The whole ‘Open’ internet meme has always been something I try to avoid because I believe it’s a circle jerk. If you have an open mind you know that open is a fantasy, a myth. No business or person can survive totally open, save Bill Clinton.
You are open until you need to make a profit, than the goal is to be ‘Open Enough’. Open enough to gain and retain trust and open enough to pay the bills. When Twitter raised $100 million they took $100 million more reasons to close just a little more even though they now have the capital to be totally open. Seriously. I mean it.
If Citibank or Goldman started a blog last year, would you trust them anymore? They had a chance to be ‘open enough’ and decided to lie and leverage. If you are really closed and giving the false perception of open…see Tiger Woods and financial companies…you can lose it all overnight. Of course Goldman and Tiger come back, but they are the exceptions.
Today, The Googster $goog took it upon themselves to help us define ‘OPEN’…in their terms …for us…on Tuesdays…between 9 and 9-15 (obscure Caddyshack reference).
Google talking open is like me talking daytrading…just words. It’s a little like ‘Bad Naked ‘.
I love Google and I trust them for my general searches, especially ticker searches. For now, they are open enough. But, when Stocktwits gets real time quotes, I won’t use Google as often for ticker search. Boy, if we could just stay open….
I like how Apple handles open. They could give a shit what you think. The products kick ass and when they stop kicking ass enough, they will lose.
Google should embrace that their search kicks ass enough and focus on it kicking ass longer. It’s almost impossible because they have employee options to reprice , quarterly earnings and shareholders. Damn distractions.
Open intent is great. No person or business should need to or advertise being open. But if you are as big as Tiger Woods, Google, or Goldman Sachs you are best to just leave the subject alone and just be great at what you do. Or buy your damn stock back, and talk about how closed you can be. That would be cool too.
good point….
good point….
I guess I need a bouncer.
I will get back at your answer in a bit.
pfft…..that’s all that needs to be said, just one big pfft…..damn where’s fred wilson and umair haque, we need stand up when our religion is violated by sacrilegous folks like howard lindzon. it’s okay howard, i still think you’re a good person. you crack me up and pounce on jdawg and mikey, what more can a person ask for.
but as a spiritual man of the openness cloth let me dispell your blasphemous remarks about my religion.
first if what you are saying is true in that companies are only as open as they need to be, than what you are saying is that openness is a cost. if this were true the real winning innovations would be those that minimized how open a company needed to be. if the environment were really like this, then we would see a trend towards greater closedness. instead we see a trend towards greater openness. the key is to monetize openness, the way this is done is by being an intermediary and intermediating transactions. google is the poster child of this. or craigslist. you pull everyone in, you do some matchmaking, you intermediate the transaction. now we just need to make this better, so we go niche, and we filter. c’mon man you know this game, you literally wrote a book on it, why you gotta be dissing it now, that ain’t right howard.
I guess I need a bouncer.
I will get back at your answer in a bit.
ok kid,
you are not reading this properly. I believe in open, so thats not what this post is about, open wins and thats why small companies can disrupt large companies, but closed is just reality for profits….exxon, google (fake open), microsoft, Goldman sachs….the long term trend has been open for 1000 years, but open enough is how you survive after the first few. it sucks, but its reality.
fair enough, that is probably true, though the “enough” part of “open enough” is perpetually increasing. so when you start closing, you start making money….but you also seal your demise. perhaps it is fitting this way.
Of course yiu seal your demoise though timing it willmake u insane
pfft…..that's all that needs to be said, just one big pfft…..damn where's fred wilson and umair haque, we need stand up when our religion is violated by sacrilegous folks like howard lindzon. it's okay howard, i still think you're a good person. you crack me up and pounce on jdawg and mikey, what more can a person ask for.
but as a spiritual man of the openness cloth let me dispell your blasphemous remarks about my religion.
first if what you are saying is true in that companies are only as open as they need to be, than what you are saying is that openness is a cost. if this were true the real winning innovations would be those that minimized how open a company needed to be. if the environment were really like this, then we would see a trend towards greater closedness. instead we see a trend towards greater openness. the key is to monetize openness, the way this is done is by being an intermediary and intermediating transactions. google is the poster child of this. or craigslist. you pull everyone in, you do some matchmaking, you intermediate the transaction. now we just need to make this better, so we go niche, and we filter. c'mon man you know this game, you literally wrote a book on it, why you gotta be dissing it now, that ain't right howard.
ok kid,
you are not reading this properly. I believe in open, so thats not what this post is about, open wins and thats why small companies can disrupt large companies, but closed is just reality for profits….exxon, google (fake open), microsoft, Goldman sachs….the long term trend has been open for 1000 years, but open enough is how you survive after the first few. it sucks, but its reality.
Of course yiu seal your demoise though timing it willmake u insane
fair enough, that is probably true, though the “enough” part of “open enough” is perpetually increasing. so when you start closing, you start making money….but you also seal your demise. perhaps it is fitting this way.
I’d attribute a meaningful portion of the $550 million rumored purchase price of Yelp’s stalled acquisition to their not being open to Google Maps. Google Maps pulls in review data from a litany of publishers, but Yelp, the largest player, remains “closed.” $GOOG, thus unable to commoditize local reviews, found it strategic to explore an acquisition.
I'd attribute a meaningful portion of the $550 million rumored purchase price of Yelp's stalled acquisition to their not being open to Google Maps. Google Maps pulls in review data from a litany of publishers, but Yelp, the largest player, remains “closed.” $GOOG, thus unable to commoditize local reviews, found it strategic to explore an acquisition.