• Problem at Jeff Bezos’ Fight Club

    David Streitfeld at New York Times wrote:

    Every fall, Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, hosts Campfire, a literary weekend in Santa Fe, N.M. Dozens of well-known novelists have attended, but they do not talk about the abundance of high-end clothing and other gifts, the lavish meals, the discussion under the desert stars by Neil Armstrong or the private planes that ferried some home.

    The man who sells half the books in America seemed to want nothing more each year than for everyone to have a good time. All he asked in return was silence.

    For four years, the bargain held. But the fifth Campfire, which writers say is taking place this weekend, is a little different. Amazon’s acrimonious battle with Hachette, the fourth-largest publisher, is fracturing the secrecy and sapping some of the good will.

    There’s a huge problem with the book industry if the only effective way of revenge against monopolistic behavior by your retail partner is not coming to the store owner’s dinner party. But, i guess we already know that.

  • How Betaworks Revived Digg

    A great article by Timothy B. Lee on Vox about the story behind Digg’s Revival

    So Betaworks had about six weeks to create a new Digg.

    The company decided to ditch the user voting system that had been the hallmark of the original Digg. The Digg user community had become too acrimonious — and the front page too spammy — to be salvaged. Instead, the new Digg would use a combination of software and human editors to decide what would go on the home page.

    According to McLaughlin, Digg has grown from 1.5 million users per month to 8 million.

    Interesting how one old media’s1 trash is a another startup’s treasure. That startup is of course, Betaworks. The company that bought Digg’s brand name and domain in June 2012, and rebuild it to become what the current Digg is. A news aggregator that i use daily. I barely remember the old Digg, and the whole kerfuffle that became the narrative of its fall from glory. What i found even more interesting in this article though, is the working model of Betaworks, the startup incubator:

    In a traditional incubator, each startup is run by independent founders who work primarily for equity in their own companies. If a startup fails, its founder-employees are out of a job. In contrast, the people running new Betaworks companies are salaried employees of Betaworks. They move from company to company as needed.

    If a Betaworks company fails, the designers, developers, and other talent behind the company are re-assigned to other projects. If a Betaworks company grows large enough to leave the nest, some employees go with the new company but others will return to the mothership to work on another project.

    Also these guys are the one who bought Instapaper2 from Marco Arment last year. Great decision by Mr. Arment i should say.

    1. Washington Post ↩
    2. Digg Owner Betaworks Buys Instapaper To Go Big On Social Reading And Discovery ↩

  • Having a Stroke at 33

    A remarkable article from Christine Hyung-Oak Lee on Buzzfeed, recounting her whole experience having a stroke at the age of 33.

    It was Dec. 31, 2006. I was 33. I did not yet know this, but a clot had traveled from my aorta into my brain, and made its way to my left thalamus. As a result, my left brain, the expert at numbers and language and logic and reasoning, a part of it suffocated and died. My right brain, the specialist with regard to color, music, creativity, intuition, and emotions, therefore could not talk to my left brain. Numbers became squiggles, colors lost their names, food lost flavor, music had no melody.

    What makes this story remarkable as well is that the symptom of her stroke is not normal. I’ve been hearing stories about people having a sudden stroke and the symptom is always physically there. Drooping face, unintelligible words, and such. But no.

    People have asked if anyone around me could tell I was having a stroke. “Weren’t you acting weird?” they’d ask, and my husband’s mouth would turn into a thin line, and my friends who joined us for New Year’s would lower their eyes. I was acting weird, yes. But it was New Year’s Eve. My friends and husband were drunk and jolly. I was not talking. They thought that was odd, but not cause for huge concern. They thought that perhaps I too was drunk.

    The whole article is a must read, especially since it seems she has recovered fully from the incident, and yet the incident, that little stroke, changed her life forever. I can never imagine how that feels, and trust me, being the overweight mess that i am, nothing scares me more than the thought of experiencing this kind of thing in my lifetime. Time to change, i guess?