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Is the Web Dead?
As Billy Crystal says in one of my Top FIVE Favorite Comedy’s…’It’s only Mostly Dead’ (which means it’s slightly alive…and you should look for loose change):
Here is what the talented, banjo playing Chris Dixon has to say:
Earlier this month, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff put out an article on Wired, The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet. In this piece, an obituary of sorts for the world wide web as we know (or knew) it, they argued that simpler apps are quickly replacing the web browsers that we have used for many years. We decided it would be great to get some of the best thinkers on the web on StockTwits TV over the next two weeks to discuss this concept with me.
The result was incredible. We had some tremendous discussions on the future of the web, and how and where to invest in it.
The Web is Dead Series kicks off tonight at 5pm and 10pm ET with Chris Dixon, Cofounder of Hunch and early-stage web investor. The full schedule for this week is below:
Monday (8/30/10) at 5pm ET & 10pm ET: Chris Dixon, Cofounder of Hunch and early-stage web investor.
Tuesday (8/31/10) at 5pm ET & 10pm ET: Fred Wilson, VC and principal of Union Square Ventures.
Wednesday (9/1/10) at 5pm ET & 10pm ET: Seth Levine, Managing Director, Foundry Group.
Thursday (9/2/10) at 5pm ET & 10pm ET: Brad Feld, Managing Director, Foundry Group.
Friday (9/3/10) at 5pm ET & 10pm ET: Eghosa Omoigui , formerly with Intel Ventures, now Angel Investor
We look forward to what should be a very thought provoking 2 weeks. If you ever miss an episode, you can catch them in our archives.
There is a useless debate on Le Web over Le Years whether the internet makes you smarter or dumber . Let me chine in on that:
COULD. CARE. LESS
I know what Le Web does for me. I hold my pee in longer. It could be my age and gynormous prostate but I think it’s engagement. I sit, I read, I am engaged, I hold in a pee.
Clay Shirky has the important stuff on the subject of ’smarter or dumber’:
The past was not as golden, nor is the present as tawdry, as the pessimists suggest, but the only thing really worth arguing about is the future. It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity. We are now witnessing the rapid stress of older institutions accompanied by the slow and fitful development of cultural alternatives. Just as required education was a response to print, using the Internet well will require new cultural institutions as well, not just new technologies.
Whats Does the Internet Make You do more or Less of…
I love stocks and I LOVE investing in startups. About 8 months ago I started calling Facebook $fbook and Twitter $twit when I tweeted. I felt the IPO market was struggling and it would be cool if Private Companies had a lightweight exchange or center of conversation to point people too to learn about them in real-time. A place where employees and investors could get a pulse of what people were saying about private companies.
It would be cool for the Companies and REALLY COOL for STOCKTWITS is we could own all the company conversations on twitter. When I had the idea and Fred Wilson noticed me doing it, at least he thought so and his hunches are better than mine.
Through a partnership with SecondMarket, the marketplace for illiquid assets, we are excited to deliver to our community at StockTwits the capability to comment on an entire network of private companies. We love what SecondMarket is doing, and are delighted to be able to provide a real time messaging and idea sharing and messaging platform for them.
You will be able to find the Private Companies stream on the Stream Navigation Panel on the left side bar of the website.
Private Company Stream in Navigation PanelTo find a particular company’s’ ticker, simply browse through the Private Company Database and then tweet using that ticker symbol.
Browse through the Private Company Database
Once you find the ticker symbol, tweet about it and it will show up in the Private Company StreamEach Private Company has their own symbol page, where you can easily view the tweets as well as view the company profile on The Business Insider, TechCrunch, GigaOm, CNNMoney, and TechMeme. Check out this one for $SKYPE:
Each Company gets their own symbol page where you can view company profiles across the web.
We are excited to be working alongside SecondMarket and can’t wait to see the conversation surrounding private companies blossom. It’s really going to be fun to see some of these great companies move from the Private Company Stream to the Public Equities Stream in the future!
It seems so.
Intuit $INTU is not a sexy company. They don’t care. They are rocking. I started blogging about the setup a few months ago and am long the stock.
In 2005, I walked into an Apple store for the first time and I just knew a homerun was coming. I started blogging about it (check the archives). I was long the stock immediately. I did not care what the chart looked like.
The next 3 years were nirvana for growth stocks so owning the best ones paid handsomely.
Intuit feels to me like Apple did but there are a few big differences. The mood of the country sucks. The stock market itself feels broken, different and tired. But, most important to me from a confidence/catalyst standpoint, I don’t directly engage in Intuit’s products like I used to. My bookkeeper does, our controller at Stocktwits does and I know that all my portfolio companies do so as well.
I want to reengage. I wish my kids were old enough or there was a Mint/Quicken for kiddies. I would even work there 
. In the meantime, Intuit owns the SMB. It may not be as sexy as the enterprise or the consumer, but profits and market share is super sexy and Intuit sells the SMB the hammers and the shovels.
I think Intuit should seize upon MY personal intuition and get closer to the consumer. They spent $170 million to get closer when they purchased Mint.com, but that should just be their opening salvo. They should be opening Mint.com stores. America would immerse themselves in personal finance. To do so, all Intuit needs to do is hire some Apple people that built the Apple retail concept and want new challenges. It’s that simple. I see Mint and Quicken ‘genius bars’ in a retail environment that dares to immerse the consumer and SMB in personal finance. I will spend my mall and retail time going from the Apple store to the Mint.com store.
While getting to these stores I will pass some empty Microsoft stores and some bankrupt retailers that I wished were Kayak.com travel experience stores and Google experience stores filled with SMB ‘Search Geniuses’, but I dare to dream and try to ‘will’ the goodness to happen.
You will RARELY get the perfect catalyst and market conditions to ‘back up the truck’ or ‘load the boat’, but if you stay in the game opportunities as good as these present themselves. So I own it and I think I will watch it march consistently higher. I own enough that I will blog about it when I am wrong so stay tuned.
PS – At minute 11 in laste week’s ‘Momentum Monday’ I took a deeper dive into the business so you can watch here:
PSS – This Mophie and Intuit credit card reader and processing is also an interesting growth opportunity .
I was completely surprised this morning to wake up and see StockTwits on Time Magazine’s Top 50 Websites of 2010. Each year, this is a great list, and to be in such great company is absolutely humbling.
I would like to thank every member of the community for helping to make this possible. Each day we are simply amazed at the talent and idea flow that goes on in the community. It’s truly astounding. We are hard at work to continue to build great tools to empower our community members and foster the transmission of financial ideas. Thanks for being so awesome!
If you are new to this blog, you may not know that I started downsizing in 2005. I was blogging about it.
I was not downsizing my risk, just shifting dollars spent ‘conspiculously’ to dollars invested. The final chapters are long from written, but I am happy with these choices. If the ‘Web is not Dead’ I will be fine. So will you if you know how to leverage it. My family’s standard of living has improved meteorically in the right ways. We have less of everything except bikes. There is still much waste and I imagine more withdrawls than deposits, but I live in California for chrissakes….quit judging!
There is a renewed and somewhat useless ‘meme’ circulating our financial blogosphere about whether housing prices are too high. That is no longer the proper context for an argument. Housing was a cultural phenomenon. It’s cooked. It was a lie and a sham. Timing the end made a few risk freaks some coin, but who cares already.
The real bull market is in everything else. ’Less is truly more’ for the Companies that sell you less. Lower hassle, less stuff, less weight, less style.
Watch the GREAT Steve martin in the final scene of The Jerk:
I will recreate that scene for you when I build the perfect list for late 2010.
All I need is :
My Bike
My $CROX
My $nflx
My iPad
My Rental Home
…Chime in please in the comments and let’s redo this classic scene for 2010.
One of the hardest things about managing money is finding good ideas. The Real Time Financial Idea Network we’ve built at StockTwits helps solve this problem and the new Chart.ly makes it even easier.
Two of my favorite features of the NEW Chart.ly are screencasts and pattern tagging.
Built using the ridiculously easy to use screenr technology, you can record a screencast up to 5 minutes long with just one click – no need to download software or know how to make web videos. The Screencast feature is a great way to share ideas that can’t fit in the standard 140 characters as well as ideas other than technical analysis. Whether it be @charlesrotblut discussing the latest AAII survey, @abnormalreturns riffing on $GLD, or @RagheeHorner talking Forex Charts, the screencast feature makes it so easy to share and find a broad array of investment ideas.
On Chart.ly 5 minutes is the new 140.
In addition to screencasts, another feature I love is pattern tagging. You have the ability to select a pattern for every chart or screencast you upload. This is a fantastic way to zoom in and find ideas. Looking for bullish setups? We have a stream for that. Bearish on the markets and looking for stocks to short? We have a stream for that too.
It even gets down to the type of pattern. You can zoom in and look at all inverse head and shoulders, or all bear flags. For the trader looking to learn technical analysis, this is a tremendous $STUDY tool. You can really get a good feel for each pattern and learn to identify them on your own in the wild.
This is just the start of many great tools to empower users of our Financial Idea Network. If you have any suggestions on how we can make StockTwits or Chart.ly better please let us know. In the meantime get on Chart.ly and start sharing ideas!
