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Interview With Hadi Partovi, President of iLike

Posted: 05 Aug 2008 02:09 PM CDT

This afternoon I had the opportunity to speak with Hadi about the new services being offered by iLike that they announced a couple weeks ago at f8. I actually did an interview with them at f8 but for some reason my recorder didn’t seem to work. This time it worked great and I’ve included my interview below. During the interview we discussed the impact of Facebook Connect on iLike as well as the launch of the new Great Apps program recently announced by Facebook. Hadi also was pleased by the new change in Facebook metrics that was announced today.

The company recently surpassed 30 million users on their applications across all of the sites that the are on including Facebook, MySpace and their destination site iLike.com. iLike is also preparing to release a developer API that enables developers to embed the entire version of various songs. Hadi gave the example of an application that creates a wedding playlist. I’m sure there are countless other examples of applications that can be built with this new API.

iLike, which was originally built out from GarageBand.com, is now the most popular social music service on the web. Listen to my podcast with Hadi to learn more.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

A Glitch in My Digitally Nomadic Life

Posted: 05 Aug 2008 09:35 AM CDT

A few weeks ago I wrote about the concept of the digital nomad and how I was actively trying to make changes that enable my life to be completely portable. From the scanning of mail to moving my data to the cloud. Then last week my whole process hit a kink. I purchased a MacBook Pro and I became completely reliant on the cloud. Let me explain what happened.

Prior to purchasing my new computer I had been running a Dell Inspiron laptop to handle most of my computing activities. While I also had a G5 Mac, all of my business activities were done on my laptop. Early in July I decided to start moving all of my data to Amazon’s S3 servers with the help of Jungle Disk. The concept was that I could move all my data to the cloud and then no matter what computer I was using I could simply log-on, sync my computer with the cloud’s version and I’d be good to go.

Unfortunately it didn’t work that easily. The most significant problem was that my Mac and PC have different file and folder naming conventions. For instance on my PC my documents are stored under: /NICKLAPTOP/C/Documents and Settings/Nick/My Documents. If you are a PC user than this will look familiar. On my Mac however, my documents are stored under /Macintosh HD/Users/nick/Documents/.

While similar in many ways, this slightly different naming convention has made it impossible for me to sync my two computers. This means that Jungle Disk has simply become an external hard drive, just like all the others laying around my house. These external hard drives are more of a hastle than helpful because my data is not in sync. If I download a file off of Jungle Disk that was uploaded by my PC and modify it, there is no way to sync it other than manually overwriting the file.

Honestly, I can’t believe Jungle Disk doesn’t have a simple mapping feature. If there was a way to say that /NICKLAPTOP/C/Documents and Settings/Nick/My Documents on my PC equals /Macintosh HD/Users/nick/Documents/ on my Mac, I’d be good to go. As far as I can tell this isn’t yet available. My attempt at becoming a digital nomad has been rendered useless simply by switching computers, not by moving across the country.

If you know a solution to this problem please let me know! I don’t want Jungle Disk as a backup hard drive, I want it to be my central repository of information. Have you run into similar problems? Do you think becoming completely portable is a ridiculous notion?

Friendster Looks for Revival With $20 Million and New CEO

Posted: 05 Aug 2008 08:57 AM CDT

Friendster, the social networking site that has been long-forgotten by most in the United States, is looking to ramp up its business with a fresh influx of cash and the hiring of a new CEO. The company is hiring Richard Kimber, an ex-Googler who ran the South Asian operations at the search giant. This makes a lot of sense considering Friendster is the largest social network in Southeast Asia, primarily in the Philippines and Singapore.

Currently the company has over 75 million registered users but the Asian market for social networks is still in its early phase. There is increasing competition from both local start-ups as well as Facebook and MySpace who have both made significant strides in Asia to expand their presence. So will Friendster rise to become the largest Asian social network?

Possibly. They have a significant lead over competitors and they continue to grow rapidly in Friendster. The business model in Asia is significantly different though since advertising spending abroad is substantially less than in the United States. Many of the competing social networks generate a large portion of their revenue from virtual gifts rather than advertising.

What’s clear is that the Asian market for social networks has yet to play out. Over the coming years we will see fierce competition where a number of large players have substantial war chests and sizable traction. For the time being it looks like Friendster will continue their upward momentum in the region.

LinkedIn Worth $500 Million?

Posted: 05 Aug 2008 12:45 AM CDT

Eric Eldon has been pulling sources out of his hat today. The latest one claims that LinkedIn employees have been given a similar agreement to Facebook in which they can sell up to 20 percent of their shares at a $500 million valuation. I’m guessing that a source came out of the woodwork after they saw the earlier story about Facebook letting employees sell their shares.

This is an interesting phenomenon as it has become more challenging for web start-ups to go public. It’s now more challenging to keep the top tier employees working at valley start-ups as the exit period has become extended. Enabling employees to sell some of their shares is supposed to provide employees an incentive to stick around. Unfortunately I don’t have more details on how this plan works

LinkedIn should generate $100 million in revenue this year in comparison to the $300 million that Facebook publicly stated they would generate this year. If you were to value the two companies strictly on revenue, it would appear that Facebook is extremely overvalued even at a $4 billion valuation. The differing valuations could be a result of opportunity cost as well as unknown internal valuations that both the companies produce when filing reports with the SEC.

However this new system works, it is definitely interesting to see employee liquidity opportunities prior to the companies having liquidity events. I’d wonder if it’s only employees and not the venture investors that have an opportunity to sell shares as well. For now, all we know is that this is options for employees according to Eric Eldon’s sources.

Bloggers Running Out of Things to Say Take a Vacation

Posted: 04 Aug 2008 04:04 PM CDT

Over the past couple weeks it has become relatively apparent that there isn’t much news on the web. Why is that? Well in contrast to last year when the Facebook platform pushed us through the summer, this year it’s business as usual which means not much news. Typically the rest of the country goes on vacation in August but journalists and bloggers are known to continue at essentially the same pace.

This year it feels like the story is different and as I see more posts popping up about blogging being exhausting (which it is), I’m also seeing more bloggers tweeting bout their time away in the carribean or elsewhere. I’m starting to think that it may just be a good idea to follow-suit. Take a look at the headlines and you’ll notice that there really isn’t much going on but speculation and rumors.

One example is the rumor of the iPhone nano which is expected to hit stores in time for the holidays. How will it work? We don’t know. What does it look like? No idea. We can just tell you that it’s going to happen (or not) and there will be millions of them sold (if it exists). In an industry where you stay up until 3 am to see if any news breaks or make sure that you don’t miss the opportunity to break a story, it’s difficult to jump away from the computer.

What happens if you miss that big story? Well, apparently it doesn’t really matter. When you return things will be back to usual and that readership base that you thought would go running for the doors will still be around. Personally, I haven’t run out of things to say but you’ve probably noticed that there is less news on here and more analysis. That’s not a choice, that’s simply a result of the lack of buzz.

So for the rest of you bloggers out there, I think it’s time to take a break. Anybody have a beach house I can go hang out in for a few days?