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Is Twitter a fad or the next Facebook?June 30

The faster a fad rises in pop-cultural consciousness, the faster it falls in the popularity ratings. Thus says a recent study that surmises that “people believe that items that are adopted quickly will become fads, leading them to avoid these items, thus causing these items to die out”. Weird, uh?

Besides baby names, the symmetry between popularity rise and fall can carry over to other cultural items. For example, the scientists noted that similar outcomes have been observed in the music industry, where new artists who shoot to the top of the charts right away also fall quickly, and so have lower overall sales than those who rise more slowly. While this finding seems counterintuitive, since a quick rise in popularity would seem like a good thing, it shows that a backlash to perceived fads should be taken into account. As the researchers explain, people who want to ensure the persistence and success of particular items should seek to popularize the items at a slow but steady pace.

I’ve read a bunch of articles in the recent past, that talked about users’ disillusionment with Twitter after signing up en masse, thanks to (maybe) Oprah. But my experience has more closely mimicked that of Tech

How Obama and Transformers 2 crossed the chasmJune 28

via theplaylist.blogspot.com

As I was reading that “Transformers 2″, the much reviled movie (critically at least) made $112M on their opening weekend, I couldn’t help but think back on Seth Godin’s excellent post earlier today on the paradox of the middle of the market.

This is obviously a movie that caters to that audience precisely:

“The paradox is that it’s almost impossible to make a product or service for this segment, because they want the tried, the true and the boring.”

However, with movies we’re talking about making movies solely for this segment because they want the tried, true and bor

What it’s like being an AD in a movie setJune 28

For those wondering what these pictures were all about. This was at a test shoot for a scary cow documentary, that I was a part of earlier today.
 
Scary Cow is an independent movie co-op that brings together amateur talent (such as myself) in pursuit of creating a movie, documentary or short film. Unfortunately, I can’t share much about the documentary I’m a part of right now, but I’ll continue sharing tidbits on the movie making process in subsequent posts of mine.
 
How are movies made? Here are my first impressions from today’s shoot: 1. There are three key people running day-to-day operations of a shoot. We’re a small crew so this is just a microcosm of what one would experience on a feature film’s shoot. Today’s shoot had three key players ably assisted by the crew: a. Executive Producer who also plays a key role in the documentary. b. Director c. Director of Photography or DP The DP is supported by x number of camera operators who are helped by production assistants (admin stuff – tracking time, etc.)
 
The AD is the key liaison who helps connect these different individuals on the day of the shoot. I was helping the AD today and have also volunteered to help with various aspects of promoting the film. 2. The devil is in the detail: Seriously, this is key to the success of a day’s shoot. Period. It’s the role of the AD to plan a day’s shoot well in advance, being the administrative lead on keeping e

The Top 100 Networked VCs (Reid’s at #18)June 28

via techcrunch.com

Is it any surprise that the 18th most connected venture capitalist also founded the world’s largest online business networking site! BTW, I do work at that company and consider working with Reid, one of the many perks LinkedIn has to offer.

If you’re wondering how TechCrunch came up with the #s, check out the rationale below or feel free to skim through 52 pages of analysis embedded above.

If this is true, then who are the most connected venture firms and angel investors today? Vijay Dondeti, a graduate student in bioinformatics, applied the analysis in the Hochberg paper to about 2,700 investors in CrunchBase who participated in over 3,300 startup funding rounds between 2006 and 2008. He scored each investor based on how well connected they are to other investors as well as how well-connected their co-investors are to other investors. “In summary,” says Dondeti, “to get a high score, you need to co-invest often with others that also co-invest often.”

And, why do you think being a networked venture capitalist is important, besides the obvious? Better Returns.

Deconstructing the Addiction to TwitterJune 26

via techcrunch.com

I couldn’t have explained it better. It pretty much explains how I got hooked onto it, but in my case, it was the events that drew me in at first, and real-time search and the fact that many of my friends and colleagues were using it.

Erick Schonfeld of TechCrunch explains the phenomenon:

The adoption cycle for Twitter is a bit strange. It goes something like this: Ever-increasing waves of hype, links, and attention bring in the newbies to Twitter.com where they get their first taste of Twitterdom. Some portion of those set up an accou