Valleywag: Joi Ito

BusinessWeek scrapes Techmeme for its latest list

Paul Boutin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:00:00 PDT

Loic Le Meur! Gabe Rivera! Joi Ito! Don't feel bad if you've never heard of them. BusinessWeek.com's latest 25 Most Influential People on the Web is a mashup of billionaire powerbrokers with a randomized handful of those folks you run into at that same little tech conference that happens under a different name every month. I'm guessing they left out TechCrunch's Michael Arrington to create buzz. If you don't want to click through 27 pageviews on BusinessWeek's site, here's the entire list in alphabetical order:

Steve Ballmer
Mitchell Baker
Jeff Bezos
Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt
Jeff Clavier
Paul Graham
Arianna Huffington
Joi Ito
Steve Jobs
Jonathan Kaplan
Loic Le Meur
Jack Ma
Matt Mullenweg
Rupert Murdoch
Craig Newmark
Gabe Rivera
Kevin Rose
Sheryl Sandberg
Jon Stewart
Peter Thiel
Maria Thomas
Anssi Vanjoki
Jimmy Wales
Evan Williams
Jerry Yang

Big in Japan! How Twitter jumped the Pacific

Owen Thomas — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:40:00 PDT

The digital revolution promised us that the nation state would wither away. But the spread of social networks show that however much the Internet connects us, quirks divide us. Take, for example, the inexplicable popularity of Twitter in Japan. Tokyo out-tweets New York and San Francisco combined. Pingdom, a website analyst, finds that Twitter is more intensely popular in Japan than in the United States. The conventional theories — Japan's high wireless usage, for example — fail to explain it.

Joi Ito, an early Twitter user and an investor who helped launch the service's Japanese version, said in April that the wireless theory doesn't apply. Early on, Japanese users were 30 percent of the service's base, a percentage that has fallen as it has grown in the U.S. and elsewhere. But they used the site despite its flaws. Though Japan has long been text-message crazy, Twitter didn't have a Japanese SMS service at first. Even entering a message in Japanese characters required a workaround.

Ito thinks that Twitter's simplicity struck an emotional chord in the famously minimalist country:

It got crazy early adoption in Japan from the beginning. One of my theories is that a lot of services in Japan to be either closed or over-featured portals and simple services with good open APIs are not as common as in the US and it attracts developers and users who are sort of sick of a lot of the bloaty Japanese services.

Here's another theory on why Twitter spread: Ito himself. Though he's too modest to say it, the globetrotting venture capitalist is a key bridge between San Francisco and Tokyo. Could it be that Twitter spread in Japan in part because Ito, Web 2.0's trans-Pacific import-export specialist, took note of it, and others followed the trendspotter? We are talking about a social network, after all. People may stay because of their features, but they join because of their friends.

As late as last year, Ito was hedging his bets, favoring Twitter rival Jaiku in April 2007: "I've been helping the Jaiku guys out a bit as an advisor and I'm also a friend of Ev's." (That's Ev Williams, Twitter's founder.) Less than a year later, Jaiku had been sold to Google, and Ito announced he was investing in Twitter. It's not an explanation that coders will like, but Twitter's spread in Japan suggests success really does come down to who you know.

(Chart by Pingdom)

Joi Ito is headed to a "Fortune thingie" -- are you?

Adriana Nunez — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:00:00 PDT

The invite-only Fortune Brainstorm: Tech is taking over the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay through Wednesday. Dreadfully convenient for Robert Scoble, who lives in town; not for Japanese VC Joi Ito, who's jetting across the Pacific. The maelstrom of people and ideas includes the likes of Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, the World Bank's Daniel Kaufmann and One Laptop per Child's Nicholas Negroponte. If your thought-leader status was somehow overlooked, fine-tune your leadership skills at tonight's East Bay Innovation Group. Organizational psychologist Peter Newton offers insight into how startups can grow strong and competent leadership. Ready for the next frontier? Klara Nahrstedt, a professor of Computer Science at Marc Andreessen's alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is in town indulging your sci-fi holodeck fantasies as she discusses Cisco's Teleimmersive Environment for Everybody.

Got something to add to the calendar? Send it to calendar@valleywag.com.

The number of good ideas I've had

Jackson West — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:00:00 PDT

The annual gathering of techies at Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp in Sebastopol is like Bohemian Grove but slightly less secretive. Want to know who was in and who was out? Investor Joi Ito's photos should give you an idea of who's who this year. Have a better caption? The best one will become the new headline. Friday's winner: "Two guys, one glass" by montoya. (Photo by Joi Ito)

Shawn Fanning might never have to pitch Volkswagens again

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 09 May 2008 08:40:00 PDT

Finally, Napster creator Shawn Fanning will make a little bank. After Napster went bankrupt and he sold Snocap to Imeem for not much at all, Fanning and cofounder Jon Baudanza have sold social network startup Rupture to Electronic Arts for $30 million. The best part: Fanning and Baudanza did it without launching a product out of beta. All Rupture ever built was a still-in-beta network for World of Warcraft gamers. Investors cashing in on the Volkswagen pitchman's payday (see video) include Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures.

When Joi met Esther

Owen Thomas — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:00:00 PDT

Hyperglobal adventure capitalists Joi Ito and Esther Dyson met by coincidence at London Heathrow's just-opened Terminal 5, and raced to post photos of each other to Flickr. Before Yahoo bought the photo site, Dyson was an investor in Flickr. Suggest a caption in the comments. (Photos by Esther Dyson and Joi Ito)

Shanghaied LinkedIn founder misses a photo shoot

Owen Thomas — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:51:05 PDT

Valleywag hears that LinkedIn, which has largely missed out on the social-networking buzz, is getting ready for its closeup. Employees were getting lensed today at a photo shoot, which is usually a sign that a company's about to get the cover treatment, or at least a major feature story, from a big business publication. Missing at the shoot, however, was LinkedIn founder and president of products Reid Hoffman, who recently stepped out of the LinkedIn CEO chair. Hoffman, a tipster says, is away in Shanghai, with friend Joi Ito, the Six Apart backer pictured here to his right, purportedly looking for new startups to invest in.

Joi Ito discloses his graceful side

Owen Thomas — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:27:34 PDT

After Valleywag pointed out the unseemly appearance created when Six Apart funneling donations from users' purchases to charities tied to investor Joi Ito, the company — right in keeping with its recent problems living up to its ideals of transparency — never publicly conceded the existence of a conflict of interest. But today, Ito, to his supreme credit, did just that on his own blog — and even acknowledged Valleywag in the post. Well done, Joi. If only the blog-software company you backed could learn from your example.

Six Apart funnels donations to backer's pet charities

Owen Thomas — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 13:26:40 PDT

LiveJournal, the online community run by blog-software maker Six Apart is rowdy, contentious, and mostly undeserving of attention. But occasionally its cantankerous users, in their perpetual, pointless war with Six Apart management, make a decent point. For example, this one: Why do three of the four nonprofits chosen to benefit from a recent sale of paid LiveJournal accounts have ties to early Six Apart investor Joi Ito? Ito no longer serves on Six Apart's board, but he's the CEO and founder of Neoteny, a Japanese venture capital firm which provided Six Apart with much of its initial backing. Neoteny chairman Jun Makihara has a board seat. And Six Apart CEO Barak Berkowitz previously worked for Neoteny. I'd never say the organizations Ito's linked to — the EFF, Creative Commons, and Witness — aren't doing good work. But it all seems very cozy. So cozy that the supposedly pro-transparency company didn't care to disclose the fact to customers.

Joi Ito preaches the World of Warcraft gospel

Nick Douglas — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:17:09 PST

Serial entrepreneur and investor Joi Ito, a terribly accomplished technologist, is introducing the audience at the Web 2.0 Summit to the communicative and social power of World of Warcraft. His points:

A tricked-out World of Warcraft screen looks like a cockpit — it's an amazingly sophisticated interface requiring multitasking and information translation skills.
It's social — Joi is not only part of a clan for traditional monster-killing, but also several social clubs that include characters from the warring Horde and Alliance clans.
The social aspects of WoW don't negate the immersive property of the game, despite some theorists' objections.
South Park. Everyone loves South Park.

Waggable: Lord of the rings

Nick Douglas — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 19:08:10 PDT

Forgive me for running a mere reprint, but this quote from angel investor and ICANN board member Joi Ito speaks enough about the world of tech that it needs no comment.

I remember being in an elevator with a guy from Nokia. A phone went off with the Nokia ring tone and everyone reached for their phones. The Nokia guy said, "Ahh, the sound of marketshare."

Can you hear me now? [Joi Ito's Vox blog]

Internet Millionaires to African AIDS Babies: Drop dead!

Nick Douglas — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 07:30:00 PDT

Marketer and pro-blogger advocate Curt Hopkins is a good and reasonable man. Good because he's running the Blogswana project, in which students will help those affected by AIDS in Africa tell the world about their plight. Reasonable because when he asked the following Valley people — people known as good souls with a passion for world-changing technology — for financial support, he expected a few yeses and a few nos.

But from all but Blogger co-founder Evan Williams, Curt didn't get so much as a "screw you." Not all of the non-responders are worth millions, but one suspects they're all better off than the average Central African farmer.

Decent People
Evan Williams (Blogger, Odeo)

People Who Would Rather Buy a Fourth Lexus Than Give a Dime to Keep African AIDS Babies From Going Tits Up
Chris Anderson (Wired)
Ted Leonsis (AOL)
~~Steve~~ Scott Johnson (Ookles, Feedster)
Craig Newmark (Craigslist)
Craig Mundie (Microsoft)
Esther Dyson (I have no idea)
Joi Ito (goes to lots of Blogger conferences, other than that...visits diaper hookers in Kabukicho?)
Michael Arrington (Techcrunch)
Steve Wozniak (Apple)
Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media)
Kevin Kelly (Wired)
Jason Calacanis (Weblogsinc/AOL)
Nick Denton (Gawker)
James Hong (Hot or Not)
Max Levchin (Slide, Paypal)

The Blogswana Project [Official site]
Donation page [Blogswana Project]

Remainders: Let's slay this ogre and discuss your business plan

ndouglas — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:51:15 PST

Geeky investor Joi Ito says the new golf isn't extreme biking, it's World of Warcraft. [1up.com]
Pixar's taking over Toy Story 3, not shelving it. A power play against Lasseter, or can he wring more magic from the series? [Moviehole]
Google can keep a copy of your tax records, love letters, and porn folder, and they promise not to peek — as long as that's considered evil, anyway. [EFF]
Get in on the ground floor (or own a piece of doomed software history) — order a Flockstar tee. [Factory Joe]
Homeland Security saves the Internet from hackers and, um, bloggers in a simulation. They probably cheated and skipped the "Cory Doctorow of Mass Destruction" simulation. [Newsvine]