My phone is beeping a lot less these days. I’m fairly certain I didn’t lose any of my extreme popularity. I seem to be getting the same amount of emails as ever — just not to my phone.

Verizon released its version of the iPhone for nearly a month and already has accumulated an 8.4% market share for the product. Before the launch, Verizon claimed it had tested its network to ensure it could handle the rigor adding iPhone users would cause. As an Android user from the beginning, I am here to call shenanigans.

I no longer receive emails to my phone at work. I cannot always access Pandora while traversing New York City. Text messages sometimes do not send from my apartment. Everything seems a bit slower. Not AT&T slow, but slow enough to where I notice the difference.

What responsibility does Verizon have to reimburse me or improve its network so it can perform as well as it had prior to the Apple influx?

I re-upped my Verizon contact 15 months ago long before Verizon or Apple publicly acknowledged they would be getting together. When the two companies finally did make an announcement, Verizon did not offer its existing customers early upgrades nor did they warn me that my data network would hurt. That would be fine…so long as the network did not suffer.

When fans who bought Super Bowl tickets were not able to view the game from their seats as the temporary structures did not pass inspect and instead had to watch from a special party area, the NFL was quick to offer compensation. The league even went out of its way to offer three options to the upset customers — options that provided the flexibility for the fans to receive proper compensation in monetary and sentimental value.

Verizon clearly doesn’t have to this — neither by what is forced upon them by the law nor by competition. There is no moral ex po facto rule and my data is still better than AT&T. Yet, six weeks ago I had better service and I still pay the same much. The value I am receiving has gone down and Verizon hasn’t even issued an apology.

The practical side of me knows I should not expect anything but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

With 1:01 left on the clock and the Knicks down two, Chauncey Billups pulled up from deep, way deep. It was a “no-No-NO-YEEEEEEEES!” moment. Mr. Big shot swished a three pointer over the outstretched arm of Dwyane Wade. The Knicks led 85-84 and would not look back.

I’ve been a Knicks for as long as I have been conscious. I kinda, sorta remember two-for-eighteen. I definitely remember the missed finger-roll. My favorite memory is a toss-up between the Allan Houston triangle runner and Larry Johnson’s four-point play.

With those 1990s (and 2000) teams, the Garden was electric. There were epic battles with Chicago (which we often lost), Indiana (about a split) and Miami (won most of those!). Ewing, Oakley, Starks, Houston, Sprewell, Johnson, Smith, Harper, Childs, Dudley (Yes, Dudley!), Rivers, Davis, Blackman and Camby. Riley and Van Gundy. (We’ll just sweep the Don Nelson under the rug.) Those teams had heart. Ugly to watch but fun to root for. Cliche, cliche, cliche.

In the 1990s it was fun to root for the Knicks. Not only were they good, but they represented what New York City likes to think it is all about: hardworking and the best — yet still an underdog. How does that work? I’m not sure…it just does. It’s a New Yorker thing.

With every game — not big game, just game — the Garden would come to life. The fans and team were one. We would give each other everything we had. The players would play their asses off and the fans would scream and yell and provide the best home court advantage in the NBA. It was awesome.

Then the Knicks traded Patrick Ewing just months before his contract was set to expire. They were forced to outbid themselves and give Allan Houston $100 million. One bad contract turned into twenty-three bad contacts (yes, you only have fifteen active players on your payroll at once) and Isiah Thomas went down in history as the guy who ruined one of the league’s best franchises as well as a whole league (OK, the CBA — still a league, sorta). Ten years of misery ensued.

Then Donnie Walsh came. A man who had a plan. A man who had the patience to not succumb to the overbearing New York fans and media. Yes, he came at a good time when fans were — after eight years of misery — willing to allow a rebuilding effort. And yes, there was a light at the end of the tunnel in LeBron James that allowed us to be even more patient. So when LeBron went south and Amar’e was the only spoil from our war with Patience we were not very happy. It was nice to have a “star,” but was he really worth $99 million? Would his knees hold-up? Could we really compete?

At the All-Star break we were two games over .500. Relatively speaking we were ecstatic.

Then the trade happened. ‘Melo had come. Two stars. The first great scoring wing in NYC since Bernard King to accompany the best big man since #33. It would take awhile to jell but their collective greatness would bring moments. Maybe not a championship but year one had to bring hints.

February 27, 2011. Miami. Fourth quarter. The majority of South Beach fans finally decided to make it to their seats. The Knicks and Heat were playing. Five All-Stars and a former NBA Finals MVP on the court at once.

I have not had as much fun watching a Knicks game in a decade. My blood pressure was high. The refs were my enemy. The Heat were my archenemy. Loud voices and bad words were used.

Then Chauncey hit that three.

It was too good.

“You can opt out after [2011],” Cashman said Monday, recounting the conversation. “That way, if you’re still worried about playing in New York, you can leave.”

Famous last words?

Brian Cashman — the Yankees’ General Manager and prime baseball issue decision maker unless those decisions are really important and/or necessitate signing a player to a really, really big contract — has been awfully direct this offseason in his criticism of the organization. He point blankly admitted he did not want to sign Rafael Soriano and consequently lose a first round draft pick. He straightforwardly called CC Sabathia out for not losing the thirty pounds in the offseason that he had claimed to have lost. He even broached the subject of Derek Jeter moving off shortstop — a topic that has be a “no-no” for any Yankee employee to think about let alone discuss publicly.

If Cashman is trying to get fired so he can collect a check then prove his doubters by leading a mid-major organization to relevancy, he better not hold his breath. Hank Steinbrenner will allow Cashman to wallow in baseball purgatory — a figurehead leader without any relevant influence — as opposed to letting him leave just because he opens his mouth a bit. Yet, there is one move that would expedite Cashman’s transition to another team:

If CC Sabathia opts out of his contract. Even worse if he then jets to the Red Sox.

Sabathia is on the record as stating, “I have no idea [if I will opt out.] It is still in my contract. Anything is possible.” Couple that with his “noticeable” loss of weight — whether fifteen or thirty pounds it does not matter — and CC’s words and actions seem to make one thing clear: he is in a contract year.

Player options are a bit counterintuitive (or perhaps morally ambiguous). All other things being equal, if a player has a great year he will choose to opt out of his contract. Otherwise, if he plays poorly he will pick up his option and stay on for the previously negotiated amount. There is no, nor should there be any, loyalty from the player.

If CC has another great year, he will be a 31 year old workhorse southpaw entering free agency. As a matter of comparison, Cliff Lee was 32 years old this year when he received a 5 year, $120MM contract. Carston Charles Sabathia will be in a position to demand at least that number. Combine his excellent resume with $50MM coming off of the Red Sox payroll, the Angels determined to spend their way into relevancy and the Yankees desperate to keep their only stud starter and you have the recipe for a bidding war not seen since Mark Teixeira.

Which brings us back to Brian Cashman. The man’s fate seems tied to Sabathia. If the big lefty leaves and it will can be attributed to Cashman then he will get the Tommy Devito treatment. Otherwise, sorry Brian, but your stuck with the pinstripes.

**Disclaimer**
We’ve pivoted our company to become a white-labeled product. We believe in it as a commercialization model.

Wikipedia has a nice definition of a white label. So nice, in fact, that I will not try to recreate a better one. Please read:

A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company (the producer) that other companies (the marketers) rebrand to make it appear as if they made it.

I believe the white-label will become a huge phenomena in the mobile/social/tech/eCommerce space(s). While the consumer facing tech product has worked in the past, it genuinely has had a few things work in its favor in the past to help ensure success. Some — like Facebook and Twitter — will surely continue to succeed while others — like Groupon and Foursquare — might find that the success they’ve had thanks to being first to market might not be defensible as much of their technology (read code/features; not scaling ability) will be commoditized and recreated by existing, bigger brands in other sectors. Let me explain…

Case Study on Expense: Gap/Groupon Promotion
On August 19, 2011 Groupon hosted a Gap promotion offering $50 worth of apparel and accessories for $25. The deal sold 441,000 times, netting over $11MM. Groupon generally takes half of that. A nice $5MM+ day for Groupon but at least a $7.5MM hit to the Gap’s bottom line (source: http://mashable.com/2010/08/19/gap-groupon/).

The question regarding the case study is who had more reach? The Gap or Groupon. Groupon can email millions of people. But at least that many have heard of the Gap. Granted I cannot estimate how many people Gap can make aware of a daily deal but I am guessing it is a lot.

In the future, what is stopping Gap from using one of the many white label Groupon clones who would charge a lesser cut while allowing the Gap to claim 100% of the branding of the offer’s page?

No white label will be able to compete with Groupon in the brick n’ mortar ma and pa shops (i.e. local) sector. But on the national level for large corporations the white label might make sense.

Case Study on Reach: Foursquare
As a member of the mobile/social community, we all hail to Foursquare. Today they just announced they have translated their application into five new languages. To date, they have a user community of over 6.5 million people who aggregately check-in over 2 million times per day. Clearly impressive numbers.

But take this into consideration, the NBA Facebook fan page has nearly 7.5 million users. Clearly this is a granny smith apple to macintosh apple comparison at best. I wish I had the NBA Turnstile numbers instead, but I think you — the intelligent reader you are — understand my point: it is much easier for an existing mega-brand to accumulate a following than a tech start-up.

Does this mean the end of Foursquare? Of course not. They have a great product and are led by some brilliant people. I am just making a point of relative scale.

The Theoretical Argument
People create start-ups every single day. Nowadays, many of those infant companies are in the social/mobile/tech space. Some succeed but many more fail.

But what if you are one of the lucky few to make it? You raise some money and have a nice initial customer base. You might even be earning a bit of revenue. Now you face competition from people who see your success and clone your technology. This is where the real problem comes because nowadays your competition does not just come from other start-ups, but from large corporate entities who have the wherewithal to quickly catch-up — both in terms of capital and existing customer base.

Technology is often easily replicable. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley once said (somewhere, I don’t have the exact quote) that he believed the check-in would be a commodity — it would be how different applications used the feature that would differentiate. Unfortunately for many start-ups, Crowley’s statement can be applied to many other tech features.

Gowalla and Scvngr built upon Foursquare’s technology.

Fanvibe and Crowdzone look a lot alike.

Living Social is essentially Groupon.

But these all represent technology companies copying technology companies. What happens when Comcast Spotlight creates Buyzooka.com — a Groupon clone — then puts its sales and marketing teams behind the effort? I’ve already mentioned my curiosity to see how well NBA Turnstile is doing, but how about ESPN Passport as a Foursquare for sports?

These larger entities have the ability to sit and watch as tech start-ups duke it out to see who will be declared king. However, the start-ups often bout in a ring only visible to early adopters. Mainstream users — and when the real money comes in — do not know about the leaders in the tech world until the Big Corporations of the world have time to clone them. At that point, the question becomes what is more powerful? A head start and user base of a few million or a large brand name with immediate recognizability from tens of millions of consumers.

*FAIL*

Eduardo Saverin: “You know what, settle an argument for us. I’d say its time to start making money from theFacebook but Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want advertising. Who’s right?”
Sean Parker: “Neither of you, yet. TheFacebook is cool. That’s what it’s got going for it.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “Yeah.”
Sean Parker: “You don’t want to ruin it with ads because ads aren’t cool.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “Exactly.”
Sean Parker: “It’s like you’re throwing the greatest party on campus and someone saying it’s gotta be over by eleven.”
Mark Zuckerberg: “That’s exactly right.”
Sean Parker: “You don’t even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go. This is no time to take your chips down. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool?”
Eduardo Saverin [giving evidence at the deposition]: “A billion dollars. And that’s what shut everybody up.”

Its official: Facebook is cool.

With the announcement that they will be introducing new advertisements helping companies that you “Like” to announce to your friends that you “Like” them and the purchase of Rel8tion — a Seattle start-up that focuses on optimizing ad delivery using demographics and location as input variables — Facebook clearly now know what the thing is. Tell your friends, the party will be going all night long.

With Goldman Sachs’ special vehicle investment and a declaration to open up the books before April 2012, Facebook is finally making an all-out effort to drive revenue. On top of the recent changes to optimize advertisements, the company also announced that starting in July all third party applications will have to use their Credits system for in-app purchases. This shift of strategy to align product development with revenue creation seems to indicate that Zuckerberg and Co. might be looking to an IPO (Shakespearean Aside: I really do not believe Zuckerberg’s motivation to have a really big number associated with Facebook’s IPO is to drive his personal wealth. I actually look at it in much the same way I look at athletes’ contracts. At some point they know an offer is more than enough money to ensure several generations of posterity will be able to eat, but they still want the biggest offer because it is a respect thing. An athlete wants the players in every clubhouse to know that he is making X amount of dollars a year because he is the best there is. Zuckerberg, like the athletes — I believe– sees the IPO valuation as a large piece of his legacy.) — or they just want to blow everyone’s socks off when they do have to show their books (Second Shakespearean Aside: I think this would be enough for the Zuck).

So why is Facebook making this shift? Perhaps it might not be a radical shift or even a pivot, but a new “product” to develop. Still, Facebook now has $2.36bn in funding from a number of institutional backers across many countries. These entities are the faction who most want Facebook to become extraordinarily profitable. Goldman Sachs, Digital Sky Technologies, and the other funds who have generously bought into Facebook vision are all guests at Mark’s party.

The interesting things to look in the future are patterns that the guests are running the party. There isn’t enough evidence to believe it to be the case now, but a conspiracy theorist might argue these last few moves to be the foundations of an argument built upon circumstantial evidence.

The Yankees had a disappointing offseason. Cliff Lee treated them as if he was the popular girl, they were the A/V geek and the 2011 season was the prom. Theo Epstein decided to go all George Steinbrenner on the Yankees. Civil war in the front office led to overpaying for Rafael Soriano and rumors of Andruw Jones and Carl Pavano. Basically, the Yankees look like a team with little leadership or direction.

So what can the Yankees expect going into 2011:

- CC Sabathia will be the Yankees only trustworthy starter. Phil Hughes might get off to a hot start and AJ Burnett will look unhittable a hand few of times, but only the big fella will be consistent from April through September.

- The offense will be streaky. With aging players, players with interesting platoon splits, and a few young guns, this team will score 14 runs a few games in a row before being shut out for a week.

- A very strong bullpen. Mo, Soriano, Robertson, Feliciano, Chamberlain, and Logan comprise the best back six in baseball. Now if only Ramiro Mendoza would come back for that long relief role.

- Many Joe Girardi press conferences where he tells you that there is not much too worry about although you can easily tell he is worried. Variations of:
– “Derek is swinging the bat well and hitting the ball hard…just right at guys.”
– “Alex has been seeing the ball great these past few weeks. It’s just a matter of time before you start seeing the results in his numbers.”
– “Jorge swing has been looking shorter. His contact rate is bound to increase soon.”
– “Soriano just needs to get used to playing in New York. With all the energy and excitement he brings to the mound, he just needs to learn how to use it to his advantage now that he is constantly in the spotlight. It’s just a matter of time.”

- A few dumb quotes from Hank. Examples:
– “Don’t let Cashman fool you. He really wanted Soriano. He would’ve taken credit if he was pitching to a sub 2 ERA so now he has to be blamed for his 17 blown saves.”
– “We are the best team in baseball…we just aren’t playing that way.”
– “No one on this team is untradeable. Even Robbie or Jesus.”

- Speaking of Jesus Montero, don’t expect him to be the everyday catcher — a position he should own at this point.

- 91 wins and a *possible* Wild Card birth.

Two industry sources tell Silicon Alley Insider that Facebook tells its new employees its goal is to be a trillion dollar company. If their current $50bn valuation is to be believed — and the fact it is already trading at over $100bn on secondary markets lends me to think it should be — then a trillion dollars is totally within the realm of possibility.

Facebook will have two sources of revenue moving forward: advertising and credits. Each will be multi-multi-multi-billion dollar businesses.

Advertising
You know those advertisements on the right side of a Facebook page? Yes, those little ones that you never click on. Those advertisements represent a good chunk of the two billion dollars Facebook made this year. I’d argue that Facebook has yet to figure out how to optimize how it performs a service that as a whole has yet to be optimized…and still makes 10 figures.

Take a look at slide twenty-five in this PowerPoint presentation by Morgan Station on Internet Trends.