- Twitter is close to being valued at $5B but I do not believe Twitter is worth one more cent than it is making. I base that on my own experience in having deployed our well-regarded blog entries over Twitter for quite a while know, only for those messages to be submerged in what I call the barking dog syndrome; excessive spamming of categories by people with less thoughtful content. What Twitter is missing is a reputation method, a way of letting people determine by virtue of their actions what content deserves exposure. Now Twitter is just a cesspool in which the frequent barking of the little dog drowns out the more thoughtful (yet less frequent) bark of the big dog. And a house full of barking dogs is an unpleasant place to be. I can think of many other spamming platforms that could similarly be valued at more than $1B, if we use sheer presence as the metric of valuing companies.
- Why closed is better than open, for end-users.
- Italian coffee maker Illy appears to make a run for scaling itself a-la Starbucks with more Italian style coffee bars in the U.S. and more restaurants serving Illy espresso after a great meal. But Illy better start making fully automatic machines that make the espresso the way it ought to be made real soon, to avoid waiters watering down the quality of what is served in that Illy branded cup. The unique experience and taste of Illy espresso can only be produced by a diligent barista (in person or as a machine), or put differently: the quality of an experience is highly dependent on the quality of distribution. Having experienced Illy espresso in quite a few restaurants now, Illy’s current distribution quality is deflating its brand rather than expanding it.
Twitter value, Closed is better, Illy to scale
The sign of an intelligent nation is its willingness and ability to reinvent itself, upstream. Let’s inspire the world with new rigors of excellence we first and successfully apply to ourselves.
