Scobleizer - Latest Comments in Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Brian Humphrey — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:07:54 -0000

@Lazy,

Please know that the Los Angeles Fire Department is using a handful of Web applications such as Twitter and Google Groups as a complement to the well established "mainstream media" sources that we've used with great success for decades.

Along with robust telephone systems that have ring-down lines to wire services, as well as broadcast television and radio networks across the nation, we have for years sent an e-mail blast to many of our stakeholders.

All that was necesarry to implement Twitter was adding a single e-mail address to that lengthy distribution list.

While we haven't considered Twittering the Firehouse cook, we will warmly welcome your suggestions as to how we can make these ancillary offerings not only useful but palatable.

Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,

Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Lazy — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:35:03 -0000

apparently some fire dept does. I hope it's just for telling the
cook what groceries to buy. Not sure I would want my fire dept relying on an unproven, unscalable, not yet proven secure service for my public safety needs. But then again
i might have a higher bar than the SV Web 2.0 geeks
2

r
r

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Erik — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 14:53:25 -0000

How many of the 400,000 Twitter users DO NOT read TechCrunch and GigaOm?

Is there any mainstream traction at all?

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Lazy — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:35:59 -0000

@17 What a mature, well thought out, insightful response to the argument
This is the level of insight I only get from my 10 year old. You could have easily said "you mother wears combat boots" and made the same point. The logic you are using to support Twitter was the same used for CB radios and Pet Rocks--- "look how many people are using it!"

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

HavingFun — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:17:55 -0000

Thanks @ericdotnet - That's what I thought, but I occasionally hear about twitter exchanges, so I wondered if I was missing something.

Again, thanks.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

fred wilson — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:06:03 -0000

wow, things get pretty fiesty here at scobleizer.com

on the discussion of whether twitter was a dumb or smart investment, well you know what i think on that one. i put my money on the line and i like the odds of success, but the great thing is we'll know in 2-3 years whether it was a good bet or not.

on the discussion of "do you need a business plan" the answer is yes, eventually you do. and investors need to feel confident that there are a number of totally viable options to choose from.

but i believe that Umair is on to something with this post (and i know he says nice things about us in it, that's not why i am referring to it though) where he says you need to be flexible about business models early in the life of a company.

http://www.bubblegeneration...

Fred

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

jm — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:35:09 -0000

The main fact behind the question of the business plan is that if you only looks at the service you understand twitter has huge cost (SMS) and no revenu....
And adwords cannot cover cost.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

ericdotnet — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:32:33 -0000

@33 From what I've seen, you cant. People just type
@havingFun: bla bla.

So if you're following one person, and you don't see the other party they're responding to, you have no clue what they're talking about.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

HavingFun — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 08:54:54 -0000

Since you're such a fan of Twitter and because their helpfiles are pretty useless: How do you respond to someone's tweet?

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Adam — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 03:56:13 -0000

> Twitter has 400,000 users and is gaining at a quite
> consistent rate. Anyone who watches
> http://www.twittervision.com for more than 20 seconds
> can see that there are people all over the world who
> use it and who aren’t using other services.

GAH! But Robert, this really doesn't tell us anything.

1) How does Twitter define a user? Am I still a "user" even though I opened an account, twittered lightly for a few weeks, then quit?
2) What's Twitter's 30-day-active graph look like?
3) What's Twitter's churn rate? How many people join and then quit [x] days later?

And, seriously, Twitter has nothing new, nothing disruptive, nothing creating any sort of barrier to entry. Userbase is *not* a barrier to entry.

How much would it take for people to leave Twitter for the next shiny thing? Practically zero.

Compare that to Facebook, where people have tons of mail, wall-messages, apps-data, etc.

Or Ebay, where people have earned a trust # and feedback over time. That's not immediately replicable. Also, on ebay, buyers go where sellers are and visa versa... there's a three-way relationship there not mirrored in any way by Twitter.

* * *

There's a lot Twitter could have done to be useful AND create lockin at the same time. For instance: enabling people to set up priority-groups, group-types, etc. That would have helped target and filter messaging AND would have required an initial investment in time from members that they'd likely be loathe to repeat on another service.

But right now, leaving Twitter and going somewhere else is a 30 second deal.

And lastly, what does Twitter have that others don't have, that others can't easily get? Server space, bandwidth, computing power, SMS-gateways? Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo... they could all probably imitate Twitter in the blink of an eye.

400,000 peeps? Come on, Scoble, that is laughably small. How many people are on MySpace? How many frequent users/buyers does Amazon.com have? For that matter, how many DSL members does Earthlink have?

400,000 is not even a blip. The only reason people talk about Twitter is because a handful of popular bloggers and other geeks have adopted it as their new toy.

It's cute, I grant you that. And for some people, undoubtedly fun.

But sheesh, put this stuff in perspective, will ya? :)

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Scoble — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:58:18 -0000

When you say Twitter has no loyal users (not to mention new technology) you are totally full of shit. I really hope you don't come back here like you promised originally because I expect my readers to be smart and you, sir, aren't to that bar yet. Twitter has 400,000 users and is gaining at a quite consistent rate. Anyone who watches http://www.twittervision.com for more than 20 seconds can see that there are people all over the world who use it and who aren't using other services.

Have a nice day. Hope you keep your promises.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Ryan Holiday — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:54:25 -0000

Feel free to do some research: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Ryan Holiday — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:53:07 -0000

They had all sorts of things: Buy It Now, Feedback System, etc.

Killer Apps can be less than tangible--in Ebay's case it was CREDIBILITY. TRUST. SAFETY. You can't steal that, at least not quickly.

What was YouTubes? Free hosted, no-plugin required video. Facebook? College student tailored. Myspace? Place for bands, hosted music, customizable profiles and UNRESTRICTED ACCESS.

That's the point: Buzz is not a foundation to build a business on, especially with how fickle you people are. All Twitter has is buzz: no new technology, no massive market share, no loyal users, no killer app.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Paul Kedrosky — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:52:55 -0000

Hey Robert

As the surprised originator of the "You don't need a business plan" meme, I sort of feel like I should insert myself in here on this Twitter biz plan thing.

My point wasn't that business plans are a complete waste. That's silly. I was making two other points. First, you can get away with having a considerably less crisp plan if you have something else to put on the table with VCs, like boffo traffic/growth numbers. Second, in dealing with VCs keep in mind that they are professional nitpickers, so treat initial discussions with them as a dance of many information veils.

I now return folks to their regularly scheduled Scoble-ing.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Scoble — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:45:44 -0000

Ryan: you sound like the same people who said that eBay didn't have lockin. It certainly did. I'm not leaving a service that my friends are still on. Now, if all my friends move over, then that's one thing.

Leo Laporte left Twitter and went to Jaiku which does pretty much the same. But very few other people left. Why not? I guess your theory is that they are all idiots, right?

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Ryan Holiday — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 02:17:45 -0000

Robert:

You simply do not understand markets or incentives. Multiple people here have raised the same point. Twitter has nothing that protects it from competition--that prevents others from simply emulating their methodology. Just like you don't understand the iPhone. Neither are "disruptive" technology. They simply move the market forward with innovations but they control nothing. The iPhone doesn't really bring anything to the table that prevents Samsung from making a better cheaper phone to steal the bottom out from Apple. (They could have had one, many people think, had they created a phone that wasn't tied to a single network. THAT would have been unique, instead of simple innovative.) Twitter is the same way--what do they bring to the table that someone can't copy? They are simply a concept, not a business. If it's successful, FB will steal it, if it's not Twitter goes away. All risk, no upside.

Of course they have a user base--but not a sustainable one in the light of HOW FREE MARKETS WORK. It's ok, you don't understand these things. Many don't. But if you're looking for a reason to why many, many of your predictions fail, this is it.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Adam — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:36:59 -0000

I still don't get Twitter. I tried it, had friends on it, stopped using it (as did most of my friends) and don't miss it a bit.

And -- at risk of re-upping the Facebook hype -- can someone, anyone explain to me what's to keep Facebook from emulating twitter 100%? It seems the following steps would suffice:

1) Letting you "follow" someone or be a "fan" of them without requesting reciprocation.
2) Er... I think that's about it. Let's see, Facebook member updates his status, it goes to whomever he's permissioned.

Mobile access? Already there. IM access? Couldn't be that hard to add.

Er, any other barriers to entry that I'm missing?

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

David — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:57:45 -0000

Are they ever going to fix the AIM interface?

Why doesn't Twitter answer support emails? Ever.

Sending me spam email about funding when your major interfaces are broken show a major breakdown in priorities. Will they fix this stuff or will every Twitter user migrate to Facebook?

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Scoble — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:55:26 -0000

Tons of people in my circle wanted me to join Facebook before the app platform. It's just that's when the dam broke.

Twitter has no killer app? Interesting. Yet thousands of people are using it every evening.

No one holding me accountable? Seems like you just did.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Ryan Holiday — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 00:14:52 -0000

DUDE. Facebook is the epitome of your bubble. These features have been around for less than 2 months. 2 months! Almost no conclusions ought to be made around their usage and viability yet.

Data we can use:
-College students went to Fb in droves to get away from the shit on Myspace.
-FB was wildly popular before the apps.
-Geeks gave it almost no attention before they added geek stuff to it.
-You thought Second Life was going to be the Next Big Thing.

Twitter has no killer app. The concept might have legs (microblogging) but why would teenagers--the rest of the world go to that service when it is very easily integrated into existing service?

You will be wrong here, as usual and no one will hold you accountable. Unsubscribed. Tired of your shit.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Scoble — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:56:16 -0000

LayZ: and I know lots of teenagers who think you are lame. So, what does that all mean? Facebook already has something very similar to Twitter built in and most of the teenagers I'm watching use that built-in feature.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

HavingFun — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:32:16 -0000

If you're asking for other people's money, you have to be able to communicate your idea, but I'm sure different funders have different wants, so what may work for one may not work for another.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Dewey — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:15:57 -0000

...maybe i should have said geeks, "nerd" sounds a little harsh ;-)

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

Robert Dewey — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:11:28 -0000

...i'm 22, for what it's worth.

nerds find twitter interesting, just like nerds found computers interesting back in the 70's and 80's. only nerds would have a computer in their home, right?

wrong.

Re: Business plan obfuscation: Twitter style

LayZ — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 22:03:08 -0000

@9 Amen to what Ryan @9 said. Scoble, you live in such a bubble it's almost laughable. My kid, 22 years old, just finishing college. Does the Facebook, Myspace, IM, chat, etc thing. Friends do it too. Many do the WoW thing, etc. So, they are pretty "normal" for that age group. Few if any of their friends have heard of Twitter. And the ones that have find it "retarded". Yeah, it's an anecdotal example, but likely not that uncommon in the real world.