Would be interesting to hear about how he stumbled on the position. Startup recruiting just doesn't happen the way corporate recruiting does. Does that mean being up in the bay area (or other startup hub) is crucial to landing a great startup experience? Outside of co-founding your own...
That's an interesting way of looking at it, but you're still talking about "preference" of one over the other. Unless there's a new tool out there that can integrate everything for me, (even if I prefer FB/Buzz/Twitter/etc.) I'll still probably use all of them for those precise separate reasons.
I think it'd be interesting to see how many NEW social network users Buzz will bring in, just because of the simple fact that it makes setting up a brand new network easy as pie (vs FB and having to build up to a nice little community of friends).
It works to show the underlying thread in the downfall of 'the old business model', but it would be nice to have a forward-looking extension of the article. Okay, we know that internet changed the game - great. But now that it's becoming the new norm, what are the watchouts...what's next?
Maybe going beyond simple wordcount to determining statistical probabilities of certain words / phrases being mentioned together & at "high" frequencies would taper down the number of words you need a baseline for (because I also don't assume the baseline will be static or even near stable - changing trends of discussion topics)
This idea also ties into the "new news" idea a bit. What we've seen from events like #iranelection is that twitter is a good (but could be great) tool for detecting news at the onset of events (before big stations pick up on it), but really starts to get bogged down with "spam" or RT's once a topic gets picked up. I'd like to see news that integrates these abnormal spikes in tweets that hint at a bigger underlying story w/some sort of follow-up with more context about the event.
I think it's less about vacation time/'time off' and more about just disconnecting from your normal routine (often times fairly rigid as we're natural creatures of habit)...and giving yourself the freedom to explore different paths/options/ideas.
I definitely see the value in that and it goes for any career where creativity and insight is important. Taking the time to step back, disengage and then reengage with new ideas and perspectives can be very valuable. But like he said, it needs goals and structure to make sure you accomplish that, otherwise, you're just screwing off.