• To Think Lists: We all have to-do lists. They don’t end. They help us try to make sense of our days. However, the important thing for us to do is to ask why this item is on your to-do list, argues Rajesh Shetty. It is a great way to think.
• Ten reasons to slow down. I just need one reason to slow down. But other nine are pretty darn good reasons as well. You should check them out.
• From telegraph and tubes to Skype — how the world of communication has changed. A great, fun piece that you should check out and marvel at how far we have come.
• Once you are done reading the previous post, check out Martin Geddes’s essay on the end of the phone system, what it means and where we are going. It will give you context and a sense of the decay in the “phone system.”
• Distributed and destination thinking. Neil Perkin writes about how the changes in the media landscape are fundamental and it is too bad we don’t seem to realize that.
• My buddy Brian Lam writes about robot boats and their epic voyage across the Pacific Ocean. It is just fun reading.
• And for some heavy thinking: Is Finland a model for tomorrow’s society? Not sure, but I know I love my Finnish friends.

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We are on the cusp of a big economic shift. I believe that the industrial era is coming to an end and Kickstarter just might be the most visible representation of that. When I look at Kickstarter, I see small businesses that have been funded by their customers. I see the acceleration of this shift away from the industrial manufacturing ideology to more of a maker economy. And I also see an idea so powerful that the company name has become a verb.

Take the Pebble Watch as an example. It was an idea that was rejected by institutional investors but embraced by actual buyers via Kickstarter. Without broadband-enabled connectivity and Kickstarter, this watch that has now raised upwards of $10 million from over 85,000 people would have not happened. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of these projects that upend the whole established manufacturing ecosystem.

Kickstarter has received $100 million in pledges over the last year and has had a number of projects exceed the million-dollar-pledge mark this year for the first time. And now, Kickstarter is up to 23,000 successfully funded projects and more than 2 million backers. To date, more than $230 million has been pledged to products. Movies, music, city designs, watches, video games — Kickstarter has become an epicenter of creativity. It is funding everything from a pickle factory in Chicago that uses Bloody Mary marinade and wants to expand, to a live music-and-film series that would play in parks around Harlem.

With Kickstarter, creators list a project, a funding goal, a deadline and a way to reward backers who pledge money to the project. The project is only greenlit if it reaches its funding goal, though there is no limit to how much a project can raise. Kickstarter makes its money by taking a 5 percent fee from a successful project’s funding total. (The company has raised $10 million in venture backing from Union Square Ventures, Betaworks, Jack Dorsey, Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein, Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and many other angel investors.)

When I see Kickstarter  I don’t see a company. Instead, I see a social movement. I see people doing things for people. I think of Kickstarter as a reflection of me, which is why I engage with it. When Kickstarter turned three years old, Perry Chen, the startup’s 35-year-old co-creator, wrote a post about the company on his blog and that was enough of a reason for me to ping him and see if he wanted to sit down for an interview. We had met about three years earlier at a coffee shop near Union Square in Manhattan, but we clearly had a lot to catch up on.

So earlier this month, I sat down with Chen, (who in past life co-founded the Southfirst gallery in Brooklyn and worked as a musician/audio engineer in New Orleans,) in his offices on the Lower East Side for a marathon two-and-a-half-hour session. I have managed to boil it all down to about 3,500 words. It may seem long, but Kickstarter is that important of an idea. Why? Because just as we Google things and we tweet — we kickstart!

1. The story so far
2. Is Kickstarter a symbol of a society transforming?
3. And where does it go next.

An idea, Kickstarted

Om:  You and I met for the first time over three years ago, when Kickstarter was still a nebulous idea. Have the past three years surprised you?

Perry:   At its core, Kickstarter is a very simple idea. We believed that if we could just get it out there into the world, and get people to use it, that their success would beget more success, and more attention. With thousands and thousands of projects on the site at any one time, and over 20,000 successful projects — I think, in many ways, this is exactly what we hoped.

We knew if people embraced it, it would grow and be used in this way. But I don’t think we knew what success felt like.  We knew that the idea was big.  The visceral part of it is something that we’re only knowing by experiencing it, but I think from the perspective of just, “Is this what we thought it could do?” Certainly.

Om:  When you started this, did you ever think of it as a company or did you think of it as a social movement?

Perry:  It was an idea. It’s funny. I remember early on, people tried to associate us with ‘This is a social good thing that you’re doing,’ and I almost bristled. I was like, “What do you…?” because that’s not how I thought about it.

Now, I’m thrilled that our mission is a socially good mission, but that’s not where it came from. It just came from this feeling that there was this need for creative people to raise money for their projects.  And this was really an efficient way to do it. There were a lot of other beneficial effects, like the building of a community around an idea and the connection of people to an idea in a very, very different way than as consumers.

Om:  Had you been thinking about this idea for a long time?

Perry:  The original idea came to me in, I think it was late ’01 or early ’02. I wasn’t in the position where I wanted to start a company or, honestly, really knew how to do it, especially in the web space, because I didn’t come from the web. I was living in New Orleans and thinking about continuing to work on music.

I had the idea, and then I was like, “That’s a good idea. Now, back to my regularly scheduled life.” I did expect that, in six months or one year or two years, I was just going to turn on the TV or go on the web one day and somebody was going to send me a link and be like, “Oh, check this thing out,” and I would be like everybody else, “Oh, I had that idea.”

Om:  We all have different interpretations of Kickstarter, but what is the essence of Kickstarter in your mind?

Perry:  We would like it to be a fundamental tool for the liberation or the acceleration of our own creativity. I think that, when we’re younger ‑ whatever that means ‑ we have ideas all the time. We embrace our ideas. We say,  ‘Oh, I’m going to do this. I’m going to throw this event with a friend. I’m going to have this play, this movie, this thing.’

You have not yet been taught the realities of life, that, “You can’t do that because of this and that or the other thing.” Very often, that other thing is money. Over time, because of the constraints, with money being the biggest one (or the most common one) we start to squash down our ideas.

We don’t have to squash down our ideas because of the harsh realities of the real world. From a very emotional level, that’s the dream.

I think, we’re able to offer people the ability to overcome that one core roadblock — the funding — and then additionally allow people to build this community and nurture an audience around a project.

Om:  Twitter had its Oprah moment, and everything changed for them. You think the Pebble Watch is your Oprah moment?

Perry:  Maybe in technology and design. Listen, it has been great, and publicity has been great. But we were (responsible for) 12 percent of the films in Sundance in January 2012. I think we get a little myopic in our world.

Om:  So there are many Oprah moments.

Perry:  If you remember the Double Fine project, that was massive. [Laughs]

Top

Does Kickstarter personify a society re-making itself?

Om:  What is your take on the emergence of this Internet-enabled creator/maker ecosystem?

Perry:  I feel like we’re used to this industrial creative complex of movie studios, record labels and production houses. It wasn’t always that way. This is relatively recent in human history. People have been creating art for tens of thousands of years. Artists have always been hustlers, too.

In general, artists have always been extremely creative people both in art and in talking to audiences, and in hustling to get the things that they want done, to get their ideas out of their brains and expressed.

A lot of the things that you’re seeing on the web now, from YouTube to Twitter, and what we’re doing, are really just the tools so that creative people can get their things done and connect with other people. They don’t create the creativity. They don’t  change the way creative people are.

Om:  So in a way we are going back to the old way of doing things, where instead of having rich patrons we have a lot of every-person patrons.

Perry:  There was this concept of subscription artist — a lot of 18th-century books were written this way.

Mozart, Beethoven had to raise money this way.  They would go out to subscribers and those subscribers would put in money and they would get a copy of the book with their name inscribed inside of it or a copy of the concerto, or a first look at the concert.

Yes, there’s a history of this in art, besides the patronage of the Medici or the church. There was this concept of the audience. Obviously, they didn’t have the web, the scalability of the web. The ability to do that is incredible.

Om: Given the traction Kickstarter has received,  I wonder if something bigger is going on at a societal level?

Perry:  We’re reaching this bursting point of creativity. People are embracing their own creativity more and more. It’s now OK to be an accountant during the day, but at night you’re a writer or you’re a painter or you’re a DJ. We don’t have to be one thing anymore.

Om: Does it have something to do with our ability to learn and create easily, thanks to the Internet?

Perry: It’s getting cheaper to make things. It’s getting cheaper, or free, to learn how to do things. It’s getting cheaper to distribute things and share them with people and get yourself out of that creative vacuum. Even if some kid out there in the middle of nowhere creates something, she can share it on the web with people, and get that feedback so she doesn’t feel like: “I’m just doing this and nobody can tell me what’s going on.”

You can do a lot of art and creative projects in digital form. To make an album now, it probably costs 10 times less  than it did 20 years ago. Even film being crazy expensive, is still coming down in cost.  And now, hopefully, we’re helping build the pieces that help the funding of it and building the community around that as well. That is an explosion point.

Om:  For awhile, I have had this theory that we, as a society, are coming to the end of the mass production, industrial phase of the human race. Instead, we have entered an Internet‑enabled phase, where the economy is not about being the biggest, but being able to do few things well, and then finding an aggregate audience for what seem to be small ideas and niches. A perfect example would be the Pebble Watch.

Perry:  Pebble Watch… not so small anymore.

Om:  In the grand scheme of things, it’s not really a big product. But it’s, like, $10 million.  What do you think about that?

Perry:  It shows a relatively obvious point: that not all the big ideas come down the mountain on a stone tablet by a major corporation. There are really creative people out there that are doing things on their own.

In terms of the small‑batch, artisanal market for everything, I think without a doubt we see it.  People want to know where their stuff comes from. I think people buy products, but they also buy experiences. People value experiences more than they value products.

When you buy local food, you’re buying both a story and a good. Also, you’re saying something about yourself and what you care about. I think that’s what you’re seeing more and more in the things that people are looking for. Often, the stuff costs a premium, and I think people are willing to pay it. It’s worth it to them.

Om:  Right now, big media companies make products, which we consume. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Facebook or Disney. They are all vying for our attention. Now, here is Kickstarter with, let’s say, 3,000 films today and about 5,000 music albums. Suddenly content that is not controlled by big media is now competing for our attention with the big-media productions.

Perry:  Yeah, any dent we can put into the machine we’re happy to do. I think we’re already seeing it. A lot of these things that are getting funded would not have been funded in any way. People are watching films that were made on Kickstarter and playing games that were made on Kickstarter. I think the big media companies are going to continue to have things that they’re going to keep making for the mass audiences, but we hope we’re eating away at the bad stuff.

Bad stuff gets made in the system. You get sequels. You get safe things. You get people with new ideas that don’t get funded. You get constrained funding so that one out of every thousand people can get a shot. You have systems that are based on who you know. That’s what we want to break apart. Good ideas can bubble up without these gatekeepers saying yes.

Om:  Right. I think the question or the point I was trying to make was that with the friction in the creative process going away, it’s getting harder to get people’s attention. I think Kickstarter is that platform of creativity.  I think the emotional appeal of a platform is what works. I think the old-media entities still have not figured out that part of the game plan.  I see Kickstarter as coming from left field, just like Twitter siphoned attention away from established media forms and in the process became a medium of its own.

Perry:  Well then, don’t give it away. Don’t, please. [laughs] We almost had them, and then you had to give them a heads-up, and the Murdochs are going to read this.

Om:  Do you really think of it as your company? Do you think of yourself as essentially the caretaker for the movement?

Perry:  It’s a lot of things. I definitely do think of Kickstarter as my baby. I’ve worked long and hard on it. I take a lot of pride in it. But I also certainly know it’s bigger than me. It’s the baby of the rest of the team, of course, and the project creators and the community. I think even before it became big, there was this moment where I just felt like I was the shepherd of the idea, not just the company but of the concept.

Regardless of company, this idea of funding projects in this way on the web is just here now.  We’re confident that we’re going to keep doing it right, but that’s secondary to the fact that the idea is now just in the world.

Top

What’s next for Kickstarter?

Om:  How many types of categories are on Kickstarter right now?

Perry:  [Laughs] There are 13.  I’m going to forget a few, but it’s film, music, art, photography, theater, design, technology, food and a few others.

We take a very liberal or what I think is a more modern view of what a creative project is. I mean, for us, a lot of food projects are definitely creative projects.  A lot of technology, maker/hacker projects are definitely creative projects. Video game projects are, for us, definitely creative projects.

Om: Are you adding new categories?

Perry:  We’re also looking at not just constraining but also expanding a little bit into urban design and things like bike lanes and bike racks and community gardens.  A lot of cities have approached us, talking to us about projects in that space. And we’re just having conversations — we don’t want to do anything too quickly.

We want to see how we can bring those projects in and bring them in in a way that fits Kickstarter — so they’re creative projects, with rewards and the right structure.  And even science, I mean, science is something that we’ve been talking about for awhile.

There’s already been science projects on the site that fit into other categories for some reason. But it’s really fascinating to us. Science is a hyper‑creative field, and there are a lot of things in science that we feel qualify as creative projects.

Om:  I’m addicted to Kickstarter. And the biggest challenge I have is finding the projects.

Perry:  We’re working on kind of the next generation of discovery and ways that we can help you find the projects you want faster.  Because the growth has been so great, we’ve shifted a lot of focus to other areas. And discovery hasn’t gotten as much love as we would have liked.

Om:  We have tablets and phones. Going beyond the obvious browser, do you think Kickstarter evolves and changes to keep up with that?

Perry:  We don’t have an iOS app. We don’t have a very mobile‑friendly version.  We don’t have an iPad app.  That’s all stuff we’re thinking about and we’re working on. I think it’s a battle between getting a lot of stuff done and staying small. I think we’re very committed to staying small.  We’re 37 and I know it’s not a lot of people when you talk about the web. But it’s a lot of people.

If we take a little bit longer to get stuff done, that’s what we’re going to do. We’ll work harder, but we don’t want to be hundreds of people. We want to keep the team small. We want everybody to know everybody else. We want to grow the company culture in that way.

Om:   As a platform, what are the things you think that you will need to provide for this thing to keep going? For example, security, fraud prevention, all those things.

Perry:  We believe in not just the audience to find the things that they want to fund, but also in the audience to help us police the site, help us see when things are going off. I don’t think in terms of a trust and safety perspective that the solution for us is to build a big team of people who investigate the validity of people’s claims. Like “Who are these people?”

We’re trying to move away from gatekeepers. I think you create a safer system, instead, by continuing to build tools to have the audience be out there and help us spot things. We’re going to keep doing a better and better job of that as we go on. We’ve got over 20,000 data points right now of successful projects. That’s really informing our thinking with the new things that we’re working on developing.

Om:  With the JOBS Act, there is a lot of talk about Kickstarter being used for crowd funding of startups, etc. What do you make of all that talk?

Perry:  Some people have made assumptions about what we would do. We’re not interested in that model.

We’re going to keep funding creative projects in the way we currently do it. We’re not gearing up for the equity wave if it comes. The real disruption is doing it without equity. The real disruption is when you break down the funding of a project into all these little bits.

When people are giving $5, $20, $50 — people don’t need to receive a return on their investment.  People are giving relatively affordable amounts of money and they decide how much they give.

So many ideas, in general, in the world are not about and are not going to make money. Those things need a model. That’s the world we come from. That’s what we wanted to support.

Om:  Where do you see Kickstarter going over the next three to five years?

Perry:  The past three months have been a whirlwind. We had never had a million‑dollar project before and then Double Fine was about three months ago. Now, we’ve had many million‑dollar projects and multi‑million‑dollar projects. But we honestly don’t really care if we have million‑dollar projects. We’re just interested in projects.

That said, those large projects draw attention. They draw new people to the site and they’re rallying points for people to find out more about the site. So we’re more known, more out there.

Om: Is that important?

Perry:  You start from being something that works really well and is cool. That’s what makes people want to use it. Then you ride that for a little bit, knock on wood. Then at some point this magical thing happens where you become a utility. You’re like Wikipedia. You’re like CraigsList. That’s really where we want to take this. We want people to understand very simply how Kickstarter works and how they can use it. It’s just a utility out there on the web.

Top

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Moritz is part of a rare breed of uber-VCs who have had multiple billion dollar exits. Moritz, John Doerr, Vinod Khosla, Jim Breyer and Fred Wilson belong to this super club. Moritz, who spent early part of his life as a journalist and wrote for Time magazine, is well known for his investments in Google, Yahoo and PayPal. Moritz spoke at our RoadMap conference last November and is a big champion of finding investment opportunities in India, China and other parts of the world. Moritz also wrote the seminal Apple book, The Little Kingdom.

On a more personal note, I have gotten to know Mike over the years and I am stunned by this development. He informed the firm’s limited partners in a note earlier today. This is the text of the email that was sent out.

We have always tried to be straightforward with you and, in that spirt, I need to share something. Unfortunately, I have been diagnosed with a rare medical condition which can be managed but is incurable.

I’ve been told that in the next five to ten years the quality of my life is quite likely to decline. Right now I feel fitter than ever and I hope that I’ll be one of the lucky ones who can live a full life and defy the statisticians. But there is no way of predicting this with certainty and thus for me, life has assumed a different meaning and I am making some adjustments.

I am going to extract myself from the daily management of Sequoia Capital, a task that has consumed a large part of my time for the past sixteen years. I will become Chairman of Sequoia Capital and will be deeply involved with nurturing the fresh investments, ideas and relationships that can be of significant long-term benefit for all of us. I will also work very closely with some of our younger and newer members, will continue my role as Managing Member of existing funds and maintain all my current company responsibilities. I will use twelve to fourteen weeks – sprinkled throughout the course of each year – for various pursuits, diversions and trivial indulgences.

Nothing about this should cause much of a change because everything that has been achieved at Sequoia Capital has resulted from the teamwork and contribution of many people. Our overall business is in the best shape it has ever been and we are better positioned than at any time in our forty year history. Doug Leone will assume full responsibility for coordinating the business we have gradually developed over the past couple of decades and almost everything else remains entirely the same.

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Connectivity in offices, home, cafes, trains, parks, cars and planes — I say bring it on. I have already shifted most of my life to the “cloud,” and it is not much of a surprise that I am a shameless believer in connectivity. That is why I am excited about Aeromobile, which is making it easy to use your phones on planes, including transatlantic flights.

Aeromobile is a UK-based company that is jointly owned by Telenor, a telephone company, and Panasonic Avionics, which recently became a majority share holder. Panasonic has developed the satellite technology that makes the connections work. Aeromobile is working with several airlines such as Emirates to wire their planes for connectivity.

Last week, Virgin Atlantic, part of the Virgin group, announced its intentions to offer a service powered by Aeromobile. For now, the service is restricted to Virgin Atlantic’s new Upper Class cabin, and only flights between New York and London.

AeroMobile allows passengers to use their own mobile phones in the air. Even better, the new entertainment system is smartphone, tablet and USB compatible, giving passengers the choice to read, watch or listen to their own media. The re-designed cabin will also soon be available on the Mumbai service, from October this year. (from WallPaper magazine)

Virgin Atlantic, on its website, adds:

Instead of spending a fortune using satellite phones, this new system’s charges are almost the same as they would be if you were roaming from another country. Plus, the calls and texts will be added to your mobile bill after you’ve flown, so there’s no nasty credit-card bills. As long as your phone is activated for international roaming, you can use it to make calls, receive texts, and, on BlackBerrys, receive email. By the end of 2012, we expect Aeromobile to be available on 13 of our aircraft. (Some countries like the USA don’t allow mobile phone use in their air space. In these cases, the system will automatically switch off.)

They actively encourage you not to use data roaming for Internet access as it is going to result in a cardiac-inducing phone bill.

While I am excited about the ability to send and receive SMS, I don’t much care about the phone calls. What I really want is in-flight Internet access on long transcontinental flights. The nearly 22 hours of flying time to New Delhi without connectivity makes me jittery. As for SMS messages — iMessage, Facebook Messenger and What’s App do just fine for me.

Lufthansa’s Flynet

Whenever flying across borders, I prefer Lufthansa, which is one of the more punctual and efficient airlines in a world dominated by penny-pinching and shoddy service providers such as United, American and Delta. And they fly pretty much everywhere. What makes them even more attractive  – they are promising to wire their entire fleet by the end of 2012 for WiFi access, though I’ve yet to be on a Lufthansa flight departing from San Francisco that has WiFi. But hope springs eternal. Even the APEX’s editor blog assures us that…

Lufthansa is offering in-flight high-speed Internet on about 60% of its long-haul fleet, and expects to complete installations of Panasonic Avionics’ Ku-band satellite-supported system across the remaining 40% by the end of 2012.

A former customer to now defunct Connexion by Boeing, Lufthansa reignited in-flight Internet service – dubbed FlyNet – in late 2010. It started with its Airbus A330s, moved to the A340-300s, and is now fitting A340-600s and Boeing 747s.

Today, I don’t normally get on a domestic flight without WiFi — think Virgin America. I bet soon, we will have similar expectations of international flights as well.

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• When train engineers talk telco. Trains were the Victorian Internet, and the early networks were built when we strung wires next to the train tracks. The Internet’s cables sneak around, next to train tracks. So when I read that post, I knew I had to share it. I am satisfying my inner telecom nerd, but it is actually a good post, even for non-telecom people.
• The hierarchy of innovation. You may or may not like Nicholas Carr. You may or may not agree with him. But, you have to read him. Check out his latest rant about innovation and how it is changing.
• The sweet spot of personal search: Tuhin Kumar works for Pulse, the iPad news app. He writes about the emergence of personal cloud tools, the need for personal search and why a lot of work needs to be done.
• TV is not TV anymore. I guess others are catching on to what I have been saying since 2007 when we launched NewTeeVee. Nevertheless, Mark Harris breaks it down for mainstream readers in this New York magazine article.
• A singularity hits venture capital. The whole venture capital industry is on the verge of being disrupted and that is a good thing, says Fred Destin.
• What makes a 21st century mom? Good question. I don’t know the answer, but this post is enlightening. For whatever it is worth, I like my mom, old-fashioned and 20th century.
• A moment of clarity in pursuit of happiness. Majd Taby’s sweet and happy post. I don’t have anything to add — just read it.

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In a blog post, Lee and Ben write:

Over the last year, we’ve built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We’ve been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook’s social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we’ve heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we’re just getting started — today we take social gifting to the next level.

We’re thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook. The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook’s platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say … only good things will follow.

The deal terms were not announced. Facebook plans to keep the service alive. A Facebook spokesperson said this is an acqusiton and not an acquhire.

“We’ve been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma’s passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook’s platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways.”

Facebook has gotten fairly aggressive in its acquisitions of mobile applications and acquired Instagram for close to a billion dollars. Karma is quite a stunning app and I have become quite a fan. In fact, I thought this could be the next Fab.com. When Karma launched we looked at the company and here is what we wrote:

What’s nice about the Karma app is that users can send gifts almost instantaneously, without having to enter their billing information before doing so. You also don’t need to have the address or contact info of the recipient — they enter that information when they choose to accept a gift.

It also allows users to send a personalized note to people they’re gifting, either by SMS, posted on their Facebook walls, or by email. Those receiving gifts can even choose between options or swap out something they’ve been given if they’re not thrilled with what was initially gifted to them.

One of the more interesting aspects about the Karma mobile experience isn’t just that it makes gifting by phone ultra-easy, but that it helps to highlight the news around friends and family that actually matters. There’s so much noise on Facebook that it’s difficult to tell now when a friend is having a birthday, or if someone got engaged or is having a baby. The Karma app, by contrast, uses semantic analysis to determine events that are worth gifting people for.

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13.05: Facebook closed the day flat at $38 a share. Smartly priced? And with it, we bring our live blog to a close. Thanks for staying and reading.

12.55: In case you were wondering: How did Mark Zuckerberg retain 26% of equity after so many rounds of financing?

12.51: Milo Yiannopoulos on the new Murdoch aka Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook is on course to be the new News Corp: a global corporation that subverts and corrupts democratic process in furtherance of its own ideological and financial objectives. The difference is that while Rupert Murdoch’s empire has been circumscribed by the limits of production and broadcast, Zuckerberg’s is already in your home, on your laptop, at your workstation and even in your back pocket. Facebook has achieved in a few short years what it took Murdoch decades to accomplish – but the implications of Zuckerberg’s power are far more disturbing.

12:21: Rob Hof at Forbes says that the lack of a first-day “pop” in Facebook’s share price may be a sign that bankers picked the right price, but it’s a PR failure:

IPOs aren’t just about raising money. They are a publicity event intended to cement a company’s arrival as a solid corporate citizen and, at least when it comes to technology companies, a growth stock. A first-day pop, even a relatively small one, often provides a signal that a company is indeed a hot commodity.

12:06: Data analysis company DataSift looked at more than 75,000 interactions on Twitter and the sentiment expressed about Facebook’s IPO and then correlated those with the actual trading:

11:57: A sign of the times, literally: a real-estate agent willing to accept stock in return for a building lot (via Jonathan Heileger of North Bridge Venture Partners):

11:42: One teenager — the daughter of Loop Insight editor-in-chief Jim Dalrymple — gives her perspective on the Facebook IPO:

My 19-year-old daughter @beardsdaughter: "Why are people investing in Facebook, it's already on the way out."

—
Jim Dalrymple (@jdalrymple) May 18, 2012

11:39: The Washington Post may not have invested in Facebook when it had the chance, but chairman Don Graham’s net worth has increased by about $40 million as a result of shares he was awarded when he joined the Facebook board.

11:28: David Hornik, a venture capital partner with August Capital, says that several visionary investors — including Yuri Milner — deserve some credit for seeing the value of Facebook early:

It is impossible to ignore the economic impact of the Facebook IPO. It will make many people very rich. And it secures what has been known for a long time — Facebook is the best Venture Capital investment in the history of the industry.

11:26: A Facebook update from chief technology officer Bret Taylor:

11:16: Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic has some thoughts and questions about what happens to Facebook post-IPO, including whether investors will start to care about the CEO’s iron grip over the votes and the board:

Not all corporate structures are alike and as Matt Yglesias explained a while back, Facebook’s power is concentrated in one person: Mark Zuckerberg. Is this going to become an issue for investors or are they all too happy having Zuck running the show?

11:08: You think he’s young now? Here’s a photo that Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes (now owner of The New Republic) posted to his Facebook wall of himself with Mark Zuckerberg and fellow co-founder Dustin Moskovitz:

11:03: According to the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones, in the first 10 minutes of being public, Facebook had already traded 25 percent of the highest volume of any initial offering in history.

10:56: Just to show that some people live outside the Facebook IPO bubble, Betabeat talked with some normal human beings in Times Square outside the Nasdaq trading screen:

We passed by two blonde twenty-somethings, tourists from Germany, who were wondering what exactly was going on. “It’s a business story,” clarified our news editor. “Oh, okay,” they said, nodding, still looking quite confused.

10:51: You knew it was coming, sooner or later — a video animation from Taiwan’s NMA about Facebook’s historic moment:

10:45: How much does India love Facebook’s IPO? Judging from this photo, a whole bunch (via Prasanto Roy)

10.40: Will the IPO Change the Way Users See Facebook?

It has a unique relationship with the users who entrust the Facebook to manage enormous amounts of personal data, knowing that mistakes can have profound social consequences. That unique relationship puts Facebook under more scrutiny by it’s users than, say, a company like Walmart receives from its customers. So, threats to it’s mystique of being something more than just-another-company are particularly problematic. As a public entity, Facebook with be subject to pressure by shareholders to make changes for the sake of producing revenue that are contrary to the interests of users.

10.30: Dominic Basulto writes Facebook Unlike and Internet Schadenfreude

At a time when Facebook promises to transform hundreds of investors and employers into paper millionaires, the site’s 900 million users are wondering: What about me? The site, which rocketed to fame and fortune by selling advertising based on the personal data of its users, will leave almost all of them empty-handed. As a result, we have people gloating over the site’s disenchanted advertisers.

At some level, we’re all disenchanted that the world’s most successful Internet company is actually just a massive advertising play. Facebook sells ads based on our web behaviors and personal profiles.

If nothing else, this schadenfreude will only deepen as we find out how other Web companies are getting rich by trafficking in our personal data. As we transition to a new mobile, post-PC era, this trend towards personal data consumption by the Internet’s most successful companies will, most likely, only deepen.

10.20: Why do we care about the Facebook IPO? Rohit Bhargava explains

Only a fraction of us watching the coverage today will actually be in the market to try and purchase some shares, yet we will watch. Is it merely the historic size of the IPO? No, I think the real reason is something more fundamental.

We all have a personal connection to Facebook. We all use it, and not just as a “user” of Coke drinks a can once in a while. We rely on it to manage many of our personal relationships and share our memories. Facebook is more than a social network, it is a utility – like water.

10.03: Look who is driving toy cars. Hint – not Mark!

Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss with Divya Narendra (via Instagram posted on May 2, 2012.)

09.57: Jim Cramer writing for TheStreet:

We want things to be compliant with Facebook(FB). That means we need to see oil stabilize. We need to see Europe stabilize, which it can, given that every short is worried about something good happening this weekend. We need to see gold rise, which is what happens each time the Germans give in to some growth initiative that could be considered inflationary. We also need to see earnings be smooth.

So we have a decent backdrop, for certain. But we also need to see the frenzy die down — and that, well, that’s not going to happen. So if we balance the über-exuberance of Facebook with the über-depression of an oversold stock market, maybe — just maybe — we’ll get a decent day. Of course, that sure hasn’t been the case on many Europe-dominated Fridays.

09.51: David Sze of Greylock Partners was at Facebook HQ and spoke to Forbes.

“People were milling around in the middle of the square in anticipation,” Sze said. “(COO) Sheryl (Sandberg) spoke a little bit. The (person from) Nasdaq spoke a little bit. Mark spoke. Then they opened the bell. Everyone cheered and celebrated for about 10 minutes. Then everyone went back to their offices and started working again. It’s a great milestone for the company. Wonderful congratulations to all of them. But one of the great things about Facebook is you don’t get to where they’ve gotten and get where they’re going to go without being really focused.”

09.48: Chris Cox, one of Mark Zuckerberg’s confidantes is having a great day. Photo by investor David Sze.

09.26: Facebook users are double dippers, says comScore.

40+% of Facebook users use another Social Network or sharing service (up from 20% last year.) Twitter (23.8% of FB users), LinkedIn (20.3%), Google+ (16.6%), Tumblr (13.9%), Pinterest (12.1%)

08.59: Facebook IPO is all that everybody seems to be talking about on Twitter.

DataSift recorded 190003 interactions generated by 85689 unique authors, over a period of 5 days.

8:55: A thought from Venrock venture partner David Pakman:

What an incredible accomplishment - the creation of a $100B company. A celebration of genius entrepreneurship. Congrats to everyone at $FB.

—
David Pakman (@pakman) May 18, 2012

8:53: As risky as it might be to sell such a high-volume stock short (i.e., bet on it going down), some hedge funds say they are preparing to do exactly that:

“This is about as bubbly as you can get,” he said. “My mother asked me if she could get Facebook shares and she has never been interested in IPOs before. A cab driver asked me about the IPO too. That’s when you want to short it.”

8:45: Apparently Facebook’s IPO isn’t doing any favors for one of its biggest partners, game developer Zynga — Reuters says the stock has been halted after dropping 13 percent:

RT @rossneumann: ZYNGA trades halted as stock drops 13% bit.ly/KyZKSK

—
Matthew Keys (@ProducerMatthew) May 18, 2012

8:40: A thought from early Facebook staffer and Benchmark Capital partner Matt Cohler:

So very, very proud of my friends and colleagues at Facebook. Today is just another step in the journey, but an important and exciting one!

—
Matt Cohler (@mattcohler) May 18, 2012

8:35: According to Reuters, Facebook traded a mind-boggling 82 million shares in the first 30 seconds on Nasdaq:

Facebook, Inc. trades 82 million shares in first 30 seconds. Facebook IPO live blog - bit.ly/JXw9RQ $FB

—
Reuters Top News (@Reuters) May 18, 2012

We’re also tracking the trading of Facebook in a separate post.

8:32: Finally, Facebook starts trading — up a respectable 13 percent in the opening to $42, and cheers at CNBC according to Eric Jackson:

8:29: While the Nasdaq tries to cope with a tsunami of demand for Facebook shares, there’s plenty of time for more witticisms, like this one from humorist Steve Murray:

What are the chances that facebook will open and then immediately suspend or crash like it does on my iphone?

—
Steve Murray (@NPsteve) May 18, 2012

8:22: Nasdaq officials have said they were forced to delay Facebook’s opening further for technical reasons, and Barron’s columnist Steve Sears says someone must have underestimated the demand:

The FB delay simply reflects the cold fact of bandwidth limitations for electronic trading. Someone at NDAQ mis-calcuated FB demand.

—
Steve Sears (@sm_sears) May 18, 2012

8:18: So where is Facebook? Nasdaq says it is experiencing a delay, likely due to enormous demand according to Bloomberg:

Nasdaq says it’s ‘experiencing delay’ in opening Facebook. Likely due to enormous retail demand. Live coverage: bloomberg.com/tv

—
Mathew Yurow (@myurow) May 18, 2012

8:15: A thought from Marketplace Wall Street reporter Heidi Moore:

CNBC: "I just want to make sure we don't whip ourselves into a frenzy on the short term value." That horse has left the barn.

—
Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) May 18, 2012

8:13: Some frustration on the part of financial commentators like the CBC’s Amanda Lang as Facebook is still delayed:

This is what happens when child dictators head public companies: start trading FB already!!

—
Amanda Lang (@AmandaLang_CBC) May 18, 2012

8:11: While we wait for the stock to actually start trading, a thought from Yieldbot founder Jonathan Mendez:

Nice day to recall that on 12/23/99 Yahoo passed the $100B valuation mark. $YHOO

—
Jonathan Mendez (@jonathanmendez) May 18, 2012

8:05: Why didn’t Facebook stock begin trading when the Nasdaq exchange first opened at 9 am Eastern? Because that’s just how the Nasdaq works, that’s why:

“It’s not a delay or a problem, just a matter of style,” said a source familiar with Nasdaq’s process. “We want to have an IPO stand alone at its own special time.”

8:04: AOL founder Steve Case thinks back to the day when his company went public at a much smaller valuation:

Celebrating Facebook IPO today while reflecting on AOL IPO 20 years ago. Valuation was $70 million. Most thought Internet was a fad. #wrong

—
Steve Case (@SteveCase) May 18, 2012

8:01: Reuters says Facebook trading has been delayed until 11:05 Eastern, so day-traders can stand down for another few minutes.

7:57: A wry observation from Twitter chairman and Square CEO Jack Dorsey:

Wow. Slow news day.

—
Jack Dorsey (@jack) May 18, 2012

7:54: With Facebook stock set to begin official trading within minutes, here’s an official photo of the Nasdaq bell-ringing ceremony provided by Facebook:

7:51: In the list of those who have become extremely wealthy as a result of the Facebook IPO you will find the name of one Paul Hewson — otherwise known as U2 front-man Bono, who New Music Express says will officially become the richest musician in the world, eclipsing Paul McCartney:

The U2 singer owns 2.3 per cent of the shares in Facebook through his private equity firm, Elevation Partners, which they bought for $90 million (£57 million) in 2009

Also, CNBC notes that much of musician Kenny G.’s net worth comes from a seed investment he made in Starbucks (via Staci Kramer).

7:42: True to Facebook’s hacker culture, a programmer at the giant social network hacked the Nasdaq opening bell button (with the exchange’s permission) to automatically post a status update to Mark Zuckerberg’s page — using the engineer’s headphones:

7:36: A photo posted on Facebook by mobile product manager Erick Tseng, with the caption: “It’s official! Exciting day! Now some sleep, then back to work!”

7:31: Wade Roush at Xconomy asks the new Facebook millionaires and billionaires to spend some of their time and resources after the IPO on some really world-changing problems instead of just new Ferraris:

I’m not saying that ex-Facebookers should abandon their training in business or computer science and become climatologists, roboticists, entomologists, or oceanographers. But they can certainly take the lessons they’ve learned about building scalable systems and harnessing natural human behaviors and apply them to problems outside social networking.

7:28: According to CNBC, retail interest in the Facebook IPO — that is, interest expressed by non-professional traders — is the highest ever for an initial offering:

RT @CNBC: BREAKING: CNBC's Kelly: Retail demand for $FB highest ever for IPO; people close to deal expected retail component of 15%-25%. ...

—
Eric Jackson (@ericjackson) May 18, 2012

7:24: Meanwhile, New York Times writer Nick Bilton asks us to spare a thought for two of the people who probably feel the most left out of the Facebook hype:

In an alternate universe, the Winklevii twinsies are ringing a NASDAQ bell right now.

—
Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) May 18, 2012

7:22: Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, warns anyone thinking of buying Silicon Valley real estate about the spinoff effects of the world’s largest technology IPO:

Reminder: today marks the last day you can buy a house in the Valley without having to rob a bank or start Instagram.

—
Aaron Levie (@levie) May 17, 2012

7:17: The Boston Globe points out that, in contrast to how both Google and Netscape were treated by the universities where they were created, Harvard made the smart move by not asserting any rights over Facebook despite the fact that Mark Zuckerberg developed it while he was a student there:

Harvard’s minor role in Facebook’s history has attracted a different reaction: a star-studded Hollywood blockbuster, a reinvigorated reputation as a dream school for entrepreneurial teens, and warm feelings among millionaire alumni who may become large donors. By contrast, few know that modern web browsing was born at the University of Illinois, and Netscape’s embittered founders vowed never to give another dime to their alma mater-turned-adversary.

Hat tip to Techdirt for spotting that one.

7:14: A great photo from New York Times media reporter Brian Stelter, posted on Instagram just after the ringing of the trading bell:

7:11: Comedian Andy Borowitz has been firing off one-liners about the Facebook IPO since Thursday, including this gem:

As for Facebook, people seem to be saying that $100B is a small price to pay to avoid interacting with actual people.

—
Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport) May 17, 2012

7:09: Although Mark Zuckerberg has already run the ceremonial opening bell at the Nasdaq exchange, actual trading of the stock won’t begin until 11:00 a.m. Eastern — so you can stop holding your finger over the “buy” button on your Bloomberg terminal now.

7:01: Apparently not everyone is aware of what a momentous day this is, according to this tweet from Eric Jackson:

Barista at Starbucks next to Nasdaq just asked me "what the heck is going on today?!"

—
Eric Jackson (@ericjackson) May 18, 2012

6:57: There have been lots of great Twitter responses to the Facebook IPO, but one of the best was from blogger Ed Hunsinger, or @edrabbit:

Why is Facebook going public? They couldn't figure out the privacy settings either.

—
Ed Hunsinger (@edrabbit) May 17, 2012

6:52: Those newly-minted Facebook millionaires had better restrain themselves, according to a New York Times story on the nouveau tech rich:

“The message here is, ‘Keep shipping product,’ ” said a Facebook executive who requested anonymity while discussing internal matters. “If someone buys a fancy car and posts a picture of it, they get ridiculed and berated.”

6:51: Remember when everyone was saying they were quitting Facebook? MG Siegler does:

I swore I read that everyone was quitting Facebook in 2008. Then 2009. Then 2010. Then 2011. What happened?

—
MG Siegler (@parislemon) May 18, 2012

6:46: A historic moment is recorded — where else — as a Facebook status update:

6:43: Looks like someone in the TV caption-writing game needs a spelling lesson:

6:40: Ryan Holiday at Forbes says there’s one reason why the media loves writing about companies in their pre-IPO period — because they can say whatever they want and the company can’t comment:

It’s not just about capturing a popular SEO-term. The real reason is much more insidious. It all comes down to exploiting a single fact: the reporter has complete freedom to write the “facts” however they want while the company is gagged by the SEC’s quiet period regulations.

6:38: Here’s a shot of Mark Zuckerberg ringing the opening bell:

6:35: It seems as though everyone is excited about the potential of buying Facebook stock, based on this tweet:

BUY BUY BUY!

—
Jesus Christ (@jesus) May 18, 2012

06:23: Watch Zuck ring the bell live here in a few minutes.

06.10: The Atlantic says Facebook is a weapon of mass distraction.

“Facebook’s greatest asset is its immense capacity to distract us. The best social media companies manage to get 10% of their users to come back each day, according Foursquare/Tumblr/Twitter/Zynga investor Fred Wilson. Ten percent isn’t cool, Facebook contends. You know what’s cool? Fifty percent.”

06.01: Eduardo Saverin, the “Brazilian” on the eve of the IPO on his Facebook page:

On the eve of the Facebook public float, 8 plus year in the making, I as co-founder wanted to look back and cherish Facebook’s early beginning. Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg [sic] on keeping tremendous stead-fast focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place.

05.56: The New York Times: General Mark Zuckerberg

“We heard from people close to Mr. Zuckerberg that part of his leadership skills can be attributed to his penchant for playing games that involve conquering virtual worlds. A favorite video game of his as a boy was ‘Civilization’, the object of which is to ‘build an empire to stand the test of time,’ a friend of Mr. Zuckerberg’s told The New York Times. The person added that ‘Civilization’ was the ‘training wheels for starting Facebook.’”

I clearly should stop wasting my time on Tetris -Om

00.01: Want to predict the closing price of Facebook IPO on first day of trading? Play this game -facebookipodatclosingprice.com! I am betting it ends up in the $60-$75 range. – Om

One of the cool things about that closing-price prediction site is that creator James Proud set it up after angel investor Chris Sacca asked for just such a thing in this tweet. - Mathew

00.00: CNBC: India Set to Overtake US as Facebook’s Largest Market

“India is set to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015, according to social media analysts, driven by growing internet penetration and high rates of growth in mobile connections. As Facebook’s third largest market, India is home to over 45 million users, behind Brazil and the United States with 47 and 157 million users, respectively, according to the latest data from Facebook’s advertising platform.”

This is not necessarily a good thing. It is hard to monetize the overseas traffic and many Internet companies have learned this the hard way. – Om

And with information exploding on the web, companies big and small are finding ways to organize it around constructs such as “knowledge” and “interests.” Think of these as attempts to push the Internet into “discovery” phase.

Yesterday, Google announced its Knowledge graph. Today, Twitter is introducing a way to follow others based on interests. In a blog post, the company said:

Currently, when new users come to Twitter, we show them all almost the same suggestions for what or who to follow. That isn’t ideal. Since you have individual interests, you should get individual suggestions. To make it easier and faster for everyone to get started on Twitter, we’re beginning some experiments with tailored suggestions in a number of countries around the world.

The first experiment will show new users a list of accounts that we recommend you follow, alongside a timeline filled with Tweets from those accounts. If you’re part of the experiment, you’ll see a Twitter experience that’s relevant to you right when you sign up. (Of course, you can always choose to not follow the suggested accounts that don’t interest you.)

If you’re a current user, you may see tailored suggestions in Who to follow so you can constantly find interesting and relevant accounts that are new to you.

In doing so, Twitter is also telling the world that Google and Facebook aren’t the only game in town and it has a reach to match those mega-billion dollar giants.

These tailored suggestions are based on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem. We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies — including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube — do when they’re integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days.

(That paragraph also explains why Twitter was talking about its new do not track privacy policy earlier this morning.)

Twitter is trying to solve what my colleague Mathew Ingram calls its “filter” problem. It isn’t the only one. Zite, a mobile app, for example has tried to organize articles and blog posts around “interests.” Prismatic, arguably one of the best of all new services, is building the digital daily newspaper.

Back in 2008, I wrote a post, Can serendipity make you rich? arguing:

The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity.

Well, looks like many companies are looking at the opportunity and licking their chops. And that can’t be a bad thing for us, the people of the Internet.

Zite and new notions of content discovery will be part of the discussion about the ever-changing media landscape at paidContent 2012: At The Crossroads on May 23 in New York City.

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Paige Craig’s photo courtesy of Venturebeat.

BetterWorks, one of the most well known startups to emerge from Los Angeles seems to have hit an air pocket. The company which was started by super angel, Paige Craig (along with Zao Yang and  George Ishii) is said to have laid off close to thirty people, a very credible source of mine tells me. The company is said to be looking at making some dire choices. I left voice mail for Craig and emailed him and am awaiting a comment from him.

I emailed his lead investor, Satish Dharamraj of Redpoint Ventures, who is offline for family reasons and pointed me back to Craig. My attempts to reach some of his other investors in the company have drawn a naught as well. Dharamraj is the lead investor in the company which raised a whopping $8 million in August last year. Forbes put the estimated valuation of the company at $100 million and recently called it one of the 10 startups changing the world.

Craig, who dodged my phone calls and repeated requests told Pando Daily:

The outside sales model is a big risk. When we were on-boarding early adopters, the signals were that it was working. Once we got past the early adopters, the real numbers didn’t justify the cost.

To that I say, keep spinning dude!

Other investors in the company include Jeff Clavier of SoftechVC and Ron Conway’s SV Angel. The company also attracted angel dollars from well known angels such as Naval Ravikant of Angel List, Keith Rabois, COO of Square, Michael Jones ex-MySpace, Brian McClendon, VP of engineering at Google and Yishan Wong, a director of engineering at Facebook.

BetterWorks describes itself an employee perks program. The idea was just as Google and Facebook offer a variety of perks (meals, coffee, gym, etc.) to their employees, startups (and others) could use BetterWorks’ platform to offer perks to their employees. And because it can aggregate a lot of employees, the company could get better offers for the employees and the whole process could be managed through its web-based interface.

Update: I used exclusive in the headline, but later was told by Erin Griffiths that PandoDaily beat me to the punch. Apologies to them and to the readers. 

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Comcast says it is planning to make sweeping changes to its data usage plans and will start by boosting the data cap from 250 GB a month to 300 GB a month. The move is in response to changing consumer usage behavior and a shift to more cloud-oriented computing. Comcast, which is the largest broadband provider with around 20 millon customers in the U.S., points to emergence of devices such as iPad and Roku as a reason behind this change.

Comcast first introduced the idea of metered broadband in 2008. At that time, company had come under criticism for being unable to develop a meter to accurately show the monthly bandwidth usage. Since then other U.S. broadband providers have been adding a “cap” to their data accounts and are betting that consumers will pay for additional bandwidth. While this hasn’t become a widespread practice just yet, almost all major companies are toying with limits and additional charges.

The company explained its decision in a blog post, which follows below. If you want our take on the subject and more details, read Stacey’s analysis.

Today, the way people use video and access information has changed dramatically. Four years ago, when we first instituted a broadband Internet data usage threshold, the iPhone had just been introduced…the iPad didn’t exist…and the experience of watching streaming video on your home PC or through a Roku box or direct to an Internet-capable TV was much different than it is now.

While the world was changing, so were we. Over the past few years, we have been an industry leader in innovation — delivering exciting new products to our customers on a regular basis. Our recent announcements about the Xfinity TV app, Streampix, HBOGO, WatchESPN, and Xfinity TV on the Xbox 360 are just a few examples of how we’re using new platforms to deliver new services to a range of consumer devices and screens.

In 2008, we announced an Internet data usage policy that allowed residential customers up to 250 GB of data usage per month. It was widely recognized that this was far above any normal (including very heavy) residential use of our high-speed data service, and in fact, that remains the case today. (Netflix April 2011 Letter to Shareholders; PC World — ‘Are Broadband Usage Caps Inevitable?’; ArsTechnica: ‘Comcast starts 250 GB bandwidth caps October 1′). With the passage of time, it’s important to remember that the purpose of the usage threshold was simply to ensure that all of our customers were treated fairly and had a consistent and superior experience while using our high-speed data service. That has been and will be our sole goal. We’ve never had any intention to limit the lawful use of the Internet or restrict our customers’ ability to view online video.

Importantly, we have consistently treated all video carried over the public Internet the same whether it comes from our sites or anywhere else on the public Internet. XfinityTV.com, nbc.com, Hulu, Netflix or YouTube, and every other Internet video site (whether our site or a third-party site) is treated, and will continue to be treated, exactly the same. That’s consistent with FCC rules and consistent with what we have always done and continue to do.

We’ve also always said that we would evaluate customer usage and a variety of other factors and make adjustments as the marketplace evolved. Please see our FAQs and a Venture Beat story on this topic. Over the last several years, we have periodically reviewed this policy, and for the last six months we have been analyzing the market and our process and think that now is the time to begin to move to a new plan. This conclusion was only reinforced when, in recent weeks, some of the conversation around our new product introductions focused on our data usage threshold, rather than on the exciting opportunities we are offering our customers.

So as the market and technology have evolved, we’ve decided to change our approach and replace our static 250 GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches that benefit consumers and support innovation and that will continue to ensure that all of our customers enjoy the best possible Internet experience over our high-speed data service.

In the next few months, therefore, we are going to trial improved data usage management approaches comparable to plans that others in the market are using that will provide customers with more choice and flexibility than our current policy. We’ll be piloting at least two approaches in different markets, and we’ll provide additional details on these trials as they launch. But we can give everyone an overview today.

The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we’d start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).

The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).

In both approaches, we’ll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today’s 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month. “

(Via.)

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