Quotes from John Battelle

Google+ was, to my mind, all about creating a first-party data connection between Google most important services - search, mail, YouTube, Android/Play, and apps.

Good first drafts and speedy responses to consumer dialog will always trump lawyered corporate speak.

There are essentially two main reasons to hold a phone up at a show. First, to capture a memory for yourself, a reminder of the moment you're enjoying. And second, to share that moment with someone - to express your emotions socially. Both seem perfectly legitimate to me.

Way back in 2008, when the iPhone was new and Instagram was a gleam in Kevin Systrom's eye, I was involved in creating a service called CrowdFire. It was a way for fans at a festival (the first was Outside Lands) to share photos, tweets, and texts in a location and event specific way.

We all know the future is mobile, right? And the iPhone and iPad are Perfect Expressions of Beauty, Ideal Combinations of Form and Function. Except they're Not.

I've been a Mac guy for almost my entire adult life. I wrote my first college papers on a typewriter, but by the end of my freshman year - almost 20 years ago - I was on an IBM PC. Then, in 1984, I found the Mac, and I never looked back.

Just like the VCR opened the film and TV industries to unimaginable new revenue streams, search, RSS and the Internet will do the same for marketers and media companies.

When documents were analog, they were protected by government laws against unreasonable search and seizure. When they live in the cloud... the ground is shifting.

Only a consistent, ongoing, deep experience can make a lasting media brand: one that has a commitment from a core community and the respect of a larger reading public.

I think ad networks is an ongoing story. Federated was a chapter in that story, and it continues to write a new one.

I have done a pretty good job of partitioning my life digitally, posting utterances and stories that I'm happy to share with anyone on Twitter, leaving a few sparse comments and 'Likes' on Facebook (I'm not a huge user of the service, I'll be honest), and sending any number of photos to thousands of 'followers' on Instagram and Tumblr.

Google Now is one of those products that to many users doesn't seem like a product at all. It is instead the experience one has when you use the Google Search application on your Android or iPhone device (it's consistently a top free app on the iTunes charts). You probably know it as Google search, but it's far, far more than that.

As you grow older, you learn a few things. One of them is to actually take the time you've allotted for vacation.

Founded by an ex-Apple employee, Nest devices do for thermostats and smoke alarms what the Mac did for PCs - Google Buys Nest made them relevant and far more valuable.

I think Facebook is an extraordinarily important part of the Internet ecosystem, and having a robust presence there is a critical part of any brand (or company's) strategy.

There will soon be streams of data coming from all manner of products - appliances, clothing, sporting goods, you name it. Wouldn't you rather live in a world where you can export the data from your son's football helmet to a new app that monitors force and impact against a cohort of high school players around the country?

You happily give Facebook terabytes of structured data about yourself, content with the implicit tradeoff that Facebook is going to give you a social service that makes your life better.

Drones ply the liminal space between the physical and the digital - pilots fly them, but aren't in them. They are versatile and fascinating objects - the things they can do range from the mundane (aerial photography) to the spectacular - killing people, for example.

It seems everyone is converging on a simple set of facts: Our lives are digital, and we wish to share our lives. Pinterest came at it through images, artfully curated. Facebook came at it through friends, cunningly organized. Dropbox came to it via files, cleverly clouded.

An elaborate system of etiquette and social standards flowered around the home phone: how long a child might be allowed to stay on the phone, how late one could call without being impolite, and of course, the dread implications of a late night call which violated that norm.