Howdy, I'm MG Siegler. I’m a general partner at Google Ventures and a columnist for TechCrunch. This is where I collect things.
Selected works. Some haikus. Some investments. Ask away. Archive.
Showing 19 posts tagged web
What we know for sure is this: monocultures always make more & faster progress in the near term when they’re stewarded by strong, vibrant leaders. But over time you get stuck. Companies change, sensibilities change. And then you’ve got all the technology, and all talent, and all of the best thinkers, all trapped on one technology stack.
Good thoughts.
Fascinating post by David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale.
I think about what constantly-flowing information means for blogging. In some ways this is Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, etc. But what if someone started a stand-alone blog that wasn’t a series of posts, but rather a continuous stream of blurbs, almost like chat. For example: “I just heard…” or “Microsoft launching this is stupid, here’s why…” — things like that. More like an always-on live blog, I guess.
It’s sort of strange to me that blogs are still based around the idea of fully-formed articles of old. This works well for some content, but I don’t see why it has to be that way for all content. The real-time communication aspect of the web should be utilized more, especially in a mobile world.
People aren’t going to want to sit on one page all day, especially if there’s nothing new coming in for a bit. But push notifications could alleviate this as could Twitter as a notification layer. And with multiple people on “shift” doing updates, there could always be fresh content, coming in real time.
Just thinking out loud here.
Look at that. Mobile hugely up, and personal computer usage for Facebook is actually down.
Take heed, and ignore this trend at your peril. Mobile isn’t the future anymore. It’s the present.
And I’ll just add that while there’s recently been quite a bit of talk about going back to “web first”, Facebook’s numbers are especially important here. Yes, a lot of early adopters are still heavy traditional web (meaning desktop/laptop-based) users. But Facebook is at full mainstream scale with a billion-plus users and the trend is clear. If you’re thinking big and for the future, you have to think mobile.
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I’d really love to be able to play these on the web at some point, SoundCloud & Tumblr. I refuse to install Flash to do that. They work great in the iOS app though! Make them work like that please.
Sarah Perez for TechCrunch:
Tracks have strange double circles on them in the play queue. I click them and they turn into one circle. Click again. Back to two circles. Somewhere, Myspace probably thinks this means something. Kelly Clarkson! No, not Kelly Clarkson. Kelly Clarkson! No.
Sounds awesome.
John Lilly:
What I mean is this: when you try to take one technology — any technology — and have it mimic another one — you’re starting from a tough place. Specifically, taking the technology of the web and making it look like a native app.
You’re always at a disadvantage — we can argue whether it’s possible to get to parity or not. I think it’s generally possible to get to parity in user experience + performance at any given time, but a fact of life is that the owners of the platform — the organization who ships the operating system — is always moving forward and will naturally advantage themselves — parity today means you’re behind tomorrow. More than that, though, once people have established a good way to do things (like getting apps from the app store instead of going to the web), parity doesn’t even really matter. Being as good as a native app isn’t really the point. You’ve got to be a LOT better than what exists.
Great points. All you seem to hear about today (and really, for the past few years) is that web apps are closing the gap quickly versus native apps. But what never seems to be acknowledged is that native apps continue to improve as well with better API access to new, exciting functionality that may or may not be device-specific.
It has long felt like a race that can’t be won. And I’m with Lilly, the truth is that it’s a race that’s foolish to focus on. The web has other strengths that native apps can’t match. That should be the focus. That’s how it “won” the last time. You win a war by making a battle come to you.
A chat I had the other day with Vibhu Norby, co-founder of Origami Labs, based on his post about pivoting away from the mobile-first mentality.
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![thenextweb:
Earlier this year, Gartner predicted that widespread adoption of HTML5 was still 5-10 years away. Kendo UI’s survey indicates that it’s much quicker than that — in fact, adoption seems to be happening immediately with 51% of respondents saying that HTML5 is important to their job right away, with 31% saying within the next 12 months. (via HTML5 use is real: majority of developers find it important for their jobs in next 12 month [Study] - The Next Web)
Said every survey ever the past 5 years…](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_md22mztVVl1qejjfeo1_500.png)
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Earlier this year, Gartner predicted that widespread adoption of HTML5 was still 5-10 years away. Kendo UI’s survey indicates that it’s much quicker than that — in fact, adoption seems to be happening immediately with 51% of respondents saying that HTML5 is important to their job right away, with 31% saying within the next 12 months. (via HTML5 use is real: majority of developers find it important for their jobs in next 12 month [Study] - The Next Web)
Said every survey ever the past 5 years…
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It’s always a joke until it’s not.
Gregg Keizer for Computerworld:
Adobe today issued a surprise update for Flash Player that patched 25 critical vulnerabilities in the ubiquitous media software.
It’s great that Microsoft can drop everything else they’re doing to try to match Google’s speed in fixing critical vulnerabilities in a third-party piece-of-shit plug-in. But I prefer Apple’s method: stop supporting Flash.
My Safari web browser is shockingly unaffected by these latest 25 vulnerabilities.
