Linked List: March 11, 2015

Wednesday, 11 March 2015

The Non-VC ‘SimCity’ Approach to Growing a Media Business ★

Interesting piece by Danny Sullivan on bootstrapping a media business in lieu of venture capital:

Third Door Media started in late 2006. It never took investment. We grew our staff as our revenue grew, according to our business plans. In 2008, when the world economy crashed, we hunkered down and came through without losing people. In part, this was because we’d been careful not to over-extend, not to build a large operation beyond what it could support with native revenue.

It’s what I once called the “SimCity” model of growing. I used to often play the game years ago. I would take two approaches. One was to use the “FUNDS” cheat to get all the money I needed to build everything at once. But in doing this, I often found my cities built that way didn’t thrive. Instead, naturally growing my city slowly over time allowed it to stabilize and do well.

Rene Ritchie on Apple Watch’s Interface ★

Rene Ritchie:

The Apple Watch isn’t an iPhone any more than the iPhone is a Mac. Computing has moved from the server room to the desktop to the laptop to the pocket and now onto the wrist. Every time that’s happened, every time it’s moved to a new, more personal place, those of us who were used to it in its old place have become slightly anxious, we’ve become subject to our own expectational debt.

“Expectational debt” — I love that turn of phrase. Wish I’d come up with that.

Update: Several readers peg the originals of “expectational debt” to my friend Merlin Mann. Reader Sawyer Paul points all the way back to episode 6 of “Back to Work”.

Mathew Ingram on Gigaom’s Closing ★

Christopher Massie of Columbia Journalism Review interviews now-former Gigaom editor Mathew Ingram:

Q: Were there any indications that this was going to happen before Monday?

A: No.

Q: You were just totally blindsided?

A: Yeah. And I think the majority of staff were as well. We were writing right up until the announcement. We did get a new CEO [Michael Rolnick] recently, so I think people thought maybe there needed to be some changes — maybe some strategic changes — but there was literally no talk of even layoffs. There was no talk of having to cut back. There were no austerity measures. We just got a phone call Monday afternoon saying “Be on the phone in an hour.” And the CEO said they were shutting it down and we were all out of work.

Brutal.

Responding to Apple Watch ★

Jim Dalrymple flagged an Apple Watch hit piece by Martin McNulty in The Guardian (headline: “Goodbye Apple Fanboy: How the Watchmaker Alienated Its Audience”) for having been written by a guy who’s the chief executive of a product marketing firm that works for several luxury watchmakers — without disclosing that. The Guardian has since amended the article to disclose this.

What I find more interesting than the undisclosed conflict of interest is the desperate nature of his argument. Knowing that he represents watchmakers, his piece comes across as scared. Dismissing the usefulness of Apple Watch is not the angle they should take. The angle for mechanical watchmakers is to double down on what they already have going for them: tradition, distinction, mechanical elegance. We’re surrounded by computing devices already. It’s nice to have something purely mechanical as a break. That’s the angle.

Arguing that Apple has “alienated its audience” just makes this guy — and his clients — look foolish. I’d be furious if I were one of the watchmakers he represents.

The Guardian Backpedals on Whisper App Privacy Violations ★

Elizabeth Dwoskin, reporting for the WSJ:

The Guardian on Tuesday clarified and corrected a series of controversial articles it published late last year about Whisper, a mobile app designed to transmit messages anonymously.

The U.K. newspaper, which had alleged that Whisper violated users’ privacy, added a paragraphs-long clarification at the top of a main article in the series. It also added a link to the clarification to other articles in the series, and removed a commentary from its website.

Not a good day for The Guardian. This is a serious ding to their credibility.

Apple Engineer Explains How the New MacBook Came to Be ★

It’s great that the new Apple allows engineers talk about things like this publicly.