Mobile Messaging is rapidly becoming the primary way users engage socially on mobile.
Path is a well designed app with a singular purpose. For users who solely want to share with a small group of friends, and share everything with the whole group, it is very effective. And of course, it is wonderfully designed. Just.me isn't better or worse, it's just very different. Just.me is a messaging application, not just a sharing app.
As users replace usage of the web with a mobile, app-centric ecosystem, the phone becomes the center of gravity. In this mobile world, Facebook is just one app on the phone.
I escaped London in 1997 because it was hard to raise capital.
As users flock to Vine, Snapchat and, previously, Instagram, the social platforms are challenged to continue to be the primary provider of these services to the growing army of smartphone users.
As Android, iPhone and other mobile platforms grow, we are moving away from the page-based Internet. The new Internet is app centric and often message-centric.
The human race is already social, and the smartphone has everything needed to enable them to act on their social needs.
I feel like 'Just.me' is not successful, but it is not a failure.
Would I advise early-stage companies against taking debt? One hundred percent yes.
It's very hard to cheaply build anything significant in a multi-platform, mobile world.
Mobile will probably disrupt much of what we know of web 2.0.
We've patented the idea... of using the address book as a place to declare that you like a brand. By so doing, the brand has now got your permission to send you personal messages - it could be money off offers, coupons, promotions, just information, whatever is appropriate.
Phones were created as social tools. Smartphones are especially good at being social, integrating text, voice, video and images in an endless number of apps that can serve a user's needs, and all without the need for a web-based social network.
Sponsored stories are not a great way to monetize mobile traffic. The phone is way more of a publishing tool than a reading tool. The attention users pay to the streams on mobile is far less than on the desktop.
The Facebook of 2011, the Twitter of 2011 and the Google of 2011 are all understood to be in need of reinvention for a mobile-centric world with no clear strategy to make revenue.
