After investing 9 episodes of time into the FOX series Reunion they have pulled it because of mediocre ratings. I liked the show, it was like 24 as a murder mystery soap opera and it had a very good hook (advancing one year every week) which conditions nostalgia.

When are the networks going to figure out that the whole concept of “word of mouth” is becoming altered and stretched? The movie studios are digging up anything with remote brand currency because it is cheaper than building something from scratch (e.g. Bewitched, Starsky and Hutch, etc.) and the networks are going to ride reality sequels until they collapse.

What real hope does a new show have? The chance of an initial hit is miniscule now with the options available to people and the entire ratings foundation which determines these things is flawed and measuring a system that is entirely in flux.

Someday soon networks need to understand that their brand is now undeniably tied to the community that they build around their products and ultimately that is where they must find out how to both add and extract value.

All this is prelude to what I really wanted to say which is: Why in the world would FOX pull the Reunion website before the ink was dry on the freaking press release!? Are these execs just plain ignorant? Is your Web product director obsessively tidy?

Instead of possibly cultivating a relationship with all these people who committed to your product you are pretending like they don’t exist instead of possibly building on them for the future. Pure genius. N’t.

I mentioned the slick Google map creator Wayfaring when they launched. Now the community is starting to build some funky stuff. Check out this annotation of vlogs to a map in NYC. That is pretty cool and opens the door for virtual tours!

Tags: wayfaring, socialmapping, vlog, web2.0

I have been playing with the beta for Yahoo! Mail and it sure does look nice. The responsiveness, however, to put it nicely, sucks. It takes 10-15 seconds everytime it loads which is pretty much a show stopper right there. There is a lag on clicking things. The RSS feeds are there but it doesn’t keep track of feeds you have already read which is another major strike against.

Congratulations on porting Microsoft Outlook! I wish everyone would stop chasing Microsoft and do something much better.

[Update: I have started using Y!M Beta now for one of my accounts and it has definitely improved. It is still too long in loading up but it has a smoothness that is lacking in gmail. I only wish it was functionaly for Yahoo! business accounts...

Update 2: Global release of Y!M is solid.]

It would seem that our little project is generating a fair amount of interest (we’ve had more than 200 people sign up to beta test an entirely vague product!) despite a paucity of details.

We are decidedly not in “stealth mode�—it’s just that we aren’t quite finished with the product and want to get valid feedback from the get go. I thought I would try to explain a little bit more about what we are trying to do.

First, we think (apologies Redmond) that Outlook is bloated and lame. We are also not fans of porting the Outlook paradigm to AJAX. In setting out to design this product, we wanted to recreate (as best we could) the action of writing down an event on a monthly calendar stuck to the refrigerator.

If we are able to pull that off, then we hope that our new product will allow you to open a browser and easily know what you are doing and what your friends/family are doing—a social network centered on an actual application (how refreshing!)

If we err, it will be on the side of simplicity.

The good news is that we will be working through the holidays. A further update here.

Tags: 30boxes, 83degrees, calendar, web2.0

I got a parking ticket on the Stanford campus yesterday.

It is the end of 2005 and the geographical epicenter of Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, does not yet have a setup where you can pay your ticket online! WTF.