I think Founders at Work, written by Jessica Livingston, is going to be a fantastic read for entrepreneurs.

I’ve read 4 founder interviews so far (Excite, PayPal, Blogger & Apple) - it’s definitely one of those books you can’t put down.

Why?

Firstly, unlike lots of other tech/start up books, there is no unnecessary narrative that dilutes the points being made (and there are a lot of different startup stories condensed into this one book).

Secondly, it focuses on the early start-up period, which is by far the most interesting part of a company’s history. I think it’s great that it is in the format of an interview, reading what the entrepreneurs’ have to say in their own words is invaluable, and page for page is worth 100x anything written by journalists.

And finally, this book gives plenty of inspiration by truly revealing just how many unknowns there are in the early days of any company, and of course, how valuable persistence is. This is unlike a lot of other books, which give the impression of founders being superhuman individuals, who are enacting this great vision. Founding a successful company really is an iterative process, it most certainly won’t grow as you originally expect it to.

Thank you Jessica!

So, whilst doing my daily eBay research, I came across this power seller’s feedback.

That is pretty bad that so many people had to get ripped off before any action was taken, especially around Christmas time.

Contact me if you’ve ever had any bad experiences with eBay, I’d be curious to hear them.

1. The inside story on the YouTube acquisition. This was interesting.

“The second request was to pile some lawsuits on competitors to slow them down and lock in Youtube’s position. As Google looked at it they bought a 6 month exclusive on widespread video copyright infringement. Universal obliged and sued two capable Youtube clones Bolt and Grouper.”

Intimate details on the google youtube deal

2. Break.com, people hurt themselves badly, and upload the videos, hilarious.

3. American Optimism:

“The most telling polling result from the 2000 election was from a Time magazine survey that asked people if they are in the top 1 percent of earners. Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday.”

Originally in the NYT in Jan 2003, reproduced here.

Another excellent successful summary from James at Trendcatching:

“Having a human being manifested in a social media site helps in a number of ways. It helps to “make meaning” - the site becomes more than just a load of code on a server designed to make money for VCs. It’s easier to create “social value” when there’s a real person involved, not just a shadowy bunch of employees. There’s also practical value in providing a focal point of the site in an individual node in the social network. Finally, the PR value of a human story continues to endure - journalists like writing about people, not technology.”

How to make your website cool pt 3 - get a personality.

When the news feed first launched, I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Now, not so much. I’ve noticed recently that some of the friends I really want to stay up to date with, have removed themselves from the feed via the privacy settings, which is understandable. Except, if you (like me, and I suspect most) begin to rely mainly on the newsfeed for information, this necessarily subtracts from the value/usefulness of the overall site, as there is less of what you want and proportionately more of what you don’t.

Technically, I should be no worse off than before the news feed, because I can still click on “My Friends” to see what’s happening. However, the news feed creates the illusion that it tells you all that you want/need to know, when that definitely isn’t the case.

Is there a solution? Well, if you want to stay in touch with those friends so much, why not try the real world?

Or, maybe FB could let you have different privacy settings for different groups of friends? Though, I’d doubt that they’d do that as it’s suggestive of hierarchy, not a norm they’d want to promote.

ps: Just heard about a/the German version of facebook, it’s doing quite well: