Musings of a VC in NYC

Mobile & Conversations

One of the great things about the web is the ability for people located all around the world to be having a public conversation in real time in a single place. We see that in action here at AVC with the Disqus comment system. But it also exists on Twitter, Quora, Stack Overflow, Reddit, Hacker News, and a host of other places on the web. This kind of open public discourse is quite important and leads to greater understanding and ideally a progressive society that moves forward as new ideas and new ways of thinking propagate.

As the web is increasingly moving to mobile, there are opportunities and challenges. The opportunity is simple. Folks don't need to be in front of a computer to be able to participate in a real-time discussion. The challenges are harder. Who here has tried to comment on AVC from a mobile phone or tablet? It's not as easy. And what would a mobile app look like for commenting?

Those who solve these challenges will be the leaders in real-time discussions in the coming years. Because taking our conversations with us in our pockets will be critical.

I say all of this because of an experience I had yesterday. I had to take my son to take a test yesterday afternoon. As I left our home, I saw a tweet from Dave McClure responding to my post yesterday:

yo @fredwilson @msuster ur missing main point on notes -- big reason they're used over priced rounds isnt valuation, rather synchronization

— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) September 8, 2012

I responded to his tweet and then took my son to his test. A half hour later, after I dropped off my son, I checked Twitter and there was a lively discussion brewing. I responded to a few tweets and started driving home.

Every twenty blocks or so I would pull over, check twitter, reply to a few more tweets, and then start driving again. By the time I got home a half hour later, there was a full blown Twitter discussion.

Mark Ury did us all a favor and Storified the discussion for posterity. Mark Suster also contributed a curated version of the discussion on his blog.

What's the takeaway from this story, other than investors get pretty emotional about things like convertible notes, priced equity, discounts, and signaling?

Mine is that I could have never participated in that discussion in real time had it not been for the Twitter client on my Android phone. But it was simple, in some ways simpler than doing it on the web, in Twitter's mobile client.

So it's high time for all those companies out there that are in the business of hosting and facilitating live real-time public conversations to do what Twitter has done and make your products work well in mobile. If you don't, others will.

Inclusivity

One of my favorite bloggers and thinkers about social media, Anil Dash, has a blog post up on Medium titled You Can’t Start the Revolution from the Country Club. Go read it because he's talking about some important stuff.

In his post Anil observes that in many of the most interesting new social media services, there is a sense of exclusivity built into the experience. A velvet rope as it were. And in many cases, this is being done to produce signal instead of noise, to make the consumption experience easier, and to produce "quality content." Anil calls bullshit on that. And so do I.

I have learned the power of inclusivity from writing this blog and watching this community evolve. Everyone is welcome here. Everyone can comment. Nobody's comments get nuked unless they are spam or hate. And I have a very high standard for hate. The community can and does police this place. And that allows anyone to come in here and be a regular. And that is what has created the magic.

If you look at some of the best communities on the web, like reddit for example, they all follow this approach. It makes for a noisy and messy experience. But it works and it scales.

This is my basic argument for free as a business model. Once you insert money into the equation, you are excluding important voices. Once you insert exclusivity into the quality model, you are excluding important voices.

Some of these "country clubs" as Anil calls them may succeed. But they don't inspire me. They don't invite me (in the behavior sense of that word). I'll hang out in public if you don't mind. It suits me.

I'm Looking For An "Ask Me A Question" Blog Link/Widget

A friend has asked me to help them with a new blog series. Each week this blogger will select a question submitted by their audience and answer it.

I'd like to put a Q&A link/widget on their blog to collect the questions from the audience.

I like what they do on Ask the VC and am looking into how they do that.

But I'd love to see what else is out there for this kind of thing.

If you've come across something like this on blogs that you like or if you use something like this on your blog, please let me know about it in the comments.

Thanks!

Social Sources

Google Analytics has a relatively new feature that allows you to look at your "social sources" of traffic. According to Google, about 27% of the vists to AVC in the past month came from social sources. For those who are curious about the rest of the traffic, 30% is direct, 15% is search (much of which is really direct traffic), and of the rest, about half is from social sources.

Here are the top social networks that drive traffic to AVC:

Twitter and Hacker News have been the mainstays of the social traffic to AVC for a long time. Last year, StumbleUpon was driving a ton of traffic to AVC, but that waned early this year and it is much less of a factor today.

Facebook, Techmeme, and Disqus are the other big social drivers of traffic. 

And the traffic that Disqus drives is markedly different than all of the other social sources. These folks hang around longer, read more pages, and engage more.

If you have a blog or some other form of online media and have a Google Analytics tag on your pages, I suggest you take a look at your social sources. I think you'll find it interesting.

Fun Friday: Blogs We Read

I am going with another reader suggestion for fun friday. Blog discovery is still too hard. There are so many great blogs out there and it is still too hard to find them.

So today we will list blogs we read that folks might not know about.

I will start it off with a few that I enjoy:

The Gurgling Cod - written by a friend's brother. It's mostly about food, but also veers into culture and politics from time to time.

Techman's World - written by AVC community member Michael Hazell. It's mostly tech reviews, news, and commentary.

Tracey Talks - written by screenwriter and author Tracey Jackson. Tracey Talks is a wide ranging blog about life, culture, and other interesting stuff.

Arnold's Wine Blog - everyone here knows Arnold. And Arnold knows wine. Enough said.

Becker Posner Blog - written by University of Chicago Professors Richard Posner and Gary Becker. This is the home of serious thought on the web. Amazing stuff.

AndySwan.com - nobody does the "picture plus a few choice words" thing better than Andy.

So those are a few of my regular reads that folks might not be reading and should. Now we open it up for everyone to chime in with their favorite blogs that folks might now know about.

Reading Every Comment

I have said many times, here and elsewhere, that I read every comment left on AVC. That is a true statement and remains true to this day. But I can also tell you that it is a struggle and gets more so every day.

Yesterday on my flight to the bay area I was able to go through a week of backlog of comments and get caught up on a bunch of conversations that were sitting in my inbox unread. I don't know if anyone noticed that I had not been that engaged in much of last week's conversations, but the truth is I had been mostly absent.

If nobody noticed or cared, that is a good thing in my book. The community here is large and engaged. They can have a great conversation without me. So that feels good. But I still feel that as the conversation starter it is just not right to be absent from the conversation. And so it bugs me when the unread comments pile up.

I have long made peace with not reading every email that is sent to me. I bet I don't read more than 25% of the emails sent to me these days. I still manage to read every email my wife and kids send to me. And I still manage to read most of the email my colleagues at USV send to me. And I still manage to read most of the email our portfolio companies send to me. Beyond that, it's a crap shoot. I've written about that and most folks know that's how I'm managing email nowadays.

But I don't want to go there with blog comments. I figure that if you take the time to leave a comment, I should take the time to read it. And so I try to get through as much of the prior day's conversation as possible before I start a new one. That's what broke down last week and required a plane ride across the country to get caught up.

I mention all of this because I want folks to know that I remain committed to reading a comment if you take the time to leave one and because I wonder if there has been a noticeable falloff in my engagement. I am feeling the struggle and I am curious if it is obvious.

Some History

Folks often ask me "how have you been able to make comments work so well on your blog?"

It is not any one thing, it is a bunch of them.

But one of them was the decision to have a "bouncer."

Back in the early days, when we were using the native Typepad comment system and maybe we'd get 10 comments on a good day, my brother, who uses the handle Jackson online, and his friend, who uses the handle Tony Alva, were very frequent commenters here at AVC.

And whenever someone would come into the comments and say nasty stuff about me or what I wrote, Jackson would go right at them. So I started calling Jackson my "Bouncer."

It was effective and the trolls eventually lost interest in the AVC community.

Jackson got social media burnout four or five years ago and lost interest in AVC and pretty much everything else online. He went back to his vinyl records, photo albums, and hard cover books while the rest of us moved onto soundcloud, instagram, and wattpad.

And so I needed a new Bouncer. The obvious choice was Kid Mercury although I might have been tempted to go with Fake Grimlock if he had been around.

The Kid stepped into the role with skill and aplomb. And he is still in the role. Although to be honest, we rarely need a Bouncer anymore around here. The community is the bouncer now in many ways.

I was reminded of this when Jackson showed up yesterday without any warning. I am not sure if he will stick around. If he does, be prepared for an old school bias and a fair bit of cynicism. I hope he sticks around. We could use a bit more of that around here.

Being Naked Online

I saw this tweet from the start of Howard Lindzon's talk in Boulder yesterday:

 

"First two people I met on the Internet (who weren't naked) were @bfeld & @fredwilson" - @howardlindzon #bigboulder quotes

— Kyle Porter (@kylegport) June 21, 2012

 

I don't know exactly what Howard means by "naked" but I feel the opposite way. I have always tried to be naked online. To me that means real, authentic, and who you are.

I suspect that is what Howard is talking about but he will have to stop by and comment to explain his meaning to us.

We've talked about this ad naseum here at AVC, but the blogging revolution is more than a free publishing platform and a new model for media. It is self expression at its core. It is people being who they are, talking the way they talk, and doing it in public.

I have an agenda. I do not hide it. I wear it on my sleeve. I believe in certain things. I want the world to be a certain way. I make investments. I promote them. I want them to be successful. And hopefully everyone knows all of those things when they show up here. I think that is being naked online and that's how I want to be.

Blogworld Talk Between JLM, William, Arnold & Me

A few weeks ago AVC regulars JLM, Arnold, William and I did a talk at Blogword.

We talked about blogs, social media, and of course, commenting communities. William kicked it off with some data that came out of the survey he did. About nine minutes in, the conversation starts.

We recorded it on SoundCloud and you can listen below.

Top Ten Sources

I took at look at Google Analytics this morning and was a bit surprised to see the makeup of the top ten sources of traffic to AVC in the past month.

If we compare this to May 2010, when AVC got almost exactly the same amount of visitors, you can see that the makeup of traffic has changed a fair bit.

Search, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Facebook, and Disqus have all risen a fair bit as sources. Direct, Feedburner, Hacker News, and various specific sites have waned as sources of traffic.

Mobile visits have also doubled in the past two years from 11% to 22%. Frankly I thought they would be even higher by now.

What this tells me is platforms are ascendent as drivers of audience, particularly platforms like Twitter that are optimized for mobile.

It is also nice to see Disqus cracking the top ten. And the characteristics of the Disqus traffic is very different from the traffic that comes from the other top ten sources. The Disqus audience stays longer and is way more engaged. That makes sense. I hope to see Disqus rise in the top ten as they do more to drive traffic around their network.

It makes me think that Disqus could use a mobile reading app that shows Disqus users the interesting conversations happening in their network in real time. I would certainly be a big user of that.

But no matter how you slice it, we are in the era of mobile platforms. That is pretty clear to me this morning.