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Quick Link | Why Facebook badly needs Steve Jobs | Take The First

~ Eoin Purcell ~ Leave a comment

Frankly, I think this email offering is going to be a bit of a damp squib. That said, I’ve been wrong before and I think Facebook is just a slightly fancier AOL ten years on.

There’s some good commentary on this here:

Which brings me back to the title of this post: Why Facebook badly needs Steve Jobs. Facebook is the new Google – as in, they are building up an army of the best damn software developers on the planet. But having great engineers is not enough. Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have each had a monopoly on great engineers for a period of time. But engineers want to solve hard problems – to build abstractions – to unify 3 different things that seem kinda similar. But this has nothing to do with solving real user problems, which is what Apple excels at. So these amazing engineers need a Product Person to direct them. Steve Jobs. Someone who doesn’t just unify stuff because it’s neat & challenging. Someone who thinks, “what problems do people have?” and then solves those problems (see: iPhone vs. every smartphone before the iPhone).

What’s Going On With Tumblr?

~ Eoin Purcell ~ 8 Comments

All of a sudden everything seems to be getting designated a platform even when the claim is a little weak.

The latest is Tumblr which frankly, if it is anything other than a service provider is a network or maybe, at a stretch, a social network and perhaps, an emerging community (but a very fractured and erratic one). In some ways, Tumblr is like the webring of the 21st century the only difference being that it is nicely designed and ‘ultra-hip’.

Yet Tumblr seems to be attracting a huge amount of interest from media and publishing companies as this Read Write Web blog post makes clear:

“Part of what we do is experiment on different platforms, and it seemed apparent to us that there was a sizable number of NPR fans on Tumblr,” he says. “It’s less about pageviews and more about engaging a community that enjoys NPR.”

Carvin says NPR is taking a very experimental approach to Tumblr in terms of curating content to share, engaging one-on-one with followers and determining how to voice the blog.

He adds that he is eager to get feedback from fans, but that there is no “grand plan” for what they intend to accomplish.
NPR Looks to Engage New Audiences On Tumblr.

Taking the Tumblr plunge is just as stupid as taking the Twitter plunge or the blogging plunge if you haven’t the faintest idea why you are doing it? Why on earth would NPR get involved in this while at the same time admitting that they don’t have a ‘grand plan’?

Sure, experimentation is interesting, valid and worth engaging in, but this kind of shot in the dark stuff reeks of chasing an illusory ‘cool’ crowd.

Tumblr is interesting in its own way and there seems to be some kind of community building there, but Tumblr is NOT the solution for publishers and media companies, their own websites offer so much more opportunity for engaging with audiences, audiences who are coming TO them, not being interrupted BY them. Quite a few publishers could spend some time sorting that side of things out before running off to the next pretty ‘platform’ they see.

Still coughing, which is annoying!
Eoin