Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• What exactly is "User Generated Content"?

  There's an interesting discussion going on over at CenterNetworks , with Allen calling out Mike Arrington and co. for giving Digg the award for "best user-generated content". Allen says that Digg doesn't belong in that category (which he includes Wikipedia, your blog, and Flickr), but rather as a "UGC aggregator". Obviously, this is all semantics, but I think saying that there's no "content" being generated on Digg, del.icio.us and similar sites misses the point a little. Digg does more than aggregate content - it also filters and ranks the content. As Steve Gillmor would say, there's a lot of attention metadata generated by the users of the site. It is this "content" which separates Digg from being indistinguishable from a set of links, and I would argue that there's a lot of value in that information. Some of the discussion there also focused around the amount of effort put into the generation of content. For example, one commenter... Posted Jan 22 2008, 04:02 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Blogging, Social Behavior

• Distinguishing between a platform and a destination

  Charlie says that "the whole idea that you have a main site is dead". I couldn't agree more - I strongly believe that platforms are the future of the Internet. One clarification I'd like to make in this whole discussion is Facebook is both a destination and a platform. It's important to understand that these are discrete things - something can be a platform without being a destination and vice versa. Clearly, Facebook offers a nice API for integrating your code into theirs, but this to me is not what makes Facebook a platform. MySpace, iGoogle, and a plethora of Web 2.0 portals allow you to "embed" your code - Facebook just allows you to do it more seamlessly. If anything, these are all simply platforms - or rather, vehicles - for traffic. Of course, as Charlie and myself and countless others have said, traffic does not give you a business model. On the other hand, Facebook is getting flak for not being open enough with their data . As Fred says, being open... Posted Aug 21 2007, 06:15 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Software Development, Web 2.0, Business, Blogging, Entrepreneurship, Startup, NextNY, Notches

• Facebook: Lawsuits, IPOs, and Acquisitions

  ConnectU is suing Facebook for, among other things, copyright infringement, breach of contract, theft of trade secret. (It should be noted that Facebook is counter-suing for business torts and unfair business practices). ConnectU (which started at Harvard Connection) alleges that Mark Zuckerberg was brought on as a member of the ConnectU development team, given access to the existing code base and business plans, and eventually "stole" them. For more details, read the full set of complaints and other filings . Rob is wondering why no one is covering this lawsuit ... it's certainly a big deal given the recent valuations and talk of an IPO. As Mike Arrington notes , "this isn’t a case of plaintiffs looking for a quick buck as billion dollar valuations are discussed" - this is actually a long-standing dispute that commenced long before we were saying "Facebook" and "billions" in the same sentence. Facebook recently acquired Parakey , a as-yet-launched... Posted Jul 24 2007, 07:19 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Microsoft, Google, Startup, Venture Capital, Facebook

• What's the best state to incorporate in? (Hint: Delaware)

  AskTheVC recently addressed the question of what was the best state of incorporation . The short answer is one of 3 preferred states: "Delaware, whatever state the company is in and whatever state(s) the VCs are located in." Obviously, the last is hard to determine if you're going to incorporate before you close financing. California is notoriously employee-friendly so it should be avoided. Some of those laws may still apply if you are based in California, but if you are elsewhere you should definitely assume those burdens. New York is also undesirable. It's fairly balanced when it comes to dealing with owners vs. employees, but the one big red flag is Section 630 of the NYS BCL. This section states that the top 10 shareholders are liable for employee wages if the company goes out of business and employees aren't paid. This statute does not apply to foreign companies (i.e., those incorporated in other states) even if they're doing business in New York. Considering... Posted Jul 23 2007, 05:53 AM by Tim with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Law, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, NextNY

• Twitter is, or will be, a Messaging Platform

  Charlie discusses the future of Twitter and touches on what I think are two key points: corporate twitter and content subscription. The key as Charlie discusses is the opt-in and one-way nature of Twitter. That is, I only get updates from someone if I explicitly choose to receive them, and the party I subscribe to doesn't necessarily need to listen to me. That sure sounds a lot like an RSS aggregator, doesn't it? To me, Twitter is exactly that: a messaging aggregator. The future of Twitter is a messaging platform . Twitter has a number of ways to deliver updates - you can get them on your phone (via SMS), from IM, or on the web. And of course, you can get them as RSS and bring them anywhere you want. You can also send the updates from any of those mediums. Ever better, Twitter has an API for putting data in and getting messages out, which means I can update Twitter and have this "status update" sent out to Facebook , my blog , and so on. Delivery based on context and priority The key feature... Posted Jun 18 2007, 03:05 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Web 2.0, Innovation, Business, Blogging

• Google launches Google Apps Premier Edition

  As rumored yesterday , Google made a major announcement : a subscription package of premium, hosted business applications. (Man, Arrington's sources are scary good). The service combines GMail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Docs & Spreadsheets for $50 per user annually. I still insist that Microsoft is well positioned to compete with a hosted version that integrates with existing Office apps. There are elements about a hosted Office that are appealing, but there are just as many that are not - particularly in publicly traded enterprises. Aside from potential downtime issues, you're placing a lot of trust in Google and its security ( which may not be the best idea ). No word on any plans for a self-hosted server like their search appliance - to me, that would be key for broader adoption and erase a lot of these security and compliance concerns. Getting back to Microsoft, I'm still puzzled that they haven't done more with Foldershare. By integrating this technology with a Office... Posted Feb 22 2007, 06:04 AM by Tim with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Security, Web 2.0, Business, Microsoft, Google, Enterprise

• How is IP split between separating founders?

  AskTheVC addresses the question of what happens to IP rights when the founders go their separate ways . "Bottom line, you have a strong incentive (as does your former partner) to settle this amicably, otherwise, you both are going to be worse off." I thought it was worthwhile to dig into this a little further, though, and discuss what happens with the various IP rights a startup might acquire. Often you'll hear 3 founders say "we want everything split 3 ways", but joint ownership of IP can be tricky. Rights and duties with joint ownership are poorly misunderstood, even by many lawyers. More importantly, the rights and obligations of each owner vary by the type of intellectual property and from country to country. A joint owner of copyright in the US has different rights from a joint owner in England, and a joint owner of copyright has different rights from a joint owner of a patent. Both copyright and patent rights vest in the original author(s) or inventor(s) respectively, and both can... Posted Feb 12 2007, 06:47 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Intellectual Property, Copyright, Web 2.0, Patent, Business, Law, Entrepreneurship, Startup, NextNY

• Google bought the brand, not the technology

  Scoble says Google bought YouTube because it "realized it couldn’t make its own video service look as cool as YouTube." As I said before, Google was buying YouTube's audience and/or employees, not the technology . After listening to the Google-YouTube conference call, it definitely sounds like Chad and Steve were a big part of the purchase. Eric Schmidt gave them very high praise, comparing them to Larry and Sergey. Though I have to wonder if Larry and Sergey were this giddy when Google went public. (Mind you, I can't fault them too much, because I probably wouldn't act too much differently if I just made that kind of money). Posted Oct 12 2006, 05:23 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Rants, Web 2.0, Business, Google, YouTube

• Advertising in RSS

  Mike Gunderloy (Larkware News) points to an ad brokerage for RSS feeds . Interesting idea. How effective it is depends. I still think that, especially when it comes to personal weblogs, a personal endorsement is going to be infinitely more effective than a canned ad. I think the only way this is going to be effective is to have ads that are carefully selected based on the content of your weblog. Even if automated, the ads need to be something that, if given the choice, you might actually endorse. Actually, what would be ideal would be avoiding any automatic ad injection and instead buying placement. This, of course, requires more effort on the part of the author - but it helps the author's opinion come through a bit better, and still generates the same or better buzz for the product. After all, I subscribed to the feed to read the author's opinion, not a canned advertisement. I want the ad to reflect that. Of course, there should be some disclosure and the ad should be clearly marked as... Posted Jan 26 2004, 07:49 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Blogging, Advertising