Keep ratings ratings, and discovery discovery

I love Netflix in many ways. 

But this is frustrating. This is taking a community/market norm - star ratings - and applying it to recommendations.

I want to see what the world thinks. I don’t want to see Netflix’s Brendan filter on what the thinks the world thinks. 

Beyond the frustration of just trying to figure out if a film is going to be good, this is a symptom of a darker trend of personalization technology increasingly isolating us from public consensus and opinion. 

John's Tumblr: Foursquare

lilly:

I was really happy to hear the details of Foursquare’s financing this morning, but a little bummed to see how my conversation with Businessweek came out in the article, just saying that I thought the $600M price was too high.

What I spent probably 95% of my conversation with Businessweek…

One of the reasons we don’t have balanced debate in the tech echo chamber - people get selectively quoted for effect, and not nuanced discussion. 

Kind of like politics. A shame. 

B

Your buzzwords aren’t fooling anybody

“…may have an interest in our very innovative seed-stage company, XX, which is a disruptive technology in the e/social commerce world. Our technology will cause a paradigm shift in the multi-billion dollar ecommerce XX industry as it allows the customization of XX and XX and same day delivery.”

Just say “we let anyone create and customize XX, and have it delivered the same day.”

Just say what you do. 

Your buzzwords aren’t fooling anybody.

B

(actual pitch received; all sector/startup identifying elements removed)