Author Archives: affronti

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Google Plus may not be much of a competitor to Facebook as a social network, but it is central to Google’s future — a lens that allows the company to peer more broadly into people’s digital life, and to gather an ever-richer trove of the personal information that advertisers covet. Some analysts even say that Google understands more about people’s social activity than Facebook does.

“The Plus in Google Plus? It’s Mostly for Google” via The New York Times.

I am mostly pleased (although sometimes caught off guard) whenever Google’s services help me out in a way I didn’t expect. My favorite scenario is a simple one: when I map an address on my Mac at work, and then 15 minutes after leaving the office I pull out Google Maps on my phone when I (inevitably) get lost getting to my destination. One tap in the search field and it pre-populates with the last search destination from my desktop, saving me a step. Again, nothing revolutionary but very helpful. 

As a technologist and someone who wants to understand and make the most use of anything I sign up for, Google+ frustrates me because I don’t feel like I use it at all. This article is a good reminder that although many of us feel that way, G+ is becoming the key to Google’s service fabric and will likely have a big impact on the way you use their services (if it hasn’t already).

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This part of the business — the lifestyle aspiration, further fueled by user content — is the next well to tap. As it becomes a challenge to differentiate at a hardware level, GoPro has an option not available to its competition: become a platform as well as a product.

“GoPro’s IPO isn’t about selling cameras, it’s about creating a media empire” via Engadget

A great read on some of the history of GoPro and how it has morphed from a pure hardware shop to an end-to-end ‘lifestyle experience’ provider. Given how much better prepared they are for an IPO than a few recent big technology companies (read = they have revenue and a sustainable business model), I’m very interested to see how they do this year. 

Disclaimer: I do not own a GoPro camera. But I can’t stop watching that insane GoPro video of the Russian dudes climbing that crazy-tall tower in Shanghai. 

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“This caters specifically to the target segments that primarily want to use their apps on their smartphones and only secondarily use their phone to talk & text, which probably by now is the majority of the smartphone users.”

This is very much me. I still use SMS a lot but at the same time switch almost hourly through Skype, WhatsApp, GroupMe (yes, still), and several others since I have friends scattered across the networks.

Mobile Messaging Startup UppTalk Evolves Into A Low Cost Cell Service With Launch Of UppWireless In U.S. | TechCrunch

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And rather than shying away from technology because of the role it played in creating today’s problems—for example, synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, made from petroleum, fueled the explosive growth in the production of grains, soybeans, and corn, which in turn were used to make the processed foods that make up so much of the American diet—these new food reformers seek to use it strategically to produce what we want without costs to our environment and our health. That requires more complexity than a network of community gardens can provide.

“SILICON VALLEY’S NEXT BIG GOAL: FIXING OUR BROKEN FOOD SYSTEM” via FastCompany

Amy and I try to eat ‘smart’: know where our food comes from, try to stay away from processed goods and ingredients, and keep our meals as “primitive” as possible, though I firmly believe that cavemen had a way to make single-malt scotch. We believe in and support local, sustainable farms, and our family’s butcher shop sources from several local farms and producers. 

Yet individual choices will likely never cause change on a massive scale, and I like this article’s perspective on the enormity of the problem. Yes, if we had to design the food system from scratch right now we’d likely do things very differently. Yes, folks like Amy and I try to do what we can to improve our own personal food system, and encourage friends and family to do the same. But the scale of change necessary to impact the nation (or world) is going to require recognition that our existing system is here to stay; that is, the needs of its users to have cheap, readily-available food will only grow and we can’t ignore it.

I’m excited to see what type of change tech+food companies can affect at scale.

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LinkedIn engagement is rising, and its high-income audience is especially desirable for brands.

A good summary of how well LinkedIn is doing, but the article also includes some good tips on “key times to post” on the various networks. We’re working hard on our social media presence for Contactive and are always testing to find the best time to post, blog, tweet, and share.

LinkedIn May Not Be The Coolest Social Network, But It’s Only Becoming More Valuable To Businesses

What’s the most random task you had to do in your last job?

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Found this great article today that is perfectly timed given how we’re interviewing right now (and kind-of always are):

“Conduct the Perfect Job Interview in Twelve Simple Steps” via Jeff Haden on LinkedIn.

Contactive is always looking for great people. I find that the way I interview here in our 10-person startup is not too dissimilar from the way I interviewed at Microsoft. I continue to focus on assessing a candidate’s personality, their passion, and their skills (in roughly that order), using mostly experiential questions like “Talk to me about a time on in your old position where you had to talk someone down from a bad decision.”

Given the odd jobs that you sometimes have to do in a smaller company like ours, I’ve added a new one which is “Tell me about the most random task you had to do in your previous job that wasn’t in your actual job description.” I like to see how weird their “odd job” was to get a sense for their tolerances for doing random stuff. It may not be a perfect question, but I’ve heard some pretty interesting responses because of it.

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By analyzing the behavior patterns of its digital and mobile users in 3 million locations worldwide—along with the unique climate data in each locale—the Weather Company has become an advertising powerhouse, letting shampoo brands, for example, target users in a humid climate with a new antifrizz product.

“THE WORLD’S TOP 10 MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES IN BIG DATA” via FastCompany

I traded off the Weather Company’s mobile app a while back and sort-of forgot about them. It’s incredible to see how big they’ve become and what they’re doing with the piles of mobile data they’re getting from their millions of users.

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bricin:

parislemon:

Apple CEO Tim Cook, talking to Daisuke Wakabayashi:

Last year, we grew (revenue) by $14 billion to $15 billion. Yes, those percentages are smaller compared to a year earlier and two years earlier and so forth. But that doesn’t mean that you’re not a growth company. We were in hyper-growth, or whatever is above growth. We went from $65 billion to over $100 billion to $150 billion to $170 billion. These are historic, unprecedented numbers. I don’t know any companies adding growth at that level. So when you say $14 billion to $15 billion compared to those numbers, it’s clearly smaller and a smaller percentage, but, to put it in some context, that’s like adding three Fortune 500 companies in a year. I think that’s hard to say that’s not a growth company.

This is another way to articulate the Law of Large Numbers issue that Apple faces. And it’s certainly hard to argue with.

Steve Ballmer said the same thing for years, no one believed him. Will they believe Tim Cook? And does it matter as long as the solutions continue to flow.

“That’s like adding three Fortune 500 companies in a year.”