I just posted this on GigaOm: Emails, tweets, notifications, text and instant messages, Facebook status updates, Path moments — all these are new tools of communication when taken together are notification hell. These notifications prey on human desire for a dopamine fix. And just as we are over-caffenited, I think the 21st century is quickly making us over-notified. (I think this is my second new phrase of the week – the first one being aspriational escape velocity)
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I have been a big fan of Nooka’s watch designs so when I saw they released a new app for the iPhone, I promptly downloaded. It is a pretty amazing little app that visualizes the concept of time in a fresh and fun manner. Just check out this video and you will know. It is worth the 99 cents (though there a free version as well.)
Chris Mahan in the comments below points out that one of the key points of Mark Zuckerberg’s memo has been part of programming ethos for a long time. He links to a 1994 article in the Linux Journal where a group of Bell Labs researchers working on the UNIX operating system made a list of four principles.
Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.
Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.
Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.
Or so says Bijan Sabet, a long time VC whose investments include Tumblr and Twitter. I would say, timing has a lot to do with Facebook’s success too.
More people in more countries have computer, broadband connections, smartphones and wireless connections. Unlike MySpace, Facebook was able to thrive because of persistent broadband, better infrastructure technologies and smarter web software methodologies. More importantly, it had leadership that knew what was good enough for them to focus on (or imitate) in order to grow.
“Much has been written about the value of being a first mover in a given market. Or the importance of market timing. Or whatever some bullshit business school has to say on the matter.
But the reality is that it wasn’t that long ago where MySpace was massive and Facebook had a tiny fraction of their users. If memory serves, in 2006, MySpace had 7x the user base of Facebook.
Think about that.
It wasn’t market timing. It was execution. Facebook had a better team and a better product and they were able to keep pushing, and pushing with bold initiatives.
Lesson: there is a big opportunity when the market leader has a bad product” [Bijan Sabet ]
It is great to see this in a financial document that is otherwise kinda dry!
Today, our society has reached another tipping point. We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want.
Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.[Facebook S-1 filing]
