• May 18th, 2013

    Gillmor Gang: Live From Betaday

    This Gillmor Gang was recorded live at betaday, the betaworks annual gathering in New York. The Gillmor Gang included John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Douglas Rushkoff, Paul Davison, and Steve Gillmor. Enjoy. → Read More

    April 29th, 2013

    John Borthwick Says Betaworks Is A Puzzle Where All Parts Serve The Whole

    TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 - Day 1

    Betaworks is a fairly unique entity, as a holding company that creates, acquires and invests in a wide variety of startups and products, including most recently Marco Arment’s Instapaper. Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick took the Disrupt stage today to talk about his company and its investments, as well as the products it has created in-house like Giphy. → Read More

    April 6th, 2013

    Gillmor Gang: Fork You

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — spent a too-quick hour on Facebook Home, Twitter’s new deep linking Cards, and the jousting over Webkit. Individually, these developments represent interesting strategy for the major notification platforms of Google, Apple, Twitter, and Facebook. But taken together, we’re seeing an… → Read More

    February 25th, 2013

    Shapes Of Things

    House of Cards

    Sure, there’s a second screen these days. But it’s not the one you might think. The second screen is the TV, where the decaying rules remain in force as network comedies atrophy and the fall season is rife with cancellation. The first screen is the mini, managing the push notification appointment calendar and relationships of the binge viewers as they kibitz, joke, and narrate the stream economy. → Read More

    February 23rd, 2013

    Gillmor Gang: Gangnam Style

    The Gillmor Gang — John Taschek, Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, and Steve Gillmor — went bicoastal with @stevegillmor at @borthwick’s Betaworks Studios in New York City. @scobleizer and @jtaschek held down the West Coast as it threatened to float away in Googlemania. With a touch Chromebook and a Google Glasses video surfacing, at least half the Gang is predicting Apple is in… → Read More

    February 9th, 2013

    Gillmor Gang: Snow Kidding

    The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — take advantage of the East Coast blizzard to toast some marshmallows on the fire. First up is the Series A drought and impact of the cloud on startup funding. Next, the big pivot to Spoilerland, aka Binge TV.

    House of Cards is having just that impact on the television industry, collapsing the… → Read More

    January 12th, 2013

    Gillmor Gang: Hello Goodbye

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — go beyond the usual scenarios in examining the symbiotic relationships between Apple’s more proprietary model and Android’s open heritage. CES may have been presiding over the collapse of the PC, as the mobile device wave overwhelmed Wintel. But the speed with which the two silent partners have captured our… → Read More

    December 2nd, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Talking Tablet Smack

    Gillmor Gang: Talking Tablet Smack

    The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — survived a rare Saturday recording session at the unstable directorial hands of Gillmor. Topics included iPad Mini, Nexus 7, the latest Twitter UI on said iPad Mini, the lack of communication across platform firewalls, and a bit of Windows 8 Surface and Google Glasses smack. Rated B for Buttcast. → Read More

    October 27th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Tommy Can You Hear Me

    Gillmor Gang: Tommy Can You Hear Me

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Keith Teare, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — counted their pennies as Apple, Microsoft, and Google weighed in to the Tablet Sweepstakes with new entries. Apple’s iPad Mini captured two of the Gang’s wallet, while none seemed ready for the Surface or other Windows 8 entries. Google seems challenged to wrangle the carriers and Microsoft may be… → Read More

    October 20th, 2012

    Twitter Spring

    Jack_Dorsey_at_Bear_Hug_Camp

    I read the news today oh boy. Well actually, I didn’t. In a realtime Twitter world where everything looks like news, none of it is. The Steve Jobs anniversary stories are just one measure of this logjam, but something deeper than his tragic demise is troubling the technology business. What news is and why we crave it are being disrespected by Twitter’s recent moves, and the result may be a… → Read More

    October 13th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Rocks In A Can

    Gillmor Gang: Rocks In A Can

    The Gillmor Gang — Danny Sullivan, John Borthwick, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — bemoan the political dregs of the finally-engaged election before working our way back into tech waters. Just when all hope seems crushed in a sea of SuperPAC money and Jobs nostalgia, we ask the interesting questions, merge the technology and the business moment, and otherwise till the ground for… → Read More

    September 29th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Platformicide

    Gillmor Gang: Platformicide

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — watched in amazement as Twitter made good on its promise to hobble the core of its viral power adopter developers and users. By shutting down third-party clients to focus monetization on its core clients and the Web, Twitter leaves itself exposed to its challengers for control of the realtime wave. → Read More

    August 4th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: I Can’t Hear You

    Gillmor Gang: I Can't Hear You

    The Gillmor Gang: John Borthwick, Danny Sullivan, Doc Searls, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — struggled with Comcastic bandwidth and hours on hold as Twitter and Apple tweaked their business models. It seems that Twitter is refurbishing the accomodations within 140 characters to create a nice new home for Twitter apps, in the process giving the FLipboard to aggregators outside the mother… → Read More

    July 21st, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Or Are You Just Glad to See Me

    Gillmor Gang: Or Are You Just Glad to See Me

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Danny Sullivan, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — turned into Google fanboys on a dime, or $200, with the release of the Nexus 7 tablet. This thing is amazing,, small, fast, and did I mention $200. Just weeks after Microsoft Surface didn’t ship, pre-ordered Nexi did, selling out in most if not all the stores that carried it.

    The Gang touched… → Read More

    June 23rd, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Send In the Clones

    517402858_c_o

    The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, John Taschek, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor — found plenty to write home about in Microsoft’s Surface tablets and Windows 8 rewrite of the Windows platform. Coming hard on the WWDC Apple announcements, it’s clear Redmond is stepping up its game.

    With Skype and the still-not-closed Yammer acquisitions, Steve Sinofsky is trying to buy his way… → Read More

    June 16th, 2012

    Target Practice

    20120616-014914.jpg

    What Apple is signaling with its WWDC announcements is an adoption of this Netflix/iTunes streaming model to the technology business. Built on push notification and the intersection of Siri, Maps, and AirPlay, the next season (iOS 6) begins in the fall, crescendoes with iPhone 5, and then accelerates with software (apps) that harvest the efficiencies and user comfort with the new media consumption… → Read More

    May 28th, 2012

    Push Level Agreement

    20120527-200328.jpg

    That’s the big secret Wall Street is struggling with, that push is the monetization model of mobile. Who cares what the UI is, or what the advertising surface is. The moment a push hits your screen, it comes down to a binary decision: do I want to know more, or do I already know enough. To make that decision, we need social metadata to help out. Who said this, who retweeted it, who @mentioned it… → Read More

    May 12th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Tomorrow Never Knows

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — turned off their minds, relaxed, and floated downstream on the push notification inbox of tomorrow. Borrowing a page from the Tibetan Book of Windows, the Gang debated the impossibility of multitasking, the existence of a new uber operating system, and the overall impact of surrendering to the… → Read More

    May 6th, 2012

    Eat the Document

    eatthedocument

    With all the press releases masquerading as news, Techmeme has felt more like Craiglist for articles in the past few months, or is it years. But recently we finally got some real news, when Google of all people released Gdrive. We knew of course that it was coming, but not how it would actually feel when it got here. I haven’t signed up yet, but already it’s a big deal for me.

    I haven’t… → Read More

    April 28th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: The Teddy Bear Bubble

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Danny Sullivan, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — took the bait and played the Are We in a Bubble game. With Apple’s stock price in free fall, the mobile giant reported another blowout What Me Worry quarter that sent the stock right back up. Meanwhile, Google announced, no, shipped Gdrive, and sent shivers down the collective cloud storage spine.

    What… → Read More

    March 3rd, 2012

    Gillmor Gang: Living on Rented Time

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Doc Searls, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, and Steve Gillmor — go through an entire show (almost) without mentioning Apple’s big event next week. Instead, we discuss Netflix’ new 26 hour movie model, why news silos can be good for you, the relationship between the Republican primary process and the secret source of innovation, and Cluetrain vs. the… → Read More

    January 17th, 2012

    Gillmor Gang 01.17.12 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — on SOPA, Google +, and the End of Software Mayan 2012 Edition. Not one of my best efforts, but the Gang more than picked up the slack. → Read More

    December 31st, 2011

    Gillmor Gang 12.31.11 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — wound up the Old Year and previewed the next one. In fact, we are already well into Social Spring, what with SOPA, Go Daddy, the media scramble, Louis C.K. and the $5 download, Spotify and the independents, Apple AlmostTV, Microsoft irrelevancy, and the end of email. → Read More

    December 3rd, 2011

    Gillmor Gang 12.3.11 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — Robert Scoble, John Borthwick, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — gears up for a rough and tumble Social Shakedown. Facebook, Path (?), Gmail filters, News.me, Media Redefined — we’re swimming in signal without a paddle. But some of us (@scobleizer) are happy to see the big get personal and the little get better.

    Whether you live to serve the social beast… → Read More

    October 23rd, 2011

    Microbridges

    microbridge

    Already we’re seeing microbridges being set up, like the one that puts Twitter into your Contacts list as an SMS address so you can ask Siri to Tweet out a message. As these hacks accelerate, it will be incumbent upon Apple to expand API access to the routing layer so that third parties and especially users themselves can construct these macros. The more they’re used, the more the business… → Read More

    October 22nd, 2011

    Gillmor Gang 10.22.11 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, John Taschek, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — rebounded from a seven and a half minute gap to explore the mysteries of the Siri platform. As machines give up being trained by us and reciprocate by rewarding us for compliant behavior, our gestures are being finetuned to a social pitch.

    While no one was looking, Apple has provided a fresh and… → Read More

    September 24th, 2011

    Gillmor Gang 9.24.11 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — talked Facebook, Spotify, Netflix, Twitter, and, oh what was that oh yes, Google+. In a post-Arrington unpaid blogger world, it seems likely the new alignments suggested by the Facebook announcements will quickly migrate across the social spectrum.

    Soon we may see Spotify play the role of ABC to iCloud’s… → Read More

    August 14th, 2011

    Hello Dali

    dalicity

    Let’s reverse engineer this new Twitter release to get at the heart of the problem. Before the change, there were two ways to navigate the stream. A last in, first out stream of those you follow and their retweets of those you might not. And second, the @mention stream of posts containing a reference to your @username. The @mention stream is by definition high value, but it relies on your personal… → Read More

    August 13th, 2011

    Gillmor Gang 8.13.11 (TCTV)

    The Gillmor Gang — John Borthwick, Robert Scoble, Kevin Marks, and Steve Gillmor — waxed and waned about the latest in social media buildout. Most notable was Twitter’s new Activities and @mention views, which rolled up not only your @mentions but follow and favoriting signals in a realtime notification stream. Activity view did the same thing for those you follow, with an aggregate stream of… → Read More

    July 3rd, 2011

    Social Studies

    The overall consensus is that Google has done some good work in avoiding where they have dropped the ball in previous efforts. Also some good work in creating a way to rapidly navigate through a series of people views. And a wonderful video tool that recalls the early days when we all gathered around campfires to shoot the breeze.

    The early threads are predictably self-referential, just as they… → Read More