Entries Tagged 'Technology' ↓

Everyone kept asking for a take on the Sarah Lacy-Mark Zuckerberg keynote interview run awry at South by Southwest in Austin last week. Having weighed in on the subject in Fortune.com, I might as well offer my thoughts.

 My main thought was: I felt sorry for Sarah Lacy. Sure, I thought she could have done things differently, and I generally prefer a much more subdued style of interviewing. But the criticism was over the top and out of proportion to what happened. In addition, she had a notoriously tough subject on stage, one who was heavily coached as well as not particularly forthcoming.

I do also think the interview raised some age-old questions about the journalist-source relationship. Lacy was apparently Zuckerberg’s hand-picked choice, and she has become something of his Boswell. They clearly had some rapport on stage. That’s great for her, as a lot of journalists would love to have that kind of access. But it also comes with a price, as it’s in her interest to maintain that relationship, which sometimes can affect the tone of the questioning.

The geeks in the audience thought this would de-rail Lacy’s career. I don’t see it. She’s immensely talented, and I anticipate that her book coming out on Web 2.0 figures will be a great read and will sell well. And hey: A little controversy never really hurts. No publicity is bad, right?

I come across a lot of startups in my work as a technology journalist, and quite often I can’t tell if they have any shot of making it. I admire the passion, but I know that they face many hurdles, and many will fail.

 I don’t know if Get Satisfaction, the startup that I profiled in today’s New York Times, will hit it big either, but I do feel that the folks behind the company are onto something big. And that’s the notion that in the networked economy, companies no longer control the discussion about their products. Customers are increasingly in the driver’s seat, writing on blogs and their own Web sites aimed at different products. 

 Smart companies will listen to their customers, and embrace this new transparency. Get Satisfaction is giving these companies a way to do just that.

 The other fun thing for me, in writing this story, was catching up with Thor and Amy Muller, who I knew at their old company, Rubyred Labs. Thor told the story of Get Satisfaction’s inspiration in a silly side project the Mullers had started at Rubyred. Called Valleyschwag, people could pay $15 a month and get a care package of Web companies’ t-shirts, stickers, buttons and other paraphernalia. When the blogosphere touted it, it took off, and Valleyschwag had 2,000 paying customers in the first six weeks. The Mullers and their partner Jonathan Grubb were overwhelmed. Eighty percent of customer issues were repetitive, and in some cases the community solved the problem before the Mullers could get to it, giving birth to the idea for Get Satisfaction. (Jonathan is moving to L.A. to keep running Rubyred while the Mullers teamed with Lane Becker on Get Satisfaction.)

I’d like to join the chorus wishing for Om Malik’s speedy recovery. In today’s New York Times, I have a story about how Om suffered a heart attack just after Christmas — and how other A-list bloggers like Paul Kedrosky and Michael Arrington warn how stressful it is to have to constantly update a site.

Om was already wrestling with the issue. His chief operating officer Paul Walborsky told me that others, most notably Martha Stewart, have had to figure a way to extend their name across a media business in which others do most of the work. Martha’s staff was forced to work without her through one kind of hardship; Om’s staff is coping with another.

It can be done. Utne Reader survives without founder Eric Utne (although his wife Nina, who sold the magazine, is still an editor-at-large), and Collier’s survived its founder for nearly 50 years. (Others haven’t fared as well: Jane magazine didn’t last long without Jane Pratt, and let’s not even get into what happened to Rosie.)

A story I wrote about what Rupert Murdoch might do with the San Francisco Web site MarketWatch.com is up today on Fortune.com.

Fortune has revamped its Web site, and it looks great. Now, instead of stories appearing to come from CNNMoney, you can tell that they’re by Fortune writers. I hope to contribute more in the weeks ahead.

I’ve got a story in this morning’s USA Today about how cell phones will soon have credit card information stored in a chip, so that you’ll only have to wave it over a scanner in order to pay for something.

While all the experts I spoke to said this is a very secure technology, there are plenty of skeptics out there, judging from the comments the story is receiving.

I welcome the skeptics. I’m a big fan of paying with cash myself.

That was the startling assertion I heard from Philip Rosedale, CEO of San Francisco’s Linden Lab, producer of the virtual world Second Life, at a breakfast hosted by Conde Nast’s new business magazine Portfolio at the St. Regis Hotel in San Francisco on Tuesday morning, Sept. 11.

Yet despite such an outrageously hype-filled statement, Rosedale actually came across as humble and realistic. He continually noted that Second Life was in its early stages. He acknowledged that most people who have signed up for the site rarely visit it (count me among them) and that it’s too hard to use. He said it needs to add many more features, including a big improvement of its search capability.

In a way, he could have been giving tips to the Portfolio writers and editors in the audience, including Kevin Maney, the former USA Today columnist who interviewed Rosedale on the podium. I’m very excited that Portfolio has started, as I am still a big believer in print and love to see new venues for long-form narrative journalism. But given the skepticism greeting Portfolio’s arrival, the magazine is still in its very early stages, and is still charting its way in the world.