Disqus - Latest Comments for spraycode

Re: 5 Awesome Tools To Track Trends On Twitter – What do YOU use?

spraycode — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:42:22 -0000

Great list. You should also check out what we are doing at http://www.klout.net. We are measuring influence but looking specifically at who a person influences and on what topics.

Re: Does Twitter Follower Count Matter?

spraycode — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:46:24 -0000

Like Friendfeed?

Re: Does Twitter Follower Count Matter?

spraycode — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:45:44 -0000

I don't think that following a lot of people is necessarily a bad thing in any way. Everyone should use Twitter in which ever way serves them best. Some people can only stand to follow a hundred while others can effectively follow 10,000.

As a person follows more people they are likely getting more information but the the impact of any one tweet or tweeter decreases though.

Re: Does Twitter Follower Count Matter?

spraycode — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:44:09 -0000

Can't seem to delete my comment here..

Re: Influence on Twitter

spraycode — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:35:49 -0000

Wow, amazing post. Not near enough people reference Jean Baudrillard when talking about influence on Twitter :)

My name is Joe and I am one of the founders of Klout (thanks for the mention!). We look at influence not as a rank but as an aggregate. We measure influence between each node on the social graph. So of the people who follow me, there is a range of influence spanning between my close friends who share affinity groups and interact with my content to the random spam follower who will never see a single tweet I create. Figuring out how big of an audience a person has is the (relatively) easy part. To understand a person's influence you have to be able to analyze how deeply the connect with that audience. You can think of it as wide and shallow or narrow and deep in a lot of instances.

The next challenge is figuring out what topics connect people. For companies looking to leverage influencers it's critical to understand what topics a person is specifically influential about. It's not as easy as saying "this person tweets about baseball 12% of the time". You need to be able to look across the person's social graph and see if the people viewing those tweets even care about baseball.

We are placing our bets right now that influence at the local level (and we consider affiliate groups here) is going to be the sweet spots for companies. Node optimization and understanding where you should plant the seeds of your message so it has the best chance to migrate across the web is a powerful weapon.

Really looking forward to the rest of this series!

Re: Yelping My Way Through LA

spraycode — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:54:17 -0000

If you end up by downtown just ping me @joefernandez and I can help guide you to either of those places if you need help. Both have outside seating, perfect for an LA day like today.

Re: Yelping My Way Through LA

spraycode — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 01:08:26 -0000

If you end up near downtown LA don't miss El Site Mares on Sunset in Silverlake for the best shrimp burrito ever. It's like jesus himself made it and it's the size of a new born baby. If you are interested in venturing into East LA don't miss Tacos Baja Ensenada for amazing fish tacos.

I drive all over this city hunting these things down.

Re: Catch up with @MrTweet at SXSW!

spraycode — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:45:49 -0000

Hey guys,

We have a service called Klout (Klout.net) and would love to meet up down in Austin.

@joefernandez

Re: Advsiors - how much equity is right?

spraycode — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:23:09 -0000

Really appreciate you taking the time to write this article. Would be very interested to hear a general range of ownership you see advisors getting. Also, if an advisor played a key role in finding and negotiating a vc investment is it reasonable for them to expect a significant increase in their ownership?

Re: bit.ly blog - @tipjoy is helping test some bit.ly labs features.

spraycode — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:51:57 -0000

I need this, when are you going to make this functionality supported through the api?

Re: Announcing the $5 million Twitter Data App Seed Fund

spraycode — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:38:18 -0000

Hey Charlie,

You are right, there is an endless number of exciting products that can be built on "the now web" that twitter seems to own. Forget a twitter fund though, as someone who is risking my entire savings to build a product that utilizes twitter data I would be happy with just a few more api calls, reliable support and an easy way to authenticate. Just trying to get your IP's whitelisted for the API is a major ordeal. For the last week I have been trying to get ours updated because we changed hosts and they have twice whitelisted my user name rather than IP and even when they said they got the IP we still get rate limit errors.

The twitter api is great if you want to build a twitter client. If you want to build the type of influence based marketing app that you describe however you are going to run into a lot of problems. I hope Twitter realizes that they will soon need to provide a lot more support to their developer ecosystem if they ever intend to have apps built that provide true utility beyond the lightweight stuff we see today.

Re: What is early stage?

spraycode — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 10:27:10 -0000

If Angels start doing bigger rounds how do you think their evaluation criteria will change?

Re: Following vs. Following

spraycode — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:09:49 -0000

You can get some sense of how many people you really follow and how many people really follow you by looking at the number of @messages you receive and the count of unique individuals that have sent those messages. These people are reading what you write and interacting with you in some way.

I am curious about people who do most of their twitter updates through sms. Are they less likely to interact with the content of others. There is also the huge percentage of garbage twitter accounts that are following everyone. I have a feeling that if you ran the numbers without these followers a lot of people would have bruised egos.

Re: I've been neglecting my Tumblr

spraycode — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:51:22 -0000

I read it too you know.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

spraycode — Thu, 22 May 2008 13:19:38 -0000

I've never had any interest to see anything on Broadway. Enough people have mentioned this play to me though that today I bought tickets for my girlfriend and I to see it on saturday night. Anything I need to know as a novice theater patron?

Re: Organic Synergies

spraycode — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 11:59:10 -0000

What if one of your portfolio companies wanted to work with a competitor of one of your other portfolio companies?

Re: Organic Synergies

spraycode — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:40:04 -0000

So many of your portfolio companies have natural synergies with each other. I could see Outside.In pulling geographically relevant twitter messages or tumblr posts. AdaptiveBlue finding comparable handmade products on Etsy. Etsy sellers creating their own Tumblr blogs to advertise their products. Wesabe showing blog posts from Outside.In related to restaurants that people are spending money on and Outside.In showing the average amount of money spent (and if people tend to become repeat visitors) of a restaurant from Wesabe. AdaptiveBlue could show whether a person is currently active in any Zynga game when you view their profile across multiple social networks. Who knows what people will create with Bug. Such an exciting portfolio.

Re: Our Run In With Auction Rates And What It Taught Me About Markets

spraycode — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:39:09 -0000

Looks like Move, Inc is experiencing some of the same issues (from their Q4 earnings call, http://seekingalpha.com/art...

As of December 31st our cash and short term investments were $175.6 million which includes $130 million of investments in auction rate securities. These are high grade AAA rated student loan federal government backed auction rate securities issued by student loan funding organizations which loans are 97% guaranteed under FELP, the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Historically, these securities have been considered short term investments and were highly liquid as the interest rate reset every 28 days and allowed investors to either roll over their holdings or sell them at par. However as has been reported in the press earlier this month the auctions for auction rate securities backed by student loans failed. The auction rate securities continue to pay interest at LIBOR plus 1.5% and there’s been no change in the rating of these securities. As a result of the failed auctions these securities are currently not liquid. We may not be able to access these funds until a future auction of these investments is successful or they are redeemed by the issuer or they mature.

I wonder how many CFO's out there are sweating the fact that their no longer as liquid as they had planned to be?

Re: The Second Order Network Effect

spraycode — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:01:24 -0000

"The “number of prior adopters” is the value to “the next adopter”. So if you are picking a game network to join, go to the one that has the most game players in it. You’ll get the most clicks that way."

There has been a lot of talk about these social gaming networks over the last few weeks and the conversation seems to inevitably turn to how developers might choose between them. Wouldn't the best strategy for a game developer be to join as many of these social game networks as possible? Wouldn't it be best for Zynga, SGN, or whomever to have the games in their platform getting popular through as many channels as possible?

I don't think Zynga, SGN or any social gaming network are ever going to be able to "lock in" games to be exclusive in their network. In console gaming the vast majority of games are available on every platform. The exceptions are tend to be lucrative exclusive deals and first party development efforts. Another exception is when the technology of the platform is unique in a way that a game might not necessarily be easily transferable across systems. Many Wii games just would not make sense on Xbox 360 or PS3. Looking at the Zynga developers documentation it looks like the only thing you need to add to your app to join is a couple lines of code to display the toolbar. Hardly a barrier to joining multiple networks.

Lets say a social gaming network has an exclusive game that a user gets hooked on. They are more likely to further engage that user by offering many of the same games that user may like to play within other social gaming networks. More importantly, for social games to grow beyond cute retreads of board games there needs to be incentive for developers to invest their time ad creativity in this market. Having as many channels of adoption as possible open to them is critical to accomplish this. The better these games get the more the social gaming networks benefit.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

spraycode — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:02:54 -0000

Hey Fred,
You should check out The Acorn.
http://hypem.com/track/496664

Your love for Vampire Weekend made me think this might be interesting to you. Saw these guys the other nigh at Union Hall and they were great.

Re: Top 10 Records of 2007 – Number 6

spraycode — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:26:07 -0000

It's impossible to see these guys live and not jump back into their record with open arms. Through some sort of act of god I ended up having no problem buying tickets to the Judson Church show. I am still listening to the record (and even went back and re-discovered Funeral). I share your concern about where these guys go from here though. I am guessing there is still about 18 months before we hear a new record from Win and crew. Who knows what the mainstream will be looking for at that point.