Editor’s Note: This guest post is written by Doron Simovitch, the co-founder & CEO of SortPrice.com, a shopping search engine and Facebook eCommerce solutions provider. Doron has more than 15 years of experience in managing technology and eCommerce and has been quoted in the New York Times, CNN, and other media outlet as an expert in all things online shopping and eTail.

Beware, the sky is falling! Or at least that's what we're hearing from some experts on F-commerce following announcements from a few big name retailers in recent weeks that they are shuttering their stores on Facebook.

Going as far as to suggest that the “F” in “F-commerce” now stands for “failure,” these critics are boldly asserting that F-commerce's days are numbered and that the entire concept is destined to soon be but a footnote in the pages of tech history.

Frankly, such claims are more than a little mind-boggling. Whenever a new medium like F-commerce emerges, companies are naturally uncertain on how to approach it and it always takes some time before strong and effective strategies emerge. Think back to when the internet first caught on – it was unchartered territory for everyone but now, just about every business has in-house employees that handle things like online reputation, SEO, SEM and more.

You'll forgive the rest of us if we don't necessarily agree that the end is nigh simply because a handful of companies (out of literally thousands that are actively engaged in F-commerce) are going in another direction. We work with hundreds of merchants on F-commerce and Facebook marketing every month and rest assured, many of them are finding success in the practice. So, no, F-commerce is not on its deathbed. Far from it, actually.

With that being said, however, the recent changes in strategy by some of the bigger names in retail do present an opportunity to re-examine what works and what doesn't in F-commerce.

If you're a retailer who isn't getting what you hoped for out of F-commerce thus far and you're wondering why, perhaps the following list holds the answer.

1. Your Social Media Director/Manager is a 20 year old college intern who only comes to work two or three days each week.

The Lesson: Effective F-commerce requires time and an attention to detail. It is certainly not a part-time venture, so if you hand over the responsibility to someone who isn't consistently on top of things, you can't possibly expect solid results in return.

Hiring someone exclusively to handle F-commerce isn't necessarily a requirement but finding a way to make sure that your social media ducks are in a row every single day absolutely is a must. Spread those responsibilities around so everyone on your team gets to add their input and please, by all means, avoid letting an intern carry the load!

2. When the F-commerce craze started, you spent upwards of $50k on a so called feature-rich social commerce platform to make a big splash rather than shop around to find something more cost-effective that actually fits your particular needs.

The Lesson: In other words, you overpaid. Look, F-commerce is not 'one size fits all' and what works for a big-name electronics retailer may not work for a niche merchant selling customized jewelry. Of course, if you've paid four or five figures to have your Facebook presence built, any disappointment in the results is going to seem that much worse because of the cost affiliated with it.

There are lots of social commerce providers out there that won't charge you an arm and a leg for a good, solid platform. If you still can, it might be a good idea to explore those options.

3. The last time you posted something, ANYTHING, on your Facebook fan page it was still 2011.

The Lesson: It's early March, your most recent Wall post referenced something about holiday shopping and you're wondering why no one is paying any attention to you? Attention spans are short on Facebook and the one thing above all else that determines F- commerce success is engagement. If you're not regularly posting content, even if it isn't material that is necessarily tied to your company or products, users are going to forget about you. It's as simple as that.

Don't wait for your next big sale or promotion to put something up on Facebook. Scour the web for thought-provoking content such as jokes, riddles, trivia questions, funny videos and pictures and encourage your fans to chime in those posts. Chances are, they will enjoy the 'fun' content now and as a result, will be likely paying more attention when you do roll out something bigger.

4. Your Facebook fans are wondering, "Where's the love?"

The Lesson: If there's one hard truth that we've learned in the past few years with regards to F-commerce, it's that Facebook users overwhelmingly tend to Like brands for one reason only: they want to get something out of it. The problem is, very few retailers are obliging them in that regard.

F-commerce is a two-way street and users have already satisfied their end of the bargain by liking you in the first place. Now it's your turn to provide something that is exclusive to your Facebook fans. Maybe it's a deal like free shipping. Maybe it's a promo code. Maybe it's a discount on larger orders or a 'Buy One Get One Free' offering. But give them something! Again, with shortened attention spans you're going to need every tool at your disposal to keep people around. Giving them an incentive or reward for their loyalty is one of the best ways you can do that.

5. There's no 'social' in your social media strategy

The Lesson: This encompasses some of the things we've covered already but overall, it's amazing just how unsocial some brands are when it comes to social media. Far too often we see retailers building a Facebook store and then just expecting new sales and customers to appear out of thin air simply because they've now got a social media-based storefront. It doesn't work that way!

Remember engagement? Remember the idea of a two-way street? Remember incentives and rewards? All of these things are important components of successful social media strategies. Simply posting products on Facebook is never going to be enough. Make a connection with your fans and followers whenever possible because that is the very essence of what social media is about in the first place.

Critics will continue to say that F-commerce's day has come and gone but don't believe it for a second. Facebook's huge global user base and the potential that it holds for brands is more than enough to ensure F-commerce's viability well into the future. Your own F-commerce success, however, is wholly dependent on keeping these suggestions in mind as you move forward and try to separate yourself from the pack.

Editor’s Note: Iltifat Husain is the founder and Editor-in-chief of iMedicalApps.com, a physician-operated technology review publication and is currently an Emergency Medicine resident physician at Wake Forest University’s School of Medicine.

The significant adoption of smartphones among physicians has not only led to an explosion of medical apps aimed at healthcare providers, but it has also cultivated an emerging trend of health and wellness apps aimed at empowering patients.

While great innovation is happening in the health and wellness mobile ecosystem, it's difficult for patients and physicians to navigate through the large database of apps to
find ones they can actually use. My experience reviewing health and medical apps as a writer, combined with my experiences in a high volume Emergency Department that sees a diverse patient population, has allowed me to get a unique sense of this space.

Looking back, I’ve come to realize that there are three apps in particular that I routinely prescribe to my patients, as they are not only meaningful to physicians, but truly empower patients (and their families) and help them better understand their treatment and what’s going on with their bodies.

These three apps help patients and their family members get a better understanding of the cancer treatment process, help women in pregnancy understand their baby’s development, and help children and adults learn how to manage their diabetes.

All three apps are backed by venerable organizations already trusted by millions of patients worldwide. And just to make it clear up front: I have no relationships, financial or personal, with the developers or companies of the applications mentioned.

Cancer.net

Cancer.net, an oncologist approved cancer information website from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), released an iOS app last year that brought their website's functionality and much more to mobile form.  When I reviewed the app last year, I was impressed with the unique mobile-specific features.

My favorite area of the app is the “questions and answers” section, which enables patients to store questions they can ask their oncologist and other physicians later. However, the most impressive part of the app an area that suggests questions that cancer patients and family members should consider asking — empowering patients and family members to ask relevant questions.

The functionality is extended by enabling patients to store questions in voice format. This is a critical feature for cancer patients as many of them are undergoing chemotherapy that can make typing or finger manipulation difficult due to neuropathy in their fingers. Furthermore, it helps patients record their physicians response accurately — so when patients are asked by family members "What did the doctor think?" — they can easily share the recording. Study after study shows patient recall after a physician visit is not optimal, and there is good evidence to suggest audio recordings, especially of oncology visits, are beneficiary to patients and their family members.

Other features that empower patients is an area where side effects of their medications can be meticulously stored and an area where patients can see various videos suggested by ASCO.

Available for iOS and Android is pending.

Carb Counting with Lenny

Carb Counting with Lenny is made by Medtronic, the goliath medical device company. The app is designed to help children learn about diabetes and to get a better understanding of carb counting. Those with diabetes or those with family members with diabetes know how crucial carbohydrate counting is. It is crucial for diabetics to be able to approximate how many carbohydrates they are consuming so they can titrate their medications effectively.

The app incorporates gamification into teaching, making the app playful and fun to use. The games show you all the basic food groups and enables patients to easily understand how various carbs can affect their blood sugar adversely.

Although this app is aimed at children, I have suggested it to adults patients as well. The app does a great job of getting patients to understand how many carbohydrates they are consuming, and how it can affect their blood sugar.

You can find it on iOS here.

Hello Baby Pregnancy Calendar

Hello Baby Pregnancy Calendar is produced by Pampers, and was released just a few months after the introduction of the first iPad. The app allows expecting mothers to get a better idea of the various stages of their pregnancy and their baby's development.

The app shows expectant mothers the different stages of their baby's anatomy week by week. One of my favorite parts of this app is the great medical education delivered — such as explaining to patients when and why physicians would want to do an amniocentesis. These types of tips enable patients to be better prepared when they go for their prenatal check ups.

The app also included a parenthood video series, and even a quirky "Womb Translator" portion that enables you to hear what your baby is hearing while in your Womb. Frankly, I don't know how scientifically accurate this portion is as various variables such as amount of amniotic fluid surrounding the baby would impact this, but it’s endearing and if it gets expectant mothers to learn more and be better prepared during pregnancy I'm all for it.

As smartphones become more ubiquitous, it's critical that health care providers, as well as patients, get a better understanding of how to utilize these devices for improving overall patient care.

You can find it on the App Store here.

Personal Disclosure:

I have no conflicts of interest to disclose.  I have no relationships, financial or personal,
with the developers or companies of the applications mentioned.

Medical Disclaimer:

This post does not establish, nor is it intended to establish, a patient physician relationship with anyone. It does not substitute for professional advice, and does not substitute for an in-person evaluation with your health care provider. It does not provide the definitive statement on the subject addressed. Before using these apps please consult with your physician or health care provider as to the apps validity and accuracy as this post is not intended to affirm the validity or accuracy of the apps in question.

Editor's note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest book is I Was Blind But Now I See. You can follow him @jaltucher.

(Illustrated by Nathan Lueth. See also the non-comic book version: “How I Screwed Yasser Arafat Out of $2mm and Lost Another $100mm in the process“)

Ambient location app Highlight is a big deal. Eldon likes it, Scoble likes it, MG and Mike like it and Grindr fan Charlie Cheever likes it. More importantly, I like it.

Before you call me out for being slightly narcissistic with the above statement (which wouldn’t make me at all unique in my field), here’s why the fact that I like it is important; In case you haven’t noticed, I am a female, which means I am an indicative use case for an app that forces you to constantly broadcast your location.

The premise behind services like Highlight and Glancee is that humans are desperate to connect with one another on a multitude of levels. Why not make it easier for them if we have the technology? As one of my VC friends rudely put it, when I expressed my love for the app, “Seems like a fad, but if it gets people laid then it’s huge.”

I’m pretty sure this is going to need females on it to go beyond Grindr and get a critical mass of people laid.

The issue with females is that we’re sensitive with regards to dudes contacting us about getting laid, hence being cautious about letting people know where we are at any given moment (I’m coming to this conclusion based on anecdotal information). Because there are serious, real world implications to being carelessly open with that sort of stuff.

Highlight had 20K users when I last spoke to founder Paul Davison a couple of weeks ago. In about a week, that number will likely exponentially increase, as people in Austin download what we’ve already touted as THE BIGGEST APP AT SXSW.

As I prepare for the coming week, I realize if Highlight doesn’t create some sort of “Only Friends” filter, and thus blocking “Friends of Friends” as well as people you have Likes in common with from seeing your location, Texas is going to be a shitshow. For example, thanks to Highlight I now know that Evan Williams and MG Siegler are both a block away from me for some reason. Imagine if I were a crazy startup founder weren’t “so over” talking to tech celebrities … I would totally change out of my pajamas and try to intercept them somehow.

I’m willing to bet that the above hypothetical is going to play out a thousand times in Austin unless Highlight fixes it so I can only see MG (who is my friend on Facebook and in real life) and not Ev.

Judging from the reactions I’m getting when I try to explain to Normals what Highlight does (“Omg IT LETS PEOPLE KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?!?!?”), mainstream society isn’t ready for it as it stands now. If things work out as founder Paul Davison envisions, one day Moms will be cool with lightweight actions like letting their friends know if they were both at the same party, but for now many are apprehensive.

“Privacy is so critical,” Davison told me in an interview, “Having people’s trust is so critical for this sort of thing. We want to build something women can use and feel safe on. If you build this product the right way you can build something that will be really useful.”

In my opinion, the “right sort of way” means allowing users to limit the app to “Friends.” Highlight is winning because unlike services like Sonar you don’t have to check in, but if its default inclusivity isn’t tempered in the next week, it will serve as a fatal flaw when we all get to early adopter Austin.

I can just imagine the stacks of Highlight messages from PR People now …

“We’re still working on basic throttling,” Davison tells me. “Tiny changes in the product have a profound impact [no kidding!] … If you do this the right way it just makes people better. It’s really hard to get it right, but if you get it right, it’s hard for me to think of something more important to be building. You’re literally giving the world a sixth sense.”

Good luck Paul.

Here’s one of the great things about South by Southwest: Everyone wants to launch a cool new product there. Here’s one of the worst things about South by Southwest: Everyone wants to launch a cool new product there.

That’s why Dalton Caldwell, CEO of App.net, is holding a special App Showcase at Beauty Bar on the afternoon of March 10. In his blog post announcing the event, he writes about how hard it is for any individual startup to stand out:

Why is it getting harder to launch at SXSW? Well, if you happen to attend, the second you step off the plane you are non-stop bombarded with so much information that you enter some kind of zombie state (see also: free beer). You can't walk 10 feet without hearing about a new sharing app, device, or location-based service. Last year I looked down and even my hotel key had an ad for a social media startup. It's hard to break through amidst all of this, and as the event gets bigger each year the bombardment will only intensify.

Sure, there’s already a Startup Accelerator where 48 new or new-ish companies will take the stage, but Caldwell tells me there are some key differences — namely, that the App Showcase that is the only startup event that’s “mobile app-specific, not charging folks, and done as a single discrete event.” (And of course it’s also a good way for App.net, which offers landing pages and other app marketing and analytics tools, to connect with mobile developers.)

Three of the six app slots are still open and you can apply whether your app is already available or want launch at the event. Caldwell says he’s particularly interested in seeing apps from outside his Silicon Valley network. You can apply here.

Editor’s note: Chris Shen is vice president at Chinese gaming company The9. Prior to joining The9, he served as group account director and account director for several advertising agencies in Shanghai and Taipei.

If you spend any time speaking with Western mobile companies, one topic that's likely to pop up is their "China strategy." Due to a mix of mobile penetration, sheer population, and popularity of the mobile web, Western mobile companies recognize there's a lot of money to be made overseas.

The idea is not without merit: China is the world's largest mobile market with almost one billion users, 69 percent of which access the Internet through their phones on a regular basis. As such, plenty of big-name Western mobile companies have already begun entering China. However, the mobile market is still immature with issues like fragmentation and piracy, making distribution exceedingly difficult for developers. China isn't quite yet a home away from home for Western developers, but it's poised to be the next big mobile market.

China's lucrative potential is especially relevant for mobile developers. Mobile apps and games were popular in China well before the United States caught on, and the market is only going to get bigger. Smartphone adoption is picking up and opening a window for Western developers to introduce new titles, while in-app purchases are on the rise in China and app downloads have almost tripled in the last year (more on that in a second).

Rise of the Smartphones

China has over 980 million mobile users. While this number is staggering, the majority of users own feature phones. As such, many local developers create apps that cater to feature phones. However, in the past few years, smartphone adoption — both iOS and Android devices — has increased significantly. According to research firm Strategy Analytics, almost 24 million smartphones were shipped to China in 2011, surpassing the number of devices in the U.S. This trend is still gaining steam and creating a profitable window for Western iOS and Android app and game developers. The9 and GREE recognized this trend early and established the $100 million Fund9 to help developers port their games to Android and distribute them in China.

Loads of Downloads

In addition to a massive user base, China's mobile activity is also skyrocketing. More people are downloading more apps and games. According to mobile analytics site App Annie China's mobile download numbers have grown by almost 300 percent in the last year. Additionally, research firm Distimo reported that over 30 percent of Apple's App Store downloads were coming from China by the end of 2011, as opposed to only 18 percent at the beginning of that year.

In-App Purchases and Virtual Goods

China's massive mobile potential is more than just a numbers game. It's true that there are more mobile users in China than anywhere else, but they're also starting to spend more. A lot more. According to App Annie, mobile revenue in China has nearly tripled in the last year, increasing by 187 percent. This is partially due to Apple's recent announcement that they're going to start accepting App Store payments in Chinese yuan. Now Western game developers can seamlessly offer virtual goods to China's huge audience.

Western mobile companies can't afford to ignore the Chinese market. A good example of this is Flipboard. Before launching in China, Flipboard was plagued by multiple clone apps that grew in popularity in the app's absence. Since launching in China's App Store, the company has been successful partnering with big-name companies like Sina and Renren. Hit mobile game maker, Rovio, saw a similar problem with loads of unlicensed Angry Birds (even a theme park) being sold in China. Their solution: open an entire Angry Birds store in China.

There's more incentive to enter China than just to protect a brand. Companies like CrowdStar, GREE, and Zynga have all announced China ambitions.

As China's mobile market continues to mature, it's safe to assume that issues like piracy and fragmentation will become less problematic. For mobile game developers looking to cash in on China today, there are still some ways they can bring their apps over successfully. Finding a local partner to help with distribution, security, and catering to a Chinese audience will ensure a more successful launch.

Companies like The9 recognize both China's complexity and its opportunity, and are eager to work with Western app developers. By leveraging carrier partnerships and working with multiple distribution channels, local partners can eliminate the headache of entering China.

Developers also need to localize their apps if they want them to succeed in China. This means not only translating apps into Chinese, but also customizing design aspects to meet cultural preferences and various channel requirements.

China is a beast already and it's only going to get bigger. As Apple and Google continue to penetrate the market and cater to Chinese audiences, there will be a great window of opportunity for Western developers to rake in the yuan.

[image via flickr/bfishadow]

Editor’s note: Matt Moog is the founder and CEO of Viewpoints.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattMoog.

Google Panda strikes

February 24, 2011 was a day that will live in infamy for the team here at Viewpoints. That was the day of the Google Panda update. Up until that point we had enjoyed four years of consistent traffic growth to Viewpoints.com. We managed to double traffic each year and had just reached 2.7 million unique users. We had heard that Google was planning to update its algorithm to penalize content and link farms and were excited about the bump we might get as a result. Turns out we were in for a bit of a surprise.

Viewpoints takes it on the chin

You see, Viewpoints is a consumer reviews and product ranking web site. We have 600,000 reviews of 100,000 products contributed by more than 250,000 members. We have had more than 70 million visits to the site since we launched in late 2007. All of our content is original and we always viewed all of our practices as the "right way" to do things. Apparently Google felt differently because we lost 50% of organic search traffic overnight as a result of the Panda update.

And tries some quick fixes

As the days passed and we sorted out all of the comments from Matt Cutts and industry pundits and watched the Google blog as anxiously as the faithful await the plumes of smoke from the Vatican to figure out what we could do to get back in the good graces of the Google crawler. Was it our ad density? Was it speed of our site? Did we not have the right authoritative back links? Was it that some of our reviews were short and Google was penalizing sites with "thin content"?

The truth of the matter was that it could have been any and all of these. Although we had hundreds of thousands of great reviews, we had probably let some slip through that did not deserve to be published. And we had not paid enough attention to speed, ad density or other hall marks of a good user experience. So we set out to fix our Google problem but at the same time, we resolved to think bigger and longer term and use this opportunity to create a better user experience, regardless of what Google was looking for.

So now you can judge the results for yourself. We have spent the last 12 months as a team of 25+ professionals reinventing Viewpoints. From March to June we removed 40% of the ads across the site. We improved the speed of the site by 3x. We moderated out 80,000+ reviews that did not meet minimum quality standards. Unfortunately these changes had only a nominal impact on traffic. So we decided it was time for a more radical approach.

Time to make serious long-term changes

After making the changes listed above and 90 days after Google's Panda update, our team decided to devote six months to a total overhaul of the Viewpoints.com user experience. This was not just a visual redesign but a soup-to-nuts, top-to-bottom overhaul. We ended up making 30 major changes to the user experience. This entire effort was basically a bet the company decision. It had been four years since we first launched and the reality is that the world had changed. It was time to question even some of the most fundamental assumptions.

Content Quality – addressing the perception of "thin" content

In addition to eliminating 80,000 reviews that did not meet our new quality standards we also decided to eliminate stand alone review pages for all but the longest reviews. This one decision removed 600,000 pages from the site. We also decided to treat very short reviews differently. A new minimum threshold was established for when a review would become publicly accessible. If you want to review a product and say "It's awesome!" that's fine, we just don't think your two word review helps other consumers enough to warrant publication. We also made the tough decision to exit more than 300 review categories that had more than 90,000 reviews. We decided strategically to focus on product reviews and retire hundreds of non product review categories such as hotels, restaurants and movies. All of these decisions to improve content quality together eliminated 20% of all reviews and completely eliminated short review pages in favor of very comprehensive product pages.

We don't know if Google will notice, but we do feel that we have addressed the issue of "thin" content the best that we can.

Site Credibility

In addition to eliminating "thin content" we also focused on the overall credibility of a site. Google suggested that site owners need to put themselves in the shoes of users and ask the question "Would I trust this site with a health issue or my credit card?"

For Viewpoints, this meant cleaning up the content as outlined above as a first step, but it was also time for a redesign that was cleaner, simpler and better conveyed the credibility, quality and overall helpfulness of the site. In addition to eliminating 40% of the ads on the site, we also stripped out 15+ features that were clouding the core value proposition of consumer reviews and product rankings. For example, we made the decision to stop giving scores to products that did not have enough reviews. And we made it clear when members had connected their account to Facebook to demonstrate an extra layer of authenticity of the reviewer. You can see the following screen shots for some examples of the old design and the new.

OLD SEARCH RESULTS

NEW SEARCH RESULTS

OLD PRODUCT PAGE

NEW PRODUCT PAGE

Product Intelligence

So we have addressed content quality, site architecture and site credibility. But were we adding enough value to distinguish ourselves in a crowded market? Good question! While we firmly believe that getting the basics right (quality, credibility, ease of use etc) is the key to a great consumer reviews user experience, it became clear to us that there was another important way we could distinguish the Viewpoints user experience. We saw an opportunity to occupy the white space between expert reviews that make clear buy recommendations and the mass of consumer reviews which gave great consumer feedback but did not always help give a clear and concise buy recommendation.

We call this "Product Intelligence – for the consumer by the consumer". We have spent a significant amount of time and resources developing scoring and ranking algorithms to smartly rank products against each other so that shoppers know what product to buy.

Diversification

As much as these changes were done to improve the user experience and in turn improve our rankings with Google, we also explicitly wanted to optimize mobile and social as two new channels that can be a new source of growing traffic to help us build our audience. The changes we made in these areas were very significant. The specific changes will be detailed in a later post.

Conclusion

So, that is how Google's Panda update changed our business. It drove us to improve the quality of content, improve the credibility and trust of our experience and invest in Product Intelligence as a distinct point of difference in the market.

We don't know how Google is going to respond to these changes but the important thing to note is that every change we made improved the experience for the user. So as disappointed as we were with the outcome of Panda, we will admit that it forced us to think harder about our business, about adding more value to the end user, and perhaps most importantly, take our game to another level. Game on.

“Klout for Pinterest” is a catchy company description, but it might not be a good idea to take it too literally.

Startup PinClout launched about a week ago, and its name seemed to make the company’s mission clear — to measure influence on fast-growing Pinterest. And there’s been positive interest, with some tech press coverage and what co-founder Chris Fay said is an average of 2,000 to 3,000 unique visitors every day. (Amazingly, it’s not the only “Klout for Pinterest.”) However, the company just received a letter from Klout’s attorney asking it to “immediately cease and desist from all use of or plans to use the PINCLOUT mark and the www.pinclout.com domain name.”

The letter argues that PinClout’s name is “confusingly similar” to Klout for several reasons: The similarity between the words, the similarity between the services, the fact that they’re directed at similar consumers, and the similar marketing channels.

PinClout co-founder Chris Fay said he was “really surprised” to get the letter. He argued that despite the superficial similarities, PinClout has different aims from Klout — yes, it provides a score between 1 and 100 to rate a user’s influence, but he said the real aim is to provide analytics tools to businesses so they can increase that influence: “It’s not really about the score itself.”

Nonetheless, Fay said that on the advice of PinClout’s lawyer, the company will be changing its name rather than getting embroiled in an long and costly legal fight. The new name is still being decided. (I pointed out that if his goal was to create something that isn’t just Klout for Pinterest, changing the name might not be a bad idea, and Fay agreed: “We can utilize this to show that we are different from them.”)

I called a Klout spokesperson, who told me the company welcomes new entries into a market they invented but also feels it’s important to avoid confusion and “protect the brand” — for themselves and for partners.

I’ve embedded the letter below.

Editor’s note: Aaron Levie is co-founder and CEO at Box. Follow him on Twitter @levie.

For the past six years, any startup touching the cloud storage space has lived in anticipation and fear of Google's entry into the market. G(od) Drive's arrival was meant to instantly commoditize existing offerings, kill all future opportunity for new players, and leave a charred ecosystem in its wake as it battled Microsoft and Apple for control of our online lives and content. This was seen as all but a forgone conclusion among investors, press, analysts, and even competing startups since 2006 and beyond. And even beyond that.

But the Google Drive never came. Why?

"Sundar had concluded that it was an artifact of the style of computing that Google was about to usher out the door…  I don’t think we need files anymore,” Steven Levy writes in his book, In the Plex, referring to Sundar Pichai, head of Google Chrome.

Google was moving towards a world where its cloud operating system would make traditional file systems obsolete. Consumers would create and manage data without ever touching a desktop application again. Before it was ever born, Google Drive was suddenly a thing of the past. A Valley myth.

And with Google Docs, we bought into Google's vision for reinventing how we create and interact with data. At least many of us in the tech community did. I remember thinking that Google Docs (and Writely before it) would easily take over Microsoft Office as the choice solution for creating and editing new information. How could it not?

But it turns out that lawyers still needed to share detailed, structured documents. Investment bankers wanted to access complex spreadsheets. Doctors had to review medical records. Reality set in that most people still created content using local apps like Photoshop, Autodesk and – gasp! – Microsoft Office. Google's Chrome and cloud-only view of the world wasn't supportive of this reality. And while the Mountain View giant stood firm with its vision for the future, users moved on in the present, signing up for file storage and sharing apps from a range of startups and tech leaders.

And now, like all good legends, Google Drive is rumored to be back on the brink of launch. Maybe the competition between Android and iOS – with the latter gaining a competitive edge with iCloud – brought it back from the dead. Or perhaps it was the traction of cloud storage startups to the tune of tens of millions of users. Whatever the reason, Google has been pulled into the market.

An inevitable entry, just delayed

When the Google Drive rumors first started in '06, it seemed inevitable that it and others would soon enter the space in a significant way. At Box, we were but a small guppy in waters soon to be populated by sharks with rocket launchers. (See image above.) In short, it wasn't going to be an easy fight. Even if we were successful in acquiring and attracting consumers, getting wallet-share in a market where the price is driven to zero is immensely difficult. We had to take a different tack.

In talking with our customers, we realized the battle for big business adoption would be played out and won on a completely different set of dimensions: Instead of making decisions based on price, enterprises are utility and time sensitive; instead of being platform-specific (my mom only uses Apple products), enterprises deal with every device imaginable; and, enterprises would need a significantly more thorough set of services that would preclude consumer companies from addressing the market effectively. For these reasons and others, moving into the enterprise was an obvious choice in 2007. That's when we hit the big red "Pivot" button that's hidden under every startup CEO's desk.

We decided to let the other players duke it out in the noisy consumer space, while we'd try and shake things up the quiet and dusty enterprise world. Surprisingly, it's really only in the past year that Apple, Microsoft and (supposedly) Google have made real moves to enter the market we left behind. And with their frenzied land-grab for the consumer space, they're driving fragmentation that's unparalleled to anything we've ever seen.

The upcoming fractured cloud

Think about it: If you're Microsoft, it's in your best interest to make it frictionless for your customers to move data between as many Windows machines as possible. Apple equally wants to ensure your iPhone, Mac, and Apple TV all communicate synchronously. Google, for its part has long wanted to be the information hub for its customers as it moved beyond its core search vision.

But the efforts of these three players – building up their own vertically integrated technology stacks from the mobile devices to the platforms where you create content to where it's all stored – are leading us toward a fractured and fragmented ecosystem. And this is not a group of companies that are going to play nicely together.

The world will never again look like it did in the ’90s, when a single vendor in Redmond laid claim to the vast majority of critical software we interacted with and data we produced. Already, less than half of devices connected to the internet are Windows-based. This change is absolutely great for innovation; but when Microsoft had undue control over the software world, there was something arguably soothing (as a consumer) about everything roughly working together. Unlike the traditional desktop environment, where applications were forced to let the local file system broker some level of uniformity, the cloud we're about to enter is one that will manifest its own platform wars, proprietary approaches, and a disjointed developer and customer ecosystems.

Questions abound. Are there files in the future or not? Do we use Microsoft Office anymore? Are we just in a multi-year transition period before we're completely cloud? If I store a document in Google, how do I get to it from my Mac? If I store a photo in my iCloud, how do share it with someone on a Windows phone?

iCloud is attempting to have applications rebuilt on top of its proprietary notion of a cloud-assisted data model. In a sense it's trying to recreate all applications in its own image, on its own platforms, and trying to kill the concept of sync products along with it. Apple is putting some serious muscle behind this vision by integrating it more deeply into the operating system.

With Skydrive, Microsoft has a goal of "delivering personal cloud storage for billions of people." But its historic approach to openness and cooperation leaves a lot to be desired. Microsoft Office 365 is a noble effort by Microsoft to enter the web-office market, but with nonexistent APIs to allow content import or editing, it's yet another walled garden of information that gets created in its environment. Google, too, doesn't have the richest history of long-term developer support.

I don't have the answers, but the emerging problem is apparent enough. We hear it from our users and customers – in the form of confusion, consternation, and signs in the market. There is a greater abundance of applications that offer little similarity, security, or integration; and consequently go unmanaged. This is an untenable fate for enterprises. And whereas the inherent heterogeneity of devices and platforms in today's businesses will force some degree of openness from enterprise players, there is no such check in the consumer world.

So get ready for a number of years of absolute rock-your-world style competition among major players fighting for your content and the cloud. Every photo you upload, every song you listen to, every video your capture. These guys want it. With around $200B in cash between Microsoft, Apple, and Google alone, cost is no issue; they see your data as the center of their universe. They'll probably get it. I'm just happy to be swimming in enterprise waters.

Every year, Y Combinator Demo Day, where the latest batch of incubated startups make their pitch to investors, gets a little bigger. (Or a lot.) Now, for the first time since the event began in 2005, it’s moving to a new home — the Computer History Museum.

At the last Demo Day, in August (they’re held twice a year), you could already sense that the gathering was outgrowing YC headquarters in Mountain View. Organizers pushed out the walls to accommodate a larger audience, and in order to speed through the 63 presenters (an increase of nearly 50 percent), each company was limited to a few minutes of speaking, meaning they had to give rapid-fire pitches instead of full demos. There was even a tiny stage erected for the demos.

The next Demo Day will be held on March 27, and it seems that YC has embraced the fact that it has become a big deal Silicon Valley event. While the number of demonstrating companies has only grown slightly from its last class, to 66, things have been restructured. There’s the new location, and rather than repeat the sessions several times over two days, they’re being consolidated into a single, all-day event. That should give companies more time to present, while also leaving room for plentiful breaks. Hopefully, that means attendees won’t completely lose our minds by the time the 65th (!) company is on-stage.

Partner Jessica Livingston predicts that there will be more investors than ever in attendance. (At the last Demo Day, partner Paul Graham joked that instead of holding neverending meetings with entrepreneurs, investors could “just come here twice a year.”)

The crowds and hype of South By Southwest make the massive Austin tech and media conference the perfect place for launching, well, any sort of app that needs crowds and hype to break out of tech circles and into the mainstream. So what can we expect to blow up next week, like Twitter, Foursquare, GroupMe and Beluga have in past years?

Highlight is what I’m placing my bets on — and not for what it is today, but for what it could become. That is, the long-sought replacement for business cards.

The new background location app got my attention at the beginning of February because it made it easy for me to find old friends and meet new ones without the friction of checking in. But some of you are going to prefer Glancee, because it has a tighter privacy focus, a subtle but smart algorithm for matching to nearby friends, and a beautiful design. Other people are likely to just stick to Foursquare — which is killing it these days — or maybe just Facebook Messenger (which Beluga became). Or maybe one of the dozens of other location apps that have their own ideas (or cloned ideas) for how to connect people in close proximity.

Relentless early adopter Robert Scoble has also taken a close look at each, and last weekend declared them the up-and-comers at SXSW this year. I agree — and actually meant to write a post about it, but he beat me to the punch ( for you, Scoble).

In an in-depth article for The Next Web last weekend, he sketched out three key reasons why these apps are special. By having them turned on and running in the background of your phone, they can help you find people to hang out with, learn more about nearby strangers, and tell you when your real friends are near.

All true, but there’s something bigger going on. These apps are enabling types of long-term connections that nothing else has yet, which in some ways is like remote contact sharing service Bump. This vision hasn’t manifested itself yet, but you can see the signs in the update that Highlight in particular says it’s going to push next week.

Check out what founder Paul Davison said on Thursday, when he announced his new funding round.

We want Highlight to make Austin even more fun for you – by surprising you with hidden connections, surfacing information about the people you meet, and helping you remember these people when you bump into them at a random New York coffee shop a year later.

Wait, what? Wasn’t he just supposed to be talking about South by Southwest? No. He’s talking about building a new social network on top of Facebook, the key source of user data for both his app and Glancee. This is what is going to make Austin so interesting next week. Highlight could create new value for users when they go back home, and that’s what fundamentally needs to happen when we all take our hungover flights back home.

Instead of the normal business card swapping that happens at the event, it’s sounding like Highlight is going to get some sort of feature for marking and saving the favorite people you meet in person. Thinking through the New York coffee shop scenario, imagine seeing a notification that says “You met Robert Scoble at the Trendy Startup BBQ party in Austin. Now he’s two blocks away at a bagel place. Go say hi!” Instead of just using mutual friends and Liked Facebook pages to determine relevancy, Highlight is getting a new layer of behavior data.

Now indulge a little bit of speculation about where all this could go (I don’t know Highlight’s specific plans). You can also imagine the app adding features like an auto-created group or list of “Friends From Austin.” A few weeks after the conference, what if you could see a list of all of these people and message them through Highlight to reconnect. And because Highlight uses Facebook data, it could also tap into the social network to allow users to share the phone numbers, email addresses and other contact info they already have stored. I would love a feature that said “Robert Scoble is sharing his contact info, click here to download it to your address book.”

And boom, business cards would be dead. Forget stuffing your pockets full of cardboard at a party, going back home, throwing them on your hotel room dresser as you pass out, and forgetting them when you have to rush out the next morning to catch your flight. You’d just mark the people you want to stay connected to right when you meet them, and then at your convenience connect with them later.

Here’s a little more evidence for that sort of experience. As I’ve used Highlight in San Francisco over the past month or so, I’ve found myself scrolling through to see who’s nearby, ignoring any messages from interesting people as I continue working, and then going back hours or days later — and geographically far from where I’d made the connection — and continuing the conversation. As I’ve said before, this has already connected me with old friends, introduced me to new people, and gotten me stories for my job.

So hang on to your phones, folks, because they’re going to be all you need to create a new and lasting network of friends.

[Top photo of Austin skyline via StuSeeger.]

Note: One of Highlight’s new investors is the CrunchFund. And while the partners are friends, and its largest limited partner is our parent company, AOL, I have no financial stake in the firm and TechCrunch only covers its investments when we think they’re good (not all of them) — same as any other investor who we know. Feel free to discuss with me in the comments. 

Valve, creators of (among other things) the Half-Life franchise and Steam, the gold standard for digital game distribution, are said to be getting into the hardware game. If The Verge’s tip is to be believed, the company is working with partners to establish a base PC gaming standard to sell as a packaged deal, a sort of set-top box PC that would run Steam or other download services and run most PC games.

If true, it would be a major step for Valve, which has always been a software company. They haven’t ruled out moving into hardware, but their expertise is in software, so they’re more likely to be collaborating with an established gaming PC brand like Alienware. In fact, Alienware’s compact X51 system is said to have been designed with a spec like this “Steam Box” in mind.

It essentially would establish the “PC” as just another console, or at least would allow one to treat PC gaming in that way. As most PC gamers will tell you, however, this isn’t really high on many PC gamers’ lists. The advantages of gaming on a “real” PC are many and various, and the choice not to play certain games in a console environment is a conscious one.

But at the same time, the benefits of a simple system attached to a TV, and sold for a reasonable price, are obvious. They’re the benefits of existing consoles like the PS3 and 360, both of which are, of course, extremely popular.

The system, which is said to have a Core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and an NVIDIA GPU, could be unveiled as soon as GDC, which is to say this week. But they could also wait until E3, when the device might make more of a splash.

“We have trained, hired, and rewarded people to be cowboys. But it's pit crews that we need,” said Atul Gawande — a surgeon and Harvard professor who writes for The New Yorker in his copious spare time — in a recent TED talk. He was talking about doctors, but what tech profession might fit that description as well? Yes, that’s right. You there, huddled over the IDEs on your MacBook Pros. Step forward, software developers.

Coding has always been seen as lone-ranger work; witness the opening scene in The Social Network. Despite managers’ dreams of programmers as fungible units, it’s nearly universally accepted that a great developer is ten times as productive as a mediocre one, and/or that a small team of the software equivalent of the Special Forces can code rings around an army of hundreds of grunts. The flip side is that one cowboy coder’s bad decisions can cripple you — maybe immediately, or maybe next year, when you suddenly discover that your organization has quietly racked up so much technical debt that it has become the software equivalent of Greece.

There are various ways to try to mitigate this risk. One of the more extreme calls for all development to be performed by pairs of programmers: two coders at one keyboard, at all times, with almost no exceptions. The idea (to oversimplify a bit) is that a second mind will sanity-check every bad idea and support every good one, so you — counterintuitively — wind up with higher per-programmer productivity. Legendary development shops like San Francisco’s Pivotal Labs and Toronto’s Xtreme Labs(1) have adopted a 100 percent pair programming mindset, with considerable success.

Great! Problem solved, right?

…Not so fast.

“Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption … What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn't greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed,” says a New York Times article castigating “the new groupthink.” It also quotes Steve Wozniak:

“Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.”

Open-plan offices, in particular, seem an impressively terrible idea. “Open plan layouts create massive distraction, damaging productivity,” according to a recent analysis by the U.K.’s Channel 4. See also the related Hacker News commentary, which includes gems like “Most modern office layouts seem to be designed to screw with people’s fight or flight instincts all day,” and “I’m a quiet type, and I often need time alone to think and write code and documentation. The ‘rah rah’ social types railroaded us … I am becoming bitter and resentful.”

Solitude seems to be essential for creativity: but paired programmers have no on-the-job solitude, ever. Does that matter? After all, it’s “just programming,” right? It’s not an art form. It’s barely even a craft. It’s certainly not creative. Just ask anyone who isn’t very good at it.

Sorry. No. I’ve been writing code for twenty years, and I’ve had half-a-dozen novels published, and I can assure you that there are far more similarities between those two fields than most people realize. In fact, I use the same analogy for both: carpentry. All three are crafts wherein considerable mechanical skill is required before you can add creative flourishes — but that creativity is essential to the end quality of what you’re building.

I’m not saying programming ever rises to an art. There are no software equivalents of Atwood or Marquez or McCarthy out there. But there are many programmers who have done extraordinary work on their own: Marco Arment of Instapaper, Gabriel Weinberg of DuckDuckGo, Notch of Minecraft. Would they really have benefited from pair programming?

…Maybe.

A recent Jonah Lehrer New Yorker piece reveals: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.” Aha! Further proof that working alone is the answer, right? But it goes on to mention something more interesting and more subtle:

Pairs of subjects were shown a series of color slides in various shades of blue and asked to identify the colors. Sometimes one of the pair was actually a lab assistant instructed by Nemeth to provide a wrong answer. After a few minutes, the pairs were asked to free-associate about the colors they had seen. People who had been exposed to inaccurate descriptions came up with associations that were far more original.

Working alone is good for creativity — but being paired with someone who thinks differently from you can lead to more creativity yet. So should your takeaway here be that pairing is the answer after all?

No, no, hell no. The true answer is that there is no one answer; that what works best is a dynamic combination of solitary, pair, and group work, depending on the context, using your best judgement. Paired programming definitely has its place. (Betteridge’s Law strikes again!) In some cases that place may even be “much of most days.” But insisting on 100 percent pairing is mindless dogma, and like all mindless dogma, ultimately counterproductive.

My own preference is a development environment where every feature/module/story has two programmers assigned to it, one “primary” and one “secondary.” (Terminology shamelessly stolen from Homicide/The Wire.) Each developer is primary on one feature and secondary on another. They pair-program from time to time, especially in the beginning, but in general the primary does most of the work, while the secondary spends an hour or two each day sanity-checking the primary’s code and building bite-sized subsections.

Alas, I’ve only worked like this a couple of times in all my decades of development. Those have been the most productive projects I’ve ever worked on…but that’s an extremely small sample size. Further research, as they always say, is needed. In the interim, I’ll leave you with one last quote from that Hacker News discussion:

“Yes, communal areas for some type of work/communication, private areas for others. It’s staggeringly obvious that this meets everyone’s needs … but I’ve found very few places offer anything remotely similar.”

Image credit: Esti Alvarez, Flickr.

(1)Disclosure/disclaimer; I did a few months of contract work at Xtreme early last year.

As tech becomes the world’s hottest subject and one of its few growth sectors, the international borders are straining as talent moves around the globe in search of the best startups and projects. European countries are increasingly alive to this, and we’ve seen huge efforts made by tech celebrities to lobby the White House over the Startup Visa concept. But it seems the news that the tech industry is now a big deal had not reached a certain immigration official at Dublin Airport today.

An unnamed officer today turned away one of the world’s top UX guys from entering Ireland because they didn’t believe his “story”. The “story” turned out to be told by one Brian Flanagan – a name normally recognised as being Irish in extraction, but more to the point, Flanagan is currently working with one Joi Ito on a project.

The problem was that the official simply did not buy the idea that UX is a “real job” and promptly sent him off to a waiting room where he was due to be deported back to the US from where he’d traveled.

Despite telling officials he was in Ireland to hire people he was told bluntly: “You couldn’t be hiring people, you’re – like – 23!”

Brian told us that he is a long-term (5.5 years) resident of Ireland: first as a student, then as a co-founder and employee of a web app company (hypertiny.ie). His work visa expired at the end of October, and since then he’s been employed (as a U.S. citizen) by a new San Francisco-based company called New Context (newcontext.com – wholly owned by Joi Ito’s Digital Garage).

Part of his job description is the establishment of an Irish branch (growing to about 15 employees over the next few years).

He was in SF this past week meeting with his management team and execs, and on his way back to Ireland he was stopped at immigration.

As Brian told us via email: “I’m 23 years old and dress the part. But I figured it would take a phone call or two (or even just a Google search) to verify. For a gov’t pushing its “smart economy” so hard, it would seem like this is exactly the kind of tech investment they would want,” Brian told us.

However, there is a happy ending.

An ensuing Twitter storm erupted about Brian’s predicament, under hashtags #dublinairport and #innovationisland, roping in an Irish Senator in the process.

Within two hours, a senior politician put in a call in and had the hapless immigration officer’s decision reversed.

And it’s worth pointing out that us Europeans often experience similar problems in U.S. (it happened to me only the other day when the guy didn’t believe I was a blogger going to TechCrunch Disrupt in SF – but they let me in eventually…).

The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — go through an entire show (almost) without mentioning Apple’s big event next week. Instead, we discuss Netflix’ new 26 hour movie model, why news silos can be good for you, the relationship between the Republican primary process and the secret source of innovation, and Cluetrain vs. the carriers.

Doc’s theory that Verizon killed fiber to get into the mobile market certainly does raise some eyebrows, but @scobleizer is happy just sucking down data because he’s living in the future. Me — I’ve been living in 1919 and Downton Abbey, waiting for Mad Men to return. So it goes in the Land of Licensing, where the only thing we own is the electric bill.

@borthwick, @scobleizer, @dsearls, @jtaschek, @stevegillmor

Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor

We’ve found Pinterest clones galore since the social pinboard site first launched, but it would seem that the fad is going in a new direction. Recently I stumbled upon Manteresting.com, a Pinterest for men, and couldn’t help but seek out the founders for a quick little interview.

In it, co-founder Brandon and I discuss what it means to be a clone, how Manteresting plans on differentiating itself, and whether or not the user experience is heightened by drawling a line between the two genders. (Unfortunately, co-founder Jesse Michelsen wasn’t able to speak with us.)

If you’ll remember, comScore recently revealed that 80 percent of Pinterest activity is by women, though you really don’t need comScore’s input to know that’s the case. A quick visit to Pinterest.com should help clear it up: ladies love Pinterest.

But honestly, even as a girl I don’t really enjoy Pinterest as much as I know I could if I was following more male friends who actively interact with the site. At the same time, I can’t see myself getting the best possible experience out of Manteresting.com either.

A nice combo would be best, and that’s what Pinterest is going for. But it might get a bit more difficult with Manteresting, and other sites like it, trying to snatch up the male demographic.

Editor’s note: Robert Scoble is Rackspace’s Startup Liaison and a blogger. Follow him on Twitter @scobleizer.

Over the past few weeks, when I’ve visited several startup incubators from Stanford’s Start X, to Los Angeles’ Start Engine, to the NewMe Accelerator, I have noticed many cloud computing companies hoping to get these startups to choose them.

Some of the cloud computing companies are throwing tons of goodies at these startup incubators or accelerators. Rackspace, where I work, sponsors startups at Techstars, Founder’s Den, and other places where startups congregate.

Why?

Well, when I worked in retail I noticed something: Lots of people bought Nikon cameras because that was the brand that the pros used. When I eventually got to go to where the pros were, like at the World Series or the Olympics, I noticed that Nikon often handed out free gear.

Today we’re seeing the same thing, except the “pros” that many people and businesses look up to are those startup entrepreneurs.

While we’re seeing a consumerization of IT, we’re also witnessing a startupization of enterprises. We’re seeing enterprises move to using systems that five years ago only startups would try.

The competition to land startups is afoot and the startups can almost name their price.

So, should your startup just go with the company offering you the most goodies? Or are there other factors at play?

Putting myself in your shoes for a moment, here are some things to think about:

1. Is there contract lockin? The contract says you’re giving me $60,000 of free hosting but is there any fine print?

2. How technically acute am I? Do I need a helping hand when it comes to IT? Do I have limited staff and resources and need a company that I can outsource my IT and cloud needs to?

3. What does my future look like with this company? Do they want to lock me into their cloud platform? Or will they give me the tools to port my data from cloud to cloud?

4. OpenStack is a big trend in cloud computing and will continue to be so. Does the company have a foundation in OpenStack, a belief in open source and working with the community to make technology great? And is this important to you?

5. Does the technology stack offered actually solve your business problems, both today and tomorrow? What happens if you turn into the next Pinterest and need help scaling?

6. Outside of their cloud platform what else can the company help me with? Do they have partners? Some of my favorite partner companies helping startups today include:

• New Relic – an all-in-one web application performance tool that lets you see performance from the end user experience, through servers, and down to the line of application code.
• ScaleXtreme – a cloud-based server automation product for the modern distributed data center. SystemAdmins gets a single unified automation platform to build and control physical, virtual and public cloud servers.
• SendGrid – replaces your email infrastructure so you don't have to build, scale, and maintain these systems in-house.

One advantage of the best incubators, like Techstars or Y Combinator, are the alumni networks. Ask them what they think.

Remember, as a startup, you have cutting edge technology and a business idea that needs to be executed quickly and properly, so don't settle for a company that doesn't understand where you are coming from and where you need to go in order to succeed. Choose a partner that once was a startup, that acquires startups, has an entrepreneurial mindset and always picks up the phone when you need help.

Oh, and if you see me at your incubator or startup accelerator know that you can always ask me to do things for you and I’ll jump into action. Can’t keep the pros waiting!

[image via Glengarry Glen Ross]