HIGH FIDELITY

Sounds like this was a $5 million raise at a $20 mil pre-money valuation, according to TechCrunch.

Twitter has raised an undisclosed amount of financing in a round led by Union Square Ventures. If there’s any VC every Web 2.0 company would love to have in their corner it’s the Union Square dream team of Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson, whose other investments include Tacoda (just bought by AOL), del.icio.us, FeedBurner, and oddcast. Twitter is arguably a very sexy company, but not everyone thinks this was a no-brainer great investment, as evidenced by the posts on Union Square’s own blog (many early stage investments have their share of detractors, of course).

My own take is the following: I use Twitter and find it fun, and I agree that provides a “platform for banter”, as Fred Wilson writes in the Union Square post. The question is whether banter is an interesting form of public communication or just minutiae that is interesting only to your friends. A good way to think about online communication is through their off-line analogues: email replaced the written, posted letter, blogging allowed anyone to become an essayist/pamphleteer, texting allowed friends to quickly communicate while on-the-go. Twitter allows us to…what? Make our high-velocity chit chat public? I’m not sure if that increases the quality of human communication, or just the quantity of chatter people have to sift through. Does anyone really care that an hour ago I got caught in the rain on the way to work and am now standing under a restaurant awning? Or that I’m now eating lunch?

Mashable has a funny graphic that sums it up well:

Another question is whether, at 300,000 members, Twitter will be able to break into the mainstream or remain a pastime of the technorati. And their business model isn’t clear yet.

At any rate, it’s an interesting investment and an exciting time — congrats to the people at Union Square and Twitter.

Very interesting article in the July 23 issue of New Yorker by famed neurologist Oliver Sacks (I would link to article here, but the New Yorker is not offering it up online for some reason). Sacks discusses the accounts of several of his patients who had the neural pathways of their brains abruptly changed, from various causes, after which these people a permanent, and nearly all-consuming affinity for music.

In one case, a man who was struck by lightning — after experiencing a near-death, out of body experience — gained an irrepressible desire to listen to, play, and even compose classical piano music. This was with no previous strong affinity for music. His passion after the strike became so emotionally intense that he forced himself to learn the piano. Over a decade later, this passion remained undiminished and he had become a very talented amateur pianist. There have been no other lasting effects from the lightning strike, and he continues to be highly competent in his profession (medicine).

Two interesting takeaways from this: 1) some people’s brains are more wired for music than other people’s. This may seem obvious in the case where someone is a musical prodigy from an early age — like a Mozart. But it also seems that some people are wired to respond to music more emotionally than other people. 2) this basic structure of the brain can be altered in a person through strong external stimulus (electric or chemical, it seems). Which does not mean we should advocate musical shock therapy for people who are musically clueless, although that 12th play of Ace of Base may make us want to.

I look forward to Oliver Sacks’ forthcoming book on the subject, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain

No artist seems to understand this as well as Prince. A good article in the NYTimes today made it clear: Prince is a one-man, twenty-first century music machine. He gave away his latest CD, “Planet Earth”, free in the UK paper The Mail on Sunday, infuriating retailers and music companies. The man has a brilliant understading both of what his fans want — recorded music for free, live shows for a premium — and what will make money. If it’s about getting your music to your audience, in this internet age, why go through a big music company handler?:

“Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an audience, whether it’s purchased or not…Other musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales then at shows or through other deals.”

Music wants to be free — and it will be. What’s good for the artist, and the fans, is not always good for the CD biz. Amen.

We live in a culture of writing — with the exponential growth of email, IM, texting and blogging over the past decade, there is more writing (usually typing) happening now than in any previous period in history. But there’s one discipline in which writing is of only secondary use: client services. Unless you’re a very good writer, it’s hard to communicate shades of emotion or meaning through a hastily written email or IM. And if there’s money on the line, why take the chance?

Here’s an example of where one or two spoken sentences would have worked a whole lot better than a hamfisted letter. From my building management:

“Dear Joshua,

It has recently come to the attention of the management office that you are keeping a pet in your apartment. You may not be aware, but the presence of a pet or animal in your apartment constitutes a breach of your lease agreement…Our policy as of June 1, 2005, states that we no longer accept dogs. All residents with dogs leased with us prior to June 1, therefore, the dogs are “grandfathered” into the building from our previous pet policy.”

Please remove the dog from the premises within one week or we will be forced to refer the matter to our attorney…Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

– Residential Manager, Liberty Towers”

Now, I am not a bad tenant. I have paid literally over $100,000 to this building management over the past 3.5 years (I need to buy a place, obviously), and my rent is never late, we’re not loud, nor do we leave stinky garbage outside our door or steal our neighbors’ papers. I am a dream tenant. Why would they risk losing me? There is a huge number of rental units coming online in Jersey City this year, and this massive new supply is bound to keep their rents flat.

So here’s my reply:

“Hi Maryann,

In response to your recent inquiry about the latest addition to my family, the animal in question is a Chihuahua. I’m not sure you’d really refer to him as a dog. He weighs 3 pounds. He’s about half the size of a lean cat, considerably smaller than a newborn baby. He generally does not go outside, and instead uses a litter box. He most commonly travels in my wife’s handbag. He is literally the size of a guinea pig.

In terms of the issues associated with normal-sized dogs – urinating and defecating near the back entrance of the building, tearing up apartments and common areas, barking, howling, being aggressive and nasty – NONE of these issues pertain to our Chihuahua. He causes significantly less damage and noise than a newborn human baby (we’re planning on having one of those too, let me know if you see any issues with that).

I don’t think we need to call the lawyers in on this one. I apologize for not requesting permission in advance; let this letter be our formal request. In terms of a ban on dogs per se, I was not aware of this policy, nor is there anything whatsoever in my lease (or its addendums) to this effect. So there is no legal claim to be made on this point.

At any rate, I would like to work this out and move forward, so let me know how we can do this.

Thanks.”

In the end, like most things, it will probably just come down to money.

A NYTimes article from a couple of months back made the point that Manhattan real estate developers have an ever-expanding definition of the boundries of Soho. There is not much space in Soho proper to build new condo buildings — perhaps a parking lot here and there, but not much else — so developers put up new buildings on the outskirts of Soho — in areas more properly identified as Chinatown or Little Italy — then broaden the definition of Soho a bit, in an effort to make the most of shrinking opportunities and get buyers willing to pay $1000+ per sq. foot.

Here is the latest example which I walk by every day on the way to work. It’s very very close to both Soho and Tribeca — but what a difference a Manhattan block makes. It’s actually on Canal St., near 6th Ave and the entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Meaning non-stop noise and traffic, but possibly also some good views. Will be interesting to see what these units go for.

There are two dominant paradigms when it comes to music discovery services: 1) a ‘top-down’ approach in which a self-appointed group says “if you like song A, you will probably like song B because of these shared qualities”; 2) a ‘democratic’ approach in which the tastes of the entire listening group are taken into account and the user sees recommendations based on what other people with the same taste liked. The classic example of #1 is Pandora, with its group of trained musicologists and its taxonomy experiment known as the Music Genome project, and the classic example of #2 is Last.fm (bought by CBS for $280 million earlier this year).

Personally, I like the recommendations I get on last.fm better than those on Pandora. My last.fm neighbor radio plays stuff from artists I usually know, but good tracks, and sometimes new stuff I haven’t heard before but end up liking. On Pandora, after I enter a seed artist, one of two things usually happens: 1. I hear b-side tracks from other related artists (i.e. songs I don’t want to hear); or, much more often 2. the artists that are recommended are completely obscure.

And, of course, as an American, I can’t help but like the idea that the entire group of my fellow listeners makes better recommendations than a self-appointed elite of musicologists. At any rate, I think we’re headed into some very exciting times as more and more Web services try to perfect their predictive analytics models (whether in music, movie rentals, book buying, etc.). Predicting individual consumer taste is a notoriously tricky thing, and no doubt we’ll see some large successes (and failures–I still don’t like most of what Amazon recommends to me) in the years ahead.

If your experience with the above services is different, let me know. And if anyone knows of a 3rd paradigm (in addition to the 2 listed above), that I’ve missed, please let me know that too. Thanks.

Sometimes I forget what a great writer Graham Greene was. Patiently observant, witty, unafraid of sweeping, meta-narratives. And a writer of great eloquence. Take the following passage — whether you agree with it or not, it’s hard to deny its narrative punch:

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of good will carries always in his heart the capacity of damnation.”

On July 4 of this year, my father passed away.

What follows is the eulogy I gave at his memorial service on July 14.

_________________________________________________________

John W. Engroff, Jr.

On behalf of myself, my Mom and my sister, I want to thank you all for being here. These past few weeks have been full of heartbreak and deep sorrow, and the loss of my father is a void we still don’t know how to fill. But by being here, and sharing not only our grief but also my father’s wonderfully rich life, you are helping us to heal.

I’d like to quote briefly from a song by the noted blue singer / guitarist / philosopher John Lee Hooker. It’s a song called “I Want To Hug You”:

“I want to hug you, kiss you, squeeze you til my arms fall off
I want to hug you, kiss you, squeeze you til my arms fall off
Then you’ll know by that, baby that I love you so”

I think that’s what Dad would say to you, Mom, if he were with us today.

Bluesman
The blues is a good place to start when talking about my Dad, because anyone who knew him knew that he loved the blues. He loved gospel, jazz, bluegrass, R&B, and folk too, but the blues first and foremost. One of my earliest musical memories is hearing BB King’s Indianola Mississippi Seeds on our turntable at home when I was about five years old. BB’s ringing guitar stayed in my mind – it was almost like a voice, that guitar, capable of expressing joy, sorrow, mischief, and every shade of emotion in-between.

My Dad also played acoustic blues guitar, and would sing to my sister and me in his clear, melodic voice. Songs about foxes in the henhouse and other stuff we didn’t really understand. He sang the lyrics like he really meant it. It was always magical to hear him sing.

When I was 11 my Dad took me to see BB play live at the Flynn Theater in Burlington, something I will never forget because it was also the first time I tasted beer. To say I had a very cool father would be an understatement.

I think the reason my Dad loved the blues so much is because he found in it the most sweeping, eloquent expression of the human experience. And living life to the fullest was something my father took great joy in. As he himself put it to me in an email in December, 2005: “The blues – and of course bluegrass and gospel – are elemental-fundamental-seep-in-the-soul-very-stuff-of-life-and-living.”

In addition being our resident bluesman, my father played other roles as well: Read the rest of this entry »