thafman

Some battles have a winner, publishers are no more likely to stop adopting FB connect then they are to start inserting robots no-follow.

Google won the (general) search battle and it's nigh impossible for a young innovative start-up to beat them. Facebook are beginning to assume Google-esque dominance, and no start-up looks at all likely to displace them.

In the end ease of use wins every time.

Facebook has users, Basecamp has customers.

This is the first one, we'll probably find out on the fly.

I won't (really really shouldn't) go into specifics, but it was pretty darn easy to tell.

In the bad old days as a Media Buyer for a large-ish brand I tended to get amazing results by looking up a site that had paid CommScore and then fining their direct competitors who had not, and buying spots for 30-50% less for what was essentially the same inventory. Good times.

It took me about three minuets to get that this not a gag.

Dude what did you submit?

OK; twitter for enterprise, nice UI, not really seeing how you differ from Yammer.

Side topic; has anyone succeed long-term with get[name].com? Or do you always end up buying your dot-com name?

But they already have 'favored partners' for search (Goog and Yhoo) you can't add another search provider even if you want to.

Use mint.com... kidding. Get an extra job freelancing, night shift, whatever - trade your free time now for your 'side projects' time later.

I'm 26, so apparently the clock is ticking...

sounds awesome

Once a service crosses a certain threshold they stop being cool and start reflecting the masses. Look at YouTube now, its MTV + America's funniest home videos (minus Bob Saget).

Facebook mainly beat this by being a very walled garden. Oh-so-open twitter can't do that. And for the record FlockingMe didn't seem any more relevant than the masses just my friend's drivel.

Fred, as someone who felt your wrath earlier today all I can say is that we (the loosely dev/hacker community) feel that Zynga, playfish,et al. peed in the pool by having bad offers in the first place and made it much harder for the rest of us.

We also placed lots of stock in you personally as the older, wiser voice on the Web, and then the shitstorm broke out over "scamville" and you were nowhere to be found on this subject. It hurt to see someone we looked up too as a "grown-up who gets it" not say what you were clearly thinking.

To his credit, Fred donates all proceeds from his blog to charity: http://www.businessinsider.com/2009/1/fred-wilson-makes-3000...

fair enough, I may have over done it

I apologize http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1028422

Not a fair reply, Zynga today makes >90% of its revenues from virtual goods (and above 80% of that is from Farm-ville) that was not the case when Fred invested when they were makeing >75% of their revenues came from offers.

Not taking Fred seriously until we hear an explanation from him of how much he knew about Zynga's shady offers business. He has been disturbingly quiet about this.

Does anyone else think that while Fogcreek and 37signals have done something cool, a whole generation has tried to imitate them with little success and the constant posting of Joel + Jason does this site little/no good?

I genuinely thought that I would be clicking through to an insightful post about how many crappy web-based "business productivity" apps that try and go the 37signals/Fogcreek route to success, and why the glut in this market helps no-one. Shame.

currently you have with the iPhone: a phone that handles calls and small tablet computer that runs app and can view the web, it is also a pretty good music/video device.

I want apps that can add functionality to the phone, contacts music and video sides my iPhone So my answer would be; hell yes.

Meant "Android". Doh.

while the Adriod market isn't really open enough, given time it is still going to open a can of whup ass on Apple and their * control everything and lock the user in app prison *strategy.

Given time their will be apps and services (starting with Google Voice) that just cant be in the app-store and are to compelling to live without.

The age of the phone-computer has just begun.

You have no concept of how true this is, these days I have a good gig at a great company, but there was a time not so long ago when the VC world almost shut down and I found myself out of a job (was an analyst/due diligence guy) and started looking through the intrerwebs for my next 9-5.

Long story short I ended up at a "social marketing firm" which turned out to be one mid thirties bottle blonde woman working out of a home office. The few months I spent working for her were an instruction in the art of selling practically nothing; use buzzwords relentlessly, insist that your marketing efforts "can't be measured" and if all else fails just get a boob job and wear a really low cut blouse.

Instead of hiring a social media expert/consultant/douche just spend the money on coke and whores, the marketing effects will be the same and you'll do less actual damage.