I’ll share my findings here.

When what you’re building turns into a phenomenon accidentally – you really can’t take too much credit for it’s evolution and must consider yourself more an agent of change.  That’s exactly what the Twitter team is (or was) up until now.  In fact, I’d go out on a limb and say that now that the Twitter folks are riding this bronco of a company, they hardly know what to do with it in it’s current fashion.

Jack Dorsey lends much of his fame to his reign at Twitter – but past success means very little in the valley and many entrepreneurs spend the rest of their lives trying to outdo their first startup which came across as “beginner’s luck”.  Square is a lofty idea and only someone with super grandiose position in the tech world who could generate buzz could launch an idea into the buzz stratosphere.  If not someone then a massive company with dollars to spend on development and marketing and with a stronghold position in an existing market.  I’m talking about Verifone and PAYware.

We’ll have to see who wins in the end (or exactly what winning means) but I suspect that it will take much more than Techcrunch and Mashable articles to get Square adopted by retailers far and wide.  I’ve been surprised before though…

While on Facebook, I noticed a few things that I think are reasons why it is so wildly successful:

[1] Things are so intuitive – from how to add a friend to how to search for them; things just make sense.

[2] The thing feels so polished – yet so “hacked together”.  They are using PHP and they don’t care about hiding it (like a whole bunch of other sites that feel some kind of envy from the Ruby-on-Rails crowd that they have to keep the extension from showing in browser URLs).  They don’t mind having simple querystring’ed URLs to fetch data because it just works.

[3] Things feel so open – yet so closed.  If you’re friends with somebody on Facebook, you get a magnifying glass into their profile.  However, if you don’t know them – you’ve got to earn your way in.  That makes the experience much more intimate than voyeuristic (which is what Myspace is all about).

Okay so that’s just 3 things above but I believe they are worth mentioning – so many sites out there OVER-engineer products and services when, at the end of the day, it all doesn’t matter!  Case in point: Myspace works so well because it’s so stupid and simple.  Who knew people would learn HTML to snazzy up their profile pages?  Myspace themselves didn’t after admitting the HTML “feature” was an accident.

1. The stories often bring down the sites due to heavy traffic.
2. The traffic is “shallow” and tapers off after a few weeks.

What this signifies in my opinion is that people are curious as to what’s happening in the technology startup world but not necessarily looking to use many of the services that are talked about (unless they are really compelling).  Instead, they digest the articles as they would The New York Times.  I suspect that similar websites (like Read/Write Web and Mashable) face the same problem.

I discovered KillerStartups  a few days ago after reading a post about them on franticindustries.  A RSVC (read, submit, vote, comment) website like Digg, I think this is the kind of “feature” TechCrunch and similar news sites really need to create a different kind of value – allow research to develop through the community.   They have the reader base to launch something like this fairly easily and I’m sure we’d learn a lot about where to focus entrepreneurial talent.  That being said – the Techcrunch reader base is very techie (read: early adopter) so I’m not sure whether results would be representative of a wider audience.

I think it’s neat that of all organizations, he’s joining a Web Hosting Automation company.  Ensim is one company that has traction with a product I find technically inferior to other automation offerings out there.  This is only due to their “bundling” it with servers that are leased by datacenters.

Software-as-a-Service is another name for Application Service Provider – companies like FreshBooks.com and Salesforce.com are Invoice Management and CRM Applications, respectively speaking, that offer subscription-based services.  These applications run on servers.  Like web hosting, they also need to be maintained 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by people.  The characteristics of these servers are normally no different than web hosting servers.  There is a web serice, database service, and e-mail service.   So, not much has changed except possibly the structure and focus of the business towards one common goal.
Those who are concerned that I am going to let go of people and close down a section of the business are mistaken and should really speak to me if they feel a little bit insecure about their future.  However, I am not going to put anybody’s job at risk.  There are some employees that have been local to our company since it’s inception in early 2004.   Despite other employees who have come and gone during this time, these special employees are to be cherished and can expect to be taken care of now and into the future.
I understand that some feel the need to leave the company to explorer darker parts of the ocean at other organizations.  Those that decide to follow the Tripod Computing path, I’m convinced, will experience an adventure they will not get at any other company.

Speaking of other companies, I personally find working at large companies boring and fruitless.  I’ve heard from many who say “I shifted to XYZ company and now I’m at a large company and, intially it feels great but with this change, I now have to wonder why the idiot next to me got promoted and I didn’t even though I’m more qualified than him.”  And then eventually “Can you believe I now work for this stupid person?”  And sometimes “Gosh, I feel like a nobody at this huge company”.

Working at small companies gives you a chance to take on some special responsibilites, get proactive, and see opportunities that you would never find possible at their larger counterparts (usually due to arrogance in upper management and lack of foresight).
All in all, don’t worry.  Be happy.  We’ve got a long way to go!

Well here it is folks!  Take a peek!

http://photos.tripodcomputing.com