A couple of days ago, I wrote about what I'm now calling the Pizza Phone--a great product idea, executed too narrowly to be broadly useful (as useless, say, as would be a cell phone that could only be used to dial up for pizza delivery). That post was prompted by Dan Bricklin's essay on the Long Tail, and how a major product's robustness is determined in part by its adaptability to different uses--especially the unexpected.
Today I was reading Danah Boyd, on Many 2 Many, on how MySpace evolved from being an 18+ site to one almost monopolized by teenagers--without interference or assistance on the part of the site's developers. Why? Because the kids were able to adapt the site's tools to meet their needs: "Unlike adults, youth are not invested in email; their primary peer-to-peer communication occurs synchronously over IM. Their use of MySpace is complementing that practice." The decision to incorporate IM into MySpace was probably not one of the design team's top priorities, but has turned out to be their making.
Then a bit later, I was reading about mashups, and how the same principles of broad, adaptable utility come into play when developers mix and sample programs the way DJs do music. Dion Hinchcliffe has a particularly succinct description of the principle on ZD Net's Enterprise Web 2.0 blog:
...let's focus for a minute on the underlying reasons for the mashup phenomenon. An important one is the advent of Web 2.0 concepts that encourage software creators to expose their applications as sets of reusable services. The theory is that you can be much more valuable to the rest of the world if your software can be reused in unintended ways. In other words, don't just provide a fully created end-product for one pre-intended use. Encourage others use the good pieces of what you provide in new and innovative ways.
If you've never seen a mashup, look at The Windmap, a devastatingly clean and useful (if unadorned) site that uses google maps spliced with a wiki.
Hackers have long been entrepreneurial souls. But now the software they write is itself entrepreneurial. We've established that markets are conversations, and a couple of months ago, Cluetrain co-author Doc Searls went so far as to suggest that code is conversation. But I along with everyone else always assumed that meant that markets were places where people talked to each other, whether through words or code. But more significantly, I think our marketplaces are also places where our encoded offspring can continue to interact long after we're abed.
In part, this has happened because we have loosened the definition of ownership in this environment.
A lot of the discussion over who "owns" this kind of open source code is misguided (i.e., arguments for or against ownership, capitalist vs. communist models, etc). Setting politics aside, I'd describe the difference between old-style ownership and the new model for ownership as being very much like that between owning a car and having a child. If you own a car, it doesn't move until you put the key in and turn it, and when you aren't present, it hibernates. Your child, on the other hand, needs more attention investment from you up front, and less and less as it matures. If you either neglect or attempt to overcontrol it, it will grow up to be impaired and dysfunctional. It needs to get out there and live, make its own mistakes. And if you treat it well, giving it nurturance and freedom in good measures, it may just take care of you in your dotage.
By that token, modern entrepreneurs would probably be far better served by boning up on Dr. Spock than on Sun Tzu.
There is a key difference, though: unlike human reproduction, where two individuals' DNA sequences get put into a Cuisinart and come out as a randomly generated genetic pattern, our virtual children are designed with fewer rules and more intention. It's like a biological process, but with more leeway and room for creativity. Like being able to breed a camel with a can opener--if you decide you want to, and if doing so produces something new and useful.
Tags: mashup, MySpace, Corrante, Boyd, Searls Bricklin Long Tail
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"Hot Soup" is an absolutely stunning vintage specimen. I bought her last year from the original owner, a Dana Point veterinarian who had maintained her so assiduously that when I took possession, the original factory plastic wrap was still on the red-white-and-blue plaid cushions.
Why my desperation to part with this boat? She's too small. I need a bigger one to live on. If you want to see her, email me at kerabuinc at gmail dot com.
is the de facto standard for an RSS feed. Maybe someday, but I doubt it, 
A couple of posts back I went on a
Here is an interesting test of the ideas I 
