Just watched Jack’s interview with Charlie Rose. And it seemed to be perfect companion to my thoughts at the end of this past week about just how much business progress can be made in a remarkably short period of time.

Storified by Jon Steinberg · Sat, Apr 28 2012 20:04:48

Charlie Rose – Jack Dorsey (04/25/12)
Square original dongle@jonsteinberg
It feels like just yesterday that I got the first hand made versions of the Square dongle – pictured above. It was actually 2 years ago, but 2 years from hand made small batches to a run rate of processing $5 billion in transactions seems staggering.
Jon Steinberg " My Square ReviewI got my Square in the mail Monday. The software and hardware integration are seemless. You literally install the iphone app, plug in the square, and it works. I tied my checking account so I’m able to receive payments. Charging people with it is incredibly cool and easy.
Jack comments square review@jonsteinberg
(Jack’s comments above – in one of my many blog hosting migrations the Disqus comments got lost)
And then I read this article in Pando that drove home just how quickly mobile has overtaken things; calling the Instagram acquisition a watershed movement when web 2.0 ended, and the mobile age began. Even beyond the stat that Instagram was just 551 days old, there are other remarkable numbers on just how fast this has all happened- the iPad is only 2 years old.
Web 2.0 Is Over, All Hail the Age of MobileWhen they look back at this era, Internet historians will mark Facebook’s Instagram acquisition as the symbolic moment when the Great Shift was confirmed. Significantly, it also came soon after Steve Jobs’ death. The device that Jobs created had, within the space of five years, allowed a 551-day-old company with 14 employees to become worth $1 billion.
I’d coincidentally been thinking a lot about dog years in a very positive way. The combination of technology and hard work have made it possible to accomplish years of progress, especially in a startup setting and other setings lacking bureaucracy, in 365 days. It seems like you can genuinely live dog years. Maybe not 7 to 1, but certainly 2 or 3 to 1. In the case of Square, maybe 5 to 1.
Office Space TPS Reportskornfreak82187
When not bound my unnecessary process or corporate procedure (i.e. TPS forms), it’s just amazing how many years you can cram into a year.
And so the reason you can go from zero to $5 billion in transactions in 2 years is because those are dog years…and it’s really more like 5 to 14 years crammed into two. Dog year hard work enabled by technologies that allow for rapid spreading and sharing that wouldn’t be possible without networks…