50 Things I Learned in 2011

by on January 2, 2012 in Opinion

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  1. Linked-In’s Reid Hoffman is the most connected man in Silicon Valley. He also drives a metallic green Acura.
  2. Arianna Huffington has an ego the size of Greenland. She also poops while talking on the phone.
  3. Michael Arrington is the size of Greenland. He also has a fetish for the color green.
  4. You can go from 0 to $13Bn in market cap in under three years. This causes a lot of people to scream “bubble-bubble” at the top of their voices.
  5. By next year, all of you reading this would own a smartphone.
  6. You can’t shoot elephants in Zimbabwe, paint your site a horrible lime-green, and support SOPA without some repercussions.
  7. Never underestimate (justified) nerd rage. See above, and here.
  8. Sometimes, a pivot can get you $40M in funding, a million members in 5 months, and a cover feature on Entrepreneur magazine.
  9. You can’t trust AOL to not screw everything up, ever. See proof: here, here, here, and here.
  10. I can feel overwhelmingly mournful at the death of a man I’d never met, who lived more than 7500 miles away, and had the reputation of being a massive ahole.
  12. Netflix isn’t untouchable. Thankfully, Qwikster was a disaster aborted well in advance.
  13. Autocorrect is damn effin’ hilarious.
  14. Sexting on Twitter can utterly desecrate your political career.
  15. Duke Nukem Forever. FTW….Not.
  16. Dwolla is giving Visa and MasterCard executives many sleepless nights.
  17. You can buy and sell recreational drugs on the internet. Required: TOR browser, bitcoins, balls and bravado.
  18. Louis C.K. is a rockstar and an all-out awesome guy.
  19. Apple fanboy and Android droid fights can be horseshittingly hilarious.
  20. TheVerge is the slickest tech site on the interwebz.
  21. I still think it’s cool to say ‘interwebz’.
  22. I may be wrong.
  23. Kickstarter: Facilitator For the Annihilators of First World Problem
  24. Marco Arment is still the best tech-writer not writing for a major tech publication. And that is a wonderful thing.
  25. Dan Frommer comes a close second to Arment.
  26. Web 3.0 = Big Data.
  27. Blackberry. The End is Near.
  28. The Kindle Fire is a pale, pathetic shadow of the iPad. That hasn’t bothered people from buying up millions of units each month.
  29. On that note, Jeff Bezos is a Giant Brained Alien. Also, Google sucks at platforms. It ain’t in their DNA.
  30. Google: “Do a Barrel Roll”. Giggle. Repeat.
  31. Follow up the above with “Let it Snow”.
  32. Yahoo, by the way, can’t do a barrel roll.
  33. Siri Says the Darndest Things.
  34. Never underestimate nerd rage, Part II, especially if they call themselves ‘Anonymous’ or ‘LulzSec’.
  35. Skyrim will kill your social life. But social life < slaying dragons anyday.
  36. The Dark Knight Rises.
  37. Social media. It matters. For proof, take the first plane to Tripoli, then make a short trip through Syria, Yemen, Tunisia, and Egypt.
  38. $41M in funding can buy you press, but it can’t buy you success. Pivoting, of course, is always an option.
  39. Pandora, Zynga, Linked-In, Groupon. Four red-hot startups went public this year without setting the market on fire. Google these are not. Prediction for 2012: Facebook IPO surges before tumbling down within four months as children and senior citizens overrun the site.
  40. On that note: as per my Facebook newsfeed, the most active demographics on the site are annoying 12 year old cousins and annoying 60 year old uncles.
  41. 2012 will see a major battle between Box.net and DropBox. There isn’t enough room for two cloud storage startups.
  42. It’s a pity Americans haven’t taken to TinTin.
  43. Grad school can be hell. Fortunately, I’m only paying $150/year in tuition.
  44. Jimmy Wales really needs your $5. Jimmy Wales banners also convert better.
  45. Staff pages. This is how you design them.
  46. The list of reasons why Yahoo is the snot nosed kid of the internet are many and varied. This is just one of them.
  47. Roger Ebert is the most interesting man on all of the internet.
  48. “Light Field Cameras” are the shit.
  49. That a glorified 3D-chatroom can win TC Disrupt and raise $15M.
  50. Acer will no longer sell cheap, unprofitable crap. The new plan of action is to sell expensive, profitable crap.
  51. Midnight in Paris, the year’s best movie.
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3 Responses to “50 Things I Learned in 2011”

  1. Herval January 3, 2012 at 2:34 am #

    Is n. 11 a secret?

    Reply
    • Puranjay January 3, 2012 at 3:31 am #

      no. 11 was eaten by the WordPress list squashing monster.

      Reply
    • Puranjay January 3, 2012 at 3:32 am #

      P.S. GetNovelo.com…interesting!

      Reply

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