$12,107.09

I might be misquoting here, but I believe I once read in Playboy Interview with John Kenneth Galbraith that his biggest disappointment with people was that they sought out data that supported their currently held postions and opinions, and rejected all other data. With that firmly in mind, I nonetheless want to share Guy's post entitled : By the Numbers: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09. In it, he details what he spent, in time and in money, to launch his often reviled, and often visited, new site called Truemors. Of course, his initial success has a lot to do with the fact that it's Guy Kawasaki that launching it, but let's face it : $12,107.09. As I recall, that was probably the monthly fedex bill for the smallest of the 2000 class of VC funded startups.

I call your attention to it to illustrate my currently held belief, that service providers are so easy and simple to deploy that the game for all businesses has fundamentally changed, not only for service providers. As the costs to deploy these sorts of services goes down, the required market share to support a busines is much smaller, allowing much more targeted businesses to be created. This drives my focus into the new Web services based architectures, which are ideal to support businesses exactly like this. I was not surprised to see an Amazon Web services URL flash by on Truemors...

As I look at the recent crop of Voice Over IP startups, I use this picture of the future to predict the success of my industry peers. It's why I like Twitter as a small, bootstrapped place, but have a hard time seeing valuations that would support massive investment into it. The technical implementation of Twitter, to telecom standards, is nearly trivial. The mob effect and it's value to the mob seems marginal to me, but the service and infrastructure are useful, and if they stay close to customers that will pay, they'll do quite well. Apparently, Twitter is out to raise some dough. For their sake, I hope they fail there, and succeed by sticking to their knitting.

I think I ought to get some sort of report card together to help me keep my thoughts. How would Twitter fare?

• I'd give them a B for technology, as they did a good job with integrating existing technologies, but have not really made any new technology or architecture improvements. A decent job there, but not exactly Stanford or MIT.
  
• I'd give them an A- for business if they don't take investment (and a definite C if they do). Twitter's service is still very horizontal, and as such, can be commoditized. However, the service itself is quite cool, and has many applications, and they have first mover advantage.
  
• We need to give the Twits an A for buzz. Like a friend of mine in the Valley says, they love Twitter because they showed that using text messages was something that people might even like to do. I agree. I'm a fan.
  

Web 2.0 Show Wrap Up

Well, the show is over, but the show head-spin hasn't ended yet. Here's some of my highlights I wanted to share with you.

Finally got to meet John Musser of Programmable Web fame. John runs (in our opinion) the premier site for finding state of the art mashups and APIs. Nice guy. Pat wanted to go to Seattle for another meeting, and we will, but I think Pat just wants to get a cup of coffee.

I think I scared the FatDoor people when I claimed to know my neighbors and be involved in my community. After a blank stare, the nice lady said, "Well, you can use FatDoor too!" And I will, right after I get back from the YMCA.

Finally met Andrew Turner and Mikel Maron, fellow Web 2.0 speakers and geo-location geeks. Brady Forrest put us together for my mashup, and it was good to meet them in person. If you're looking for geo-location web applications, start with them. They rock.

I took a quick field trip to meet up with Jack Dorsey from Twitter and Narendra Rocherolle from 30 Boxes. I really appreciated the time they spent with me, and I plan to do podcasts and a profile of both companies. If you haven't heard of Twitter, please press up with your hands to move the rock you're living under. 30 Boxes is a personal favorite of mine, where I first came to admire the service, but now starting to admire the crew, too. If there are any social anthropologists out there, please go visit these guys, take a camera and start shooting. This is exactly what the 2.0 culture looks and feels like, right down to the floor. In 200 years, the geeks will thank you.

So much more to say, but it's dinner time in old San Francisco, and there's a trolley awaiting.

Been really busy designing this week

Sorry for the drop out in posts... just been working really hard. So, as a complete dodge of my blogging responsibilities, let me clue you in to Tom's favorite, but probably useless, mashup of the day... Twitter Vision.

Twitter vision mashes up Twitter text messages with google maps, so that when anybody sends a message, it shows up with their picture on a world map. It's really pretty cool, and in some small measure, what it must be like for God to be listening in on our thoughts. (Shoot... God, ignore that last thought.)

I suppose the general concept is pretty cool, and may even have some applications in a battlefield sort of scenario. Each soldier has a headset, it runs through speech to text and a GPS unit, and the commanders get real time, geo located battlefield intelligence. But, for Twitter Vision, it's more about hearing twenty somethings whine about their hangover.

I'm sort of fascinated. I wonder how many ignorant Americans are wondering why there are no Twitter messages coming from Nigeria. Like my friend Auri says, all these personality disorders are an American invention. In Belarus, people are too busy trying to find something decent to eat to worry about being depressed. Suppose they're too busy to Twitter too.