Editor’s note: Guest author Prerna Gupta is the CEO of Khush, which develops the music-creation iPhone app LaDiDa that has been downloaded 270,000 times. Khush means “happy” in Hindi. You can follow her on Twitter at @prernagupta.

Earlier this year, my company advanced to the final stages of two prestigious start-up competitions. Both times, I got up on stage and belted out my prezo in C Major (our product is LaDiDa, an iPhone app that helps bad singers make music), and then backed up the singing with solid growth metrics on our business. The audience loved it, and LaDiDa was a crowd favorite to win in both contests. But when it came time for the judges' feedback, I was frustrated to hear a familiar refrain: "Your demo is great, really cool app," they said, "but we can't give you this award because your product doesn't solve any obvious pain point."

Most investors will tell you to never walk into a meeting without a good answer to "what's the problem you're trying to solve?". Dave McClure's famous Startup Viagra: How to Pitch a VC deck puts this question right up front, at slide #2. Focus on pain, say the experts. Your product must be a painkiller.

While there is obvious wisdom to this rule, there is also a flaw in using this rubric exclusively. Consider, for example, that the most addictive technologies we've seen in the past few years would have never passed this test before millions of people were already using them (that's perhaps why so many VCs missed the boat on Twitter). It's easy to say today that Twitter solves the problem of dispersed information, or Facebook the problem of dispersed friends. But who thought of these as "pain points" back in 2004? I don't believe Twitter and Facebook are painkillers. Just ask yourself, Is "acetaminophen" really the drug you feel like you're on when you're using Twitter? Or does "methamphetamine" sound more appropriate? There's in fact been research to show that your brain reacts to products like Twitter in much the same way as it would to stimulants like meth.

So what's my point? If you focus only on painkillers, you'll likely miss out on a completely different, and potentially much larger, set of opportunities: those that target pleasure. Pornography, sports and coffee are, for example, three insanely lucrative industries, and each of them sells the promise of pleasure.

I believe that a focus on solving pain points alone leads to linear thinking that suppresses innovation. A perfect example of this is music. As traditional wisdom would have it, music is an ailing industry. Listeners won't pay for content, labels are going bankrupt and artists don't know how to connect with their digital fans. Lots of obvious pain points waiting to be addressed, and lots of start-ups offering obvious solutions. But obvious is never disruptive. The opportunity for disruption in music lies in the pleasure of music creation. The idea that only professional musicians, backed by labels, should create music was a relatively short-lived fad (music creation has, for most of human history, been a central part of daily life; some even believe that music was a precursor to speech), and it is so over. So let's forget about the dying parts of the music industry, and focus instead on the world's 6 billion living, breathing musicians who are ready and waiting to express themselves through music creation. I assure you there are several multi-billion dollar opportunities there waiting for us, as well as a few viral videos…like this one of a dog singing with her iPad ;)

I'll close with a caveat to my argument above—it's not clear that meth (and Internet products like it) are actually sources of pleasure. Rather, they may simply induce pleasure-seeking behaviors that are never fully satisfied, and that's what keeps people coming back.

There’s has been much discussion in the past couple of days about how Quora can handle its recent explosive growth, avoid becoming a Yahoo Answers (i.e. full of nonsense and spam) and scale with grace.

As further evidence of a growing success problem, Google spam avenger Matt Cutts points us to this evidence of Quora fraud through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Ironically the above Human Intelligence Task (HIT) involves voting up Internet marketer Larry Genkin’s answer to the very popular and highly contested question “How do you become influential?”

Quora’s official policy on paying people for upvotes:

“Solicitation for upvotes is not allowed on Quora.com and users are not allowed make offers to (1) buy upvotes, (2) reward users for upvotes with consideration, and/or (3) trade for upvotes.”

Someone has already made reference to the Mechanical Turk HIT under the answer in question. And the answer has been “collapsed” because of the policy violation, which means that no matter how many upvotes it receives paid or unpaid  it won’t show up. Repeat offenders of Quora policy are warned and then potentially blocked.

Founder Adam D’Angelo tells us that there is currently no system in place to search for/or prevent this kind of spamming “This isn’t a common enough problem for us to have standard procedures or systems built out yet. But maintaining the integrity of our system is really important to us, so we’re going to invest a lot in it as we grow.”

While this isn’t the first time Quora has been involved with Mechanical Turk, right now the “How do you become influential?” item is the only Mechanical Turk task that I can find related to Quora. In contrast there are countless offers to click “Follow” on Twitter and “Like” on Facebook for pay.

Quora recently addressed concerns about the difficult problem of maintaining site integrity in a post entitled "Commitment to Keeping Quora High Quality." It’s a start.

So, The Crunchies Finalists have been announced and  - thanks to votes from you, our valued readers – Wikileaks’ Julian Assange has been shortlisted for the “Founder of the Year” category.

Of course, as one of the co-hosts of the awards, it’s vital that I be seen as impartial and in no way inclined towards or against any particular nominee.

For example, it would be hugely inappropriate for me to suggest that nominating a creepy, egotistical, criminally negligent alleged rapist as “best founder” sends out an astonishingly messed-up message to other entrepreneurs. Equally, running around the TechCrunch office screaming “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? JULIAN ASSANGE?” at the top of my lungs would likely give the appearance of bias against that oily little Australian tool. So I won’t do that.

Instead, I’d like to extend my commiserations to a few of the other equally deserving (and conveniently high profile) candidates who were cruelly overlooked during this year’s voting. People like…

• Tony Hayward (Best CEO)
• Bernie Madoff (Best Enterprise)
• The Craigslist killer (Best Location Based Service)
• Evil Bert (Best Puppet)
• Michael Vick (Best Social App)
• Kim Jong-Il (Best International)
• R Kelly (Best Angel)
• Lindsay Lohan (Best Touch Interface)
• That volcano in Iceland that grounded all the planes (Best Clean Tech / Best Time Sink)
• Snooki (Best New Product of 2010)

Bad luck guys – better luck next year!

It’s time for your favorite part of the week: the new episode of OMG/JK, featuring fellow TechCrunch writer MG Siegler and myself talking about the hottest stories in tech. And this episode’s a great one (though that should come as no surprise).

This has been a remarkable week in technology news, especially when it comes to the iPhone and Android (which, as you may have noticed, happen to be subjects MG and I like to talk about). In this episode we go over the impending release of the iPhone on Verizon (I’ve never seen MG more giddy), the Amazon Android App Store (say that three times fast), the new video demo of Android’s tablet OS Honeycomb, and Apple’s new Mac App Store.

This is also a special episode because it only features one camera (the rest of them are down at CES). It’s sort of like being on a ride. Or something. Yeah, we’ll go with that.

Here are some articles relevant to the topics we discuss:

• Why Apple Will Let Verizon Announce An iPhone
• Amazon's Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

Apple's Mac App Store Opens With More Than 1,000 Apps

• Google Officially Posts Android 3.0 Sneak Peak, Touts "Holographic" UI

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Well, this is several types of amazing.

Way back in 2009, I received an email from an Argentinan lawyer-turned-singer/songwriter by the name of BluBlú. She’s a big TechCrunch fan, she explained, and was considering writing a song based on my Not Safe For Work columns. Would I mind?

Of course I wouldn’t mind. After all, MG has a song, so why shouldn’t I? That said,  I wasn’t actually expecting there to ever be a song. I get a lot of crazy emails.

Oh me of little faith.

This week, almost two years after her original request, BluBlú emailed again. The song was finished! And, you know what? It’s slightly brilliant: my ridiculous rants against social media, my constant firings and even my love-hate relationship with Counting Crows – all turned into something resembling a coherent narrative, set to a haunting tune which has since become stuck in my head. There’s a pretty intense guitar solo in the middle too.

And then I watched the video.

And, well, just wow. Let’s just say, if you’ve ever found yourself reading one of these columns and wondering “why is this not safe for work?”, this video is your answer. To be absolutely clear, unless your employer is cool with naked girls covered in very small amounts of body paint, this video is Not Safe For Work.

If you’re interested, BluBlú has kindly provided the lyrics (posted below), all linked up to the original posts from which they came. You can listen to more BluBlú here.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what brought an Argentinian singer to TechCrunch in the first place, BluBlú explains: “I had a crush on Michael… girly, I know.” 

All the way from Argentina. Oh, the Internet.

Not Safe For Work
by BluBlú

I’ll crash and burn at high speed

This is a battle I will win

Cherchez la fame, follow the game

Keep sleeping through the rain

I want to whet your appetite

The good stuff in CEO cards

3 million bucks, 2 girls

1 cup of groupie tales

A case of wine won’t be enough this time

I’m dry

A hack to the future is my only chance

Not safe for work

Not safe for life

Why is this news, again?

It’s always been out there

Not safe for love

I’ll break our hearts

You better run fast, babe

before you leave me, babe

Please save me from my dark side

A passion that’s romantic pride

And they squeak loud when I bite

Someday I’ll be over counting crows

But for now I’ll avoid profound

The long fail might be over

I’ll be a star, inshallah

Who is the slut? I am the slut

A scarlet letter man

A case of wine won’t be enough this time

I’m dry

A hack to the future is my only chance
Not safe for work

Not safe for life

Why is this news, again?

It’s always been out there.

Not safe for love

I’ll break our hearts

You better run fast, babe

Before you leave me, babe

Please save me from my dark side

The Gillmor Gang reconvened after the holidays. Robert Scoble took the occasion as an opportunity to catch up on some much-needed rest from his Vegas hotel room, albeit on camera. CES continued to be the ghost of conferences past, as the @Scobleizer famed let's-walk-the-show-floor-with-a-camera-tour took a record 60 minutes or whatever. For those who remember Johnny Carson, this has become Robert's version of the Ed Ames tomahawk throw.

John Borthwick weighed in on the inevitable Year of the Tablet discussion from New York, where my view of Apple dominance is met with healthy skepticism but no real counter argument. Borthwick's Bit.ly service continues to prosper even as Twitter consolidates services and clients in-house. As a self-described former member of the entertainment cartel (AOL), he declined repeatedly to join my cartel-bashing while essentially agreeing with me.

Androiders @JTaschek and @KevinMarks ably represented the Android-will-beat-Apple-if-we-have-to-ship-individual-tablet-models-for-each-customer crowd. Marks even had one of the paperweights that he brandished on camera. I fended off a plea from @Borthwick to fix the RSS feed for the 7 remaining people who would rather podcast than stream. Other stuff was talked about. I had fun.

A spectre is haunting Mountain View. No, not bed bugs: bit rot. Google is in serious decline.

I don’t see how they can deny it. They have famously always been a data-driven organization, and the data is compelling. Business Insider’s list of the 15 biggest tech flops of 2010 cited no fewer than four from Google: Buzz, Wave, Google TV, and the Nexus One. Bizarre errors have erupted in Google Maps. Many of its best engineers are leaving. Influential luminaries like Vivek Wadhwa, Jeff Atwood, Marco Arment and Paul Kedrosky (way ahead of the curve) say their core search service is much degraded from its glory years, and the numbers bear this out; after years of unassailable dominance, Google’s search-market share is diminishing—it dropped an eyebrow-raising 1.2% just from October to November—while Microsoft’s Bing, whose UI Google tried and embarrassingly failed to copy earlier this year, is on the rise.

Even their money fount, AdWords, is problematic. An illustrative anecdote: I recently experimented with a $100 free certificate for my own pet app, and found my ad got stuck “In Review” indefinitely. According to users on AdWords’ discussion boards, this is common, and the only way to fix it is to file a help request. I did, and the problem was soon repaired—but what happened to the speedy algorithmic solutions for which Google is famous?

The general tone on the AdWords forums is exactly like that on those devoted to the other Google service I use a lot, App Engine: users on both frequently complain about the way Google neglects and/or outright ignores them. I like App Engine a lot, but it’s prone to sporadic bursts of inexplicable behaviour, and some developers are abandoning it because of Google’s perceived reluctance or inability to fix its bugs and quirks. Another example: a bug in Android’s default SMS app which sent text messages to incorrect recipients festered for six months until a spate of high-profile coverage finally forced them to fix it. How can they neglect problems like that in their only big hit of the last five years? Never mind don’t be evil—what happened to pay attention?

Once upon a time, Google was the coolest place for a techie to work. Not any more. While I can’t quantify this, I’m confident that most engineers will agree: somehow, over the last 18 months, their aura has faded and their halo has fallen. Once their arrogance was intimidating and awesome. Now it just seems clueless.

I feel a little bad being this critical, because I am—or was—a giant Google fan. I admire their China stance, and the way that they innovate like crazy and constantly take chances, not all of which pay off. I had an Android before Android was cool. But this is no mere losing streak; this is systematic degradation. They seem to be rotting from the inside out.

What happened? The same cancer that sickened Microsoft: bureaucracy. A recent NYT article claims that “the bleak reality of corporate growth” is that “efficiencies of scale are almost always outweighed by the burdens of bureaucracy.” A famous (and brilliant) essay by Moishe Lettvin, a former MS employee, explains why Windows Vista was such a turkey: at the time, every decision—and every line of code—had to filter through seven layers of management.

My sources tell me that since then Microsoft has become much more efficient, and their recent successes—XBox, Kinect, Windows 7, Windows Phone, Bing—testify to this. Kudos to them. Can Google do the same? Let’s hope so. But their situation is more difficult and dangerous: they could conceivably lose 90% of their business in the space of a few months, if a qualitatively better search engine comes along. That’s not likely to happen, but it could . . . and I’m almost beginning to hope that it does.

It’s not like they’re Yahoo!, halfway past the point of no return. Google is still a giant money machine full of brilliant engineers. Google Voice could be huge. If the rumors of their super-secret augmented-reality app are true, they have another hit in the wings. Even their self-driving cars make strategic sense to me. Still, the trajectory is clear; they’re in decline. They seem to have finally stopped believing their own press releases and realized that they have a problem—but is it too late? Has Google grown too big to succeed? I fear that the answer is yes.

Image via Digital Inspiration