Month: March 2011

This is going to be one of those posts where I wish I was creating it on my mac so I could include links. But I’m on the run today with only my iPhone. So here goes anyway.

When I first started using Twitter back in early 2007 (before I became an investor), I followed a small number of folks and I had even less followers.

I found the service simple, addictive, useful and fun.

I loved seeing tweets about breaking news or content related to my work but I also cherished seeing friends tweets about little personal things happening in their lives. Whether it is was coffee with a friend, or a laugh or sharing some other life moment.

Along the way Twitter as a network grew very fast and the number of folks I followed grew and followed me grew too. I found even more useful content but it came with a balance of tweets from friends again sharing personal moments of their life. I now follow hundreds of folks with pleasure. I use Twitter lists on my iPhone in case my time is short. But mostly I stick with the good old timeline.

Over the past year or so the number of questions and high quality answers flowing across this network continue to show that people want to help people whether they know them or not. It just feels good. My friends on twitter saved me a lot of time and energy yesterday by telling me which retailers were out of iPads and which ones had them in stock. I’m not sure where else I could get such timely and relevant information.

Over the last few months in particular I found more people following me on twitter that I don’t know very well on a personal level but they are people I’ve looked up to for a long time. A good example of such a person is John Doerr (@johndoerr)

Now John is following me and while I’ve enjoyed getting to know him personally its still a very new relationship.

Does he want to see all my tweets about concerts, dinner with my wife, photos of my kids, my love affair with our portfolio company products, my personal frustrations with various things etc.

I must confess I felt the same bit of concern when @benkweller started following me too. Does he want to see all of my stuff in his timeline.

Do any of you that arent my close friends want to read it? Should I pull back and spend more time exercising control over my tweets and maybe make them more work related.

The conclusion I came to every time I have these moments of concern is that I’m just letting the tweets fly.

I’m sure some of you are tired of them and I’m also quite sure many folks have stopped following me because of my personal moment tweets.

But I don’t know or have the ability to the alternative. Twitter wouldnt be the same for me if I changed my relationship with it.

So if you are still following me, I’m happy to share my thoughts and moments with you. 140 lovely characters at a time.

And it has been wonderful getting to know you in return.

Earlier today, I thinking about the new ipad. I’m still trying to decide i’m getting the white one or the black model….but ah, i digress.

Then my mind wandered to the new Smart Cover.(i’m getting the orange one, lauren is getting the pink). 

It’s beautiful and given that Apple was the only one to know about magnets in iPad2, they will have the first case on the market that uses this capability. 

So I was thought out loud about that effect on the iPad ecosystem (to my knowledge, apple doesn’t make an iphone case). Why didn’t any 3rd party ipad case company cry foul. 

I got a few responses. Peter Rojas thinks that fear is keeping 3rd parties from complaining. Chris Dixon suggests it’s because Apple doesn’t bundle it. 

I think Peter’s follow up tweet was something to consider:

@bijan Yeah, if can get your stuff into Apple’s retail channel you can make an insane amount of money.

Even though Apple competes with their ecosystem, they provide a way for 3rd parties to still innovate and thrive.

And you don’t have to get into their store to do this either. As far as I know, Dodocase doesn’t have a deal with the Apple Store – instead they just sell direct. 

Dave Winer has often told me that there will always be a certain amount of healthy tension within any ecosystem. And I’m sure Apple has their fair share of such tension.

So you can have an interesting and vibrant ecosystem even if the platform competes with others in the ecosystem. But the key things to take away from this in my mind is that the platform has to be strong, successful and growing. If it isn’t than the ecosystem won’t stick (how many Zune cases have you seen). And if the platform is strong and growing, the ecosystem will figure out a way to thrive based on creativity, tenacity and differentiation.