Twitter proves again it is the real-time web.

A 4.3 magnitude earthquake hit Northern California, minutes ago. After I felt the shake, Twitter confirmed it happened seconds later without me asking.

Twitscoop Showing the Most Tweeted Topic Now

A quick search on Twitter gets me to relevant news and links from real people.

Twitter Search for "earthquake"

Google doesn’t even know that the earthquake occurred.

Google doesn't provide any relevant links for the earthquake

Here’s the most important point. 

Twitter told me about the earthquake before I asked.

Google did not know about it when I asked.

March Madness In Your Browser

I’m the kind of guy who likes to set things up once.  Since I have a bracket for the NCAA tournament, I’ll probably tune into some games. So the question is, should I google “march madness 2009″ each time or should I setup a dedicated browser that I can launch with one click?

Here’s a step by step guide for the 2nd option.

Step 0: Get Firefox

If you are not using Firefox, shame on you (although Chrome is pretty good too).

Download Firefox and install it.

Step 1: Create a New Firefox Profile

[Note: These steps are for Windows XP. I'm sure Mac fanboys can figure it out too]

You can follow the steps at this link, or read below.

Using the Start menu, click on Run… and type “firefox -P“

Firefox Profile Manager

This opens the Profile Manager (which is a little known feature of Firefox). We’re going to create a dedicated profile called “March Madness“.

Firefox : Create A Profile

Once you have created that profile, it will return to the profile manager. Launch the profile called “March Madness”. You will get a default Firefox configuration.

Firefox: 1st Time Startup

Step 2: Set the Home Page to CBS Sports

The link is http://mmod.ncaa.com/video. Just paste that link into the address bar and the player should load. If this is your first time going to the player, it will ask to install Microsoft Silverlight which you must do. After that, it will bring you directly to the menu of games.

If you have any problems getting to the menu, just go to cbssports.com and click through until you are fully configured.

Finally, we want to set the home page to http://mmod.ncaa.com/video. Go to Tools > Options and paste that address into the “Home Page” field.

Firefox: Set NCAA Video As Your Home Page

After clicking OK, test it out by clicking on the Home icon on the browser.

Step 3: Slim Down the Browser

Alright, you’ve got the browser configured, but it’s big, it’s got toolbars and maybe add-ons. Here’s how you slim it down:

• Open Tools > Add-ons and disable any Extensions that are listed (you’ll need to restart Firefox)
• Under the View menu, you will want to click on any visible toolbars to hide them (including the status bar)
• Finally, resize the window so that it exactly fits the content.

Here’s the final configuration

Final Config - March Madness

Close the browser and your size and toolbar preferences will be saved for this profile (“March Madness”).

Step 4: Create a Desktop Shortcut

You probably have a desktop shortcut called “Firefox 3″ that was added when you installed Firefox. Click once on that shortcut, hit Ctrl-C to copy, then Ctrl-V to paste. You will get a new shortcut called “Copy of Firefox 3″

Change the name of that shortcut to “March Madness!” or whatever you like.

Here’s the magic: Right-click on that short-cut and choose “Properties”. Under Target, enter this text “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -no-remote -P “March Madness” including the quotes.

That’s it! Click OK and you are good to go.

Enjoy March Madness in One-Click

Double-click on the shortcut you created and your custom browser will open, resized and at the menu of games currently being played.

Oh, and don’t forget about the Boss Button, which brings up this screen.

March Madness Boss Button

Comments and other suggestions? Please add them.

Twitter is the Real-Time Web

After an incredible 752% growth in 2008, Twitter jumped 33% in February to reach over 8 million people.

CEO Evan Williams has been profiled in the New York Times, interviewed by Charlie Rose, and invited to the White House by Barack Obama.

I decided to write a post that looks beyond the hype and explains why Twitter matters and what it may grow up to be.

Despite Twitter’s impressive growth, it’s traffic is still dwarfed by that of Google and Facebook. So what’s the big deal?

I believe Twitter will be the backbone of the real-time web. 

Google organizes and finds documents and media files that are stored online. Facebook helps you feel more connected to and share your life with your friends. Twitter has tapped into a new source of data, one that never before existed on the internet: sincere opinions from real individuals.

I will make several arguments and comparisons to illustrate why this is valuable.

Twitter’s First Killer Application: Real-Time Search

Over the last several months, nearly every major news event – from earthquakes to the Mumbai attacks to plane crashes - Twitter was first to report what was going on, by people involved.

On March 10th, 10 people were killed by a shooter in Alabama. I learned about this tragedy from a tweet by @MCHammer. Immediately I jumped onto google and searched for “alabama shooting.” Below is the results page:

Twitter vs Google Results: Alabama Shooting

[Note: Using a Greasemonkey Script that mashes up Twitter search results on a Google page, I can see both real-time search results and Google search results.]

Take a look at the screenshot. Each of the Twitter results are accurate, real-time, and personal. Excluding the first Google result, the other links are either inaccurate (reporting an incorrect number of fatalities) or inappropriate (it’s arguably poor form to link to an Alabama shooting range during a tragedy).

But Google Doesn’t Want Real-Time Search, Right?

In recent weeks, Google has been outwardly critical of Twitter. First, CEO Eric Schmidt called Twitter a “poor man’s email system” and dismissed the notion of buying Twitter. Soon after, Google executive Brian Bershad indicated that Google does not want real-time search because “There’s relatively little data in Twitter.”

So Google does not want to be Twitter nor buy Twitter. Fine. But not wanting real-time search? I think that is just posturing. Let’s take a look at more examples of where real-time search beats Google results.

Example: “tech jobs” – would you rather have links to real job postings and insights (Twitter) or links to sites you already know about (Google)?

"tech jobs": Twitter on top, Google on bottom

Example: “tim armstrong” soon after the announcement that he is leaving Google. Twitter shows commentary about the real-time news. Google gives a link to Tim’s old corporate bio page on google.com.

"tim armstrong" search: Twitter on top, Google on bottom

Facebook Understands the Potential of Twitter

Even though Google is still in denial, Facebook knows that Twitter has tapped into the real-time web in an innovative and valuable way.

Facebook’s attempt to acquire Twitter for $500 million failed, but they did launch a response to Twitter in the form of a new homepage that gives users a real-time feed of status updates and published content from their friends.

Well Facebook, imitation is the biggest form of flattery. Smart decision though.

With Twitter and Facebook (and FriendFeed) now battling over the same turf of real-time updates, who will win?

Facebook has a strong advantage in that the network already exists (over 175 million users). However, what about connecting with people who are not my friends?

Twitter lets me follow anybody and anyone can follow my updates. Ad hoc social networks are created by simply using a hashtag to specify a topic (like #sxsw for the South by Southwest festival).

It is not clear that Twitter can win against Facebook, but momentum and hype will help Twitter continue to grow its own network and be a strong contender.

Twitter’s Monetization Strategy

Twitter has a lot of hype, so where is the revenue model? Well, there isn’t one yet, they admit, but they have raised $55 million in venture capital to find one. And in recent months, several possible business models have started materializing.

Search advertising – Taking a page from Google’s highly successful AdWords business, Twitter could build out a performance-based advertising platform that integrates with its real-time search capabilities.

Paid placement – Jason Calacanis offered to pay $250,000 for one of the top 20 Twitter accounts recommended to new users, commenting “I believe that in five years the top 20 recommend slots will be worth $1m a year each-super bowl commercial level in fact.” Companies like Whole Foods and Zappos have built strong presences on Twitter and many firms like these would be willing to pay for premium placement.

Selling Virtual Goods – In a recent post, Benchmark Capital Partner Bill Gurley wrote a fantastic piece on how MySpace and Facebook should monetize: sell stuff online. Twitter could build a marketplace for virtual goods and casual games that directly leverages its social connecting capabilities.

Final Thoughts

This is probably my longest post to date. I have been actively participating in the Twitter community for some time now, and have watched the hype and innovation unfold. The source of innovation is clear to me now: Twitter has built a new form of communication that encourages activity like never before.

By limiting tweets to 140 characters, users are willing to write quick responses to direct requests. 

By allowing any user to follow another user’s updates, Twitter has traversed the limits of friendship circles and introduced a new channel for personal and corporate brand marketing.

By opening up its API to a multitude of other players, Twitter has become ubiquitous to all platforms, PC and mobile, encouraging intimate, personal tweets.

I believe the best comparison for Twitter is the invention of the telephone, on top of which industries and fortunes have been built. There is no guarantee for success, but the possibility for a new platform technology on which new industries will be built is the strongest since the advent of the Internet.

Startup Corner

I was asked to present to a group of entrepreneurs about using SEO and Social Media to build buzz for an early stage internet startup. I am uploading the presentation as the first of a series I am calling Startup Corner.

Overview

Web startups will struggle as we continue to face challenging economic times. There are fewer sources of capital and more risk is pushed onto the entrepreneur.

With limited resources for paid search and other costly marketing techniques, an early stage internet company can build organic traffic through SEO and social marketing. This presentation gives best practices for these approaches.

SEO and Social Media In Practice

For His Catalog, we started late with our SEO efforts, in fact, after our public launch. SEO experts could cost as much as $2000 / month so we had to figure it out on our own in the early days. I learned several valuable lessons through this experience:

• Bake SEO into the DNA of your product – it takes a while for Google to index
• Allow users to share your content and promote your brand (e.g., ShareThis)
• Build a following on Twitter and Facebook
• Blog as often as you can, and about all angles of your business

Your Vote Counts!

I attended the Facebook Developer Garage in Palo Alto, CA tonight. There were 620 confirmed guests for this event posted on Facebook, who picked up the tab for a drink and some appetizers. Here are the highlights from the event.

Voice: Changing from 3rd-Person to 1st-Person

When something is posted to the news feed on Facebook, it currently reads like a 3rd-person report: “Brian was tagged in a photo”, or “Brian said he liked The Beatles.”

Facebook Wall Post (3rd-Person Voice)

Facebook is making a subtle shift that will have a big impact – the move from 3rd person to 1st-person. For example,  ”Brian I love the White Album by the Beatles.”

News feeds going forward will start to read more like Twitter messages, with the authority of the actor. When friends read the news feed, they will be reading messages from their friends, not from the Facebook narrator.

Media – More of it, easily embedded

Media is clearly going to play a bigger role on Facebook. To date there are 700 million photos on Facebook and video uploads have been accelerating. In addition, Facebook will allow users and applications to upload audio and Flash games.

Each of these rich media formats will be easily and automatically embedded in the Facebook social news feed. This is the beginning of a significantly more interactive web experience, one which users will come to demand from all sites.

Verification – Is your application up to Facebook’s standard?

Another message that was reiterated by the presenters tonight was that Facebook is really focusing on verification.

There are two ways that 3rd party sites can integrate with Facebook. Developers can build applications that embed into the Facebook experience, or developers can use Facebook Connect to let visitors to their own site login with their Facebook credentials.

When Facebook Platform was first launched, it was a new Wild Wild West where early applications could use spam techniques to amass a large following. Facebook has officially declared an end to this practice with the launch of the Application Verification Program which will determine the applications that are good for users and those that are suspicious. Unverified apps will likely have  the steepest of hills to climb to get traction with users.

So the question is: are you friends with Facebook enough to get your app verified?

Today Was Digital TV Transition Day

Digital Television - ETA ...?

February 17, 2009 – the day when the US was scheduled to transition from analog to digital television broadcast.

We Failed.

President Obama signed into law the DTV Delay Act, which pushed the deadline for transition back until June 12th.

While I applauded Obama’s ability to get things done in a recent post, I am disappointed with this decision to delay.

A Delay For the Wrong Reasons

5.7% of US households (or 6.5 million homes) were unprepared for the digital TV transition as of January 22, 2008.

This lack of preparedness was chalked up to the suffering economy (as most things are). President Obama said in a statement, ”Millions of Americans, including those in our most vulnerable communities, would have been left in the dark if the conversion had gone on as planned, and this solution is an important step forward as we work to get the nation ready for digital TV.”

I am compassionate about Americans “in our most vulnerable communities,” so I tried to understand what was the risk of leaving them “in the dark.” Would these people be unaware of emergency broadcasts? Not more than people who don’t own a TV by choice. Does owning a TV guarantee some privilege of free over-the-air basic programming? Clearly not.

How Americans Were Prepared For the Transition

Did you know that there is a DTV transition website?

Did you know that the federal government has been subsidizing $40 coupons for TV converter boxes that will enable viewers to keep their analog TVs? Up to 2 per household.

Did you know that a good digital converter box only costs $59.99?

Digital TV Hits A Wall

The digital TV transition delay was based on uncertainty

Uncertainty over the reaction of that 5.7% of the US population. This was the wrong reason to delay, and the Obama administration knows it.

In fact, Obama today signed the $787 billion stimulus package, which includes $7.2 billion for broadband development.

Television is not dead yet, but broadband internet has clearly out-tracked television as a tool for communication, commerce, and short-form entertainment. Where television continues to dominate is long-form entertainment and high-definition content.

The role of television – as a broadcast mechanism – will continue to diminish over the next 10 years. Broadband Internet will become ever more important and will eventually be the source of high-quality long-form entertainment, as Hulu is demonstrating today. Therefore, the pain of transition to digital TV will be like pulling off a band-aid – temporary and necessary.

Do you agree that letting this digital TV transition deadline slip was a mistake?

Key Lesson #1: Transparency

President Barack Obama

Politics aside, Barack Obama runs his organization with a management style that can and should be emulated by business managers. I’d like to point out three key lessons for managers from observing President Obama.

Barack Obama has set a tone of transparency with his administration. By transparency, I mean that he is forthcoming and proactive with his intentions as Manager-in-Chief.

His weekly video address is a great example of transparency. Each week, Obama presents himself to the nation in an intimate format – a YouTube-sized video about current issues and his intentions on addressing them. Whether you agree or disagree with his plans, he lays them out for every American to watch and digest on their own time.

At one of my previous companies (a private firm), the COO would open the books (P&L, sales pipeline, and more) to the whole company in a meeting called State of the Onion. This transparency engendered greater trust and faith in the employees since they could see and ask questions about the internals of the business.

I think many managers, especially young managers, will be reluctant to “expose their cards” to the whole team – especially in bad times. But I believe that transparency breeds loyalty.

Key Lesson #2: Get It Done

FastCompany declared Team Obama as the year’s most successful startup, which “took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation.”

Since taking office, Obama and his team have continued to move at the pace they set in the campaign, moving forward his agenda, such as announcing plans to close Guantanamo and vigorously pushing for the historic stimulus plan.

Good managers take action quickly. The create a plan an execute on it. People are inspired by momentum, and are frustrated by bureaucracy.

When I applied for a MIT Sloan class taught by former G.E. Chairman Jack Welch, the essay topic was What experience provides the best evidence that you can “get it done” ? In the class Jack espoused the values and benefits in the concept of winning. This is a concept that Obama knows and demonstrates well.

Key Lesson #3: Expect Crisis

In less than a month in office, President Obama has met with his share of crises.

After Obama nominated Tom Daschle to be his secretary of health and human services, it was uncovered that Daschle failed to pay taxes. Obama, torn between the high ethical standards he had spoken about on inauguration day and his desire to move his political agenda forward, exacerbated the crisis by outwardly supporting Daschle. The New York Times called for Daschle to withdraw, as did many others. Fortunately, Daschle did.

I doubt Obama antipicated that Daschle and other appointees would be derelict on their taxes, and we can learn from his missed opportunity to adapt quickly to that crisis.

In business, crisis can occur when a key employee leaves suddenly or when a key contract is pulled. Managers who anticipate these events will be less surprised and can react more quickly.

Moreover, managers who bring transparency to the workplace and have a history of “getting it done” will be most ready to respond in a crisis.

Photo Attributions

President Obama Speaking photo by marcn
Obama Jedi photo by Michael Verdi

Yesterday I posted a blog article called Want To Be A Startup CEO? Better Learn How To Code. It caught on fire and was viewed more than 4,500 times in a few hours. If you google for “startup CEO“, this link is the number 9 result.

Google Search for "Startup CEO"

Comments and Controversy

I was impressed by the level of engagement from the readers on this post. Many comments agreed with my sentiment, while some critiqued. Here is a good sample:

• @Dharmesh Shah – I could not agree with you more. Even if you did happen to raise money and such, I think it’s still immensely valuable to be able to dig into the code and deliver a product.
• @Mike - If you already employ a small team of people to build a website such as yours, and nobody knows how to code, then that means you need to work on your CEO skills and employ the right people.
• @dunk010 - This is really just so true. I’ve seen so many would be “CEOs” getting distanced from the code far too early, they just want to run a business and make a bunch of cash. All the great companies have coders at their heart for the longest time, listen to their users, build a dedicated community and most importantly create a _great_ product.
• @sak84 - I don’t think you necessarily need to have deep coding skills to start a tech company utilizing programmers. I do think you need to have a great idea, an open mind, and a willingness to step inside the shoes and take the perspective of the coder.
• @Alex3917 – This is terrible advice, even for people who want to do web startups. The job of the entrepreneur is to pull everyone from their social network to make the thing work. They’re responsible for finding the web guys, the sales guys, the marketing team, the science advisers, the customer support people, etc.

But I especially liked the comment from @neilc on Hacker News who nicely summarized my main point.

I don’t think the advice is “learn to code”, as such; rather, the author’s saying “be prepared to do whatever your business needs to be successful.” …  a CEO who only views his role as managing others + “the vision thing” and isn’t prepared to get his hands dirty, probably isn’t a great early-stage startup CEO.

That’s Exactly The Point

There has been a phase shift in the entrepreneurial landscape. Only a year ago, securing investment was easier, advertising business models were still legitimate and new “platforms” like Facebook and OpenSocial were seen as green fields of opportunity.

Today, entrepreneurs face a world where opportunities have narrowed – a dearth of VC investment in Q4 2008, a sudden slow-down of acquisitions by Google and others, and massive layoffs in Silicon Valley that dampens optimism.

As a startup CEO, you can’t just be an MBA. You can’t just use your social network to get other people to work with you; at least not until you have a product that has hit critical momentum. In the beginning, the buck stops with you.

As my friend and former professor Howard Anderson would say, being a startup CEO will tap into every talent you know you have, and some you don’t even know about yet.

If you’re building a web company, then coding better be one of those talents.

I decided to start a company after graduating from business school at MIT Sloan. After taking courses with industry leaders like Jack Welch and learning the fundamentals of solid management practices, I was ready to run my new company as CEO.

What I did not know is that I would enter the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem just as it would begin to implode.

As sources of funding suddenly become more scarce, I had to quickly adapt to my new circumstances and do whatever needed to be done to move the company forward, and that meant coding.

MBA Skills Not A Priority

At one time I was a hot shot developer, with a computer science degree from Harvard. After some experience as an individual contributer, I began to lead teams and manage large engagements in San Francisco and London. I enjoyed the leadership responsibilities and decided to go back to business school to prepare myself to run my own company.

Through my MBA and work experience, I developed expertise in finance, marketing, and business strategy. These are fantastic skills for constructing a business plan and pitching to investors, which I spent much of the spring and summer of 2008 focusing my energies on.

However, when it became clear that venture and angel money was drying up, I quickly realized that the priority needed to be on building our product, not on being a CEO.

Building A Product With A Small Team

My team has built a fantastic web product – His Catalog.  What few people know is that I did nearly all of the web design, functional development and SEO. My lead engineer built an amazingly scalable back-end and my lead stylist wrote a ton of content for the site. But building a big product with a small team is hard. We didn’t have the resources to hire SEO experts, designers, or testers. We did it all on a shoestring budget.

When push came to shove, my skills as coder were more valuable than my skills as CEO.

Recommendations to New Entrepreneurs

If you’re in business school now and thinking about launching your company, I want you to ask yourself: Will you be ready to get down and dirty in the code if no one else can? Will you enjoy working long hours tweaking your SEO strategy if you can’t hire someone to do it for you? Will you be psyched to attend technical webinars about new services for the cloud?

And do you have the technical background to make a difference?

If the answer to any of these is no, then I highly recommend you focus on a path to funding rather than a path to profitability (topic for another blog post).  Because the market can turn and you, the founder, need to be ready to adapt.

 

[ photo by dierken ]

I know it is only mid-January, but this may be the photo of the year 2009.

Miracle On The Hudson

Snapped by Janis Krums on a commuter ferry that responded to the US Airways plane crash on January 15, 2009. The composition of the photograph, contrast versus the city skyline, and rawness of the rescue make it spectacular.