The thing about being the current platform of record is that all eyes are on you. So when you do something stupid, like co-opting information from around the web into everyone’s Facebook feed without a user’s explicit permission, you get called on the mat for it. Mark Zuckerberg had it right today in his apology for the Beacon debacle when he said: Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be…
Archives / December, 2007
BioWest with a ‘Vue
One of the best parts of being a part of TechStars this summer has been watching the companies make their way onward and upward now that TechStars 2007 is fading into memory. While most are still in some form of beta (meaning that their sites don’t tell you much about what they are up to) a good handful are making real progress. A great example is EventVue (also still in beta), which provides conference attendees a way to interact before, during and after a conference (which is really the main reason anyone attends a conference in the first place). BioWest just announced that they would be using the platform to support their upcoming conference and my friend Adam Rubenstein (who…
When you know it’s not right . . . it isn’t
“When you know it’s not right, it isn’t.” A fellow board member said this to me a few months back and I wrote it down as something I wanted to remind myself of every once in a while. She was referring to the human tendency to act slowly in the face of clear evidence and in particular to venture capitalists’ reluctance to be decisive. While I don’t fully subscribe to the “Blink” theory on decision making, I find it excruciating when decisions are drug out unnecessarily. Don’t do that.