Read my article in Gigaom on the Quantified Self market and how it is developing.
There are too many choices available for consumers when it comes to devices and apps that track your steps or daily activities. What needs to happen is consolidation across the industry and a focus on storytelling, not just activity.
Check out my article in Forbes on the future of Virtual Assistants. What’s after SIRI and IVR?
… Read More “The Future of Virtual Assistants”All of the interesting stuff happens when data collides. A voice-based interface to a single data set is a thing of the past.
In Part I of this article series, we looked at how the real-time Web has precipitated Nowism as a fundamental shift in how we understand and engage with information. Nowism is a cultural shift to a focus on the present, instead of the past or future.… Read More “The Present IS the Future: Real-Time Marketing In the Era of the Stream – Part Two”
Bottlenose (disclosure: my startup) just launched the first attention engine this week.
But it appears that Bit.ly is launching one soon as well.
It’s going to get interesting to watch this category develop. Clearly there is new interest in building a good real-time picture of what’s happening, and what’s trending, and providing search, discovery, and insights around that.… Read More “Bottlenose Beat Bit.ly to the First Attention Engine – But It’s Going to Get Interesting”
This article is part of a series of articles about the Bottlenose Public Beta launch.
Bottlenose – The Now Engine – The Web’s Collective Consciousness Just Got Smarter
How Bottlenose Could Improve the Media and Enable Smarter Collective Intelligence (you are here)
Bottlenose offers a new window into what the world is paying attention to right now, globally and locally.… Read More “How Bottlenose Could Improve the Media and Enable Smarter Collective Intelligence”
Recently, one of Twitter’s top search engineers tweeted that Twitter was set to “change search forever.” This proclamation sparked a hearty round of speculation and excitement about what was coming down the pipe for Twitter search.
The actual announcement featured the introduction of autocomplete and the ability to search within the subset of people on Twitter that you follow — both long-anticipated features.… Read More “Bottlenose – The Now Engine – The Web’s Collective Consciousness Just Got Smarter”
Today I had an interesting phone call with an alumnus of my alma mater, Oberlin College. He called me for an informational interview, asking for some career advice. It was a good conversation. At one point, on a tangent, he asked me why I went to Oberlin?… Read More “How I Got Into College (by Doing the Opposite of What I Should Have Done). An Essay.”
Continuing with the theme I’ve been writing about lately, focused on the growth of the next phase of the Web, what I call “The Stream,” I’ve started to analyze the messages I get on a typical day.
First of all, through all the different channels I use, I now receive approximately 13,000 messages a day.… Read More “I Get 13,000 Messages/Day via Different Streams – Here’s the Analysis”
This is Part III of a series of articles on the new era of the Stream, a new phase of the Web.
In Part I, The Message is the Medium, I explored the shift in focus on the Web from documents to messages.… Read More “Keeping Up With the Stream — New Problems and Solutions”
This is Part II of a three-part series of articles on how the Stream is changing the Web.
In Part I of this series, The Message is the Medium, I wrote about some of the shifts that are taking place as the center of online attention shifts from documents to messages.… Read More “Drowning in the Stream — New Challenges for a New Web”
A major shift has taken place on the Web. Web pages and Web search are no longer the center of online activity and attention. Instead, the new center of attention is messaging and streams. We have moved from the era of the Web to the era of the Stream.… Read More “The Message is the Medium – Attention is Shifting from the Web to the Stream”
In the previous article in this series, Is The Universe a Computer? New Evidence Emerges I wrote about some new evidence that appears to suggest that the universe may be like a computer, or least that it contains computer codes of a sort.… Read More “Consciousness is Not a Computation”
I haven’t posted in a while, but this is blog-worthy material. I’ve recently become familiar with the thinking of University of Maryland physicist, James Gates Jr. Dr. Gates is working on a branch of physics called supersymmetry. In the process of his work he’s discovered the presence of what appear to resemble a form of computer code, called error correcting codes, embedded within, or resulting from, the equations of supersymmetry that describe fundamental particles.… Read More “Is the Universe a Computer? New Evidence Emerges.”
Today I’m happy to announce the launch of StreamGlider, a new tablet app (initially on iPad) that provides the first live streaming dashboard for keeping up with your interests.
TechCrunch just broke the story.
The inspiration for StreamGlider was a product that launched in the early 1990’s called Pointcast.… Read More “StreamGlider Launches Today!”
After my former project, Twine.com, was sold, I began to turn my attention to the Next Big Challenge: How to make sense of the growing real-time Web, or what many call, “the Stream.”
I could see the writing on the wall, and it was less than 140 characters: Social media’s own success was going to be its biggest challenge.… Read More “The Problem with Stream 3.0”
Today, after almost two years of work in stealth, I am proud to announce the launch of Bottlenose.
While I have co-founded and serve on the boards of several other ventures (The Daily Dot, Live Matrix, StreamGlider, and others), Bottlenose is different from all my other projects in that I am also in a full-time day-to-day role as the CEO.… Read More “Bottlenose has Launched!”
Today I’m pleased to announce that, The Daily Dot, our newest “venture production,” has launched into public beta.
The Daily Dot is the first of its kind – it’s the Web’s newspaper — the first community newspaper about the Web.… Read More “The Daily Dot – Our Newest Venture Production – Launches Today!”
The social media landscape is changing quickly, but this change won’t be immediate, or for that matter, efficient. And that’s going to be a big problem for all of us.
I believe that Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn are fundamentally different, and thus, should not be in competition.… Read More “Sharepocalypse Now”
It may look like Google+ is competing with Facebook and Twitter, but I don’t think that is what will happen in the end. I think Google+ is a very different kind of service and it’s not clear that it can or will, or should, replace these other services.… Read More “The New Social Media Landscape: A Roadmap”
In previous articles, I’ve written about how Google+ can build a developer ecosystem on Chrome that is different from Twitter’s ecosystem, and how Twitter must change to survive against that. It’s clear that Google+ and Twitter are very different animals.
Now what about Facebook?… Read More “Should Facebook be Worried About Google+?”
As a result of the emergence of Google+, Twitter could soon find itself in a tough spot. A large chunk of their core developer base might migrate to Google+ because there is simply more opportunity there.
Why? Well for starters, it’s really easy to crank out Chrome extensions and you can market and sell them instantly in the Chrome Web Store to a ginormous captive audience that is many multiples of the size of Twitter’s user-base.… Read More “Why Twitter’s API Strategy Must Change in a Google+ and Facebook World”
Google+ has seen some good initial uptake from early-adopters in its first few weeks. But how will it leverage developers and partners?
In order to really build value around Google+, of course Google will integrate it with their other products, including Search, Gmail, and more.… Read More “The Google+ Developer Ecosystem Will Be Different from Twitter”
I was recently interviewed by Stephen Ibaraki and Alex Lin (CEO of ChinaValue) in what turned out to be the most interesting, far-reaching, and multi-disciplinary (and long) interview I’ve ever given. I was very pleased with the depth of their questions and the topics we covered.… Read More “My Best Interview: About Global Brain, Consciousness and AI”
TechCrunch kindly ran my most recent article today — the full version is available here.
Here is an excerpt:
I’ve been puzzling over Twitter’s recent tactical moves around their API, Ubermedia and Tweetdeck, for a few months now, and it just doesn’t add up.… Read More “[Excerpt From My TechCrunch post] Why Twitter Should Adopt a Freemium API Model Immediately”
I’m pleased to announce that my newest venture production is beginning to unstealth. It’s called The Daily Dot and it promises to be “the hometown newspaper of the Web ” — the community newspaper for Web.
The story of The Daily Dot began several years ago when I was thinking about where the Web was headed.… Read More “Announcing my newest production, The Daily Dot”
UPDATE NOTE: June 8, 2017:
The original post below was written in 2011. In that article I discussed the concept of venture production studios as a model — what are now being called “startup studios.”
I actively produced nearly a dozen ventures starting in 2011, using my venture studio model.… Read More “What I’ve Been Up To: The Venture Production Studio Model”
My father, Mayer Spivack, passed away on February 12, 2011, in the Kaplan Family House, a beautiful hospice outside of Boston. He passed away, at the young age of 74, after a difficult year and a half battle with colon cancer.… Read More “My Father and Me. A Memoir. For Mayer Spivack (1936 – 2011)”
Tonight I am pleased to announce that my next Big Idea has launched. It’s called Live Matrix and I invite you to come check it out.
Live Matrix is the schedule of the Web — We help you to find out “What’s When on the Web” — the hottest live online events happening on the Web: concerts, interviews, live chat sessions, game tournaments, sales, popular Webshows, tech conferences, live streaming sports coverage, and much more.… Read More “The Schedule of the Web: Live Matrix – Launched Tonight”
If 2010 was the year of the Real-Time Web, then 2011 is going to be the year that it evolves into the Scheduled Web.
The Real-Time Web happens in the now: it is spontaneous, overwhelming, and disorganized. Things just happen unpredictably and nobody really knows what to expect or what will happen when.… Read More “The Birth of the Scheduled Web”
Today I am announcing that my company, Radar Networks, and its flagship product, Twine, have been acquired by Evri. TechCrunch broke the story here.
This acquisition consolidates two leading providers of semantic discovery and search. It is also the culmination of a long and challenging venture to pioneer the adoption of the consumer Semantic Web.… Read More “Evri Ties the Knot with Twine — Twine CEO Comments and Analysis”