like Larry and Sergei or Mark Zuckerberg, or even Jeff Bezos

like Larry and Sergei or Mark Zuckerberg, or even Jeff Bezos

Good morning, All,

If technology had a mantra, it would be that you’re only as good as your last innovation. Now, imagine being a so-called tech wunderkind or leader, like Larry and Sergei or Mark Zuckerberg, or even Jeff Bezos, and being under that kind of pressure.

Hot off the presses: Facebook released Slingshot (yeah, well, it seems that Snapchat acquisition didn’t quite work out) and Amazon released Fire, their long-expected entré into the smartphone market that’s not likely to ignite any mass exoduses from the Apple platform. Kindle was something of a game changer. Fire? Not so much. Not yet, anyway. No YouTube on the phone? We’re sure that no one is taking that as being a glaring omission on Bezos’s part. Pay attention and eyes right. More to come, you can count on it.  Bezos wants to be a media mogul – he already owns the WaPost – and tech always demands more, more, more.

Not unlike corporations before them, the big tech companies are trying to take over the world, and that means swallowing up other verticals. Doesn’t GE have a majority stake in NBC? The Achilles Heel of tech is that everything moves faster and we believe what Brad Feld said – that we have to do more, faster. Add a few bells and whistle, call it innovation. It’s not so much about moving the needle as it is making the announcement. Which makes for a lot of interim/premature technologies. As for Fire – might have pulled the trigger a bit too early and here it comes: this is a first iteration. Jeff Bezos rarely makes mistakes and, Kindle aside, it’s not called Fire for nothing.  The real question is – at whom is he really taking aim? Onward and forward.

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