Martin Gordon's Blog

Word came last Friday that all CompUSA stores will be closing. While some have some horror stories about their experiences at CompUSA, I've never had any bad experiences. Looking back, however, CompUSA was the place where I had my first experiences with Macs.

The only place to really play with Macs back in 2001 was at CompUSA. At the time, there were few Apple Stores and the only one in South Florida was at The Falls, about an hour drive from me. So CompUSA was the first place I laid hands on an iMac, the G4 Cube, and others. It was the first time I played with OS X - I was amazed with it even though it was in it's terrible Public Beta/10.0 stage. I bought my first Mac at CompUSA - a 700 MHz G3 iBook, and my first iPod - an open-box 1st Generation 10gb iPod. Since then, Apple Stores have sprung up and I've only made smaller purchases at CompUSA, a memory card here, a hard drive there. I have memories dating back even further - I remember buying a 4mb stick of RAM and a 14.4 modem for our 386.

Despite being one of the recent contributors to CompUSA's demise, it will still be sad to see it go. I have a MicroCenter fairly close by, but Best Buy and Circuit City don't have anything on our dear old CompUSA.

Goodbye.

Technorati Tags: CompUSA, Mac, Apple, stores, out of business, closing

My webhost of almost two years, Dreamhost, is offering free hosting to non-profits, forever. This isn't a cheapo 10MB plan either, it's their Strictly Business plan, which offers 500GB of storage and 5TB of bandwidth a month and costs $80/month.

Technorati Tags: Dreamhost, hosting, webhost, nonprofit, free, business, bandwidth

We're going to see job boards pop up all over the place since it's a much easier way to monetize a site than traditional banner ads. Compare pulling in $200-$250 a job post guaranteed versus the crapshoot that is AdSense et al (click-thru rate, cost per impression, # of clicks and # of impressions are all variable). If you've got the traffic already (as 37signals, Om Malik and TechCrunch do), then it's a no-brainer, especially once you take into account the fact that geekier audiences are more likely to ignore ads.

Mike Arrington writes about how both Jason Fried of 37signals and Om Malik turned down offers to join forces. Mike envisioned a job posting API and all sorts of interoperability. The problem is that these job boards are simple revenue-generating machines. By keeping the boards closed from one another, each company looking to hire will have to pay Mike, Om, and 37signals a separate listing fee. If we open the system up, then employers only have to pay one fee and all but one job board site lose.

While the idea of a job board API for interoperability sounds great, I don't think it can come from a job board site (at least not one bolted on to a blog), it will have to come from the employers themselves. And since the employers are each competing with each other for the best talent, I don't see any of them really taking a lead on the project (see 37signals' response above). Dave Winer has volunteered to develop the API, and he possesses the objectivity necessary to do so (at least for the time being), but for the same reason Jason Fried and Om Malik didn't join forces with CrunchBoard, I don't see them adopting any API either.

Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, CrunchBoard, jobs, Monster.com, job search, job board, Jason Fried, 37signals, Om Malik, GigaOM, Dave Winer, Scripting News, API, open network, walled garden

About a year after he started, Kyle McDonald of One Red Paperclip fame is finally finished. His goal was to trade up for a house starting with a paper clip and he's done just that. The keys to the Kipling, Saskatchewan farmhouse will be given to him next Wednesday.

While there were transportation and transaction costs involved, this little exercise proves how different people value things differently. This is a perfect example of something I learned in my Negotiations class last fall: bartering is not a zero-sum game; it is definitely possible for both parties to come out ahead in an exchange.

Technorati Tags: trading, One Red Paperclip, Kyle McDonald, bartering, negotiations, paperclip, farmhouse

TechCrunch is reporting that one Microsoft employee has been able to join Facebook as part of the Microsoft network.

A quick search of Facebook turns up only one Class of '09 undergrad with the name "Niall Kennedy". It's hard to get an accurate number of the number of people on the Microsoft network, but there doesn't seem to be Google, Yahoo, or AOL networks on there yet (according to Inside Facebook, there are only 10 companies on Facebook so far).

Is this a good thing? On the surface, it looks like it will get more users on the network. But with already existing rumors that employers are already leveraging recent grads' logins to look at the profiles of potential new hires for "risky" behavior (partying, drinking, drug use, etc.), you have to wonder if this will hurt the utility of the college networks by forcing students to censor themselves or leave the network completely.

As a college student, I don't see much utility in letting someone on a work network see my profile. They could learn much more from me by reading my blog, and what they read hear is much more useful to both of us in terms of professional networking (as opposed to the social networking Facebook is optimized for).

Putting myself in the shoes of a work Facebook user, I don't see as much utility in learning about a coworkers favorite books, TV shows, etc than I do in learning about what type of projects they're working on, their title, where they fit in the formal structure of the company, etc. Of course, I haven't spent much time out in the work force, so I may be completely off base.

Anyway, I don't see this addition of professional networks of bringing much value to the network itself. What I do see it doing, however, is allowing bloggers at the companies allowed on Facebook to generate buzz about the network and drive up the perceived value of the business.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, social networks, Microsoft, professional, networks, college, university, work

The folks at Marginal Revolution have a post on the melting of pennies and the discussion that follows is excellent (partly because I can follow all the finance-speak :))

Technorati Tags: money, pennies, zinc, copper, currency, precious metals, finance, economics, bullion, Marginal Revolution

Saw an article in the Financial Times today (FT.com requires a sub, but I found it here for free) about how zinc and copper prices have shot through the roof in the past few weeks/months.

Zinc, in particular, has seen an astronomical price increase (55%) in the past three weeks. If it increases by the same amount again ($550 per ton), a pound of pennies (160 of them) will be worth $1.61 and you could get more by melting them down and selling the metal (in theory).

So what does that mean? Will our pennies no longer be pegged to the dollar? If the metal in a pound of pennies were worth $3.20, would our pennies be worth 2 cents?

Either way, it's time to start stocking up on pennies.

Technorati Tags: money, pennies, zinc, copper, currency, precious metals, finance, economics, bullion

Rumors has it that Facebook is on the block and looking to get $2B.

I just heard a Knowledge@Wharton podcast by my former professor and Supernova founder, Kevin Werbach, entitled, "What Makes An Online Community Tick?" featuring Craig Newmark of Craig's List, Julie Herendeen of Yahoo, and Bill Flitter of Pheedo.

Scoble and others are raving about Second Life. They're going as far as claiming its an OS.

Social networks are on everyone's minds these days. Can they last? I'm not too sure.

Amazon believes it had a sound business model. They make money by selling stuff. If people can find things more easily they are more likely to make a purchase. So Amazon released an API. Take the load off the company's shoulders and let others make Amazon better.

Google: same thing. AdWords is a solid business model. It helps everyone make money! Advertisers don't waste ads on people they can't reach; Google takes a bit off the top. All this is funded by people buying things from the ads they see. AdWords has an API. It's in advertisers' best interests for AdWords to be as good as possible. "Fine, do it yourself", says Google. Google provides an excellent service, and advertisers make it even better for themselves. Most of the products Google puts out has an API. They say, "we don't need you to come to our site to make money, we do just fine on other people's sites."

MMORPGs are a different kind of social network. They have some bonus activity attached that only makes the network stronger. Blizzard/Linden can and do charge for this value-added. They also allow scripting of the game. They let others make their software better, driving more people to pay for the service.

What about Facebook and MySpace? They have no APIs. The "software" is closed off to tinkerers for fear that an API could do away with the need to visit the site and feast our eyes upon lovely banner and click-thru ads. Pretty much anything I could imagine wanting from a Facebook API would bring me alternate ways of getting information available on the site, ways that are far away from ads. Tom Carden's brainstorm of uses for a MySpace API mostly deal with getting data off of the network in a different way. He wants podcasts, RSS feeds, etc, just like I do. And I'm sure many others do also.

So will a lack of an API drive Facebook and MySpace into the ground? Probably not. MySpace is already owned by News Corp and Facebook will get bought out any day now. But the lack of an API does signal that these networks are scared and that their revenue models may be a bit flimsy.

Technorati Tags: MySpace, Facebook, social network, Wharton, Knowledge@Wharton, Kevin Werbach, Supernova, podcast, Craig's List, Yahoo, Pheedo, WoW, World of Warcraft, Second Life, API, programming, development, web services, Amazon, Google

I recorded most of Venture Capitalist Ted Schlein's talk last Thursday here at Wharton. Mr. Schlein has been with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers since 1996, when he joined to manage their Java Fund. He spoke about his experiences in working for Symantec and his earlier experiences at various startups. He also talked about VC in Asia and the challenges VCs face in going over there.

The audio quality is markedly better than the Kevin Smith talk, partly because of better acoustics and because I was sitting a lot closer to him.

Direct link to file.

Technorati Tags: Wharton, UPenn, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Ted Schlein, KPCB, Kleiner Perkins, business, business school, Penn, finance, venture capital, vc, speech, talk, audio