Startup Toolbox

Jay Parkhill June 3rd, 2008

Twitter and Adobe both got dinged this year for making statements in their Terms of Use that neither company exactly meant.  Twitter’s said that it reserved the right to “to warn and/or ban people who use their service to “abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users”.  Adobe’s gave Adobe a license to use any photos anyone edited with Photoshop Express online service- for any purpose.

When faced with a request to warn and/or ban an alleged Twitter stalker, Twitter realized it didn’t want to take such an aggressive editorial stance at all and would rather let users be responsible for their own content.  Adobe corrected itself to say it didn’t plan to use anyone’s photos for just anything, so both statements were really mistakes.

As others have pointed out, terms of use are not complicated.  They do need to be correct for the situation, though.  Twitter and Adobe probably just grabbed someone else’s terms without a lot of thought and got nailed on it.  AOL got nailed much worse by the Ninth Circuit for changing terms mid-stream without properly notifying users of its newly-acquired Talk America service.

The mild irony is that any good lawyer would also grab other sites’ terms of use, but instead of finding one set, s/he would take a look at a few sites, pick and choose the best/most applicable provisions and create something tailored to the site’s actual business.

All of which goes to prove the old saw- haste makes waste.  It frequently doubles the legal fees too.

• Web , terms of use

Jay Parkhill December 19th, 2007

I’ve recently started to receive a surge of invitations to yet another professional social network (which shall remain nameless). I still haven’t figured out how Open Social or anything like it will actually affect life in the real world. Will I suddenly be on people’s networks in lots of places after making one uber-connection? That seems desirable and undesirable at the same time.

Still, I know this. I checked out the social network for which I am currently receiving invitations. I can’t figure out if it is useful or not. However, I do know that building my “social graph” on any network is time-consuming. As a result I am accepting these invitations on the off chance that the network turns out to be valuable someday. Is the alternative to Open Social just to be “easy”?

• Web , social graph

Jay Parkhill December 6th, 2007

VentureBeat linked to a really clever video parody of the current web scene, linked below. I watched the whole thing, which is rare for me. The thing that is driving me crazy, though, is that I can almost, but not quite, place the tune to which the lyrics are set. If anyone can help me out please put a note in the comments.

Update: about 20 second after posting this I figured it out.  The tune is Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.  I feel much better now.

• Video , Web , YouTube

Jay Parkhill November 9th, 2007

A few weeks ago Dave Winer posted a screed about the complexity of the VC financing process. One of his points was that legal transactions rely on the fax machine- that unglamorous item of 1980s technology- to an inordinate degree.

He’s right. It is a cumbersome process: email documents, open attachment, print, fax, (sometimes mail originals) repeat.

There has been a law on the books in the U.S. since 1999 called E-SIGN that says electronic signatures are just as valid as manual ones, provided a few simple requirements are met. So why are people still using fax? Are lawyers simply luddites?

Perhaps, but I decided to try out some digital signature services- if nothing else to see why few people ever talk about them. Since I really don’t like reviewing products I am not going to name the services I tried, but instead to make some general observations based on the handful of transactions I have used them for.

People aren’t Ready for “Pure Digital” Signatures
Under E-SIGN a “signature” can consist of a digital stamp in the footer of a document with the date and some identifying information (such as an email address). A sample is below.

In practice this does not work for humans. I used this format in one transaction and the exact words of the opposing counsel were “I’m sure it is legally binding but I don’t have time to look it up”. This format isn’t required by E-SIGN, of course- one of the other services uses a font style that looks like a signature and puts it in the “right” spot in the signature block on the document (see below).

This is a seemingly small thing that makes a world of difference.

Fax “Just Works”
One of the services let me add nifty “stickies” to the signature blocks in my documents and when it worked scrolled signatories through the documents to just the right spots and collected all of the needed information beautifully. The problem was that it didn’t work reliably. One signatory couldn’t open the “digital envelope” containing the file at all and I had to resort to paper and fax. The whole thing also only works in Windows and requires a desktop download, so I could only use it from one computer (and that with Parallels installed).

Fax, on the other hand, uses tried-and-true technology and only needs to be compatible with the phone line. Low tech and the darn headers are ugly, but the process is effective and doesn’t require much thought. I like to think, but not about how to send my signature pages out.

I Still Want a Digital Signature Facility
I said previously that I would very much like a digital signature facility that I can route documents through as an adjunct to- and probably eventually as a replacement for- the manual pen/paper/fax. I still do. The systems need some tuning, but they will get there. The founder of one of the services in particular has been endlessly helpful to me in my experimentation and I hope he keeps at it until he gets the system down. It will work eventually, it’s just going to take some time and iteration to get it to “just work” as smoothly as fax does at its best.

• Tech , Web , legal

Jay Parkhill October 23rd, 2007

I was in college when the first Gulf War happened, and I remember the school setting up a TV to show the round-the-clock (a new concept then) coverage on the upstart CNN network. People more media-savvy than I credit CNN’s rise in esteem and viewership to that coverage.

The fires tearing through Southern California are relevant to a much smaller population, to be sure, and I doubt Twitter will benefit to even 1% the same degree in absolute terms. However, many people- and media outlets- that previously dismissed it as a toy or a distraction are going to start paying attention because it is actually a convenient vehicle for distributing news in disaster environments. It is:

*Lightweight. It works nicely even on a mobile browser. No TV or computer required from the sending or receiving ends.
*Easy to update. It’s type-and-go. No setting up cameras or preparing to broadcast.
*Easy to aggregate. Tracking makes it possible to pull in tweets from lots of sources on the same subject.
*And perhaps most important, short (or “pithy” if you prefer). The problem with reporting disasters is that there usually isn’t much to report from minute-to-minute. Twitter lets networks broadcast tidbits as they become available.

Imagine if the news crawl at the bottom of a network broadcast was actually a Twitter feed. They serve basically the same purpose, and then there would be a place to find the crawl text one missed because one was watching the top part of the TV screen.

I’m not saying Twitter is suddenly going to be on everyone’s lips everywhere, just that people are going to realize it can be a really useful adjunct to other media distribution systems.

• Web , social media

Jay Parkhill October 12th, 2007

Update:  Linkedin apparently agrees with me.  They just announced a developer-API program to create widgets that allow “business functions like conference organization or travel planning”.  But no superpokes.

There’s been lots of talk about walled gardens in social networks. Plenty of people seem to be asking for “network portability”- the ability to move one’s social graph of contacts and connections across platforms. Given that the revenue stream for most social networks depends almost entirely on advertising, which depends on page views, I am starting wonder if that puts the cart before the horse.

Also like many people recently, I have been thinking about how I and my friends really use social networks. My conclusion is that they are a nice adjunct to offline communications- they can help me deepen connections with people I don’t see regularly- but they don’t actually *do* much.

For example, my Facebook news feed is almost entirely full of “___ became friends with ___” and “___ added the ___ application” updates. Do people actually do anything meaningful other than friending, adding applications, joining groups and updating status?

What about “___ beat __ in scrabblicious”, or even “Brad Fitzpatrick nailed his 95 theses on the opening of the social graph on Facebook’s door”?

Facebook seems to be mostly a tool for casual, superficial interactions and ways to show off one’s interests and affiliations- joining groups, marking favorite movies/music/books, showing where one has been, etc.

I’d love to see the platform and the feed represent real activity, not just connection-forming. Maybe the “next Facebook” (which may or may not be Facebook itself) will be the one that lets us really collaborate and not merely connect.

The next question, though, is on what we want to collaborate. I suspect it is probably different for different people and groups. That thought leads me back to the open social graph issue- maybe the open social graph is the horse after all and useful (as opposed to entertaining) applications are the cart. Oh dear, thinking in circles again. Time to quit.

• Web , social graph

Jay Parkhill October 3rd, 2007

(this post started as a comment on Nate Westheimer’s blog, but got too long so I decided to put it here instead)

Nate says that Facebook could disappear tomorrow and it would be replaced in about a week with other web services.  Likely true enough, but it begs the question what would make FB disappear.  It doesn’t happen on its own- people need to stop using it.

Nate’s implicit answer, I think, and that of a number of other people, is that internet users crave openness- they want their content to be distributed, mixed and mashed up as they see fit, not as the platform decides.  One-way openness isn’t good enough either.  Content should flow freely both ways, and when someone offers that up Facebook could start to suffer.

It sounds as though the nascent FriendFeed does this.  Plaxo also does it to a certain degree. I don’t think mere openness is enough, though, and I say that for two reasons:

1)  There needs to be a “there” there.  Plaxo is free-flowing, but also empty.  Maybe I just haven’t connected with enough people, or they haven’t “turned on” enough feeds (or maybe that’s the point- it takes too much effort). 

A variant of this point was made by Adam Elend from Wallstrip.  He said that just putting content out isn’t enough- it needs to fit the platform on which it is being distributed.  As applied to the open/closed platform discussion, the argument is that mere aggregation easily leads to clutter and randomness.

2)  There needs to be an ad strategy.  Most content on the social web is ad-supported.  Totally open platforms make it hard to monetize the traffic.   

Maybe these two points offer an answer” provide a compelling place for people to aggregate and they’ll congregate.  Becoming and then remaining the “coolest” platform seems like it would be an increasingly difficult task, though.

• Web , social graph , social media

Jay Parkhill September 24th, 2007

Maybe this goes without saying. Twitter is fascinating beause it is such a proto-social network. It does almost nothing, but I probably use it more than any other network I am on.

Still tring to figure out what twitter is “about”, I’ve been thinking about the posts that grab my attention. I follow basically three kinds of twitterers: friends, news outlets and tech experts/celebrities. I like getting little vignettes of my friends ‘ lives that tell me what’s going on with them. This is less true from strangers, though the occasional trenchant comment can be fun.

What gets me to follow people I don’t know is really the same as what I get out of news tweets- teasers that make we want to learn more. I don’t think I am alone in this. Loic le Meur has twittered repeatedly about certain aspects of the new product his company is developing, but without explaining what the product is at all. In the same vein, Evan Williams posted a couple of tweets this morning about “namestorming”- for a new product? Inquiring minds want to know.

• Web , social media

Jay Parkhill September 21st, 2007

The New York Times seems to have its head screwed on right as far online marketing goes. Witness its Facebook application: it’s a simple thing that shows off what the NYT does best (news coverage) and lets friends compete against one another for “News IQ” ratings. To do well, one needs to read the news and the NYT provides ample opportunity to link through to articles on the paper’s site.

Add this to the company’s announcement that it is dumping the Times Select pay wall and one could almost forget what they are up against. I saw the graphic to the right and was blown away by the difference between on- and off-line ad revenue.

Something sure needs to change, or publishing (i.e. reading what’s actually happening in the world) as we know it is going to be completely screwed.  Yikes.

• Web , media

Jay Parkhill September 18th, 2007

I wrote recently about different visualization techniques used by Digg, Lijit and Twitter. I wrote that I didn’t think the Twitter Blocks developer, Stamen Labs, got it quite right. They did a brilliant job with Digg’s visualizations so I’m sure they’ll work out Twitter as well.

The challenge in creating visual representations of text data, it seems to me, is to capture the essence of what the site does. Digg Stack beautifully captures both the flow of news across the Digg site and the voting element that (partially) distinguishes Digg from traditional news outlets.

Twitter is captivating for a couple of reasons. The “random discovery” element is fun- seeing what’s on people’s minds around the world. The more engaging element is following one’s friends.

Twitter Blocks goes after the latter, which is probably the harder nut to crack. Meanwhile, Twittervision hits the discovery nail right on the head. Watching the posts flow across the globe is mesmerizing.

A couple of requests, though- I’d like to see the tweets persist a little longer instead of fading out immediately when a new one comes up. I’d also like to see the history- it doesn’t seem to follow the Twitter timeline precisely and I can’t necessarily find interesting tweets easily.

If Stamen Labs can figure out how to combine Twittervision’s hypnotic visual timeline with the social relationship aspect that makes Twitter so engaging they will capture the full scope of the site perfectly. It’ll be fun to see.

• Web , social map , social media