All Posts Tagged ‘strategy’

Chase Garbarino

Introducing the News Graph

For the last couple of years, much of the focus regarding the evolution of the web has centered on the concept of the social graph.  The social graph, or the digital collective set of personal connections established by users on social networking sites, has laid the foundation for deeper engagement with others online.  We update our personal networks on everything from the mundane eating of a sandwich to marriage proposals, separations and births.  Simply, our social lives are now hosted online for our worlds to see.

As the web has evolved, and we have evolved with it, we have started to see that “one size fits all” doesn’t apply to graphing our personal connections online, and more particularly it does not apply when hosting different types of user behaviors.  This is why we manage and engage with our business connections on Linkedin and not typically on Facebook, to give one example.   Considering that social media is still a very young medium, it is safe to expect that more platforms will emerge hosting different connection types and user behaviors.

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Austin Gardner-Smith

Pirates Are Super Awesome, Metrics Are Kinda Cool, but Pirates+Metrics = Super Awesome Cool

I like pirates. A lot. I’m from a place where people spend a lot of time on boats and we played Coasties and Pirates instead of Cowboys and Indians. So when I first heard about this dude named Dave McClure who was spreading something called  ”Startup Metrics for Pirates” I was pumped.

Turns out this stuff is useful for people who are pirate-neutral, maybe even those with an aversion to pirates (I don’t understand you). I could sum it up  but you’re much better off checking out the presentation or watching a video of Dave giving the basic talk. But the gist is pretty simple: measure the stuff that matters, don’t measure the stuff that doesn’t. This might seem like an easy thing to do, but in reality it can be pretty easy to confuse getting a lot numbers with getting the right numbers.

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Chase Garbarino

Facebook, Twitter and Buzz: Who shares your personal information best?

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, once stated that, “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds.” After Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments about the death of privacy, one has to wonder whether Barlow’s statement may be more relevant to the times if phrased: “Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking Facebook to respect the private information of its users.”

While there are plenty of smart people arguing the pros and cons of the effects of Facebook’s new privacy changes and Google Buzz’s auto-following model on users’ private information online, I am more interested in the business implications of these developments.  The industry powers like Facebook and Google seem to be in a mad dash to make more information public; however, I wonder if this push for extended network connectivity is smart for all networks.

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Austin Gardner-Smith

For Newspapers, Closed Access is an Open Invitation for Failure

Last February, The New York Times announced they’d be opening up their archives via an API. I was pumped. It was a really cool development that didn’t quite get the attention it deserved, and it made me believe that the Times “gets it,” something I often say about that institution when the newspaper industry comes up in conversation (if that doesn’t happen to you, well, just pretend – the point is that I stick up for the Times).

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