{"id":288,"date":"2013-12-20T13:30:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/?p=288"},"modified":"2013-12-20T13:31:49","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T13:31:49","slug":"twitter-founder-reveals-secret-formula-for-getting-rich-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Founder Reveals Secret Formula for Getting Rich Online…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sam<\/a>
\nEv Williams has figured out the internet.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what he told the gathered tech heads at the recent XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon, and while he may have said this with tongue partly in cheek, he spent the next 30 minutes unloading his unified theory of the global computer network, an interpretation formed after 20 years of hard thinking \u2014 to say nothing of his experience creating seminal internet companies Blogger and Twitter.<\/p>\n

In his speech, Williams explained what the internet is, how it works, and how to get rich from it. Truth be told, Williams is not the best public speaker, but his message was clear: At a time when so many internet entrepreneurs are running around Silicon Valley trying to do something no one else has ever done, Williams believes that the real trick is to find something that\u2019s tried and true \u2014 and to do it better. It\u2019s a speech that should serve as a signpost, a bit of much-needed direction for the Valley\u2019s younger generation.<\/p>\n

The bottom line, Williams said, is that the internet is \u201ca giant machine designed to give people what they want.\u201d It\u2019s not a utopia. It\u2019s not magical. It\u2019s simply an engine of convenience. Those who can tune that engine well \u2014 who solve basic human problems with greater speed and simplicity than those who came before \u2014 will profit immensely. Those who lose sight of basic human needs \u2014 who want to give people the next great idea \u2014 will have problems.<\/p>\n

\u2018We often think of the internet enables you to do new things. But people just want to do the same things they\u2019ve always done\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014 Ev Williams<\/p>\n

In 1994, Williams was a Nebraska college dropout selling tutorial videos to help people get onto the net. In those videos, he described the global computer network as \u201ca puzzle comprised of three things: Computers, information, and people.\u201d But he no longer sees it that way.<\/p>\n

After leaving Twitter in 2011 and helping to incubate, among other things, the blog network Medium, Williams found himself rethinking his original formulation. Computers have proliferated and diversified, in size and function, to the point of being unremarkable. Information has become similarly abundant, rendering the term unsatisfyingly generic. And after 20 years, the types of people and groups you find online are basically identical to the people and groups you find in the physical world. What\u2019s now important are the connections between the people and the machines.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are hardware connections, then there are all these interactions involved with data and software,\u201d Williams says. \u201cAnd if you look at any big internet thing, you see it\u2019s basically a big hive of connections. A Follow is a connection. A Like is a connection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the internet is doing now is connecting everyone and everything, every event and every thought, in multiple ways \u2014 layer upon layer of connection. Increasingly, everything that happens and everything we do, everyplace you go and check in, every thought you have and share, and every person who liked that thought\u2026 is all connected\u2026and it keeps multiplying relentlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n

These connections aren\u2019t just proliferating, he said. They\u2019re proliferating in a particular direction. There\u2019s an organizing principle that explains what thrives on the internet and could potentially predict what will thrive in the future: Convenience.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience,\u201d he said. \u201cConvenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease.\u201d In other words, people don\u2019t want to wait, and they don\u2019t want to think \u2014 and the internet should respond to that. \u201cIf you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple were all excellent at delivering this sort of convenience, Williams said. They often got there by removing steps from what had once been a more complex series of actions, precisely the trick that allowed Williams\u2019 first big invention, Blogger, to dominate how people put new content on the web. Instead of creating a new document, saving it, manually uploading it, and viewing it in a web browser, people could simply type their content into a web form and click \u201cpublish.\u201d
\n\u2018The internet is not what I thought it was 20 years ago. It\u2019s not a utopian world. It\u2019s essentially like a lot of other major technological revolutions that have taken place in the history of the world\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ev Williams<\/p>\n

The key to making a fortune online, Williams told the XOXO crowd, is to remove extra steps from common activities as he did with Blogger.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s the formula if you want to build a billion-dollar internet company,\u201d he said. \u201cTake a human desire, preferably one that has been around for a really long time\u2026Identify that desire and use modern technology to take out steps.\u201d<\/p>\n

His recent example is Uber. \u201cHow old is the desire of getting from here to there?\u201d he said. \u201cHow hard was it really to do? They took out some steps in that process\u2026They formed a connection between you and the driver.\u201d<\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 philosophy might seem pedestrian. But that\u2019s the point. Twenty years after people began using the web en masse, it\u2019s time, Williams said, to accept that the internet isn\u2019t a magical universe with boundless potential. It\u2019s just another engine for improving quality of life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe internet is not what I thought it was 20 years ago,\u201d Williams said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a utopian world. It\u2019s essentially like a lot of other major technological revolutions that have taken place in the history of the world.\u201d He compares it to, well, agriculture. \u201c[Agriculture] made life better. It not only got people fed, it freed them up to do many more things \u2014 to create art and invent things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rub is that we often take convenience too far. \u201cLook at the technology of agriculture taken to an extreme \u2014 where we have industrialized farms that are not good for the environment or animals or nourishment,\u201d he says. \u201cLook at a country full of people who have had such convenient access to calories that they\u2019re addicted, obese, and sick.\u201d He likens this agricultural nightmare to our unhealthy obsession with internet numbers like retweets and likes and followers and friends.<\/p>\n

That warning wasn\u2019t so much a slam on Twitter, which Williams helped create, as it was an observation about human nature. People will be people. The internet wants to give them exactly what they\u2019re looking for. And people who understand how to channel that tendency will be disproportionately powerful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Good Luck…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ev Williams has figured out the internet. That\u2019s what he told the gathered tech heads at the recent XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon, and while he may have said this with tongue partly in cheek, he spent the next 30 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[111,103,125,104,34,100,94,133,58,134,43,37,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,99,122,132,92,129,131,115,118,95,130,77,98,55,52,106,70,119,53,72,73,69,86,74,123,54,136,120,90,107,80,89,82,137,84,88,68,78,97,110,81,87,79,128,108,126,127,138,75,93,135,38,96,67,124,113,112,114,60,105,83,121,85,76,102,42,35,36,51,4,101,59,117,56,40,41,7,109,91,71,39,33,116,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288\/revisions\/293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dolphinsgroup.co.ke\/sam-muchai\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}