The saying goes “you should never argue with a drunk or a fool”

It’s good advice.  I should be following it.  But this post was so ignorant and it was written in such an insulting manner that I just couldn’t help myself.  With that said, here’s the premise…

Oh. Thank. God. Twitter’s deals with Google and Microsoft (letting the two companies search Twitter in real-time) total $25 million and make the company profitable for 2009, according to BusinessWeek. This finally ends the stupidest line of commentary of the past few years: “How will Twitter survive without making money?”  There are three reasons this is so stupid

Now before I even begin with his justification points let me clarify a few things…

1.  Bloomberg’s source is anonymous and Twitter doesn’t make it’s financials public.  So we don’t know if any of this is true (though for the duration of this post I’ll assume it is)

2.  These are multi-year deals.  So if these payments are making Twitter profitable it’s a finance trick.  They’re counting the whole payment on this balance sheet rather than distributing it across the years.   This seems likely since Twitter’s own internal estimates put every twitter user costing the company $1 per year and the Wall Street Journal reported in May that the service had reached 32.1 million users (I assume the $1 has gone down substantially but they still have to be close to $25 million per year)

3.  Any renewal of these deals depends on Twitter becoming a viable long term company.  So there’s a chicken/egg problem here.  Twitter is popular right now because they’ve been using VC money to keep running.  That’s why search engines are willing to give them an additional revenue source.  But in order to keep that relationship going they’ll have to replace the VC money with actual revenue.  So the search deal’s future is dependent on finding another revenue source.

4. It remains to be seen whether Google and Microsoft will continue to pay for information that is essentially free to the public.  They’re doing so now because the amount of money to get it is so small.  But they are clearly the power players in the relationship and they could just as easily dictate better terms in the future.  Especially if Twitter’s active user base drops.

All that said let me address his points…

1. Google did it too: Three years to profit isn’t new. Twitter launched in 2006. They possibly turned a profit in under three years. Google took just as long – even if you count back to its 1998 incorporation and not to the site’s beginning as a research project in 1996.

The Google point really isn’t valid.  Google got lucky in that another company stumbled upon the idea of AdSense and they were able to acquire it.  So while it’s possible other companies might get equally as lucky you can’t really call this a strategy. 

2. MySpace did it too: Lucrative search deals aren’t new. So far, commentators focused on two possible revenue streams for Twitter: Ads and pro services. But search deals with other companies? That’s nothing you could expect paid tech journalists to think up. Except for Facebook’s two deals with Microsoft, or the $900-million MySpace-Google deal of mid-2006.

Yes except that the Myspace-Google deal of 2006 was completely different.  In that deal Google became the exclusive search engine for MySpace AND (far more importantly) became the exclusive provider of text based advertising.  The only thing it had in common with the Twitter search deal is the fact that “search” was in the title.

More to the point it seems clear that neither Google nor Microsoft were willing to offer Twitter a deal like the one Myspace struck (since it would be foolish to invalidate the chance at a $900 million deal for a $25 million dollar one)

3. The press and the analysts are morons: Secrecy not new. I’m not even citing sources here. This is siimple: Businesses don’t tell all their plans to the public.

Brilliant, right? Businesses don’t tell all their plans to the public.

Secrecy is not new but a couple of things make Twitter’s secrecy different.  First, a massive amount of their internal documents were leaked not too long ago.  Those documents revealed revenue projections that didn’t seem realistic.  Two, Twitter’s service is still failing periodically making the need for revenue more of a focus.  In other words they don’t appear to have a secret revenue plan and if they do than now would be the time to use it because their service isn’t reliable.

So in the end we’re left where we started which is that Twitter has no clear road to profitability.  But in saying that I want to make one final point. 

All the discussion about Twitter’s ability to become profitable is just a way for people to help the company find a way to become profitable.

The author of the quoted piece attacks people like Caroline McCarthy (of CNet) and Michael Arrington (of TechCrunch) while missing the fact that both are supporters and avid users or Twitter.  No one, not even Twitter detractors like myself, is hoping the company will fail.  Everyone is on their side.

Which is why this snide attack post was out of line and why I felt the need to reply to it (against the good advice I mentioned at the beginning)

Fred Wilson has a post today on the standardization of APIs.  He says…

First WordPress allowed posting and reading wordpress blogs via the Twitter API.

Then yesterday our portfolio company Tumblr did the same.

John Borthwick has been advising companies for a while now to build APIs that mimic the Twitter API. His reasoning is that if your API look and feels similar to the Twitter API then third party developers will have an easier time adopting it and building to it. Makes sense to me.

But the problem here is it doesn’t make sense really.  At least not in the way he seems to be endorsing. The problem is there’s a difference between being inspired by something and imitating it.

Let me explain…

Online APIs are in their infancy right now so there are a lot of differences between them.  But as they mature they’ll become similar to each other.  Just as other software has done in the past.  There’s a reason why Windows and OS X have more similarities than differences.  Or that every programming language has a variation of “.tostring()” available. 

It’s natural for developers to look at what works in other products and try to implement that in their own products.

So it’s great that publishing APIs are adopting similar methods (as Wordpress has done with the Twitter API).  But that doesn’t mean they should imitate each other completely.

Wordpress is not Twitter.  If certain parts of the Twitter API work for Wordpress than they should adopt them.  But if not than they shouldn’t be pressured into adopting ill fitting API calls just to adhere to some imagined standard.  Not only because it would lessen their product but because it prevents them from thinking up better ways of doing things

Better ways that other companies (like Twitter) might want to adopt some day.  To put this in perspective imagine a world where Apple was forced to tailor their APIs to act in the same way as Windows APIs because Windows is the more widely used OS. 

Which brings me to my final point.  APIs aren’t file formats.  In a file format the whole point of it is to store and retrieve data so it makes sense to adhere to standards because not doing so would prevent the data from fulfilling it’s purpose (to be read).  But APIs aren’t like that.  Having a different API isn’t going to break anything.  So while developers should always look at the APIs of other companies for inspiration they shouldn’t treat successful APIs like Gospel

Wired has an article on how scientists are trying to use Twitter to measure the gravity of earthquakes.  To support their thesis they published this graph…

They then state this conclusion a little lower in the article (bold added by me)…

It turns out that the “Earthquake! Earthquake!” SOS that you tweet, aggregated with thousands of others, provides an excellent indication of the strength and severity of a quake. A little rumbler yields just a small spike, while a strong quake produces a huge spike in Twitter activity, as seen in the graph above.

Now look back at the graph and notice a few things.

1.  A 5.1 Quake in Costa Rica creates more traffic than an 8.1 in Samoa

2.  “The Great California ShakeOut” which was just a large earthquake drill created more activity than the 7.6/7.8 in Vanuatu and the 8.1 in Samoa

3.  A 3.7 quake in Pleasanton creates more traffic than a 6.6 in Sumatra

And so on…

I’ve pretty much given up on fighting Twitter hype but in this case I couldn’t resist because they were literally pointing to a graph that didn’t support their thesis and claiming it did.  I mean, it takes some serious  cognitive dissonance to say “as seen in the graph above” and then point to a graph that doesn’t show what you’re claiming it does. 

Of course they could argue that spikes within an area tells you something (e.g. Pleasanton’s 3.7 might rank higher than Sumatra’s 6.6 but a 6.6 in Pleasanton would rank higher than the 3.7).  But even that doesn’t track because that would only be useful if the jump was proportional.

In other words the 7.5 quake in Sumatra caused a spike at least 3 times larger than the 6.6 (the graph is clipped so it might have even been larger than that).  So I can’t see how that would be “an excellent indication of the strength and severity of a quake” as the author claimed.

As I’ve said before I’m not against twitter.  It’s a nice little services for those who enjoy that sort of thing.  But people who insist on trying to make it more than that are just fooling themselves.

So the Obama Administration has released a directive asking Government Agencies to create a plan to be more transparent in the next 120 days and to designate a single point person for this effort within 45 days.

I don’t like being the cynic on this stuff.  I honestly don’t.  But this isn’t going to work and someone has to correct the almost irresponsible hype that’s coming out of sites like techPresident.  Take this quote from them…

This morning's announcement of the 11-page OGD is hugely important in many ways. But none more so than that federal agencies are the places in the United States government where the financial budget and staffing resources to finally put some real meat on the bones of open government.

Read the directive.  Do you see anywhere in that directive where additional funding is being promised to anyone?  In fact, as anyone working for these agencies will tell you their being asked to cut costs in the coming year.  All this directive provides is “ideas for contests, prizes, and other tools proven to spur innovations outside government.”  One last quote from techPresident…

The spaces between the Open Government Directive's firm benchmarks and concrete performance metrics are filled with articulations of the broad principles of open government widely agreed upon by advocates. But they take on new import when it's the White House doing the talking. "With respect to information, the presumption shall be in favor of openness (to the extent permitted by law and subject to valid privacy, confidentiality, security, or other restrictions)." Beyond that, the OGD plants flags on more controversial principles of open government. "Timely publication of information is an essential component of transparency," reads the plan, an implicit critique of after-the-fact disclosure that sometimes passes for openness in government circles.

Well, if the White House says the presumption should be towards openness I suppose that solves everything.  Right? 

(That was sarcasm in case you didn’t realize)

Now I know this is a long post but I ask you to follow my logic here because this really is important.  This plan isn’t going to work because this is not how problems are solved and the first step to getting actual transparency is realizing how flawed this effort is.  So with that said let me start out with the most obvious point…

No new data is being made available.

That's not a criticism I’m just stating the fact.  There’s no dispute here.  Nothing that wasn’t already available to the public is being made available by this.  The best you’ll get is the info in a more machine readable format.  That leads me to my next point.

If it’s already available why isn’t this data online already?

All these agencies have websites, all those websites have people writing them and all this information was already available to the public.  So why isn’t it already up there?  The way I see it there are two options:

Option #1: People in Government are lazy

So maybe the data isn’t put online because the people in these agencies are just too lazy to do it.  It’s certainly a possibility.  But if that’s the case than this directive doesn’t solve anything.  All the directive does is to tell these same people to put a few datasets up.  If laziness is really the problem than they’re going to put up whatever data set is handy and do so in the sloppiest way possible.  At which point they’re going to go back to not putting stuff online (the directive instructs agencies to be proactive but doesn’t specify what that means).  So if these people are just lazy than today’s directive doesn’t solve the actual problem.

Option #2: There’s a real reason why this data isn’t made available.

If there’s an actual reason for data not being put up than the key to solving that problem is to (a) find out that reason and (b) find a way to address it.  This directive doesn't do that.  It arbitrarily says “put up data” without any input from the agencies.  So again the problem isn’t solved.  But this is actually worse.  Because you alienate the people with the information to fix the problem by not asking their input.  So instead they end up grudgingly doing the bare minimum and not really participating at all.

So what should the government do?

They should make this a collaborative process.  Rather than edicts from on-high they should send a directive to each agency saying “detail what data you haven’t shared and the reasons why it hasn’t been shared?”  Then they should examine each report and engage the people in each agency so that a solution can be found that puts the data out there while addressing the concerns of each agency.

The problem is with the approach.

When you say “Put up 3 datasets” or “reduce requests by 10%” you’re saying “I’m going to set arbitrary goals and not bother caring what your individual needs are.”  This is the problem with Government and specifically with politicians.  They want to be the hero.  They want to ride in like the white knight, declare “information should be free” and then bask in adulation.  But that’s not how problems get solved.

Problems get solved by teams.  By engaging the people who know what they’re talking about and empowering them to fix the problems they see.  Mark my words: I will follow up on this and I’ll bet all the money in my pocket that the data this directive makes available is next to useless based on the reasons outlined above.

I leave you with this.  Everyone reading this has or has had a job in the past.  How would it make you feel if your boss told you to do something without asking your opinion on whether it should be done?  Wouldn't you feel much better if said boss asked your opinion and addressed your concerns before ordering you to start work on the project? 

Ever own a domain but accidentally leave the contact address as your hotmail account that you haven’t checked for years so the domain gets shut off for a morning because you bought a two year renewal and forgot when that renewal was due?  Yeah, I hate when that happens.

After falling off the blogging wagon a bit I’ve committed myself to updating at least every 4 days no matter what.  But the next 4 days are going to be pretty busy so I’m updating now.  Unfortunately my focus is decidedly  un-tech right now.

That’s because tonight I’m headed to the opening of Crystals at CityCenter.  For those not familiar CityCenter is a huge complex located on the Las Vegas Strip.  Once the construction is finished it will include a “City in a City” with several resorts, casinos and a shopping mall (Crystals is the shopping center and the first real component of CityCenter to open to the general public)

If you can’t already tell, I’m a bit obsessed with the project.

You see, CityCenter will also feature actual condos that are billed as “having all the amenities of a Las Vegas Hotel” (along with VIP access to the actual MGM Hotel and Casino).  The moment I heard that I wanted one.  Badly.

It is quite literally the stupidest idea I’ve ever had.  It would take every cent I’ve got AND I’d have to either move there or pay a huge sum of money for a Condo I don’t live in.  Beyond that I’d have to give up my job and start consulting full time (or find some other high paying vocation).  All for a living space less than half the size of where I live now.

But I REALLY want to do it.  I grew up in the government funded housing of Las Vegas (a.k.a. “The Projects” in TV vernacular).  This creates an odd situation because I love the city of Las Vegas but actually couldn’t go back to living anywhere near my childhood home even if I wanted to.  Living in a Condo actually located on the Strip would be perfect.

Anyway the chance to live in one is thankfully still in the future so for right now I’ll content myself with sign seeing in the shopping mall (along with a late Dinner with some old friends).  

When I was very young I lived with my Mother in Las Vegas (specifically North Vegas just to give props).  During that time her best friend would babysit me on days when there was no school (as a professional gambler she didn’t work days).  One day we went on a “field trip” to an office building where she wanted me to help her put pre-folded flyers on each car in the parking lot.

Now I don’t remember how old I was.  Somewhere between not tall enough to reach the windshield wipers and tall enough to get there with a small leap.  But even at that age I knew something was up.  First she wasn’t the type of person to volunteer and she didn’t have a real job so why are we passing out flyers?  Second, when I opened the flyers, there was a picture of a man with the words “child molester” in big black print on top.  I’m not even sure I knew what a child molester was at that age but I knew it was a bad thing.  So I remember thinking we were doing something good even if I didn’t know what was going on.

Well…some time later I found out a few things.  One, the man on the flyer was my babysitter’s ex-boyfriend.  Two, the office building was where he worked and three he was in fact not a child molester.  His sin had been nothing more than breaking up with a woman who knew where he worked (I never learned why they broke up but it couldn’t have been too bad since she crashed his birthday party and tried to get back together with him no more than 6 months later)

I thought of that story when reading this article from the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Dark Side of ‘Webtribution’”

Imagine this scenario: Every person you know—each family member, friend, co-worker and casual acquaintance—receives an anonymous email from a stranger making terrible accusations about you.

How would you feel?

Renee Holder knows: "Devastated."

Several years ago, Ms. Holder discovered that dozens of her MySpace friends had received an anonymous email calling her a tramp and a home-wrecker.

For weeks, she tried to counter the allegations, which she says came from her new boyfriend's former girlfriend.

Now there are a couple issues here. Does social technology make it easier for people to spread rumors about you and does that make them more inclined to do it?

On the first point I present the story that started this post.  People were perfectly capable of spreading nasty rumors well before Facebook and Myspace came along.  Those social networks might make it slightly easier to do but only slightly and even that is arguable.

(My babysitter in the story didn’t need anyone’s password to plaster a parking lot with flyers)

On the second point here’s the thing:  Technology makes it much easier for people to blow up their ex-lovers cars too (the materials are readily available online as are instructions on how to use them).  But ex-lovers generally don’t do that because property damage on that level is a pretty serious crime. 

So even if technology makes something easier to do people won’t do it if society frowns upon it.  The reason “Webtribution” is becoming so common is because society doesn’t seem to be taking a strong stance against it.  Take the next example in the WSJ  article…

"It's perfect for public humiliation," says Jacquelyn Eschbach, an editor at a university in Philadelphia.

She should know. When she found out her husband was cheating on her last March, she logged onto his Facebook account, deleted all his privacy settings—allowing anyone to see his page—and created a new status update for him: "Moving back to my mom's because my wife caught me cheating with a woman from work."

Almost immediately, her husband's friends began sending questions, which Ms. Eschbach answered, acting as him. She named the other woman and explained that the affair had been going on for four years and had been carried on over lunch, sometimes at the woman's house, sometimes in a car. She asked if anyone had a room for rent. Finally, she disparaged his physical attributes, adding that "I am surprised Jackie stayed with me for so long."

"I wanted everyone to know what a jerk he was, and this was the easiest way to do it without saying it to each person's face," says Ms. Eschbach, 39 years old.

And what did her husband do?

When her husband found out about it, he immediately changed his Facebook password. But he says he understood why she wanted revenge. (He also begged her forgiveness.) Now the couple is trying to work things out. Ms. Eschbach says she doesn't regret her online outburst, but sometimes feels embarrassed when she runs into people she knows and wonders if they are aware of her husband's affair.

Even after they’ve gotten back together she doesn’t regret it?  That’s your problem right there.  Society has made this woman feel so justified in doing whatever she wants when she’s angry that she doesn’t feel bad even after the anger has passed.

People behave in the ways that society allows them to behave.  That’s been true since the horse and buggy days.  It has nothing to do with technology.  Our society has stopped valuing personal integrity and in doing so has allowed people to feel justified in doing whatever they feel like.

But technology only empowers people to do what they already could have done using low tech means.  It does not cause them to do it and doesn’t deserve to be blamed for it.