Netly News

Can Facebook Save Business 2.0?

The New York Times reported earlier this week that Time Inc., the corporate parent of Business 2.0, the magazine I edit, is considering shuttering it. Our situation is a fairly common one these days: As more and more ad revenue is shifting from print to online media, many magazines are going the way of the telegraph.

What happened after the Times story was published, though, was an It's-A-Wonderful-Life kind of surprise, one that continues to amaze me, minute by minute: Two readers from Canada started a Facebook Group to rally support for Business 2.0. Within 40 hours of the Times story, 350 people had joined the group. (I believe I was member number 7, having read about the group on Techmeme.) By last night the number topped 700 and as of this writing we've got over 900 supporters. At this rate, we ought to hit 1,000 people (bright-eyed geniuses, every one of them, with big brains and enormous disposable incomes!) by the weekend. Please forgive me for obsessively checking The Number; I am starting to feel like Jerry Lewis in the waning hours of a telethon...

So how big this thing will get? What effect it will have on the folks in whose hands the fate of this magazine rests?

The iPhone Returns, or The Return of the iPhone

Image from Dan_H's photostream

I really want an iPhone--some day, when it's ready for primetime. But it's not yet. And now that the reality distortion field is lifting, I need to get the iPhone back to the store to qualify for the 14-day returns policy. So, like a bunch of other people have already done, I'll be returning mine (and my wife's) this weekend. Why?

What's left to say about the iPhone?

I’ve been playing with the iPhone for the past few days and agree with what others have written: It represents a giant step forward in personal technology. Its pros and cons have been well documented, so there’s not much of value to add. Deal breakers for me include: the $500 or $600 price tag, the fact that it runs on AT&T’s EDGE Network—which has already been rendered obsolete by AT&T’s 3G Network—and the scary prospect of having to send it off, (within two years!) for days to Apple to replace the battery. This phone is aimed at the very rich, or the chronic early adopters you saw lining up at Apple stores. Most people will be better off waiting for a while, at least until the holiday season when Apple will doubtless update the phone, while dropping the price of this model.

That said, it sure is a lot of fun to use, and I can understand why the Apple fanboys are enraptured. Apple has done so many things right since Steve Jobs returned. His greatest gift—even greater than his uncanny skill spinning the media like Jimi Hendrix played the guitar—is his constant drive to imbue his products with magic. This is a device that does so many things you’ve never experienced before, you feel like you have special powers just carrying it around.

Despite all that I’ve read about it, some things surprised me. For instance, I believe that one of the best markets for this 1.0 phone isn’t consumers—who, without carrier subsidy or handset insurance, can’t afford to buy it, lose it or drop it in the toilet—but business users. A lot will need to be added in the coming months of course, such as real Exchange support and the ability to send out a "kill pill" as my pals in the IT Department call it. (This is a remote command that encrypts and effectively shuts down a lost cell phone.) But from a business user-not-worried-about-security stand point, the iPhone is such an improvement over my Treo, that going back to it, after two days with the iPhone, was a shock. My Treo, which “only” crashes once or twice a day since a firmware upgrade a few months ago, looks and behaves like something from Stalinist Russia by comparison. As my friend Ted said, the iPhone feels “like something from the future—maybe 2012.”

While adults have pretty much picked this thing apart, kids have a different perspective. Luckily, I found one in my neighborhood who's been demoing it, and who agreed to review the phone—from a kid's perspective.