RealityCrunch

My Birth Year Has One 9 Too - That’s Not Special

Rick Diculous — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:42:34 +0000

I know it’s been a while since we’ve posted, but some of us have had some real work to do. No excuses though, and we’re back in form (hopefully).

I’m a little confused that no one else seems to have picked up on this (except our personal favorite - we heart you), but what kind of statistical ju-jitsu is Twitter trying to pull with their claims that they “made it.” In the aftermath of the Apple WWDC keynote, they wanted to be open with their customers and let them know how the service performed. They are so brazen as to say that their uptime was 97.3%. I know that people have been slamming them in the past weeks for their lack of platform stability, and we’re pretty sure Blaine Cook has promised favors to the boys at TechCrunch due to their repeated calls for Twitter to rehire him, but this is not a victory.

They had one 9 of reliability. One. Uno. Not only are their users happy about it, but they blog about it. Rejoice is the word I see used. Oy. For all you Valley types, on your one hour commute, that’s 1 minute 40 seconds your car just decides to take a crap and stop running. In your 8 hour work day, that’s 12 minutes and 30 seconds of your computer simply not working. During your 12 hour heart surgery, the doctor stepped out and stopped working for 18 minutes 40 seconds. I hope you didn’t need that time back.

I suppose if you reduce expectations so much that you can rejoice in the little things, more power to you. This brings to mind one of my favorite Homer Simpson quotes: “Kids, you tried your hardest and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

The Two Fatal Flaws Of Facebook

Rick Diculous — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 23:17:04 +0000

From Techcrunch: Facebook Platform Faces Rough Road Ahead

It comes as no surprise to me that the hucksters are out trying to huck each other into believing that there are millions to be made on the Facebook platform. The disagreement, it seems, appears to be over how much money people are making. Here’s a tip: when people are trying to convince you that there is money being made, run the other way. What is this, a late night infomercial for a get rich quick scheme in real estate? Sheesh.

There are two very critical and fatal flaws in the Facebook platform.

Network Effects Eroded - When your platform success is built on a community, a come one, come all approach to application development hurts you. The Windows platform won because of the proliferation of applications, and no constraint that your enjoyment of the app was bounded by how many of your friends were using it. The abundance of apps on Facebook has fractured the community to the point that each app looks like a ghost town, save a very, very select few. (more…)

When The Leavies Broke - Twitter Shit Flood Begins

Rick Diculous — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:32:40 +0000

From TechCrunch: Amateur Hour Over At Twitter
Twitter Trends
Privacy Disaster
Putting aside the possibility that our favorite tech rag is simply a schizophrenic chicken little, bent on running through the streets, bludgeoning those who disagree with them as non-believers, it’s a very interesting exercise to see how the sentiment on twitter can be so chaotic and have such a high degree of variance.

Not a day goes by that I don’t hear about someone in the blogosphere talking about how Twitter is this great internet utility, and how it is changing the nature of news delivery. Even Steve Gillmor can’t resist bringing up Twitter on what feels like a minutely basis on his show (now, ironically, inexorably tied to TechCrunch).

It seems that the common complaint about Twitter is the stability. The growth is amazing, and it seems that the new user growth rate is actually increasing. With that in mind, I wonder how long it takes before someone writes a Twitter clone on the new Google AppEngine platform.

The levies are about to break on the public sentiment toward Twitter, and things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Being a cynic, I can see the folks at Twitter caring not about the complaining because, bottom line, no one is paying them for the service. Perhaps they subscribe to the slum lord model of not investing in the property knowing full well people can’t leave.

Alas, the clouds are on the horizon, and Twitter will be one of the first dominoes to fall in the sordid tale of communities turning on their benevolent masters.

TWITTER WATCH 2008!!

El Guapo — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:29:39 +0000

Queue scary “BOM-BOM-BOMMMMM” music.

Techcrunch has become twittercrunch these last few days. There are no less then 4 (at least last time I looked) twitter stories on techcrunch right now on the front page. Three of them are very negative. The other is neutral.

The real question is who at Twitter peed in Arrington’s cheerios.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/amateur-hour-over-at-twitter/trackback/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/twitter-trends-twist/trackback/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/23/privacy-disaster-at-twitter-direct-messages-exposed/trackback/

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/twitter-japan-ads/trackback/

Even penny-arcade is getting in on the twitter bashing action:

This is like Britney Watch only not funny.

This guy’s life changed when he installed Twhirl

El Guapo — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 23:47:56 +0000

I just can’t help myself…

As a follow-up I decided to read all the comments on the techcrunch post:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/twitter-may-not-have-to-care-about-uptime-any-longer/trackback/

I read through the comments and most of them were pretty entertaining talking about how no one, but dorks and silicon valley tweekers use twitter. But, then I got to a comment by:

Travell Perkins
His comment:
Dumbest Comment Evar

I’m with Mike on this one. Twitter would be nothing without its API and the ecosystem around it. My life changed once I installed Twhirl.

His life CHANGED after installing Twhirl. Wow, my life changed after the first time I fell in love. My life changed after I got married. My life changed after my wife I had a baby. His life changed after her installed Twhirl.

Sorry, dude. If your ‘life’ changed after installing Twhirl you had and still have no life.

No One ‘Needs’ Twitter

El Guapo — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:41:05 +0000

From Techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/22/twitter-may-not-have-to-care-about-uptime-any-longer/trackback/

I love this first quote by Mikey:

We used to speculate that Twitter’s persistent downtime and overall poor service quality could result in a Friendster-type nose dive. But after a three day weekend outage I realized that in the last two months a subtle shift occured: I now need Twitter more than Twitter needs me.

You need twitter? I have heard some sad pathetic shit in my life, but this might take the cake. Which part do you need most? The ability to tell a handful of tards what color your poop is? Or is the need to believe a handful of tards actually care what color your poop is? I would guess it’s the latter.

So while Robert Scoble speculates that FriendFeed is the big winner when Twitter goes down, and Dave Winer hacks together contingency plans for the next outage that remind me of stockpiling candles and bottled water for the next big storm, I just shake my head at how wonderfully we’ve all been had.

What I’ve learned is that when Robert Scoble and other luminary (I use the word in the loosest seense possible. Loose like a fat dudes waistband before he hits the buffet line) tech nerds talk about anything being a big winner the only real winners are the people who never read a word they say.

For others the Twitter habit started long ago. And for most people, it is yet to start. But the trend is clear: Twitter is becoming an Internet utility.

Nothing could be less clear. Twitter hasn’t proven itself to be a utility for anything other then increasing the narcissism and worthless info on the internet.

Let’s compare it against a site created so people can show their butts to each other:

The domination of twitter and another site (that will remain nameless) by a site that mostly consists of awful amateur videos just shows how unneeded twitter is.

Let me make this clear: NO ONE NEEDS TWITTER!

To even suggest that reveals a complete and total lack of understanding about people and the real needs people have in their lives. Half the people in the world can’t find food and Mikey is lamenting twitter.

Mike = The biggest tool in the tool box in the biggest tool shed on the interwebs.

edit:
From Scoble

Of course, today I gave a talk to Stanford’s Sloan program (bunch of MBA students). Only a handful had heard of Twitter. That’s Twitter’s future growth. What if they hear Twitter sucks and that FriendFeed is where they should participate?

It’s interesting he would come to the conclusion that people who haven’t heard of Twitter would go to FriendFeed. My conclusion would be that no one with real lives cares about twitter or friendfeed. They may or may not use it, but they surely don’t care if it goes away tomorrow. People in Standford’s MBA program have a lot more interesting and important things to worry about.

VC Intelligence Is Inversely Proportional To Size Of Their Checkbook

Rick Diculous — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 21:36:08 +0000

From TechCrunch: Where Have All The Bold VCs Gone?

There has been quite a strong reaction to Paul Graham’s essay asking why there aren’t any more Googles. Paul lays out some clear thoughts, but Eric Schonfeld takes the argument one step further with the positing of “Where have all the bold VCs gone?”

It’s real simple folks. VCs like to wield their checkbooks. When the marginal cost of corporation production goes down, things get a little tough for VCs who rely on having deep pockets. For the longest time, VCs have acted like douche bags. They act like they are the smartest people in the world. Often times this is symptomatic of some successes they have had as VCs. Ultimately, however, they all fall victim to believing that the bigger their check book, the smarter they are. When you don’t have that lever any more, all of the sudden you look pretty dumb. Their power has been removed.

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Step 1 On Path To Liquidity - Make Stuff People Buy

Rick Diculous — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:00:02 +0000

From AVC: We Need A New Path To Liquidity

Fred spins a fine post about the lack of liquidity in the marketplace these days. No new ground covered here in that regard, but he does have some good commentary about the destruction of value by some of the better known acquirers in the tech space.

What seems to be lost on so many people these days is that M&A is spawned, in most rational cases, from a perception of synergy and accretion to the shareholders. The short version on accretion is that you buy something for less than your shareholders will value it, thereby pushing up your stock price, and making everyone happy.

Of course, there is also dilution, which has the opposite effect. The most recent and notable being YouTube. Paying $1.5 BILLION for something with no discernible revenue/profit piece is highly dilutive to shareholders. What Fred and every other VC seems to be missing these days is an age old concept of profit.

Make something that people buy, and your enterprise value goes up. It’s really simple, but the rah rah bubble 1.0 days seem to have left an indelible impression that making money is no longer important. Everyone wants to build a social network or ad network, or some other kind of network. How about a profit network? Just a thought…

How to waste $5 million

El Guapo — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:15:20 +0000

From Mashable: Sellaband gets $5 million

OK, so let me make sure I get this straight. You are a few pimpley faced teenagers that picked up the guitar to try to do better with the ladies. You have a dude that wears eye-liner who ’sings’ songs about the pain of High School love and cold french fries. And you can’t understand why no record company wants to pay you money. Is this who Sellaband is trying to court?

The business model is amazing. Sellaband makes 30% on album sales of it’s amazing array of:

18 recording artists

Really? Really? REALLY?

Sellaband received $5 Million for this. I’m actually quite speechless…which is a feat in itself.

If A Nerd Cries Alone Into Twitter, Did They Make A Sound?

Rick Diculous — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 03:06:06 +0000

From TechCrunch: Comcast, Twitter and the Chicken

So, Mike has an outage and then lets his outrage fly. Comcast goes down. Nothing new there. Anyone who has ever had cable service knows that a) it will go down, and b) don’t bother calling because you will get hung up on or told that “the service is out and they are working on it.” Most people would vent their frustrations to their wives or girlfriends. Barring that, we, the introverted nerd masses, turn to Twitter to air our diatribes.

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