VC

Apple introduced yesterday a new version of iTunes. iTunes 10. It is a better software and it is going social. But it's raising so many questions and observations in my mind

 

1. Ping is the first social network to exist only in a software (iTunes). Can a social network exist out of a browser? Can a social network exist in a place where most of the usage is about transaction and download? 
2. Popular social networks became popular because they were built as a platform, not only as a destination (think Facebook connect, Last.fm distributed graph, Flick widgets,..). Will Apple consider an API?
3. Every user has a Ping profile URL (here is mine) : Apple made them as friendly as iTunes songs URL. meaning unfriendly. Maybe they should use my friend loic's ping.fm shortener
4. Do people really care about the taste of people they don't know? Is music a strong vertical enough to build AGAIN your social graph? Isn't your "taste graph" just a sub graph of your existing "social graph".
5. A lot of people seem to indicate that apple made the right choices in terms of privacy settings. Actually i believe most people don't care
6. What's really missing in ITunes is a out-of-iTunes broadcasting mechanism. There is Share with Facebook/Twitter but it is painful. Apple has all the assets to create the very best sharing experience (think about cross app sharing for example). They did not do it. Because Apple's DNA is not social and is not about sharing.
7. I said it in the past, will say it again. iTunes "rebranding" to iTunes 10 is a missed opportunity to assess iTunes as the leading media store (video, podcast, games, apps, shows AND songs). They should have rebranded it iStore
8. Real names, connected to Ping will now be used in Reviews. Since your name is associated to a credit card, you'd better watch out to fake reviews :)
9. Lady Gaga who is #1 in Twitter follower is probably also #1 in Ping. I am afraid Ping will be good for mainstream music discovery only. Eg: Keith Jarrett is not even an artist to Follow...The problem of discovery is not about hits, it is about the long tail
10. Ping will come to other media (podcast, movies, apps). But not until it makes its way on music. Maybe.

Bonuses.

1. iTunes has not solved the biggest pain to discovery: the browsing, speed/experience and search. More than a social network they should have started there.
2. Example to point 11: iTunes search engine does not work holistically with Ping's user. You can't be searched in iTunes own search engine...
3. Ping's execution is awesome and simple: but it looks so much like Facebook feed that i wonder why Apple did not give more credit to that and even if Apple did not build Ping out of a missed opportunity with Facebook.
4. Some people seem to indicate the death of last.fm and spotify. I seriously doubt it. Those 2 services provide a way better discovery experience and are built as platforms, not just softwares.
5. Apple has nnot enabled notifications on ping. no way to know when you have a new friend following or a new artist feed mention. You need to actively go and discover it
6. I really want to thank Apple for making our life easier at Appsfire: social discovery is the key to apps, more than advertising. people start to understand that what we make, makes sense :)
7. you can't share your own library on Ping. A smart move would have been to prepopulate my profile with my existing library. Since everything is already there. you can only share what shows up in iTunes Store!

Ben’s last post on minimizing corporate politics generated a bunch of interesting comments. One set of commenters essentially asked, “gee, why should an employee be motivated first by a company’s success rather than by their own success”? Frankly, this surprised both of us.

So I suggested that Ben answer this line of questioning directly, which he does in his latest post The Right Kind of Ambition. In addition to his trademark rap quote, he also quotes esteemed management philosopher Theodore Guisel—a.k.a. Dr. Suess—speaking in the voice of Yertle the Turtle. That’s got to be the first time Drake and Dr. Suess appear on the same page of, well, anything.

Filed under: Business, Opsware

Facebookfacebook

Ouriel OHAYON has:
2132 friends
123 photos
757 notes
198 wall posts
120 groups

Join me on FacebookI have started using appsfire.com, an application on Facebook,
and I think you would like it too. Facebook is a website that
lets you connect with your friends, share photos, use
applications and more.Hi there, would love to share my favorite iPhone apps with you, would be great to discover yours too :)Thanks,
Ouriel
To sign up for Facebook, follow the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?app_id=118960208123041&i=505925412&k=561U22SZWT6G6BDATAZ5RQRUP6BAW56C4VAV&r

Already have an account? Add this email address to your
account.
23da98dea4b99db2@typepad.com was invited to join Facebook by Ouriel OHAYON. If you do not wish to receive this type of email from Facebook in the future, please click here to unsubscribe.Facebook, Inc. P.O. Box 10005, Palo Alto, CA 94303

As companies grow, they often get more political—by which I mean, people start advancing their own agendas by means other than merit or contribution.

Ben explains in his latest blog post what a CEO can do to minimize corporate politics. It’s not intuitive. For example, Ben points out that CEOs need to give career guidance to junior employees in a very different way from giving advice to executives. Read the post to learn how to minimize politics—especially around the traditional flash points of performance reviews, promotions, and re-orgs.

Filed under: Business

As companies grow, they often get more political—by which I mean, people start advancing their own agendas by means other than merit or contribution. Ben explains in his latest blog post what a CEO can do to minimize corporate politics. It’s not intuitive. For example, Ben points out that CEOs need to give career guidance…

Some paleolithic institutions like Banks are still using fax and refuse to adapt themself to the modern world using emails with their customers. The problem is that no one is really using a fax anymore. Even those multi function printer... Ouriel Ohayon

Some paleolithic institutions like Banks are still using fax and refuse to adapt themself to the modern world using emails with their customers.

The problem is that no one is really using a fax anymore. Even those multi function printer are a pain to use [printing, putting the doc in the tray, dialing,....]

So i started to look for services to send and receive fax for free in Israel. I called netvision. After 6 sales representative, they figured out they had such service but 1. it is ridiculously expensive 2. you need to use their Paleolithic own email system

I started to look on the web. you can find plenty of so called free email to fax service. But they are not free. And force you to buy a monthly subscription.

I really found 2 services for sending and receiving faxes from your computer (meaning sending files directly from your computer)

• FreeFax.co.il [make abstraction of the endless number of google ads] Works great TO SEND ONLY
• MyFax.co.il Works great to RECEIVE FAX on your email. they will provide a temporary fax number routing to your email [take the right blue option]

I used them both and they work great. and are really free. BUT...

There is no single service doing all of it (send + fax) in a clean way. Fax is a commodity, like Voice. I am sure there is space to build a killer free iphone app that will do all of that using a stupid fax server. Sending a fax is not more expensive at cost than a min of voice.

The first guy to do that, will end up #1 in the App Store. I guarantee

The more i visit apartments, and the more i understand how the real estate market works, the more i am confused. I don't understand how prices can be so high, and keep getting high: i am told there is no... Ouriel Ohayon

The more i visit apartments, and the more i understand how the real estate market works, the more i am confused.

• I don't understand how prices can be so high, and keep getting high: i am told there is no apartments to buy, but on the other side they are an endless number of new projects.
• I don't understand how a 4 bedroom, to be totally rebuilt, in the center of tel aviv, can be more expensive than a house with garden 50km from tel aviv.
• I don't understand how an average family with decent revenues can buy something those days, without having to eat pasta and humus 3 times a day for the rest of their life.
• I don't understand how banks are so bad at providing mortgage services (i could write a post on this) - banks are bad in general, but specially in this.
• I don't understand how most real estate agents are guiding their own business by not even calling you back when you are hot on a deal
• I don't understand why our government believe that by limiting the amount of money you can get from banks, they will stop prices from going up (since those who buy never need to borrow money)

For me all of those unanswered critical questions are the sign this is not the right time to buy. This market is just insane.

Is it stupid to think a real estate bubble is about to explode in Israel? Are prices too high? Should i wait? Should i go?

What do you say?

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome Ouriel Ohayon

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle

Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome Ouriel Ohayon

Amazing composition by one of the best pianist in the world. Extract from his second (maybe one of the best) album, Elegiac Cycle

Could be a jazz tune, or classical music. Does not really matter. it is just awesome

These days, entrepreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about scaling their products. No one wants to build the next Facebook only to watch their technical infrastructure crumble when user growth takes off. Entrepreneurs rarely think as much or as deeply or as rigorously about how to scale their companies. Best practices for scaling human…

These days, entrepreneurs spend a lot of time thinking about scaling their products. No one wants to build the next Facebook only to watch their technical infrastructure crumble when user growth takes off.

Entrepreneurs rarely think as much or as deeply or as rigorously about how to scale their companies. Best practices for scaling human organizations are harder to find, and the whole endeavor feels much more like an art than a science.

Ben leaps into this information void with his latest blog post titled Taking the Mystery out of Scaling a Company. This post will be the first of a series Ben will write on this topic because each skill CEOs must learn to scale their companies—such as designing and rolling out re-organizations, hiring functional executives for functions they’ve never done personally, optimizing incentive systems, and so on—need a post (or three) of their own.

Filed under: Business, Startups

superb song by Gainsbourg. A french composer. a genius in it own right (some probably know the late version by Carla Bruni) Ouriel Ohayon

superb song by Gainsbourg. A french composer. a genius in it own right (some probably know the late version by Carla Bruni)

Exciting news these days from SemantiNet. Over the past year, the company has been developing an application for online publishers based on its semantic web technology that will allow publishers to automatically enrich the content on their sites. SemantiNet’s Headup... Shai Tsur

Exciting news these days from SemantiNet. Over the past year, the company has been developing an application for online publishers based on its semantic web technology that will allow publishers to automatically enrich the content on their sites.

SemantiNet’s Headup for Sites has been running on several hundred blogs for the last six months. Now, SemantiNet has launched its first installation with a major publisher. They completed a successful implementation at the Jerusalem Post, which is currently running a wide-scale pilot.

So, how does it work?

Headup scans Web sites and builds up a database of significant entities (people, places, and things). It then automatically generates Topic Pages which combine articles from the site and enriches them with additional content from external sites such as Wikipedia. Finally, it goes through and annotates instances of those entities on the publisher page.

For example, here is an article from Jpost.com which has been annotated:

The user who hovers over the link (in this case, “Hosni Mubarak”) sees a popup snippet that provides some information about the entity and a link to its topic page. Clicking on the link brings up the Topic Page:

The Topic Page provides information about Mubarak taken from Wikipedia, alongside links to articles in the Jpost’s archives and its blog network which are relevant to the subject. In this way, the Jerusalem Post has been able to develop what it calls the JpostPedia, an authoritative source of information on a wide variety of topics relating to Israel and the Middle East.

Why is this important?

Online publishers, especially in the news world, face a major engagement problem. Studies have shown that users are keen to consume news online. In fact, it is a more popular online activity than shopping, watching videos, or social networking. However, user engagement on news sites is low and the bounce rate is high.

By utilizing Headup, news sites provide their readers with a more complete context as well as an easy way to consume additional content. By creating topic pages, publishers can essentially unearth archived material that users would generally not think to look for and present it to their users within a particular and more complete context. Users get more information about the articles they are reading and sites get more pageviews and provide a better user experience.

This is the reason that the biggest online news publishers such as the New York Times have also developed systems for creating topic-based directories of archived content.

The cool thing with Headup is that it allows publishers to develop these topic pages automatically. In addition, its semantic technology identifies and categorizes entities based on their context rather than on keywords. For example, it knows that stories mentioning “Benjamin Netanyahu”, “Bibi”, and “Prime Minister of Israel” all refer to the same thing and can organize topic pages containing all three.

In addition, the technology recognizes related linkages between entities and can then present the user with even more content around a general subject. For example, the same topic page on Netanyahu could lead to material on Knesset Members or Ehud Barak or even Sayeret Matkal.

SemantiNet believes that the future lies in bringing new levels of meaning to the content in the online world. Headup is a significant step in that direction.

Ben Horowitz and I co-founded one of the first cloud computing companies which we named, appropriately enough, Loudcloud. So we’ve been thinking about the cloud longer than most folks. In fact, we had to call ourselves a “managed services provider” in those days since no one was talking about “cloud providers” in the year 2000. I have to say it’s gratifying to see both the cloud name and the cloud computing architecture going mainstream in the past few years.

This time around, we’re thinking about cloud computing as investors rather than entrepreneurs. On his blog, Ben walks through why we invested in Okta, our first cloud investment. We couldn’t be more excited.

Filed under: Startups, Technology