This post isn't news worthy or thought provoking. I have to write it though.

I need to share it because it is both eye candy and irrefutable evidence that Twitter COO Dick Costolo (@dickc) moonlights as Bigfoot. There is no mistaking that gate. Put a backpack on the really hairy one and it is done deal.

See it for yourself:

Okay, so maybe it's a stretch. But in Texas it will be known as fact throughout the land. You can bet on that.

The new Twitter headquarters has a hip aesthetic and strange penchant for all things deer like. The hardest thing to get over when reviewing the set, besides Costolo's striking similarity, is that the Twitter logo in their waiting room isn't blue. It's kind of creepy. You can see some select shots below and the entire set here.

Photos by: Dustin Diaz (@ded)

DISCLOSURE OF MATERIAL CONNECTION: http://cmp.ly/0

New Twitter HQ and Proof COO is Bigfoot is a post from: TechStartups.com

The conversations started out around the book, but quickly evolved in the work that I do and how I think about investing. As part of that, I explained that I learn an enormous amount by both thinking about the future, but also reading science fiction from the past that maps to the present time.

For example, I decided this would be the summer of Dick. I bought all of Philip K. Dick's books (about 60 of them), put them on a shelf in my Keystone house, and have been systematically working my way through them whenever I'm in Keystone (I've read about 15 of them). I'm completely fascinated by how Dick in the 1960's thinks about computers and travel in the early part of the 21st century. Some of his projections of what computers will be like completely miss (Auxtape, Magtape, or some other variation of tape is the storage device", computers have sexy voices) while others are a lot closer (computers have evolved into learning machines that are self-correcting). Travel, on the other hand, is a complete miss you can get from Europe to the US in five minutes in Dick's worlds.

When Kurt Vonnegut died, I did the same thing as tribute to him I bought all the Vonnegut books and read them in order (I still have a few left). As I read Dick, I recalled that I felt Vonnegut sometimes got computers right and sometimes got them wrong, but also completely missed it on travel.

After seeing the latest Star Trek in the theater, Amy and I Netflixed Star Trek Season 1 and started watching it from the beginning (I've seen most of them, but I was never fanatical about Star Trek so there are a few I missed.) Same drill it's cool to see Spock's bluetooth-like ear implant communicator thingy, but why the fuck does the elevator take so long to get between levels on the Enterprise? And what's with the sexy computer voices and all the flashing lights?

When I think about all of the information I synthesize both by going backward in time and reading forward (Dick, Vonnegut, Heinlein, Asimov) as well as starting today and going forward 5 30 years (Clarke, Suarez, Stross, Banks, Stephenson, Gibson, Sterling) I realize that I'm creating a subconscious framework in my brain for a lot of the stuff I'm investing in. Sometimes it maps directly; sometimes it's the stuff that misses that it so interesting.

Oh and it's really fun! BTW, where is that jetpack I was promised (still my favorite West Wing moment of all time):

Leo McGarry: My generation never got the future it was promised Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh Lyman: The personal computer
Leo McGarry: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

Steve Gillmor is going to love this, of course, since he proclaimed that RSS was dead and Twitter was the new messaging protocol bus, or something to that effect. Rest In Peace, RSS, he wrote, saying It's time to get completely off RSS and switch to TwitterAll my RSS feeds are in Google Reader. I don't go there any more. Since all my feeds are in Google Reader and I don't go there, I don't use RSS anymore.

Santosh Jayaram, Twitter's existing head of operations (and also from Google), will presumably remain with the company and report to Costolo.

Costolo, who is also an early Twitter investor, is someone who has actual experience building scalable infrastructures, which Twitter sorely needs. The company hasn't launched any new features in recent memory, and continues to have regular downtime. In fact, Twitter's inability to build features and keep the service live is a serious competitive disadvantage. Costolo can presumably fix all that.

Twitter is actively hiring more senior people, we've heard. In July they hired Alexander Macgillivray, Google's associate general counsel for Product and IP, as their new General Counsel.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

Costolo and his team, based in Chicago, joined Google two years ago when Feedburner was acquired for $100 million. Like some other Feedburner employees he has moved on to other projects within Google. He currently reports to Neal Mohan, an exec in the Ads group, as the group product manager for social ads.

Costolo has no plans for his next job/startup. But something tells me that in a few months we'll be hearing about his next venture. He turned $8 million in venture capital into a $100 million payday. More than a few venture capitalists will be taking him to lunch at their first opportunity.

Interesting side note: Costolo, who was a stand up comedian in a former life, is rumored to be the author of a Twitter account mocking a well known Silicon Valley angel investor, Chris Sacca. Zingers include Headed to Africa for charity kite-surfing event. Kites made from t-shirts of child soldiers in Ivory Coast to draw attention to their plight and Going over my SXSW talk on why I should have equity in your startup. Getting inspired just proofreading it. Sacca's real Twitter account is here.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

From the 1976 Olympics, the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics history by Nadia Comaneci on the uneven parallel bars. This more impressive routine also earned a 10, as did this balance beam routine.

Olga Korbut's uneven parallel bars routine from the 1972 Olympics (above). Love that dismount! The skills done on the bars today are so much more athletic but Korbut's routine was a magical flowing performance. At the rate the women today are going, the uneven parallel bars will soon be replaced by the high bar used in the men's competitions...they barely use the bottom bar anymore.

My recollection of the men's 4x100m relay at the 1984 Olympics involves the US team trailing after three legs when Carl Lewis (still my favorite Olympian) seizes the baton from Calvin Smith and thunders down the last 100 meters, singlehandedly winning the race and smashing the world record. The reality was somewhat different. The American team was way ahead when Lewis got the baton but it still is amazing to watch him pull away from the rest of the field like that. Bolt-like, innit?

A similar pulling away occurred in 1996 by Michael Johnson in the 200 meters. No one even came close to threatening his world record for 12 years until the emergence of Usain Bolt.

In 1988, Greg Louganis hit his head on the board on his third-to-last dive in the preliminaries of the men's springboard. He returned to qualify for the next round and eventually won the gold medal in the event.

Bob Beamon smashed the world record in the long jump by almost two feet at the 1968 Olympics. His record stood for almost 23 years until Mike Powell broke it in 1991.

Also at the '68 Games, Dick Fosbury unveiled his unique high jumping technique, the Fosbury Flop, which became the preferred technique in this event. For comparison, here are a couple of videos showing the other techniques that were in use at the time.

Jesse Owens' 100 meter win at the 1936 Games in Berlin.

After his hamstring popped in the semifinals of the 400 meters at the 1992 Olympics, Derek Redmond, aided by his father, finished the race to roars from the crowd. Just thinking about this makes me cry.

Speaking of tear-inducing performances, Kerri Strug hobbled up to the vault runway on a bum ankle and hit a 9.712 on her final vault in the team competition at the 1996 Games, landing more or less perfectly on one foot, clinching a victory for the US team. Or so the story goes. As with all mythology, the truth is present but not entirely adhered to. As it turned out, the US team had enough of a lead on the Russian team that Strug's last vault was unnecessary. But it hardly dimishes the moment for Strug. At the time, she thought she had to do the vault for the medal and she went out there and stuck it.

And finally, Svetlana Khorkina on the uneven parallel bars at the 1996 Games. For reasons I don't fully understand, Khorkina is probably my favorite female Olympian ever.

Update: From the 1964 Games, here's a video of Billy Mills coming from behind in the 10,000 meters. I have no idea how he sprints that fast after running more than six miles. (thx, nivan)

Instead, let's just assume for the moment that Microsoft succeeds in its bid for Yahoo.

What would a Microsoft/Yahoo merger mean for startups in Silicon Valley?

Some smart people whom I respect a great deal believe that a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would be bad for Silicon Valley startups.

Says Bill Burnham, for example: "By swallowing up Yahoo, Microsoft will be removing one of the biggest and most active acquirors of start-ups in Silicon Valley... [making] M&A less competitive in general and [reducing] the # of potential exits... [which is] bad news for Internet [startups] and their VC backers anyway you look at it."

I respectfully disagree; I think that a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would have practically no impact on any high-quality Silicon Valley startup.

And here's why:

First, Yahoo has simply not been all that active in buying Silicon Valley Internet startups -- nor, for that matter, has Microsoft and Google -- contrary to popular perception.

Since Terry Semel's arrival as CEO, and continuing since his departure, Yahoo has become quite conservative when it comes to buying startups.

Yahoo only bought a relative handful of companies in 2007. The big ones were Right Media and Blue Lithium in the advertising space -- where Yahoo was highly motivated to make progress -- and Zimbra in the email space. The small number of other acquisitions (three in the US, I believe -- Mybloglog, Rivals, and Buzztracker) were tiny enough that Yahoo didn't even have to disclose the purchase prices.

Similarly, Microsoft bought surprisingly few companies in 2007. aQuantive was the big dog, and Microsoft was similarly motivated by a high degree of urgency to get on the advertising bus. Apart from that, you're looking at a very small number of very small deals, such as Screentronic and Jellyfish -- fine companies, I am sure, but tiny deals.

And even Google, which did more deals than Microsoft and Yahoo combined in 2007, only did a coule of sizeable ones -- Doubleclick (again that advertising thing), and Postini in email. And, Feedburner got a fine exit from Google given that it hadn't raised much equity funding. But most of the other companies Google bought largely to acquire engineers, and perhaps nascent products that hadn't yet shipped -- not doubles or triples or even necessarily singles from the perspective of venture-funded Valley startups.

Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google are only buying a relatively small number of smaller companies at all today -- so given that, taking Yahoo, or even Microsoft for that matter, out of the M&A races isn't going to reduce the number of deals going down each year by very much.

Second, the spectrum of companies that are doing Internet M&A is surprisingly broad, and, drawing from lists of deals from just 2005-2007, includes names like:

• Akamai
• Amazon
• American Greetings
• AOL
• CBS
• Cisco
• CNet
• Comcast
• Digital River
• Disney
• eBay
• Expedia
• HP
• IAC
• Jupiter Media
• Liberty Media
• Marchex
• MercadoLibre
• Monster
• Motricity
• NBC Universal
• New York Times
• News Corp
• Omniture
• Priceline
• Publicis
• Real
• Sabre
• Scripps
• Shutterfly
• Sony
• Valueclick
• Viacom
• WPP

So the base of buyers for Internet startups is considerably more diversified than you might think.

Third, consider what's likely to happen next.

Many of the traditional media companies -- in the US and overseas -- are looking at their core businesses today and seeing either rapid or imminent deterioration. This is certainly true for television, radio, music, newspapers, and magazines, and quite possibly also true for movies (given the decline in ticket sales and the recent apparent stalling out of the DVD market). And this is also true -- or will be true -- for a pretty broad range of various other businesses that are getting touched by the Internet.

For historical reasons -- skepticism about the potential of the Internet, combined with the false hope presented to many traditional businesses by the dot com crash of 2000-2002 -- many of these traditional companies are not yet appropriately positioned for an Internet-dominated future.

And now, if the Microsoft/Yahoo deal does go through, those same companies in many cases will be looking down a very scary double-barreled shotgun of an ascendant Google and an armored-up Microsoft, aimed right at their lunch, if you know what I mean.

I'm pretty confident guessing that the level of concern and even panic among many traditional companies -- particularly media companies -- is only going to escalate from here, as traditional non-Internet businesses in various sectors deteriorate and consumers continue moving en masse to the Internet.

And from there, it's not hard to guess that Internet M&A is likely to heat up considerably over the next several years, compared to the last several years, across a very interesting and surprisingly diverse cross-section of buyers.

Fourth, new buyers appear on a regular basis.

It wasn't that long ago that Google would not have gone on anyone's list as a significant buyer of other companies.

In the meantime, Facebook has emerged as a company with considerable financial firepower and is already starting to do M&A.

If past is prologue, several new buyers of one form or another will pop up over the next five years, and one or two of them will probably be on the "top buyers" list in 2010 or 2012 -- when you'd be selling a company you start today -- even though we probably haven't even heard their names yet.

Think also about the telecom companies, the mobile carriers, the Japanese consumer electronics companies, the Korean conglomerates, the mobile handset makers -- Nokia is ramping up their Internet M&A efforts right now, European media companies... not to mention the Chinese Internet companies. Any of these could emerge as meaningful buyers of Silicon Valley Internet companies of various forms in the years ahead.

After all, in a world where Cisco is buying social networking startups, anything is possible.

Fifth, building your startup with a goal of getting acquired is foolishness anyway, in my opinion. Smart people disagree with me on this, but I'll make my case in two points:

• Big companies don't want to buy startups that want to get bought. Instead, big companies buy startups that have built something of value that they decide is important to them.
• You can't possibly guess what things of value big companies are going to want to own in one or two or three years. The world is changing too fast -- witness the Microsoft hostile bid for Yahoo itself! -- and besides, big companies are Moby Dick and you can't understand the reasoning behind their decisions anyway.

Combine those two points with the fact that no big company buys that many startups each year anyway, and it's easy to see that the odds of you successfully anticipating something that a big company is going to want in the future and then actually selling your company to them -- as your strategy -- is a very risky proposition that is highly prone to failure.

And in fact, in my experience, most startups that start with the goal of getting bought, fail.

The formula for success in startups is the same today as it's always been, and it will be the same post-Microsoft/Yahoo:

Build something of value -- something that people want, and something that will be profitable at the appropriate point -- and the world is yours.

Successful companies -- companies that have built something of value -- have many options. They can stay private and throw off dividends. They can go public. They can get acquired by big companies who suddenly decide, hey, that looks really valuable, let's buy that. They can sell minority stakes to big investors or strategic partners at very high valuations. All options that are typically not open to the startup that started with the goal of getting bought and didn't build something of independent value.

Or, reduced to a phrase: the best way to get bought is to not be for sale.

Because of this, even if Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google stopped doing M&A completely, the strategy of any high-quality startup in the valley would not change one bit.

Sixth, I believe that a Microsoft/Yahoo merger would actually be a net positive for many high-quality Silicon Valley Internet startups, for a completely different reason.

Again, suppose the takeover bid succeeds. You're looking at probably a year of government approvals, followed by at least a year of integration.

You can't speed up the first part, because that's up to the government, and they don't react well when you scream "hurry up!" at them. And you don't want to speed up the second part, because integrating two companies of the scale and scope of Microsoft and Yahoo is an absolutely enormous undertaking and you want to make sure you do it right, or you're not going to get any of the benefits.

In practice, that will be two years in which both Microsoft and Yahoo will most likely be considerably less aggressive on rolling out new products and new initiatives -- because the key people at both companies will be consumed with the merger.

And, just think, if they are buying fewer companies as a consequence, that also means they're less likely to buy one of your competitors and come after you while you are building your thing of value.

I think this merger, if it happens, will help clear the field for a whole new generation of Silicon Valley Internet startups to create and scale the next set of killer consumer services that will go mainstream and be used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Where does that leave us?

The Microsoft/Yahoo deal, if it happens, means very little for the entrepreneurial climate in Silicon Valley, or the opportunities available to you and your startup.

Your job is exactly the same as before: build something people want, scale it up, make sure it's defensible, and make sure you can make money with it.

Build a company you are proud of.

If you do those things, you'll do just fine; if you don't, neither Microsoft nor Yahoo nor any other big company were going to rescue you anyway.

Nobody ever said this was easy, but in a world moving this fast and this much in flux, it certainly is fun!

The Tribune Editorial Board released its list of endorsements in the upcoming Illinois primaries on February 5. Among the list are 3rd District Congressman Dan Lipinski (striking a blow to challenger and progressive blog champion Mark Pera) and tenacious ice cream magnate Jim Oberweis -- running for Congress in the 14th District -- who is determined to get himself elected to some office, somewhere, some time (we hear Sugar Grove is looking for a new mayor, perhaps he should start there). They also endorse Senator Dick Durbin's challenger, Steve Sauerberg, who has about as much chance of unseating Durbin as Spanky the Clown.

But the big news is obviously their endorsements for Democratic and GOP presidential nominees. Not surprisingly, our own Barack Obama gets the nod on the Dem side, as the Trib champions how the country has moved beyond the issue of race (er, while they lead the endorsement with it) and that while they agree that their endorsement is a "paradox", they feel Obama is best suited amongst the Democratic candidates to "help this nation move forward" and that Hillary Clinton "unifies only her foes."

John McCain picks up the Republican endorsement, in which the Trib makes a not so subtle dig at Rudy Giuliani:

Many Americans yearn for the holiday-from-history that was the 1990s. The Cold War had ended; the cataclysmic updraft of concrete dust and human DNA hadn't risen from Lower Manhattan.

But there will be no going back. The planet's lone superpower won't again have the privilege of ignoring -- of appeasing with strong words but soft pursuit -- the sworn enemies of this nation and its friends.

One Republican candidate for president dedicated himself to American honor, American duty, long before Sept. 11, 2001. The world of 2008 is the dangerous world John McCain unknowingly spent a military and political career preparing to confront.

McCain, who as of a few months ago was practically written off, has surged forward as Giuliani's strategy of ignoring all of the primaries until Florida has erased his previous dominance in the national polls. [Trib]

Photos from the Tribune website

AOL Video was one of the first places Hulu content appeared. Before anyone had even had a look at the Hulu beta test, videos from the service began showing up on AOL. The site is not the most attractive, however, and their content is not complete. For example, AOL video only has 6 episodes of NBC's "Chuck" -- Hulu itself offers 12. Their player is also generally lower quality than the one on Hulu, and clips can't be embedded.

However, the Hulu on AOL user does show nearly 5000 clips, with some of the most viewed receiving over 35,000 views. It may not be "Dick in a Box" on YouTube numbers, but there is no denying that Hulu is effectively getting its content out through the AOL channel. For the Hulu watcher, though, this is not your best option.

Video site Veoh just recently announced a partnership with Hulu. Their new TV Shows section, which offers access to 153 shows, is largely powered by Hulu. They too offer less content than Hulu itself, but unlike AOL they're using the actual Hulu player, so quality is higher and embedding is possible.

Generally, Veoh is a well designed site that is easy to navigate. The experience, because of the player, is a lot like Hulu. If you're already using Veoh for other things, then it is good place to watch Hulu content. Unfortunately, I was unable to get Hulu content to work through the downloadable Veoh player -- I kept getting an "unknown error." Because of that and the limited content selection, Veoh also probably isn't the best place to consume Hulu videos.

Launched last week, MSN Video Guide is the latest Hulu partner. The site is slick, but when it comes to actually navigating to specific episodes, it falls somewhere in between Veoh (good) and AOL (bad) in terms of usability. Unlike Veoh and AOL, MSN seems to have more Hulu content -- they actually list all 12 available episodes of "Chuck." Oddly, though, many of them arent't available, with the site insisting that "no airings of this episode were found in the next ten days." Huh? Many of the other episodes are only scheduled to be watchable for a short time (i.e., they have a notice like, "Available for 11 more days.")

When you actually do find an episode you can watch, MSN is wrapping it in a smaller player than the one Hulu uses. The result: lower quality and no way to embed -- or even rate and comment. For this reason, MSN is also not the best place to watch Hulu.

MySpace Primetime is where Hulu's catalog resides on the world's largest social networking site. They appear to have the entire Hulu catalog, and though they use their own player, it is better than the ones employed by AOL and MSN. Still though, it isn't up to par with Hulu's own player and embedding isn't allowed.

Hulu content on MySpace is framed in the way that all MySpace video is -- so commenting and rating is the same. Despite MySpace's huge audience, most of the Hulu content doesn't seem to be doing that well. Even for very popular shows like The Simpsons or K'ville (the most popular Hulu show on AOL Video), plays only number in the low hundreds on most clips. We can't help but think that if Hulu content were available on YouTube (the way some NBC content used to be), those hundreds of views would be hudreds of thousands.

The TV section at Fancast, a video web site from Comcast, is mostly powered by Hulu. Our "Chuck" test turned up 9 episodes -- more than AOL, but less than what is actually in Hulu's full catalog. At least we didn't find any videos that had expired or were scheduled to, though.

Fancast also uses its own player. It seems a little better in quality than MySpace (and leagues better than AOL), but still not quite up to par with Hulu. There also isn't any embedding and isn't much in the way of social feature (i.e., no commenting). Fancast might be a good choice for Comcast subscribers, but for anyone else, it isn't the best place to watch Hulu content.

OPENhulu

While Hulu is still in an invite only closed beta, some smart people realized that the clips on the site are embeddable. So in order to provide early access to the masses, a handful of sites offer the Hulu catalog via embeds. The most well-known of these is OPENhulu. The site recently received a cease and desist from Hulu and will be changing its name -- to what I'm not sure -- but it is still operational this morning.

Because the site is using embeds, it is using the Hulu player and thus offers more or less the same viewing experience as Hulu itself and, it would seem, the entire catalog without any weird time limits like MSN. Though covered in ads, the design of the site makes it easy to navigate and find videos. When the site changes names, it is also supposedly launching a redesigned version of the UI as well. For now, OPENhulu is the best way to watch Hulu content for anyone who can't get into Hulu itself.

We were, initially underwhelmed by Hulu. But by offering a high quality player, an easy to navigate web site, a large library of recent TV content, and the ability to embed videos, Hulu is beginning to win us over.

There is one thing that you can only get on Hulu: the guarantee that you're getting the most up-to-date library Hulu has to offer. Hulu's player also has at least one nifty feature that the embedded version doesn't offer, a dimmer that dims the rest of your browser screen to make the video stand out. Very cool.

For these reasons, Hulu itself unsurprisingly remains the best place to watch Hulu content.

Note: Hulu content is only available in the US, but some intrepid users have figured out how to trick the system and watch Hulu content outside the United States.

An Advertising Recession?

Another New Ad Medium

Watching the Audience

Information Will Be Free

Since the dawn of the internet, "content wants to be free" has been the rallying cry of digital evangelists. But those who wanted to charge for content could always point to a shining example: the Wall Street Journal, with its 1 million online subscribers and $65 million in digital subscription revenue.

That will all change in 2008. Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. recently completed its $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones, plans to set WSJ.com free, judging from several fairly unequivocal public pronouncements.

Despite the short-term loss of subscription revenue, "long term, it's kind of a slam dunk," says Mike Vorhaus, managing director at the consulting firm Frank N. Magid Associates. The money that is made from selling ads that reach a much larger audience will more than make up for losses, he adds.

The New York Times had a similar epiphany in September, when it shut down TimesSelect, its premium content service. But business news seemed to be one place where online subscriptions could still be sold successfully.

The Journal's move, however, will change the economics for competitors such as the Financial Times, which also charges a fee. "If the Wall Street Journal goes free, I suspect [FT.com] will also do it," says John Morton, an independent newspaper-industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Companies that provide data rather than news may perhaps be more immune to the live-free-or-die fever, but then again, they might not.

ConsumerReports.org has been another success to date; just this month, it signed up its 3 millionth paid subscriber. But Jarvis predicts that free content will triumph eventually in that arena as well.

"Somebody's going to come along and pull a Craigslist on them," says Jarvis, referring to the listings site that has decimated newspapers' classified sections. "It's the kind of data you can get from your fellow customers."

Time to Part Ways?

One thing neither party disclosed was the size of the round. PE Hub reports today that a regulatory filing reveals that Twitter has raised $4.8 million of a $5.4 million round. Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, and Charles River Ventures are also investors in the site.

Perhaps no other small company has caused as much commotion as Twitter this year. Since it exploded on to the scene at SXSW last March (that's not when the service debuted, but when it finally found its audience), Twitter has been running away with headlines all year and their growth has been impressive.

Arguably one of the most important things Twitter has done is open up an API to outside developers (this is an argument that co-founder Biz Stone made to us in September). According to Twitter, the API has seen such incredible growth, that just months after it was released it is already getting 10 times the traffic of the Twitter web site.

One of Twitter's cheif rivals, Jaiku, was acquired by Google in October.

• Disruptive Technologies & Innovation
• Google and OpenSocial
• Next-Level Discovery Panel
• Enterprise 2.0 (Andrew McAfee)
• Web 2.0 Made of People (Ross Mayfield)
• Customer Reach vs. Vendor Grasp (Doc Searls)
• Discussing Attention (Esther Dyson)
• Defragging Identity (Dick Hardt)

There's more posts over on AltSearchEngines.

I first met Dick in June 2004 when Kevin Werbach took pity on me and gave me a pass to attend Supernova. Not only had Dick just decided that txting ruld, but that making it easier to share and consume RSS feeds was very important. He was right on both. What they did with Feedburner was stunning. They made structured XML mark up extremely sexy and business-friendly.

But I'm wasting your time. What you should be reading are my below notes from Dick's presentation and his recent blog entries on first hires, exit fallacy and start-up offices.

My notes from his talk:

• When hiring, looks for talented-at-anything people, not just position-perfect people. Plans will change and if people can't move, it's a major loss.
• Launch late and launch often. (By this he's suggesting to not launch until you have a lot of features ready or almost ready. Launch with a solid core set, but then keep releasing new features quickly, some of which may have been ready at launch, but held to keep excitement up.)
• Don't write pre-launch long-term business plans. They'll be void within months of deployment.
• Keep your org chart as flat as possible for as long as possible. Reporting chains hinder fast, flexible development.
• Speed of execution is a competitive advantage. When you fear Why won't Google just copy your product once it's live? The answer is becasue we are fast and nimble and they are slow and hamstrung.
• Develop your service and business models the way an optometrist tests your eyes. They try 40 different combo's of A vs B. to methodically find the best combination.
• Make it as easy as possible for the Markets to determine what your most valuable offering is. Allow them to tell you what your business is. Open, accessible businesses get scrubbed and reviewed by the business people of the world. The wisdom of those markets can often finds your true value offering much faster than you can in your board rooms. Secret, private companies do not get such benefits.
• Open APIs and the like make this happen ever faster. Dick thinks open APIs are a great business advantage as the Markets can even faster scrub your offerings. Even if it means your competition can benefit from it too, you will always be 2 steps ahead of them because you'll be leading and they'll be copying.
• You ALWAYS spend more money than you plan. Be brutal with your revenue forecasts and slash them to as small as they could be if nothing new happened other than what you've proven. [Ted note: trust me, only count on revenue you've already proven. Plan for growth, but do not require your company to achieve it.]
• Compete on your merits, not the short comings of your competitors. Your outward case for your company should be what you do better than anyone else, not that others do it worse than you.

Photo by Ted R. Hosted on Flickr. Trilby tip to Greg Cohn for pointer to Dick's recent posts.

This article was contributed by Ted Rheingold who is a passionate thirty-something accidental entrepreneur and founder of Dogster and Catster. He writes about the biz and passion-centric online communities at the Dogster, Inc. company blog and his personal blog, Spidey Senses.

Was Chris Matthews the wrong guy for last night's debate of Republican presidential hopefuls? Well, yes -- but not for the reasons you've been hearing all week.

Fox News and its fellow-travelers have been waging war on Matthews, insisting the MSNBC host's recent comments about "criminality" within the Bush Administration exposed an anti-GOP bias.

Bill O'Reilly misquoted Matthews, claiming he'd called the entire administration a "criminal enterprise," while Gretchen Carlson of Fox & Friends went one better, called Matthews's remark "blasphemous." (Considering Matthews was apparently talking about Scooter Libby's conviction, that would make Dick Cheney...Jesus Christ?)

In the event, Matthews played it pretty straight, which Fox News et al will no doubt chalk up to their watchdoggery. The one off-note came in an exchange with Fred Thompson. After listening to Thompson's answer to a question about a possible government bailout of Chrysler, Matthews editorialized, "Took a long time. He said no; he should have stopped there."

There you have it: Matthews is a jerk. And while being a jerk is sometimes a useful journalistic tool, Matthews is a jerk for no reason; he doesn't seem to get the distinction between adversarial, which every journalist should be, and being combative. When Matthews brags about how "independent" he is, what he means is that he's obnoxious to both sides.

Byron York of the National Review seems to agree with me. He says Matthews's snark "seemed to cross a line," and he offers this priceless quote from a Thompson aide: "Chris kept himself in check for as long as he humanly could, and then he just reverted to type. He can't help himself. He said this isn't going to be about me, and of course it was about him."

Chris Matthews photo by Kimberly P. Mitchell/MCT /Landov