The Gong Show

Direct Giving

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 09:58:03 -0500

The drama over Kiva’s slightly misleading social stance has boiled over onto the NYTimes. To summarize, Kiva has been marketing itself as a model to loan money directly to third world entrepreneurs. But, the truth is that most entrepreneurs on the site already have an outstanding loan with a local micro-finance institution (MFI), and Kiva appearance of direct giving is really just a layer of marketing to enable people to give small loans to web-enabled MFIs around the world.

This layer of abstraction is fine by me… Kiva rocks. But for most of Kiva’s lenders, the idea that a lender’s choice of project is irrelevant on Kiva is surprising and disillusioning to most lenders.

The NYTimes piece gives the impression that the web is too nascent to enable direct Peer-to-Peer giving. That’s why I’m so impressed by DonorsChoose, who actually does enable direct giving to a specific classroom. 100% of the funds from a DonorsChoose donation goes to purchase the materials for the project you choose, and they implemented an e-procurement solution in order significantly reduce the opportunity for fraud.

Similarly, in the for-profit space, I’m excited by the prospects of Kickstarter, which is the new form of patronage online. There’s no layer of abstraction in Kickstarter, the project you select to sponsor is the project that receives your funds, the giving is direct.

In areas where there is already an infrastructure in place and widespread internet connectivity penetration, direct giving online is possible and is already happening today. It takes a ton of legwork to pull off and is not the easiest path to sponsorship. But, it’s worth clearing the hurdles to enable direct giving because the resulting transparency and lender empowerment is worth the effort.

USV.com

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:31:23 -0500

We launched a new website at Union Square Ventures. It’s still a blog, just like it was 4 years ago, built on top of Movable Type. But, now, we’ve got a whole bunch of other dynamic content widgets (powered by Magnify). So, the latest blog posts, tweets, job postings and rich media from all our portfolio companies will be aggregated in one place.

@EricFriedman is the rockstar at USV that ran with this. And, I’m incredibly impressed by the design talent of Phoebe Espiritu. Props to both.

Surface of Mars (Via U or Arizona) I just changed the background...

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:05:24 -0500

Surface of Mars (Via U or Arizona)

I just changed the background image of my blog to a picture of the surface of Mars. More at The Big Picture.

Recession Statistics Sliced by Demographics

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:34:33 -0500

The New York Times consistently steps up the level of journalism in a digital age by publishing flash charts like this one. It’s a fantastic, yet painfully transparent, visualization of how the recession affects varying demographics differently.

The unemployment rate for my demographic (white, male, college graduate, Age 25-44) is one of the lowest of all possible demographic combinations at 3.9%. What is particularly painful about this visual analysis is the effect race has on the statistics. By contrast the unemployment rate for a black, male, college graduate, Age 25-44 is 8.3%, which is twice as high as its white equivalent.

Kudos to the NYTimes for a strikingly interesting and interactive piece of journalism.

(via HackerNews and great comment thread there)

Android's Affordances

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:14:10 -0500

I had an opportunity to play with the Droid yesterday (thanks to @ericfriedman). It was an overall positive experience. But, it felt like the user experience was missing a final coat of polish. Here’s one small example that is very typical of the whole Android experience.

When using an iPhone, there is only 1 physical button on the face of the device, the home button. This button always does what it says: takes you home. Why does 1 dedicated button with consistent action matter? Because it means all the available choices for interaction must be visible on the touchscreen. In HCI terms, all interaction choices have a visible, explicit affordance.

By contrast, in Android there are 4 face buttons: back, options, home, and search. Many interaction choices are hidden behind the options button. So, I often found myself staring at the screen, asking myself where XYZ feature is, only to find it hidden behind an options button click. But, that experience was not consistent it that the choices behind the options button changed based on the mode or app I was in. By having an options button, many of the advanced functionality could be removed from the touchscreen, which simplified the interface, but it meant I was often guessing what feature were hidden behind options. In HCI terms: there are no affordances for the choices behind the options button.

It’s not surprising that Apple decided to not to incorporate an options button like Android. Apple’s operating systems have been optimized for a single-click mouse for years, based on the exact same arguement: don’t hide options behind a right click with no visible affordance. They took this design paradigm and applied it to the iPhone. It’s yet another way in which the following SAT-style analogy applies… iPhone:Android::Mac:PC

Verizon Droid Iconography

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:21:28 -0500

Does anyone else see the Droid eye as a cross between the Eye of Sauron and Hal 9000? Why so evil, Verizon? I’m not saying I want my phone to look like a cute puppy, but the Droid Red Eye looks like the opposite of a simple, inviting experience. It looks more like a device I will combat in an intense final battle, possibly to a John Williams score blasting in the background.

+ =

Are We Friends?

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:29:03 -0500

“friends,” “followers,” “contacts” and other descriptors of the edges between nodes in a social graph are all poor choices of words. Being friends with someone on Facebook does not make us friends. Following you on Twitter does not make me your follower.

If I ran a social network I’d use a complete nonsense word to describe the edges on the social graph. Even “rebaflames” would be better than “friends.” Better for two reasons: 1) it wouldn’t be loaded with the social context of friendship and 2) it would allow you to define the lexicon in your space which leads to thought leadership. Like FeedBurner owning the term “burn” your feed.

"Interview” is really the wrong word for what happens. You might expect something that’s in the genre..."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:11:25 -0500

““Interview” is really the wrong word for what happens. You might expect something that’s in the genre of a job interview or an investor pitch, but it’s nothing like that. It’s more like a brainstorming session with the volume turned up to 11.”

- - Description of the YCombinator interview process by DirectedEdge

From where I sit, this reminds me of many pitches at Union Square Ventures. I wonder if entrepreneurs would agree or not.

giantrobotlasers: hartsell: Whoa there,...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:17:45 -0400

giantrobotlasers:

hartsell:

Whoa there, Governator!

http://gov.ca.gov/pdf/press/2009bills/AB1176_Ammiano_Veto_Message.pdf

This actually happened. I love California politics.

Facebook Fan Pages

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:39:13 -0400

I don’t understand Facebook Fan Pages (and would love for that to change). What’s the biggest thing that fan pages do for businesses? Anyone have any examples of well-executed fan pages that a business would deem successful?

Pixel Games

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:00:00 -0400

I really enjoy both the art-style and the simple gameplay of super-pixelated games. Here’s a couple examples that are worth a spin, but, be warned, you’re putting your free time at risk.

Quick List of Big-Pixel Games:

Pixel Grower - Don’t let any pixels drop… watch your character grow fractal-like over time.
Pixel - You’re a pixel that shoots other pixels. That description sounds like EVERY game, which means it’s the opposite of true because the experience is very unique.
Small Worlds - Explore a world.
Squareball - iPhone games. Slide the world to move. Watch a video of gameplay to see if it’s your cup of tea.

I think a big part of my attraction to these games is they don’t try to do too much. The is rarely a narrative or character arc because it’s hard to “identify” with a blob of over-sized pixels. These types of games are often super-concentrated gaming paradigms that most gamers can instantly recognize and quickly get engaged.

Plus, I just really like pixel art.

Know of any other good games in this pixel-style that I should check out?

siminoff: This confirming the scribble letters thing is...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:59:41 -0400

siminoff:

This confirming the scribble letters thing is starting to get ridiculous. On gmail I have found it to be almost impossible to decipher it…

There has got to be a better way to make sure that I am human then putting letters up that I can not read.

I’m surprised Google is still using this illegible mess after they purchased reCaptcha in September. I guess they just have not had enough time to implement it across the company.

Caterina Fake’s recipe for a focused, productive day....

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:45:00 -0400

Caterina Fake’s recipe for a focused, productive day. Very cool (and very nicely designed). I wish I had the self-discipline to implement this, but both the nature of my job and the way my mind spins hold me back.

——————
singletasking (via caterina)

That’s quite a few middle man hops to get from my eyeballs...

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:02:08 -0400

That’s quite a few middle man hops to get from my eyeballs to SportsCenter on ESPN. I count three because there will definitely be competing providers for that authentication layer even through that layer of competition is not visually represented.

There’s a lot of value in this transaction (my cable+internet bill is $100/mo, which is my highest monthly bill, not counting rent). All that money is flowing into the MSOs today, and they’re cutting up the pie, but I don’t think that will be true 5 years from now.

As a simple analogy: If this market image were a sentence, my 6th grade grammar teacher would highly encourage editing of “unnecessary phrases.”

(image via readwriteweb)

Wikipedia Rel=NoFollow

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:35:00 -0400

Why are all external links on Wikipedia marked as Rel=Nofollow? For those unfamiliar, rel=nofollow means that search engine web crawlers will not follow these links; therefore, they will not benefit the destination site’s PageRank in Google.

I know the obvious arguement for marking Wikipedia external links as rel=nofollow, which is that it will prevent spammers from using Wikipedia’s PageRank for their own benefit by pointing a bunch of Wikipedia external links towards their own spam sites.

But, that argument is lame because spammers already have PLENTY of incentive to make a bunch of external links to spam sites on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a traffic firehose because of all its visitors, and each external link a spammer points to their external site will generate a bunch of traffic for them. So, I don’t think marking external links as rel=nofollow discourages spammers.

Instead, marking external links as rel=nofollow just punishes legitimate sites that should rightly benefit from being linked to by Wikipedia. For example, The United Nations Human Rights Council page on Wikipedia references the official website for this organization in the first link of the External Links section of the page. Yet, the UN Human Rights Council receives no PageRank benefit for that mention. If anything, the official site of this organization is more canonical than even the Wikipedia page itself and deserves to rank highest for a search on this term. So, it should really receive the benefit of Wikipedia’s link.

If I thought rel=nofollow actually discouraged spammers at all, then I could understand Wikipedia’s decision, but I really doubt there’s any benefit to spam prevention, so I would love to be able to remove the rel=nofollow attribute whenever I make an external link while editing Wikipedia.

newspeedwayboogie: Espers - The Pear New Espers record, III, is...

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:36:34 -0400

newspeedwayboogie:

Espers - The Pear

New Espers record, III, is out today. It’s great, typical slinky sound but also different than earlier records, there is more space in the songs, more room for the band to breath, the production and sound are amazing, Greg Weeks’ guitar tone is remarkable - I need to ask him sometime how he gets that. In all, wonderful package.

Andrew’s $0.02: This song is terrific and well worth a reblog. Beautiful texture and the female vocals are like an alluring lullaby.

However, the main reason I wanted to reblog this is that Andy puts his finger on a phenomenon that often disappoints me as bands get success. I find the following trend all the time: Band records grungy muddy mess of greatness in their garage on cheap guitars and a couple of 4-track tape recorders linked together. Then Band strikes it big (likely via requisite Pitchfork “Best New Music” knighthood). Band goes out an buys a bunch of big fancy amps, new guitars, etc and the production quality on the recording gets kicked up a notch as they upgrade to a real studio and a brand name producer. Then, the resulting sophomore album sounds way to cleaned up and inorganic, and all the great, original raspy-sounding instruments are gone.

Based on this song, I don’t feel like that has happened to Espers, so that’s good. But, the trend is too common… I wish I could take some of my favorite bands and send them back through a time machine.

A beautiful cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone...

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:42:36 -0400

A beautiful cover of LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” using a Cello. Cello is my second-favorite instrument for use in indie-music (first fav is some banging brass).

Redeye VC: Company Math vs VC Math Great Post… plus this...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:10:26 -0400

Redeye VC: Company Math vs VC Math

Great Post… plus this quote is terrific:

“it’s even more scary when you look at it from a micro/fund perspective. Take a $400M venture fund. In order to get a 20% return in 6 years, they need to triple the fund — or return $1.2B. Add in fees/carry and you now have to return $1.5B. Assuming that the fund owns 20% of their portfolio companies on exit, they need to create $7.5B of market value. So assume that one VC invested in Skype, Myspace and Youtube in the same fund - they would be just halfway to their goal. Seriously? A decade ago, any one of those deals would have been (and should have been) a fundmaker!”

christmasgorilla: Buzz Andersen, creator of the excellent...

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:54:00 -0400

christmasgorilla:

Buzz Andersen, creator of the excellent Birdfeed, probably after spending some time with the new Tweetie 2.

Andrew’s $0.02: This is why APIs are so important to startups. They are the ultimate iterative design tool. Third party developers crank out features you’d never dream of inventing as the Company, some of which fail and others flourish. For example, who would have thought that social games on Facebook would become as big as they are now? Without the FB Platform API, the only game we’d still have on FB is the “poke.”

Barney Frank Spares Venture Capital

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:08:56 -0400

There’s a WSJ article today which credits Barney Frank with sparing venture capital from SEC registration and “systematic risk” testing. That’s great news, and I think it makes a lot of sense because VC is not leveraged, doesn’t use derivatives, etc…

But, I wonder if the fact that Barney represents Massachusetts 4th congressional district had anything to do with it… the 4th district overlaps part of the 128 Beltway, which is littered with VC firms. I’m sure that, as a percentage of overall VCs in the country, Barney is the directly elected representative for a fair number of them. I doubt this overlap had a significant effect on Barney’s decision, but I’d be curious if it came into consideration at all.