kdykes

Do you think that the majority of those transactions will happen within Facebook.com, or on other websites through Facebook Connect?

Well, I think the whole system is decentralizing. The idea of Facebook Connect is really that it’s the evolution of the Platform.

The idea was never that we would have these boxes inside the site. That was a good way to get started, but the idea is that eventually there should be thousands and thousands of applications built on the web, desktop, and mobile. Those will be the ones that handle most of what people are doing.

KDYKES: The perspective of 'Decentralization' is gradually moving into all web companies. Online commerce has been the remaining hold-out, but even the are starting to get that you must go to where the users are online - not try to drag them to you kicking & screaming.

KDYKES: Interesting perspective on the future of Twitter business model from @steverubel

Business has always been about connections. Whether it’s communication with your customers, alliances with partners, or ties with suppliers, connections are a critical part of your business.

Traditionally business development was about the salesmen with the Rolodexes who could close a handful of big deals. Today, the rules have changed. In the Web-based economy, business development is about connecting people with the relevant information at the point and time they need to consume it. Web services allow companies to do business across firewalls, reach a broad range of partners, and create new business opportunities.

The Web services model is applicable to a range of businesses, from information plays like WhitePages.com to messaging systems like Twitter to infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services and semantic web services like Thompson-Reuters’ Calais.

The concept works like this:

A company makes a web service that is accessible via an API (application programming interface).
Each business partner registers to obtain an access key.
Using those keys, partners can use the service programmatically to get and send data.
A well-managed API gives prospective partners, or a community of developers, a way to develop an application using your content or services. They can try it, test it, and even build something that begins to scale demand for your content. Using monitoring and metrics, you can identify the handful of partners or developers that have been the most successful in helping you meet your business goals. In the process, you end up with a self-managed business development funnel that yields the world’s most qualified leads.

Using APIs as a mechanism for content and service distribution, or as a tool to allow partners to build value added services on your platform has become an enticing concept. But the question still remains: If we build it, will they come? The purpose of this paper is to answer that question by showing you how to create a successful business development channel built on a Web services strategy.

KDYKES: From Catrina Fake of Flickr... this is the perspective of how startups build tremendous revenue & value from the outset!

What we have discovered over the past nine months are growing diseconomies of scale. Bigger firms are harder to run on cash flow alone, so they need more debt (oops!). Bigger companies have to place bigger bets but have less and less control over distribution and competition in an increasingly diverse marketplace. Those bets get riskier and the payoffs lower. And as Wall Street firms are learning, bigger companies are going to get more regulated, limiting their flexibility. The stars of finance are fleeing for smaller firms; it's the only place they can imagine getting anything interesting done.

As venture capitalist Paul Graham put it, "It turns out the rule 'large and disciplined organizations win' needs to have a qualification appended: 'at games that change slowly.' No one knew till change reached a sufficient speed."

The result is that the next new economy, the one rising from the ashes of this latest meltdown, will favor the small.

My philosophy of life

While reading Tina Seelig's new book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, I came across a Lao-Tzu quote that describes my new philosophy of life:

“The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both.”

I love this perspective ffrom Guy Kawasaki's blog!