FanGram
I spoke at the METal meeting.
Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of it either. But its majordomo implored me to come and my shrink was on vacation so I decided to get up early and appear.
It was the opposite of the music business.
The music business is populated by uneducated hustlers, people who do their best to triumph on bluster, employing smoke and mirrors. Their main goal is to get you to believe they’re a winner, and to dedicate time to checking their effort out, whereas the METal attendees are the same, but different. Because it takes a lot more money and smarts to make an app, to play in the tech world.
It reminded me of nothing so much as the Homebrew Computer Club, where the two Steves made their debut, introducing the Apple computer.
Which got little reaction, by the way. Don’t be put off by jealousy. Your compatriots don’t want you to make it, to pull ahead, because that leaves them behind. Chances are if you succeed you’re going to get a whole new set of friends, the same way Howard Stern was invited to Jennifer Aniston’s wedding. You’re nobody and then the door opens. But it opens for very few.
Now the entrance barrier to METal isn’t nonexistent, unlike in music. You’ve got to pay $100 a month, and $35 every time you attend. Supposedly the latter fee is for breakfast, and they had everything from pastry to fruit, but the older we get the less we’re interested in carbs and the truth is I tanked up before I left the house.
The first thing I noticed was no women. And I was about to get on my high horse and complain about this but then someone clued me in, they can’t come. Well, once a month only. Because otherwise no work is done, everybody’s peacocking around to impress the ladies. But the ladies have their own group, that meets every couple of weeks.
And the goal of the group is to make investments. This one guy was an MD who was funding a microscope and I thought it was all kind of fantastical until he laid out the numbers. A billion dollar marketplace and his product was going to cost a fraction of those now dominating. And he’d had one victory already. And I wondered if everybody was a winner. I’m not sure.
First speaker was Nolan Bushnell. That’s right, Mr. Atari, Mr. Chuck E. Cheese. He talked about the future, virtual reality and augmented reality. He believed in the latter. He said the former made you sick, and you didn’t get over the illness so fast.
And then there was this guy who worked with Oliver Stone who talked about advertising. And I hated and loved him at the same time. Because I hated the manipulation, but I could tell it was real. He had it down to a science.
And then there was the run-down on new products. Most exciting was a camera. Who needs a new standalone camera, right? But this cheap device has sensors that not only help it decide what to record, but can automatically edit together a clip of everything you did all day. It was fascinating, it’s a winner.
And then there was the company that tells you what to eat based on your DNA.
But what I found most fascinating was FanGram.
What I love about Los Angeles is so much is happening right under our noses. Hell, I saw Bob Costas on Rodeo Drive earlier today, at least I think it was Bob… But while we’re focusing on celebrities, in Santa Monica especially is a whole bunch of unheralded techies who are trying to change the world. This guy put 150k of his own money into trying to make sense of social media.
So this is how it works…
It’s an app. Mobile is everything. It presently only works on iOS. All the apps start on iOS. You may love your Android, but not only are you susceptible to viruses, you’re one step behind in the tech world, trash it for an iPhone, immediately.
So, FanGram has scraped the web. Found every personality (even me!) And when you search and find them, there are buttons, for news, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, everywhere the personality plays. You click on the icons and you get the info.
And below this part of the screen is every bit of news about the personality.
And below that is everybody who’s related to the personality, who you might want to follow.
And that’s right, you can follow people.
But what I find most amazing is FanGram makes social media comprehensible. Puts all the services in one place. Because the truth is we want to follow people, that’s where it all starts. And on Twitter it’s all mashed up and it keeps loading and you’re overwhelmed. On FanGram it all suddenly makes sense.
This is the future. We’ve got enough services, how do we integrate them and make them comprehensible?
It’s what we’re looking for in music, but haven’t found yet.
Now METal is run by Ken Rutkowski, who’s got a radio show syndicated around the country that focuses on innovators. Ken gets cut into the deals, he provides his network and expertise.
And it’s all happening here in L.A.
And I’d love to tell you you need to go, but the longer I sat there the more I saw the difference between tech and art. Everybody’s trying to get rich in both, but when everything works the end result in art is so much more satisfying to me.
But art is a tsunami of product that no one can make sense of.
We need a FanGram for art.
I’m waiting…
