Reddit’s easy fix

Are you following the hand wringing over Reddit? If not, the problem is that a few people say terrible things there. And then Reddit tries to figure out how to stop it without infringing on the sense of ownership that users have for the content they help create. But deciding where the lines are and what crosses the lines is hard. After all, Google links to ALL SORTS of terrible things (seriously, click on that link at your peril), but since they don’t host all that terribleness, it’s all OK.

The controversial CEO Ellen Pao has left, and people are clamouring for “real leadership”.  This is not a “leadership” problem any more than global warming is a “sunshine” problem.

Rob Labatt and I have been discussing Reddit’s dilemma, mainly because we’ve lived through it.  Rob was CEO of a company called ezBoard, where I invested.  ezBoard grew to be a giant host of discussions of all kinds, circa 2000-2008.  We had the exact same problem as Reddit, and struggled over it in the exact same way (minus blaming the CEO — Rob was great).  The challenge is less about leadership and more about the nature of online communities.  They are, let me not say “unruly”, let me say “heterogenous”.

And, beyond attempts to play moral policeman, it’s also hard to get advertising dollars for a website that has folks saying things with which Safeway or Ford Motor Company would rather not have their names associated.

GOOD NEWS:  There is an easy fix.  The easy fix will temporarily reduce some of Reddit’s traffic but shine a fantastic light on the shady neighborhoods, and it’s this—

Make Reddit users use their real names.

It’s far easier for bad behavior to hide behind anonymity, that’s why mobs can be so destructive.  That’s why the Ku Klux Klan wear hoods.

Facebook, the most successful social network in the world, requires the use of real names.  I have a friend who is working to legally change her name, but until she does, Facebook won’t let her use the name by which everyone knows her.  So it can certainly be done.

Then, the people who need to hide behind anonymity will go to some other site that allows for that sort of thing, and we can campaign to root them out from there as well.  Keep Reddit to its original theme of Democracy Re-envisioned.  Well functioning democracies require ID for voter registration, so Reddit should take a hint.

And it removes much of the problem without Reddit trying to play policeman.  There will still be occasions where Reddit will have to remove content, but I guarantee those occasions will be drastically reduced.  Real names is the single biggest change to allow Reddit to move on from this series of bad PR and destructive moves.

Blogs manipulate internet

I write because it’s interesting, and it records what I’m thinking.  I still have all my third grade English papers.  I’m that kind of guy.

The fact you read third grade quality randomness makes me both grateful and curious.  I was curious what you were reading, so I went to look at my blog statistics.

My most popular blog is about fixing the iPhone.  It shows up in Google searches, and desperate smart phone owners surf over to see it.  It is clearly more actionable than any of the random complaints I make about the federal deficit or the paucity of gluten-free foods at In-n-Out burger.  Though In-n-Out does make a nice french fry.

But what does it say about blogs?  It says that if you want a popular blog, it has to talk about popular things.  In fact, I could make this blog post my most popular post with just a few choice additions:

• “Charlie Sheen and Lady Gaga contemplate birthing Justin Bieber competitor”
• “iPad 3 specifications include free pornography app”
• “Sammy Hagar claims alien abduction”

That last one isn’t even made up, it’s actually the third hottest search today according to Google Trends.  I bet, though, that Google Trends excludes searches like “Gisele Bundchen nude” or “bestiality”.

I also didn’t make up “bestiality” as a hot search topic, sadly.  In 1999 companies had to buy ads from Yahoo! by negotiating for them rather than buying them in auctions a la Google Adwords.  Yahoo! would send our portfolio companies the list of top search words for purchase.  In the top 20 were “bestiality” and 2 apparently very common misspellings.  It would seem that having sex with animals messes with your spelling skills as well.

Pictures have also been a big draw, like this one:

That’s Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News, and if you’re like my girl, you’ve got “a bit of a crush on him.”  Honestly, I don’t get it, but if there are more people like her my blog search results just went up 4 fold.

Politics doesn’t move the needle for my blog, but just in case:  Go, Sarah Palin/Mike Huckabee/Tim Pawlenty/Donald Trump!  (Trump is seriously considering running for President, as if having that awesome hairdo wasn’t enough for one man).

The internet started as a research link between government funded research labs.  If the first file exchanged was “Monitoring structural integrity through acoustic emission” (i.e., beating on things to see what noise they make), the second file exchanged was “Hello, I am a Nigerian widow with $1m in a bank account that you can help me access…”

Ultimately, the internet and blogs are about us, and we are about “The Real Housewives of Schenectady” and “The world will end in May, 2012 (just like it has at least 200 times before)”.

We’re still gonna need nuclear energy

The nuclear nightmare scenario in Japan might give nuclear energy a bigger black eye than BP gave drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nuclear energy is scarier.  Birds coated in thick black tar don’t bother us as much as the silent killer of radiation and subsequent thyroid cancer.  It’s an exotic experience, outside our normal life, and a gruesome end.  That’s the reason why more people are scared of guns than cars. (Even though cars kill twice as many Americans per year).

But whether you like it or not, we’re still going to need nuclear if we want to end global warming.  Here’s three reasons why:

1) Nuclear is safer than other energy options, surprisingly.  Despite the current crisis, nuclear accidents are isolated and less harmful.   Chernobyl killed 50 people immediately and perhaps 4,000 people over 20 years.  Japan is still in doubt but could be more.  Meanwhile, pollution kills about 3 million people per year.  Nuclear is even safer than rooftop solar, because people die while installing solar panels according to one estimate.

Deaths per Terawatt hour:

Coal – world average               161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)
Coal – China                       278
Coal – USA                         15
Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)
Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)
Biofuel/Biomass                    12
Peat                               12
Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)
Wind                                0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)
Hydro                               0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)
Hydro - world including Banqiao)    1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)
Nuclear                             0.04 (5.9% of world energy)

 

2) It fits in our space.  According to the substantially researched “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air”, by David MacKay, our other options take up a lot of space.  We can’t meet our current energy demands even if we convert 75% of agriculture to biofuels, fill 5% of the land with solar panels, and install wind generators where the wind blows.  Nuclear is a very dense power supply.

3)  Nuclear is three to five times cheaper than other non-carbon producing options.

Energy is a huge component of our overall cost of living.  If we raise its price, we will have to lower our living standards.  Take a room off your house, you can’t afford it.  Sell your car, you can’t afford it.  Eat less food, you can’t afford it.  If you make those sacrifices, you can afford to replace fossil fuels with solar power.  Meanwhile, nuclear is the cheapest non-carbon producing option.

3 to 5 times more money?  That doesn’t sound too bad.  Well, imagine filling your Prius with $20/gallon gas.  That’s $240 a tank, or about $12,000 a year for the average commuter (who also makes just $33,000 a year)

 

iPhone redux

I was wrong about the iPhone last year.  It’s a great phone.  I own one.  Actually, I’ve owned three.  One had a battery problem and the second wiped its mine clean daily.  Still, compared to the crash-a-holic Treo 670, I’ll take it.  Nothing new to see here versus billions of other blogs.  Move along.

Too bad about the iPhone

Certainly, the press is agog over iPhone. This morning, I found 83,500,000 hits for “iPhone” on google. That’s more hits than for “cell phone” or even for nude.   The technorati burble bubble around the iPhone is gigantic.

But let’s be careful.  Does anyone remember the Newton ?  or NeXT computer ?  The Newton started the move to PDAs and portable computers. But it certainly didn’t finish the race in the top 3 (that title goes to Palm, Windows, and RIM). In fact, it didn’t finish at all. The important point here is that despite the recent run of successes, Apple can make market mistakes.  NeXT Software was a market failure (although a financial success for Steve Jobs when sold to Apple for $400m and 1.5m shares of Apple stock).  Jobs is also capable of error.

So it’s possible that this whole iPhone orgy is going to be the Apple Newton of 2007, whose quiet death was only 9 years ago. When I mention this to friends, they have had a few really cogent arguments against me. The first is best presented by the iPod itself, the 80% market share giant of mp3 players. I recall being in a gondola on a ski trip with 4 teenagers. Three of them pulled out their iPods to listen to tunes. The fourth, with clear embarrassment and apology, an iRiver. Even though the iRiver has some technical advantages over the iPod, the iPod is a cultural phenomenon.

There are a couple of unique reasons for this, among them Apple and Jobs clear marketing prowess. One other major reason was market timing. iPods hit a newly emerging world of mp3 players. There were, perhaps, a million mp3 players in the US. Napster was introducing millions of kids to free pirated mp3s on their computers, and those Napsterers wanted to take their songs with them. Not so with the iPhone. There are hundreds of millions of cell phones already in the US. With Jobs early announcement of the iPhone, the competition is already heating up, with LG announcing their look-alike to hit stores ahead of the iPhone.

The second argument, best articulated by Richard Simoni of Asset Management, is that even if the iPhone doesn’t get the 1% of the market that Jobs predicts, the high price and the likely subsidy by Cingular as the exclusive cell provider, will make it far more profitable than the iPod.

Great news for Apple, not so great for the folks trying to dial on that touchscreen while driving, or trying to use the iPhone for business services, or running out of battery after just 5 hours of talk time. Or, for those of us addicted to our DSL or cable modems, trying to get data into the sucker at closer to the speeds of 56kb dial-up modems on your 1998 desktop PC. (I’m using Cingular’s Edge network on this PC while sitting in downtown Palo Alto, CA. I’m getting 209kbps downloads at this moment, vs. 1,500kbps through AT&T’s DSL service.)

So all you Newton fans, stay tuned.  The internet is forever, so this prediction will be as permanent as short-selling GOOG after the IPO.