Tim Marman's Loosely Coupled

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• You don’t change the world with a marginally better mousetrap

  For those of you paying attention, Cuil , a new search engine taking aim at Google, launched with much hype. Much of that hype comes from the fact that it was founded by former Google search architect Anna Patterson and her husband, Stanford professor Tom Costello. That hype and good press didn’t last long though. WebWare says they showed us how not to launch a search engine . Forget the hype and whether Cuil is or isn’t better or different or whatever than Google and all the rest – the real point is that it just doesn’t matter . As Jeff Nolan puts it , “you don’t beat Google just by being marginally better than Google”. I wrote recently that technology only matters when it creates new possibilities . Here, Cuil doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Cuil claims to be be “bigger than Google” in terms of what it indexes, but it doesn’t really matter since most us of never get past the first page of results. Even though the This also underlines part of why Microsoft and Yahoo! can... Posted Jul 30 2008, 11:40 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Rants, Business, Microsoft, Google, Entrepreneurship, Startup, Venture Capital, Facebook

• Google is “fast becoming just another company”

  An interesting article about the backlash with Google increasing its day care costs ( via Alex ). Two months ago, Google held a series of secret focus groups with employees who have children in Google’s day care facilities. The purpose was to gauge their reaction to the company’s plan to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent. Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 — well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000. At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company’s plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company’s T.G.I.F. sessions — a weekly meeting for... Posted Jul 05 2008, 10:38 AM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Business, Microsoft, Google, Startup, Facebook

• Facebook opens up with a JavaScript API

  Facebook just announced a new JavaScript Client Library that allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site . In other words, you can start building Facebook applications are live outside of Facebook. I agree with Charlie that this move " makes membership in Facebook that much more valuable ", and is probably a direct response to the openness promised by OpenSocial . Duncan calls it a clever move , but if their goal is to truly build the social OS - or what Charlie calls a "social dial tone" - then it's a necessary move. Henry calls the strategy "brilliant" . This move seems another smart step toward a hybrid strategy: Allow app makers (and Facebook) to extend social-graph functionality to the web, gather more app users, and recruit more members--but retain full control over the social graph itself. This is precisely the approach we are taking with Notches. A "walled garden" is nice because you retain all control, but these days you need... Posted Jan 27 2008, 12:38 PM by Tim with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Software Development, Web 2.0, Facebook, Notches

• Scoble, Facebook and Data Ownership

  I've sort of ignored the whole Scoble/Facebook fiasco, with people arguing on both sides who "owns" the data. Jimmy Gutterman misses the point a bit , because Facebook has already opened up the social graph through the Facebook Platform API. What they don't expose - and why this script resorted to screen-scraping - is any contact information. He paints this as a "lock in" issue, but I doubt that's their primary goal. We already complain enough about the spam we get on Facebook, and I would hate it if someone in my network shared - accidentally or on purpose - that contact information with spammers. So, yeah, I think what Facebook did is a good thing, which seems to be the majority sentiment. Mike Arrington said Plaxo flubbed it and Jeff Jarvis agrees . Loren Feldman called Robert Scoble a corporate spy . Allen discussed how we should approach the data ownership problem . Dare says Facebook is right - since Scoble did not enter any of the contact information... Posted Jan 09 2008, 11:08 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Technology, Intellectual Property, Copyright, Privacy, Blogging, Law, Facebook

• Facebook: Lawsuits, IPOs, and Acquisitions

  ConnectU is suing Facebook for, among other things, copyright infringement, breach of contract, theft of trade secret. (It should be noted that Facebook is counter-suing for business torts and unfair business practices). ConnectU (which started at Harvard Connection) alleges that Mark Zuckerberg was brought on as a member of the ConnectU development team, given access to the existing code base and business plans, and eventually "stole" them. For more details, read the full set of complaints and other filings . Rob is wondering why no one is covering this lawsuit ... it's certainly a big deal given the recent valuations and talk of an IPO. As Mike Arrington notes , "this isn’t a case of plaintiffs looking for a quick buck as billion dollar valuations are discussed" - this is actually a long-standing dispute that commenced long before we were saying "Facebook" and "billions" in the same sentence. Facebook recently acquired Parakey , a as-yet-launched... Posted Jul 24 2007, 07:19 AM by Tim with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: Web 2.0, Business, Microsoft, Google, Startup, Venture Capital, Facebook

• I Don't Get Twitter

  I am really struggling to find value in Twitter, and I'm certainly not the only one staying out of the Twitter lovefest. It is mildly interesting from a technical perspective but doesn't really add much to what I can do today. (Not to mention it's been down and/or slow under the load lately). Perhaps the only real draw is that "everyone" is on there - but we all know love for social networks can be fleeting (see, e.g., Friendster, Facebook). As Yogi classically put it , "nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." At this point, yet another network doesn't excite me. What would excite me? Aggregation of my networks, identities and connections. I guess I'm really just looking for the Trillian of social networks. (There are people out there trying to do this, but I haven't found any that seem to do it really well. Feel free to leave a link if you know of or run one of these sites). Of course, we all know what this is really about . Damn cats... Posted Mar 22 2007, 12:01 PM by Tim with | with no comments Filed under: Technology, Rants, Things that amuse me, Web 2.0, Social Behavior, Facebook