‘Bieber Fever’ at TechCrunch Disrupt

By Julie Tangen
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, we listened to Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, talk about the megastar’s use of Twitter. Bieber has nearly 3 million followers, making him one of the most-followed people. Braun noted that it is actually Bieber doing most of the tweeting. It shows his fans that the same person who was talking to them before his enormous stardom, is still talking to them now.

Technology companies can take a lesson from this—establish a dialogue with your followers and allow them to be part of your success, never forget those who have helped you get where you are today, and be authentic!
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Web 2.0 and the Apple/Adobe Slugfest

By Joanna Kulesa
HTML5 is the new "low-hanging fruit," or maybe it's the new "locked and loaded". God I hate valley speak.  In any case, you'll be hearing a lot about HTML5 in the coming months. It even plays a role in the Great Apple/Adobe Divorce. 

Steve Jobs got the ball rolling last month by blasting Adobe for being "lazy" with their Flash technology, saying that apps written for the iPhone and iPad using Flash tools don't work properly on Apple hardware. He's banned Flash technology on Apple's mobile devices, pointing to it as a security risk and resource hog. Apparently some ex-Adobe engineers agree with him. Jobs feels that open web standards, such as HTML5, are the way of the future.

Adobe's CTO, Kevin Lynch, spoke last week at the Web 2.0 Expo I attended, and likened Apple's policy to the development of railroads in the 1800's. Back then companies were using different gauge rails for various sections of a route, making it necessary to unload cargo to a different train when you came to a section your train couldn't run on. That analogy, in my opinion, is unfortunate at best. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has gone to a web site only to be notified that I need to stop what I'm doing and install the latest version of the Adobe Flash Player. That experience sort of feels like...um...unloading a train.

The bottom line is that Apple has its proprietary OS and hardware, while Adobe has its proprietary web software. To some extent, they are both calling the kettle black. But as long as Apple can keep turning out shiny gadgets that everyone "must" have, they're safe. Adobe is not in as solid a position; open-standard Web technologies such as HTML5 will almost certainly replace Flash someday.

Of course, Flash isn't going away anytime soon; it's too entrenched. Adobe released a new version of the Flash development app last month and is developing its next Flash Player. Get ready to unload more trains. Now, I'm off to pick up my shiniest new gadget, an iPad with 3G.
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News Snacking at 140 Characters and Trending

By Tami Casey
Last week the Twitter world was abuzz with the news that HP had acquired Palm Computing. I noticed the first tweet at about 1:07 pm PT @siliconAlleyInsider broke the news. Seconds later, the floodgates opened with an outpouring of tweets on the topic. Then about 20 minutes after the first tweet, something interesting happened. The tone of some tweets changed. Sure people and news outlets were still tweeting about the acquisition, but now there was a new type of tweet in the mix—the “stop, I already know HP acquired Palm tweet.” In just under 20 minutes, the twitterverse had tired of the news.

As a self-proclaimed news junkie, this fatigue disturbed me. Other than an occasional tweet with a link to the press release there was only the one fact distributed in the tweets—HP had acquired Palm. It really wasn’t a story yet as many of the basics weren’t yet disseminated and even the Wall Street Journal took about 10 minutes to get out its basic story. But by the time the WSJ piece hit, the news had already been tweeted to a large audience. Soon the journalistic news stories started to hit providing more depth. But something strange happened; I didn’t click. The news felt old and dated—after all it was 30 minutes ago.

As I pondered this lack of desire to read more about the acquisition, I realized that this was happening far too often. I had a daily habit of getting the Twitter version of the news—or maybe on a good morning scanning the headlines of a news aggregator site. I was consuming my news without digesting at 140 characters at a time. It was initially satisfying, but ultimately left me empty.

So I’m asking readers to stop and take a look at how they are consuming news and to fight the urge to “snack” and “nibble” away at news. Go for more depth, actually click the links and read the content. Sure you won’t be able to cover as many topics, but you’ll have more depth of knowledge. I’m going to take the plunge because what do I actually know about the HP acquisition? Really I know nothing about it at all.

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