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 able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

That said, the idea behind Beacon is a step in the right direction. It was the implementation that was wrong. Even the most dedicated Facebook users have lives outside of Facebook. In fact, most of what we do around the web has nothing to do with Facebook (at least it shouldn’t, if you have a life . . . ). The problem is that if I want a centralized place to tell people about what I’m up to and to interact with them about it, I need to spend a bunch of time recreating stuff I’ve done everywhere else around the web back at my platform of choice. It’s not efficient and it’s a pain. In my case, I essentially never do it. It’s that real-world problem that Beacon, despite its flaws, is trying to solve. For that, I say kudos to Facebook.

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 writes a blog about the Colorado life science investing) has a nice post up on why BioWest went with EventVue. Go TechStars Go!

“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.

It’s not that I’m ashamed of being a venture capitalist, but I do find that when people I don’t know ask me what I do, rather than say “I’m a venture capitalist” I typically say “I work for a finance company”. Writing this, I suppose that probably makes me sound like I sell mortgages or something, but for some reason I prefer it to the more direct answer.

We were talking about this at a Foundry partner offsite earlier this week and it turns out that I’m not the only one of the group that tends to do this. We decided that it probably doesn’t stem from a deep seeded psychological problem (although perhaps we’re in denial about that) but rather is a result of geography. On the coasts who you are is much more tightly associated with what you are – vocationally speaking – but here in Colorado (as Chris eloquently put it this week) when someone asks you “what do you do,” you’re much more likely to talk about mountain biking or skiing than you are to answer what you do as a vocation. It’s not that people here don’t work hard (or that people on the coasts don’t do things outside of work), it’s more a question of how you want t the outside world to see you (and in what order).

I wonder if that’s true for other types of jobs and in different geographies. What do you think?

Perhaps it’s too cliché to rag on Microsoft Vista, but indulge me for just a minute. Vista – you suck! You reboot my computer constantly and at seemingly any time of day, you don’t work with any of my existing peripherals, you amuse yourself with your endless “i’m thinking now, please go away” circles and seem to revel in turning my inbox opaque and hanging up for minutes on end – especially when I’m in the middle of something important.

Today I bought my first Mac in 17 years (my last Mac was the Classic my parents bought for me when I left for college). It’s too early to tell you exactly how much I like it, but so far it’s a breath of fresh air. And while I’m not planning on completely giving up my windows machines yet, I think I’ll enjoy a respite from them now and again with my new found friend.

For a much more amusing rant on this subject, check out this post from Ross Carlson, our Director of IT. Well put, Ross!

So now that you are arguing for consensus at your meetings rather than arguing to win, how much is that tete-a-tete costing you anyway? Here’s an amusing answer to that question. I just ran a hypothetical meeting with a VP Sales, COO and Director of Biz Dev. They couldn’t agree on anything and our meeting ballooned into an hour long discussion. The grand total? $169.56. A waste of time and money . . . hypothetically speaking . . .

Someone recently told me about being stuck in a group where people were arguing to win, rather than arguing for consensus. Whatever it was they were talking about didn’t get solved and a bunch of people left the meeting annoyed. I’ve not heard anyone describe the difference in debating style to me in this way before and think it perfectly captures a huge distinction in the polar approaches some people bring to a group decision making process.

On the one hand, you’re already right, don’t want to hear about what anyone else says and your only goal is to get the group to make your decision. You probably don’t hear a lot of what other people say, because you’re too busy coming up with a response to the stupid point they just made rather than listening to their reasoning.

On the other hand, you want to make the best decision possible, don’t have to be the smartest person in the room and realize that other people bring different backgrounds and experience to a discussion.

You tell me which one results in a better decision (not to mention overall experience) . . .

I first signed up for FaceBook about 8 months ago, interested in checking out the platform and to playing with the technology. I was happy to find a handful of my geek Boulder friends already there as well as a few colleagues and one or two college buddies. The TechStars guys (most of whom were under 25) were, of course, well established on FB already and happy to point me in the right direction (download this, pull your blog into your news feed, see your contacts this way, etc.).

Over the first few months I noticed some of my VC friends join up as well as more of the Boulder tech crowd. Then I started seeing a few more people from College and finally even some friends from high school ‘friending’ me. I’ve noticed over the last month or so that this trend is accelerating . . . quickly. And it’s not just older tech geeks – it’s anyone and everyone starting to jump on and sign up. While the overwhelming majority of FaceBook users are still college and just post college age (18-24) there’s real growth happening in the 34 and up crowd (FaceBook itself reports that its fastest growing segment is those over 25, but doesn’t break it out more specifically).

What does this all mean? I believe that at the moment, FaceBook is the most important platform on the internet. And while I’m sure that iGoogle and others will give it a run for its money, anyone looking for an audience online can’t ignore the 55 million and growing number of users on FaceBook (still doubling every 6 months). And while there are over 7,000 FaceBook applications, the growing number of older . . . I mean experienced . . . users suggests some different ways that publishers and app developers can and should target this demographic. This has implications for gaming, for recommendation engines, for book and movie advertising and reviews, for conferences, for the guys spamming my inbox incessantly with advertisements for Viagra and for just about anyone else who has a product or service to sell for the 35+ crowd.

The beauty of FaceBook as a platform is how broadly applicable it is to any demographic – the utility is a function of the people you are connected with rather than the application itself. This explains why we’ll see FaceBook usage accelerate, particularly across new demographics.

InsideCRM has compiled a list of the 20 worst venture deals of all time. Not sure the methodology (I can think of a few that I might have added to the list . . .) but the deals mentioned are for the most part worthy of the designation. You can see the story here – definitely amusing reading.

There’s no question that OpenSocial supports exactly what I was talking about last week. Check out Marc Andreessen’s post on the effort here – a must read for anyone who cares about open platforms.