I am an information architect and user experience obsessor.

It’s not on message for me to depart from talking about tech and rant about TV but the travesty the NBC is committing right now begs a response. To start let me make it clear that while I think Conan is funnier than Jay Leno, I’m agnostic about The Tonight Show. I don’t watch it. No, my concern is with NBC’s behavior and what it says about how it runs its business.

Some months ago I ranted about NBC’s choice to play musical chairs with Kings, a modern-day David and Goliath drama that I felt was one of the best things to hit television waves in some years. Obviously millions of Americans disagreed with me electing instead to watch American Idol, Extreme Makeover:Home Edition, or pretty much anything else they could find that wasn’t Kings.

What’s a network to do when ratings go south? I can’t fault NBC for canceling it. But that’s not what they did. First they moved it to a new night, Sunday, looking to give it more steam. To review the logic, NBC felt that a show with low ratings would perform better if stacked against Extreme Makeover:Home Edition, Desperate Housewives and Fox’s Sunday Night lineup. They did it for one week then quickly gave up, moving it to Saturday to run it out. In one week.

Meanwhile I was telling everyone I know to watch Kings on Thursday, Sunday, I mean Saturday night. How is a show to grow if it moves days every week? Sure, ratings were low but shuffling a show twice in two weeks doesn’t help rescue it.

So here we are. NBC made a fear-based knee-jerk reaction in offering Leno a 10pm spot. They committed to a 52 week run with the new Leno/Conan schedule then caved 45 weeks early to pressure from local affiliates whose local news ratings are apparently suffering, not because local news programs are crap, but because people get their funny fix at 10 and head to bed.

Their solution, move Leno to 11:30 and The Tonight Show to midnight? It might make sense to shift in the long-run, but so soon, so quickly? After all, what are the affiliates going to do, change affiliation?

I don’t question NBC’s choice to cancel Kings or play musical chairs with Leno and Conan. I challenge NBC to give a plan a shot. It’s America, we overreact and scream but over time we adapt to change and start to love life again. It just takes time.

Dave McClure wrote an interesting post today that touched on something I’ve been thinking about for a while. To begin I should point out I am not an investor nor am I a founder. I come to this article as an observer with concerns. Dave’s argument is that there are far too few investors with design/user-experience/marketing experience. I can only assume that to be true based on the state of technology today. Let me explain.

Building anything for consumers is a tricky endeavor and it takes time to get it right. Companies must have a firm grasp on what consumers want, develop solutions to meet those demands and be prepared to stick it out. In short, developing consumer technology is just as complicated as developing a consumer product. You can invest years in what you think people want only to find out that the demand has passed or your creation just didn’t hit the mark. (See Waterworld, Crystal Pepsi, New Coke.) The tech industry has yet to realize that it’s just another consumer products manufacturer.

What I observe in emerging tech today is a glaring lack of consumer-centric strategy. When Kevin Rose tells people to join Gowalla investors trip over themselves to back it and all of the early adopters rush to be a part of something new and shiny. What we forget is that middle America doesn’t watch Diggnation and they don’t understand why they should drop a slice of pizza at a venue or pickup a muscle car. They just want to know where they should eat tonight.

Continue Reading →

The reach of the internet fascinates me. The speed of email, blogs, and websites is old news. Now communication tools like Twitter thrust words into light speed. A few years ago I could email everyone I know. Today I can send a Twitter update to a plethora people, some I know and most I don’t. Either way, I can influence others with very little effort. They, in turn, can influence those who follow them.

When I wake up in the morning I check my feed reader (Fever) and many others check The New York Times or whatever. The point is most of us don’t walk to our doorstep or to the local newsstand and buy a paper to find out what’s happening in the world 12 hours after it happened. Words come to us in real-time from the streams we choose to follow.

Saturday a perfect storm unfolded between AT&T, the people of New York, and everyone with an interest in either. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to observe the reach of words on the internet. That is to say how quickly words travel. Story here

The Consumerist, with roughly 8 million unique visitors/month, published a story. They tweeted it. Mashable also published a story and sent it out via Twitter to its 1,863,998 followers. Friends retweeted the retweets and so on. On Monday the NYTimes, WSJ, NPR, and countless others jumped in.

The story didn’t wait for editorial confirmation, the rolling of the printing press, or the spin of PR. The writer went to AT&T’s website and had a chat with a customer service agent who confirmed the story, telling her “New York is not ready for the iPhone” (see the chat.) That agent probably doesn’t have a job today.

At 7:47pm I searched Twitter for “New York iPhone”. Let’s examine the first eight results. Combined, those first eight random Twitter users have 10,051 followers. That’s 10,051 people who potentially saw that story in 22 minutes. There are thousands of tweets behind these eight all going into an untold number of users’ streams. Social influence aside, you can’t argue with the numbers.

This isn’t a story about the shoddy job that AT&T did managing its business and its image, but the ease with which a guy from Brooklyn made his experience into a national headline. A dialog between a customer service agent and a random customer can become national news, quickly.

Every person with a computer, a phone, or a camera is a member of the real-time media. Stories that influence people come in the form of bytes, Tweets, feeds, and webpages and they come instantly. The only middleman between a person’s fingers and the people she can influence is, well, AT&T.

This is the time of year when the torrent of “New You in the New Year” articles flood my feeds. Like the covers of Men’s Health they seem to repeat themselves. After all, we’ve had twelve months to forget all the things we were supposed to do last year.

During this long holiday weekend, with 2010 just around the corner, I thought it proper to look back on 2009, a significant year in my life, full of change, advancement and challenges. It was at once the best and hardest year of my life. It’s worth a bit of reflection.

2009 was a year of change and challenge. I moved to San Francisco, a city that looks beautiful from the outside but is much more complicated for those who live here. For a year I lived in a house I both hated and could barely afford, an overpriced Victorian on a very bad street. Thankfully that experience is behind me. New place, new me.

I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t speak to the importance of my friends. I’m not much of a co-dependent and I don’t accept help (or advice or criticism) very well. As I’ve grown, fallen, and overcome challenges my friends have proven irreplaceable. I am so very grateful for and humbled by their friendship.

It’s impossible to summarize the technical knowledge I’ve acquired this year so I won’t. Here are a few things I learned about myself and about life.

Deal With What’s Out There
There are few times in life when you are not in 100% control of your fate (exceptions include air travel.) You lose control when you leave others no choice but to act on your behalf. Dealing with uncomfortable challenges may seem difficult now but you can bet that they will worsen with every passing day.

I’ve had the opportunity to learn this lesson many times in my life, but never did. In 2009 I dealt with a financial situation that that started ten years ago. For ten years I’ve had the opportunity to take control of it and I chose not to. Alas, the shit hit the fan in 2009. I lost control and almost didn’t recover. Thanks to hard work and the support of many in my life, I made it through and learned my lesson.

American culture doesn’t reward assertive behavior but that doesn’t mean you can’t take control of your life. When confronting an uncomfortable situation, remember, the person at the other end of the table, phone, or email doesn’t control you. If you do the right thing, you will always win in the long run.

Accountability Is Infectious
I take pride in my accountability. I make decisions and take complete responsibility for them if something goes wrong…the buck always stops here. It’s a valuable trait in a world where so many people spend their time searching for someone to blame or making excuses. It can also be troublesome because when something goes wrong there’s no one else to blame.

Though like a virus, accountability is infectious. When those around you know that you will take responsibility for what you do, they spend less time trying to point fingers. Everyone is better off and groups work more efficiently. As a person I’m less interested in hearing why you did something wrong than I am in hearing what you’re going to do to fix it. As a professional, I don’t see the value of explanations. At the end of the day, something still went wrong and the smartest people are constantly trying to find ways to make the world better instead of focusing on who to blame for their woes. Don’t get caught up in the race to blame.

Understand Motivation
I make a lot of very quick decisions. Some are spawned by gut reactions others by sheer will. Rarely do I stop and take stock of why I want do do something. Even when I make an effort, I almost never admit my real motivations, they can be too uncomfortable to admit.

Here’s a recent frivolous example. I’ve been toying with moving my hosting services from Media Temple to Rackspace. No less than four times I’ve provisioned a clean server on The Rackspace Cloud, moved databases, done everything short of pulling the plug. My gut tells me I should do this but it doesn’t tell me why.

When I stop to consider my root motivations, the reason is clear…it’s new and shiny. I arrive at this conclusion via Toyota’s Five Whys Test. Understanding the root, I can weigh the advantages and make a better decision, which in this case means not moving my server. With reality in front of me, I abandon my frivolous pursuit of developer coolness and stay with what works.

Trust, But Question Your Gut
Outwardly I’m very self-assured but often I give detractors and naysayers more credit than I should. Instead of considering varying viewpoints and making a decision, all too often I allow the negative feedback to overpower my will.

Even our closest friends who want nothing but the best for us come to our lives with their own perspectives. Almost every time I’ve trusted me gut, life was better and most times I’ve allowed my gut to be overpowered, I’ve regretted it.

Your gut should be an excellent guide so long as you have honest conversations with yourself about your motivations.

You Can’t Know Everything
The saying goes, “Those who can’t do teach.” I don’t know if that’s true but I’ve learned this year to accept the opposite…those who do, can’t teach. For years I thought the world crazy because no one could learn what I was trying to tell them. This year I’ve realized the lowest common denominator in those situations was me. The buck stops here. I’m a bad teacher.

Part of growing up is admitting that you aren’t the solution to every problem the world has. As I continue to narrow my professional focus I must accept that when things aren’t going as I would like, close examination may prove that in fact I am the problem. This logic along with my focus on finding “the root” helps me lead more effectively.

How 2010 Will Be Better
As I grow older I grow more focused, not to be confused with more patient. This year I’ve had the opportunity to grow in ways I never thought possible and I’ve been the recipient of generosity I can never repay. I’ve also suffered through the consequences of decisions I’d convinced myself would never go awry. All of that, good and bad, is behind me.

All of these cautionary guides give me strength to grow in 2010. With a better personal foundation I intend to take a few more risks in 2010. As I examine the root of my motivations and the reality of what it will take to get there, I have 20/20 clarity of the things that could go wrong. It’s not that I’m more comfortable with risk, I’m just more comfortable taking risks because I know my motivations are just.

As a human I intend to balance the generosity scale that’s woefully out-of-balance. I’m not sure how to go about that but I’m going to try. Most of all I intend to live in the moment, see what’s in front of me, and listen. These are simple statements with far-reaching implications.

Happy 2010.

It started as a rumor, then confirmed, and is now a distinct possibility. News Corp. may be the first (or at least the largest) news producer to block Google in favor of an exclusive partnership with Bing.

From the FT (which I pay for):

Microsoft said that the plan “puts enormous value on content if search engines are prepared to pay us to index with them”.

Here’s why that’s the worst thing that could happen to the internet. Search is about finding information. Google, Bing, and Yahoo (now also powered by Bing) index the internet and try to match your search term with things people have created on the internet. The algorithm that determines what lies at the top of your search results is acutely democratic. It’s meant to highlight content that is relevant to your search, content marked by others as good, and not at all influenced by direct payments to the search engine from the publisher.

Along comes Microsoft with their third try (MSN, Live, now Bing) at search. In possibly teaming up with News Corp to be the ‘exclusive’ indexer of news from its properties, Bing will become a completely undemocratic search engine. This isn’t an example of the “what’s next” fear mongering. If News Corp and Microsoft reach a deal and News Corp blocks Google, the worst will have happened.

Search results will be weighted by a financial arrangement and no longer ranked by relevance to the user. The idea is counter to everything journalism is supposed to protect. Sure, Rupert, put your content behind a pay wall (Disclosure: I am a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal) I think we all agree that’s fair. But making search a game of who has the most money is evil.