I’ve been thinking about LinkedIn quite a bit lately. I think LinkedIn is really interesting because in many ways I think it is one of the most durable and hard to disrupt companies that sit at the intersection of SaaS and social networking. I’ve also been meeting a ton of companies that I think are looking to compete with LinkedIn by attacking them on a feature-by-feature basis as opposed to a full frontal assault. There are some interesting and emerging things I’m seeing on this front and I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on the subject.
Category: facebook
The Potentially Divergent Paths for Facebook and Twitter Mobile Ads
Mobile ads, particularly app install and direct response ads, have become a big business for Facebook and are likely to become a big business for Twitter very soon. Much of the focus has been on the app install business and how large that line of business can become. But I think Twitter and Facebook could head in different directions.
The Zynga Hate Has Gone Too Far. Maybe They Should Go Private.
I have been working in free-to-play games for the past 5 years and I have been reading a lot of articles describing Zynga’s recent announcement about a soft Q3 2012 on the back of a less than stellar Q2 2012. The public markets clearly don’t like Zynga’s stock – it’s down substantially since its IPO […]
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3 Reasons It’s Hard to Get Mobile Group Photo Albums Right
I’ve been fascinated by many of the early attempts I’ve seen to create group photo albums. With the continued proliferation of smartphones, it seems like someone should have solved the problem of creating unified photo albums with photos taken from distributed devices. I had hopes that the original version of Color would fulfill that promise […]
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Thoughts on the Latest Version of Highlight – Greater Emphasis on Sharing Out to Facebook
I’ve been enjoying the latest update to Highlight (version 1.2 which issue described on their blog here). For my previous thoughts on Highlight, I’d encourage you to read this post. As a fairly active Highlight user, a few things have really jumped out at me about the newest release. Overall, it feels like this update was […]
Keeping Track of People You Meet – The Unified Evergreen Address Book
I’ve had a few blog posts in the past about managing contact information and the various tools I’ve tried (you can read them here and here. I continue to look for a unified contact management system to keep track of the many people I meet. I’m looking for a unified system that can perform two […]
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Why I Like Path
I was not particularly impressed with the first iteration of Path. I just couldn’t relate to the need to restrict photo sharing to a limited number of people. So I’ve been surprised how much I like Path 2.0. I written before about how my own social network usage is changing ( you can read those […]
Yelp and foursquare are on a Collision Course
Awhile back I posted a question on Quora about services looking to disrupt Yelp via focusing on short-form reviews. I got a lot of feedback via email, Twitter, and Facebook and one person in particular, David Levy, pointed out that foursquare is the most likely competitor. All that was lacking was a better logged out […]
Facebook Mobile and Discrete Apps for Core Services
I’ve been thinking a bit about how I use social networks and how it continues to evolve. Increasingly, I find myself wanting to consume Facebook’s myriad set of products and services as discrete applications, especially on mobile devices. The core Facebook UI is burdened with having to do a lot. It has to be able […]
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My Experience Getting Over the Trusted Stranger Issue with TaskRabbit
I’ve been really curious about TaskRabbit ever since I heard about the service. While it has always sounded interesting in practice, I’ve struggled to find a good personal use case for the service. Like a lot of people, I’m busy and have a lot to do. But the idea of trusting tasks I need to […]
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