As we’ve described in a number of recent posts — including one about my ongoing “love-hate” relationship with the service — Twitter has been going through a transformation of sorts recently, closing down access to the network by third-party apps and services, controlling more of the content that flows through the system, and generally irritating developers (and in many cases users). One man who knows a lot about this evolution from the inside is former CEO and co-founder Evan Williams, and he took issue on Thursday with a comment I made in one of my posts about how users and third-party apps were responsible for much of the initial growth of the network.
Some of the comments during a back-and-forth discussion we had on Twitter were interesting, so I thought I would excerpt them here, and also include a Storify collection of the debate as well.
During his time as Twitter’s CEO, Williams had to deal with the beginnings of Twitter’s transformation from a cool project into an actual revenue-generating company, as it started to acquire third-party apps and caused a backlash among developers that is very similar to the one it is facing today. Williams left Twitter in 2010 when he was replaced by Dick Costolo, and formed a startup incubator called Obvious Corp. with former Twitter colleague Biz Stone (which recently launched a new-media publishing platform called Medium) but the former CEO has remained an advisor to the company and a board member.
While Twitter was trying to figure out in 2010 which external services it wanted to incorporate and which it wanted to leave alone — a process that angel investor Chris Dixon compared to “a drunk guy with an Uzi” — Williams admitted that the company had screwed up its relationship with developers, and Twitter held a whole conference for developers called Chirp that was supposed to try and repair that relationship. In reality, however, the tensions between where Twitter wanted the company to go and how that was going to affect third-party apps remained just below the surface, and erupted again recently after moves like the announcement of new API rules and the shutting off of features to services like Tumblr and Instagram.
What role has the ecosystem played?
Our Twitter discussion started when Williams mentioned a phrase from my recent post about the company’s ongoing struggle with being open vs. controlling the network. I argued that much of the early power and growth of the network came from being open, since many of the things we associated with Twitter — such as the @ mention for users, the hashtag, and even the retweet — were not developed by the company but came from the users themselves, in many cases assisted by third-party apps. But Williams said that this influence is “a common myth but completely overblown”:
@mathewi "virtually all of the network’s power and growth has come from outside the company itself"—a common myth but completely overblown — Evan Williams (@ev) September 06, 2012
At this point, Anil Dash — who used to work for blogging platform Six Apart and now has a media consulting firm — agreed with Williams that the focus on how much of a role third-party apps played in Twitter’s success is overstated:
@mathewi I think the "Twitter was made by third party things" is mostly nerd triumphalism, not factual. Shaq did more than any indie app. — Anil Dash (@anildash) September 06, 2012
Dash also noted that some of the elements we associate with Twitter — even hashtags, which Chris Messina (now of Google) was the first to use on Twitter — were used in other ways on the internet before Twitter came along, and others noted that the @ symbol was also used on services such as Internet Relay Chat. Williams then pointed out that if it wasn’t for the company’s decision to incorporate and support those features, they would never have become part of Twitter to begin with.
@mathewi @anildash This is how products evolve. You have 1M ideas—some come from usage, some from inside. You pick and choose carefully. — Evan Williams (@ev) September 06, 2012
I tried to argue that the point wasn’t to try and determine which played a larger role, the ecosystem or Twitter itself and the decisions it made (some of which irritated users, such as the decision to implement retweets in a different way). The point for me is that the relationship between users — and third-party services — and Twitter has always been much more symbiotic than it has a traditional company-user dynamic. And a big part of that was a wide-open API that let tweets flow wherever they wanted to, something Twitter has been busy shutting down.
Ethan Kaplan, a developer who is a vice-president at Live Nation and used to work for Warner Brothers Records, put it well when he said that all developers really want is for Twitter to admit the relationship is symbiotic, rather than parasitic:
@mathewi @chrismessina ultimately what we all want is twitter to stop treating their ecosystem as parasitic. It isn’t. It’s symbiotic. — Ethan Kaplan (@ethank) September 06, 2012
And Chris Messina — who noted that the third-party app Tweetie (which Twitter ultimately acquired and turned into the official iPhone app) was the first to support hashtags — said that one of the things the company has failed to do is to make it clear who it is making all of its recent changes for. As I’ve pointed out before, it argues that it is doing so for users, but is that really the case? I have to admit that I’m not convinced.
@ethank @mathewi is it that? It feels like there's not sufficient transparency behind the motivation for the changes. Who're they *for*? — Chris Messina™ (@chrismessina) September 06, 2012
I’ve embedded the full version of the Storify below, with as many of the comments as I could find (apologies to those whose contributions I missed). Interestingly enough, Twitter has said that the new API rules aren’t meant to apply to services like Storify, even though the company seems to fall into the wrong quadrant of customer product lead Michael Sippey’s by-now-infamous chart.
Note: Evan Williams will be speaking at GigaOM’s RoadMap conference in San Francisco in November, where I will be interviewing him about the future of media online and other topics. You can register for the event here.
[ View the story "Evan Williams on Twitter and its ecosystem" on Storify] Evan Williams on Twitter and its ecosystem
Storified by Mathew Ingram · Thu, Sep 06 2012 14:36:54
@mathewi "virtually all of the network’s power and growth has come from outside the company itself"—a common myth but completely overblownEvan Williams
@ev: fair enough — would you say a majority? or any at all? I’m thinking of key features like the hashtag, @ mentions, retweets, etc.Mathew Ingram
@mathewi Absolutely, the ideas that led to those features came from usage (not unusual, BTW). Not sure how/if that means "power and growth."Evan Williams
@ev: my argument — and it’s just an argument — is that those features and third-party apps fueled a lot of Twitter’s growth. you disagree?Mathew Ingram
@mathewi "A lot" is hard to argue with. But your conflating features, which were designed and built into Twitter, not taken whole cloth…Evan Williams
@mathewi …and third-party apps is stretching my ability to respond in <140. In a nutshell, both are important…but widely exaggerated.Evan Williams
@mathewi I think the "Twitter was made by third party things" is mostly nerd triumphalism, not factual. Shaq did more than any indie app.Anil Dash
@Besvinick @anildash: I agree — but the influence of third-party apps, which I think was important, was only part of my point.Mathew Ingram
@mathewi @anildash I think 3rd party apps have been more critical to enterprise adoption, which is arguably more important than consumerAdam Besvinick
@ev: it’s possible that the influence of both those things has been exaggerated — but I don’t think they should be underplayed eitherMathew Ingram
@mathewi Well, there’s no risk of that, given the kinds of statements you and other commentators make, which no one thinks to question.Evan Williams
@ev: which is why I am glad to have you question them :-) I’d be interested in a longer view from you about the topic as wellMathew Ingram
@ev @HilzFuld: some fairly crucial features, and all — or at least most — of the best apps. that has to have a pretty powerful effect.Mathew Ingram
@ev @mathewi 3rd-party innovation doesn’t just mean apps and tags. Users negotiated a raison d’etre for @twitter that it couldn’t have led.Ian Andrew Bell
@mathewi @ev @hilzfuld Sure, @chrismessina thought up hashtags, but others did slashtags, etc. Only Twitter’s adoption made them meaningful.Anil Dash
@anildash @chrismessina @mathewi @ev @blaine Similarly for @ to address users, which was common on BBS, forums & IRC long before Twitter.Faruk Ateş
@ev @mathewi Suspect that much of the push-back comes from the disruption of the Twitter ecosystem. Ironic, no?FRED MCCLIMANS
@anildash @ev: yes, Twitter’s adoption made them meaningful — but what would there be if those features had not emerged?Mathew Ingram
@anildash @ev: totally agree — I am saying one would not have happened without the other, not that one is all-important.Mathew Ingram
@mathewi @anildash Who knows what there would be, but it’s not like we were sitting around with no ideas.Evan Williams
@mathewi @anildash This is how products evolve. You have 1M ideas—some come from usage, some from inside. You pick and choose carefully.Evan Williams
@ev @anildash: and I agree, that process of picking and implementing is crucial. I am not trying to denigrate that in any wayMathew Ingram
@mathewi It’s hubristic for me to not give users all the credit, I realize. But it’s naive for you to not recognize the Twitter team’s role.Evan Williams
@ev: I’m not saying users deserve all the credit — just trying to put recent events and the backlash into context, and that is part of itMathew Ingram
@mathewi @chrismessina ultimately what we all want is twitter to stop treating their ecosystem as parasitic. It isn’t. It’s symbiotic.Ethan Kaplan
@ethank @mathewi is it that? It feels like there’s not sufficient transparency behind the motivation for the changes. Who’re they *for*?Chris Messina™
Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Steve Jurvetson and Rosaura Ochoa


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/09/06/evan-williams-on-twitter-and-its-ecosystem/?utm_...
Cord cutting is real, and it continues to grow: You might have heard that opinion before — but not necessarily from someone in the business of selling pay TV subscriptions. However, Verizon’s director of consumer video services Maitreyi Krishnaswamy, who is responsible for the company’s FIOS TV service, said as much in an interview with The Tampa Tribune Thursday (hat tip to Karl Bode).
Asked whether cord cutting is losing steam, Krishnaswamy said:
“No, that trend is not stopping. It’s growing. The question is: Is it growing enough for us?”
Of course, many traditional TV services vendors would rather see cord cutting just go away, but Verizon seems to have a slightly different take on the matter. That’s not just because the company is rolling out a Netflix competitor in cooperation with Redbox later this year, but also because cord cutting is fundamentally changing the parameters of Verizon’s TV business. Again, Krishnaswamy:
“Is the migration to a-la-carte enough that we can go that route? It has a way more important impact that (sic) just on them. It impacts how we negotiate TV contracts with studios. It’s not something we can do overnight, but definitely something we’ve been looking at.”
Krishnaswamy didn’t spell out all the details, but here is what I read between the lines of this statement: Cord cutting isn’t just about some people not paying for TV anymore, but also about enabling new and innovative business models, including unbundled subscriptions to individual channels. And Verizon is apparently ready to take the plunge as soon as the wave is big enough.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/video/fios-tv-cord-cutting/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_mediu...
We’ve been growing the family of products that makes up Twitter for Websites, including, for example, yesterday’s launch of the ability to embed timelines on a website. As Twitter for Websites has evolved, it has improved upon many of the features we introduced with @Anywhere: Tweet box, follow, linkify a @username, sign-in, and the hovercard. As a result, we are sunsetting @Anywhere and focusing on continuing to build out Twitter for Websites.
read more
from Twitter Developers blogs https://dev.twitter.com/blog/sunsetting-anywhere

Over the past two weeks, both VMware and Parallels released new versions of their flagship virtualization software for the Mac. First on the scene was VMware Fusion 5 (US$49.99 - $99.99), and last week Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac ($79.99) arrived. Both offer faster performance, compatibility with Mountain Lion and Windows 8, and new features for ease of use. Now MacObserver's Jim Tanous has done a side-by-side comparison of the two virtual machine apps, complete with detailed benchmarks of their performance in a variety of conditions.
Tanous' detailed analysis shows that at least for the current incarnations of these two virtualization applications, Parallels Desktop 8 has the edge in terms of performance. He did see some anomalous results when running benchmarks on Windows 8 under Parallels Desktop 8, and chalked up the "too good to be true" performance figures to the way that Windows 8 is virtualized in Parallels 8.
There are a plethora of charts to illustrate the results, and I suggest that you look at them over at MacObserver. Tanous brings up a final point that "Consumers may not be happy with the yearly paid update cycles, but the fierce competition between Parallels and Fusion has led the market to a mature and capable state and consumers of both products will likely be satisfied with their performance." Parallels 8 and VMware Fusion 5 go head-to-head in benchmark testing originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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from TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/06/parallels-8-and-vmware-fusion-5-go-head-to-hea...

The Republican and Democratic National Conventions have been a coming-of-age party for the practice of politicians and outside groups paying Twitter for nationwide promoted trending topics. Promoted trends cost upwards of $100,000 each -- but is that money being wasted by the campaigns?
Romney opened the floodgates with #RomneyRyan2012 during the RNC. Later, the Republican Party and a conservative PAC, respectively, bought #AreYouBetterOff and #16TrillionFail during the DNC as part of a counter-messaging campaign.
Thursday morning, the Obama campaign joined in with #Forward2012.
A decent chunk of the responses to each promoted trend have been exactly the opposite of what the bu… Continue reading...
More About: 2012 presidential campaign, Democratic National Convention, Mitt Romney, Politics, Social Media, Twitter, US, barack obama, republican national convention



from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/obama-romney-promoted-trends-twitter/?utm_sour...
Thrive Capital, the New York VC firm led by 27-year-old Joshua Kushner, has raised $150 million for Thrive III, the firm’s third fund. The latest funding, which was drawn mostly from existing limited partners such as Princeton University, Hall Capital Partners and the Wellcome Trust, follows on $10 million raised in 2009 and another $40 million raised for Thrive’s second fund a little over a year ago. The latest fund, which took ten weeks to complete, was oversubscribed.
Thrive has been one of the hottest New York VC firms and has backed names like Instagram, Fab, Kickstarter, Warby Parker, Codeacademy and GroupMe, which sold to Skype. One of Thrive’s early bets was on Hot Potato, which, like Instagram, eventually sold to Facebook.
The new fund will give Thrive more ability to go after bigger deals. But it doesn’t change the firm’s basic strategy, which is to be geography and stage agnostic, with an eye toward backing ambitious and transformative companies in the Internet and media space.
Thrive has succeeded, in part, by getting in on some of the hottest New York deals while investing in other major non-New York start-ups, such as Instagram and Dwolla. Kushner believes that New York is still very much on the upswing though he believes opportunities are opening up in all kinds of places.
“It is evident by what has been built over the last years that New York is home to some of the most creative people in the world,” he said. ”The Internet has evolved. Individuals can build transformative businesses from anywhere. Human capital is the most important driver of change.”
Kushner, whose father was real estate magnate Charles Kushner, got the startup bug in college when he launched Vostu, an online gaming company in Brazil. Though he’s become one of the biggest VCs in the city, Kushner casts a low-key profile, avoiding a lot of publicity. That is reflected in the firm’s website, which is barely more than just a contact page.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/09/06/thrive-capital-raises-150m-for-third-fund/?utm_s...
SocialFlow, which got on the radar of marketers by helping them time their social messages, is now rolling out the second of its 1-2 punch, a paid media tool called Crescendo that is launching Thursday for Facebook. The tool is designed to help brands buy ads at the cheapest price by monitoring the changing conversations and actions of fans.
Crescendo works alongside SocialFlow’s existing optimized publisher tool now called Cadence, which helps marketers send out tweets and updates at the time that their fans are most receptive to them. With Crescendo, marketers have a cost-effective way to target consumers who are not following the brand.
The secret sauce behind Crescendo and Cadence is the way New York City-based SocialFlow understands what people are talking about and where their attention is likely to turn to over time. That allows the company to stay ahead of followers and keep sending messages that are likely to be complementary to their discussion. Now, with Crescendo, SocialFlow can use its knowledge to buy up the right keywords for Facebook ads that reflect what their most engaged fans are talking about and sharing at the moment. So instead of buying against larger buckets of expensive keywords, SocialFlow can pick off terms that are being discussed in real time and then buy them for less money.
Using SocialFlow’s dashboard, customers can target customers by geography and demographics and set how much they want to spend. And then they let Crescendo buy the right keywords automatically. This is important because as some popular conversation topics emerge, which can drive up the cost of certain words, Crescendo can move on to the next set of keywords as it anticipates the flow of attention. The dashboard shows users how much their spending is worth in terms of cost per clicks, cost per likes and other metrics.
Frank Speiser, SocialFlow’s co-founder and CEO, told me marketers can’t be expected to track every conversation and respond in real time. But with Crescendo, SocialFlow helps companies insert themselves into conversations in a helpful way by being timely and listening to what people are saying.
“If you want to be relevant and not intrusive, you have to listen to where the conversation is and you have to fit in with the conversation and where it’s flowing,” Speiser said. “It has to be adding to the experience. No one likes a commercial, but if it’s contextually relevant, it feels like I’m helping at the right time and place.”
Crescendo is designed to work with Cadence and highlights how paid and earned media can work together. By building up a large following of fans, a brand can tap into the conversations of active users to learn how to target similar consumers on the open market. And ultimately, if a paid ad works, it can turn a consumer into a fan, allowing a marketer to get more out of their earned media.
LIPMAN advertising, which has been testing Crescendo with one of its brand customers, said it was able to double conversion rates and produce more qualified “likes” using Crescendo.
“Partnering with SocialFlow has enabled us to significantly amplify brand messages dynamically to the right audiences, at the right time in their journey,” says Jennifer Pasiakos, VP of digital at LIPMAN. ”Together we are inspiring more users to join the conversation, share their own experiences and ultimately create a more engaged, deeply loyal community.”
SocialFlow’s approach to social media advertising makes a lot of sense especially in today’s attention economy. These days, everything is competition for a user’s attention, whether it’s media, advertising, games or just life. More and more, it comes down to listening to what a user is talking about and reacting quickly.
Image courtesy of Flickr user xthylacine


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/2012/09/06/socialflow-debuts-crescendo-an-attention-buying-...
 TechCrunch first reported earlier today that enterprise social media platform HootSuite is buying another social media platform, Seesmic. That fact has now been confirmed by HootSuite itself. Ryan Holmes, the CEO, has given us some more color on the deal, and we’ve found out some other details as well along the way.
The companies are not disclosing the price, but we have been told it will be based on how well HootSuite manages to convert Seesmic users on to its own product. Holmes tells me it’s buying the company mainly as a customer play, not primarily a technology play, unlike many of HootSuite’s past acquisitions.
HootSuite currently has 4.5 million business users but it does not disclose how many of them are paying — but clearly the company wants to drive up the number in the latter category, and Holmes says that among those using Seesmic today are some key brands it hopes will migrate to HootSuite. No details on how many enterprise customers Seesmic actually has at the moment, however: Holmes says they’re still trying to work that out.
That’s for the enterprise users Seesmic has. But it also has a good proportion of consumers among its estimated 30,000-40,000 unique monthly visitors. Those, Holmes says, will be given the option of going either to Twitter or Facebook for their future social media needs. “If someone is a casual user of Seesmic, go this way [e.g. to Twitter]. If you are an SME we are happy to help you out” is how he describes the choice.
Part of that, he says, is because of Twitter’s new approach to its API and encouraging less usage of consumer me-too Twitter apps; but mainly it’s because HootSuite is mainly about enterprise users. “We’ve always been very focused there we enterprise,” he says.
HootSuite is still trying to work out what will happen with Seesmic’s existing operation. The only thing confirmed so far is that Loic LeMeur, the founder of Seesmic, will be staying on with the company to “help with transition and advisory work.”
HootSuite is based in Vancouver, Canada, while Seesmic is currently in San Francisco. HootSuite is still trying to work out whether it will use that as a lever to build up its presence in the Bay Area — HootSuite had already been planning to expand there before this deal — or whether it will look to migrate what is left of Seesmic to Canada.
I also asked Holmes a bit about future acquisitions, whether it sees itself potentially under threat from Twitter as it grows and becomes a more powerful platform beyond just consumers, and whether HootSuite is getting many offers itself…
On the Twitter threat, he is sanguine. “We think of ourselves as a social media Switzerland,” he says. “We sit between Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and 30 other social networks. And I don’t think we will see those social media properties butt up against what we are doing because they don’t really want to acknowledge the existence of the others.” Which they would have to do if they bought HootSuite and assumed control of that business of “workflow and analytics across those networks and all the pain points around that.”
On being an acquisition target, we should watch this space. “We’ve seen a lot of acquisitions of these lately, and we have had some folks approach us, and the offers are getting more and more tempting as everyone starts to see how important social media has become for enterprises,” he says. “Every software company on the planet now needs to have a product that speaks to social. And in a way we are one of the last big ones that is available and independent.” But he adds: “I’m not focused on that right now, just focused on building a business and seeing what comes of that. But the next few months will be an interesting time.”
On buying more talent and technology, it looks like there may be more to fill holes in what HootSuite already offers. “We are still looking at creating most comprehensive solution for people and helping them manage their social presence. As a young company there is a culture of fast paced engineering and agile development here.” But he also acknowledged that there are gaps at HootSuite, such as complex technology around sentiment analysis. “So that means either a partnership, or an acquisition, or hiring someone who can help us do that.”

from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/06/hootsuite-ceo-were-buying-seesmic-for-the-cu...
Apple’s negotiations with content owners over a new Apple TV model are reportedly proceeding at a molasses-like pace, and it’s looking like we should be less hopeful that Apple will be bringing something entirely new to the market for set-top boxes any time soon. According to a Bloomberg report Thursday detailing the negotiations, where they stand right now doesn’t leave a new Apple TV looking much different from other set-top box services already available.
That Apple is negotiating with cable companies and other content owners to get live television and older episodes of TV shows on Apple TV is not news. What is interesting is the detail in the Bloomberg story about what the holdups in the negotiations are. Here are a few of the most interesting (and depressing) bits from the story that show how cable companies are thinking about partnering with Apple:
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Cable companies want to brand the screen interface. The most recent talks reveal that “the main stumbling blocks with cable companies have included a tussle for control over the software that determines the screen interface — the look and feel of the viewer’s experience.” It’s fair to say Apple probably won’t be cool with that.
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Cable companies know Apple’s product will be superior. They are reportedly “concerned that a better-designed Apple product will undermine their business model.”
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Reticence on behalf of most cable companies could force a regional roll-out strategy. Time Warner Cable is the closest to being on board with Apple’s vision, and could be its first cable partner. But that would mean Apple TV would be available mainly in the New York and Los Angeles metro areas.
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Cable companies want to retain control by selling Apple TV boxes alongside their other products. According to the report, “Apple may also lease the boxes through cable companies, another person said. The box would be Internet-connected, similar to Comcast’s new X1 interface, which is available in Boston, Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, the person said.”
When this is what Apple is dealing with, it means that we’re not going to see a revamped Apple TV model for a long time. If Apple does choose to bring a device to market sooner, it probably won’t turn out all that different from a set-top box/DVR you can already get from a cable operator today, it just might have an Apple logo on it.
My colleague Janko Roettgers last month noted that this result would be a defeat for Apple if you think about the company’s original disruptive vision for TV: “The company originally set out to disrupt the TV space and sell programming directly to consumers. It wanted to unbundle cable much in the same way it unbundled the CD when it started selling single songs on iTunes for $0.99. A move like that would have been truly innovative. But as it looks now, Apple is just going to repackage the good old cable bundle and make it available through yet another device.”
Cable companies as of yet, don’t have a good reason to get on board with Apple’s vision for TV. And Apple doesn’t appear to have the negotiating powers or the leverage to convince them otherwise right now.


from GigaOM http://gigaom.com/apple/will-the-future-apple-tv-be-tivo-redux/?utm_source=fe...

Twitter may have a ways to go until it matches Facebook's valuation, but at least in one crucial segment -- mobile advertising -- it appears to be besting its larger rival.
A report from eMarketer estimates that Twitter will hit $129.7 million in U.S. mobile ad revenues this year compared to $72 million for Facebook.
However, Twitter's advantage in the mobile ad space won't last for long. According to eMarketer's predictions, Facebook's ad revenue will grow five-fold to $387 million in 2013, beating Twitter's take by more than $100 million. This would make Facebook the second highest mobile ad earner behind Google.
eMarketer's predictions offer some hope for investors who are c… Continue reading...
More About: Facebook, Twitter, facebook ads, mobile advertising



from Mashable! http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/HfsGLK3dD9Y/
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