They should have sold Facebook, because until now no one on either company knows how to make money like Google does! The offer was crap, but maybe combining all those people with one same problem($) could have resulted in an amazing monetization strategy(or not).
(Link TechCrunch.)
Shit! There goes the cool factor for our skumo.com site name! Cool thing is that I now get another reason to hate Microsoft!
Thanks, guys for making my hatred so easy!
(Link TechCrunch.)
With a lack of monetization options and greedy platform owners, it’s hard out there for small app makers. Platforms are made or killed by developers. Threatening their existence and changing the rules of the game will prevent serious companies from investing in their platforms.
According to TechCrunch:
Facebook has been quietly searching for a partner to take over their year and a half old classified listings application, and may relaunch as early as the end of December.
By partnering and endorsing an app developer for their Facebook platform poses some problems to the other players in that market segment. Where do players like iList or iLike end up?
Michael Arrington proposes the following options in a article while exploring the possibilities for a Facbeook Music service to compete with MySpace Music:
1) build their own music service like MySpace did and lose the trust of their application developers forever (plus it will take them a year or more to build the service and secure deals with labels and other rights holders),
I can only think of an Internet Explorer-like evil doings that destroyed Netscape.
(2) partner with a third party to build out Facebook Music, and then compete on a somewhat level playing field with other third party developers
Level playing field, really? Are there clouds that taste like cotton candy and a shinny lemon flavored Sun in that world as well? In my opinion people usually go with the default(platform branded, i.e. Facebook Classifieds) application, even if it is just good enough.
(3) just acquire iLike (or another service) flat out, since they’re already a “Great App,” and show developers that if they really excel in their niche, they have a path to liquidity.
Nice to know the only way to make bank off a Facebook app is by being acquired by a company that doesn’t know how to monetize their success? How comforting!
The Facebook Platform is broken, no matter how you see it. The biggest selling point for a Facebook app is: you have a huge market available. But does that really matter?
In contrast Apple’s recently released iPhone platform is far from perfect, but it has clearer monetization and rules. Apart from a few isolated cases the iPhone platform is much more standardized and a better playing field for small developers.
The platforms that will survive going into the future(recession) will be the ones that can provide the following things to developers in this particular order:
1. Optimized Monetization(no lipstick on pig, banner/text add commission)
2. Large installed base
3. Clear rules and level playing field
4. Solid development tools
Motorola’s new WebUI widget platform is powered by Apple’s open source HTML renderer WebKit and is now holding a contest to lure developers to it’s platform:
This contest is for building “WebUI” widgets — a platform based on Apple’s WebKit Web browser guts — which Motorola’s Web site says is for “Motorola’s open mobile Linux platform.”
Nokia, Google(Chrome and Android), iPhone, and now Motorola all on WebKit, I wonder why…
(VIa Alley Insider.)
Here’s what I don’t get:
Because of trade preferences granted as part of the war on drugs, most Colombian exports already are exempt from United States tariffs. The new agreement would benefit American companies that now have to pay high tariffs on exports to Colombia.
The Democratic majority congress is still playing politics against Bush, even after the Obama win. US companies would benefit more than the Colombian ones with this pact, and still they don’t want to approve it. US companies need to increase exports as the the economy tanks. Colombia is the third largest country in Latin America(after Brazil and Mexico), thus it’s a big partially untapped market. The war on drugs and terror is at is almost won thanks to the President Alvaro Uribe’s security and economic policies. By saying NO to Colombia, they are saying no to a President with 84% popularity, thus saying no to 84% of the colombian population. President elect Barack Obama wants to change the face of the US in the eyes of the world. Why not start by endorsing a President with 84% approval? This will be easy peasy compared to the gargantuan tasks that awaits in the Middle East!
Colombia is the last South American ally the US has, and still they choose to ignore them because of supposed human rights violations(shit happens when you have rebells inside hurting the civilian population).
The time is now, to build strong alliances and keep Colombia from going left like Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Brazil in the upcoming 2010 Colombian elections.
(Link NYTimes.)
Jim Neath’s useful tips and tricks to get a jump start on new rails projects. Everything from using a skeleton app to writing your own scaffold generators. But by far the best one is:
Seriously, Just Buy a Fucking Mac
Can’t argue with that now or can you?
(Via Jim Neath.)
If you’ve ever sold a Mac before, and cleaned installed it for your customer, you have probably had to create the new user(which is awkward), because you had no choice. Turns our there is. As Dan Benjamin point out:
After installation, when you’re prompted to create a new user, just press Command-Q.
Other great tips and tricks when selling a Mac in the link below.
(Via The Narrative.)
David Heinemeier Hansson goes myth buster on rails deployment. Got to be honest, it took me a while to appreciate it, but now I think it’s more organized than deploying a php app, thanks to Capistrano. His conclusion:
Rails is no longer hard to deploy. Phusion Passenger has made it ridiculously easy.
Tried it last week, and I have to agree.
(Via Loudthinking .)
They are going to need a business model very, very soon. They have a lot of revenue options and have enough people to try a few, and see what works best. My favorite:
Sell access to either the Twitter API or “firehose.”
(Link Webware.com.)
That would really be the most embarrassing thing ever for Microsoft. Hopefully it will happen. No matter if they stick to IE 8 or not, they need to do something about IE 6. I will never understand what’s taken them so long to upgrade people to IE 7.
(Via AppleInsider.)