Michael Arrington has written the best article ever on TechCrunch. That is all. As you were.
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[Note: This is a slightly edited version of an article I wrote for Crikey this morning. The main difference is a bit more linkage. There's more CeBIT / Transaction 2.0 material to come.]
In 1980 futurist Alvin Toffler wrote The Third Wave. Following the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions, he said, we’re now experiencing the Third Wave, or what might be called post-industrial society. Australia’s surfing prowess means nothing here, though. We’re still pissing in the shallows, barely held up by leaking floaties.
Why is tech-literate, well-educated Australia so bad at marketing and profiting from its own innovation, from the fisheye lens to gene shears? We do innovate, you know.
“Australians expect the government to do everything for them — but the government’s clueless,” explained journalist and evangelist Duncan Riley at yesterday’s Transaction 2.0 conference. “The Australia 2020 Summit is a classic example. The Internet was seen as an ‘emerging’ industry. Emerging? We’ve had it for 20 years! In the US alone it employs 7 million people.”
Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.
TechCrunch has some figures on Twitter usage. It seems my own Twitterings at 16+ a day makes me a “heavy” user.
March 2008
Total Users: 1+ million
Total Active Users: 200,000 per week
Total Twitter Messages: 3 million/dayWhat’s most interesting is the rabid Twitter usage by active users — they send an average of 15 Twitter message per day.
My Twitter stats show that my usage is spread across my waking hours right across the week. Yes, Twitter has become a core communication tool — though I’ve said that before [1, 2]. Maybe you should follow me.
[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh's cartoons published online, it's free to use.]
Hannover Fairs, the organisers of the CeBIT Australia IT trade show, must be shitting themselves about poor ticket sales or something. They certainly seem desperate.
These guys are spammy at the best of times, sending at least one email a week every week. But this year I’ve received three “Exclusive Limited Offer: Free Exhibition Entry” emails this month alone, plus today another one via the Australian Computer Society — yeah, that’s fuckin’ exclusive, eh? They’ve emailed a “Dear Bloggers” media release and phoned. Gawd!
I was underwhelmed last year and annoyed with the marketing wank-words.
Do these shows actually achieve anything any more? I mean, if you’ve got a new IT product you just tell TechCrunch and the geek world’s blogosphere of feral goldfish do the rest, right? Why herd everyone into a room, except to fuel an industry of hangers-on who make t-shirts and lame promotional giveaways?
[P.S. I am actually going. If nothing else I can collect some high-grade sarcasm for my podcast. But enough with the spam already, Hannover!]
[Note: This article is a follow-up to How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?, written after that piece received a lot of attention. But my views are more complex than simple Good vs Evil, as a look through all Calacanis-related posts will show.]
I’m still chuckling at the seriousness with which some people treat getting onto Techmeme. It’s true, I keep stopping typing to giggle. It’s embarrassing.
I’d never visited Techmeme until this weekend. Even then it was only because someone told me I’d blipped up there. It’s just another feed of what someone thinks is “important” in infotech, yeah? Who cares. It’s not as if it’s Reuters or BBC News.
It’s just more geeks telling geeks what geeks think other geeks should think about stuff that geeks think about.
But Jason Calacanis cares.
Jason Calacanis must care very deeply because he “joked” about it on this website, and over at TechCrunch he “joked” about getting pageviews. His fan club speculates that Duncan Riley and me and others are only attacking him to generate our own web traffic. Well, I can’t speak for Duncan, but no, I couldn’t care less about website traffic — especially the low-grade drive-by flamers that usually wash up here after being mentioned on high-traffic fan sites. That’s not why I’m here.
I’m attacking Calacanis because I reckon the business style he describes, the one championed by his defenders, is rotten to the very core.
But first, let’s talk about religion…
A note for folks stumbling across this website thanks to the Jason Calacanis / 37signals / TechCrunch discussion: It’s 4.30pm on a sunny autumn Sunday afternoon here in Sydney. I have been writing a further post which explains, amongst other things, that I’m not trolling (deliberately stirring up controversy), but passionately arguing a genuine concern. I’m amused this has turned into a global controversy, flattered even, when I reckon it’s more a storm in a teacup — though at its heart is a fundamental issue about how we do business. However for the next few hours I’ll be enjoying the remaining sunshine, doing some shopping and generally spending Sunday evening with my beloved. More soon.
[Update 10 March, 1030 AEDT: I've written a follow-up article which, while bound to piss off a few people, explains precisely why I'm so concerned about this issue.]
…but I don’t know whether this was exactly what I had in mind. Calling a high-profile Internet entrepreneur a prick, and then being referenced by some of the highest-traffic tech blogs on the planet.
OK, I participated in the discussion at TechCrunch and the 37signals blog Signal vs Noise, as I should. But then it was picked up by Mashable and then TechMeme (see screenshot). And now I’m seeing inbound from TechCrunch Japan and Colbert Low’s technology blog and who knows where else to come.
Over at TechCrunch, Australian journalist Duncan Riley tells the story of a 23-year-old Afghani who’s been sentenced to death in a secret trial for discussing a document he found on the Internet.
Sayad Parwez Kambaksh’s crime was printing a document… that allegedly “violated the tenets of Islam.” Kambaksh then allegedly took the printout to Balkh University, where he discussed the contents with his teacher and classmates, resulting in a complaint to the US-backed Government.
Duncan asks:
What exactly are Americans and coalition forces (including British and Australian troops) fighting for in Afghanistan again? Feel free to remind me in the comments.
And the comments have gone beserk, even for TechCrunch. I’ll share some of it with you ‘cos someone who read my own comment emailed me privately to call me a genius and say that following the link to my website, i.e. here, was the best decision he ever made! Poor chap.
ABC The Drum
Crikey
CSO Online
Delicious
Dopplr
Flickr
LinkedIn
newmatilda.com
Patch Monday
Posterous
Qik
Stilgherrian Live (Ustream)
Technology Spectator
Twitter
Viddler
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