Ok Chamath Palihapitiya is For Real

This is a random thought, and I'm just a guy in a room watching a video. Palihapitiya is financing the moonshots. It's inspiring. New York Mag's Kevin Roose criticized the heck out of his perspective on government, and he refines that here. But this guy is for real. If you're interested in people with huge ideas, watch/listen to the link below the photo.

http://on.aol.com/video/chamath-palihapitiya--social-capital--in-conversation-with-leena-rao-517991823

The short rundown:
- Invested in a company that can accurately predict degenerative brain disease by tracking eye movement across computer screens.
- Sits in on pitches about mining asteroids.
- Has pledged to give away all the money he makes in his lifetime because it's "not [his]."

Don't Build Social Networks, Buy Them

What do Google and Dave Chapelle's reparations beneficiaries have in common? They buy things "straight cash" because "[they're] rich, b__ch!"

Everyone is saying that Google+ is a huge failure. That there's no reason for it to exist, that it will never compete with Facebook as a destination, etc. etc. They might be right. Why would I shift over to G+? None of my friends use it on a regular basis, meaning there's no interesting content (photos, conversations, shared articles), and the internet's primary utility is the conveyance of content.

So, it's really that question of "why" that looms largest. While G+ can't provide a reason, there are certainly other services besides Facebook and Instagram that can. Naturally, Twitter comes into this conversation. But those are all strict communication tools. Those have been positioned as the holy grail of information tools for advertisers because you can mine what people are saying and thinking. Granted, that's pretty incredible, and the work that companies like IBM are doing in big data and machine learning will definitely shine more insight than we have now.

However, I think that's a little short-sighted. What's most important to advertisers (a.k.a. people looking to get people to spend money on the products they rep) is people's relationship with money, and on what/with whom they're willing to spend. The less popularly considered but more interesting social networks from a business perspective are things like Airbnb, Etsy, and Uber. Airbnb and Etsy are examples of people building relationships with peers and the goods/services the value they can provide one another. Uber is powerful in that it has the capacity to tell you where people start, where they go, how long they spend there, with whom they go where (bill splitting tech introduced a few months ago), how wealthy they are (Uber black cars or UberX, how often do they take an Uber), and more.

Wanna know something crazy? Google just invested $258 million dollars in Uber's most recent financing, meaning they own part of it. Guess what's going to happen in a few years - Google's going to know all the stuff Uber knows. They're going to make it useful to you as a consumer through transportation services that will make the NY subway a relic of the past - a self-driven Prius will deliver you to "Jim's house." You'll pay a monthly subscription fee that might even be subsidized by the government in some kind of environmental/transportation program. Google will throw ads at you like the in-cab systems in NY, except those ads will be deals or sample coupons for local restaurants that are buying on AdWords. G+ will become a repository of all this information and more if/when the G+ Login spreads like I think it will.

GOOGLE PLUS LIVES!!!!!

Google AdID vs. Apple IDFA

Bear with me. I'm just trying to hash out the ad tech ecosystem in my mind, stream of consciousness, because I'm bored.

Ok, if I'm understanding this correctly, Google's maybe coming out with this AdID product which can track user behavior like a 3rd party cookie. They'll offer this to other web and mobile properties so that they can own all user tracking across all devices. Question 1: who owns web tracking today? Is it a compilation of a bunch of different 3rd party cookies? To clarify, whose cookies does a company like Rocket Fuel use?

Apple's already been doing the same thing on iPhones, insisting that all app developers use their IDFA to track user behavior and feed data back to advertisers as opposed to installing cookies. As of iOS 7, they don't accept apps into their app store that use 3rd party cookies. So, why would they accept apps with Google AdID rolled in. Especially given the feud that erupted between the two companies when Google got into mobile OS's.

If Apple doesn't accept apps with Google AdID rolled in, how will Google track people on iPhones when those people are in apps other than Gmail, Google Maps, or whatever other product that Google owns? Statistical modeling?


OOOOooohhh...never mind.

Google's going for all apps to use G+ as the standard login so anytime someone logs into an app on iOS, Google will be able to see that? So, it's not going to act like a cookie that gets downloaded when someone visits a site, they're going to have users activate it every time they use an app. Dude, smart. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Wow, they're going to have a hell of a hill to climb. Facebook is winning the login battle pretty solidly right now. I guess that's why Fbook hired all the Google people back in the day. They get it.