The Big Reveal

Now that the conference is over, it's finally safe to talk about what we've been laboring over in secret these three long months. Geoff and I left Clarium to found Udorse, a new kind of web application Geoff calls a 'visual endorsement engine'. The core idea is pretty simple - we give you a platform to tag interesting stuff in your pictures and link those tags anywhere on the web. To the extent you tag something that has a partnership agreement with us, a link there becomes a referral that generates a couple of cents every time someone clicks through or a couple of bucks every time someone buys something. Then whenever Udorse gets paid, users get paid. Your tags (we call them 'udorsements') function just like micro-sized endorsement deals, from the stuff you are already sharing online.

We applied to and were accepted as finalists at this year's TechCrunch50 conference, so we had to keep our plans secret so as not to spoil the big reveal at the show. But that's all over now, and you can see video of Geoff's riveting stage performance above.

Since this is like the sixth or seventh time I've taken this blog out of semi-retirement, you'd think I wouldn't make a big deal about but you would be WRONG, mister.

The Efficient News Hypothesis Fallacy?

The theory behind the efficient market hypothesis as applied to asset prices was that they would reflect all the information known in the market, and therefore the real underlying value of the priced assets. Trouble is, investors are strategic, and so the more of them know about and believe in the EMH, the more of them can free-ride on the pricing information produced by other investors, and the less true the EMH becomes.

I think there is, or will soon be, a similar dynamic in news and content aggregation. The more people try to get their content from aggregators, free riding on the search costs of others, the lower quality the aggregators become. As more people rely more on content that bubbles up through recommendations, the more you'll get bubbles in attention that resemble asset bubbles.

The question is, what happens when attention bubbles pop? Do they pop? Attention spent isn't a tradable asset, probably entirely a sunk cost. Is spending attention on aggregated content any worse than on US Weekly?

Listia is Pretty Sweet

I got a bunch of mentions this morning to Listia, a cool auctions-for-free-stuff site that makes it easier to coordinate giving stuff away. Users bid on your listing with points from the service (you get a starting balance when you join) so you end up with just one committed donee to deal with, instead of some rabid Craigslist mob. Going to try this over the weekend to get rid of some extra stuff from the move.

Multiple channels point to TechCrunch.

It's On With Alexa Chung

The office is actually full of enormous televisions, but Big Hedge Fund has them tuned to the financial news all day, so I hadn't seen of MTV's new show until today. Isn't it only like a month old? Because Chung is a complete natural. Someone at MTV deserves a gold star for hiring her.

Is it like racist against the UK to compare this to Craig Furgeson's start on the Late Late Show?

Dawn Patrol

Invite-only beta goes live in one week. No rest for the wicked.

Best Practices

Got the first draft of our Terms of Service for Udorse back from Big Law Firm - they're ... aggressive. My friends at the Berkman Center would flip their shit. Time for a redraft...

CSS is Awesome

I approve of this product:

CSS IS AWESOME by stevenfrank
cheap coffee mug on www.Zazzle.com

(via BoingBoing)

Original Development Insights #1

IE6 sucks.

The Swipple Stallion

The current Achewood strips, about writing bodice-ripping erotica into the Williams-Sonoma catalog, have me grinning ear to ear.

1:45 Cycle

I am old and slow. That's what I get for only swimming 3 times in the past year. And aging.

Must train harder. Only 6 months until the next alumni game!

The Eternal Recurrence of Weblog

Back! Out from under the NDA and in the news. I've left Clarium (the hedge fund that required me to shut this place down for a while) to co-found Udorse. This will allow me to replace my previous content of no posts about the financial markets with new content of willfully obfuscatory posts about software development! Progress!

24 Hours to Go

This seems appropriate:

What We Need More Of Is Science

Water + Cornstarch + Subwoofer = Awesome

NDA

For real this time, guys.

Trapped in Amber

Important Note: Recent decisions, like Heller discussed below, are NOT tested on the bar exam.

Trevor, stop reading the news.

Individual Gun Rights

It amazes me how far to the right I've moved on gun control in the last few years, but the recent decision in Heller strikes me as entirely reasonable. Scalia is way less entertaining than usual when he's being reasonable, but one takes what one can get.

Honors and Signaling

What's that? The DOJ under Bush systematically excluded left-of-center applicants from the DOJ honors program? The Federalist Society is a vehicle for affirmative action for conservatives? This is me not surprised.

Most Original Blawg Post Ever

Studying for the bar? Sucks.

Totally sucks.

Without A Net

1. I graduated! See shiny new title above.

2. I just quit the firm. 3 months before I even started. I still think it's a great place and would still be there in a minute, but I was seduced away from my legal career before it even began by some crafty financial services wizards, who used the cunning technique of getting my best friends from college to recruit me.

So, now the real fun begins.

Astronauts and Marriage

All oxygen tanks and massive bespoke shoes.