Devolver

SignalWire is a client of mine. They shipped POM in April.

We noticed that Microsoft released the POML (Prompt Orchestration Markup Language) yesterday.

SignalWire's version complies to markdown or XML.

The very close parallels may be pure coincidence, but it may not be.

If a clone job...not a good look to rip off OSS software without even a link to the inspiration.

If a coincidence: the co-founders at SignalWire have a lot of foresight (they hacked a tool use framework within two weeks of GPT-4, before OpenAI introduced tool calling).

Their AI toolset is worth a deeper look.

Surprised not to see Bento on the consideration list. Maybe not (yet) well known, but gives Customer.io a run for its money and pricing is great.

A "ChatGPT app designed by Apple" scenario would be the safest, simplest, and lowest-risk partnership for both companies.

It would also be the least imaginative.

The wilder, more interesting scenarios:

- "SiriGPT" - GPT in Apple data centers, running on Apple Silicon - Why not both?

In all three, Apple partners with OpenAI to iterate Apple Silicon towards performance parity with NVIDIA...but with much better performance-per-watt.

Totally agree with you.

The essay is less about the regulation and more about why Google needs HubSpot more than HubSpot needs Google.

As generative AI matures, HubSpot’s “all-in-one” software for marketing, sales, and customer support has an opportunity to evolve into AI-powered flywheel that accelerates (and eventually automates) every aspect of a business’s relationship with its prospects and customers.

Given the mixed history of large acquisitions and the growing field of AI models that aren’t Google’s, HubSpot seems more likely to actualize its biggest opportunities if it does not accept tempting acquisition offers from Google (or anyone else).

Unrelated..except for the one small fact they they are all large scale social systems built on foundations of technologies and philosophies from the 18-20th centuries.

And yes, crypto hype IS 100% in full effect and there is a plurality of nonsense in and amidst all the hype.

And yet, from the railroads to the automobile to the stock exchange to the internet, groundbreaking technologies seem to develop via a massive wave of speculation that brings with it the full battery of scammers, hypers, and snake oil peddlers but also the funding and expertise that actually builds new infrastructure...

Then all the get-rich-quickers lose their shirts, some of the scammers go to jail, and what's left behind is a completely new way of doing things.

Nope! While your skepticism is totally reasonable, this is not a lead up to anything basic like a social network on the blockchain or any ICO/Coin pitch at all.

That blockchain wind up was only a foreshadowing of another piece of content..an essay that attempts to actually define what the blockchain is (in historical context) AND how it can be applied over the next generation to solve huge problems in energy, food production, transportation, municipal government, civic engineering, education, etc.

Chose to use this grammatically broken slang very consciously.

I’d be lying if I said that reaching an audience and seeing my post generate (mostly) positive, thoughtful discussion didn’t feel good.

But that feeling (for me, at least) is closer to gratitude and hopefulness than it is to ego gratification.

The claps and notifications of retweets are, however, quite addicting, in the truest sense of the word.

I find myself checking twitter more than is reasonable to see where it’s going.

And while there is some upside there (connecting with and engaging in conversation with like-minded peeps), the frequency of my checking is highly disproportionate to that Value.

Ugh.

I agree. There is a contradiction here. And I am nearly as uncomfortable with centralized publishing platforms as I am with mass scale behavior design for profit.

And yet.

I originally published on my own site and it didn’t get much traction.

But when I edited it substantially and published as a direct response to Nir’s post, it reached 30,000 people, 6000 of whom finished the whole thing...in less than 24 hours.

Since the goal for me is spreading the message and fueling the converstion, I gotta go where distribution follows.

Me too. But you know what they say about the pen and the sword?

Maybe we need to update the saying: “the keyboard and a content database can be mightier than the predator drone”

?

If my writing makes it less likely that some would-be Facebook competitor can use mass-scale psychological manipulation to get an edge, I can live with that.

Snap went from an incredible growth rate to a terrible growth rate because of a few simple (and sadly, quite common) strategic mistakes:

1. Underestimating the competition.

Evan Spiegel clearly believed that Zuckerberg would never figure out how to beat him. He seems to have concluded that he was smarter, more creative, and more agile than Zuck. He profoundly miscalculated Zuck's relentlessness and is now losing badly as a result.

Takeaway Lesson: Hubris kills.

2. Attacking a market where you have few/zero major advantages.

Evan seems to have concluded that the only scaleable way to monetize a social app is with digital advertising.

The problem?

With <10% of Facebook/Instagram's user base, a tiny fraction of Facebook's ad targeting data, and a set of ad products that were 4-5 years behind Facebooks, why would any advertiser ever dedicate more than their 1-5% "experimental" budget to Snapchat?

Answer: They wouldn't, and likely never will.

Takeaway lesson: Don't take a juggernaut head on. You will get crushed every time.

3. Misunderstanding your own advantages.

Snapchat originally took off because it offered an underserved segment of the market (young people) something Facebook and Instagram did not: a relatively safe, low-judgment place to express themselves.

By focusing on the advertising market (and inevitably turning to privacy-destroying data aggregators like Experian to buy ad targeting data on its users), Evan threw that away.

Takeaway lesson: Never lose sight of the needs and desires that led your users to choose you.

More here: https://exponents.co/snap-facebook-key-competitive-strategy/

Extremely well said. Yours is a more in depth and eloquent version of what I wrote in the first section of this essay:

"This is an essay about go-to-market strategy and market development. It’s also an essay about company culture.

Specifically, it’s about how the market focus and culture that helped a company reach significant heights can rapidly transform from critical assets into potential liabilities…and what to do about it.

While Twilio is the focus of this essay, this essay is not just about Twilio. It could be about about ANY potentially disruptive company with brilliant founders, venture-scale ambitions, great products, a top-notch team, and traction to die for."

Trying to understand why this is happening and deal with it

Good question!

I don't mean to say that Snap won't cross the chasm, just that it hasn't yet.

If it had, its position against Facebook would have been strong enough that Facebook would not have been able to clone its core feature into Instagram and cause Snap's growth to stall.

Twitter is a more interesting question.

Twitter's product and position are unique, yes, but IMHO, the company pursued a market (advertising) where they had no clear advantages over Google or Facebook.

The result of that mistake has been stagnation. Barely evolving product, flat user growth, declining revenue growth, and no clear path to long term profitability.

In other words, Twitter not only did not cross the chasm...they fell into it and got stuck.

Hey Steve! Love what you're doing with the bank APIs!

Not being well-versed in such matters, I'd appreciate any insight you can offer into why the Nav hijacking happens and what I might do about it.

I created the article using a WP plugin (Aesop Story Builder) which integrates with the WP theme I'm using (Journalist from UpThemes).