New Work Diggs

On Monday we moved into a new office space at 11 Madison. It's a magnificent landmark Art Deco building with an interesting (albeit stunted) history.

 












It was built during the great depression and was originally supposed to be the soaring skyscraper seen in the sketch on the right. But the building ran into financial trouble and they stopped building at the yellow arrow, resulting in the smaller tower seen on the left sketch. 


There's a magnificent lobby and although security would not let me take pictures, I managed to sneak one in:

Best of all though is the stunning view on the Empire State Building directly from my desk:

Actually, best of all is that 11 Madison, one of my favorite NYC restaurants is in the lobby...

Kid Harpoon - A Take Away Show

Kid Harpoon plays acoustic versions of some of his songs in a Paris park (in the 12th arrondissement, incidentally my sister used to live around the corner from there). The first song is really great. I'd never hear of Kid Harpoon so merci la blogotheque... More on his MySpace page. It's sweet pop, but not sickeningly sweet.

Facebook Facts

Digital Buzz has a fascinating infographic illustrating Facebook's transformation from a bunch of guys coding a nifty application from a Harvard dorm room to a full scale Web platform with 400 mllion users worldwide. 

One stat that jumps out at me: 

The average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook.  

Based on that extraordinary level of user engagement, it seems that the missing link for Facebook is still how to make (serious) money from it. Facebook's finances are not made public, but most estimates figure 2009 revenues around $500-600 million. Not shabby for a six year old company that's still under VC ownership/funding...

Nevertheless, they still haven't found the way to convert this amazing level of engagement into the kind of money that an ABC or Google are able to extract. I'm really intrigued to see if Facebook is able to find a "killer advertising app" that taps into all this user information or if it's going to be several revenue sources (virtual currency, apps, advertising etc.). Whatever comes first I guess. Assuming one does of course...  

Monkey Business: The Colbert Report reports

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Darwin Deez: Weird Spring Pop

Yep, it's a pretty wacky video. But it's also a pretty catchy single. If Napoleon Dynamite started his own band he'd probably sound (and would certainly look) something like Darwin Deez. Needless to say, the Brits love him already.

The Morning Benders

This is Promises from Big Echo, the Morning Benders' velvety new record. They're going to be one of the my music revelations for 2010. And just to drive the point home, and to brag a bit... Me and my mate Lolo have tickets to see them when they play Mercury Lounge ending their U.S. tour.

Facebook Bigger than Google

At least according to Hitwise's latest data for the week ending March 13, 2010: Facebook beat Google as the most visited U.S. Web site for that week.

Facebook had actually reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day (as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th). Presumably, a lot of people posting updates about their progressing state of drunkeness and overfedness...

Marketing Pilgrim points out  that Hitwise's methodology is fraught as they're comparing all of Facebook (videos etc...) against only google.com. Thereby leaving out Gmail, YouTube and other Google properties. Good point, but it does raise a couple of others:

While Hitwise may be comparing full oranges to orange quarters (rather than apples), the methodology is consistent over time and does show Facebook's growth on a property Vs. property basis. And it excludes any Facebook data for traffic from mobile phones... In other words, the headline overpromises but the data do point in the right direction. 

Beyond the ooh ahhing at social media's incredible growth and Facebook's in particular, what's interesting are the implications in the way people are using the Internet. And their relationship to the Web is changing. 

It's not going on THE Internet anymore, it's increasingly MY Internet. In fact the very vocabulary of "going online" or "being online" are starting to sound archaic as people are always online and updating their Facebook profiles through blackberries and iPhones.

Search was the big thing of the 2000s and its one-way information retrieval process is now being overtaken by Connectivity (and a multiplicity of (largely social) information exchanges. Social media's growth is hardly a scoop, but the shift and rebalancing from information search/retrieval to information exchange marks a new relationship and level of intimacy between Internet technology and people. 

Primary 1: The Blues

Perfect music for a monday morning.