… in 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded just after claiming victory in California’s Democratic presidential primary. It was one of the most depressing days of my life. The New York Times has asked three of his children to write short pieces about their father.
Daily Archives: June 5, 2008
Six-brains Sarcozy
If, like me, you were puzzled by the ludicrous spectacle of the French President drooling over the British constitution on his first State Visit, then here is the explanation: he was crazed by sex, having taken up with his new wife, the delectable Carla Bruni. Confirmation of this is provided by a new book, Carla and Nicholas: The True Story, due out in France this week.
Excerpts in Le Point make the, er, point. “It was instant”, Carla told the book’s authors. “I didn’t expect anyone so funny, so lively. His physique, his charm and his intelligence seduced me. He has five or six brains.”
This startling neurological discovery was made at the fateful dinner where the couple first met. “The president had eyes only for [Bruni]”, one of the other guests told the authors. “Several times, Carla Bruni’s hair grazed the president… Not only is Nicholas Sarcozy subjugated by her, he’s absolutely crazy… He doesn’t stop flattering her all evening…They act as if they’re alone in the room. Nothing else and no one else matters to them. The dinner ends around 2am. Carla’s obviously tipsy; she’s really drunk and smoked a lot! At the end of the meal, she asks the president if he has a car”.
Thanks to today’s Irish Times for this important information.
What Twitter needs
Thoughtful Guardian piece by Charles Arthur.
What Twitter needs is to expand its capacity while making money from those who are using it. True, it has just received $15m (£7.5m) of venture capital funding, valuing it at $80m. But it needs to deter some people from using it – while benefiting from those who continue to.
There are two obvious ways forward. Charge the users, or charge those who want to get at the users. The first option is fine – if it wants to lose 90% of its user base (the rough tradeoff any service sees if it begins charging, however little). The second option might look puzzling, but it has worked before, in the MP3 market.
Once, there were zillions of MP3-playing software programs. Then Fraunhofer, which owns the patents, decided to charge for their use. At a stroke, the number of MP3 encoder/decoders shrank – leaving only those companies able to pay for them.
Twitter could do the same: charge for access to its API, or throttle requests over a certain limit from non-paying sources. True, its architecture challenges would remain – but with money coming in, it would have the incentive to get it right. And in the end, what do you want: a Twitter that’s free, or a Twitter that works?
My answer: one that works.