At ManyWheels we are using Microsoft Visio to reduce our market risk by rapidly, cheaply, and iteratively building clickable web demos for prospective customers using this stencil.  

Risk?  What risk?

Anyone who has been through a start-up or two knows about risks.  Financing risks, team risks, and technology risks are some of the most frequent sources of the entrepreneur’s sleepness nights.

But as technology costs have moved lower and lower one risk dwarfs all others:  market risk.  Market risk is the start-up equivalent of a bridge-to-nowhere: you build a product that nobody wants.  

I try to reduce market risks by challenging my assumptions with two key questions:  ”Am I building something that people want?  How do I know this?”

(The first question is easy to answer.  The second one is a bit tougher…)

So how can I prove to myself that I’m mitigating market risk?

Ways to Mitigate Market Risk

“What’s your problem?”

The most obvious way is to ask prospective customers about their problems.  This process works up to a point; you can get high-level needs and concerns but ultimately most people need to see something to provide specific feedback.

“Do you have 5 hours to read my spec?”

The traditional route is to “write it all down”.  How many prospective customers want to read your detailed 30-page spec?  None that I’ve been talking to.  Good luck.

HTML Mockups - the traditional approach

Another option advocated by 37 signals is “Interface First”:  build mockups in HTML before you start writing any code.  Obviously if you’re very comfortable (and fast) working directly in HTML then go for it.  Personally, I find that even HTML is still too slow because managing and organizing lots of tags can get really tedious.

What I really need

Over the past 6 months I’ve been struggling with a better way to manage this process in my prospective customer conversations.

The perfect tool for me is one that:

• I already know how to use
• is free
• allows me to export in HTML to show to other people
• allows for rapid iteration

Visio to the Rescue…

I know that professional web developers have a lot of different tools for building wireframes.  After a brief search, the option that best fit my needs is the newest version of Microsoft Visio.  It isn’t free, but you can download the trial version from Microsoft and use it for 60 days.

(If you’re ultra-cheap, you can even time the download at the beginning of the month to squeeze a few exta weeks out of the trial.)

You will need the interaction designer’s nail gun (3rd edition), a set of instructions and stencils for building web pages.  You can get an idea of the possible by checking out their demo. 

We’ve been using this tool to do our mockups of ManyWheels with prospective customers.  After a few hours we became proficient with backgrounds, foregrounds, links.  We built a few of our own stencils that allowed for rapid creation of menus, buttons, etc using our color scheme.

The real power of the tool is its ability to allow an entrepreneur to present information differently to different people.  Some people need to see a sequence diagram.  Some just want to see a page.  Others want to see blocks on screens.  All of this is a snap in Visio, plus you can hyperlink it together and publish a web site instantly.

My Experiences with ManyWheels

When we first began engaging the market on our ideas for ManyWheels we started with meetings and phone calls.  We listened.  We asked people about their problems.  We sat next to the people doing the work and asked them about their frustrations.  We tried to get a sense for the market dynamics and what type of solutions might work.  And we learned a ton about the solution we thought we needed to build.

Or so we thought.  

Once we started creating mockups and showing them to prospective customers the conversations took on laser-like focus.  People instantly rejected many of our core ideas and offered alternatives.  Some customers wanted to see high-level data flows to understand how ManyWheels would work in their business.  It took us several iterations like this to get to the point where the conversations moved from “interesting” to “when can I get it”?

(man, those are beautiful words when you’re struggling to identify a solution.)

In Conclusion

My experiences over the last 6 months have reinforced what countless others have already learned:  get a mockup in front of people as soon as you possibly can.  Nothing will focus your conversations and get specific feedback like showing people a possible solution.  Moreover, it sends a message that you’re serious, that this product is really goign to be built, and that you’re thinking critically about the problem.

Fortunately, you don’t need a web designer to do it anymore.  Spend a 1/2 day with Microsoft Visio and the stencils above and you’ll be building worakble mockups in no time.  

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body … so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain …
-Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

If you follow my blog you’ll notice that I have moved from twitter skeptic to enthusiast.  And recently I have been struggling to explain why I think twitter is a bigger evolution in human communication than facebook, myspace, or anything else in social media.

“Why should I care that someone is getting up or going to the bathroom?”, they ask, just I originally did. And, quite frankly, you shouldn’t, just as I don’t.  But I think something bigger is happening on Twitter:

Twitter is a human/machine information revolution because Tweets are memes.

By memes, I mean fundamental units of discrete information that can be rapidly evolved, shared and aggregated.

I find myself forced into information compression with Twitter.  Heck, I can even sum-up most of my blog posts with a Tweet and the overall point wouldn’t be lost on the audience just as a Haiku can convey the same point in a fraction of the words of a short story.  For instance, this blog entry in 140 characters:

Twitter= info revolution b/c tweets=MEMES: shared, evolved, aggregated like genes. Bigger/different than MySpace, Facebook..

Actually this is only 124 characters, leaving me 16 characters to spare for a URL link created by is.gd.

When I ask people whether they are on Twitter I typically hear something like the following:

• “I’m not on Twitter but I’ve heard of it and don’t really get it.  What is it?”
• “How is Twitter different from blogging/delicio.us?”

Twitter is a microblog, a quick thought, a digestible blurb that is easy to type and easy to absorb by people who are constantly context-switching.  Of course it isn’t a substitute for a blog post, a novel, a movie or a poem - and I still enjoy all of these.

Tweets represent the fundamental units of human thoughts, and as our tools get better and better for aggregating them and using them practically I predict that everyone will be touched by Twitter one way or another.

Don’t believe me?  Check out what practical things you can already do with these memes.

But this blog post is theoretical and it doesn’t explain why I invest my time and energy into building relationships on Twitter.  I do think Twitter has a very practical purpose and I’ll explain it on my next blog post.

It has lead to all types of bizarre practices including domain name squatting and odd company names based on nonsense words.  Finding a good URL is one of the most frustrating activities in launching a new company, and I was thrilled to find ManyWheels.com available 6 months ago.

The tyranny of the URL may be fading with the advent of Google Chrome search box in the same line as the URL.  I now find myself less concerned about remembering the exact URL for company since typing and searching happen in the same user experience.

It’s no accident that there’s a snapshot of Fannie Mae headquarters alongside the family photographs on the memento shelf in my office.  It warms my heart to think of the place.  The stock has been so great they ought to retire the symbol.
-Peter Lynch, Beating the Street

I can be as wrong as the next guy.
-Peter Lynch, September 2008, when asked why he held Fannie Mae stock in his own portfolio to the bitter end.

The point of this essay:  I ignore all predictions about money from ANYONE. 

I don’t care if you’re Warren Buffet, the blithering idiot on TV, some random dude in my Twitter feed, or a famous hedge fund manager. You might be able to predict where a particular stock or the market is going, but I have no way of telling if you are right or wrong so it is just easier to tune you out completely.

I’ll summarize what is explained elsewhere more eloquently in books like Fooled by Randomness:

In any large pool of investors, mere chance will result in some of them greatly outperforming the average.  Unfortunately we have no means to determine whether or not these results actually indicate whether someone is lucky or good, so putting faith (or money) in their ability to continue this winning performance can lead to disaster if they have just been lucky and return to statistically average results.

We’ve been lucky. Well, maybe it’s not 100% luck—maybe 95% luck.
-Bill Miller, on his streak of beating the S&P 500 for 15 consecutive years.

“Countrywide’s long term business value… we think is in the $40’s compared to its current price of about $14-15.”
-Bill Miller, 2 months before Bank of America bought the company for $5.5/share.

Even if you can predict the future with some degree of reliability, I sure don’t want to take your advice on one of the occasions when you happen to be wrong.

Just as an experiment, spend a day analyzing how many times people make predictions about the future movement of stocks:

“This is going to be worse than 1929″
“They are too big to fail”
“Economists predict that….” (Put anything here.  They get it wrong constantly)
“The Paulson Plan will make money for taxpayers” (You want to take the future of our country on faith?)

The constant noise of the financial media does more than cause you sleepless nights or overconfidence.  Following the herd mentality will inevitably lead you to sell during panics and buy during boom periods - a recipe for lousy returns.

As I write this in October 2008, everyone around me seems to be “moving their money into something safer” until things stabilize.  I even hear “pundits” providing this advice on TV.  Countless studies show that this strategy is extremely risky since missing even a few good days in the market can drag your returns below inflation.

Nobody knows nothin’
-Marc Andreessen, in a speech I heard a few years ago.

Amen, Marc, amen.

I ignore predictions by me and everyone else in the world.  So making investment decisions must be agonizing, right?

On the contrary, this intellectual foundation makes investing so easy that it becomes boring.  I’ll discuss why in part 3.

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As all of us know, these events are about the people.  I find that the atmosphere at TECH cocktails attracts real entrepreneurs, angels, and people that I actually want to meet.  Plus it tends to be smaller and a bit more personal than many local networking events that mostly attract service providers (nothing against them…I just want to meet a variety of people).

In any case, I’d like to do a quick shout-out for a few of the folks I met:

GeniusRocket:    Might be able to help me build the creative foundation for my new start-up, ManyWheels.

Planypus:  Seems like a good service for organizing an un-conference or SMS mobs.

Great event and hope I can make the next one.
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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
-Rudyard Kipling, If.

My friends and family know that I’m interested in investing and that I’ve worked in the financial services industry. So they have been asking me the same question lately:

What do you think will happen with the current financial meltdown and what are you doing about it?

The answer is simple but not very reassuring: I have no idea what will happen, and nothing different.

Actually the real answer is more complicated and, I think, more interesting. Not only do I not know what will happen, I know that I don’t know.

This point forms my investing strategy foundation.  I don’t know the future and I’m fine with it.

Last week I didn’t know what was going to happen this week. Five years ago I didn’t know what was going to happen today, and I sure don’t know what will happen tomorrow. The Dow could stage a massive recovery tomorrow. Or it could plunge another 700 points.

The ambiguity in investing seems to give most people angst: they feel like they should know what is going to happen. For if they could put parameters around they future they would be in a better position to deal with it.

Do I want to know what is going to happen?  Of course! One look at the 2008 S&P500 Chart will convince anyone that a few good moves could make them rich. But confidently guessing wrong is the fastest path to financial ruin, and missing just a few days in a bull market from trying to guess the recovery date can ruin your returns.

In 2004 I undertook the painful exercise of calculating the net return of all of my investment decisions since 1997. After reading all of the books, doing all of the research, and making my own decisions I matched the S&P500 returns. And when taxes and transaction costs were considered I had actually performed worse than an S&P500 Index Fund. After some painful reflections and a few stiff drinks I accepted reality that I’m no better than average at making investment decisions. So I decided to read some different books.

I read Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan by Taleb. I read almost every essay written by William Bernstein. I started learning about logic from podcasts like Point of Inquiry and the basic mistakes we make in thinking. I read about the history of Long-Term Capital Management. I studied the scientific method.

I realized that I don’t know what is going to happen in financial markets. Far from causing me despair, this knowledge has made it much easier for me to sleep at night. Better still, it arms me with a powerful tool for “keeping my head about me”.

(Flip on the financial news media tomorrow and you’ll see plenty of people who have lost theirs.)

I decided that I couldn’t see a good reason why we could not have another Great Depression that is twice as severe and twice as long as that of 1929. I also decided that technology could propel the world into a new era of economic efficiency with financial returns as good as or better than those of any other time in history.

So in 2004 I started anew with an investing approach that took into consideration the possibility of these future events in the context of my life. And every time I’m faced with a decision, a new piece of information, or a new event, I remind myself that I can’t guess the future. I try to make decisions dispassionately. This isn’t easy and it takes a lot of self-coaching.

“The market dropped today, maybe it is a good time to buy!”
“Oil has really gone up this year, it is a bad time to diversify into commodities.”
“The US will NEVER let a nuclear-capable Russian economy fail.”
“Buy land. They’re not making any more of it.”

Underlying each of these points is a belief about the near future. And each time I find my mind wandering in this direction I try to coach myself back to calmer waters.

Of course I can make some reasonable bets about very long term trends that guide my investment decisions. I can develop an approach that allows me to not only remain calm through the 2008 market madness but actually profit from it.  I can use my professed ignorance about the future to my advantage.
But that is a topic for the third essay.

You all know security is mortals’ chiefest enemy
-Macbeth III;6

P.S. Just for fun, count how many predictions you and and others make about the market tomorrow.  Then reflect for a second on whether there is any solid basis for these opinions. In part 2 of this series I explain why I don’t believe any of them.
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In-Q-Tel

In July I left In-Q-Tel, the strategic investing arm of the CIA and US Intelligence Community.  It was a happy parting and one of my best career experiences.  In-Q-Tel is a national treasure and I would recommend it to anyone, both as an employer and a source of innovation solutions for the US government.  A highlight was working with the Intellipedia team  (If you meet Steve, Sean, or Don at a social media event, be sure to thank them for their dedication).

But after 3 years of the investing side … time for another start-up.

ManyWheels, Inc. - Look out, world!

Through a rather unique set of circumstances I began exploring challenges in the automobile transportation space.  Ever drive past a half-empty truck hauling cars and wonder why the truck isn’t full?  Every wonder why getting a car shipped is a harrowing experience for most people?  Me too.

After due diligence with a large company in this space I applied to the National Science Foundation for a grant to develop technology to improve automotive transport efficiency.  More on this in a few weeks.

For the past few months I’ve been trying to follow the advice I give to entrepreneurs:  focus on the market.  We’ve been vetting the opportunity with prospective customers and partners for the past few months, doing dozens of site visits, interviews, etc.  We now understand the major problems, have a vision for the solution, and just last week incorporated ManyWheels.

The Motley Fool

I also returned to the Motley Fool this Summer to do some consulting on a couple of fun projects.  It felt like homecoming, seeing many great friends that I missed.  The company has done an incredible job keeping its culture intact while becoming a world-class business.  I have no doubt it will become a premiere institution in the DC area.

(shameless recruiting plug:  The Fool is an awesome place to work!)

So there you have it, my work life.  In the last few months I’ve been working in the financial services, automotive, and intelligence sectors and volunteering with the most aggressive biotechnology initiative in world history.

You’re probably wondering about the common thread of all of this.  Me too.

But in the meantime, I’m working like a maniac and having an absolute blast!

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Consumers want the ability to consume data and use services everywhere online and sites will have to buckle to this pressure.  Yahoo’s announcement is clearly a reaction to Facebook’s move towards becoming a development platform.

Historically, sites have built financial models around attracting consumers to a destination, keeping them there as long as possible, and maximizing financial return from this activity.

In the near future all sites will be forced to identify the value-added services they provide consumers and give them the tools to use these services anywhere.

-
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I minimizee the break, coasted where possible, kept distance between cars in front of me, accelerated slowly, and turned off the car at long red lights.  I wasn’t religious about it and on several trips reverted to my “normal” style.

The result?  20% increase in MPG (about $200 a year).  I didn’t notice a duration difference and felt much more relaxed.

I also found myself paying more attention to the road ahead and anticipating upcoming events.  I have no doubt that it is a safer driving practice.

I can’t say that I found a downside to hypermiling, and even if I arrived a few minutes late it is an easy tradeoff for safer, cheaper, more relaxing driving.

Man, I am getting old…
–
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Some quick advice for my fellow Twitterers:

1. Tweet less.  Seriously.  I am starting to unsubscribe from Twitter feeds for people who simply Twitter too much.  If I log into my Twitter home page and see your icon 5 times on the screen you are unfortunately a candidate for me to stop following.  And even if I don’t unsubscribe from your feed I’ll unconsciously tune-out your truly relevant points when the are drowned out in “…is eating breakfast” Tweets.  I’m guilty of this too sometimes…
2. Think of me when you Tweet.  I follow people on Twitter because I want to learn new things, keep track of the INTERESTING parts of my friends and colleagues daily lives, and laugh a little.  What do I really like?  Hearing where you are.  Links to interesting pieces.  Interesting blurbs and thoughts from conferences that I cannot attend.  Events in your life.  Requests for help.  I understand that people use Twitter for different reasons: some people just have fun with it and (almost obsessively) post social notes; others have very specific discussions with a small work group of people.  I understand why they use Twitter for these purposes…I just don’t want to follow it.
3. THINK ABOUT WHO WILL READ WHAT YOU WRITE.  I cannot believe how much people (even those my age) will mix the personal with professional on Twitter.  I have had co-workers post truly juvenile, obnoxious things on their Twitter feed.  I often read these Tweets while I’m sitting at work.  If you want to make comments about your social adventures, consider making a personal Twitter feed that is unconnected to your professional profile.  Not doing so really says volumes about your judgment.
4. Use Twitter Search (fka Summize) to track the RSS feed of responses to your tweets.  For instance, I have an RSS feed for “@kevindewalt”.  Thus I will catch replies to my tweets that I would otherwise miss.
5. Introduce me to new people on Twitter.  I’ve done this a few times quite successfully and I’m surprised that it isn’t a more popular practice.  Find a good feed?  Know of someone I should meet?  Feel free to drop a “@kevindewalt meet @MadamX.  You guys both…”

Hopefully I’m not giving folks the impression that I’m not excited about their Tweets.  Indeed, it makes a nice break in the daily routine to hear from bucchere, 8of12 and some of the other people I follow regularly.

But a little “consider the audience” goes a long way in Web 2.0 just as it has in the rest of human discourse.

In a nutshell, GTD is a fluid personal management process that operates closer to the way most of us work. Most of us deal with a constant influx of new tasks, dozens of disparate projects at home and at work, and changing deadlines. GTD provides a framework for us to deal with this onslaught.

I doubt that I will ever implement all of Allen’s ideas. For one thing, much of the book focuses on dealing with paper. I don’t handle much paper at home or at work. I typically carry a notebook to meetings and use it to scribble down some hieroglyphics ostensibly posing as English that even I cannot read. So I don’t imagine that I’ll be creating tickler files.

But ultimately I come out of these meetings with “to-dos” for myself that need to be tracked and managed. GTD provides the framework for managing and tracking everything.

I also don’t quite see the point of keeping my email inbox empty. I need to review (in one form or another) email as it arrives. But with desktop search I don’t need to categorize everything into folders. I don’t write down everything everyone says in meetings and I don’t see why I need to categorize every email.

But I can understand why GTD has a cult-like following among techies. It provides a practical structure for organizing our hectic lives into the ways we actually work.

So I’m going to give it a shot.

I have to confess that I’m slowly becoming a believer in Twitter. What ultimately pushed me over the edge? I met some new colleagues who are knee-deep in the trenches of driving organizational change with collaborative web technology. In the course of exchanging contact info they passed along their Twitter IDs.

“Excuse me? YOU guys use Twitter?”

Suddenly I felt old. Past my prime. I had become that guy I never wanted to be: the guy who “doesn’t get it”. In a state of panic I vowed to start Twittering that night and prove to the world that I still have it.

So what have I learned? Well, the jury is still out, but I think this service is here to stay for me. Like most people, I have that occasional observation/stray thought/idea that I want to tell people about. YouTube videos and blog posts are great for communicating a certain level of info, but sometimes I just want to blurt out something. Or pass along an article I read in Wired. Somehow email and blog posts don’t work for this type of communicating.

But the best part of Twitter so far is what I’m hearing about.

I don’t really care what most people are thinking about. This isn’t to suggest that I think most people don’t have much to offer - they do. They just don’t take the time and put forth the energy to think critically about the world.

But there are a handful of friends and colleagues that I really want to hear from. I want to know about the conference they are attending. The new web service they just tried. The cool business idea that popped into their heads. The thought they had while standing in the subway. Why they want to reverse aging.

What could be better than a bite-sized gem of ideas from people I really respect? I found myself actually reaching out to these type of people (it is a small list) and asking them to consider Twittering. Talk about the zealotry of the recently converted.

I don’t think tweets (that’s a twitter message as I’ve now learned) will replace emails, blogs, phone calls, lunches or existing communications. I think it is another way to interact, collaborate, and share.

My feed is at my feed is at http://twitter.com/kevindewalt if you want to follow my ramblings.

As I said, the jury is still out. Maybe my recent obsession with Twitter is just a techie’s version of mid-life crisis, a desperate attempt to show the world I still have it.

I get it, really I do…

Scott Sigler pretty much created this space and continues to break new ground. His latest novel, Nocturnal, is once again both terrifying and addicting. His novel takes place in San Francisco and you can follow the plot online with Google Maps.

Yet another example of how the creation and consumption of content is changing so quickly.

I’ve recently become addicted to PodioBooks, a site that - as it sounds - has podcasts of authors reading their books. The authors and podiobooks site distribute the content freely and ask for donations to support the author and site.

When I first heard about PodioBooks I expected to find piles of lame content written by authors who could never get a real publishing house to take them seriously. Instead, I found some amazing books that rival or exceed that which I’ve found in bookstores.

In retrospect, this shouldn’t have been surprising. The economics of the traditional publishing model force publishers to go with known authors rather than risk promoting and distributing someone new and unproven. And yet does anyone actually believe that a handful of authors like Koontz and King actually create the best of the best?

Indeed, the Internet continues to destroy the traditional content creation and distribution ecosystem. In its place, new models are emerging and newcomers are leveraging them to build a media audience. Which brings us to the following quote:

This podcast contains adult themes, situations, and Lots - AND LOTS - of Violence!

If you recognize this quote you must be a “junkie” of podiobooks icon Scott Sigler. Scott was one of the first authors to begin releasing his books as podcasts. The audience he developed through this medium ultimately propelled him to #1 on Amazon.com’s horror and sci-fi lists. I found his work to be as thrilling and entertaining as popular novelists like Michael Crichton.

But as good is Sigler is, he isn’t #1 on my list. After listening to 20+ podiobooks, here are my favorite authors:

#5 Timothy Callahan - If you like Star Trek, you’ll like Arwen, a similar space sci-fi drama. The creative story and action compensate for some rather flat characters.

#4 John Klawitter - I didn’t expect to like Devils but I’m glad I gave it a chance. It is a great story and Klawitter keeps the action rolling from start to finish even if the ending was a bit lame.

#3 J.C. Hutchins - If Sigler is King of podiobooks, Hutchins is certainly Prince. The 7th Son Series is a creative trilogy about a set of seven cloned human beings who struggle to save the world from their creators. A great story with constant twists and an unpredictable plot. “24″ fans should love it.

#2 Scott Sigler - The man who needs no introduction. Infection, Earthcore, and Ancestor are absolutely and totally addicting. After listening to the graphic (and absolutely disturbing) description of “Scary Perry” Dawsey tearing an alien organism from his flesh in Infection, I don’t think I’ll ever look at horror the same way. Sigler takes the best from Michael Crichton and the Texas Chainsaw massacre to create some masterpieces. And if you’ve ever imagined what pro football will look like in a few hundred years, you’ll want to listen to The Rookie.

and the winner is….drum roll please….

#1 Phil Rossi

Ok, maybe this contest is a bit unfair. After all, Cresent - his first podiobook - isn’t even finished at the time of this writing. But my-oh-my is Phil Rossi talented. Don’t get me wrong, Sigler and Hutchins are masters at their trade. But so far I haven’t seen anyone who leverages this new distribution medium like Phil Rossi.

Cresent is Blade Runner meets Stargate. Scratch that. Crescent is Crescent.

With flawed, multi-dimensional characters who seem to make bad choices at ever opportunity, Rossi weaves a space sci-fi horror that appears to be written for the podcast audience. I hear the creepy soundtrack in my head even when I’m not listening.

Rossi’s slow, deliberate voice adds to the dark undertone of the tale as the characters bumble about the cold, cruel reality of inter-galactic life on the space colony. At times I find myself pausing the podcast and taking a moment to visualize Rossi’s scenes. As much as I’d like to see Cresent on film, I doubt any Hollywood creation could top Rossi’s descriptions and my imagination.

I’m going to continue to follow Rossi’s career as a podiobook author. It should be interesting to watch this new distribution medium develop along with the career of its prodigies.

I don’t bother with LInkedIn because Facebook is the future.

I’m not on Facebook. I’ve been to the site a few times and I had to register before seeing anything. I’m sure this is an intentional feature and you can’t argue with success. I don’t explore it because I already spend too much time online and have a long list of other things I’m trying to finish.
If you do follow this space I would point you to a great post by Baris Karadogan on why Facebook may become a hugely valuable online property.

This argument reminds me of the principles in The Gorilla Game by Geoffrey Moore. He describes how Oracle, Microsoft, and Cisco became gorillas as a result of leveraging 3 key forces:

1. The development of open, proprietary standards. This clearly holds true in the case of Facebook as Baris points out.
2. High switching costs. This may or may not be true for Facebook users. Clearly this was a great benefit for AOL in its early days since nobody wanted to give up their email address. To date, the social networking crowd has been those fickle users in the 15-25 year-old category; clearly this is changing.
3. Marketplace economies of scale through choosing a single, dominant platform. Given the lower cost of developing online software applications today, I think it is debatable whether this force will apply to Facebook.

I’ve given up trying to predict the future in the online space - or just about anywhere in life - but it seems hard to believe that Facebook cannot reach market dominance without leveraging similar forces.

In any case, don’t be surprised if I write about my experience on Facebook in a future blog post.