If you have something to say...
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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
It started with a simple message from Facebook: "Shawn Hayes has sent you a friend request. Click Confirm or Not Now." Definitely now, I thought as I clicked to accept.
Like The Tonight Show, the App Store is not just about blockbusters, but also more niche titles that appeal to a variety of tastes.
We drove west from San Sebastian scaled the mountains of Cantabria then descended through Asturias on the way to the Galician coast. Finally, we hopped a train for Portugal.
For many companies, that "native versus HTML" is almost a religious debate. "Forcing a channel is a mistake," says GrubHub's founder Mike Evans.
A world where we're surrounded by alerts -- everywhere, anyplace, anytime -- suggesting ideas for what we might want to do or buy next. Sure sounds a lot like advertising, doesn't it?
When pre-revenue startups with less than 15 employee, such as Instagram, have 10-figure exits in less than two years, it's reasonable to ponder how today's app economy compares to the dot-comedy of the late '90s.
There's a lot of noise to sift through to find the good stuff. But rest assured, there are certain chefs, writers, photographers, and others who go above and beyond with the quality of their shots.
The same week news broke that Facebook would acquire Instagram, two travelers used the app to shoot their Baja California expedition, capturing a $1 billion memory of a gorgeous wilderness.
Shooting with Instagram on the iPhone is far from an ideal way to capture dance. Especially the way I like to capture it.
I can definitely sense that the second we mention the words "social" or "cloud" our objectivity in judging businesses dissipates.
Creativity is incredibly important as we address challenges that come our way and to build a better future.
Two more snot-nosed 20 somethings are now worth hundreds of millions of dollars for a business that's less than 2 years old, has 12 employees and produces absolutely zero revenue.
The bigger question is why a larger, established company like Kodak didn't invent Instagram, or an app like it. They have the resources, the talent and the opportunity. What is it that stalled -- possibly fatally -- this once-smart company?
While there's no way to know which big deal will next grace the pages of GigaOM, allow me to offer a few humble recommendations. Here are five tech deals that make sense and why they need to happen.
Facebook, the Silicon Valley rebel that rebuffed Yahoo's 10-figure check, broke rules, and had the audacity to imagine itself taking over the web, has officially completed its transition from "cool" to "corporate" in the eyes of the Internet.
551-day-old app Instagram sold for a billion dollars, while the 116-year-old New York Times is valued at $967 million. But it's stood the test of time in a way that not even the greatest social network will be able to.
