… or is it MySpace?

There is outrage across the blogosphere about Google’s decision to delete Google Plus accounts created by businesses and not individuals. Google doesn’t want business on Google+… yet. Google announced that businesses could sign up by July 15th to be part of a beta program and when tens of thousands of businesses and non-profits applied, cancelled the test. Um, who is surprised that tens of thousands applied to a little known Google program? If the barriers were removed, it would be millions by the end of the month. This is Google we are talking about!

A post from Christian Oestlien The Google+ Project | Ads Guy on Google+ states:

A few weeks ago we mentioned we would be doing a test of business profiles and asked people interested to apply. Believe it or not we actually had tens of thousands of businesses, charities, and other organizations apply to take part from all over the world. Many of you have reached out to me personally through Google+, e-mail, chat, and even other Googlers. Thank you. Your response has been humbling.

With so many qualified candidates expressing intense interest in business profiles, we’ve been thinking hard about how to handle this process. Your enthusiasm obligates us to do more to get businesses involved in Google+ in the right way, and we have to do it faster. As a result, we have refocused a few priorities and we expect to have an initial version of businesses profiles up and running for EVERYONE in the next few months. There may be a tiny handful business profiles that will remain in the meantime solely for the purpose of testing how businesses interact with consumers.

In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. We recommend you find a real person who is willing to represent your organization on Google+ using a real profile as him-or-herself.

It appears that Google wants to offer special pages for businesses to use and either didn’t realize that businessses would want to use Google+ or didn’t have time to build the pages. In another post, Christian writes:

We have been watching Google+ take shape over the last week and we’ve seen some really great companies get involved. But frankly we know our product as it stands is not optimally suited to their needs. In fact, it was kind of an awkward moment for us when we asked Ford for his (or was it her?) gender!

That’s just silly. Christian continues:

How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands, and we want to create an optimal experience for both. We have a great team of engineers actively building an amazing Google+ experience for businesses, and we will have something to show the world later this year.

Looking at the Facebook and Twitter icons on every website, store front, catalog and piece of marketing material, it is hard to imagine that Google would consider launching its third(?) foray into social networking and not be prepared. Facebook has had huge success with the variety of brand pages it offers. I find it hard to believe that Google’s team built Google+ without looking at what worked and did not with other social networks. I would guess that every product manager, designer and coder on the Google+ team has a Facebook account and has for several years.

The beginning of the end for MySpace

I am more shocked that no one is talking about the best example of cutting off businesses from a social next: MySpace. Several years ago, businesses jumped on the social networking bandwagon and set up MySpace pages. I know that my company did. We had 5,000+ followers when suddenly, our account was blocked. It wasn’t deleted. We were unable to login and the custom design we had was removed and a basic template with a silly test profile pic remained in its place. MySpace refused to answer or help.

We all saw how well this played out for MySpace. Google has several high-profile flame outs in social media. If it follows MySpace’s lead with businesses, Google+ might just follow MySpace into history.

A simple solution

Let businesses sign up for accounts now. Knowing the limitation, be prepared to have these accounts migrated to the proper type of account when the new account types are ready. Unfortunately, Google isn’t building a migration tool.

Of course, there is outrage at just about every change on the Internet and it becomes the virtual equivalent of fish and chip paper. Do you really care today that Facebook changed your News Feed a few months ago? Was that when they… never mind, I can’t remember.

Try to load Twitter’s website. No luck? Nope, it’s down. What happened today that was out of the ordinary?

Twitter’s first CTO, Greg Pass, resigned today. I don’t think that he planted a daemon to bring down the site on news of his departure so we can rule that out.

The other big news is that Mr. AplusK himself, Ashton Kutcher, launched a desktop Twitter app called A.Plus. He is working with idealab backed startup UberSocial. I tried it out and it looks like a Kutcher-skinned version of UberSocial for Twitter. It is a great way for UberSocial to grab users.

While I was using it, it seemed to be making a lot of calls to Twitter. Everytime someone I follow tweeted, I got a little warning in the bottom right of my screen. I found it annoying so I turned it off. I’ve read some rave reviews (in tweets, of course) but I didn’t really like it. It was clunky. I found it difficult to scroll in the 3 different windows (more due to a lag in the speed of scrolling than anything else).

I doubt that enough of Ashton’s almost 10 million followers downloaded it and kept it open for long enough to bring down Twitter but you never know…

Yesterday Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois signed HB 3659 into law. There is plenty of background on the so-called Advertising Tax / Affiliate Tax / Amazon Tax / whatever you call it so I will give some basics and then move on to a view of solutions that might work.

The Basics

Consumers are required to pay sales tax regardless of whether or not a retailer collects it. Retailers who do not have nexus, a physical presence in a state, are not required to collect sales tax, leaving the burden on the taxpayer. Most individuals do not pay the sales tax (also known as use tax when not collected by the retailer). In an effort to collect this tax, some states have passed laws that make an affiliate relationship the equivalent of nexus for retailers.

There are two main problems with these laws:

1. These laws may not be legal. In 1992, before eCommerce began, the US Supreme Court ruled in Quill v. North Dakota that only the federal government had the right to pass laws related to interstate commerce.

2. These laws may decrease, not increase, revenue for states enacting them. When out-of-state retailers such as Amazon and Overstock.com terminate their relationships with affiliates, these affiliates will lose revenue, be less competitive with other affiliates and, in some cases, flee the state. This results in lower income tax and sales tax and higher unemployment payments.

Where are the relationships?

While I am extremely biased on this issue, I like to take a non-biased approach. I have been looking for a solution that works for both sides and doesn’t wind up having the states spend a lot of money fighting this in court.

The only perfect solution would be for Congress to enact a law requiring the collection of sales tax for the entire country. That levels the playing field in the US and, unlike in affiliate marketing where foreign companies can step in with a new-found advantage, foreign companies are less competitive due to shipping costs so they can’t take advantage over companies within the jurisdiction of the new law. But Congress won’t pass a law that will feel like a new tax to consumers/voters and where someone else (i.e. state legislators) get to spend the money.

The state of Illinois does not have a relationship with Amazon. It has a relationship with FatWallet which has a relationship with Amazon but that is not enough to create nexus. Better yet, the state of Illinois has a relationship with its residents. Residents are two things in this relationship: Shoppers and taxpayers.

In fact, it is the resident, not the store, who has the requirement to pay sales and use tax. Stores are the conduit to the collection of the tax similar to employers for income and employment taxes. You may be wondering why employers have to collect taxes and remit them to the government but stores don’t have to. Simple: It is a federal mandate. Plus, an employee establishes nexus for their employer in a state while a shopper does not create nexus for a store. Were Congress to define a shopper as establishing nexus, this would all be over.

Who do states have authority over? Taxpayers!

States can mandate what taxpayers need to do, say when they file their annual tax returns. States also have agencies that license accountants and enrolled agents, the only people licensed to prepare tax returns.

Think about how the Feds finally got Al Capone… that’s right, it was for tax evasion! There is your answer: Tax returns.

The Illinois Department of Revenue figured that out and added line 22 to the form IL-1040 for 2010. It is a required field for “Use tax on internet, mail order, or other out-of-state purchases.” Your next question should be how effective has collection been? You might assume that it wasn’t effective and that’s the reason for HB 3659. The only problem is that very few individuals have filed the IL-1040 with this new line. Believe it or not, with all of the yelling and screaming going on the Illinois legislature, there has never before been a line on the IL-1040 for individuals to pay their use tax. I did some digging and there has been form ST-44 for payment of use tax but it was not referenced in the 2009 IL-1040 instructions.

It seems to me that the best course of action for Illinois to take (or any state for that matter) is to let line 22 take effect and roll out an education program to inform taxpayers about this requirement. In addition, leveling fines for non-compliance would work as well. [Disclaimer: I report my online purchases on my California form 540.]

What about tax preparers?

When a tax professional, whether a CPA or an enrolled agent, prepares a tax return, they are required to sign it. They state that to the best of their knowledge, the return is correct.

Illinois has a use tax worksheet as part of the IL-1040 instructions. Why not make it a form that gets included with the return? Better yet, if this is such an important issue, require that both taxpayers and tax preparers must sign it. Again, educate taxpayers that they must pay use tax.

Plus, every state has a department that certifies CPAs. In Illinois it is the Department of Financial & Professional Regulation. As part of continuing professional education, the state could require training regarding use tax. I don’t know how it would be more than 10 or 15 minutes but it sure would get the point across.

Tax software can help

Intuit and other makers of tax software like to maintain good relations with the various makers of tax forms (e.g. Illinois Department of Revenue). The states can ask Intuit to have a question posed to taxpayers and tax professionals before a return can be printed or filed electronically: Did you pay your use tax? Of course, it could also be a required field that doesn’t have an override.

Some states may also be able to require this. While the Federal government cannot copyright documents that it produces (they belong to us, the people), most states can. If the tax software companies want to use these forms, they will have to agree to certain terms.

An alternative solution

When I met with state legislators and their staffs in Sacramento and their home offices in Los Angeles, I was surprised that they always asked me for an alternative solution to raising the money if they didn’t pass this bill in California. It baffled me why I should be required to have one. This is a bad bill. To me, it would be akin to my proposing to close all of the prisons in the state to save billions of dollars annualy. No one would do that because there are negative repercussions to it. Well, killing small businesses is bad in my book.

I finally have a solution: The states have legal relationships that they should work with to collect use tax. Stop trying to improperly use affiliate relationships to (quite possibly illegally) establish nexus. The best part for lawmakers is that under my plan, they don’t need to take sides between small businesses (e.g. affiliates) and the big box retailers (who donate millions to politicians campaigns).

As for Illinois, HB 3659 doesn’t go into effect until July 1. There is still time to put it on hold and give line 22 a chance to work.

In case you missed it, today’s viral marketing is courtesy of Tipp-Ex, a German maker of white out. While I am not planning on buying white out to use on my computer screen (apologies to blondes who have suffered though all of those jokes), this is better than Burger King’s Subservient Chicken. While this is interactive, it is not as customized as the Old Spice campaign from earlier this summer.

This is a great little hack. Note that the numbers on the page don’t increase with views. Animal rights activists will be pleased to note that the bear usually wins.

It is still summer vacation so my daughter and had fun finding words to type in. some are hilarious. There are also two or three for words that don’t work. We couldn’t find a comprehensive list anywhere online so we made our own.

Enjoy! Here’s what we found:
moons
shoots
feeds
walks
plays with
farts at (full credit to my daughter for this one!)
pee (yes, again evil genius daughter)
watches TV with
whites out
loves
hugs
showers
shakes
jumps
calls
photographs
dances with
sings to
eats
smokes
rides
fishes with
paints
attacks
high fives
drinks with
tickles
sleeps
moonwalks with
gives birth to
does nothing to

Watch it here. If you find more, please leave them in the comments.

I’m learning how to let go of things that I used to cherish. I loved working at GoTo.com back in the day. We knew that we were changing the world. Times have changed.

Yahoo sent an e-mail (below) out today announcing that it will be transitioning all Yahoo Sponsored Search (GoTo/Overture) advertisers to Microsoft’s adCenter. No surprise there.

Who paid for Microsoft to take over Overture?

This is the twisted part. Google paid for Microsoft’s ultimate acquisition of Overture. Well, Google and Yahoo’s shareholders.

Yahoo acquired Overture for $1.6 billion. Microsoft launched adCenter and dumped Yahoo for paid search. Yahoo settled with Google and received 2.7 million shares of Google stock. If Yahoo still holds those shares, they would be worth $1.3 billion. Now Yahoo shuts down its search engine(s) and gives them to Microsoft/Bing on an aluminum platter (I don’t think there are any precious metals left at the Yahooplex).

Between the extra $300 million, the amount that Yahoo didn’t get from probably selling the Google shares, the amount that Yahoo spent acquiring other search engines and technologies and on building its own, search was an expensive loss for Yahoo which many people wrongly considered for years before Yahoo had a search engine.

And then there were two…

Dear Advertiser,

As we shared in February, Yahoo! and Microsoft have formed a search alliance that will enable you to reach more customers with less time and effort. With the convenience of one account, you can access up to 154 million searchers, and approximately 62% more search volume than on Yahoo! alone¹.

To take advantage of these benefits, all Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers will transition to the Microsoft Advertising adCenter platform.

Transition Timing
Our priority is to make this transition as smooth as possible for you. Here’s how we’re planning to do that:

• Protect the holiday period – We know how important the holiday selling season is to many of our advertisers. That’s why our aim is to complete this transition in the U.S. and Canada before the start of the 2010 holiday season.

• Ensure a quality transition – If at any time we feel we cannot transition with quality while protecting the holiday period, we will defer the transition until after the holidays. Should this happen, we will keep you updated.

• Provide a window of time – To give you as much flexibility as possible, we plan to provide you with a several week window, beginning in late summer, within which to initiate and complete your transition.

Transition Experience
Over the last several months, we’ve been working very closely with Microsoft to design a high quality transition experience for you. Here’s an overview of what you can expect:

• Regular communication – This email kicks off a series of communications designed to help you learn about the transition. Upcoming communications will also help you get to know adCenter, the search advertising platform you’ll use to reach potential customers across the Yahoo! and Microsoft networks after the transition.

• Transition tools – To help guide you through the step-by-step process of moving your campaigns to adCenter, we’ll provide you with transition tools within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.

Next Steps and Resources
For now, the two most important things you can do are to manage your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns as usual, and keep your eye out for transition-related communications. You have a number of resources available to help you stay on top of the information:

• YSM Blog – The Yahoo! Search Marketing blog will post regularly about the transition.

• Transition Center – The Yahoo! Transition Center includes articles, downloadable materials, and, coming soon, videos and tutorials about the transition and adCenter

• Emails – We’ll send you regular updates via email, so you won’t miss a thing.

• Survey – Next month, you may be asked to participate in a survey about the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance. Your feedback is important and we strongly encourage you to participate.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial for you as possible. We appreciate your business, and look forward to bringing you the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

I am a fan and detractor of Twitter both at the same time. Remember, I’m a centrist so I can do that.

Twitter won?

Did Twitter win microblogging? Hello no. Twitter won just like MySpace won social networking… just like Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek and Altavista were the winners who were fighting for search marketshare and AOL as an ISP. Twitter has first mover advantage and huge barriers to entry with its name on TV and every catalog in America. But it can still lose. MySpace is rarely spoken of in social networking outside of music. Yahoo is shutting down its search engine this summer (and wasn’t a search engine at all in 1999 when I joined GoTo.com) and taking the remains of Altavista with it. How many people reading this even remember Lycos, Excite and Infoseek? And AOL… don’t get me started.

Twitter apps

I’ve been known to criticize Twitter (and offer suggestions for improvement) for its lack of innovation. Twitter is a company that has trouble keeping its website up. Innovation on its website has been finally adding a Retweet system that many people don’t use in place of the user-initiated convention of the RT. There is a Twitter-made app for the Blackberry but not the iPhone or Android.

In flies Tweetie

The big news yesterday was that Twitter bought Tweetie, a company of two employees (well, an owner and one employee). One of the strangest things about this was that Twitter announced its acquisition at 6:15pm on a Friday. Um, if you close a deal late on Friday don’t you wait until Monday to announce it? Or was @Ev trying to hide it with the trash?

Why has Twitter been unable or unwilling to offer apps for the iPhone and Android. Over $100,000,000 in the bank and Twitter bought a 2-person company to do what it couldn’t? Build often makes sense but why can’t Twitter innovate on its own platform?

Good news or bad news for app developers?

The debate raging now is whether the Tweetie acquisition is good news or bad news for app developers? I would say it is tragic for Twitter app developers but good news for developers with anything that is outside of the evolutionary path of any companies that have closed platforms.

A few years ago I built statustalker with Craig Ogg and Keith Bussell. It was a Facebook app to allow people to comment on their friends’ statuses. Crazy, huh? The biggest flaw was that it couldn’t be inline with the status. Most people thought it was silly to comment on other people’s statuses at first. The other big problem was that Facebook could (and we figured would) steal it. It was a logical and necessary step in Facebook’s evolution. Now can you imagine Facebook without the ability to comment on your friends’ statuses?

Think about all of the Twitter apps like Twidroid (the one I use on Android), Seemic, etc. Dead. How about Twitpic and the other apps/sites for uploading pics to Twitter? Dead.

If you want to create Twitter app, make sure it doesn’t rely on functionality that Twitter should have or that Twitter can easily replicate and give away for free.

Apps that work

Forgetting that Zynga was built on a complete lack of ethics and shameful monetization tactics, Farmville is a great app. I don’t mean that it is an app that I will ever have a desire to use. It is a great app because there is no reason for Facebook to try to build it itself. It is not basic social networking functionality. Worrying about competitors is much better than worrying about the owner of the platform you rely on.

Scrabble is another great app (and the only Facebook app I use) and easily protected based not just on its brand recognition but more importantly Hasbro’s trademark on the game.

A Facebook app to not build

I have another Facebook app idea and I will tell everyone outside of Facebook to avoid it: Facebook Group Reader. Facebook groups suck because there is no easy way to monitor or organize them. Plus, there is no way to do that in the API. If course, if Facebook were to open it up, I’d say any apps that achieve initial success as a Facebook group reader will find themselves replaced by the functionality native to Facebook.

Twitter 2.0?

What should you build as a Twitter app developer? That’s a great question. Is there some functionality that can be built that is somehow protectable or that can guarantee being bought by Twitter? I’d say you’re better off building iPhone, iPad and Android apps where there isn’t an owner of the platform.

I’ve been thinking about Twitter 2.0 for a few months. Can some be the Facebook of microblogging to turn Twitter into MySpace? It’s possible. Of course, if Twitter bothers to listen to @davewiner and forget about fitting into the confines of SMS, then Twitter will be an amazing platform and will protect itself from many challengers.

Of course there is always Google which could get Google Buzz right in its second try. Only time will tell.

I found it ridiculous a few months ago when Michael Jackson died and people were claiming that Twitter beat CNN. That wasn’t true. Twitter had unverified (yes, and correct) reports that Michael Jackson died before CNN and other traditional news outlets were able to verify it. That’s what they have to do.

Earthquake shakes things up

Yesterday there was a 7.2 earthquake in Mexico that we felt here in LA. It was a BIG quake and not all that far away the way these things work.

The first thing I did was check the USGS website. Then, I tweeted info along with the USGS URL. Finally, I turned on CNN to see what was going on. I knew that CNN would have more info than I had.

WRONG!

Don Lemon was on asking people to tweet what they felt to @donlemoncnn.

I continued tweeting updates from the USGS website when there were aftershocks and an unrelated quake north of Sacramento. I tweeted that to Don Lemon as well. He continued to read tweets on air about people feeling the quake in LA and their pool water moving. No news.

CNN kept cutting to a woman on a computer for info. She was using Google Earth to see the quake info and report on the aftershocks. I continued to be 5 – 10 minutes ahead of CNN in reporting this news.

How Twitter beat CNN this time

You are wondering why I think that people tweeting about the quake (there were hundreds of others within seconds of the quake) beat CNN but that wasn’t the case for Michael Jackson. Simple.

I was using the same types of websites as a source that CNN was using. CNN wasn’t verifying beyond trusting Google Earth or the USGS.

There was an opinion piece last week in the LA Times about the iPad and the effect of technology on reporting standards. We all know that newspaper and magazine print subscriptions are down and more attention is being given to the online versions. It seems that editorial standards are often significantly weaker for online media for the same publication.

CNN did the right thing verifying Michael Jackson’s death. My issue with the quake reporting is that if CNN is going to just use the same websites I am, they should be much faster in the reporting.

On a positive note for CNN: Fox News and MSNBC had no quake reporting. Of course, top marks go to KABC-TV channel 7 for the best live coverage. Of course, I would have preferred some news of what was happening in Mexico, not Los Angeles.

For several years I have assumed that the next governor of California would be a Democrat… and many more after that one. Why? Because California’s Republican Party appears to be inept (and I am not making a positive statement about the Democrats). Californians tend to be moderates: Socially liberal and fiscally conservative (except when voting on ballt propositions).

Governor Schwarzeneggar was elected in a spectacle of an election that included Gary Coleman, porn stars and who remember the other 150 candidates. There was no primary. As a sitting governor, he was able to survive the Republican primary 4 years ago. I didn’t think another moderate or Republican could make it.

Bring on Meg Whitman

What makes me think that Gov. Whitman is next? The Advertising Tax. Here’s the equation:

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (the Supreme Court’s decision throwing out corporate election contribution limits) = Gov. Whitman

The Coalition Against the Advertising Tax in California

It started out as AB178 when it was introduced by Assm. Nancy Skinner. I was supposed to testify against it in the Revenue & Tax Committee. The hearing was canceled because there weren’t enough votes in support of it, even though Assm. Calderon, the committee chairman, was a co-sponsor.

Next it was snuck into a trailer bill to the budget. There was no public hearing. It was passed under the cover of darkness. When daylight broke, the Governator vetoed it.

Now it’s called ABX8-8. It passed the State Senate and is in 2 committees in the State Assembly.

The important thing is that there is a strong coalition in opposition being led by the California Chamber of Commerce and the Cal Taxpayers’ Association. The list of companies opposed is incredible. I am proud to have Cashbaq on a list with Google, Yahoo, ValueClick and, oh, did I mention eBay?

What’s that got to do with Meg?

Even if the Democrats get ABX8-8 through both houses of the legislature, if Governor Schwarzeneggar follows through on his commitment after he vetoed AB178 last year, he will veto the Advertising Tax again. That means that the Democrats will have pushed through the bill again with no victory. The lingering effect will be that the tech community is terrified of having the Legislature and Governor’s mansion controlled by Democrats. The smarter position would have been, assume the governor would veto it again. Wait until Jerry Brown or another Democrat is governor and then pass this bill that will be devastating to small, entrepreneurial businesses in California while having a negative impact on the state’s finances. I mean, come on, guys!

Why opposed a bill that just hurts affiliates?

The Advertising Tax doesn’t just hurt affiliates. Our businesses definitely would be devastated if ABX8-8 becomes law. Maybe these companies are opposed to the Advertising Tax because they know that it is bad for the tech sector and bad for our state’s economy.

The current form of the bill would mean that any advertising relationship establishes nexus. If that’s the case, advertising on Google AdWords and Shopzilla’s comparison shopping engine would establish nexus. So much for the Internet, especially given Drs. Foster & Smith’s recent bombshell about nexus creating a requirement to file state corporate income tax returns.

eBay is no safe harbor

eBay is concerned that if the Advertising Tax becomes law in California it will establish nexus for (are you sitting down) every eBay seller no matter where they are based. OH – MY – GAWD!!! [Cue REM]

Money can’t buy you love but it can buy you an election

Sure there have been rich folks that have run for office and lost. I had thought Meg would join their ranks. She won’t. Meg is a shoe-in now. The Democrats have guaranteed it.

Meg has enough money to pay for TV ads months before anyone else has even declared. She’s everywhere. While she doesn’t need the money from tech companies it will help both for funding and for perception. Google supports Meg Whitman. That’s 10,000+ more votes just from employees plus any Google fans out there won’t want to see politicians needlessly hurt the company. And that’s just one tech company whose employees might fear for their livelihoods. How many votes will it take to swing a close election?

Everyone knows she was CEO of eBay (if you don’t, her commercials make it clear). Now you’ll also have eBay explaining the risk to everyone in the marketplace about how the Democrats will kill eBay.

See the snowball effect yet?

Unions don’t oppose Meg

One of the strange things about the Advertising Tax is that the biggest supporters are the trade unions. My company hasn’t suggested that the State make changes that will devastate schools and firehouses. Why are the teachers’ and firefighters’ unions insisting that state legislators attack my business? They don’t seem to understand the negative impact that this will have on the state’s finances. That would be like my insisting that fire engines carry galvanized steel pipes in place of hoses. There’d be a bad impact on the state and its residents. Personally, I’ll leave it to the firefighters to figure how to use their technology best. I ask that they do the same for my business until they understand it.

Meg isn’t letting the unions attack her. She has the money to stop them. Meg has stated that if the unions attack her, she will use millions of her own money to push a ballot initiative that will require and opt-in for unions to use members’ dues for political purposes. As it stands now, individual members may opt out. This tactic will keep the unions quiet for now but there may also be backlash. November is a long way away.

Have the Dems anointed Meg?

You decide for yourself. Do you think that a Republican had a chance? Do you think that the tech sector would have coalesced behind Meg if it weren’t for the Democrats pushing the Advertising Tax?

Suggestions for the California State Legislature to help with the budget instead of ABX8-8

I wrote down a list of alternatives in my last blog post. Please refer to that if you want positive solutions that won’t hurt the State.

It finally happened. What many of us have feared from the start. Online stores closing their affiliate programs because of the Advertising Tax (aka the Affiliate Tax, Amazon Tax and several other names). Today we received notice from a store that is completely closing its affiliate program immediately (yes, effective today) due to concerns over the Advertising Tax bills that have either been passed or are pending in several states.

California Dreamin’… er, Nightmare

California, the only state I have ever called home, is considering ABX8 8 which would change the definition of nexus to include any online store that has an affiliate earning more than $10,000 per year and is based in the state. State legislators claim that they are attempting to get out-of-state retailers, namely Amazon, to collect the sales and use tax that California residents are required to pay. Amazon and other out-of-state retailers have responded that they will terminate California affiliates if the bill passes, just as they have done in other states. Overstock terminated all of its California affiliates when a similar bill was passed last year. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill and our relationship was restored.

Legislators feel that they are being strong-armed by the retailers and they see no reason to give in to such tactics. I’ll give a reason: My livelihood. State legislators will keep drawing their salaries and their stock and bond portfolios will keep their value. One of my two biggest assets will lose significant value and my income will plummet. I am not alone. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of other California taxpayers will suffer the same fate. And if we have to start laying off employees, we’ll really see the Trickle-Down Effect. To make matters worse, the State won’t collect any additional sales tax from Amazon, Overstock or the other large online-only retailers who will terminate their affiliate relationships with California affiliates.

Governor Bev Perdue of North Carolina said it best: North Carolina is the seventh largest state in economic terms and Amazon won’t stop selling there. She was right about an irrelevant point. Amazon terminated all of its NC affiliates and still ships to the state. NC affiliates had their businesses devastated. Oh, and Amazon doesn’t collect sales tax for North Carolina. How was this a win for Gov. Perdue’s state?!?

Unintended consequences

Today we received a termination notice from Drs. Foster & Smith. You see, the good doctors aren’t so much concerned about the collection of sales tax. They are concerned that if they have nexus in many states, they will be required to file state income tax returns in all of those states. I remember as a CPA doing tax returns for a company that had nexus in 19 states. It took a team of half a dozen of us months to get the returns done. I can see why the mere threat of having to file the returns is enough even if no income tax is due in those states that have changed the definition of nexus.

Off-shore it!

I predict that next year Affiliate Summit West will be in Vancouver and Affiliate Summit East will be in London. There won’t be a reason to have a US-based conference. There won’t be any US-based affiliates if this continues.

Performance marketing offers many different types of sites for merchants to advertise on. The value of our sites won’t go away. The value will simply be picked up by foreign entities.

The Letter from Drs. Foster & Smith

It is with great regret that we have to inform you that we are shutting down affiliate marketing at Drs. Foster and Smith effective immediately  February 22, 2010.  This closure is across the board in all states with all affiliates and is not related to you only as one of our affiliates.

We regret having to do this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that so many of you have done a great job for Drs. Foster and Smith and will be adversely affected by the loss of revenue from Drs. Foster and Smith sales.  Thank you for all you have done to promote our company on your web sites.  We apologize for the hardship and inconvenience that this creates for you.

The single reason for the decision at this time is the moving target of the ever-growing patchwork quilt of state legislatures that are considering nexus legislation relative to affiliate marketing and sales tax.  It has become increasingly difficult to determine who is considering such laws, where they are in the process and what the ramifications are in each state.  What affiliates may not be aware of is that such nexus situations do not only relate to sales tax collection, but potentially state income tax for a corporation as well.

We wish there was clarity on this issue from state to state and nationally, but there isn’t.  So until this matter is cleared up nationally, we are shutting down all affiliate marketing.  We apologize for any hardships this brings to you and your team.  We have greatly appreciated the work that you have done on our behalf.  The sudden nature of the move by California to reintroduce legislation late last week and to push for a quick vote, emphasized the ever-changing nature of this issue and our need to be ahead of such votes and decisions.

With our appreciation for your contribution to our company,

Sincerely,

Drs. Foster and Smith Affiliate Marketing Team

Solutions for State Legislators

I learned while speaking with California assemblymembers, senators and journalists that I am required to offer a solution when fighting bad legislation so here it is:

1. Do nothing: In business, doing nothing is often a better solution. This applies to government as well. Imagine if a state legislator proposed closing all prisons and releasing all prisoners. This would save California $10,000,000,000. I think we can all agree that doing nothing is a better solution. Of course, repealing the Three Strikes law and spending more on rehabilitation would both save the State money and better society.
2. The Federal Solution: Don’t EVER mention this to state officials. They HATE it! They have no control and they know that it will never happen. Of course, they also know that the Supreme Court ruled in Quill v. North Dakota in 1992 that legally it is the only constitutional solution but they’ll ignore that. The problem is that if Congress passes the Streamlined Sales Tax Project it will, in essence, create what feels like a new tax to voters. Even if this is the collection of an existing tax, voters won’t see it that way. To add insult to injury, Congress won’t get control of any of the money. Why would they take a risk of upsetting voters when they don’t even get to spend the money?
3. Service Tax: Why is it that we only tax sales? Our economy has become a service economy so most of what as a state produce and consume goes untaxed. While most things that the Canadian government does is a mistake, have we looked to see what would happen if we start taxing the services of lawyers , doctors, accountants, architects, engineers, etc.?

The Silver Lining

AB178, the original nexus-changing bill in California, was amended so that it didn’t include the comparison shoping engines or search engines. ABX8 8 seems to leave pay-per-click advertising in the definition of nexus. If that happens, companies will have to decide if they want to collect sales tax (and pay state income tax?) if they want to advertise in AdWords. Oh, and every eBay transaction will be subject to California nexus. This is getting interesting. Let’s just hope that our state legislators don’t kill California’s tech sector… and especially not small business here.

There is a lot of buzz lately about Google trying to do too much. I’ve read people comparing Google to Microsoft… and not in a good way.

Google’s Mission

I don’t care what Google says it’s mission is (especially since my personal experience with Larry Page showed him to be evil). Google’s mission is simple: Gather, analyze and display as much information as possible worldwide. That’s it. Anything that enables Google to do all or part of that makes sense.

How does Google pay for that: AdWords. So beyond the main goal of finding and logically displaying information of any kind, what does Google look at when deciding what services to build and launch?

In the early days, it had to do with fun. Google’s engineers were to take a percentage of their time for pet projects. That gave us Orkut (Google’s failed social network) and other features and services. Today, even if that environment still exists, it seems to be more calculated. [Note: Most large corporations are unable to manage their parts in the way that outsiders think so this is pure conjecture.]

Google seems to launch products that fall into at least one of these groups:

• Gives Google the opportunity to make money through the display of AdWords
• Offers a service that encourages users to return to Google so that they use the Google services that display AdWords.
• Either takes users away from Microsoft and/or Apple or makes it harder for Microsoft and/or Apple to generate revenue.

Too many services?

Bloggers complain that they can’t keep up with all of Google’s new services. I know I can’t but that’s not a bad thing. Google has been on-target lately with everything but the Nexus One. Google started the Android platform to compete against the iPhone (and to a lesser extent the lesser Windows Mobile). Every Android phone was “with Google”. There was no need to be “by Google”. [FTC Disclosure: I am typing this on an HTC Android G1 which my company purchased for me.] Google had control over the platform and some of the best apps. Search on Android was Google, yes, with AdWords. There was no reason for Google to get into the mobile hardware business. The company is having trouble offering support… an issue known to be Google’s Achilles’ Heel to anyone who is a customer.

What’s the Buzz?

If you’re reading this, you probably watched the Web go atwitter with the release of Google Buzz, touted as a Facebook and Twitter killer. It’s everything hindsight tells us Orkut should have been. There are privacy complaints that it too freely uses your connections through Gmail and GTalk. Hey, that’s why I thought Yahoo 360 would kill MySpace years ago: Yahoo knew my IM connections, e-mail address book, groups, news preferences, etc. As history shows, Yahoo missed the boat and is sinking. Google gets it. Again, Google knows how to gather and analyze information.

Google as an ISP

This week Google announced that it was launching a high-speed fiber optic ISP. This is fantastic! OK, how can I go from saying that Google can’t handle customer support for phone sales but I think being an ISP is a good idea?

I hate that Time Warner Cable serves up search results for certain Web errors. I wouldn’t mind Google doing that. There is search in them thar ISPs.

But that’s not the best part. Where Microsoft has always been a hard drive hog building software to fill our drives, Google is a bandwidth hog. Google bought YouTube and wants to stream more to us. Apple has had amazing success selling content and Google might… or it will distribute content with ads.

But wait… there’s more. The big ISPs are fighting Net Neutrality in Congress. Google wants to keep the Internet free. As consumers we pay for ISP service and websites are delivered to us without the website being charged. As a Web entrepreneur, I need that to survive. I pay for my servers but if I get charged per user… YIKES. That’s the system we all (including the telcos) bought into. Google is firing a shot over the bow of the cable and telco giants. Sure these massive companies who regularly underserve and overcharge us want us to pat them on the back for spending $161 billion building out high-speed infrastructure. But it is inferior to Google’s proposed network on all counts, especially speed. Oh, and I bet Google ISP will offer Net Neutrality. This is better money spent than double the amount on lobbying. If you can’t beat ‘em in a political battle, take away their business.

Don’t forget the data!

What’s the cost, you ask? The cost is data. We give Google data in return what appear to be, for the most part, free services. Google knows where I am (or where my phone is) and in return I get traffic data (hey Google Maps is similar to Google Analytics in that respect). I could be a freeloader and just take the free data but I want accurate traffic reporting so I contribute back. Google knows what I search for and sites I go to. Google knows whom I am connected to and then tells me what they are up to, not just on Buzz but in the search results.

Is it worth that price? Only time (and maybe George Orwell) will tell.

What electronics are you carrying in your pocket? I have an Android G1 and a dumb phone. I’m not sure what to call it. Then again, these days I’m not sure what to call an Android or iPhone.

They used to be called smart phones. Then some marketing guy decided we should call them app phones because they ran applications that we could buy at app stores. Then Google released the Nexus One and declared it a Super Phone. No, it is not a super phone… it’s a pocket computer.

Think about it

Think about it… If you have an Android or iPhone, why did you get it? Did you want your phone to do more? Not really. You wanted to be able to carry a computer in your pocket. Don’t you wish that even with all that your phone can do that it did more of the things that your computer does? Of course you do.

Why do you love your phone? Because it makes calls? Not if you have an Android or iPhone. It seems like every day I hear someone complaining about how bad a phone they are.

Do you have a Blackberry? Now that is a super phone. It doesn’t really act like a computer, does it? It seems to be a phone that is trying really hard to have computer functionality. In truth, it works well as a phone (well, except that microphone issue) but having to make two separate clicks to use a Web link?!? It’s really not computer-like. It uses e-mail and chat like SMS.

What’s a pocket computer?

The iPhone and Androids are computers that had phone technology added in. It makes sense. I can use it with WiFi. It has most of the apps I use on my computer. It also makes sense to connect over the available network… that used by cell phones. Now, you’re going to argue that that fact alone makes it a cell phone and not a computer. But you won’t argue that WiFi is a computer technology that my pocket computer uses, or was it a super phone?

The Arrowhead trucks have been delivering water for years. A couple of years ago, they started delivering coffee too. Does that make Arrowhead a coffee company? Of course not.

Does it matter?

You think I am just playing semantics here. Why does it matter what we call these devices? Who cares whether it’s a phone or a computer as long as it does what I want?

Regular davidlew.is readers have been sensing (no, not my love of words) that I am trying to figure out what’s really going on with a few things. Google Chrome and Android for instance (I still don’t get why Google has both). Google Energy maybe being an ISP. Using Twitter and Foursquare and other mobile apps. There is a theme. But wait… there’s more!

I think eBook readers are way cool. I’d get one except that it would just gather dust. I don’t have time right now to read enough or play with another device to get full enjoyment out of it. That and the Kindle and its ilk are obsolete.

Behold Slate Computers!

“The Kindle is new and cool. Go…” Yeah, some of you want to tell me that. But the truth is, the Kindle is about as cool as the dumb phone I carry. It isn’t a computer.

You’ve heard rumors about Apple’s iSlate (also call isLate). And Dell and Microsoft are calling their competitors to it Slates. That is exactly why it is important to make the distinction of my “phone” being a pocket computer.

We thought the iSlate was going to be a tablet computer. Do these look anything alike?

The old tablet PC looks like a laptop with a touchscreen on a swivel. A slate computer looks like a book reader or like an iPhone or Android… those seem to be the OS bases that are being used. Wouldn’t that make them phones by the outdated logic? No, they are slate computers.

That means that there will now be 4 main sizes of computers from desktops (the biggest and I am including the iMac style in this), notebooks/laptops, slate computers and pocket computers. I expect to have at least one of each in my house and probably a few of at least 2 sizes… my kids will be teenagers soon enough.

Not just semantics

It is important to recognize that these are computers. We need to do that so we get what can be done with them and so that users both understand what they can do and demand it!

In 1995, Alan Kaye told me that the computer revolution hadn’t happened. He said it would happen when computers disappeared. They are starting to disappear to such an extent that people are starting to call some computers phones. Maybe we should call them Super Phones and keep fooling ourselves. Nah, I’m going to call my G1 a Pocket Computer from now on. Hell, it has more power than all of the computers used to send men to the Moon six times… and it’s in my pocket!

Google is making it tough to keep up. There is so much innovation in so many areas that tech journalists have been complaining they can’t digest it all. As an entrepreneur I’m trying to see where there is opportunity to dive in and where there is a higher likelihood to get crushed (been there, done that… GoTo).

Google Energy if you take Google at its word

I don’t know about you but I never take Google at its word. I don’t buy the do no evil stuff. I’ve talked to Larry Page.

Google claims that it is searching for cheap, reliable, renewable energy to power its massive server farms. Google has a lot of servers and needs more every day so that sounds reasonable on the surface.

Google is about data and analysis. I am constantly amazed that Google Chrome knows either the search phrase or the website I am looking for based on what I type in the browser address bar… even before I know what I’m really looking for. That is based on a massive amount of data and excellent analysis. I give credit to Google for a big win.

So Google may be trading energy on the open market to get data about energy rates, energy sources (especially renewable vs. fossil fuels) and whatnot. But I suspect there is more to it.

Google PowerMeter

Google insists that Google Energy is not tied to Google PowerMeter a project to help consumers measure the power usage of their home down to individual appliances. While that puts information / power in the hands of consumers, it is really only after Google gathers that data and analyzes it.

Is your refrigerator using more than the average amount of power (based on Google’s analysis)? May we suggest a new fridge that meets your household’s needs? Google Products.

Think about how far that goes. It’s still not enough of a conspiracy theory for me. I think there is more to it. Note that I rarely think that companies do this type of analysis and work in such an integrated manner. Microsoft was never able to achieve this as the Department of Justice found. All of my friends at Microsoft have confirmed that groups work independently of each other. I think that Google is different. I think there are plans.

Google Grid

Google’s power plans have to do with the Smart Grid, the way that consumers can begin to use renewable energy sources in their homes and find more efficient appliances.

That makes a lot of sense.

Experian & PriceGrabber

In 2005 I correctly predicted that Experian would acquire PriceGrabber. My logic was sound even if history and Experian have not seen it happen the way I said it would.

Experian knows life events. It knows your life events. New children, marriage, death, new job, unemployment… anything that has monetary implications goes through Experian. Imagine if Experian could market to you based on that.

Of course Experian did not either for technical or regulatory reasons integrate its databases from credit reporting and comparison shopping. Oh well. Again, most big companies / conglomerates can’t integrate acquisitions or even new product lines. [I still contend that Skype was a great fit with eBay.]

Google gets this one. What’s the problem with a comparison shopping engine like Google Products? You don’t know about conversions. Well, you will know more about conversions from search to purchase if you also process payments (Google Checkout) and have an affiliate network (Google Affiliate Network, formerly Performics).

Chrome OS, meet Google Energy

Last month I wrote about Google’s Chrome OS and the implications it had for your home. I missed a lot. Google Energy ties in with all of this and again I have to say that I do think Google can bring all of this together.

The Smart Grid can be incredibly smart with the right analytics. But why does everyone who is talking about this stop with energy analysis?

What is at the end of power lines? It’s not just appliances. It’s computers. While it would be nice to give computers cheaper, cleaner power (I am finally getting a UPS for each room that needs it now that computers and electronics are burning out in my house from the crappy power), isn’t it nice that power lines are ubiquitous to just about every location that has a computer?

Clay Johnson of the Sunlight Foundation recently tweeted “So power line networking actually works. Huh.” Yes, it does and Google knows it. Why bother with the hassles of Ethernet or the pipe dream of fiber optics and rewiring homes? Why deal with WiFi routers that spaz out? we all have power lines and they work for networking. Yes, Google Products can find what you need for a power line network.

I tried this a few years ago. It was a great solution. Then I wired the new house I was building for Ethernet. It was more difficult than it should have been. The electrician understood settling up the power plugs better than Ethernet.

The logical extension is Google as an ISP.

Google ISP?!?

You think I’m nuts with this one, right? Why would Google want to be an ISP? Data! Desktop! Home! Control! Also take a look at Google’s Nexus One and Android.

Put all of these pieces together. Chrome OS powers the devices in your home enabling you to have better power, simpler devices doing what you need and disappearing, full integration of your entertainment systems and appliances, networking as simple as plugging a device into the power socket…. that a single plug to get power AND connectivity!!!

What’s the price we pay for this? Google might just give this away for free. The price is data. Google is the preferred search engine and now can see if you get to the checkout page of stores and if you purchase. Google might even see you track your packages at FedEx or UPS. Google might get to the point of predicting what you need. (We might finally get a refrigerator that knows what we buy, if we need more of it and then place the order at the market.)

As you can see, Google Energy isn’t about energy and isn’t about Google becoming the next Enron as some are predicting in the blogosphere. It’s partly about Google getting data to have cleaner, cheaper, more reliable power for it’s server farms and it’s for Google to reach every single aspect of your computing life. That’s all.

[FTC Disclosure: If you don't believe me about Google being an ISP, Google is providing free WiFi service to me on a Virgin America flight as I type this via Google's Chrome browser which was also provided at no charge.]

To start the New Year and ring in 2010, TimeWarner Cable and News Corp. settled their dispute and Fox’s cable channels continue to be carried on TWC to 14 million American TV viewers (including the author).

Some questions

Does TWC has a right to carry these channels or does News Corp have a right to withhold these? Remember that Fox is the #2 or #3 network of the 4 major broadcast networks.

Do consumers have a right to get broadcast TV? We can always put up rabbit ears and get the 4 major networks for no charge.

What if…?

As I couldn’t sleep the other night the question came to me: What if TWC and News Corp. couldn’t reach a resolution? Let’s say that on January 1, 2010, TWC stopped carrying News Corp. channels and I couldn’t watch the Sugar Bowl from the comfort of my own couch.

I am sure that some consumers would have dropped TWC and moved to Verizon’s FiOS, AT&T or satellite. But that’s a short-term solution. News Corp. would take its victory (if that could be considered a win) and gone to every other carrier threatening that they would lose subscribers just like TWC if they didn’t pay the higher rates that News Corp. had been asking for. Would someone give? Would News Corp. have to back down at some point if no one said “Uncle Rupert”?

What if TWC paid the higher rate that News Corp. had been asking for? Then Disney and every other content provider would raise their rates… and pass on the additional costs to consumers.

Under either scenario I, the consumer, would have fewer channels to watch on my TV. Either TWC would choose which it didn’t want to pay for or I would. There’s no way I will watch my bill double to continue to receive content that I don’t consumer. Would TWC change its billing structure and finally let me pick a package of only the channels I (dare I write the blasphemy) want to get?!?

Invisible Hands

With the many invisible hands at work, what would be the effect on society? What would be the effect on business and media? We, the consumer, have already destroyed the near-monopoly of TV as our entertainment medium of choice in the home. Sure in the 1970′s most homes had radio, a daily local newspaper and a couple of magazines (either Time or Newsweek) but the limited TV that we received (limited in choice only by today’s standard) was the entertainment medium of choice for most Americans. Not so today.

Would a decision by these two media giants not to reach an accord help push consumers away from television?

Other choices

Of course, there are other choices even to receive TV content. I would not have been without my old friend Jack Bauer this year. I would have spent the hundred bucks for a device to properly connect my computer to my 52″ HDTV and streamed Jack whenever I like with only a single commercial at the beginning from Fox.com. Or maybe I would have said that I don’t mind waiting a few months or a year to watch on DVD. Not much additional revenue for Fox if I got it via Netflix.

How does News Corp. generate revenue from its programming? It seems that ad revenue is down so why not try to get more subscription revenue? Only if News Corp. pulls Fox and other networks from cable, that means that 14 million viewers won’t see any of the commercials (more if this were to happen with other cable / satellite providers) and News Corp. will have to charge lower rates for commercials. Hmmmm?

SED… that’s Deoptimization

News Corp. is the same company that last month decided to pull content for foxnews.com from Google. We all know the Pareto Principle (aka the 80/20 Rule). There is the Calacanis Corollary (aka the 80/19/1 Rule) that says that in social media, 1% creates the content, 19% consume the content and 80% bounce. If that applies to content sites and 1% return another time (with 19% reading at least 1 more page and 80% bouncing) I’d be OK with the math where millions of users come from Google each month. I’d probably try to figure out how to better entice readers to stay longer and sign up. Of course, the 80% may just not be interested. Or they may always come through Google. I find it hard to believe that they are worth nothing but Mr. Murdoch has done alright in the past without my advise.

End with a parable

Back to cable, I’m not sure who needs whom more. I think it might be the story of the scorpion and the frog. This is a wide river for them to cross and I think that they need to work together to get across. While the frog can survive without the scorpion, which is which in this case?

It’s going to be interesting to see how the content providers and carriers get along and who will call whose bluff. In the meantime, I’m going to go hook up my computer to my TV and join the rest of the country in tuning out.

Last month I wrote about Google’s Chrome OS and how it might give Windows a run for its monopolistic money. I received some criticism for such musings.

It looks like Chrome OS is a cross between a souped-up Web browser and a watered-down OS. With the lack of a harddrive, users must rely on The Cloud for both applications and file storage. That means security concerns and subscriptions for everything. Kind of like our phones.

That got me thinking about the big debate ranging between the iPhone and Android. One has to be better than the other. Or is Blackberry better? I have friends who absolutely love their Crackberries. That means it’s better, right?

Is there such a thing as better?

Wrong. Technology often is better for one individual over another. Rarely is a technology right for everyone.

In the consumer OS world (let’s ignore servers as none of us really does much with them knowingly) there is Windows and Mac OS is still screaming “Me too!”. Linux never made a dent. Windows, it seems, it right for just about everyone. Only, it is wrong for just about everyone and we suffer through it. Microsoft is a great marketing machine and managed to win with the lesser of two products. Then again, VHS beat Betamax and I’m sure we can list many others where the inferior product or service won. (Thank God Coke still beats Pepsi in sales even if it lost the Pepsi Challenge prompting the heinous introduction of New Coke.)

Windows tries to be everything to everyone. Statistically speaking, you are reading this on either a desktop or laptop running Windows. I’m typing on a laptop running Windows 7. [Did you notice that in the last 14 years Microsoft went 88 versions backwards?] Maybe you have a tablet PC. Or maybe you have a netbook that is using Windows XP because netbooks can’t run Windows Vista and just started getting Windows 7 Starter. [Author's note: Windows 7 should be a free upgrade to Vista as it is mostly a necessary bugfix for a misguided release.]

Microsoft Home

Several years ago Microsoft hauled around the Microsoft Home booth to trade shows. It was a little cool. I think it was based on Bill Gates’ mansion and all of the technology in his home.

At the heart of it was Windows Media Center. Your PC was supposed to be adjacent to your TV and stereo, really be at the heart of it all, in control of your entertainment center and even your lights, HVAC, etc. Do you or any of your friends have that set up yet? I didn’t think so.

Your Kitchen

The title of this article promised that I would tie the OS battle to your kitchen and I don’t want to disappoint my loyal readers.

Google’s Chrome OS is wimpy. Microsoft’s Windows is bloated. As long as Moore’s Law holds and app developers build everything for Windows, I’ll go with a bloated OS on my main productivity device. I spend a little extra for more RAM to handle the bloat. [I also need to have Windows to test sites the way most users experience them.]

So what do I need to run my house? It sure isn’t Windows. Windows can’t even run my smartphone. [Don't get me started on Windows Mobile. (Sorry, Randy.)] I need a light OS that can handle video display including streaming over the Internet, radio and other audio, photo albums, telephony (VOIP, video or landline) with my voicemail (can you say Google Voice?), my contacts, calendar, recipes, Twitter, Facebook, sports scores, news, art, etc. Maybe it will even control the climate and lighting in my house. I might be able to call to have it turn on my settings in the house and open the garage door for me.

I want that in my kitchen. I want that with all of my TVs. I don’t want it in my bathroom (but if you do, I recommend a good, cheap tablet that should be coming in the next few years to kill the Kindle and company).

What OS do you think is going to run all of that? It’s not going to be a bloated OS that costs the hardware manufacturers money. They want to keep cost down. Less memory and an open source OS will help keep it cheap. That means the sticker on the front just might say “Powered by Google Chrome”.

Talk amongst yourselves

I’ll leave you with a question: Why does Google have Chrome OS and Android? Can’t my Android G1 do everything I need my house to do?

Many people in technology hate the thought of government regulation. We do a better job policing ourselves than to have bureaucrats who don’t understand what we do regulate that which they don’t understand, not to mention if politicians start to make deals about completely unrelated issues to get it passed. This is the first of several posts about tech monopolies. I’ll start with a tech monopoly that is only hurting itself and its customers.

A look back to AT&T

In the 1990′s, the Federal government broke up AT&T, a massive telecom monopoly. Was it the right thing to do? I’d say so. Immediately following consumers were given choice at a lower cost. In addition, AT&T had been holding back technology that had been ready to roll out for a few years. The rest, as they say, is history.

History repeats itself

The Humpty Dumpty that was the old AT&T has been significantly put back together again by SBC which bought several of the old Baby Bells. We still have choice in long distance. We can still choose ISPs (although if you want DSL and are in AT&T’s territory, you are required to have an AT&T phone line… don’t get me started on that one.)

While AT&T doesn’t have a monopoly on much, it does have one: iPhone service.

Reduce your usage

This last week, AT&T’s CEO asked iPhone users (specifically in San Francisco and New York) to cut down their usage. SRSLY?!? According to the Wall Street Journal:

With about 3% of smart-phone customers driving 40% of data traffic, AT&T is considering incentives to keep those subscribers from hampering the experience for everyone else, he said. “You can rest assured that we’re very sure we can address it in a way that’s consistent with net-neutrality and FCC regulations.”

There is a simple solution for that: Send them to Verizon Wireless! Verizon wants iPhone users and iPhone users are begging to return to Verizon and its robust 3G network that can handle all that they do. Oh, but wait a minute… AT&T can’t do that because then 99.9% of all iPhone users will cancel their contracts and go to Verizon leaving AT&T with a ghost town 3G network and plenty of extra bandwidth.

Note to AT&T: Suck it up. Those 3% are also the evangelists who drive up your iPhone subscriber numbers. That is the cost of doing business. Better than trying to fire your best customers, spend the money that Verizon spent on building its 3G network. AT&T’s coverage was bad in LA under every single name it has had from LA Cellular to Cingular to AT&T. It is an interesting strategy to blame your customers for your company’s failings.

According to the New York Times:

Consumer Reports has just released its annual survey of cellphone service, and its respondents collectively agree with me about the rankings: AT&T occupies the bottom and Verizon, the top.

Fire your customers!

Maybe AT&T is looking at how in 2007, Sprint fired a small number of customers who called in for support too often. That is very different from this situation. Those were typical customers using basic phones. The iPhone is a monopoly that AT&T is terrified of losing. Make it a good experience or raise the white flag.

You know I have to write it… THERE’S A MAP FOR THAT!

A note to Cashbaq members

As many of you know, I am the CEO of Cashbaq, a loyalty shopping site that offers cash back, coupons, deals and reviews for 3,000 online stores and services. I have a simple message for you:

That is the message that most good companies have for users. Of course, if you are using the service in a way it wasn’t intended (i.e. fraud), we don’t want you. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T Mobility, should note that the 3% he wants to fire are using the service precisely how it was designed, just more than he wants.

Cashbaq is designed for you to shop at 3,000 online stores and services so go ahead… SHOP MORE!

Kara Swisher wrote about how she thought one of the latest Verizon Droid ads was bashing women and gays. Uh, no, not really. Maybe I’m the target. I love my G1 and would switch to Droid if it had a better thumbpad. I absolutely love the other Verizon ads. “There’s an app for that” and “iDont” are brilliant!

The use of mannequins does not equal gay bashing. Referring to beauty does not equal woman bashing. It is an admission that the Droid ain’t as pretty as the iPhone. It isn’t and anyone with any aesthetic knows that. The ad even says they built a robot not a beauty queen. I’ve heard many women bash beauty queens for being vapid and brainless. The iPhone is as gorgeous a phone as has ever been created by man (or woman… oops). [You have to read a bit to find my analogy that I am sure Kara will find just as offensive.]

The App phone battle heats up

There has been a lot of talk about Droid vs. iPhone. Right now it looks to be a foregone conclusion that Palm is soon-to-die; the Sidekick won’t survive not one but two complete wipeouts of user data; Windows Mobile will continue on Microsoft’s life support only because Microsoft can afford it, not because it is any good (kind of like most Microsoft products); and Blackberry will continue as long as it is the easy-to-use darling of corporate IT groups (I think most housewives have moved to iPhone).

For full disclosure, I have neither an iPhone or a Droid. I have the Android G1 which is on Android 1.6 and unfortunately T-Mobile. I paid for it myself. No one sends me phones. [That's for the FTC.]

I had 4 Sidekicks prior to the G1 (I, II, III and the first LX). It seems you can only drop your phone so many times so it was time to upgrade. I looked at the G1. Similar amazing thumbpad as the Sidekick. I require an excellent thumbpad on my phone and use it at speeds that most people wish they could type with 10 fingers. I loved that it was open. It had some flaws but I could see the future and I was willing to wait. Plus, it was nice that there was an OS upgrade path. A couple of years ago I tried the HTC Touch Pro. It is almost the same form factor as the G1 but runs Windows Mobile. I found that it did everything well except phone, e-mail and chat. Enough said.

I didn’t get an iPhone for 3 reasons:

1. As I stated above, I drop my phones… a lot. The iPhone is a piece of glass. I don’t care if I can get it replaced or not. I don’t want to more than every year or 18 months. I don’t have time to deal with that.
2. The iPhone is only on AT&T. I’ve had AT&T and it sucked every time. I know, I know, I have been on T-Mobile for years with the Sidekick and G1 and have carried a simple Sprint phone for voice but I want a single phone and will get there next year… just not on AT&T. I want Verizon!
3. Again, as stated above, I require an excellent thumbpad. It doesn’t matter what you say about an on-screen keyboard. They don’t replace an excellent thumbpad and they use up half of the screen real estate. As for the thumbpad itself, I’m not talking about that little one on Blackberries and Treos. I’m talking about 5 flowing rows of offset keys. The @ and . right next to the spacebar. Shift, alt, and menu. Numbers at a single click of a key. Mmmmmm, luscious!I’ve read blogs, tweets, etc. ad infinitum over the last week. There are fanboys and fangirls of both the iPhone and Droid. They insist that one is better than the other. I generally think that technology has to suit you and your needs and there is no single answer for everyone. Android suits me. I obviously am a fan while I remain a fan of the iPhone as well.

Are you hot or not? Cheerleader or nerd?

Simply put, the iPhone is like a hot cheerleader in high school. She is absolutely beautiful and not only does everyone else know it, she knows it too. She has the right lines and seems to shimmer in the right light. She flips her hair to flirt and draws you in. She makes sure not to offend you (except maybe passing gas on occasion… yeah, I had to bring up the fart apps). She isn’t the brightest person; in fact, she’s downright simple in what she thinks so she says little. Everyone wants her and wants to be around her.

Then there is the nerd. He doesn’t have the looks but for the senior prom, his best friend makes sure he gets dressed to show everyone what he can be. He isn’t as polished. He says the wrong things. He is forced to hang out with the geeks. He doesn’t have the car and other material objects that the cheerleader has… but he will.

That’s right, at some point, the cheerleader loses her looks and the nerd winds up the richest man in the world. So is the future of Android and iPhone. The iPhone is a thing of beauty. It belongs in a museum. The way the apps work never fails to amaze me. They flow like nothing else. Even the Mac doesn’t compare. Have you seen the MLB app? WOW! I want one.

Android doesn’t have as many apps and they simply aren’t as polished. The UI isn’t as elegant as iPhone apps. Yeah Google Sky Maps and NRU are really cool but they don’t look as cool as so many iPhone apps. And then there is multi-touch. Early rumors had multi-touch on Android 2.0. Nope. Still single-touch. The iPhone is the best phone browsing experience bar none. With multi-touch and that browser… WOW! Nothing beats it. But I predict Android will match it within the next 12 to 18 months.

Now look at the apps you really need and use. Are there really any apps you need that aren’t on Android? If you want to see productivity in action, try Gmail on an Android. Login to your Gmail account and you now have your e-mail, contacts and calendar synced between your phone and computer (and not the Microsoft/Danger version of The Cloud… we tend to believe that this one will work). If you need an old e-mail, just click the search button and you can find any e-mail in your Gmail history. Total Integration. Period. There is no substitution.

I remember a few months ago when iPhone users were talking about push alerts and which apps had them. Well, Android has it just like the Sidekick did years ago. They are amazing. Of course, they drain the battery but on Androids, unlike the iPhone, you can swap the battery. Imagine that. Just pop open the back and put in a new battery. I do it all the time.

I’ll give it a try

How many guys did you ever hear say they’d see if they liked going out with a cheerleader? Right, that number approaches zero really fast. That’s like the iPhone. No one tried it out. They get an iPhone and they love it.

I’ve read so many people who write that they are trying out the Droid to see if they like it. They have 30 days to see. That nerd is cute and I’ve heard she has some amazing tricks (think band camp). I’ll see if I like dating her better than the cheerleader. And in this case, I know the cool kids will welcome me back if I change my mind.

Why not upgrade to Droid?

I wanted to upgrade to Droid. Just being able to dump T-Mobile and Sprint for Verizon seemed like enough. But Motorola dropped the ball on the thumbpad. The screen is better. More memory (but still limited on the memory allocated to apps so no cool games like the iPhone). Faster Chip. Better headset jack. Google Navigation (which we got on Android 1.6 a few weeks later). So much more.

If the Droid were the only thing coming, I’d be on board, especially now that it looks like the G1 is sticking with Android 1.6 and not going to 2.0. But there is choice. Verizon already has another Android phone and I am sure there will be more. HTC makes the best phones on the market. I can give it 6 months to see what else comes out. You see, next year there will be 20 Android phones and they will be on every major carrier in the country. And there still will be only one iPhone… and it probably still will only be on AT&T.

It’s deja vu all over again

In 1994 we had the Mac (that is we as the world and me as an individual who had owned only Apple computers until 1996) which was a great computer and operating system. And then we had PCs running Windows 3.1. I could never figure out why anyone would use Windows 3.1. Windows 95 changed everything. Yeah it still sucked but it was good enough and had a real GUI. [Note that in the last 14 years Microsoft has managed to take Windows backward 88 versions with its latest release.]

The Mac faced problems because it was more expensive and, most of all, it was a closed platform. Yeah, it sounds familiar. iPhone is closed and Android is open. We again see Steve Job’s control freakish behavior on the iPhone and this time it is the iPhone with worms and not other app phones. This argument has been around for a while. Robert Scoble recently wrote about it as well. It needs to be said as it is so appropriate. It looks like Apple is going to do well but will lose out a bit.

Scoble also wrote about why he doesn’t think that the Droid is a great product. He thinks it is better than the iPhone for voice (both call quality and having Google Voice) but thinks the apps aren’t as polished as the iPhone. (He quotes Mike Arrington of TechCrunch who uses his Droid as more of a phone).

Who wins?

Here’s the best part: The real winner in all of this is the consumer. Not only do we finally have two fantastic choices but we now have two fierce competitors who will drive each other. iPhones will improve more and faster thanks to Android (and might even show up on Verizon).

Let the cool kids hang out with the cheerleader. I’m going to go over there and see what the nerds are doing next weekend.

A lot is being written about next year’s Google’s Chrome OS bringing the end of Microsoft… and for good reason.

Craigslist has revenue of $100 million. That’s amazing for such a small company. What’s more amazing is that Craigslist is pretty much all that is left of the $4 BILLION classifieds business. By giving most of it away for free, Craigslist helped in the demise of big newspapers.

Fred Wilson dubbed this model the freemium: Offer your service for free and then charge on the upsell. It works well for many businesses on the Web.

Google has the advantage of having massive revenue from paid search. It funds everything else (kind of like men’s football and basketball generating revenue for most of the other teams on college campuses).

Google has had its eye on Redmond for several years. What was the best way to kill Microsoft? Not to steal its revenue but to evaporate it. Google has taken a two-pronged attack: Google Docs and Chrome OS.

Rumor is that Google Docs will finally be a viable competitor to MS Office next year. How much does it cost to use Google Docs? Oh, nothing… it’s free. It will never do as much as Office but that is a great thing for many people. Imagine your computer running fast with few crashes. Imagine not having a company intent on filling your hard drive.

Chrome OS is due out next year and has the same price tag: Free.

Windows and Office are massive profit centers for Microsoft. Losing those would be like losing, well, everything.

The Break Up of Microsoft

Back when the DOJ was looking into antitrust issues at Microsoft, I argued that the company should be broken up into 4 companies: OS (Windows), Productivity (Office and related software), Web (MSN) and Back office (pretty much everything else). The funny thing was, I thought that Internet Explorer belonged with the OS as it was where the OS was going. I figured that at some point I’d turn on my computer and just see IE (or Windows Explorer as they oddly change the name when I look for files).

The talk today is that Chrome OS doesn’t have a desktop. Sure it does… it’s just displayed inside the browser the way it seemed Microsoft was going years ago. Only Microsoft decided to be more like GM.

Too Big to Fail?

We’ve heard that phrase about the government bailing out banks, car manufacturers and the like. Is Microsoft too big to fail? Yeah, it also has too much cash in the bank. It’s a beast and it will continue to re-form (but probably not reform). Windows Mobile remains only because it’s Microsoft. With tens of billions of dollars in Microsoft Treasury (expect to see dividends slow to a trickle), Microsoft will be around for a long time. It just may be a slow fade.

Technology Half-Life

I remember a blog post a couple of years ago about the half-life of tech companies. [I think it was written by Josh Kopelman of First Round nut I can't find it online. If you have a link, please post it.] IBM ruled for 30 years. Microsoft for 15. It was written when Google had reigned for around 7 years. Maybe the dates were off or maybe Google has found the Tech Fountain of Youth. In any event, this is going to be one helluva fight!

DealTaker launched an interesting Twitter tool: @couponbot. If you reply (OK, it’s not really a reply but if you start a tweet with an @, it’s considered a reply) to @couponbot with a store name, you get up to 10 return tweets with links to pages on DealTaker that may have a coupon you are looking for.

If I had spare time and a devious heart (or just wanted to mess with @kstraw), I’d build a simple tool that pulled the @couponbot feed and replied with a link to the store on Cashbaq with the amount that the tweep could save by shopping through Cashbaq. Wait, that would only take a day or two to code. Note to coders…

I’m not trying to mess with DealTaker or stifle creative uses of Twitter so much as musing over the misuse and abuse of technology. It doesn’t take long to figure this one out and @couponbot gives me amazing targeting for almost no cost. The more successful @couponbot becomes, the more free Cashbaq members I could get. There are enough loyalty sites out there that someone is going to try it.

So, should I build it?

One of the great things about Twitter is that the community doesn’t wait for Twitter Inc. to get it. The community creates the conventions it needs. For instance, the RT has been around for it seems all time in the Twittersphere. I recently criticized Twitter Inc. for not updating its site in ages and soon after we got Lists and now the Retweet (coming soon as reported by Mashable).

statustalker

No, I’m not taking credit for it for Twitter adding the Retweet. However, I might take credit for Facebook adding replies to comments. That is accepted as commonplace now and it seems to have increased interaction on Facebook. Duh! A couple of years ago, Craig Ogg, Keith Bussell and I create statustalker. It was an app to, well, enable Facebook members to comment on their friends statuses. It failed to gain much adoption but it may have sparked Facebook to add the functionality. We were unable to have the comments right below the status itself in the main body of the page but we did have better threading similar to what you see in blog comments and forums. Our app was religated to have comments in the right column and on a separate page. It also allowed for a better way to read your friends’ statuses, kind of like how the feed was before the last upgrade and how most smartphone apps treat the feed. It died a quick death. We were probably one round of beers away from thinking up FriendFeed. Oops.

Community Intervention & then Better Integration

So the Twitter community created the RT. It was used in tweets whether on twitter.com or via and app or other website using the Twitter API. It was sooooo simple. Apps and the other sites made it even easier by having a Retweet button that add the RT and user being retweeted.

Just as Facebook had more control over presentation than we did for statustalker, Twitter has better integration for retweet. Marketing Shindig has some great screenshots of the new retweet functionality. It includes showing your friends who have retweeted a tweet, an icon to show that it’s a retweet and, yes the much-needed Retweet link!

While I think that this is a great feature, I don’t think that it will increase the number of retweets the way status comments helped increase the volume of status updates on Facebook. What remains to be seen is if Twitter can start to get more users to twitter.com and away from apps and other sites.

There isn’t an app for that!

As you can see, it’s amazing what a company can do with $130 million in the bank. Do you think @ev, @biz and team can give us official Twitter apps for Android, Blackberry and the iPhone?

I just received the call informing me that Yahoo has decided to kill Paid Inclusion (originally Inktomi) on December 31, 2009. This isn’t a surprise to anyone who has been watching Yahoo’s failure in search. With Microsoft taking over Yahoo’s search for the next 10 years (did Carol Bartz really sign that deal?!?), there was no way that Paid Inclusion would continue. Microsoft was not going to integrate Yahoo’s PI results into its search results and there might not have been enough money to share to cover the development costs and all of the third parties who are involved in the Paid Inclusion ecosystem.

Farewell Paid Inclusion. It’s been fun (and profitable!)

Last week I wrote that I think that Twitter is not worth the $1 billion valuation that it received last month in its latest round of funding. That analysis was based on the simple fundamental of top line revenue… and Twitter’s complete lack of it today and apparent lack of it any time in the near future.

Evan, Biz and the entire Twitter executive team know this. T. Rowe Price and especially the original VCs know this. So how did these smart folks decide to invest $100 billion (yes, of other people’s money, I know) into this business and why would the execs have turned down the rumored $500 million offers from Google and Facebook?

140 words or less

I wish I could say that I have internal Twitter documents of the investor presentation. As I don’t, I am going to have to make this up…

Here is the entire presentation made to investors in the form of a tweet:

@ev: GOOG & Bing need realtime search. $$$ in bank. GOOG overpaid $1BB 4 YouTube. 2010 sale 4 $2BB+

There you have it. I predict that Twitter will sell (most likely to Google) for $2 billion or more in 2010 and will have no revenue earned at the time of the sale. There will be a bidding war with Microsoft. Facebook may join in. No one else will.

This is about search, not microblogging. Google has enough services that it doesn’t make any money from directly. Twitter would be a nice addition to the stable.

Why, you ask?

Google is getting better at real-time search. Google has been following trends for years. Google has smart engineers. What Google can’t do is have Googlebot be everywhere at once. Today it is impossible to crawl every page on the Internet every second or even minute. What’s your site’s crawl rate in Google Webmaster Tools?

Imagine what Google (or possibly Bing) can do to tweak algorithms, crawlers, search suggestion tools, news, etc. with instantaneous data. The minute something trends in Google’s Twitter, search results and the rest kick into action.

SPAM, you say? Google is teeming with fraud squad teams for search (organic and paid), e-mail, news, blogs, etc. who know how this works and have algorithm that can be modified to work for microblogging.

Exclusivity

The remaining question is, does Google (yeah, or Bing) need this and can it be protected? TweetMeme is a great service. There are others like it. They search Twitter better than Twitter. Can Google use the Twitter API to get every tweet as it is tweeted without spending billions?

If Google buys Twitter, can it limit the API so Bing (and other websites and apps) can’t get the instant search gratification?

New Year’s Resolution

For 2010, I resolve to come up with a business that will never make a penny and can sell to a search engine for billions of dollars.

T-Mobile today announced that the Microsoft/Danger lost all personal data of Sidekick users that was stored on its servers. Ah, life in the storm cloud.

I was a longtime Sidekick user. I migrated from the original Sidekick to the Sidekick 2 to the Sidekick 3 to the first Sidekick LX. When my LX was on its last leg and the new LX came out, I tried the Android G1. All I can say is that there is a reason that the Sidekick will soon disappear.

A Brief History of the Sidekick

The Sidekick hardware is made by Sharp and the OS is by Danger, a company that Microsoft acquired last year. It was a sensible acquisition. I tried a an HTC phone with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. The phone was incredible. [Note that the Andoid G1 (aka the Googlephone) is built by HTC under the supervision of the designer of the Sidekick.] As for the OS, I found that it was great for everything but phone, e-mail and chat, the 3 things I need most. Basically, Windows Mobile does everything but does almost none of it well. The Sidekick is an extremely limited platform that does almost nothing and general does it extremely well. I cannot find a phone-based chat app that matches the Sidekick’s chat on any OS.

Why this outage is so bad

Danger’s backing up users’ data on its servers was a brilliant idea. It gave the Sidekick access to the Cloud before anyone was talking about cloud computing. While others had to worry about losing their data with their phone, Sidekick users did not. The cost of this was a limitation on the quantity of data such as the number of contacts (2,000) and appointments (1,000… painfully small).

I was able to tolerate those limitations for the amazing thumbpad that allowed me to type with my thumbs faster than most people type with 10 fingers (or how ever many they use to type / hunt-and-peck). It became unbearable with the introduction of Windows Vista.

Oh, and T-Mobile hasn’t offered anything to users for the lost data or time without service. Short sale?

Not on our flagship OS

Danger relied on Intellisync for syncing the phone to a user’s computer. I used Outlook. The phone synced magically to the Danger servers with no action required from me. I used the Intellisync app to sync to Windows. No cables. No mess. Until Vista came out. While Microsoft bought Danger, Nokia bought Intellisync. Nokia didn’t seem to think it was necessary to help a competitor’s phone. There were a couple of weeks when it started to work but then it stopped again. That was enough to drive me into the arms of another phone. Farewell Sidekick.

Dark Cloud moving in

Android is a logical migration for Sidekick users. Let’s face it… the Sidekick is a toy for kids. I always recognized that and worked around it. The Sidekick gave me that amazing thumbpad and had the basic functions I needed, long before others caught up.

My e-mail, contacts, appointments, etc. are all on Gmail and stored by Google. The interface for them is Gmail which I now use for everything on every device. That’s much better than Danger’s limited, clunky interface. Also, the Sidekick limits users to 200 e-mails on the phone. I have access to every single e-mail in my Gmail account on my G1.

Apps on Android are close to the iPhone (some are better and not yet on Apple) and will be on par with the iPhone next year. Plus, every carrier will have Android phones next year when there are 20 on the market. There will still be a single iPhone, it will still have a single button and it won’t have a thumbpad. I’m all for simplicity but I also like functionality and the choice of how to use the device the way I want to.

Call the coroner

The Sidekick’s end is near. It will be thrown on the heap of old technology with Atari, Apple’s Newton (which was a little too early) and followed soon by Palm.

There is a serious battle to be waged between the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Note that Windows Mobile is on that list only because it is Microsoft and Microsoft is going to throw a lot of money at it.

Sidekick, thanks for the memories. I’ll never forget you.

I’ve limited the number of people I follow on Twitter. I just passed 150 and it seems like too many. I’m sure it’s time to look at desktop apps or other websites to help me manage my Twitter reading but I usually read on my G1 with Twitdroid (agreed to be the best Android Twitter app… of course, no official app from Twitter) and that is usually in down time so it’s OK. [Please suggest tools for me to try below. I'll review them as I use them.]

I find people to follow in the usual ways, most often through friends or people whose opinion I respect (yes, some fall into both categories) retweeting or recommending a follow. I often follow, see if I like I what I read for a few days, and then keep it or unfollow.

You see, there’s this Guy…

I respect Guy Kawasaki. He is an UCLA Anderson alum like me. I saw him give the keynote at CJU 2008. His career speaks for itself. So don’t read the following in any way as an attack on Guy. I figure out how things work by playing with them and asking questions. I find that in many cases, the questions are more important than the answers. In this case, I am trying to understand self-retweets and find a solution.

I started following Guy the week before last. I can’t decide if I want to continue following him. He has interesting tweets but he uses Twitter differently than anyone else I follow.

Guy tweets the same tweets numerous times for days. I don’t have exact figures of how many times or over what period of time.

I hate it. I hate it because I get the same tweet over and over and there is no indication that it’s a repeat tweet. I don’t want to read the same thing 5 times when I’ve already seen it before 4 of those times… and that can happen 10 or more times a day!

Ask the Twittersphere

It seemed like the best way to get an understanding of this practice was to ask my Twitter followers, many of whom know better than I about these things. So I asked:

TheDavidLewis: Why does @GuyKawasaki tweet the same thing multiple times?

First came the humorous comment from a friend:

Is he stuttering?

Then came a tweet that expressed what I was thinking:

why are you still following him – too many tweets – borders on white noise

Then came the reply tweets from Guy and a brief back-and-forth:

GuysReplies: @TheDavidLewis same reason CNN and ESPN run the same stories over and over

GuysReplies: @TheDavidLewis I schedule them 24 hrs in advance at one time

TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies When you retweet yourself, why don’t you put RT in front of tweets for tweeps who read all day and want a fresh feed?

GuysReplies @TheDavidLewis and people would accuse me if trying to game rt sites

TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies How about starting a new trend with putting RTme at the start so RT sites don’t get confused? Others will follow your lead.

TheDavidLewis: @GuysReplies Also that is only 4 characters so it would save on having to put your whole name/handle there

Tweet & Retweet were sitting in a boat, Tweet fell out. Who was left?

I know that Guy is not the only person self-retweeting. I hadn’t thought of it the way he was looking at it. Now that I’ve thought about it I still don’t agree. I think that using the TV metaphor is wrong. I follow @CNNbrk on Twitter and don’t recall ever seeing a duplicate tweet or self-retweet. I get that CNN repeats stories on TV but that is a different medium and CNN views it that way. I only saw 1 duplicate story when I scanned ESPN’s tweets.

I choose to watch CNN when I want to watch it. It’s there when I want it and when I watch, it is the only programming on my TV (I do not have PIP and don’t want it and I have no more than 1 TV in any room). If they repeat a story, I change. I watch little TV (I used to so don’t take that as a judgment, just a time constraint) so it’s not much of an issue.

Twitter is different. I get a feed in real-time. It is an aggregated feed of all of the people/entities I follow. I scan some and read some. I click through some links. I know that it is real-time… except for Guy.

Some people have commented that the value of Twitter is in the potential to mine real-time information. This practice skews that as well.

I am leaning toward unfollowing Guy. I do not think so much of myself to assume that it will matter to Guy if one guy unfollows him. I am sure that many tweeps have. The issue is what is more important: To keep the folks who read tweets throughout the day or retweet yourself so that potentially more of your (approximately 180,000 for Guy) followers read it? I could very well be an outlier and there is no reason for Guy to spend time trying to fix it. But what if there is an easy solution?

Tweets with no repeats

Guy listened and Guy replied. I found just found this in Guy’s feed.

@GuysReplies: How to get my tweets with no repeats: http://holykaw.alltop.com/rss.xml

While I appreciate the gesture, I don’t want an RSS feed. I am using Twitter. I let other people filter out the noise of RSS for me. I’m sure that I miss a lot of great articles but I have no choice based on my schedule. Guy is one of those people who reads a lot and recommends the best of what he finds. I see value in that. The question is whether there is enough value to read all of his retweets. [Yes, I know that Guy is using Twitter to build Alltop. I do not fault him in that as there is value in what he is doing. He adds to conversations.]

A scoop of chocolate. A scoop of vanilla. Don’t waste my time.

The solution seems to be a new tag. I propose RTme. It is only 4 characters (plus a space to make it 5) which is fewer than if I had to add RT @TheDavidLewis. It would be a quick way to tell what I’ve already read. Hell, I’d be happy with a simple * at the beginning of a repeated tweet.

For now, I’m going to try using RTme and retweeting a bit. I think it would be more effective for Guy to start the trend but I’ll give it a try. You know I’ll have to RTme this article.

There have been myriad articles written recently about why Twitter is or is not worth the $1,000,000,000 valuation it just received in its latest round of funding (10% for $100,000,000 in case you missed it).

[Note: As a Twitter neophyte I wrote about my first impressions upon tweeting and why I think you should try Twitter for two weeks.]

Vinny Lingham thought it was a sound investment if the investors have a liquidation preference. Of course, that assumes liquidation value of at least $100 million. Chris Dixon reminds us not to forget that the VCs take home $2 million per year in carry and describes the destruction of VC funding.

I’ve read tweets from people concerned that we are in the middle of Bubble 2.0. To them I say that bubbles are a necessary part of the business cycle. Just make sure you are well positioned for the inevitable bust.

I haven’t decided if this will look like a sound investment in the end but am leaning toward Twitter not being worth $1 billion today. Twitter definitely has taken off this year and might even be in the mainstream (limited user base but exposure on every news network and every store just like Facebook). Take a look at this graph:

Courtesy of Getting Awesome – Rishi’s Blog

My addition to the debate: An analogy

I liken Twitter the service to a river and Twitter Inc. to the Army Corp of Engineers… without the support of the US taxpayers.

Twitter is a river in the middle of a hurricane. The levees that the Engineers are putting up are servers, lots and lots of servers. The Fail Whale is the sign of weak levees. Fortunately, we haven’t seen a Hurricane Katrina yet on Twitter (even MJ didn’t do that).

You’d think it would be great to have control of this river and this abundant water supply (I live in a coastal desert so I appreciate rivers and water). But, alas, Twitter has no control of the river, just the responsibility to keep it flowing. Anyone with a bucket can dip in and take water. Farmers regularly stick pumps in and take water. They also put water in. In other words, with the API, there are mobile apps, desktop apps, websites, etc. that have users’ attention when they are tweeting. If there is an advertising opportunity, it goes to the app provider, not Twitter.

We don’t need no stinking business model

Can Twitter start charging users. No way… at least not for the basic service. This is an easy service to replicate.

Can Twitter become a freemium service where it lets everyone join for free and then charges for extras? Hmmm, there could be some services but how many users would be willing to pay for them? I know that there are a lot of tweeps out there but it takes a lot of revenue to justify a $1 billion valuation… and that needs to grow for investors to be satisfied. [Please suggest ideas in the comment section for services that Twitter can charge for.]

Can Twitter start charging the apps? Doubtful but it may be possible.

So what is Twitters business model? Ya got me. As the Citywide Change Bank said in its SNL commercial, The answer is simple: Volume.

#fail-ure to innovate

Why have third party Twitter apps taken off? This isn’t like Facebook where the possibilities are endless. On Twitter, only the content flow is endless. The apps are successful because Twitter has to spend all of its resources on keeping up with the flow.

How long has retweeting (RT) been a standard on Twitter? Yeah, that long. Now show me where on twitter.com I can hit a simple retweet link/icon. I can’t find it. I can reply or make a tweet a favorite. #fail

How about official Twitter iPhone, Android, Bluetooth, et al apps?!? Isn’t there a rumor of an iPhone app from Twitter? I think my mother wrote a Twitter app for her iPhone. (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration but you get my point.)

Evan’s latest announcement

Last week, Evan Williams, CEO and co-founder of Twitter, was interviewed by CBS News. He is quoted as saying “We’re focused on building the value for awhile. When it comes to prioritization, we value the things that best secure twitter and the things twitter does best.”

Again, this is great news for everyone dipping into the River Twitter. The water is going to be purified. That means that everyone but Twitter might be able to charge more for the water and, better yet, Twitter has no plans to compete at the monetization!

Yesterday Evan tweeted Wow, TBUZZ is pretty hot: http://bit.ly/VT1sI. TBUZZ is a new service by arc90 for Twitter users. If anyone makes money off of it, it will be arc90 and not Twitter.

It is good that the investors, such as T. Rowe Price, have long horizons for their investments. Traditional tech VCs would force out the execs if they heard this.

The good news is that with more than $100 million in the bank, if Evan and the other execs spend wisely, they will be able to reinvent Twitter multiple times before they find a revenue model.

Where’s the beef

So if I understand this correctly, Twitter has huge infrastructure costs and no revenue for the foreseeable future. How does that work?

Back in 1999 when I was working at GoTo.com (recently killed by Carol Bartz), my Uncle Rick asked me about all of these Web companies that made no money and why they had such massive valuations. He was Old Skool. He thought that companies should have real revenue. I should have listened more and shorted a lot of companies.

Playing with other people’s money

If it turns out that being the caretaker of a massive river has (enormous?) value, then more power to Twitter’s investors. I’m putting my money elsewhere. If you ask me, this $100 million investment is The Flop and we’ll have to wait until The River to see if the investors win the pot.