Watch Lebron and Superman Tonight With ALL of Your Friends!

For a long time I have been arguing that the social network is an unnatural place to connect with your friends. In real life, i have different friends in different contextual settings. There are Synagogue friends (no chatting there), Baseball buddies, Political colleagues, Poker buddies (not mine) etc. Today the social world though has much duplication and is a blunt tool. I use Linkedin for business, Twitter (full disclosure: Benchmark company) for link sharing and Facebook for more casual friends but there is a lot of overlap and no context except my status update. What we have always needed is to bring the appropriate friends from all of these social networks to a context.

Facebook Connect was the first step in that direction, enabling my Facebook friends to be with me on Techcrunch, at the Obama inauguration or at one of the other 5000 sites FB connect supports. But I have colleagues and friends on other social nets. Tonight Gigya (full disclosure: Benchmark Company) and Turner are letting you watch the NBA conference championship with all of your friends and all Basketball fans across the world who are not yet on your social net but are guys you would high 5 with at the game or the bar (screen shot below).

Alongside the live video feed of Lebron vs. Dwight Howard, you can invite friends who are in your Facebook AND Myspace AND Twitter networks plus join the chat with thousands of basketball fans world wide and watch it together. You can virtually high-5 and discuss the game with all of those friends and fans. Dwight Howard makes a spectacular block, you can ooh, aah and thump and be heard outside your living room. Want to trade coaching advice whether Orlando should foul Lebron on a last second 3-point shot attempt. Share it and go on the record. You will get feedback in real time. 

So have fun sharing a virtual Bud, High-5, and coaching from your couch with an audience. Watch the game online with your all of your basketball buddies. Watching live sports will never be the same again! 

If you want to start inviting friends to the game, click here!

Is the Israel Policy Forum Really Pro-Israel?

Our good family friend Morton Landowne penned the following letter to the Israel Policy Forum Executive Director Nick Bunzl in response to the IPF's ad in the New York Times. Judge for yourself (a copy of the ad is below and the full size ad is in the previous link). I will add one comment to the ad. "Yes you can" and "Yes you should" are two vastly different comments.

Dear Mr. Bunzl:

I am writing to express my disgust with your “pro-Israel” organization’s $60,000+ gift to the depleted coffers of the New York Times that I encountered on Page A13 of this morning’s edition.

First of all, I find the omission of any reference to the newly, and democratically, elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel, to be a calculated insult.  No, you will point out, this advertisement was intended to address Mr. Obama’s meetings with all “leaders from the region this month.” However, the implication I draw from the ad is that Mr. Obama’s “determination to achieve progress” is based on “implementation without delay” and that Israel shares some of the blame for that situation.

Secondly, I am incredulous that your message ignores the most important threat facing that region:  the creation of a nuclear-armed Iran.  If you are “pro-Israel,” wouldn't you think to urge Mr. Obama to treat that scenario with the seriousness with which Israel views it?

A few more questions:  Why do you accept as fact that the legal demolition of illegally built houses in Jerusalem is an impediment to a resolution of the “Israeli-Palestinian Conflict?”  How dare you, a “pro-Israel organization” accept as fact that Israel has created “superfluous checkpoints and unnecessary roadblocks?”  What is the basis of that information?  A press release from Khaleed Mashall?  Why must the Gaza Strip be “reconstructed” if the conditions that led to its destruction have not been ameliorated?  Why must the “Arab Peace Initiative” be embraced if there has not yet been clarification that it will include a renunciation of the “Right of Return?” 

To me, your statement “We Support You, Mr. President,” is a blanket endorsement of unilateral pressure on the sovereign state of Israel.  If you are truly “pro-Israel” then you must know that no government of Israel could long survive if it ignored true gestures leading to peace.  It was Menachem Begin who invited Anwar Sadat to Israel and negotiated the most successful peace treaty in Israel’s history.  It was Ariel Sharon who evacuated Gaza.  Why do you preemptively insult Prime Minister Netanyahu by stating in a full page ad in the New York Times that the President of the United States has to “insist” on steps that would pressure Israel?  No pressure, whatsoever, would be necessary, if Mr. Obama were able to offer Israel a true peace from its neighbors:  recognition as a Jewish State, secure borders, and  monetary  compensation for all those truly displaced by the U.N. Partition.

If the Israel Policy Forum is in fact “an American pro-Israel organization which supports sustained United States leadership to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” then you will give the duly elected government of Israel the benefit of the doubt and urge Mr. Obama to give Israel the assurances it needs to let down its guard.  Nothing else is necessary.

Yours truly,

Morton Landowne

Big Opportunity In Entire Wireless Web in my Pocket

I can't help but escape the following futuristic prediction, you will carry your personal version of the web in your pocket. Let me unpack that sentence:

Carry - on your mobile phone

Personal - Because you will not need the whole web and won't have room to store it all and you only need what YOU want.

Web - Because that is what you want from your phone

In Your Pocket - Because it won't be able to get to the device over the air.

This WSJ Article entitled Demands on Network are an iPhone Hangup gets it right. The laws of physics won't allow wireless bandwidth hogs to be carried synchronously (or asynchronously) over the air, especially not at peak times. This will force networks to build ever-more capacity and it still will not solve the problem. However, there is a solution.

Storage capacity is still increasing at a rapid rate (way faster than bandwidth) and its footprint is shrinking. A terabyte of storage in your home can be less than $100! And today you can already pack 32GB+ on your mobile phone. We are not far from the day where you will be able to get a terabyte of storage in your mobile phone. It is much cheaper to build in storage than it is to build cell towers, even without the physics problem.

What we need is software for that phone that downloads your personal web to your phone and lets you browse it locally. It needs algorithms that are smart enough to know your browsing habits and caching mechanisms to keep it updated. If you need to download the delta because you decided you need something new, that is no big deal. It also needs to do something uniquely mobile which is pre-cache on the phone relevant local data, since much mobile web use is for local information. 

That is the future: Your music library, your email and YOUR WEB in your pocket. We just need the software to get us there. Drop me an email if you have figured it out.

Incredimail Earnings

Ofer Adler and team just put up a great quarter. I posted on Incredimail's Q1 results on Seeking Alpha. So if you want to read it you need to hop over there.

Status Update

I am testing a new status update widget powered by Gigya Socialize (Full disclosure: Gigya is a Benchmark company) on the right side of the blog. Feel free to try it out and tell me what you think.