Chris Anderson's Amazing Ability to State the Obvious

The web has been abuzz all week with Anderson's latest treatise in the WSJ - The Economics of Giving it Away.

Here are some of the comments the article has generated across the web:

"Chris, what a fabulous perspective! I have been wondering how the changing economy might impact many of these web-based companies"

"Chris, great commentary on the current and future state of online business."

"I wanted to make a quick post this morning to point my readers toward a great piece in the Wall Street Journal [...] He talks about making money in this economic climate. "

Want a quick summary of Chris's "Fabulously Great" article?

If companies want to succeed, they'll have to sell something.

Hmmm...ya don't say, Chris?

That's some enlightening commentary right there...sure taught me a thing or two about a thing or two.

Ok, maybe I'm being overly critical here but I just don't get all the hubbub when someone who should be seeing ahead of the curve is pretty much reciting standard industrial-era business acumen. Am I missing something here or did Mr. Anderson pretty much regurgitate most media companies' business models (advertising) and the model for most software companies for the last 15 years (shareware)?

Chris states, "digital economics have spurred entirely new business models, such as "Freemium," a free version supported by a paid premium version. This model uses free as a form of marketing to put the product in the hands of the maximum number of people, converting just a small fraction to paying customers.", as if this were something new.

I was writing shareware when I was 15 years old - we'd give away a "Lite" version of the application and charge for the "Pro" version - it's been a pretty common practice for a long while now but for some reason if you slap a new brand ("freemium") on an old box and tell people it's new, they really think it is.

And when Chris talks about advertising-based models I really want to crack up. Network television has been 'free' for decades and is supported by ads - what's so unique about applying this model to media businesses on the web?

I just feel like it's 2000/2001 all over again and I'm reading some of the same articles for the 1000th time.

Let's get some fresh thoughts going on out there...stating the obvious isn't gonna help anyone out of the current predicament this country is in. It's as good as saying "banks should've done a better job at managing their risk" and hoping that will change things the next time around.

Chris, give us something we can really sink our teeth into next time!

Thumb Blogging...

I haven't tried this before but I've been seeing more and more bloggers posting via their BlackBerry's. I definitely don't enjoy this mini keyboard for drafting long form copy but if it helps me post more frequently/consistently then I can certainly make due.

My new phone, BlackBerry Bold (thanks baby!), is also a lot easier to type on than the older model BlackBerry I had been using. They've done some amazing things with this keyboard: better "bounce" when you press a key, ergonomic keys, etc. I've definitely been enjoying the experience all around.

The phone's camera is also pretty tight, I'm not sure what the specs are off the top of my head (I'm typing this while on the train) but it was good enough to inspire me to (finally) setup a TwitPic account. I see so many random, bizarre or funny things in a typical New York day, I'm pretty psyched about having a way to capture and record them now.

Almost at my stop on this train...let's see if this "test post" actually goes through now.


Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Happy Birthday TickerHound!

I can hardly believe it's been a whole year!  But WOW, what a year it has been.

12 months ago to the day, George Zhao and I pulled back the curtain and brought TickerHound.com to life...

...and within 15 minutes the site crashed.

Needless to say we've come a long way since then.  

Instead of the single cheap-o box we were running on when we launched, the site is now 100% hosted "in the cloud" on Amazon's EC2/S3 platform.

Thousands of investors have asked thousands of questions and submitted thousands of answers to the site.  Our members are the best in the world - and I can say that because I've personally met and had drinks (alcoholic and non) with dozens of them this year.

We've forged partnerships with a handful of financial media companies such as Investor Place Media, Agora Financial Publishing, Business Financial Publishing, Tycoon Publishing and the list goes on.

And the best part is, we're just getting started!

We made our 3rd hire only 2 short months ago  --  welcome aboard Lou!

We have our largest partnership to date launching in a few weeks -- you won't want to miss this one -- which is why we've been absent from most of the NY Tech events for the last 2 months.

So it goes without saying that we're VERY excited about TickerHound's prospects for 2009. 

But this won't be an easy year.  Then again, when is it ever easy running a start-up?  :)

Our country is entering one of the most challenging economic times we've ever faced.  The crisis before us started in the financial markets, so for a financial-tech company like TickerHound the impact of these tumultuous times becomes apparent very quickly.

We're witnessing a fundamental shift in the financial services industry and I'm excited to be a part of it, but at the same token it's certainly added a level of complexity to our business that we hadn't aticipated when we first launched.  However, the important thing to remember is that in times like these we're presented with once in a lifetime opportunities to really make in impact on our market.  Some of today's greatest companies were forged in the fires of the last downturn.

I firmly believe that now, more than ever, individual investors need to become better educated investors.  Relying on stock brokers and money managers (and even $50 billion-dollar-stealing hedge fund managers) has to become a thing of the past.

With tools out there like Covestor, StockTwits and Wikinvest, an individual investor can level the playing field and manage their money as they see fit.  They have unprecedented access to data, stock ideas and educational material that was once trapped behind high-priced pay walls.

Times they are a changin' and I'm proud and honored to be playing a small part in it.

Here's to another 12 months of sleepless nights, tumultuous markets and some of the most exciting times of my life!

Happy Birthday TickerHound!

Steve Forbes & Eric Schmidt Look Like the Head Vampire!

Here's a picture of Eric Schmidt (CEO of Google):


Now here's a picture of Steve Forbes:


And now here's the Head Vampire from the 80's classic, The Lost Boys:


Any questions? I think not.

Feature Sequencing

One of the biggest mistakes I've seen companies make over the years is improper sequencing of feature sets.

For instance, if the users themselves are the hubs of a social network, then why would you launch a social networking application before giving people a reason to come to the site in the first place? That's like saying, "Hey, come to my nightclub tonight...nobody's here, you won't meet any women/men, but it'll be popular one day so just drop by and keep coming back until we get hot!"

FAIL!

I prefer to think through feature roll outs in a very methodical way -- I don't take any credit for this either, it's been done many times by many successful entrepreneurs over the years. I just happen to enjoy copying what successful people have done in the hopes of one day becoming successful as well.

In fact, I once attended a talk given by Joshua Schachter of Del.icio.us fame and he pretty much said the exact same thing I'm about to share with you...building the right features at the right time is critical to the success of a product.

In my mind this can be boiled down to a three step framework and if applied properly, could mean faster roll outs, higher quality products, greater user satisfaction and more opportunities for revenue generation.

Here's the framework in a nutshell:

Utility - First create a product that's useful for a single user. For instance, Del.icio.us was valuable long before you were able to see other user's bookmarks. In its first iteration Del.icio.us simply allowed members to store their Favorites/Bookmarks remotely, thus allowing them to retrieve these pages from any computer they happened to be on. Later on they exposed the social content discovery components that turned the service into the viral success it has become today.

Network - After you've made a product that's useful for a single person, there's a good chance that MANY individual people will find it useful. When you attract a large audience of individual users then all you have to do is pull back the curtains and allow them to start interacting with one another. It's obviously more difficult than that, but you get my drift.

Ideally you'd want it so every piece of data one of these users contributes to your site somehow adds value back to the whole network. For instance, on Del.icio.us, each time a user bookmarks a URL it adds to that URL's popularity across the system which provides all kinds of useful information for new users, visitors and members who already have that URL bookmarked. It also allows like minded people to find one another and use these new connections as a way to discover new content (e.g. if another member has a handful of the same bookmarks as me then there's a good chance I'll want to see what else he has in his favorites).

And then this leads to (hopefully) the final step in the feature sequencing framework: Revenue.

Generating revenue has become an all elusive component of this framework. I think there are a number of reasons for this but first and foremost it's because most people save this step for last while it should probably be right up there with the problem you're trying to solve.

While this may be the final step in this particular framework, it should be one of the first things a businessman thinks about. Granted, you can have a wildly successful product (and ultimately, a wildly successful business) by simply building something people love, locking them in through the network effect and allowing the revenue model to reveal itself as time goes on, but in my experience you'll dramatically increase your chances of monetary success if you think this through from the beginning and iterate on it just like you would the software.

Ultimately you'll want your utility, network and revenue models to dovetail nicely into one another - e.g. Google and contextual advertising - so it'll pay to think through this framework in a holistic manner.

What This is NOT

This is not a bullet proof way of thinking through your product development plans. It doesn't even begin to address the many nuances of conceptualizing, building and launching a product. It doesn't address user needs, market size, etc.

Simply, think of this as a "back of a napkin" way of testing your product roadmap. Conceptualize your utility, then figure out how that contributes value back to a network and then think about how to monetize that.

I know it may sound simple and probably pretty obvious, but I can't tell you how many times I've been sitting in on product development meetings and someone is pounding the table demanding that every feature plus the kitchen sink be included in "Product Version 1.0".

By testing your product roadmap against a time-tested framework like this one, you'll stand a much better shot at getting a successful product out the door in a shorter period of time, period.

Legacy and the Web

I know I haven't updated this blog in forever, but with good reason. We've been working our asses off at TickerHound -- I wish I could share the big secret with you now but you'll just have to wait a bit longer.

In any case, I was finally inspired to write a new post as I was on the train this morning.

I had my headphones on and two of my favorite songs played back to back:

Big Pun's: You Aint a Killer
The Notorious B.I.G's: Warning

Aside from the fact that they both have "Big" in their names (and rightfully so), the other thing these two talented artists have in common is that they've both passed away -- too young, might I add.

But here I am -- along with thousands of other hip-hop fans -- listening to these young men weave rhymes that are over 10 years old and still thinking to myself, "Damn, these guys are good". I'll be 90 years old one day (god willing) and I'll still be thinking, "Damn, these guys are good".

And that right there is the LEGACY these two men have left to this world. Their ability to take concepts, events and emotions from their lives and craft beautiful rhythmic sentences out of them.

The same applies to many creative people:

• Visual artists
• Film makers
• Actors and Actresses

These people, 100 or 200 years after they're gone, will have left a legacy here on earth that all future generations will be able to appreciate.

But what about us?

The rough and tumble entrepreneurs who are creating, crafting and weaving beautiful web experiences and products each and every day.

Sure, we make an impact now but what about 100 years from now?

Will our works of art (read: "our web sites") even be around then? What happens if we have to close up shop and shut down our sites?

All that creative energy just fades into oblivion.

And I know what most people would say: "that's business". And while I agree to an extent I have to imagine that the web is more than just business. The very nature of it makes it so that content can persist.

Our designers and developers put just as much creative energy into building a site as a Director would into making a film -- where's their legacy?

Sure, the "Portfolio" section of a designer's personal page or an item on an entrepreneur's resume/bio gives a viewer a brief glimpse into a product that no longer exists...but don't we deserve more than that?

Shouldn't someone be able to EXPERIENCE the sites and products we've built as we originally intended? Shouldn't they be able to ask a question on TickerHound, or vote for a story on Digg or find a great wine on Snooth?

I think sites like The Way Back Machine do a decent job at preserving a site's content, but not so much the experience.

I also think sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr and YouTube have also greatly helped keep legacies alive - albeit in a static form.

But I think we need a new type of web archive -- one that allows a site's experience to persist throughout time. I want my grand kids to be able to go to TickerHound (even if it no longer exists as a business) and experience something I created when I was in my 20's.

What would a "legacy" service like this even look like? How would it function? Is it even possible?

I don't know.

All I know is if there were a way to make it so a young man, 25 years from now, could use TickerHound, Digg or Snooth (whether or not the businesses were still "alive") and say, "Damn, these guys are good", then I'd be one happy entrepreneur.

Chinese Word of the Day

The US economy is going to shit and China is buying up most of our debt.

We're slowing down, they're still accelerating.

Bottom line: China is the going to be the largest economy in the world within the next generation or two, period.

Being that we operate web-based businesses that have a global reach, I think it's reasonable to assume we'll either have Chinese:

• Customers
• Investors
• or Business Partners

at some point in our careers.

I grew up in Flushing, Queens here in New York:


That's where I first picked up Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin). Then I went on to Major in East Asian Studies in college where I studied Chinese for 3 years solid (spoken and written) and spent several months in China.

While I'm far from an expert, I can definitely get by.

So in the spirit of global business and global communities, I decided to start teaching Chinese one word at a time to all those who are interested.

I'll be doing this via my twitter account: @WayneMulligan

So if you'd like to pick up a new language, I'll be posting a new Chinese Word of the Day each and every day. I'll write the word out in Chinese characters, give the romanization/phonetic spelling and provide a little context.

I'm going to try and make most of the words market/business oriented but if anyone has requests or suggestions just @reply me or DM me on Twitter.

Enjoy!