The New York Tech MeetUp, The Reviews

I’m Overly Exhausted, and very distracted, so this is very late getting out, but I thought I should do a writeup of the New York Tech Meetup. (this was written over a 24 hour period, so excuse the time wierdness in advance.)

It was an interesting experience.  Sitting in the room, you could tell who was a press darling, who was playing follow the leader in a bad sort of way (rather than a good sort of way) and who actually had potential on a large scale.  Some of these businesses could do very well for a niche audience, some need to figure out there “theoretics” as I would say, and some are well on their way.

For those interested, I live tweeted it @shanacarp hashtag #nytm.  It was the first time I live-tweeted anything.  Interesting experience in and of itself, especially while also taking notes. Ubertwitter did not feel like a friend, I couldn’t follow other conversations on the BB Curve, which was disappointing, because it is functionally easier to think of tweets with a phone.  It is also hard to balance a notebook and a blackberry at the same time for this post .   Overall though, a fun event, and I should have stayed to go barhopping with the crowd, but alas, some of us have to count smartphones on trains.

The two most impressive presenters tonight were Blip.TV and Hunch.

Blip.TV has a well developed and well thought out business model, with other potential avenues to explore for more cash flow if needed to be.  Further, they have a well developed technology for a startup, that is well designed for its user base.  It looks like they spent time polling their user base and studying them and needs when it came to the design and the tools inside of it.  They took the time to really figure out their market before designing their API, and it shows.  It also seems to show up in their business plan as well.  It sounds like, although it was brushed over, that they are in close partnership with the networks as well.  They seem to be translating from Startup to Company extremely well.

Hunch also has an impressive interface, designed by one Dr. Fake and her team.  It is unique angle for finding information: decision trees and finding correlations between strange, simple questions that describe us as individuals.  I actually was an early user because I needed to buy a computer recently (agonizing process),  and it was not able to confirm my emotional focal points in the decision tree. It also would be terrible for someone going through any sort of emotional/personality growth.  As the person changes. so would the decision trees, causing radical shifts in the person’s profile.  It would make the decisions shown by hunch too unpredicitable.  This however, hopefull, is only a small percentage of the population.

Apparently they have started to work on issue of emotional focal points with the final question (what is most important to you) but still, I wonder if  identifying them, or focal points in general, much earlier one by rating the importance of the question, would affect the decision tree.  That being said, choosing decision trees strike me as smart, if they can break out into the rest of the Internet world of Middle America as a way to get advice, especially since right now it is stuck in Tech Land and needs to Cross the Chasm.  They may need to find ways to strengthen their cash flow until then.  I also would, If I were them, periodically check in with new questions.  If this is training wheels to go to Hunch for research, and to use decision trees,might as well keep it game-like by continually updating the questions, so there is always something new to learn about oneself.  Why else would I, as a consumer, use Hunch to find stuff?  It also has to be a fun experience (which it currently is, but sometimes leaves me hanging when I just don’t know the answer, or I’ve answered the question already) .  However it is a stand out product with a great team and overall, a wonderful design.  They are thinking about a new issue of the way we think and behave on the web, and even if they don’t succeed (and I hope they do), that team will have learned enough to become market leaders in something about the Internet because they will have learned something unique about understanding us.  One other thought might have it import other information about the person and “read” through it using tagging.

Rounding out the middle:

Mag.ma has a lot of great press, and a deep API that still needs further exploring for porting out.  It’s top design is very clean looking, very modern.  Very impressive for what it is, a video aggregate, with different kinds of top 100 lists of Videos from different types of Social Networking sites such as Reddit, Digg, Hulu, Facebook, CollegeHumor, etc.  It it is clear that the creator, Andrew Baron, understands video extremely well (He founded RocketBoom.), otherwise he would not have gone out of his way to present such a deep API with a clean and functional layout  that screams “I want,” which many well-run, technologically capable start ups lack .  The beautiful is not the divine, it is just a tool to get there.  A deep API for videos is great.  So is an amazing layout.

I am not totally sure if there is a need for redundancy when it comes to social media aggregators, even if they cause media to spread faster, nor am I totally sure he understands that by listing the top 100 as a first choice (especially if you have night owl habits), you cause the currently popular favorite to rise to the top and change rankings altogether. In a famous study by  Matthew Salagnik and Duncan Watts of Princeton, sponsored by Yahoo, they randomly A and B tested a group of  students to download music from independent bands, which they could keep if they rated the music.  The question was would the choice of music that be downloaded be affected by showing the ratings.  Apparently, the answer the answer is yes.    Social networks cause this affect to happen very quickly (as anyone who has read the legal documents about website can relate to), and then die quickly as well, as the pop-culture meme fades. If one creates a page that shows a mix of all social networks top 100, will after a while the cross pollination that occurs cause them all to show the exact same or similar items?  Should social networks that also aggregate be aware of this factor?  Or is there enough market differentiation between these sites and the types of people who visit that it is unlikely to happen.  Further, although there are plenty of beta features that could combat this problem, such as favorite searches saved, should they be pushed to the front of Magma to help combat this issue, if Magma feels it is in its interest?  One further note- Magma needs to work with Blip.TV and Boxee badly (though I suspect, by intuition, they are, it is just all under large C Corporate Wraps).

There also still seems to be an AND? question here- where is the money in this, because by their very nature aggregate platforms don’t do well as advertising engines.  People use them to get away from the advertising, and video hosting already has advertising in it.  Can Magma survive another round of ads?  Or are they selling the data that comes from passing links, particularly for sites like Hulu?  It’s overarching beauty can hide that question, but I am reminded of a clever turn of Biblical Phrasing: Grace is deceitful, and beauty is vain (Proverbs, 31: 30, and if it makes you feel any better, it is talking about the ideal woman)

The two hardest for me to review are Pegshot, by WellcomeMat, and Comixology.

Pegshot knows parts of its demographic well.  Anyone who has looked for an apartment or a house wants to know if the place has been trashed and then covered over with a bunch of paint, but still left the real damage behind.  A home is, after all, hard to find.  Geolocation tagging, especially in the aggregate of a neighborhood, shows those sorts of changes.  Is it totally necessary to tie oneself to Video to explain a house?  Why Video? Why not Photo?

Geolocation also has this icky little problem with it right now, how much tracking do you want in your life.  Certain amounts of tracking is brilliant.  I want to know about accurate restaurant information.  But I am young, single, female, thin, with long hair, and smart enough to realize that geolocation can broadcast too much for me.   How much of a trace do you want to leave.  I think tagging places that videos and images are from in context of real estate is a great idea.  But beware of too much in the moment tagging, they veer into zones where they have to worry about their users’ privacy.  And videos are worse, you now have an almost three dimensional image of the last location of that person.  I doubt the majority of videos will be used this way, but some caution is always warranted and issues thought about in advance.

I’m also not sold that videos in the middle of Peoria is going to work.    If the marker of a good housing market is single family unattached homes, ideally new construction (otherwise known as suburbia, and as far away from NYTM as one could be), then probably one should talk to the real estate agents out there and figure out their needs.  If they want to be posting videos, bellisima!  If they want to be posting something else, also bellisima!  But at least know what they are doing and what they are hampered by out in suburbia first.  If I wanted to do a mobile app of any sort on any platform, I would call real estate agents and start figuring out what phones they are carrying from site to site, let alone average joe people like you and me.

Further, as I will always nudge about right now- are you totally sure about that IPhone app?  I mean, it looks extremely sexy on screen up there, but of your total market of those who buy houses, how many have IPhones and IPod Touchs?  What is the most common smartphone being sold today in a given area?  I went on the train that night and counted:  There were still at around 10:30 pm around 6-7 blackberries out, and another two of different types of smartphones, one Apple Touch IPod/IPhone being played, and the rest were closer to normal non-smart phones.  And I am still trying to un-systematically chat up people about their phones, because the information is useful.  (If you want to help create a system of systematically finding out a sample of smartphone usage in this country, and how it is changing, leave a comment.)

I would also walk into a cell phone store and just see if you can shmooze out of them what are the most popular phones they are selling this week.  And also which ones are being returned.  Do it across all of the major carriers.  Try some of the minor ones too.  And see about prepaid.  And then get your best female friend to bug some people to tell her about their cell usage.  Just to make sure you got the right cell phones and that you know what is flying out there, outside of development world, where you have to sell to…

And that brings me to ComiXology*.  They have everything for a great company.  Great tech, a visual showcase, a passionate leader, who makes sure to answer questions, and who is also a good image on stage.  He was kind enough nearly immediately after presenting to tweet me back about his business model for distributing webcomics, such as xkcd, or very even more obscure webcomics, such as Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword.  Since webcomics actually have a business model as small businesses, that are usually freemium or related product related to the comics, and having a small distribution for pay would really add to those small business.

But that also holds true for the large  majority of comics published in the United States.  Lots of independents are labors of love, not of money.  Being an online distributor (even through an Iphone) may raise money for both ComiXology and independents, but even with a micropayments, is there enough of a market?

Further, once Amazon and Sony resolve their ebook issue, is the IPhone the Target?  As one Tweet from @ceonyc – what happens when the Kindle goes color? And it isn’t just the Kindle- it is what happens when the mobile web is figured out, in conjunction to the devices that go with it.

That being said, it is clear that ComiXology is a labor of love, and they are spot on about Micropayments, about aggregation for niche audience material and giving a good presentation of that material to suck that user in.  They know that the biggest draw of most downtime with phones is communication and boredom, and they are harnessing both (they first developed a blog about comics before the application).  Is their audience big enough for sustained long term growth, or are they playing a niche field?  Can they sustain this once the first round of technology passes into the second round and it is clearer who the market leader is?  Is it a necessary piece of technology, is this something that long term should be migrated to the mobile web with the Micropayments?  And finally, does this  appeal to casual readers, as well as readers who do not have as much access to cash and credit, who are big comic book readers, such as the third graders I once taught as an adjunct teacher in an urban, not so amazing school.

(Note, none of them would have access to this app, an IPhone or an IPod touch is out of reach, and at least one kid who was reading comics couldn’t do math and did not have Internet access yet at home.  That was at the library…very “Urban” school, but I would be stealing comics from them all the time and have to give them back at the end of the day…think on that).

And to sign off try “I think therefore I am” here.

*One more thing about ComiXology.  I think, no matter what happens short term, David Steinberger, the CEO, is one to watch.  He’s very passionate about what he does, and was the only presenter to actually sit there immediately after his presentation tweeting people back about questions they had.  It seems like he understands  how good critique and answering to it will make him and any company he is part of will help him grow.  As I said, one to watch.

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