Google recently opened up a field trial of it’s Google+ Facebook/Twitter competitor. So far, reaction to G+ has been largely positive among the early adopter crowd.

Google+ has even earned a stamp of approval from the Chinese government which blocked Google+ within days of its launch…a milestone that Facebook took years to reach.

Despite generally positive reactions from both early adopters and the Chinese government, there have been user interface complaints. The G+ user interface issue that drives me crazy is the presentation of stream data, specifically threaded conversations.  They take up a lot of space and make the conversation difficult to follow.  It gives G+ users the feeling of being overwhelmed, inability to keep up with activity and general chaos. G+’s display of threaded conversations is one instance where Google would do well to copy its Chinese competitor, because the Made in China idea is better than what Silicon Valley has delivered.

Take a look at this screenshot of my G+ stream:

This single G+ conversation, takes up the entire vertical height of the browser on my 13in Macbook Pro. This make it impossible to skim for interesting content in the stream because you can only see one conversation at a time.

Now I know Googlers all have huge super high resolution monitors or implants that display directly to their retinas, but  many of us are not so lucky. If they’d like those of us with normal sized screens and human eyes to keep using G+, they need to find a better way to handle threaded conversations. They need only look east to China to learn how to do threaded conversations right.

Take a look at a worst case example of threaded conversations on China’s Twitter clone Sina Weibo.

In Weibo, you can clearly see what the person you follow says about the thread parent. You can also see a brief summary of the parent thread in a callout bubble beneath your friend’s “tweet”.   As you can see in the “tweet” posted by HXYCO, the parent thread has been “shared” over 8600 times and almost 1000 comments have been left on the original post.  You can also see a tiny thumbnail of the original picture.

Weibo understands what Google doesn’t. Unless I’m interested in a paying attention to a particular conversation, I don’t need to see a whole screen about it.  And being interested in a conversation means being interested now at this immediate moment, not that I shared it or commented on it at some point in the past. We all move on in life and that includes our interactions with social network posts.

Google, if you’re reading, I know Chinese internet companies don’t get a lot of respect in Silicon Valley, but Weibo has some lessons you’d do well to learn and apply to G+.

Follow me on Weibo, G+ and Twitter.

My friend Michael Michelini asked me why vistors to his blog sometimes get sent to a Russian .ru site when they try to visit his blog. He asked his IT friend about the problem and was told he couldn’t replicate it.

Never send an IT guy to do the job of a liberal arts guy. Let me try my hand:

The symptoms were as follows:

• When his blog URL was entered directly in a new browser session, it would load normally
• When clicking on Google search results for his blog, it would get redirected to the suspicious insidetool.ru address
• After clicking on the Google search result for his blog, entering his blog address manually still resulted in a ridirect to the .ru address

Delorian:~ larry$ telnet www.michaelmichelini.com 80
Trying 74.208.82.110...
Connected to www.michaelmichelini.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
host: www.michaelmichelini.com
Referer: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=7&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.michaelmichelini.com&ei=0SjdSa-1N5O8M_qW8dQN&rct=j&q=michaelmichilini&usg=AFQjCNHJXSUh7Vw7oubPaO3tZOzz-F-u_w&sig2=X8uCFh6IoPtnwmvGMULQfw

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:36:51 GMT
Server: Apache
Location: http://insidetools.ru/pkg/index.php
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

ef

301 Moved Permanently
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
The document has moved <a href=”http://insidetools.ru/pkg/index.php”>here</a>.

0

Connection closed by foreign host.
Delorian:~ larry$


Delorian:~ larry$ telnet www.michaelmichelini.com 80
Trying 74.208.82.110...
Connected to www.michaelmichelini.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.1
host: www.michaelmichelini.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 15:37:14 GMT
Server: Apache
Content-Encoding: none
X-Pingback: http://www.michaelmichelini.com/xmlrpc.php
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.4.9
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8

Friend Tricia Wang is spending a year in China doing fascinating research on poor migrants and their use of technology.  She recently shared an excellent write up regarding her experience undercover as a migrant on the Beijing subway.

I’ve lived in China for several years, most of which have involved riding the subway around Chinese cities. As a commenter on Tricia’s blog pointed out, we foreigners in China receive similar reactions when riding the subway as migrant workers.

I think there are two discrete reactions during her undercover experience, the origins of which deserve exploration. The first is the response of subway riders when Tricia and  Yang Jie (the migrant worker) get on the subway with poor personal hygiene and with large amounts of  freight.  The second is reaction of the rider when he saw Tricia’s iPhone and texting in English.

The first is not a class issue, but an issue of community standards.  The subway (in Guangzhou at least…and from what I recall from my Beijing days, it was the similar) has traditionally been a way to commute to work and get around for middle/upper middle class people — generally white collar.  The subway is more comfortable (or used to be..but that’s another story all together), faster and more reliable than trying to get a cab in the heat, dealing with traffic or dealing with driving and trying to find parking.  This position as a luxury form of public transit was reinforced by limited subway coverage and relatively high pricing compared public buses. Regarding limited coverage, until recently, in both Beijing and Guangzhou, subway coverage was mostly limited to a few central business and residential areas. Not the places large numbers of migrants lived.  Back in 2003, when I lived in Beijing, buses were exactly 50% cheaper than taking the subway.  Until last year in Guangzhou, the Guangzhou metro started at 2 yuan and prices went well in excess of 10 yuan per trip. In contrast, almost all in-city buses cost 2 yuan.

Since Subway transit developed as a premium form of public transit, the community standards that developed around subway transit in Chinese reflect this. Personal hygiene is important.  Cleanliness is important. Not making fellow riders have an unpleasant trip is important.  (ie. using a premium public transit method to move freight around.) If people wanted to have a miserable public bus experience, they wouldn’t have paid more for the subway.

As an aside, this reminds me of a time I was riding Hong Kong’s MTR from Tung Chung back to Hong Kong station with some friends.  There was an overweight older white gentleman sitting across the aisle who apparently just completed a difficult hike on a mountain on Lantau.  He decided it would make sense on Hong Kong’s sparkling clean MTR to take his shirt off and expose his sweaty folds of fat to the clean seats and surrounding riders.  People quickly shunned him, moved away and started whispering and throwing dirty looks.  One of my friends asked me to “go tell your ‘countryman’ to put his shirt back on…we don’t do this here!”

If you don’t adhere to accepted community standards in the subway, people will treat you the same as if you showed up to a black tie affair wearing shorts and sandals.  Dirty looks, whispers, avoidance are par for the course.

The second issue, the rider’s reaction to Tricia’s iPhone and English texting, is simply surprise to see someone acting inconsistent with an accepted stereotype. The average Chinese subway rider would assume someone who can afford and iPhone and is educated enough to text in English wouldn’t go out in public without showering for days and take freight on the subway. This is the same as the reaction I get when fellow subway riders see me texting and weiboing in Chinese.  The average rider assumes that a foreigner wouldn’t have learned to read and write Chinese.  Chinese subway riders make these assumptions (stereotypes) because they are almost always true.  iPhone wielding Tricia disguised as migrant and Larry the Chinese texting foreigner are a rarity on Chinese subways.

I encourage everyone interested in China and technology to follow Tricia’s Bytes of China blog.

I’m a foreign entrepreneur in South China who has taken advantage of similar existing provisions in both Hong Kong and PRC law to sponsor my own work visas. The result has been a profitable business that employs Chinese, and happy founders and shareholders. If I was a Chinese in the USA instead of an American in China, I never would have passed the start line.

The USA is a horrible place for foreign entrepreneurs who aren’t already Green Card holders.  There’s no way for you to stay in the country legally without a full time job from a large employer eligible and willing to sponsor a work visa, if the lottery allocates one.

The Startup Visa movement promises that they will change that by offering temporary work visas to foreigners who raise certain amounts of money from US-based VCs or angel investors.

However, it seems to be written specifically to give US VCs and professional angels and the companies in which they invest an advantage over firms like my own funded by non-professional (and several non-American) angels and our own profits.

What’s with the arbitrary restrictions and thresholds for amount of capital that must be raised or number of jobs created?  If a business only creates 4 jobs and generates $480,000 in revenue after 2 years, do we not want that business? Or is the founder of that business supposed to start running around at the end of his 2 years to try to raise an additional $500k he may not need to protect his visa status? Businesses don’t grow according to legislatively mandated schedules.

I agree with Vivek Wadhwa that venture capital is not necessary and that the USA should be open to anyone who wants to create jobs.  What VCs don’t tell founders (but real entrepreneurs will) is that the more capital you raise the harder you make it to succeed, if by succeed, you mean creating a profitable, self-sustaining business. VCs aren’t interested in merely self-sustaining profitable businesses that grow organically.  They’re only interested in “grand slams”…get big or go bust.  This may be fine if you have a portfolio of companies, but if you’re a founder where your business is your life, you’re probably not so interested in going bust.

The proposed act distorts incentives for foreign entrepreneurs to take on more capital investment (and more risk), than they may otherwise need merely in the hope of keeping their visa status and puts professional VC and angel investors in a stronger negotiating position with foreign founded startups by making them the gatekeepers to a visa to the USA.

It’s actually not hard to create a bill that doesn’t have fixed dollar amounts and arbitrary restrictions on from where money can be raised without encouraging fraud.  Hong Kong has done it with their class of employment visa called the “Visa permit to enter the HKSAR for investment to establish/join in a business.”  The defining criteria is that the applicant must be  ”in a position to make substantial contribution to the economy of the HKSAR.”

At the time I sponsored my own investment visa to become Appartisan Limited‘s first Hong Kong-based employee, we would not have qualified under the standards of the proposed Startup Visa Act in the USA. Our capital raised was not high enough and nor was our revenue.  However, the Hong Kong Immigration Department was simply concerned that I would benefit Hong Kong by being a positive part of the economy whether that be through tax revenue generated or employment opportunities for locals.

Immigration Department officials requested our company financials, evidence of my personal financial position, proof of business (our start up had already begun trading), personal references and a personal guarantee from a Hong Kong Permanent Resident (I asked a friend) that if I were to become destitute, that they would be be responsible for buying me a ticket back to the USA and putting me on a plane so that I wouldn’t become a burden to society.

If the Hong Kong government can figure out how to apply such a standard without massive fraud, I am confident that US Customs and Immigration with its considerably greater resources could as well.

If the USA adopted a similar visa entry scheme, the Americans who would be employed by such businesses and the US Treasury would be thankful.  Just ask the PRC and Hong Kong residents who are employed as a result of my business if they’re glad I could start my business and the Hong Kong Inland Revenue Department & China Taxation authorities if they like the tax revenue I generate.

The Startup Visa movement is yet another example of a well-intentioned US political movement hijacked by the finance industry interested in improving their own market position at the expense of those who aren’t in their club.

I grew up in Cleveland.  Like many people my age who wanted to do “more” than “just” graduate from college, get a job and have a family. I moved away from Cleveland…to South China where I own a growing technology business.

A friend of mine Mike Shafarenko recently shared a link (login required) to Tom Bier’s Op-Ed about making over Cleveland to attract young talent on Facebook. His link generated a thread of comments ranging from “Cleveland is awesome there’s so much to do” to “Cleveland needs to stop trying to compete with bar scenes in other cities.”

Cleveland needs to give up on trying to attract young talent and focus on its strength: being a great place to raise a family.

How many times have you heard someone say “I want to move so my family can enjoy a better standard of living and quality of life, so I’m going to move to Manhattan”? What about, “I want to move my family to a bigger house, so I’m going to move to Central, Hong Kong?” That’s right, you haven’t!

People move to Cleveland because it is a great place to raise a family. $1 million US dollars will get you a 400 square foot apartment in Central, Hong Kong.  Manhattan prices aren’t far behind.  For the same amount of money, you could buy a mansion in a picturesque Cleveland suburb with acres of grass and forest for your kids to play in.

For young talent that spends most of their time either working or socializing, size of living space isn’t a priority.  All they want is a place to sleep. For a family, they want a house with enough room so that their kids can have their own rooms and space to play.

Moving a young family around on public transit is a trying experience. Places like Hong Kong and NYC are expensive for car owners.  In Cleveland, parking tickets are cheaper than the cost of an hour of parking in the cities that attract young talent. Minivan life is much more affordable.

You’re probably thinking, Cleveland, with its low cost of living, sounds like a great for young talent without much money like the starving artists and startup entrepreneurs. Wrong!

Mike hits the nail right on the head:

Whenever I talk to people about Cleveland, I describe it as “fragmented coolness.” There are pockets of great things, but because they are spread out, nothing gets to scale.

Translated, “fragmented coolness” means, you need to have a car.  I know the Cleveland public transit defenders will start tooting the horn of the RTA and talk about Cleveland’s bus and light rail system.  But a public transit system with headways of 15, 30 or more minutes is not a public transit system, its a transit system for poor people whose time is valueless.  Young talent has things to do and time is of the essence.  They may not have money, but can’t afford to waste hours getting around.  No car in Cleveland? You’re stranded and under house arrest.

Families seek stability so that they can raise their children. Young talent seeks change, to make a difference.  Change threatens families.  Stability threatens young talent trying to create change. The two are contradictory.

Cleveland needs to stop feeling guilty about being a great place to have a family and not such a great place for young people.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

By feeling guilty about it and acting like this is some problem, Cleveland gives legitimacy to the view as Cleveland as “the mistake on the lake.”

How about this new slogan: “Cleveland: For when you’re ready to grow up”

What’s your take on Cleveland’s inferiority complex and multi-decade drive to attract young people?