The startup vs. big corp saga, and my information digestion process

I liked this story from the FT on the rise and fall (well, mostly fall) of MySpace. The basic narrative (yes, I'm a bit obsessed with storytelling at the moment) seems to be one that is heard very often: Small startup becomes insanely successful and subsequently gets bought by a big corporation. Then the culture clash begins: The startup people complain about the bureaucracy of the big corporation, while the managers are unhappy with a lack of strategic focus. Add less-than-expected revenues and a more agile competitor (in this case, Facebook) to the mix, and the whole thing falls apart.

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It also occurred to me how complex my process of "digesting" information has become. I read a tweet about this article on my iPhone and saved it for later reading with Instapaper (using Tweetie 2). The next day, I went through my list of unread items on Instapaper (again on my phone) and read the article. Later, in front of my computer, I went through my list of saved items on Instapaper, bookmarking the ones I found to be interesting on Delicious, assigning a tag reminding me to blog about it. - Of course, the process is not always that complicated; often, things just catch my eye, I read them, and that's it. But I stil think that these processes have become incredibly more complex and demanding with the web; and I think we should spend more time thinking about how to design them.