new here in terms of analysis, the noteworthy thing is that the world at large is starting to buy into it.

And from what I've heard I would guess that the mean CPM is well below $0.15

Re: Information overload in the web era

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:17:07 -0000

Tks Phil - I get Taleb's point, but when you are in the business of trying to predict where the hype will be in 12-24 months then I don't have the luxury of ignoring the breaking news. In the VC world we thrive on a sometimes uncomfortable blend of fundamentals and froth!

Re: Venture investment in Europe holds up

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:28:27 -0000

The numbers don't lie Phil :)

Re: Facebook maturing as a platform

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 05:05:03 -0000

Tks Josh. I agree with your second paragraph, although I somehow suspect that apps commissioned by brands will not turn out to be high engagement, or not that many of them anyway. I would guess the model is more likely to evolve along the lines of product placement or in-game advertising, where brands compete to become associated with high quality content.

Re: The New New Thing

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:03:56 -0000

Thanks guys.

James - you are right, 'enterprise2.0' is also interesting, although I'm not sure how quickly the verticals you mention will adopt social software and all that comes with it. I'm definitely on the look out for startups in this space though, and www.huddle.net is one of my favourites here in the UK.

Paul - I also agree with you. In the post I focused on the value to consumers - entertainment, but the technology drivers are networks, devices and the new ability to make services social. All very exciting.

Re: Berners-Lee on the new-new-thing

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:46:36 -0000

Good point Terry. My mistake. I will add a link when I'm next in front of my PC.

Re: VRM - requirements of a good service

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 01 May 2008 12:59:11 -0000

Interesting link Bart. It makes me think that a feature of a VRM service could be to help people put their numbers on the do not call list, and to help them press complaints. There is a good fit philosophically and it would get some cheap PR.

Re: Myspace charging to promote applications

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:48:21 -0000

Hi Jof - as I see it the problem on Facebook is the application invite spam, not the applications themselves. That is what needs to be controlled to protect the user experience, and that is where FB have been making adjustments.

Further, I'm not sure that by charging for application promotion you get higher quality apps. Probably the cost of promotion will actually reduce the development budget.

Re: Filtering is the next step for social media

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:57:29 -0000

Hey Bart - you are right, we will need language that makes VRM ideas accessible to the mass market. I don't know if bait is the right choice though...

Re: Healthcheck on the Facebook platform - negative outlook

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 13 May 2008 10:16:02 -0000

Thanks Namdi, and sorry for the slow response. I've still to make my mind up on whether DNA is as important as Umair makes out. For sure being perceived as having 'good DNA' will help with brand value, but I wonder if good and evil is too simple and the extent to which it is possible for big companies to manage in this way. E.g. nobody thinks that Google isn't evil any more.

Then again, maybe I'm behind the curve :)

Re: Why Yelp works

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:48:06 -0000

Thanks James - I have also wondered if Yelp is over-hyped. The NYT article criticises Citysearch for not having found a profitable business model, yet the same is also true of Yelp.

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:00:41 -0000

Hi Oli - the primary method we use for all entrepreneurs is to spend lots of time getting to know them and talking through the plans of the business to get a feel for how they will manage going forward. Occasionally we use more formal psychometric tests, but that isn't something that is necessary for most businesses.

Re: On open social data and (ab)using standards for personal gain

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:03:11 -0000

Dan - Facebook et al might want to be seen to be open to make themselves more attractive to developers. In a very real sense the socnets are now competing with each other for developers as much as they are for users.

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:47:27 -0000

Hey Ivailo - tks for the link. I'm not sure that second time entrepreneurs are less motivated than first timers though.

Phil - the Techcrunch article that Ivailo points to makes the same point as you - i.e. that first time entrepreneurs are often bolder than second timers

Re: The history of media tells us the web will change the world profoundly

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 23 May 2008 07:21:43 -0000

Great comment Martin - and your points are well made. Media is important, but not the be all and end all.

And I share your excitement about the future.

Re: Data portability, privacy and personal data stores

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:18:21 -0000

Good point Dave. For the model to work they would have to copy the data and then synch up periodically, or something similar.

Re: Social network ad spend data

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:16:30 -0000

All good questions Ivan. I guess this is revenues earned by widget companies, including Facebook applications. Those widgets presumably appear on blogs and profile pages everywhere.

I haven't seen any growth projections beyond the $15-$40m 2007-2008 cited above.

Re: Social network ad spend data

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 30 May 2008 06:01:27 -0000

tks Scott - will correct

Re: If your service is free someone somewhere had better be making money

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 30 May 2008 08:47:45 -0000

Thanks guys - and Manoj - you are right, a key source of value comes from the information that is created by people using services like yours.

Re: Google still scratching head over YouTube profits

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:24:39 -0000

Tks Bizak - some interesting data

Re: The role of technology in advertising

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:38:59 -0000

Chris - thanks for an interesting comment. I guess I feel that in the future it will be harder to have a strong brand overlaying a commodity proposition - there is so much information available to consumers these days that it is really hard unless you have a genuinely good product. To your examples - I suspect that Stella maintains its position through control of the supply chain and lack of meaningful competition, but also wouldn't be surprised to see them moving backwards, and Nike has genuinely good design.

Finally - a tailor made brand makes sense for companies that are big enough to merit it, and creativity will remain important, but if you separate that from media buying the world will start to look very different to how it does today.

Re: The FLIRT model of crowdsourcing - an analytical approach

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:27:11 -0000

Thanks Alex. I will check it out.

Re: Small boards are usually better

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:25:07 -0000

Jens - we spend more than half a day per month with each portfolio company.

As a very rough guide to my time, I am on four boards and reckon I spend around my time on portfolio management depending on how things are going. That equates to 2.5 days per month each.

And in addition to that there is a very intense getting to know you period whilst the deal gets done in the first place.

cheers,
Nic

Re: Personal home pages not a runaway success

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 18:19:39 -0000

Hi James - good to hear from you. Last time I looked compete.com was only north America, so I still use Alexa - which you've never liked :).

Re: The difference between media and comms

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:05:36 -0000

James - good point, there is definitely value in the information created by socnets, even if they are purely comms focused. We need a bit of innovation to figure out how to harvest it though.

Chris - whilst companies understand the need for the sort of cultural change you are describing, they are poor at implementing it. That is why they fail.

Re: The difference between media and comms

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:13:34 -0000

Jo - good to hear from you! And also nice to see you are still a good year or two ahead of me :)

Re: The beginning of the end for eBay?

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:40:03 -0000

Great comment Patricia. Thanks.

Re: The beginning of the end for eBay?

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 05:18:37 -0000

Thanks again Patricia. I have no axe to grind against auctions, and I agree that they are exciting and have their place in the retail mix. What I'm not sure of right now is whether eBay's early success artificially inflated their market share and it would be interesting to see what happened if eBay really tried to get fixed price transactions from small sellers moving. We are in total agreement on the pointlessness of eBay being a front for buy.com.

Re: Communities are enabled, not created

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:47:57 -0000

Thanks for some great comments guys. Particularly Nnamdi - some great links.

Re: Personalised news based on your socnet profile

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 03:52:52 -0000

Hi Paul - I agree. The profile information on LinkedIn isn't nearly as rich as many other social news sites.

Re: What a new search engine should be about

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:52:18 -0000

Thanks for the comments guys.

Paul - I would be more than happy to have a go at Google in one of the areas I mentioned. For sure it would be a risky venture, but the upside is huge if you get it right. Plus there are a few companies out there that will see a lot of value in a company in this space that has made even a small amount of progress :).

Re: What a new search engine should be about

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:40:00 -0000

Hi Azeem - I agree, the trick is to pick off a corner of the market which Google underserves and then build out from there. Going head to head would be suicide.

Alex - I agree that links have been heavily gamed - that is what attracts me to social search, as that is inherently game proof (at least as long as you keep good company...)

Re: Twitter ends free SMS updates for Europe

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:38:21 -0000

Antony - I have heard that Twitter makes money on every SMS in North America, but I have looked around a bit and not seen an explanation of how. If you know of one...

Thanks for the comment.

Re: Advice for UK startups targeting the US

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:04:19 -0000

Hi Alan - you are right, it isn't easy to go to the US. But it isn't impossible either, and no business is easy :)

And my readership is well over 50% European, so I will be making the queen and Prince Charles happy by using 'u's and 's's where they should be used!

Re: Founder transitions

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:03:52 -0000

Thanks Dave. Not everyone looks on it the same way as you though. It sounds like ego and control/power are not important concepts for you.

Re: Founder transitions

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:22:09 -0000

Hey Henry - great link. I will add it as an update.

Re: Open source economics textbook

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 07:04:33 -0000

Heheh James. Absolutely right. McAfee may be doing this simply out of the kindness of his heart, but if I were to guess I would say that he is thinking this move will increase his value as a speaker or chances of getting tenure or something.

Re: Open source economics textbook

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:21:01 -0000

Alan - free sans offsetting and sans advertising is not a business model. Full stop. And, as Josh points out I would argue that advertising is best understood as another form of offsetting.

Thanks for all the comments guys.

Re: Pandora business model undermined by high royalty demands

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:22:57 -0000

Meaghan - artists obviously need to get paid, and I agree there has to be give and take on both sides. But I wouldn't agree that the music industry holds all the cards at the moment - if they did then 80-90% of digital music wouldn't be consumed illegally (or whatever the percentage is).

Re: Is an era of open-ness in mobile upon us?

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:02:18 -0000

Hi Dino - tks for all the comments, and listening to some Piano as I right.

To your last point - Google Android and Apple iPhone are big advances in open-ness from the current situation in mobile. Not much compared to open source and where the PC is today admittedly, but a step forward for mobile.

Re: ‘Free’ as a business model and how it might apply to newspapers

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 04:31:58 -0000

Richard - I agree the independence issue is not straightforward, but remember there has always been a paymaster. Furthermore, I hope, maybe naively, that if a group of investigative journalists can create a reputation for integrity then their work will have more impact and be worth more to the people who are paying for it - although admittedly this relies on the assumption that the people commissioning the work are after the truth rather than simply pursuing an agenda.

Re: Time Out considers going to free

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:28:06 -0000

Hi James - you are right that it won't be easy, and they might well have to change the nature of their offering or find some business model or advertising innovation to make it all work, but one thing is for sure - paid circulation will continue falling. Doing nothing is not an option.

Re: ‘Free’ as a business model and how it might apply to newspapers

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:29:43 -0000

Hi Alan - tks for the comments. As I've written before in the context of music the implication of free may well be that the overall market is smaller. That doesn't mean it isn't going to happen though.

Re: UK band makes money because of piracy

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:31:53 -0000

Alan - not sure why it is that money spent is important to signal popularity. There are other measures - such as how often a track is streamed or downloaded, or played on the radio to pick one that has been used for some time.

Re: Chrome - wondering why we need a new browser?

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 08:33:55 -0000

Thanks for the comments guys.

Having had a chance to play with it a bit myself it is greasy quick for ajaxy sites - if all my FF plugins would work (which I guess they might soon) then I would seriously consider moving.

Jan - competitive destruction is part of the capitalist game - wasteful I know, but somehow it seems to be the least wasteful system anyone has managed to come up with!

Re: The impact of price comparison on brand

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:57:22 -0000

Thanks Campbell.

As well as showing price comparison sites also perform the function of saying which products are equivalent, or of highlighting the important differences so consumers can quickly make trade-offs against price. If a trusted brand, like Tescos, steps into this space then they could even start to establish the parameters on which goods should be compared.

Re: GPS penetration of mobiles reaching a tipping point?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:00:18 -0000

Hi Ed - I don't think making that linkage for individual services will be that difficult technically speaking. One startup that is doing it already is SportsDo - mostly using GPS dongles.

Re: Video search

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:36:24 -0000

Thanks James.

Re: Advice from the founder of Business Objects on how to cope with the downturn

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 07:17:21 -0000

Hoover - very few VC funds are leveraged, so I don't think the extra cost scenario you describe will come to pass. tks Nic

Re: Three books, one conclusion

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:09:16 -0000

Hoover - you are bang on - Shirky is a clever guy too, and I could easily have cited him. I haven't read Benkler though and you are the second or third person to mention him now. I will check him out. (PS One day I will find a widget to add to my sidebar that links to my visual bookshelf profile on FB showing what I've read and reviewed and so on.)

Wallen - I agree the initial choice of rules and norms for the community is critical to getting it off to a good start. Johnson details this well in Emergence.

tks for the comments

Re: Open-ness in the mobile value chain

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 04:56:42 -0000

Thanks Jo. You make a good point, over the medium to long term it isn't clear why we need 'stores' at all.

Re: The importance of lasting value

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:37:13 -0000

Hi Simon - I share the thought, and we did have a couple of companies that more obviously have strong DNA in the mix at Seedcamp, but ultimately the winners were felt to have better commercial prospects - which is often the case. Nobody will win if investment discipline is lost due to our desire to embrace the sort of shifts I have been writing about.

Re: Time for something new in online advertising

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:26:51 -0000

Thanks Oliver. The thought is that if a user controls her data she will allow targeting on a named basis - with all the benefits that entails. Conversely if she doesn't feel in control she may resist even anonymous targeting - certainly that is what we are seeing at the moment.

The need to feel in control runs pretty deep in our DNA.

Re: Time for something new in online advertising

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:47:53 -0000

@Oliver - for this to work the model will need to be a bit different - probably a web service that delivers value to you and collects data as a by product, but then offers the option to deliver more value if you allow the use of your data for targeting - all in a transparent, reversible and controllable manner.

Re: The importance of lasting value

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:35:48 -0000

Tks Hoover. I guess I feel that the asset bubbles we have seen in last few years have ultimately destroyed value and that the financial system (aka banks) has facilitated them rather than mitigated against them.

To your second point - I am a believer in market forces, but they don't work well on their own. Social mores are an important part of defining what is acceptable and encouraged in business - and I think they will become more so as people choose to buy from companies they perceive as having a net positive impact on the world - beyond simple shareholder value creation.

Re: Taking stock on cloud

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 11:56:43 -0000

Thanks for the link rhhfla

Re: UK online ad spend jumps 21% despite downturn

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:54:15 -0000

Hey Marc - I think there is a lot to the idea that naked consumerism will be a lot less prevalent going forward, although I expect the change process to be slow.

Re: Sales effectiveness

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:40:13 -0000

Thanks Simon.

Re: We live in difficult times - but keep your eyes on the prize

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:57:33 -0000

I agree Scott.

Re: Time for something new in online advertising

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 05:21:55 -0000

Thanks for a great comment Sofia

Re: Where music has gone movies and books will follow

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:08:40 -0000

Thanks James - I agree the eReaders don't cut it yet - but one day they will.

Re: Where music has gone movies and books will follow

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 22:54:21 -0000

James - I think Seth's saying that the physical book is the souvenir rather than thw writing itself.

Re: Using communities for marketing

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:46:37 -0000

Thanks for the comments folks. And a particular thanks to Ian and Nancy for the resource pointers. Much appreciated.

Re: Sequoia Captial presentation

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:17:17 -0000

Hi Fabio - to generalise I would I think the trick for pre-revenue consumer internet plays will be to keep the burn low over the next little while whilst perfecting the product.

Re: Make your product ‘remarkable’

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 10:12:41 -0000

rhhfla - I agree that ultimately you need to serve a customer need and sometimes simply asking customers what they want can be enough. Increasingly it isn't though, as Alex points out. Seth Godin says the same thing, if memory serves me right the way he puts it is that soliciting customer opinion is pointless because you can't trust what they say.

Re: Lala - interesting business model for online music

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 08:54:33 -0000

Hey Viktor - what is the difference between a digital locker for my music and any standard web storage where I could back up my MP3s?

Re: Creative destruction in the digital value chain

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:59:33 -0000

Guys - tks for the comments and apologies I have been slow to respond.

James - with regard to written content, my gut is that there will be a lot of long tail content produced, but that much of it will be monetised in ways other than advertising/cash - a bit like TheEquityKicker. I guess that means a view of whether the market has grown or shrunk will depend on what you measure, but by some measures you are right that there will be growth.

Guy - you are of course right that bandwidth and storage costs will remain, and I am guilty of simplification in saying that they will be zero. Simplification, but probably not gross simplification. These costs are only a small fraction of physical distribution costs and they are trending towards zero over time.

Re: Lala - interesting business model for online music

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:02:51 -0000

Hi Victor - I understand your point. I guess whether the difference between a digital locker and simple web storage, as you describe them, is significant :)

best,
Nic

Re: Phone industry becoming like the PC industry

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:05:16 -0000

Hey Alan - good question. I guess if you have to pick a single company I would say Nokia or open source (maybe driven by Google). Google will be peripheral and mostly interested in pushing search and their internet products, which makes them a little different to any of the web companies.

Re: Lala - interesting business model for online music

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:50:14 -0000

Hi Victor - if you can get it that cheap then I'm with you, it does sound like a better deal.

Re: Online ad models breaking?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 11:00:32 -0000

Great comment Mason, thank you. These sorts of CPA deals are a big step forward, but I am hoping for deeper sorts of engagement from actual conversations about brands, probably in some kind of social networking format.

Re: State of the nation on social networks

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:27:37 -0000

Ah, good thought Alan, it might be because it is where friends are, and because you don't need to bother with an address book.

Re: State of the nation on social networks

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:42:20 -0000

James - niche socnets do monetise better, you are right. To generalise on Henry's comment - anything non-comms will generally monetise better, of which niche socnets focused around an interest area are a good example.

Re: Fear of failure spreading to Silicon Valley?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:28:36 -0000

Thanks for the comments people.

A couple of responses:

1) I agree with Fabio and Andy that results are an unreliable guide to ability and it is far better to look at what was actually done (where possible). Pay on results by all means, but judge on process.

2) As to how Judy explains the change, it is along the lines that Andy and Warren intimate. The VC industry grew too big too quickly from 1999-2000 and got used to quick returns (a problem exacerbated by some of the web2.0 successes) with the result that there is less experience of building great companies over time and less tolerance for short term problems. The result of this is less confidence (ability?) amongst the VC community in judging whether a previous failure is an indication of future failure or not combined with lower tolerance of mistakes in assessing entrepreneurs. I would agree with this to an extent, but with the caveat that some funds are much better than others. My guess is that a lot of capacity will come out of the market (i.e. there will be less VCs) and that might go some way to fixing this problem.

Re: Ebay’s decline

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:50:31 -0000

Interesting point James. I think we are seeing a similar trend with social networks too. It could be that on the web the economies of scale aren't strong enough to justify the product compromises necessary on these one size fits all sites.

Re: Social media: data versus interface

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:24:09 -0000

Some great comments guys, thank you. I wonder if O'Reilly doesn't really think about money when he assesses technologies.

Re: Google’s 20% rule

Nic Brisbourne — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:33:36 -0000

Thanks for the comments people. It seems the 20% rule is pretty popular!

Sean - I agree that the quote I cite only obliquely implies that 20% time is being discouraged - but it does do that much. I'm also with you in that people tinker and it is much better to harness that than be arrogant enough to believe you can stop it.

For me though harnessing means channeling - which means top down decisions about the areas in which tinkering will be encouraged, and discouragement of activities which go too much off piste. If strategy isn't set at the centre you don't get enough focus and the result is too many initiatives that don't fly consuming significant resource. This is something we have seen at Google, and the post I link to above lists a number of high profile initiatives that have been cancelled in favour of focus on Google's core strategies.

Re: Google’s 20% rule

Nic Brisbourne — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 13:51:24 -0000

Adam - I just tried to leave this comment on your T-Machine blog, but got a server error, so I'm leaving it here instead. Hopefully you will pick it up. Best, Nic

Hi Adam - tks for the comment on TheEquityKicker and sorry if I've hit a nerve here. My primary beef with the 20% rule is that it is held out to the rest of the world to be something that I suspect it isn't. Your comment made me reflect on what I had heard directly from people at Google, and what I had picked up from elsewhere, and whilst I have had some direct input you are right in your assertion that most of it comes from other 'observers'.

I say this to you though - please put us out of our misery of misconception and explain how it does work.

best,
Nic

Re: Facebook options debacle shows lack of liquidity is an issue for startups

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:58:21 -0000

Hi Chris - tks for the comment. I think the thing that was a bit different about Facebook is that the option is still open to Zuckerberg to cash out his employees if he wants to - the issue is valuation. That makes it a little different to the markets closing for IPOs, which everyone understands is outside the CEO's control.

I'm sure you're right that nothing was promised in the legal sense. I used the word more loosely than that. The key here is what people expected, and if they really thought they were going to get some cash then they will be disappointed, and that will hit moral.

Re: Making the case for intellectual honesty

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 06:32:26 -0000

Thanks for the comments guys.

Alan - you make good points, and having a collective misperception of the facts is obviously very dangerous, but remember also that many entrepreneurs are successful precisely because they push on and continue to believe in their visions when to other people it looks like the contrary evidence is overwhelming.

Terry - great article, thanks. It illustrates my point perfectly.

Sean - using metrics to drive a business is in general a good thing (clearly) and if done well can leave little room for intellectual dishonesty - but they are not the whole answer. Some things don't lend themselves to measurement and it is of course possible to measure the wrong things.

Re: Arrington on the entrepreneurial lifestyle

Nic Brisbourne — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 11:57:21 -0000

Sorry Terry - I'd spotted this mistake and thought I'd fixed it. Sorted now.

Re: Advertising on social networks

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 11:14:31 -0000

James - I totally agree. In fact one of the thoughts behind the post is that Google has as its mantra that advertising should be content.

Re: Phorm - back from the dead?

Nic Brisbourne — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 06:14:38 -0000

Guys - thanks for the comments.

Alex - I'm not sure we will ever see explicit market places in attention - I suspect the values are too small for that. Rather I expect that the trade offs will be more implicit.

Warescouse - when I write a post like this there is often a trade off between keeping the post short and accessible and simplifying generalisations. You are spot on that the issue is more complex than McNealy's simple statement implies. I used it because it is directionally correct - I believe that people are more concerned about privacy than they need to be at the moment, and that they will get over it at some point.

Revrob - what you say is interesting. I had thought that Phorm's USP was their ability to track surfing and target on the back of that? Surely it is pretty simple for ISPs to make us view a page of their choice en route to the one we are trying to get to? A link to the discussion you mention would be great.

Re: 2006/10/05/most-myspace-users-over-35/

Nic Brisbourne — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 09:30:22 -0000

This is good news for social networks everywhere. The sustainability of their businesses has been questioned (by me amongst others!). The evidence that usage is not limited to kids goes someway to answering those questions.

Re: 2006/10/12/yahoo-facebook/

Nic Brisbourne — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 10:04:29 -0000

Surely if there is a $1bn on the table they should take the money and head for the hills. That is a big price for any private company and whilst Facebook's unique profile may tempt them to hold out for more questions over the sustainability of the business and its cash generating potential should IMHO stop them being too greedy.

Plus if all the rumours are to be believed (e.g. on Dead2.0) Facebook is not the best run company on the planet and a bigger trip along the feeds line can't be ruled out.

Re: Customer Service is the New Marketing

Nic Brisbourne — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 09:06:43 -0000

Hi Brad,

BUT

This could have a knock on effect of increasing the importance of time to market leading to increased marketing spend.

In fact I think this merits a full post, so if you are interested check out www.theequitykicker in a couple of hours.

best,

Nic