Endeavour Partners - Blog

There’s an interesting guest post on TechCrunch this morning by Marc Benioff of salesforce.com, an archetype for or epitome of cloud services, talking about how ‘cloud services’ are evolving. I hate is ‘Cloud 2′ moniker, and agree with some of his hypothesis, if not all:

Cloud 1 ————————————->Cloud 2

Type/Click———————————->Touch
Yahoo/Amazon—————————–>Facebook
Tabs——————————————>Feeds
Chat——————————————>Video
Pull——————————————->Push
Create—————————————->Consume
Location Unknown————————->Location Known
Desktop/notebook————————->Smart phone/Tablet
Windows/Mac——————————>Cocoa/HTML 5

Fundamental Shift in Cloud Computing

FWIW, we believe that amazon.com and Google will both thrive, and remain deeply skeptical about Twitter.

One very interesting development, is how this battle is affecting standards for rich graphics on the web. Marc notes the move to Cocoa and HTML5; we were skeptical about HTML5 but may re-examine our position given the impact of the iPad and the iPhone, as highlighted by this recent post from Gizmodo:

The iPad doesn’t run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won’t play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad. So the internet’s already starting to look different.

One of the more interesting effects of the iPhone was that it drove a ton of websites to format their content for the phone in at least of two ways, and often both: iPhone-optimized sites, with more finger-friendly navigational elements that look almost app-like, and actual iPhone apps. We’re seeing a repeat with the iPad, though the adjustment appears to be less about the screen size than its lack of Flash support, and there’s the fact a lot of sites will be ready on day one. (Though before we go any further, let’s be clear: Flash is sticking around, for many reasons, regardless of Apple’s opinion of it.)

There are two fascinating and and sharply contrasting posts today that illustrate both the pro’s and con’s of mass media, bloggers and so-called ‘citizen journalism’.

First, from ‘The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs‘ entitled ‘Why the mainstream media is dying’:

Every once in a while you get to see a mainstream outlet cover a story right alongside a blog, so you can put them up against each other and see why one was so much better than the other. This week TechCrunch and the New York Times (photo) provided just such a lesson.

…

On Oct. 31 TechCrunch broke a big story called “Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem of Hell” about how Zynga was making money by selling scam ads.

…

After all this, we woke up Saturday to find a story in the New York Times, also about Zynga (and other Facebook game companies) with the headline, “Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays.” The Times put two reporters on the knob-polisher, and somehow they managed to interview Pincus, and to quote him — and yet theyincluded not a single word about the scammy ads.

…

Meanwhile, Arrington, still digging, blasted again on Saturday night, reporting that sleazy ads had popped up again on Zynga, despite promises that they would be taken down.

Um, New York Times? If you guys are still wondering why people are dropping their subscriptions and getting their news from blogs instead of you — this is why.

…

And to all those people who go around wringing their hands and saying what are we going to do when the “real newspapers” all die and we have to get our news from Gawker and HuffPo and TechCrunch? Friends, I think we’re going to be just fine.

The videos that illustrate this are fascinating; it’s hard to imagine how print would ever do this justice (note: the first one begins with audio only).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PhKRCkbX9A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

The second video shows Mark Pincus of Zynga fessing up to these tactics, illustrating ‘mutually assured embarrassment‘ (a phrase Paul Saffo was using at least a couple of years ago, and which I came across in a recent Pew Internet Project on the Future of the Internet, not to be confused with Jonathan Zittrain’s skeptical and dystopian vision).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7YaVVpK1G4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Second, on TechCrunch, Paul Carr lambasted one of the ‘citizen journalists’ for their prurient reporting on the Fort Hood tragedy:

I’d probably feel slightly smug, if I didn’t feel so sick.

Smug that after two weeks of me suggesting that social media might not be an unequivocally Good Thing in terms of privacy and human decency, the news has delivered the perfect example to support my view.

…

And yet, the first news and analysis out of the base didn’t come from the experts. Nor did it come from the 24-hour news media, or even from dedicated military blogs – but rather from the Twitter account of one Tearah Moore, a soldier from Linden, Michigan who is based at Fort Hood, having recently returned from Iraq.

…

That last twitpic link was particularly amazing: it showed a cameraphone image – of a wounded soldier arriving at the hospital on a gurney – taken by Moore from inside the hospital. Unsurprisingly, Moore’s coverage was quickly picked up by bloggers and mainstream media outlets alike, something that she actively encouraged by tweeting to friends that they should pass her phone number to the press so she could tell them the truth, rather than the speculative bullshit that was hitting the wires.

There was just one problem: Moore’s information was bullshit too.

While I laud Paul Carr’s ethical concerns in this particular case, I think that Fake Steve’s point about the power of new media explains one of the reasons why mass media’s business model is doomed. Restraint is not enough in the face of failing to do your core job as well as competing alternatives. And the core job is reporting (at least as much as it’s advertising).

At the moment, we’re doing some research on the future of web services.

One of the things I was exploring was the economics of social networks and social gaming, when I came across this fascinating post from Michael Arrington on TechCrunch about the [alleged] economics and ethics of some Facebook games such as Mobsters and FarmVille:

Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can’t stop applauding the companieslong enough to understand what’s really going on with these games. The real story isn’t the business success of these startups. It’s the completely unethical way that they are going about achieving that success

If an ecosystem is to survive and thrive, it must be built on a sound foundation; that includes a solid ethical foundation. Although these tactics may drive short-run growth and profits, they are not a basis for an enduring ecosystem. Users will become disaffected, word-of-mouth will suffer, and particularly in an environment such as Facebook, designed to facilitate communication amongst friends, information about these scams will spread like wildfire.

Clearly, some of those involved are a little sensitive about this:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PhKRCkbX9A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

For the avoidance of all possible doubt, this is not a critique of the games themselves. Rather it’s an indictment of (1) the people conducting the scams [like these] and (2) those who condone them.

Note: amended thus and [thus] to reflect continuing debate on this topic

One of the significant remaining barriers to more widespread adoption of video on demand over IP (VoDoIP), or TV ‘over the top’, is accessibility – being able to find the content you’re interested in, and get it easily. Now there’s a startup that wants to solve this challenge:

Clicker, a service launching today at TechCrunch50, wants to be the most comprehensive way to find the video content you’re looking for on the web.

While there are no shortage of video search engines out there, Clicker believes its offering is superior because it creates a structured database of programming, organizing shows by things like network, genre, and show name. This type of data not only allows for better search results, but it allows you to browse content without having to do text-based searches, which you probably won’t be doing when television and future web-enabled tablets start to serve up this content.

Clicker - 'TV Guide' for the web