In the summer of 2011, my friend @jamesrapoport from Livestream in NYC sent me an email to help this kid @vjtorres11. Somehow over one email, Victor persuaded me to have a quick phone call — and I hate the phone. Victor was just out of school and looking to get into startups. I could tell he was polite, thoughtful, and very hungry — and he also understood that because he wasn’t technical, he’d have to cut his teeth a bit and pick a focus to add value right away. I gave him advice that’s hard to give: Basically, if you’re young, nontechnical, and don’t have relevant experience, to get into an early stage startup requires a different type of risk — you probably have to be willing to work for free. And, even if you perform, there’s no guarantee you’ll get the job.

Immediately, Victor agreed. So, surprised, I made some calls and put out the word on Twitter. My friend Rohit, CEO of Syfto, contacted me and said he’d be interested in having Victor try his hands at some light web analytics and marketing. After a few weeks, Syfto contracted with Victor and he worked there a few months. He eventually realized that he was young and wanted to live in San Francisco, so instead of continuing his commute down to the Valley, he was able to land a real job with Zaarly, an up-and-company company with lots of buzz around it. Throughout the whole time, Victor always sent me pertinent updates, asked for advice in the most polite way, and found himself in another good position, riding the wave.

Victor’s recent story is a case study for what hungry, nontechnical people need to do to crack into the ambiguous early-stage startup world. Perhaps what inspired me so much about Victor — and why I root hard for him — is that I was taking the medicine at the same time I was doling it out. It was pretty bitter, let me say. Victor always emailed me to tell me “thanks,” but I’m sure I learned more from him than he learned from me. Make sure you keep an eye on @vjtorres11 — I’d love to work with him some day.

Now, Path is slowly building up steam. Path has received enough ink, so instead of writing about it again on TechCrunch, I just wanted to share a few thoughts with the benefit of a year of hindsight.

First, Path understands two things that Facebook doesn’t: (1) intimacy; and (2) mobile. I am a fan and regular user of Facebook, but it’s just plain difficult to know what actions are truly private and contained, that won’t show up in some Open Graph ticker. It’s also a terrible mobile experience. If I had to calculate my ratio of using Twitter mobile vs. Facebook mobile, it would be about 1000:1.

Second, Path is built around information vectors that a mobile device picks up more naturally than Facebook could. Yes, I know that Facebook “could” get all this information, but they don’t, and until they do, it’s open season. Path isn’t the only one, as you have Instagram, for instance, but they make it far easier for users to record and share moments at various levels of privacy.

Third, Path has a simple yet powerful mission. Sure, it may never reach the masses in time, or it may be gobbled up by one of the founders’ previous employers, but there’s at least at chance that its bet is right, and after giving a stiff-arm to Google’s offer and releasing products and services at a torrid rate, there’s a real chance — low, but real — that Path will build a truer reflection of our lives and connections.

Today, this is indeed a Path less-traveled, and it will be exciting to watch unfold.

• On blogging: Earlier this week, @cdixon started an interesting conversation about tech startup bloggers. Chris has one of the most widely read/cited blogs in tech. His feeling is that bloggers shouldn’t pile on and criticize startups because (1) startups are really, really hard (90% fail); and (2) the market is the ultimate critic. On top of this, he assigns more credibility to bloggers who have at least been founders or around small startups because they’ll have more experience and empathy when the highs are high and when the lows are lows.
• On comments: Later that day, @parislemon started what has turned into an awesome attack on blog comments. MG obviously is a prolific tech blogger, and has suffered years of attacks in the comments section of TechCrunch, where he contributes — and where I contribute, as well. And, now that he contributes less frequently to TechCrunch and is using his Tumblr more (which has sharp content/opinion), he’s using his blog to share his points of view. However, he’s disabled comments on his blog, despite his large audience, asking those who do want to comment or get in touch with him to use traditional channels like e-mail or Twitter. Basically, he doesn’t want it in his backyard.

I thought I’d use this debate to briefly share my own point of views on these matters, given that I have been a contributor to TechCrunch now for over a year (and enjoy it!). I should underscore that there are no rules of tech startup blogging and that, ultimately, the reader decides for him/herself whom to read and trust.  So, for each blogger, the calculation is different. Here are mine:

1. Anyone can blog about tech startups. Even people who haven’t built a company or worked at a startup can do this. Conversely, some folks who do have this experience may not have the analytical and communications skills to share their knowledge and perspective. In this medium, the written word is powerful and, if one can create and/or synthesize insights and explain context succinctly, there’s a good chance more and more people will read since good information is scarce and disparate. Excessive cheerleading or excessive criticism will simply erode one’s credibility.
2. Comments are a mixed bag and depend who you are and who your audience is. Fred Wilson relies on them heavily, but he has one of the most engaged audiences out there and happens to be one the greatest single investors of the last five years, so demands strong attention (and manners). In a way, Dixon is on a similar trajectory with his blog and portfolio. Wilson and Dixon are able to receive interesting ideas, feedback, and possibly even information about a new company in the comments section of their blogs. For MG, because much of his audience discovered him via TechCrunch, and because MG shares his opinions strongly, the trolls who inhabit TechCrunch will simply follow him to his own blog (as they do to mine), and he simply wants his blog to reflect his own content and point of view, cleanly, rather than a smattering of random peoples’ opinions or spending the time to moderate a discussion with a filter.

For me, as a personal matter, I blog whenever I want to, either here or on TechCrunch. If it’s just here, I write quickly and say whatever is on my mind. If it’s TechCrunch, I’m obviously more careful. No matter where I post, I try to be respectful and always remind myself that startups are really, really hard. If something warrants criticism and I feel strongly about it, I’ll try to convey it as directly as possible. As for comments, I don’t really use them on my blog. I don’t care. On TechCrunch, I will try to answer any comment that seems reasonable or offered with sincerity — for any others, I will make sure they know I’ve read their comments.

I woke up this morning to tweets from Uber customers nationwide who felt taken for a ride, literally and figuratively, after requesting an Uber on one of the busiest nights of the year. Despite the fact the company said as such on their blog and communication channels, riders were apparently not expecting the surcharges to be so exponentially high, ranging between three to over six times the normal fares.

In exchange for providing cars on demand, Uber used its system to find equilibrium within a market where demand outstripped supply, especially a few hours before and midnight. (I’m not a frequent Uber customer, but I used them three times over my recent holiday trip, and each time was flawless; I’ll continue to use the service when I need to.)

Uber’s hangover this morning is more of a harbinger for consumers in general, especially when it comes to goods and services delivered online. Uber’s “surcharges” last night were a classic example of dynamic pricing, or adjusting the price of something relative to the demand and supply, down to the minute or second. The more data a provider has on these inputs, the more likely they are to leverage that data to extract more value from providing equilibrium between supply and demand. Most every consumer is aware of this through searching for and buying airline tickets online, where fares seem to change magically, even mid-search.

Over the past few years, dynamic pricing provided value to consumers, for example, through daily deals. Companies providing these deals help vendors manage inventory and excess supply, using the power of discounting to gin up demand. Starting now, consumers should also prepare to experience the underbelly of this phenomenon, a world where prices for goods and services that are in demand, either in quantity or at a certain time, aren’t the same price for each of us.

Online, dynamic pricing is gaining momentum. eBay auctions and Priceline hidden bids are the overt expression of this. More subtly, items in my Amazon shopping cart went up a bit each day as the holidays approached. Imagine the intricate data companies like Groupon and Living Social have as it relates to how quickly a hot deal “sold out.” All that data could be used just as the airlines have for years, and potentially with even more economic precision. Tickets to Broadway musicals are being sold this way. The National Hockey League is doing it. Companies such as TellApart andHotelTonight, for instance, are already doing this kind of stuff, and upstarts like Black Locus andPredictive Edge are also in the hunt.

In the not-so-distant future, consumers may see more routine goods and services readjust to dynamic pricing. Want a dinner reservation at a specific time at a choice restaurant? Want to book a room on Airbnb in Austin during SXSW, right now? Want to see The Dark Knight Rises opening night, on IMAX? Or, simply, do you want an Uber right away at 8pm every Saturday night, when demand peaks? It’s becoming increasingly apparent that for items with spiked demand around specific times are all susceptible to these kind of extractive calculations.

This reality is the other side of the daily deal market, one not driven by discounts and demand, but rather premiums for things that are scarce. Which brings it all neatly back to Uber. Some riders last night wanted the combination of a guaranteed ride at a time of their choosing, but also at a price that they deemed “reasonable.” Unfortunately, since everyone else also wanted rides around 10pm and 2am last night, the demand so far outstripped the supply that what seem to be gross surcharges were actually automatically generated to make sure a consumer’s willingness to pay matched the good offered. You can’t have your Uber on New Year’s Eve and eat it, too, folks — unless you’re willing to pay up. Brenden Mulligan analyzed the communication breakdown and makes areasoned, design-inspired case that Uber’s in-app notification of surcharges should have been cleaner, more direct and easier to read.

Uber will no doubt try to make sure this doesn’t happen again (the tweets are not pretty), and people nationwide will continue to use the service, though will now be more careful. Uber still has a strong brand with a loyal following and a strong team. However, this is also a wakeup call for consumers, those who use Uber and in general. As devices and ecosystems enable us to share more and more data about our location and what we truly want at any given time, time-based pricing is simply a natural extension of this grand bargain and is coming to a theater near you. Happy New Year!

If you even so much as whisper your Klout score within specific circles, you’re likely to be met with a piercing stinkeye. Based in San Francisco with a small pot of funding, there’s something about Klout’s mission — to rank online influence — that ironically draws the ire of many influential people.

A few months ago, TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis kicked things off with a great, provocative post (check out the comments, too) arguing results don’t match up with the offline reality of one’s influence. GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram artfully pointed out Klout is being used by companies for promotions and even in hiring. Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a short post describing how Klout provides value, helping him sort various Twitter feeds by ranking accounts. There’s also a fascinating Quora thread detailing a host of other sentiments. Whether you’re a fan of the service or not, there’s clearly something polarizing about Klout which generates a range of reactions.

Despite the sentiments, Klout continues to roll with the punches because our online identities are fragmented across different services. These different sites rank their own users, of course, but typically only factor inputs tied down within their own gardens. The main forces, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, certainly weight their own users’ activity for various reasons, but Klout has built one single, unified score based on its own independent algorithm across these services.

Of course, this “PeopleRank” subjects the company to scorn, yet immunizes them against any changing winds within the different social services people use. A few months ago, Klout announcedan algorithm adjustment that seemed to lower many Klout scores, which generated even more suspect reactions. In the the follow-up to that announcement, Klout hinted that integrating Quora was on their product roadmap, but Quora hasn’t been shy about wanting to rank people, too, so if Klout is able to pull this off, it would be a significant signal toward their own growing clout.

I see no problem with Klout’s aggressive expansion. In fact, in the absence of any viable alternative, it seems to work, more or less. Even PR giant Edelman wants a piece of the space, as does new competitor Kred, but Klout has a great head start. While critics bang the drum for more transparency around the algorithm or hold their nose toward the idea of comparing their rank with others, Klout has been able to manufacture an incredibly simple, strong brand in a relatively short period of time. Larger companies and brands have taken notice, running campaigns with Klout and helping the small startup actually earn money and test revenue models, so much so that they have already hired an experienced Chief Revenue Officer.

Klout is a relatively young company. It is not perfect. It is going to make mistakes, and will continue to rub some people the wrong way. In the future, the company may elect to be more transparent about their algorithm, or expand their “perks” offering, or simply soften their onboarding pop-ups. Just as numerous brands are testing the effectiveness of routing messages through the service, Klout itself is experimenting with a range of ways to make this better for users and, in the process, attract more brands. This kind of ad-targeting is already in full-swing on many other sites—it’s just that it’s more overt on Klout.

All of this tends to bend back to semantics. “Clout” is a powerful word, which has various definitions, and in this context, we think of “having pull” or “influence.” With that connotation comes the impression of power, and that triggers different reactions. It’s worth remembering that Klout only claims to measure one’s online influence, and I tend to think that much of the backlash against the company is rooted in the misconception that one’s Klout score maps to the offline world. It’s easy to grandstand and take a publicly moral stance against what Klout is doing, but as it is with entrepreneurship and certainly the web, there are no rules. Companies and users are making the rules as they go, and that’s just the way it should be.

On the eve of  2012, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Klout move into scoring so-called “expert pundits” in high-value content verticals such as sports, politics, and even technology reporting, as well as partnering with startups themselves to help better tune their initial social-proof marketing efforts. They may also begin to experiment with ad campaigns outside U.S. borders, and could even be an influential social media player as attention focuses around the upcoming American presidential election.

Finally, I believe there’s something about the founder Joe Fernandez and team that positions them for success and will help them weather these current and future storms, embodied in the story of how their domain was obtained in the first place (Fernandez tracked down the previous owner of the domain via Twitter, showed up at a restaurant, and plunked down $5,000 in cash on the table). In fact, I’d argue Klout will get bigger and grow even more influential itself in 2012. With all the “newsfeeds” out there driving the information we consume, and as that content surfaces to mainstream channels, every feed will need some mechanism for surfacing consistently relevant and trustworthy content. If Klout can figure out a way to keep making money via brands and help people find the most relevant signals, it will not only grow, but secure its place within the fiber of the social web.

One of my favorite services to pop in the second half of 2011 is “If This, Then That,” or if you’re really dorky, IFTTT. Among a small group of faithful nerds on Twitter, IFTTT is a simple yet powerful service that generates warm, fuzzy feelings among those who are hooked. Based in San Francisco, the company has received funding from Betaworks and is closing out 2011 with momentum.

If you haven’t tried it yet, please give it a whirl: www.ifttt.com

Briefly, IFTTT is a service that allows users to set a number of alerts, or “tasks,” that will “trigger” a preset function based on what you set. For example, you can set IFTTT to send you an email every time a specific user on Twitter sends a tweet or have a copy of every Instagram photo you snap to be automatically sent to your Dropbox, which I wish I would’ve set before the last iOS5 update wiped clean two months of my pictures. The different permutations of “triggers” you can set are sort of endless. To help you wade through them, you can browse different IFTTT “recipes” and browse thisthread on Quora.

For some inexplicable reason, IFTTT seems to have endeared itself to nerds who love to cook up and share their own little recipes for triggers. The service’s name is also not all that elegant, which seems to bolster its street cred. IFTTT sounds like some secret web protocol that only a select few understand.

Stepping back, it’s becoming easier to see why IFTTT is gaining steam. First, there are just too many services to keep track of. If you’re monitoring a series of brands across many channels, IFTTT enables you to track and route all relevant messages to a specific place, especially Dropbox. There’s no easy way for a nontechnical mind like me to connect all these random APIs between disparate services, so IFTTT makes it both easy and, strangely, fun and addictive with its big bold letters and slick interaction. You can also temporarily turn off tasks without losing the recipes entirely.

If you want to get even more serious under the hood, you can actually view a historic “activity” feed of every trigger action you’ve set. I like to call this the “nerdfeed.”

Where to go from here?

That’s a tricky question. On the one hand, we’ve been told the future of business development on the web and in mobile is establishing connections among various APIs, where new products and services can be built on top of existing data. On the other hand, while I set many Google Alerts, I’m not sure I’d pay that much for them. Maybe companies and brands would be more willing to pay for this ability to monitor and archive, or maybe they could charge a traffic toll between these APIs?

Before that, they’d have to get beyond the nerdcore for wider adoption and usage. If they could suggest some basic triggers for more casual users, perhaps ones that monitor their names or companies (much like someone may set a Google search for their name), that could start to spread as folks want to keep tabs on their mentions and reputation. Or, they could tailor the initial triggers to be tied to Facebook actions, considering their massive user base and lack of tools for monitoring.

Finally, and it’s kind of strange to write this, but I just really like the site and service. Perhaps it has something  to do with giving users a bit more control over the social web. For being such a stale dashboard of tasks, I don’t understand why I’m using it so much. And, I’m not the only one. Every now and then on Twitter, I’ll talk about IFTTT and get up to 10 @replies of someone who says they are “addicted” to it. IFTTT could slowly become a type of “connective tissue” between various services, creating channels between walled gardens and linking data in fascinating and fun ways within a web that’s currently too fragmented to manage on our own.

Another year, another attack on the Internet. Lately, though, it’s not a loose collective of individual hackers sitting in dark rooms trying to wreak havoc. This time, stronger forces and vested interests are stepping into the game.

In the U.S., bills that threaten how content is shared online surfaced in Congress. Large media companies are leveraging their power to team up with some elected officials. These forces are being met with resistance courtesy of some of the most esteemed technologists the web has to offer. Whether it was MIT Media Lab’s Joi Ito passionatelydefending the importance of open-source movements in theNew York Times, or Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures openly decrying SOPA, or the founders and investors (including USV and John Lilly) of Tumblr harnessing the platform to encourage users to directly contact their elected officials in opposition to SOPA, influential technology personalities (many with roots in Mozilla) have focused attention on ensuring the web remains open for any consumer self-expression engines that come to pass.

As a democracy, the U.S. is in a privileged position to have these public debates. Some countries (like those in and around the Korean peninsula) don’t have that luxury, which is why it was curious to see a high-ranking minister in the Indian government recently make global headlines around a meeting he called with the Indian offices of the major social networking sites to discuss the monitoring. [Read TechCrunch reporter Eric Eldon’s reporting on the story, here.] At issue, according to India’s Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal (and as reported by the The New York Times), were messages slandering one of India’s most revered and powerful political individuals, Sonia Gandhi.

And there you have it. In a matter of a few weeks, the world’s most powerful democracy and the world’s largest democracy engaged in their own specific battles over the future of how information can be monitored and circulated online. Whereas in the U.S. the fight centers around freedom of expression (through sharing) and copyright, the suggestion made by India’s Sabil tugged at the core of self-expression itself, monitoring potentially disruptive comments generated by social media in the name of preserving the peace within an extremely diverse democratic society.

On their own, it’s likely Sibal’s statements and the corresponding kerfuffle are much ado aboutnothing.

India’s mainstream media is expert at drawing out inflammatory statements from persons of interest, and powerful members of the Indian government are oftentimes all too willing to supply those soundbites. In this particular case, it’s possible Ms. Gandhi, someone who is powerful and revered, expressed frustration over seeing her name slandered on social sites and enlisted Sabil to draw attention to it. Naturally, the Minister invoked some arcane laws that could be enforced, yet most recognize India is home to millions of innately expressive people who would be nearly impossible to silence.

Or, the negative comments in social media about Ms. Gandhi could be the early foments of a deep-seated, not-often-discussed fear among those with media or government power in India. What if hundreds of millions of citizens, the majority of them young, pick up smartphones (after completely skipping desktops and laptops), sign up for social services, start connecting with others and sharing their views, and begin to express frustration (either with their real names or anonymously) in a manner that amplifies exponentially, to the point where reality is distorted and the status quo is challenged? As any reader of (or contributor to) TechCrunch knows all too well, not many take the time to leave glowing comments. It’s in the comments where the status quo is challenged, and that’s why comments are important for debate and discussion.

It’s too easy to mock Sibal as clueless in making these types of statements. Let’s not forget he’s a professional politician in India and, therefore, quite savvy at this game. The Indian government isn’t going to act on these kinds of laws because the people will not allow it — especially those technology enthusiasts currently playing host to Dave McClure and his Geeks on a Plane sojourn to the Indian capital. More likely, Sibal may be using the mainstream media to send a message, a friendly reminder to technology companies headquartered outside its borders, as well as its own citizens, that the Indian government wants its brand of democracy to grow and not face resistance from within.

Ironically for India, this all highlights a great paradox it will face: A young, energetic country rising in economic power, continuing to grow in many diverse ways and developing newer technologies by the day. And in pursuit of these large markets, normal citizens will become empowered and have access to tools that make them more productive and relevant, potentially to the point where they could challenge parts of a complex Parliamentarian system that protected them for so long.

The fun part is that it’s not a matter of “if,” it’s simply just a matter of “when.”

India’s democracy has, so far, been quite remarkable at remaining intact despite the country’s extreme social, religious, and economic diversity, and there’s no reason to think it won’t adapt as the culture changes with new communication devices and channels. Setting India aside, one could look at 2011 as a potentially historic year with respect to governments and each one’s citizenry. Of course, the year began with uprisings in part of the Arab world, spanning from the Middle East to North Africa [related: a great post on human routers by Shervin Pishevar], and most recently, protesters in Russia taking to the streets to dispute elections and express frustration with its most powerful leader. Here in America, the #Occupy movement, though still largely undefined, has reached mainstream status in terms of name recognition. We don’t know what will happen to it in the next few weeks, or in 2012.

This is the nature of the time we live in, combined with the hardware and software tools we have at our disposal. Despite the reams of predictive statements you’ll read over the next few weeks, the onlycertainty for 2012 is that it’s likely to be as uncertain as 2011, and as a result, those with deep, wide, and entrenched interests — such as the mainstream media, or even government — could continue to see gradual shifts in the balance of power from highly-centralized system to ones that are composed of loosely coupled groups, working in concert, attempting to make the world they want to live in for themselves, no matter what stands in their way.

For those of us who studied (or suffered through) chemistry at some point in life, images from the chem lab inspire nostalgia (or dread). White lab coats. Protective goggles and gloves. Glass beakers and measuring cups. It was a place of experimentation. Students were given strict lab instructions, such as “Don’t mix baking soda and vinegar” or “be careful when mixing Mentos with soda,” which many of course ignored. Whether one liked chemistry or not, there was usually an undeniable sense of excitement at conducting experiments that had the potential to cause chemical reactions, the kind that would trigger loud sounds, big messes, and new things.

In the world of technology companies, the “labs” concept and nomenclature found a friendly home. Microsoft Research has FUSE Labs, there’s HP Labs, andMozilla Labs, and let’s not forget the once-mighty Google Labs (R.I.P.), among many others. Digging into the history of big tech “labs” would be the subject worthy of a book, of course, but in the context of this narrow post, it’s worth briefly noting that for those that make things and are builders, every big company needed to have something like this for branding, recruiting, and to keep the innovation engine humming as their corporate parents grew larger and more bureaucratic.  Perhaps each one wasn’t referred to as a “lab” explicitly in name, as Amazon has A9 and Google now hasGoogle X. No matter the name, there’s something powerful in the word that reminds us of the old chem lab and that spirit of experimentation.

Big tech companies have hearty budgets to set up “labs” for their best and brightest to cook up new ideas within. In the world of tech startups, by contrast, the original image “labs” conjures up is of a few people “sitting in their garage” hacking new ideas. In this world, it’s a powerful metaphor and how founders of seminal companies like Atari and Apple etched their legend. Of course, HP was started in a garage in Palo Alto. In these and many other startup garage stories, there’s something primal, something irreverent about the type of experimentation that takes place in the garage versus the big tech lab company.

Fast forward to the eve of 2012, where it’s significantly cheaper to develop web and mobile applications now that software costs have plummeted and large distribution networks exist for startups to harness, though it still remains very difficult to get discovered. The “labs” nomenclature is back in vogue in the consumer web and mobile spaces, and the gritty garage has been replaced with urban loft studios filled with hipster gear and Blue Bottle Coffee.

There are a few high-profile “labs” companies, such as Color and Milk, as well as many others, such as Churn Labs (AdmOb founder Omar Hamoui’s new mobile company), Monkey Inferno (Bebo founder Michael Birch’s entrepreneurial vehicle), Tasty Labs (makers of “Jig,” a site I really like), RG Labs (building the reputation graph), Nest Labs (which reinvented the home thermostat), and of course, Foursquare Labs. There’s everything from the MIT Media Lab (interdisciplinary projects in media) and Dogpatch Labs, an  incubator funded by Polaris Ventures, with “labs” in NYC, SF, Cambridge, Mass. and Dublin, Ireland. (There are many more companies with “labs” in the name, search here for more.)

Why all the “labs” startup companies all of a sudden?

There are a host of reasons. It sounds cool. The language is both inspirational and aspirational. There is a history of carving out these experimental activities within established technology companies, so folks in the community understand the connection and recall their own experiences, either in big tech companies or dating back to school chemistry class. And, it may be easier to find domain names and corresponding social media accounts and username handles with the extra “lab” letters at the end.

These are just surface-level reasons, of course. The deeper trend, especially as it pertains to the consumer web and mobile arenas, is that these shops are being set up similarly to fashion or game design studios. In a game studio, designing just one game can be risky. Instead, these studios work on different concepts on the assumption that they’ll learn in the process and (hopefully) increase the likelihood of developing a hit among different projects.

Not everyone welcomes this trend. Some people in the startup community feel that the “labs” concept comes at the expense of company focus and clarity of mission, or that a series of “smaller experiments” could adversely affect employee morale, consumer loyalty, recruitment, and equity considerations. While some of these “labs” may not resemble how companies like Apple or HP started with grander visions, the spirit of experimentation is still there, just in very different forms.

Regardless of whether or not a startup has the word “lab” on its doorfront or legal documents, all new companies are sort of lab experiments in and of themselves and carry similar risks irrespective of semantics. At the current moment, and perhaps for the next few years, a good chunk of mobile tech and design talent is concentrated in these little pockets that morph into labs companies.

Investors are keen to be involved here. It’s a different kind of gamble, but in the mobile app world, the skills are very specific and in short supply. And with all the competition in the various app stores, it’s nearly impossible to predict if a new product launch will flop like Color’s first release did or hopefully explode (in a good way) like Instagram. Furthermore, many of these founders and employees at “labs” companies could be very valuable to more mature startups or larger tech companies, so by creating their own shops, they have amplified this scarcity and created extra leverage in future M&A considerations.

In this vein, I believe the first release from Milk, an app called Oink, will be something we’ll look back on as a case study. Milk has a small team of seven. The founder is experienced and influential (Kevin Rose). Its angel investors are stars, yet it raised a modest sum. Its overarching mission is to develop mobile applications, and it’s first release, Oink, which was shipped in six months and is beautifully designed (though quite a bit of work), is meant to encourage users to rate things inside places. Given these factors, it had everything an app shop could dream of. As a result, Oink has been downloaded, used, and talked about often in tech circles, though we will just have to wait and see how usage fares as the Milk team tries to get broader adoption or ultimately moves on to the next project.

At the end of the day, however, simply labeling a company a “lab” just boils down to semantics. It really doesn’t matter.

What does matter is how these smaller companies are forming around talent that the rest of the community can’t seem to recruit because there are stronger incentives for them to go down the “labs” path. This is rational, and I’d argue, a good thing for the time being. Until more and more people amass and perfect these engineering and design skills for application development, we need the current crop of those who do to start building the next generation of products and services on their own, free of the trappings of operating within a larger company.

Just how this process unfolds, however, will remain a mystery. Startup “labs” could define a goal right upfront that is well-scoped, or they could just collect the best talent and wing it. There’s really no way for us to know what the best way forward is.

While we knew better than to mix dangerous chemicals in the school laboratory, creating a breakthrough product today requires real experimentation and a certain level of disrespect for the rules and conventions, the type of experimentation outside of the traditional “lab” environment that encourages entrepreneurs do totally random things–like mix mint-flavored Mentos with Diet Coke, as in the picture above–hopefully with dramatic results.

We’ve heard endlessly how “social” will eventually disrupt and transform old, stodgy industries, perhaps even reinvent them for the better. The promise of this change, of course, is often tempered by the reality that, if indeed this stuff actually happens, it will take time and we’re currently in the early stages of the game.

And when it comes to travel, one of the most heavily regulated industries, disruption and transformation would be music to travelers’ ears. There are a number of reasons travel has become more of an onerous task (thank you, TSA), yet consumers continue to brave the elements to merrily trot around the globe.

Brushing aside the fact that a significant portion of travel is business-related, decisions around leisure travel typically involve a number of factors, many of which are coming online. The catalyst for a personal trip can originate from different sources. One could have vacation time that will evaporate unless you use it. One could be offered a travel deal rate that motivates you to capitalize on it. One may want to catch up with old friends or families, or travel for entertainment, adventure, or to simply get away from your surroundings.

In exploring the travel space through a social lens, most of today’s consumer web-related entrepreneurial attention is focused on what travelers do once they reach their intended destination. In the old days, travelers would book hotels directly (or through travel agents) and would rely on branded guides like Lonely Planet or Frommer’s, hotel concierges, and traditional tour companies to help address these needs. A few years later, services like Kayak and TripIt offered more options for users to organize their travel.

Today’s traveler has many more options. They can “couch surf” or use others’ private spaces as lodging (thanks to Airbnb), and by comparison, could literally pick from over twenty different services to get information about their intended destinations. When I travel somewhere, I’ll typically ask friends on Facebook and Twitter for recommendations, which so far have tended to be excellent and satisfy my needs.

If I happened to need even more information, I could continue my research through sites likeTripAdvisor, FlyerTalk, TripIt, Quora (local), explore Foursquare lists, peruse Gowalla’s new social travel guides, or sign up for one of a new wave of startups focused on the space, such as Planely(meet people at the airport or on your flight), Trippy (friend-sourced itineraries), Triposo (interactive mobile guides), Travellr (location-based Q&A), Toour (currently in stealth), Tripping (traveler community service), Twigmore (connect with your friends’ friends in other places), Globetrooper(tool to find travel partners), MyTab (where folks can gift travel to members), Gtrot (scrapes social data and aggregates around places), JetPac (seems to be a slick iPad app, but not released yet), and many, many others I haven’t gotten around to trying.

Jetlagged yet?

The sheer number of startups focusing attention on this aspect of travel seems out of balance to me. Investors like this particular space because the path to victory is clearer, albeit its crowded, and because these types of apps and services could be inherently viral, both in terms of onboarding new users as well as benefitting from positive word-of-mouth.

Instead of destination-based guides, however, I’ve started to wonder if the real opportunity is higher up the decision funnel, before we buy plane tickets and hotel rooms, at the point we first feel the urge to travel. The best travel recommendations I’ve received (and acted on) have come through having conversations with close friends in real life. They share slideshows of their trip and we get to interact with them in rich ways about their experience, to see if we want to sign up for the same feeling. That is a true recommendation with a real strong social signal. These moments of inspiration oftentimes ignite the travel spark and could trigger a transaction. Startups like Gtrot and Gogobot, for instance, allow users to plan trips or record them after the fact, and research travel tips from social networks, organizing information around places.

There’s simply no way that all the destination-based services listed so far will be able to survive such a cluttered field, so it may be worthwhile for some of them to at least consider the discovery-related aspect of travel and to design systems that help draw out and collect users’ preferences around travel, sort of how Gtrot and Gogobot currently do, but perhaps in deeper ways. The current offerings incorporate “social,” yes, but they seem to lack truly relevant social context. For a big decision like traveling, the strong signal usually originates from one trusted friend or source.

Despite an unstable economy, rising fuel costs, and the hassles of air travel, people continue to jam airports worldwide. The majority of travel expenditures are eaten up by transportation and lodging, as well as food and entertainment at the destination. Therefore, today’s trend is to leverage social recommendations to help consumers shape their experiences in new places, though I’d argue this focus area actually ignores richer pastures.

The real opportunities in social travel may lie closer to the top of the decision funnel, at the moment when a consumer discovers a new place he/she wants to travel to. It’s at this point where startups could build applications on top of existing social graphs to help people get inspired about travel, to plan and book their trips, and share them in novel ways with friends and family. There’s no reason TripAdvisor needs to continue to show up on the first page of Google results for travel searches anymore.

With all of the data and pictures uploaded to Facebook, the opportunity is just sitting there, waiting for someone to jump on it. If done correctly, a new site or service could be created that actually acts as a modern travel collection and concierge in one, making travel arrangements easier and more affordable. In a nutshell, that is the challenge to startups in this space—to more intelligently incorporate data, to reinvent TripAdvisor’s existing offerings plus adding social, making results more relevant, personalized, and more emotional to interact with. Whomever can crack that code and present travelers with a better travel experience will find themselves in a very enviable seat, high up in the friendly skies.