betaworks goodrec betaworks a new medium company OMG POP Some e cards uservoice LOtame Lookery OUtside.in ideeli work "a series of intutive hunches followed by empirical evidence, arrives at laws and theories about how the universe operates" "The boundaries of your resources (read "site") become liquid, public, shared" - David P. Reed As the media industry de-industrializes we see an opportunity to create a new kind of media company. One that is distributed — like the innovation that is occuring — one that is designed to rapidly scale early stage internet businesses. One with the least amount of structure possible — a loosely coupled system that minimizes transaction costs without the overhead of a single, overarching entity. distributed data data connections simplicity recombination loosely coupled betaworks' mission is to drive innovation and profits through the creation of a distributed network of web-based applications, platforms and data services enabling interaction, collaboration and the sharing of data / content. "It's never been cheaper to test and refine a theory." (David Cohen) method induction single workflow how we dizzywood songkick covestor Twitter Tweetdeck bit.ly switchabit Twitterfeed platforms for real-time communications, public collaboration and distribution Tumblr Stocktwits We think about betaworks as a network. A network of companies. The companies in the network are loosely coupled to one another, usually at the level of data exchange. We encourage our companies to distribute their data via open APIs and integrate data from other companies. This shadow of data is what links the network. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” Western Union internal memo, 1876. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urging for investment in the radio in the 1920s. “The whole world is drunk and we’re just the cocktail of the moment. Someday soon, the world will wake up, down two aspirin with a glass of tomato juice, and wonder what the hell all the fuss was about.”Dean Martin, in The Rat Pack. We must not let daylight in upon magic. - Walter Bagehot Listen to the technology. Find out what it is telling you. Carver Mead The beauty of the Internet is that it connects people. The value is in the other people. If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we’re devaluing those people and making ourselves into idiots." -Jaron Lanier The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It’s how nature creates itself, on ever scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. Arcadia, Stoppard “Well”, said Pooh “what I like best …” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you begin to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.” An artist was talking about technological innovation in Victorian times. He talked about how free and unbounded creative thinking was at that time. Today we are experiencing a similar rush of innovation and change and opportunity. Structuring data for users, publishers and advertisers. Context now web feedback loops observation and practice "focus on what you do differently, reuse the rest" "strong preference for a simple, singular, well defined workflow" "look for network effects and loops" "think about what data already exists and is available" "we like to use shit, experience it. beta's not ppt" "make things people want, addressing a clear, simple need" Paul Graham "Seek simplicity but distrust it" Alfred North Whitehead beauty social web “No set of labels or algorithms solves anything once and for all; any working system for showing data to the user is a bag of optimizations and tradeoffs that are a lot worse than some Platonic ideal, but a lot better than nothing.” Clay Shirky “Bigness of purpose is what separates 20th century and 21st century organizations: yesterday, we built huge corporations to do tiny, incremental things - tomorrow, we must build small organizations that can do tremendously massive things.” Umair Haque "Now is the time for experiments, lots and lots of experiments, each of which will seem as minor at launch as craigslist did, as Wikipedia did, as octavo volumes did” (Clay Shirky) “Business plans are like sausages, if you knew what went into them you wouldn’t eat them.” Yossi Vardi “Most computer technologists don’t like to discuss it, but the importance of beauty is a consistent (if sometimes inconspicuous) thread in the software literature. Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology… Beauty is important in engineering terms because software is so complicated… Beauty is our most reliable guide to achieving software’s ultimate goal: to break free of the computer, to break free conceptually. David Gelernter The power of ideas to change the world is accelerating and few people grasp the implications of that fully. People don't think exponentially, yet exponential change applies to anything that involves measuring information content. Take genetic sequencing. When the human genome project was announced in 1990, sceptics said: "No way you're going to do this in 15 years." Halfway through the project the sceptics were still going strong, saying you've only finished 1 per cent of the project. But that's actually right on schedule: by the time you get to 1 per cent you're only seven doublings away. Ray Kurzweil microsyntax.org