Comments on: Kara Visits Slide in San Francisco

By: Slide Gets Big Funding? | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Slide Gets Big Funding? | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:04:29 +0000

[...] to come about the funding, but here is a post of a visit I made to Slide in September of 2007 and also a video interview I did with [...]

By: Slide’s Max Levchin Jumps on the GigaOm Show This Week | BoomTown | Kara Swisher | AllThingsD

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:23:47 +0000

[...] I did a three-part series of interviews with Max, as well as doing a video of a visit I paid to the widgetmaker’s offices in San Francisco, and I posted them all yesterday. [...]

By: Peter Cranstone

Peter Cranstone — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:25:41 +0000

I’ve met Max, he’s very smart. However I question the ability of a widget to make money. Remember PayPal (it’s still around and has a real business model around it. In fact it had one almost from day one).

Now that you have a chance to interview Max can you post a follow up where you clearly outline the business model for Widgets.

If you can do it from your analysis then there is a chance there is one. If you can’t then it means more analysis is required.

The only barrier to entry that I see is being first and having backers that as they say in the valley – no conflict, no interest.

I for one would really like to see someone else analyze the sustainability of Widgets.

By: Tom Coseven

Tom Coseven — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 12:37:00 +0000

In the 90’s, do you remember how many developers Palm claimed were part of the “palm economy”? At one point, the list of apps included 5,000 calculators. There are thousands of clock JAVA applets that you can download onto your mobile phone. The efficiency of the ecosystem was so great that no one could concentrate enough revenue to survive.

The only difference with widgets of today is viral distribution. In other words, can the leaders create a barrier to entry by spamming new apps to a large enough user base to prevent the other 100 million plus widget makers from diluting the market revenue? Perhaps, and Max is very smart, but the potential for user push-back to aggressive push distribution is very high.

By: Kara Visits Slide’s Max Levchin, Part 3 | BoomTown | Kara Swisher | AllThingsD

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:58:39 +0000

[...] Here is the third of three interviews with Slide CEO and Founder Max Levchin. If you want to read more about why I visited him, see this explanatory post. [...]

By: Kara Visits Slide’s Max Levchin, Part 2 | BoomTown | Kara Swisher | AllThingsD

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:57:41 +0000

[...] Here is the second of three interviews with Slide CEO Max Levchin. If you want to read more about why I visited him, see this explanatory post. [...]

By: Kara Visits Slide’s Max Levchin, Part 1 | BoomTown | Kara Swisher | AllThingsD

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:57:17 +0000

[...] Here is the first of three interviews with Slide CEO Max Levchin. If you want to read more about why I visited him, see this explanatory post. [...]