Facebook Bankruptcy

Fred Wilson and Jason Calacanis are declaring "Facebook bankruptcy". They are complaining that they are getting too many friend requests, app requests, etc. In the comments on Fred's post are a few people agreeing with him, saying that they have a blog, and email and that's all they need. That feels pretty shortsighted to me. Here's why:

1. These guys are internet famous. Facebook allows you to ask to be friends with anyone who has a profile. They are probably getting a lot of friend requests from people they don't really know. Oh well, tough on them. How many people are in that situation? Feels like an edge case to me.

2. They probably aren't managing their privacy very well. Are they actually accepting friend requests from all these people? If they aren't really friends with them, and they start installing the vampires and zombie and all these "silly" viral apps, then it's not surprising that everyone uses them as well. Don't install that stuff guys! Again, they're not managing their stuff properly.

If anyone should know better, it's Fred. He doesn't use his wife's name in his blog because of privacy, he complains in his blog about being in the paper for selling his house for a lot of money. So, he knows about privacy, but he doesn't know how to manage his Facebook profile? I say user error.

There are complaints about Facebook being a walled garden. I don't think so. Yes, there are walls, but the walls are the kind that the internet needs - stuff to keep out the popups, popunders, spam, and other things that make the internet annoying. At the same time, any company can come along and set up shop inside this walled garden. They don't have to negotiate some onerous deal which rev shares back all the money to Facebook. Yes, a lot of the apps that are out there stink, but it's only been 2 months - give it time! There are lots of apps which can take advantage of the Facebook social network which would not justify a social network on their own. A good example is wine recommendations. There is an app called Snooth which is supposed to do this. Unfortunately, they send you back to their site, so the implementation is lacking, but the concept is right on. I'm never going to go out and maintain yet another social network just to deal with wine, but it's a great idea on top of an existing social network. Done right, these guys can make a lot of money.

I think Facebook is here to stay and there will be some people who build up amazing businesses inside of it. I will be one person saying "Why didn't I think of that?!?"

Why Facebook will be bigger than Google

I've been saying this for a month or two now, and been meaning to write some of my thoughts down, and last night, my close friend Mike Rosenthal pinged me asking me why I think Facebook is fun. Rather than writing back directly, I thought I'd write this post.

1. It's the only social network I've actually found a use for. The people that I know who use it regularly are people I've become closer to than I otherwise might have in its absence. When I see them, they already know what is going on in my life and I don't need to catch up with them - the conversation just moves into the more interesting stuff. Facebook's engagement numbers show this - the time spent on the site, # of pageviews per user, etc are WAY ahead of anyone else. I have a lot of fun on it tagging photos, making fun of other people in their photos, etc. Just last night my sister-in-law Nicky came home with a tan line from a band-aid on her arm. I took a cameraphone pic, and will upload it and tag it as her. Then, all of her friends will see it, and they will probably laugh about it as well. It's fun. I'll have to dig up some old photos of Mike and tag him in them so that our friends can see. Good times.

2. Everything is easy. The photo tagging is easy, it's easy to upload cameraphone pictures, you can easily record a video message and send it to a friend, you can text, you can upload your status, etc. Everything is easy. The only thing that isn't easy is email. They send you an email and expect you to come to the site to respond. They can fix that in a second if they want. Being user-centric wins. Google knows that - it's a key to their success. My Dad is on Facebook now, and we've been having a fun time with it. Cool!

3. The Platform. They figured out that if they let external companies develop new features for their site, they wouldn't have to do it. They realized that allowing those companies to monetize the FB pages would be important since it would give them an incentive to. There are already thousands of apps, and most of them suck since the platform has only been available for 2 months. There is real money to be made here. I was talking with a friend yesterday about the risk of being locked into the FB platform, and subject to the whims of FB taking you down or something. He cited Photobucket and MySpace shutting them down in the middle of acquisition talks. MySpace has no platform, no API, so everything they do is arbitrary. If Facebook starts making arbitrary acts like that, they will really hurt the liklihood of success since no one will want to build a big business inside of a place that might shut you down, like MySpace. I think FB will not suddenly change their own rules. The best FB apps exist entirely within FB. Any apps that take you outside of FB seem like they're not doing well. Personally, those annoy me and I uninstall them. Lots of companies doing this, I don't get it. The cool thing about FB apps is that you have a built-in social network, so there are LOTS of ideas which can be done which depend on having a social network already built. These apps would otherwise not exist since they would not be able to justify someone building a social network for them.

4. Monetiziation methods. FB hasn't even scratched the surface of this yet. They are doing things like putting movie promotion in the news feed, allowing laser targeted advertising (the billboards) on user pages, charging for these market research polls, etc. I heard that they are going to do $100MM in revenue this year. Google was almost out of business while they were in the early growth phase. GOOG figured out that targeted ads is where it's at. FB has got a lot of ways to monetize. Ads, gifts (still don't get that one, but it's working!), surveys, etc. TONS of money to be made.

5. Personalization. I recently realized that I might be able to get rid of MyYahoo and just put that within my FB profile. I've been using MyYahoo for at least a decade, and it's barely changed in that decade. They have a new beta out, and it's worse. I've tried Google's home page, I can't get everything I need there. I'm sure I can with FB. That said, I don't want everyone else seeing all my personal stuff - not that I'm keeping it a secret or anything per se, it's more that it's not necessarily relevant to others. It's easy to manage this - you can make any app appear only for you in your profile page. Sweet, I might actually do this.

6. Winner take all. No one wants all these social networks - they're a pain to maintain. If people are super engaged with FB, why maintain all the other ones?

7. Tons of potential. Play with it a bit, you'll see lots of areas to grow. They haven't even opened up the social graph, for instance. That is, if I find someone on there that I want to meet, it would be cool to know how I know them, like what LinkedIn does. Another thing - they could take over email. FB's messaging is nice because there is no spam since everything is authenticated. Their messaging client needs a lot of work, but lots of young people basically don't use email, they just use facebook messaging.

I could probably go on for a while longer, but I think that FB will be bigger than Google. GOOG's market cap is ~$150B today. FB thinks they are worth $10B now, and they are definitely getting $3B buyout offers. Can they increase 15x-45x in market value? Definitely! They're just getting started.

One closing thought - I'm writing this post on Blogger's interface. It will post to neumannfamily.org, then get posted to my Facebook notes. I bet that if there are any comments to it, they will be in Facebook, since I will go and tag the note with the people I have mentioned. No one looks at neumannfamily.org, they're all on Facebook.

I almost crashed my airplane!
I've been meaning to type up a few notes from the flying trip since it ended over a week ago, so I thought I'd start by talking about the near-crash I experienced. Unlike anything else I've been involved with, in aviation there is a culture of talking about how you almost crashed or got yourself into a scary situation. Every aviation magazine has a column which analyzes a crash report and talks about what the pilot could have done to handle the situation better.

The centerpiece of the flying trip was a visit to Monument Valley, UT. It's on the AZ border a million miles from nowhere - really hard to get to by car. A ton of westerns were filmed there, the scenery is incredible. It's on the Navajo Reservation, and they have an airstrip that you can fly into if you want to visit. Sweet. The airport is really challenging since its at around 5000' elevation and has a 1.25 degree slope to it. Not much in general, but a decent amount for an airport. Oh yeah, it's also a 1-way strip since there is a 600' tall butte at the high end of the runway. So, you land toward the butte and take off away from it. The runway was just paved this year, which makes things easier.

So, we're coming in from the noth, I've got the coordinates programmed into my GPS, we find the runway OK, I get in the traffic pattern. First attempt I'm looking high. I'm expecting some sink because of the altitude, but it's not enough, and I know this is going to be a challenging approach, so I decide to bail early and go around for another attempt.

Second attempt. I get back into the pattern and get lined up again. Again, I'm a bit high, but this time not too bad. I get things set up, and they're looking really good with about 200 ft to go. I notice a few additional bumps as we descend since there is a bit of wind coming off that giant butte at the end of the runway. No problem. Then, with about 10-20 ft vertical to go, as we cross over the threshold of the runway, there is TONS of sink and the plane basically drops out of the sky. This is not good. I instinctively lower the nose a bit and start pushing in the throttle to keep the airspeed up and compensate for the sink. It's nowhere near enough, and the main wheels hit the ground pretty hard and the plane bounces back up into the air and starts banking slightly left. This is a really narrow runway, so there's no way we're going to land this one safely, so I go to full throttle and look at the airspeed indicator to make sure it's OK to take out some of the flaps causing drag on us. I probably should have looked at the vertical speed indicator, but I didn't. I get the flaps to 10 degrees and take a look outside since I know that butte is coming up and I need to watch out for it. Survival instinct is kicking in and I feel myself pulling back on the yoke. Bad idea - that's how to have a really bad crash in these conditions. I look at the airspeed indicator, which is now hovering around 40-45 knots - too slow. I actually say out loud "we're going to stall-mush." A stall mush is what people usually do when they crash into the trees at backcountry airstrips. I summon the will to disobey the survival instinct and I lower the nose to get the airspeed back up to Vx, which is the airspeed which gives the maximum distance away from the ground per distance traveled forward. As I'm doing this, I'm starting to bank left away from the butte. Out of the corner of my eye I see a hangar at the end of the runway that we're flying over. There's no way it's more than 30 feet below us. Remember that 1.25 degree upslope? That's working against us now and we're climbing into rising terrain. We clear the hangar and I keep a slight bank in to keep us away from the butte. Now I'm just flying the plane at maximum performance to get away from the ground. I'm freaking out that some wind gust will come off that butte and slam us into the ground, causing a real crash. About 30 more seconds pass where I'm just holding the plane in max climb configuration and thinking to myself that "we're going to be OK." My Dad actually says, totally calmly "You're doing fine Chris, just keep going."

Once we're out of the woods, I get the plane level and sort of take inventory. Holy crap, that was really scary! My legs are shaking like mad on the rudder pedals. Now I have to decide what to do. I know I have about 1.5-2 hours of fuel left, plenty to fly to the nearest airport with fuel. We could ditch this part of the trip and I continue on. I consider it, but decide to make another attempt. There's a weird thing with aviation where you're always learning. At some point you have to take some risks or you'll never get anywhere. On the other hand, you can't be reckless and take risks which are obviously really bad. Flying over mountains at night in bad weather is a perfect example. I thought about it and realized that only that part over the runway threshold is what got me into trouble, and small planes land on this strip all the time with no problem. It also wasn't very windy out, so the gusts over the butte were not a big factor close to the ground. I decide to go for it.

This time, I fly WAY out and make a really long, slow approach so that everything is totally dialed prior to reach the end of the runway. As we're coming in, we get the same bumps about 400' above the ground, and as we reach the end of the threshold, I'm already adding a little bit of power in anticipation of the sink, and in case I need to go around again. Sure enough, we a bunch of sink and the plane starts to drop. However, I'm already bringing in power, so I give it a bit more and the plane stops sinking. I find a spot which keeps the plane at a stable altitude over the runway, then reduce slightly to start the plane dropping again. We descend slightly, and gently land as if I were back at my home airport. No problem. SWEET!!! I got it down in one piece. Once we parked, I don't think I could have gotten out of the airplane any faster. That was scary!

So, things I did wrong:
- I should have expected to land with more power than I did - it was high and hot, so the plane does not have good performance. It takes maybe half a second to get the engine spun up and adding more power, and I could have avoided the near disaster if I had power already in.
- I should probably have taken a longer, more stabilized approach on the 2nd attempt. I have noticed that when landing at unfamiliar airports, I have a tendency to come in high. You want to minimize the number of things that you have to think about when you're right above the ground.

Things I did right:
- Brought just enough fuel. Less fuel= less weight. I wanted to have enough to keep my options open, but not so much that I further hurt the performance of the airplane.
- Studied up. I knew what to expect when landing there (slope, butte) and was ready for it.
- Practiced. We started the flight at Moab/Canyonlands airport. The density altitude there was 7500 ft when we left, so I did a few practice landings since it's not often that you fly a 172SP in conditions like that.
- Did the right thing when things got dicey. I could have tried to get back to the runway and crashed trying to get it on the ground. I could have pulled back to hard on the yoke and stalled the plane and crashed, or I could have stall-mushed into the hangar.
- Stayed calm and rational.

Sunday, July 8, 2007 11:03:19 AM

Someone at Boeing has a solid connection with Mother Nature.  With the rest of the country sweltering, Seattle has sunny and 70 degrees with a nice breeze.  Not exactly the kind of weather you think about when Seattle comes to mind. 

The buses came to pick us up at 1PM and we are off to Everett and the main assembly facility.  Boeing has planned 15,000 people largely from the 787 Employee Team but also the partner airlines, manufacturers and financiers. We had very good seating, eight rows back from center stage.  Back to the weather for a moment.  With 15,000 people in this facility and the doors closed the temperature started to come up almost to uncomfortable by the time the show started at 3:30PM.  All of us in the front were required to wear suits which most men quickly took off their coats.  I am not sure what that show would have been like if we had 90+ degree temperatures.

 The show, hosted by Tom Brokaw, went along right on time integrating live presentations from manufacturing partner facilities from around the world. The people from the Italian facility admitted they had been celebrating for several hours which brought a big laugh from the crowd.  At the end of the presentations the leader of the 787 Team came up and invited flight attendants from all of the ordering airlines.  He than asked each of the partner groups to stand to be recognized and then the doors opened and he introduced the plane.  They used a tug to pull the plane up to the facility door.  They pulled the stage out of the way and allowed everyone to go out and look at the plane.  No ability to get on the plane but most people wanted to reach up and touch the composite material that makes up the skin of the plane.  On balance the plane looks a bit shorter and almost stubbier than you might expect.  It will look more balanced when the stretched versions begin production.  The interior sketches would lead you to believe that this will have an interior that will not be like any other airplane in the sky.  It is designed to be wider at the shoulders where typical aircraft are at their widest at the ankles.  Lighting will be curtain lighting and will be capable of creating environments in the cabin which will now have humidity.  No more feeling like a raisin when you get off the plane.  Finishing the pictures will be the 18" tall windows.

Following the rollout they took us back to the hotel to change back into casual cloths and get a new badge to wear that would give us access to the party at the country club.  Now everything about this weekends activities have been planned to perfection and the execution flawless until now.  For whatever reason the bus driver they used had no idea where this country club was once we got in the general area.  There was a housing community around the club that we took a complete tour of before the people on the bus actually figured out how to get to the country club.  You should have seen the looks on the faces of the people out working on their lawns as this over the road bus winds it's way through their neighborhood.  

Boeing had set up a number of food stations around the country club plus three cocktail bars and the required cigar bar.  One of the interesting things they provided were two video games.  One was car racing, four people could compete.  The other was a pretty nice mock cockpit hooked up to Flight Simulator.  They had a yolk and a pretty complete consul with throttles, thrust reversers, flap control and speed brake.  It also had all of the radio controls.  A very nice set up that could be sold to the average guy for probably not much money.  The only draw back was no rudder pedals.  I was the only one to actually get the 787 on the runway.  Most put it in the Sound.  The computer was set to give yo the five mile approach to SeaTac.

The night ended with a laser light show on the back lawn of the club.  The adventure was not over yet though we still had to get back to the hotel.  Yep, that's right, the driver got lost going back to the hotel.  No one was amused, most had 4-5AM wake up calls and it was already 11PM

We finally got back close to 11:30PM.  For the most part it was a really well doe two days.

Boeing 787 Rollout

Saturday, July 7, 2007 6:04:22 PM

Dinner at the Baehrs home last night gave me the chance to sleep right through the 4:30AM wake up call.  The Hoyt car is picking me up at 5:30AM only 30 minutes to shower, finish packing and run for it.  Net effect, ran out of the house and hope I leave with everything.  To many gadgets to keep track of for every trip.

Getting to and through the airport was no problem at that hour of the day.  I had about 30 minutes in the Presidents Club before boarding.  The good news was the gate was right next to the club.  The total flight time was right at 5.5 hours which I contend, even if you are flying Business First as I was, that is the outer limit in a single aisle aircraft.  I offer as proof positive that I am not alone in this thought the fact that the flight attendant came on the PA to announce that we only had 56 minutes left in our flight.  Apparently other people were interested in how much longer the pain would last.

Getting off the airplane in Seattle the nice man from Boeing Transportation met me at the bottom of the escalator in baggage claim.  Once I had the suitcase in hand we headed for the car and the trip to the Hyatt Bellevue.  By noon I was in the room having been greeted by Boeing people in the hotel lobby and escorted to the hospitality suite to check in for the agenda and needed event credentials.  Having finished my book on the plane I need the location of the nearest bookstore, low and behold the Barnes & Noble store was just two blocks away.  I picked up a new book, one of my favorite fiction writers W.E.B. Griffith, and bunch of magazines.  A short walk back to the hotel and off to lunch at Joey's across the driveway from the hotel.  I thought it was strange the hotel did not have anywhere to eat.  Only the lobby Starbucks had a few small things.

5:30PM we have to set out for the two block walk to the Bellevue Arts Museum for the first event of the "Rollout Party".  This turns out to be typical Boeing, high end, nicely done a who's who is aviation finance.  There are apparently other parties going on throughout Seattle for the airlines and the suppliers.  Boeing has taken virtually all of the hotels and literally all of the limo's for this event.  Someone tonight said that they observed a C-17 landing which would indicate government limo's arriving but no one thought that President Bush would be attending tomorrow

Following the reception the Avitas people (our aviation advisors) took me out to dinner at Daniel's, a very nice resturant on the top of the Hyatt.  Midnight local time when we finished which just about made it 24 hours up.  Long day, glad it's over and that I don't have to get up in the morning.

July 1, 2007

Up early to get ready, packed and have breakfast before 7:30AM when Chris & Maryann will pick me up.  This morning we are going down into the bay to make the new dog selection.

After a short stop for a coffee it turns out the 9AM appointment is now a 10AM appointment so we use the time to stop at Restoration Hardware to make the big curtain rod selection.  Accomplishing this mission it is off to the dog place.  Unhappily the nice lady was tied up in traffic as a result of picking up a dog.  After waiting 45 minutes we set off to get me to the airport on time for my 1:50PM flight back to the Big Apple.  American Airlines waits for no man.

Unhappily, my ride back was not as enjoyable as the ride out since I was in coach.  The 767 is a 2-3-2 seating aircraft.  Robyn did a great job of getting me an aisle seat in the exit aisle in the left side twosome.  That was the good news, lots of leg room for a long flight.  The bad news was the Asian fellow on the window that I am pretty sure never stopped moving and fidgeting.  I dozed off for a few minutes but I am reasonable certain that it did not stop him from constantly changing his sitting position and bending over to get things from under the seat in front of him.  My hat is off to him, it takes real effort to stay in motion for 5 hours.

So now that the trip is over what did I take away from the experience?  First and foremost exactly how blessed I am to have two kids that keep the old man in adventures.  Between Chris and Courtney we have had a long list of great adventures, From F1 races to this flying trip not to mention all the stuff as they were growing up.   I am reasonable sure each could be made into a book by a talented writer.  This trip combined a bunch of experiences ranging from my complete lack of understanding of how to relate a map to my current location while flying to visiting some of the more challenging air strips in America.  My hat is off to Chris's ability as a pilot.  His skill certainly belies his 250 hours of total flying experience.  We covered a large chuck of the western United States ( California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah) that only having an airplane can offer.  As an example, we considered driving from Palm Springs to Bullhead City Arizona to see Robyn and Marilyn while the door was being repaired until we realized that it would be five hours by car each way.  The flight was closer to 2 hours.  We visited not only the back drop for virtually every western movie made in this country but also some of the most beautiful scenery in America.  Culturally we had an opportunity to experience the Navajo Indians.  It is interesting that Chris thought that Dennis (Indian guy who picked us up at the airplane in Gouldings) was not at all interested in talking with us and would have been happy if we turned around and flew right out of the Gouldings airport.  It did not help that he had a copy of Guns Magazine on the floor of the van he used to pick us up.  If you are not aware of their stoic personality it can give you the wrong impression when you first meet.  Even our waitress just looks at you with complete lack of expression and you are expected to know that she would like to take your order.  We also learned all of the features and benefits of the Hogan.  This is a free standing, eight sided, today largely ceremonial place, build of wood having an inside diameter of19-23 ft.  It is covered with what looks like a combination red clay and mud but does not seem to wash away in the rain.  There is a three foot in diameter hole in the roof which the nice tour guide said created enough escaping air pressure to keep rain from falling in. Until all of the tour people came in to heat it up it was actually livable in the heat of the day. 

 Would I do this again?  In a New York minute !!

June 30, 2007

Last day of the journey.  To bad, not happy to see this day come.  Up early again but not quite as early.  Chris met Robyn and I  for breakfast and then we headed out to the pool for some quality shade time.  After careful consideration and an examination of the winds we concluded that a 1 PM wheels up time out of North Las Vegas should be the target.  We plan to make the fuel stop back in Tehachapi CA where we stopped for our first fuel stop on the way out.  Chris dialed up the weather and it looks like head winds all the way back which should make for a long and bumpy ride.  We will take sandwiches as the fuel stop does not even have a bathroom.  

Upon take off from NLV we had to duck under the Bravo which in this case extended all the way to the mountain range on the west end of town.  As a result we had to make a climbing 360 degree turn in order to get to an altitude to clear the mountains after clearing the Bravo.  Chris alternately slowed the engine to cool it and then would start the climb again.  Once over this mountain range it was smooth sailing all the way to tehachapi.  We took about a 15 minute fuel stop, finished the sandwich we brought along from the Bellagio and took off into a very strong headwind.  The last leg of the trip was an approach to San Carlos along the coast.  The sun was dropping and reflecting off a smooth ocean.  We were flying in very smooth air and it made for a very serene picture.  Wheels were down in San Carlos at 6:15PM bringing to an end a very exciting and fun trip. In retrospect we considered ourselves lucky the door did not fail in a one horse town like Tehachapi which would have made the trip a real bummer.  A little extra time on Palm Springs did not really disturb the trip plan all that much.  The only stop we dropped was Sedona.

Chris dropped me at the Grand Hyatt, took a shower and went to meet Chris and Maryann at their apartment to go out for sushi.  There was also the required short stop at a quality chocolate store for a piece of candy and a cup of coffee.  I was seriously caffeine deprived on this trip through no ones fault just availability.  Make the voices STOP !!!