Mark Pincus Blog

Tony robbins' heroic speach at TED

Tony robbins gave the most inspired presentation of the week and in a truly heroic moment told al gore what so many of us have thought but would never say - that if al had ran for president with the passion he exhibits in his fight against global warming he would have won.

Tony robbins is an impressive man and a real leader and I'm someone who previously thought he was a cheesy infomercial peddling guy in hawaiin shirts. I will definitely go to one of his events. Clear we can all learn a lot from him about our own growth and transformation. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Sitting behind meg ryan and I got nothin!

So she's in front of me and neither of us are doing anything and I'm realizing I've got nothing to say that wouldn't be utterly stupid. So I'm deciding to spare her from one more dork.

Anyone know a good convo starter for a celeb? Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Al gore's global warming pitch

Al gore gave his intense, impassioned pitch to wake up to global warming last night at TED. First, you should all see this which you can do when his film comes out in a few weeks.

He showed a mountain of proof that we are experiencing warming at an increasing rate and projects 45 yrs until we hit a critical threshold and 10 yrs that we can still hope to stop and reverse.

My only complaint which seemed to be shared by others here is that he stops short of a clear call to action. He says we could solve this easily. Well al, how? We should all fight this. How?

I walked away more frustrated than inspired. Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Another TEDbit

Forgot to mention that al gore also told me last night that he definitely will not be running again for president which is interesting considering that I recall a recent poll ranking him third at 8 % of public supporting him.

I also asked al what he's doing to change the system (a question he didn't seem to really appreciate). He replied that he's out to stop global warming which again I should have known from his recent film at sundance.
Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Schmoozing at TED conference

I went to the google pre dinner last night where sergey announced that this guy larry brilliant will be running google.org. Apparently, he won't the TED prize and eradicated smallpox. Howd you like to have that for an answe to 'what do you do?'?

I got to talk to al gore who I pitched on my eparty idea. I can safely say he won't be participating in that one.

I also got to hang out with laurence bender who produced the al gore film and in another embarassing moment I asked him 'what else?' To which he rattled off goodwill hunting, pulp fiction and kill bill. Guess I should have known that. I pitched him on my new movie idea and he seemed neutral which was a lot better than I did with al.

Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

testing performancing

based on fred's rave review i'm giving this a try to see if it can solve my occasional typepad post losses. the installation process was not that intuitive as it appears they require flock and you have to somehow know to find an icon in the bottom right hand side of your browser. also it sounds like the app may let you do marc canter's 'blog this' but i cant find that feature yet either. wondering why they could reside in the top toolbar?

also would have been nice if there were an easier way to add tags as typepad still doesnt make this easy. too painful to create new categories when i just want to tag.

the bubble in bubble debates

matt marshall continues to fuel the web 2.0 bubble debate. my take is that we hear about the bubble most from the new fraternity of web 2.0 cocktail circuit attendees while the rest of us have grown comfortable that this is business as usual. here's my comment on his blog post.

we need to differentiate between bubbles and saturated environments. THE bubble was characeterized by a public mania that fueled an irrationale pubic stock market and trickled back down through the system.

i would characterize the present environment as one of saturation which is not necessarily unhealthy. vc's are paid to place bets. entrepreneurs are paid to create betable plays. seems to me that everyone is doing their jobs right now. there have been plenty of periods with saturated bets and little results to show for it. remember the cd-rom 'bubble' of the early 90's or the famous case of too many disk drive wannabes in the late 80's?

what's changed is that the bar to create a bet is way lower and the bar to a bettor is now open to just about anyone so we're seeing a lot more entrants. i think that democratizes what's been a somewhat clubby industry for too long.

yahoo's horowitz on social media/community value

bradley horowitz, one of yahoo's top strategic thinkers, has posted an insightful piece on how he and yahoo view the economics of value creation in social media. people have long accepted the idea that 1-2% of community participants do 80-90% of the posting. on sites like craigslist, one might consider these people 'market makers' as they keep a certain amount of 'liquidity' by posting fresh stuff and responding to others. this works so that most of us can stop by once a year and still find a vibrant market.

sounds like he views communities in general working in a similar fashion. one might argue that these 'lurkers' are even worth more as they are in a less sticky more surfing mode. many of have found this content while surfing through google and are more likely to leave which ironically makes them more monetizable through related ads. one problem many community sites like ivillage faced in web 1.0 before the new world of open surfing was being too sticky.

Israeli's enter iranian anti-semite cartoon contest!

from one of my readers who pointed me to the freakonomics blog covering this...

Applying the Old Incentive Switcheroo to Anti-Semitism

So what do you do if you’re a Jewish cartoonist in Israel and the following happens:

a. A Danish newspaper commissions artists to draw editorial cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, and said cartoons set off a furor in the Muslim world.

b. Iran responds to said furor by putting out a call for anti-Semitic cartoons about the Holocaust. (Sure, that’s a non sequitur of a response to the Danish cartoons, but what the heck.)

Amitai Sandy, a 29-year-old graphic artist and comic-book publisher in Tel Aviv, came up with the following solution: a new anti-Semitic cartoon contest, with the submissions drawn by Jews themselves.

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” Sandy said. “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

This is reminiscent of how Planned Parenthood responds to abortion-clinic protestors: by soliciting donations based on how many protestors show up. Here’s a link to the Israeli anti-Semitic cartoon contest website; here’s a Reuters article about the contest. (Thanks to Michael Fried for the tip.)

Valleywag responds...

is it bad practice to repost certain comments? i figure most of you read this through rss and would miss some of these gems...not sure if this is from nick denton or another nick...

Oh, "Women of the Valley" will come up any day now. And there ARE some ladies reading Valleywag -- maybe they dig the hotties contest too. [from nick@valleywag.com]

and it's nice (i think?) to know they're reading us too:)