“I love free software and could not have built my site without it. But free web services are not like free software. If your free software project suddenly gets popular, you gain resources: testers, developers and people willing to pitch in. If your free website takes off, you lose resources. Your time is spent firefighting and your money all goes to the nice people at Linode.”
—

Don’t Be A Free User (Pinboard Blog)

This is a very interesting take by Maciej Ceglowski of Pinboard. He encourages all of us to financially support any web service we use and love, even if it requires you to “yell at the developers!”. He says that what happened to Gowalla could happen to any free web service. As the service gets popular, costs rise; and as costs rise (and the service gets popular), an acquisition looks very appealing the founders; but the appeal of the acquisition wears off when the acquirer shuts down the service and keeps the engineers to work on something else. Patrick Rhone (of Minimal Mac) took this advice and announced that he will be sending Tumblr $10 per month to help keep the service he loves afloat, even after the VC money is gone.

I think this is a very interesting situation. There are SO many free web services out there, and there is no way they can all survive while being free. I like that some users are trying to take it into their own hands and help keep the web services they love in business. But I also like that some of the popular web services are trying to think differently about “monetizing” their service.

David Karp of Tumblr has said that he wants to find ways for Tumblr to make money that “enhance the experience” for its users. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. I also can’t wait to see what other services, like Twitter, Instagram, and Path eventually settle on as their business model. Twitter seems closest by far, but I think they still have some way to go. This is why venture capital is so great - by raising money from VCs (instead of charging their users), these web services have the opportunity to innovate new (and hopefully interesting) business models as they grow into larger companies.

Path

I know I’m about a week late to this, but wedding planning has kept me pretty busy lately. I want share my thoughts about the latest social network in town…Path, the new photo sharing social network with a twist. The twist is that you can only “friend” up to 50 people. After 50, you have to start deciding which friends mean more to you than others. I think this is a very interesting concept for several reasons.

First, I truly believe that once several of my friends join Path, I will become a much more active user of it than of Facebook. I don’t really participate in Facebook because I don’t care to share my life with ALL my “friends”. I enjoy learning what my good friends are up to, but couldn’t care less about all the farming and quizzes all of my friends are participating in. Path is all about sharing experiences (moments) only with your close friends, which is the only part of Facebook I really enjoy.

Second, and related to my last point, is the 50 friend limit. Imposing a 50 friend limit will ensure just that…that they are truly my friends. While 50 may seem like an arbitrary number, I think it is plenty for me. I think it would be hard to keep that many close friendships, and that is what Path is all about - close friendships.

Finally, Path has a beautifully simple interface - both on the iPhone and the website. This reminds me of a recent post by Fred Wilson where he talks about how startups should develop for the mobile web first and then says that some of the best websites mimic their mobile counterparts. Path’s website is very similar simple and very elegant, just like the iPhone app. While the Facebook iPhone app is similarly simple and elegant, the Facebook website is too cluttered and busy for me.

Overall, I think Path could have a  very interesting future. I find it very refreshing and useful that you are limited to 50 friends on Path. I think that will make for a much more tightly-knit community. One thing I wondered about, however, was Path’s apparent choice not to use foursquare or some other service to provide locations. When I created my first “moment” on Path, I was forced to add my work to the location directory. I wonder if they had any specific reason for not using foursquare’s API…

“I never wanted to work for a big company because it increases the likelihood of being pigeonholed, and I don’t want to be “the ______ guy” for any one thing.”
— “Avoiding the blogger trap” by Marco Arment. I have been reading through the history of Marco’s blog over the past few weeks (while working at a big company like he mentions). This especially stuck with me because it is a big reason why I hope to spend most of my career with much smaller companies.
“We think now is the right time to join with Amazon because, quite simply, every company that becomes a subsidiary gets two free downloads until the end of July, and we very much need that new thing with Trent Reznor’s wife on our iPods.”
— Matt Rutledge, CEO of Woot on their acquisition by Amazon. He’s a pretty funny guy!
Woot : Amazon, Woot, and You: But Mostly Woot
The first post from earlystager.com, a blog started by four females in the startup space in New York. I am looking forward to reading it - especially based on this “approval matrix”!

The first post from earlystager.com, a blog started by four females in the startup space in New York. I am looking forward to reading it - especially based on this “approval matrix”!