Stuart Robinson’s Weblog

I’ve been calling them ‘unidirectional friends’ but the concept is the same. I suspect that popularising this form of social network is going to be twitter’s longest standing contribution:

The idea of unilateral connections is an important one. People’s ideas of ’friendship’ differ and it’s not a good idea to, at the outset, ask a user to accept another person’s measure of what friendship is.

A site that visibly promotes how many ’friends’ you have turns friends into commodities, creating an economy where you are motivated to make as many friends as you can. That’s not a good idea because the utility of these sites suffer as social networks become too densely populated. Throw in the social implications of ’un-friending’ someone and you result in a cycle where the only way to solve the problem is to stop using the service and instead jump on to the ’latest’ social network where you can start with a clean slate. This is how we went from Friendster to Tribe to Orkut to MySpace to Facebook (with a few more or less along the way).

From blogoscoped

Smartening up the default user avatar icon in social apps is not only a waste of time but in fact
counterproductive. The uglier the default the more likely it will be changed, usually the desired behavior.

Fred Wilson has an example of how one site (any ideas which?) takes it that one step further.

Brilliant.

So the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Report is out. Only a fool would dare to question Buffett’s genius… so lets get on with the foolishness…

I find it a little curious to see Buffett highlight his disinterest in investing in businesses without “an enduring ‘moat’ that protects excellent returns on invested capital” and comment that “if a business requires a superstar to produce great results, the business itself cannot be deemed great”.

In terms of Berkshire Hathaway’s minority-share investments few would question that Buffett is this superstar, but what about the many businesses it owns? With bungled acquisitions so common these days, BH is a wonder because it handles acquisitions so successfully, usually keeping the original management onboard, motivated and happy.

E-government in Dubai is surprisingly effective due to the eagerness of heads of department to impress Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoumand and be showered with his praise.

The reason the second half the BH annual letter is usually so dull is because it isn’t written for anyone other than BH’s managers. This is where they get the chance to bathe in the praise they seek.

But when the charismatic, idolized Sheikh passes and a lesser - whose praise is not sought - takes over, what happens?