I absolutely love this time of year. Football, Thanksgiving, Fall weather, then first snows, Christmas, lots of opportunity to assess the year; count my blessings and focus on the most important things. To welcome it in, here’s a video that cracks me up!
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I just finished reading Ken Auletta’s new book: Googled, The End of the World as We Know It.
Auletta delivers on many levels with this book. As a general corporate biography, Auletta was given the kind of access required to compose a compelling story about the development of the business as well as the role various personalities played in the company’s founding and success. In fact, the access he was given seems extraordinary in an era where famous people are as easily mugged by the media as they are truthfully reported on. On the flip side of that, the way Auletta takes that access and pens a balanced critique of the people and company position speaks well to his character and ability as a journalist in the face of extraordinary wealth and power.
Definitely, an excellent corporate biography.
But what gives the book, and story, significance isn’t just the extreme success achieved by Google and it’s principals. It’s the role Google is playing in a larger story about the transition our media industry at large is currently suffering. These days, there’s quite a bit of blaming going on in old media directed toward Google. I don’t tend to subscribe to the belief that Google is an evil plotter in the demise of an American Icon industry. I think content will always have a central role in our culture because we value storytelling as much as any culture ever has, and we value News as a pillar for our Liberal Democracy. Content will always be King. However, just as real monarchies in different countries have to justify their role in society from time to time, so does Content need to re-establish it’s role as King in our context. It’s true to say our modes of distribution are evolving at break neck speeds. This pace of innovation compels us to wonder whether new forms of content that effectively dis-intermediate the Media Companies will become King. We’ve been experimenting with user generated content in that regard for some time now. But it seems to me the experimentation is leading us to conclude once again that some people are awesome story tellers, and the vast majority of us benefit from the consumption of their art.
So I’m not worried about the demise of Media. We love it and need it too much. How we pay for it, well, that’s what everyone is really freaking out about.
One of the recurring themes or aspects I picked up on in reading this book had to do with the way Google is perceived. There’s a chronic question as to whether Google is naive or evil. The question is typically posed to people in traditional media who believe their livelihood or wealth is affected by Googles presence in the market. It makes sense for them to believe Google is evil. According to Auletta, this baffles the people at Google in a way that then lends itself to believing they are not really evil. Truly evil people know they are evil and are not surprised when others think it as well. So, the other alternative is that they are naive. Naive enough not to recognize and understand the way they are perceived by the people they are affecting adversely. Auletta ascribes this naivete to being a function of an extreme engineer worldview. Everything is logical; not emotional. Efficiency matters more than anything else. So the ability to relate to people that feel harmed by Google eludes the people at Google.
I’ve been in the Valley long enough to know this is not something unique to Google. So, I’d probably side with the perspective that the folks at Google are maybe guilty of being insensitive over evil. It seems to me Googlers are probably as good as folks at any other company. They’re not out to kill anyone, they are just out to make a difference.
Which seems like a rather hohum conclusion…which is not good for blogs. I know this by looking at the Google Analytics for this blog 
So, in the interest of being somewhat controversial, here’s my greatest concern. I think that the current management of Google is composed of people who really believe the ideals they espouse as corporate values. At the same time, I see the power Google is accumulating through its position in the industry as the collector of all manner of consumer data. This power is currently wielded by personalities that seem inclined toward benevolence. But a company with that kind of power necessarily attracts evil geniuses over time. My greatest concern will be when the current management team moves on to the next challenge and the personalities vying for control of Google’s assets represent a very different profile than the current personalities do today. I know if I was an evil genius I could do a lot with the kind of data Google is gathering and controlling right now.
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I love this zigzag punt return! My favorite parts of the video: first the pose a blocker strikes after making a hit on the second zag; second, the way the player stands in the end zone looking pretty baffled by it all while he just drops the ball…hilarious!
| Play of the day: Grant's Kenneth Acker's amazing punt return touchdown |
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Latoya Egwuekwe put this graphic together displaying the progression in rising unemployment rates by County across the country. Nebraska never looked so good! Click on the image and press play to see the graphic in action.
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Yesterday, I taught my 3 year old daughter how to arm wrestle. We laid down on the carpet, belly down, facing each other. I showed her how to plant her elbow and grip my hand for a serious arm wrestling match. She’s as convinced she’s stronger than me as she is 3 years old. No question. So, I had to ask myself whether I was going to let her win every match. I decided to use this as a teachable moment. She won the first one, I took the second…she started crying. Yea, not exactly what I had in mind. So, I told her I understand how badly she wants to win and I think that’s great. But she’s not going to win every time. So she needs to learn how to handle when she loses. It’s not something to cry about, but it is something to learn from and let motivate her next time. She’s pretty smart, of course, so this all seemed to make perfect sense to her, and she was cool with a 50% winning record for the rest of our matches. I think she realized she enjoyed the competing as much if not more than the winning.
Well, that got me thinking (again) about the decision to put my last startup on the shelf. We built a service for parents serving about a dozen cities nationwide, we grew a great team of local “work-from-home-mom” editors, we developed some really interesting software to manage the whole thing. But at the end of the day, we (I) couldn’t find the funding necessary to let us take it to the next level. So, in my book, we (I) failed.
The last couple months have provided the kind of time to reflect that does not come along all that often. As a result, I’ve learned a lot. In fact, I think I’ve learned more than had I still been focused full time on building it out. There’s more clarity now than before regarding all the things I know I’ll never do again. But there’s also a ton of things I would do again, and am growing eager to get back at it!
Here’s one of my favorite quotes, sent to me by a friend in the early days after deciding to shelve my last company…
It’s not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or when the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
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These are economic times when you need to be either creating something, selling something or maybe establishing new channels for something to be sold. In my industry, that means you’re either writing software, selling software or building a new channel for more software to be sold. Everything else is a bit expendable.
I think this is the crux of the problem with News Media. The News is reported as a service to consumers, who are all then supposed to gather around a piece of paper which includes ads sold by someone else. The news was the content that only had as much economic value as the advertiser’s need to communicate with consumers on the paper the news was printed. This is a problem because the societal value of good news reporting greatly exceeds the apparent current economic value.
For years, there was an uneasy alliance between news reporting and ad sales. The Journalist reports the news and hopefully does so in a way that is not compromised by the ad sales guy’s need to impress his advertising clients. These types of uneasy alliances were found in other industries as well. For example, before the Bubble, there was a supposed “chinese wall” between Analysts reporting on business financial information and bankers trying to win opportunities to serve those same companies with lucrative services. For a long time, we believed the banks when they said the two functions of the same Bank didn’t influence each other….then we found out that wasn’t necessarily true.
But back to the news business. We’ve believed the News Media in its assertion that the Revenue side was not compromising the Reporting side. Well, different industries have different cultures, and I think the News industry’s culture may have lent itself to at least a better attempt than the I-Banking industry to keep this assertion true.
Regardless, the ad sales side has now disappeared. It’s been assimilated into the financials of Google for big Publishers and Craigslist for small.
So now, we have this decoupling of the economic value of News from the the societal value News provides.
Hard core tech industry people think Blogs will evolve into the new journalism. I’m skeptical. And I’m not even a Journalist.
Regardless, be it that the News comes from Bloggers or Journalists, how are we going to pay for truthful News?
Well, given that the News has greater societal value than economic, maybe it’s something the government should operate…kinda like Education (or Healthcare)
Whoa…hold on there! The government?!? What about the fact that we depend on the Journalist to make sure the politician is held accountable…those rascals!? Well, I’m not sure the uneasy alliance that would be held between politicians and Journalists, would be any different than the uneasy alliance between Journalists and Advertisers. A politician’s goal is to maintain or grow their personal power. An Advertiser’s job is to convince us to buy stuff we may not necessarily know we need or even really need at all.
I dunno. I do suspect, however, that without Journalism entirely, we’re in for more rascally politicians than even if the politicians are the ones hiring the Journalists.
Maybe we establish a fourth Branch of government. Something like the Judicial Branch that is theoretically less impacted by the constantly changing political winds that so directly affect the Executive and Legislative Branches. The News Branch of government can have life terms appointed by Executive branch representatives, but be subject to the same process a judge goes through in being appointed to any local or federal bench.
Now that would be interesting to explore. It accepts the fundamental value to our society that truthful News reporting is supposed to provide while establishing a mechanism for managing Journalists with enough insulation from the Politicians to allow them to truly seek the truth.
But I guess we’d need another tax to pay for it all….that would suck. But I’ think there’s still some rich people in America….let’s tax them!
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This is my 6th post about the ongoing process toward building, launching and monetizing a mobile app in today’s market. This post is about how we’re building the team, and specifically what skills we’re putting together to flesh it out.
I guess it’s worth stating up front that a team seems necessary. There are a couple stories out there of the lone coder building an app, putting it on the shelf in the App Store, and maybe even discerning a marketing strategy that results in significant short term cash. But by in large, the personality types and skills necessary to do all that is required to really pursue this stuff is not often found in the same person. Hence a team is required. At the most basic level, someone needs to write software and someone needs to sell software. This is probably true not just in the mobile app business right now, in fact, when the broader economy is like it is right now, I always feel safer in a pure Sales role than in roles that do not interact directly with customers or carry some level of Quota. I think that’s because when times are tough, it’s critical to know how I am adding quantifiable value. But I digress.
This is a post about the mobile app team, and what skills we think need to be on that team.
So, here’s what we think:
1. Sales guy- in our case, the Sales will be done mostly through Internet Marketing strategies, so it’s kind of a Marketer’s role, but we’ll know whether our Marketing is successful by virtue of hard numbers that translate to cash. The Sales guy also gets to vet various prospective revenue models since the Sales guy is usually the one with more experience around which sales strategies work, and how well, and most importantly, how much effort is required for any given Sales Strategy. The value of any Sales strategy is in part a function of the level of effort required to execute that strategy. Herculean efforts are not often scalable or repeatable, and Sales strategies ought to be scalable and repeatable.
2. Mobile App developer- This is obviously the most important role. Without a product getting built, there’s nothing to sell.
3. Graphic Designer- This is critical for us since we’re building a Consumer App here, and consumers like excellent graphic design a lot! Of course it’s more than just colors and lines though. User Interface and Experience are critical aspects of whatever design we end up employing.
4. Server side developer- This role depends on the app you’re building. Most Apps seem to be software that sits on the device and doesn’t need to talk to a server for anything in particular. Our app actually has a social networking aspect to it, and that social networking function will be managed ultimately by our Server. So, we’re really building a Mobile Social Networking App that may require a couple engineers instead of just the one building the Mobile App.
Now, in our case, Tim, who’s building the mobile app is totally capable of doing anything needed on the server side as well. But, we want another friend to be involved because, well, I just think it would be fun to work together!
And that’s probably the most crucial aspect to putting the team together. Skills need to be represented, but most importantly it needs to be fun to work together. There’s really no assurance of financial success in this business as far as I can tell, so if it’s not fun, then there’s really very little point to doing it.
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My blog is about a few things, but a couple of those things are Integrated Marketing and Mobile. On both fronts, I’m becoming a huge Flurry fan.
First, on the Marketing front, Flurry is a perfect example of how to write a Company Blog. What I mean to say is that Flurry does an amazing job of providing extremely useful information to the community rather than just hyping their own products and news all day long on the blog. I did some keyword searches in Google on the topics of mobile app economics and stuff like that. The Flurry blog returned high in the search result and for good reason! The information I clicked through to was relevant, well researched and very well written. Bottom line, those guys know how to use their Blog in the context of Search Engine Marketing and not just as a personal PR wire.
The other reason I’m digging on Flurry so much right now has to do with the Mobile specific stuff. My blog is in part dedicated to the process of building a mobile app I’m working on with a partner. We think there’s at least a small business to be built around the app. The kind of industry information I’m gleaning from the Flurry blog is helping to better position the app and discern potential business models. It’s just so comforting to know there’s a tool out there that can enable me to gather the kind of quantitative penetration and usage data that makes me want to stay up all night looking at charts and spreadsheets!
So, if you’re a Marketer, check out the Flurry blog from a best practices perspective. If you’re into Mobile, check it out for some really great mobile app industry data.
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