Silicon Valley Shutdowns Mean Quieter Business This Week

The global recession has not spared Silicon Valley, or of course, the state of California, which stares in the face of bankruptcy, forced to grapple with an unprecedented budget shortfall. With a statewide unemployment rate exceeding 11 percent, the nexus for much of the world's tech innovation has been severely strained. The unemployment rate for Santa Clara County stands at 10.8 percent, with San Mateo County looking a bit healthier, at 8.1 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In an attempt to reduce fulltime job losses, companies throughout the Valley have turned to every play in the book to reduce costs - stopping and slowing projects, eliminating contractors, reducing pay for both rank and file and executives, forcing vacations, and the ever-popular move of company shutdowns (which we also saw in the 2002-03 recession following the crushing death of the first dot com era).

With Fourth of July looming, this week will see many companies in the Bay Area have their doors closed to non-essential, non-customer support facing employees. Among the known companies shutting down this week are Adobe, Autodesk, NetApp, and a number of other firms, both public and private, who are looking to draw down on company vacation during a time when some employees' thoughts are toward the beach and barbecues.

(See details from Autodesk and one Adobe contractor)

And for those companies that are staying open at a time when their counterparts are sleeping in, there's no doubt many employees are opting to take the week themselves, so you can expect fewer phone calls, reduced Web traffic, and yes, reduced real world traffic as well. So maybe that drive up the peninsula that used to take 45 minutes in morning rush hour just might take 25.

So if you drove into the office today and wondered why you didn't see the usual hustle and bustle, the shutdowns are why. It's a solution that makes the finance guys on one side of the building happy, and possibly the other side of the building isn't complaining much either, with a much-needed respite from the daily grind.

See Also:

• Good People, Bad Companies: The Intersection of Skill and Luck
• Which Companies Will Blink First and Lead Us Out of The Depths?

Know of any other Silicon Valley companies that are taking the week off? Let me know in the comments.

RakedIn Takes On Portals With Focused Finance Site

Today, a good amount of the news we get about businesses and the individuals at these companies comes from horizontal portals and news organizations that have other priorities - be it search at Yahoo! and Google, or politics and entertainment, like at CNN. Meanwhile, social sites like LinkedIn and business tools like Jigsaw and Hoovers are accruing personal details about many companies. A new site, debuting today, called RakedIn, has launched, trying to interweave the personalities behind the businesses you watch with up to date stock and financial information, as well as company overviews, with key leaders and board members.

RakedIn, launched by Mike Yavonditte, the former CEO of Quigo, who left AOL following that company's $340 million acquisition at the end of 2007, says it now has a collection of more than 200,000 companies and half a million people covered on its site, on day one, a number it anticipates to continue growing over time.


RakedIn's Search Engine Finds Data On LinkedIn


RakedIn's Profile of Twitter, the Company
The site's front page displays featured headlines and an update on the day's stock markets, headlines from across a wide range of industries, and the day's biggest losers or gainers. Aiming to have the most up to date information available, you can dice the information by industry, or even by press releases, company filings, or other news. The site even helpfully tells you if there are more headlines that have loaded as you read the current news - saying they have "raked in" new updates.


A Sample from RakedIn's Financial Data Headlines


RakedIn Also Shows Detail On Individuals Across Companies
Like Yahoo! Finance and Google Finance, you can dive down into any specific company, such as Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! or any of the Dow components. A company page, assuming it is public, will highlight the latest news, insider trades, employee compensation and other personnel highlights - as well as where the company ranks versus its peers. (For example, Microsoft has the highest earnings in Washington State and is the 88th largest employer overall tracked)


RakedIn's Profile of Microsoft's Steve Ballmer
One of the biggest aspects of RakedIn is the benefits of near real-time. During market hours, you can see stocks rise and fall, and headlines slot their way in to company pages. And the site even tracks your most recently viewed pages, giving you fast access should you want to return.


My Recent Activity on RakedIn Is Tracked
And for the largest companies, you can see how their extended families operate. For example, for EMC Corporation, you can see its related businesses, including VMware, Iomega and Documentum, as well as their estimated revenues, profits and employee counts.

RakedIn has a wealth of information, especially for a inaugural debut. And their focus might give people a very real alternative to the portals who are simply aggregating data from everywhere. Check it out at www.rakedin.com.

Would You Night Owls Pay a Premium for 24-Hour Commerce?

If you have a 9-5 job, and any responsibilities at home, be they family, digital, or anything else, you might find the world closed down around you by the time you're ready to go out. In most cities, practically the only things open past 9 or 10 are gas stations, 7-Eleven and possibly a grocery store. Want to pick up something from the electronics store, some new power tools, or even a new pair of slacks? You'll have to wait until tomorrow, but yes, the same hours apply, which means you're pretty much screwed until the weekend, unless you can sneak out on your lunch hour or roll into work late.

I've been a night owl since high school, at least - including a 1:30 to 9:30 a.m. graveyard shift during the summers, and working on the school paper in college starting at midnight. Even now, after putting the twins to bed after a full day, and catching up on all online activity, it's a rare night that we shut down before one - hours after the surrounding city has called it quits.

While I have moved as much of my commerce online as possible, there always remains the elusive item that would be much easier to get in the real world. What would be great is if there were something open for those of us who actually function very well between ten at night and eight the following morning. Whether there is one mega-complex open overnight that hits all the basics - from clothes to food to electronics and house supplies, or a mall in each metro area that does the same, I believe there would be a subset of the population that would flock to it - one that wouldn't mind paying a little bit more for the convenience.

I wouldn't even mind if the store charged one price at 7 p.m. and 20 percent more at 11, so long as they were open when I went. But I hate feeling like a prisoner to somebody else's schedule.

10 Rules for Today's Consumers In the New World of Real-Time

The world of communication and product delivery is changing as the Web evolves and new services are introduced, enabling us to gain faster access to information, download richer media more quickly, and rapidly voice our opinions and feedback near and far in a wide variety of methods, including text, voice, video and imagery. As customers become more savvy and in tune with these new tools, we are also expecting those offering products and services to adapt, and as such, I thought it made sense to put forth what I believe are key tenets of a new consumer manifesto for today's real-time world.

1. We Want Access to Your Product As Quickly As Possible

We have become an "instant gratification" society. Our short attention spans are being rewarded with ubiquitous access to fast food, the rollout of ever-faster download speeds, near elimination of commercials, thanks to DVRs, and the ability to replace activities that were once limited to venues outside the home with in-home equivalents, including on-demand programming and simulated bowling on our Wiis.

When we order your products, or sign up for your service, we want access to them immediately. We don't want to wait for an approval period, and if the product is physical, we want it shipped quickly at the first possible convenience.

2. We Expect the Product to Work On Any Platform In Any Location

Many of us spend more time in the Web browser and our e-mail than we do in our Operating System software these days. We rapidly grow frustrated with any Web sites or applications that operate differently if you utilize different operating systems or Web browsers, and we expect to have access to your product, or a mobile equivalent, when we are away from our desktops.

3. We Want to See That You Allow for Feedback, Positive and Negative

The time of a siloed product experience is gone. We want to see that you provide a forum or link to a third party site that discusses your business and your products, and connects us with peers, where we can learn from one another in a venue that reaches you as well. And if you do provide a forum or bulletin for us to provide feedback, we will not look kindly on your deleting threads or comments of substance.

4. We Expect That You Respond to Your Customers, Quickly

Customers are talking about your products on their blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook and other aggregation sites. They may send you e-mail or post in public forums. While we can't expect CEOs of the largest companies to respond to every mention, we do expect company representatives to be listening, and for the smallest companies, we do expect founders and entrepreneurs to be accessible.

5. We Expect That You Join and Lead the Conversation

In the absence of communication from you, rumors and negative feedback can snowball. And while you might be coached in handling crisis PR in case something gets out of hand on blogs or Twitter, the best way to get ahead of potential issues is to have a presence in these social areas before problems occur, so that your customers have a place to engage you, and you them, helping to redirect the conversation and react. Additionally, you can use your communication outlets to show thought leadership and teach us better ways to use your product in ways we may not have considered.

6. We Want to See That You Continually Improve Your Product

Thanks to the now assumed two-way conversation with your customers, we expect you will be making incremental updates and improvements that both meet your corporate objectives and satisfy user expectations - beyond fixing bugs. Not only do we now expect instant access and near real-time responses, but we hope for rapid iterations that add to our satisfaction. A stale product will lead to cranky users, and breed disloyalty, as we may migrate to alternatives that appear to be updating more frequently with more agility.

7. We Expect You to Use Your Product and Be Visible

One of the greatest endorsements of your own product is that you use it and make it a part of your own visible activity - making you appear as a peer with a shared experience in parallel to that of your customers. For the smallest companies, including startups with 1-10 employees, we expect to likely see your CEO and founders visibly consuming their own dog food, both exulting in its benefits and suffering through its disappointments. And if you do put up a central example of your employees or founder using your products, don't do it once and never update again, because we'll know about it, and it will a stark reminder of your pandering.

8. We Expect That You Will Embrace or Lead Standards

As we are helping you create a business by selecting your product instead of that of the competition, we expect you will help us, and the ecosystem as a whole, by either embracing existing standards that are agreed upon, or by forging new standards and releasing them to the community for the benefit of all. We reject proprietary methods that don't deliver significant differentiation, or aren't forced by antiquated legalities.

9. We Expect You Are Driven By More than Money Alone

As consumers, we are eager to be seen as your partner, and to contribute to improving the next iteration of your product, or in helping to grow the information base around it, through consistent feedback, formation of user groups, or in creating content related to your product. As such, we do not expect to be seen as blank checks, there to support your bottom line when quarters draw thin. Instead, we want to see that you share a passion for your products and your market, and know that you, as we are, are driven by the potential of what your product can enable us to accomplish. We want to know the story of what you are trying to solve, and how it can help the community, more than we want to hear about your margins and your EPS.

10. We Want You To Treat Us As Informed Consumers and Partners

We have real-time access to news and many of us are rabid information sponges who are experts about you and your product. We don't want to be talked down to, and often have significant history with your organization. We despise the tendency to architect service, support and marketing to the lowest common denominator, and greatly appreciate your expecting that we have a baseline of understanding that includes recent headlines on you and the industry.

---

While books including the Cluetrain Manifesto and Naked Conversations have chronicled the move by consumers and businesses to e-commerce and a new world of online communications, continued advancements toward real-time news and exchanges of ideas lay the platform for a revamped approach to consumer relations with business. We are finding out more about you than you ever believed possible, and we are more than willing to share it just as quickly - both the good and the bad. Embrace the change and embrace us as partners and we can be your greatest ally. Be truthful, transparent and trusted, and you can help us cross the chasm from customers to fans.

Good People, Bad Companies: The Intersection of Skill and Luck

If you have worked at a company that went public or changed the world, you might be given an unfair share of accolades for your part in its success, even if you were actually a pedestrian employee. Similarly, if you happen to have put blood, sweat and tears into an unsuccessful venture, you might be seen as having contributed to that's company's lack of success, or worse, its downfall, giving your resume a black mark. Despite one's best intentions, there is always a strong element of luck in terms of what companies succeed, what products gain share in the market, and, often, if you were hired at the right place at the right time.

In Silicon Valley, the measurement of success and failure can be extremely visible. "Oh. He worked at Google..." says one person in hushed tones to a friend. "And that guy? Let's just say he's on his fourth startup in six years."

But the company name, and the headlines that covered that company's activity over the years, never tell the full story. You don't always know if the person was liked and trusted by their employees. You don't know if they put in 14 hour days or 6 hour days. And you don't know if there was anything they could have done in their role that could have changed the outcome. It's no secret that companies big and small have elite employees, pedestrian employees, and laggards, be they those on the Fortune 500 or ones you've never even heard of.

In a time when the economy is in decline and unemployment is rampant, here and elsewhere, these rapid judgment calls are no doubt having profound effects. How do you explain your way around product failures, hostile takeovers and missed sales quarters? Should the guy whose company chose to go public three months before the market crashed, when yours didn't, giving them $100 million in the bank, and him a nice Mercedes, be considered a better talent than you? Should every former Google employee have a leg up on every former Yahoo! or Ask Jeeves employee, for example?

Watching some industries very closely, it can become clear that people, no matter their role in the organization, will claim the success of their company as their own handiwork. Paraphrasing from a recent release, many of which you've likely seen, a company crowed last month upon getting a new Sales VP, "Prior to joining, (this individual) previously served as a Senior Vice President at (company), where he was responsible for growing sales revenue from $hundreds of millions to $billions." But in the last twelve months, I had actually seen others of this company's alumni report that it was they who had been the driver for the same growth - generating the same similar press release.

Should they all take credit for the same thing, even if one person led worldwide sales, another was a regional area manager, and another oversaw channel efforts in a single territory?

There is something to be said about having been part of a shared experience of success or failure, and learning what to do next, should the opportunity present itself again. In Silicon Valley, where it's well known the vast majority of startups will eventually fail, most of us have two or three companies under our belt that didn't make it. An elite few managed to jump from success to success and not miss a beat. Still others have alternated success with failure, with a healthy mix of effort sprinkled with luck through the process.

It's this knowledge that doesn't get me starry-eyed when I bump into people who played central roles at companies that are household names today - not any more than I look askance at those whose history may be more checkered. All we can do as individuals is deliver our best effort and work to help the company we are at succeed to the level of our abilities. And should that not work, we should take a deep breath, look around, and do it again. Risk is not something to be feared, and with risk always comes the chance that you won't succeed - and it might not always be because of you.

Adobe: Our Products Are Expensive - And Don't Buy the Downloads

Last night I told you that Adobe failed my expectations for an instant download experience of their Creative Suite, looking like the company preferred to review every single software download manually. Now more than 15 hours later, I'm no closer to having access to the product I purchased, and if their support infrastructure is any indication, it might be some time before this gets resolved.

Along the way, I learned the company still has a long way to go before embracing true e-commerce and satisfying savvy customers.

Support Experience #1

Having seen my order still labeled as "Pending" in the Adobe Online Store, I called their "Purchase by Phone" toll-free number listed on the site, to see if I could push the order forward. After exchanging pleasantries with the support personnel on the line, I explained this morning...

Me: "I ordered the download version of Creative Suite last night, and the order shows as Pending. Can you see if it can be fulfilled or canceled, or what I have to do to get it moving forward?"

Them: "Has it been more than 2 hours?"

Me: "Yes. I ordered it last night, and it still shows pending."

Them: "Then the order is dead. I've seen that a few times today."

Me: "Dead? So what do you recommend?"

Them: "Well, first I would recommend never buying the download version. Always get the disks. You get an authentication code, can install on two computers, and can uninstall from the disk. I would never get the download."

Me: "But the disks and the box take up a lot of space."

Them: "No they don't."

Me: "Well, I would prefer the download version. What should I do?"

Them: "I don't deal with the online store. Let me transfer you."

Support Experience #2

I get transferred to a main customer service line. The quality of the call noticeably decreases, and a man named "Jerry", with a clear Indian accent, picks up.

Me: "I made an order on the Adobe Online Store last night, and it is showing as pending. I can give you the order number."

Them: (takes number... puts me on hold)

Them: "Your bank probably stopped the order. It was a big order - more than $1,000."

Me: "That's what your products cost. And I don't think it's the bank. I used my credit card."

Them: "Let me check while it is still pending." (puts me on hold again)

(Hold music warbles in with more static than notes)

Them: "Sir, it is your bank. We have released it. You should call your bank."

Me: "That doesn't make any sense."

Them: "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

Me: "No."

According to Adobe Online, my order is still pending. In theory, it could resolve this afternoon, or tomorrow, or next week. I can't cancel it. I can't move it forward. I can maybe call the credit card company, but I expect to get nowhere. But what I have learned (again) is that big companies that let bureaucracy get in the way of their customers will never win the customer service game.

Hey Adobe, I have the money. If you think this order is too big, lower your prices. If you think I shouldn't download your product, don't offer it. And if your phone sales team can't see the online side, you should find a way to get them talking.

Dinosaur Adobe Manually Reviews Download Purchases

After years of working on outdated desktop software, I was all set to bite the bullet tonight, and upgrade to the latest Creative Suite family from Adobe. Not interested in cluttering our already-cluttered home with boxes of software and CDs, I was pleased to see I could order a download version of the suite, and potentially have it tonight, installed and running while the twins slept. But for some bizarre reason, probably having to due with an overwrought insecure obsession with piracy, Adobe says it will review the order manually, in the next business day, and then, assuming I pass, I'll get permission to download what I bought.

Crazy. Dumb. Antiquated.


Seriously, Adobe? You're Reviewing a Download?
It's one thing to order a physical item from Amazon.com, the Apple Store, or Zappos, and expect it to ship in a few business days. But downloads? Instant or not at all. This is part of why iTunes has been so successful. Click to purchase, and you are downloading immediately. Same goes for Netflix's "Watch Instantly", and practically every other legitimate software download service.

What if I absolutely needed Adobe's software tonight? What if I were in a creative agency on deadline working the weekend? Could I tell a client that no, I would be unable to open their project in the latest version of InDesign or PhotoShop because Adobe was going to review my order the next day? It's almost enough to make me check out BitTorrent.

There's a reason Web services are replacing the old dinosaur software companies. They are more agile and more forward thinking. Maybe I'll get approved and get the software I paid for by tomorrow. But this is completely ridiculous. The world is moving to a real-time Web, and this is anything but.

Conquer Information Overload at the Inbound Marketing Summit

Earlier this week, I mentioned I am scheduled to speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit, featuring Chris Brogan, Tim O'Reilly, Tim Ferris, John Battelle, Loic Le Meur, Brian Solis, Charlene Li, and others. But it turned out that O'Reilly and I actually were on so close a wavelength that we practically submitted the same speaking topics. Aiming to be flexible, and let O'Reilly close strong, I thought we would revisit one of our favorite topics - how to avoid proverbial information overload, and find the right data at the right time, no matter where it is.

On Wednesday at 4:25 p.m. in San Francisco, just before O'Reilly finishes up, I'll be speaking on the topic, "There Is No Information Overload. Finding a Signal in the Noise".

The topic description leaves you with a little tip on what's coming:

"With a nearly constant stream of information related to you, your product and company from all corners, it can at times seem overwhelming. How can you break through the noise and find out all you need to, without being overwhelmed with a data tsunami? Don't just look to a chief information officer. Look to be a chief signal officer, by selectively finding where to listen, when to listen, how to listen, and if you should engage."

I've talked before about tackling information overload, and I'm looking forward to participating at the conference.

I do have a pair of VIP tickets available if you want to go, so send me an e-mail if you're interested.

IT Trade Show Attendance Down Sharply. Is Quality Improved?

During the last recession, especially in 2002 and 2003, our experience showed that attendance at technology trade shows was very poor, to say the least. If vendors weren't canceling their sponsorships outright, or dramatically reducing booth space, the scarcity of end-users saw marketers desperate to hit target lead counts, even if it meant randomly scanning those who just wanted the give-away of the day. But in this go around, having attended a fair number of events so far this year, while I see attendance is once again down significantly, the quality of those end users who remain might actually be better overall.

As mentioned yesterday, I am spending the week at the NAB conference here in Las Vegas. This show, expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees, if not a hundred thousand, as once estimated, clearly doesn't have as many exhibitors as in previous years. The hallways are less jam-packed, and wait times for services like taxis, shuttles and the monorail are greatly lessened, compared to other times I've attended.

Any trade show veteran knows that the first and second days of a show typically drive the lion's share of activity. Often, a 3-5 day show can be like molasses as all the exhibitors pace upon their well-carpeted square booths, and watch the clock by the end of the week. So getting a big number on day one can be critical. While today's activity was very busy through the first portion of the day, by the second half of the eight-plus hour shift, I could have sworn it was Wednesday already - and I know we were not the only ones with serious gaps in visitors.

But interestingly, despite the relative quiet, as I also experienced at Storage Networking World in Orlando at the beginning of the month during parts of that show, those attendees who are making the visit and the inquiries are those who we should be talking to. It could be that companies who lived through the last recession have learned to save money by not sending more than the critically necessary attendees to said events, effectively aiding them and the vendors who see them by improving the signal while lessening the noise.

If you are a technology marketer deciding whether or not to spend your money on trade shows this year, I wouldn't recommend outright pulling the plug. If you reduce your presence, end users will understand your desire to save money. But if your competitors go and you don't, they've got a beeline to deals that should be yours. And if you're a technology purchaser wondering if you should go to a show, ask around the office, and see if somebody with better focus can go on your behalf. It will make sense for your budget and for the vendor ecosystem as well. I hope that what I'm seeing so far this year displays this is already happening.

Please Stretch Me Thinner: I'm Saying Yes to Everything

Yes we can. That may have been the rallying cry for 2008's victorious presidential candidate, but sometimes, I swear it's mine too, because every time I hear somebody say I can't do something, I want to make sure I do it, and do so well. Any time I hear somebody say I can't possibly keep up a certain pace, have to drop something, or that something is going to slow me down, I want to prove them wrong. Here's the truth - despite having a full-time job, a pair of active twins under a year old, and a fairly active online lifestyle that includes this blog, some social media activity, and three advisory board positions with early-stage start-ups, we're not done, and I want you to stretch me further. Do it.

So, as best as I can, I am saying yes to everything I can - and want to keep it up.

When at the SXSW conference last month, I participated in one panel, as was the rule of the show, but I wish I could have done one each day. I blogged every session I was in, and the videos you've seen thus far from Kipp Bodnar, from Wayne Sutton and Morgan Brown are only half the story, as was the coverage from the Times of London and The Guardian.

Last week, as I mentioned, I participated in the FFundercats podcast, and Josh and Johnny know they have an open invitation should they want me again.

Looking forward, on April 29th, I am signed up to speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit, put on by Chris Brogan and CrossTech Media, in San Francisco. I'll be speaking just ahead of Tim O'Reilly, who closes the show, and discussing how the promotion of others, including customers and competition, can help your brand (see the agenda). Hopefully you can attend.

And yes, I'm acting as an advisor for BuzzGain, ReadBurner and SocialToo, talking strategy with the entrepreneurs of each service, providing feedback on features and roadmaps and introducing them to new contacts. You should hear about a fourth advisory role in the next few days, and I haven't yet hit the saturation point. I also managed to sneak out to Boulder to see Lijit earlier this year, even if it wasn't in an official role, and that was a great experience.

I've also got a big trip planned this September to see Thomas Power and Ecademy in London - which I have to embarrassingly admit will be my first time out of North America, ever. Hopefully, it's just a start, and I look forward to offering more details on that soon.

So why mention all this? Because I want more. Feed me more. At recent business events, there is a dramatic need for those I run into to get an extra push to get and grasp blogging, to understand what's happening in social media, who's winning and losing, and best practices. And right now, I don't think my 5 minute answers are enough. I am starting to get inquiries from people to help them more formally, and yes, I will. I will also be signing up for more speaking opportunities, more panels, more podcasts, and more advisory roles if they think I can help. This is going to be fun, so abuse me. You know where to find me.

iPhones Can Protect Your Warcraft Account, and Someday Much More

By Daniel J. Pritchett of Sharing at Work (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Two recent iPhone stories highlight some interesting potential for Apple's iPhone and iPod family.  First up is WoW Insider's announcement of a free iPhone Authenticator available in the app store for securing World of Warcraft accounts.  A Battle.net user is typically a World of Warcraft player but the accounts can be tied to any Blizzard game you might own, including their future releases.

As shown in the screen shot on the left, the Authenticator program generates a new string of numbers once every minute or so.  Once a player links the authenticator to an account, these numbers must be supplied along with a user name and password at each login — a two-factor authentication challenge.  This iPhone app is an alternative to the existing solution where gamers can pay Blizzard $7 for a key fob that generates a similar passkey every time its button is pushed.

World of Warcraft characters and items are regularly hijacked via targeted trojans and keyloggers.  They can be stripped bare in a matter of minutes, their contents flipped quickly for tens or even hundreds of dollars on WoW's thriving grey market.  Given the time and effort involved in securing an account rollback from Blizzard customer service, many players will opt for the peace of mind granted them by this new application.

The next iPhone may read fingerprints and retinas

The second tidbit comes from Apple Insider (via Engadget): An Apple patent filling hints at fingerprint and retina scanning potential in future iPhones. Apple is researching the potential for embedding biometric scanning devices (cameras, etc.) behind the touch screen of an iPhone.  Such enhanced iPhones would allow for secure identification in order to unlock the phone itself.  These enhancements would also allow the iPhone to serve as an easily obtainable high-powered authenticator for other systems such as Blizzard's Battle.net.  While we might only imagine such tools as being necessary for sensitive operations like banking or remote logins to corporate intranets, the Blizzard app demonstrates that it can be cost effective to secure our less critical digital holdings.

The Blizzard authenticator is a great example of high-powered security applications that the iPhone family can provide right now, and the recent patent filing by Apple gives us insight into other uses for tomorrow's iPhone.  We'll certainly have the mobile available as an ever-more-secure authentication tool, but we'll also be able to use it as a remote sensor for home and office medical purposes such as the recently promised glucose monitor or a biometrically secured retail barcode scanner.  There are undoubtedly more possibilities than I can come up with on my own, and I look forward to seeing some of them becoming reality in the near future.  If you've got a great example of alternate uses for mobile phones, please share it in a comment!

Read more by Daniel J. Pritchett at Sharing at Work

Rackspace Stock Undergoes the Scoble Effect Following Robert's Hire

In the two weeks following Robert Scoble's official announcement that he was to be joining Rackspace, Inc. and embarking on a new project called Building 43, the company's stock has jumped by more than 30 percent, rising at a pace three times that of the NASDAQ, as the broader market tries to recover from a horrific year. And while yes, the argument should be made the two are not connected, the rise in the company's stock has added approximately $300 million to Rackspace's market cap. If Robert were responsible for even 1% of the jump, he would already have delivered $3 million of net value to the company.


Rackspace's 2-week Rise Has Been Impressive
While Scoble hasn't been blogging as much as he used to, in his most-impactful years, simply getting linked to would deliver what smaller bloggers called "The Scoble Effect", as new visitors to the site could dramatically outnumber their regulars. And it's fun to think just maybe he can do the same for the Web hosting firm.

At the close of trading on Friday, March 13th, the last day before Scoble's news was unveiled, Rackspace stock closed at $5.98 a share. At the end of trading today, the shares closed at $7.81 apiece, a move up of 30.6% in two weeks. In fact, according to Google Finance, Rackspace stock has been up on 8 of the 10 trading days following his announcement.


Meanwhile, Microsoft Has Been Slowly Sinking
In contrast, Microsoft, the last public company where Scoble worked, having left their offices in June of 2006, has seen their stock decline more than 15 percent since he left. Of course, so has just about everyone else...

The Downward Spiral - As Companies Slow, So Do Their People

Yesterday, IBM said they were laying off 5,000 people. Today, Google said they were laying off another 200. Unemployment in Silicon Valley is easily above 10 percent, and for the remaining job owners, many have seen salary cuts, forced furloughs and mandatory vacation. Companies have cut estimates and forecasts, or reduced spending. And even as the stock market has had some up days of late, the feeling out there is still not good - a lot more AIG than IPO, for example. But in many offices and cubicles around the Valley and beyond, workers are exercising their own slowdowns, their spirits dulled, as they gradually get less and less productive, waiting for more bad news, and being numb to it when it finally arrives.

For many, while the dire times should drive a newfound sense of urgency, it never comes. Instead of putting in extra hours, these desk zombies float through their business days, murmuring in the hallways about how they heard rumors even more cuts might come, and refreshing the company sales dashboard to see if anything has changed since when they last looked at it twenty minutes ago. It hasn't. They might come in just a bit later than they used to. They might take longer lunches - spending less, but they'll be out of the office. And by three o'clock, they're either thinking about shutting down for the day, or in some cases, finally getting up the energy to clear their to-do list, having killed more than half their time filing e-mail and browsing the Web.

The office, once a bustling energy-filled environment interrupted by phone calls, fast-paced strategic discussions and the occasional peal of laughter, instead resembles an unpopular library, with the most activity being the frequent visits to the printer or copy machine, and the creaks of the restroom doors opening and closing. If there are ringing phones, they are either from vendors demanding to be paid, or employees' personal cell phones, as they take the call and then rush out to the back, or to a conference room.

These companies are dying. Not necessarily IBM or Google, of course - but there are companies strewn throughout the Valley and beyond that were set up to capitalize on momentum that disappeared and then reversed over the last 18 months. Dreams were blasted away as the public markets closed, acquisition offers never appeared, and customers started to say no in a big way. And inside, many employees gave up. They're still coming to work. They even might put on a game face when in meetings or talking with their boss. But their will and drive to be a success and make things happen is all but gone.

I speak to this because I've seen it and I've heard it - not just in this recession, but in those before as well. One friend of mine confided to me by phone a few weeks ago that he probably works a solid 2-3 hours a day in his software engineering job, frittering the rest of the day away. He doesn't believe his company has a chance, and he doesn't care - citing their move to cut staff and move other jobs to India. But he isn't doing anything to change it, and the putrid job market has him just barely treading water, let alone seeking other options.

Yet another friend of mine talked to me yesterday about how his company is winding down, trying to convince two potential acquirers to find something of value in the little that's left.

In a previous company where I worked during the dotcom bust, I distinctly remember seeing one of the business development management team members spending more time playing video games and updating his resume than trying to close deals - as I gnashed my teeth, wondering why I was working so hard at something that meant so little to others.

If you read many of the tomes that were written about the Silicon Valley's successes, from the earliest days of semiconductors and the Internet, to Sarah Lacy's "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good", you can be regaled with stories of people who didn't give up, who didn't take no for an answer, and who put in twelve-plus hour shifts, putting the company ahead of themselves. But you're not hearing the stories of those who went the other way - as frequent as they no doubt are.

A recent satirical post blamed Twitter for the down economy, noting a correlation between Twitter's popularity and the Dow's plummet. And as silly as that is, many of these frustrated desk zombies are likely turning to social networking sites to kill time, to feel busy, and to chat with others around the world about their shared annoyances. Amidst calls for ways to deliver a social media ROI, the fatigued masses are sucking the ROI out of their companies, as their productivity drops down to almost nothing.

Now, don't get me wrong. Every company has its heroes, even those that aren't doing well. Even the biggest failures of companies that are roundly mocked starred impressive people with aggressive work ethics, and success amid despair. As I once asked a potential job candidate during an interview, "With your record showing a string of failed company after failed company, how can we be certain you won't bring that failure here as well?" Luckily for this gentleman, he had a good answer. But for some, the culture of failure around them becomes so internalized that they push it forward and it becomes self-fulfilling.

There's a reason that turn-around stories are so rare. Once momentum is going in a certain direction, a troubled company's best assets, the best employees, find a way out. And the ones that remain, those who couldn't attract another offer, are the ones who just might be plodding through and praying they get a severance package, or that the next round of cuts spares them as they muddle along. You know these people. They're the ones not making the headlines. But in reality, they are. They just don't know it - and maybe, their company doesn't know it either.

How To Cleanly Separate Personal and Work Social Media Personalities

As social networking and social media sites increasingly become as much about companies and brands as they are about people, you are seeing names like Zappos and JetBlue tweeting alongside you, and Comcast answering complaints. Companies might be making comments on FriendFeed and asking you to join their fan page on Facebook. Many of you, possibly tasked with maintaining the social media presence for your company, might be maintaining multiple accounts on practically every network, and trying to keep your personalities in check, lest you make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. For the last four months, I've been doing the same thing. Here's how.

Put Your Work Life In One Browser, and You In Another

Everybody has multiple browsers these days. Whether you prefer Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, or something else, you probably have a second one which you use less. Rather than ask you to login and log out over and over, set up one of your browsers with bookmarks to all your work activity and the social media sites with that account, and keep your preferred browser all yours.

For my work account, I use Firefox, and for me, I use Safari.

When I open Firefox, the browser opens five distinct tabs:

• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Twitter Search
• Twitter
• FriendFeed

The GMail account tracks new subscribers and DMs. Google Reader populates the link blog. Twitter search watches what is being said online, and Twitter and FriendFeed let the company participate.

Running the browsers in parallel lets me do the work I need to in both, without suffering from multiple personality disorder.

Make A Second Login, Preferences for TweetDeck

TweetDeck, in my opinion, is still the best way to track groups and saved searches in Twitter. I set up TweetDeck so if I am logged in as me, the application has the standard black look and feel. But when I am logged in with the company ID, TweetDeck is in the company colors of blue and orange. Yes, the combination is somewhat garish, but it serves as a reminder to me that I'm logged in for work, so I won't screw up.


Logged Into TweetDeck as the Company

Logged Into TweetDeck as Me
Beyond the colors, you should leverage TweetDeck's saved search functionality to track your company and product mentions, as well as that of competitors.

Create a Second Disqus Account for Commenting

When commenting on blogs around the Web, as yourself, or for the company, it makes sense to use best practices and identify who you are. But you don't necessarily want to track your work comments to your personal ID. I recommend getting a second Disqus account that ties back to your work e-mail address, and have that registered in the "work" browser. When I make comments on sites as work, it says my first and last name, and then, in parentheses, the company name.

Always Work Methodically When Acting on Behalf of the Company

Tweeting or commenting or blogging or bookmarking as a brand is more risky than when you do it on your own. As with all things on the Web, you should consider how they could be interpreted downstream. But when you are doing something on behalf of a corporate entity that represents products, people, history and finance, you should take an extra breath before acting, and pay extra attention to every word, character or nuance.

Be Replaceable

If you do your job well, it should be easy for you to pass off the reins of the social media strategy at your company to somebody else with very little impact. If you make the company's social media presence all about you, it will follow you where you go next, and could negatively damage the company you are leaving, and distract from the company where you are going. See that you can work on behalf of the company without it being all about you. Try to offer personality without it necessarily being your distinct personality.

You'll note I don't often talk about work here on the blog. It was a conscious decision I made when starting the site at the beginning of 2006. It's not a secret where I work (check my LinkedIn profile) but it's not about where I work. It's all part of keeping things separate. Are you running the social media activity for your company, or looking to get started? I would be interested in the tips you may have as well.

CloudContacts Teleports Your Business Cards to the Virtual World

Like many of you no doubt, over the last several years, I've amassed a solid collection of business cards, from both work and social engagements. I have business cards in boxes, in piles on my desk, on my dresser and table at home, and in virtually every zipper pocket of my laptop bag. I have business cards from Web companies that haven't launched yet, and I have business cards from companies that have already gone out of business since we shook hands and traded paper. And while I always thought someday I would sit down and input each one by hand into my address book, it never happened. That's why when I heard about CenterNetworks' Allen Stern's new venture, CloudContacts, I was intrigued. When we met up at SXSW last week, I took the plunge, and have to say that not only did the service do exactly as I expected, but i tees up some interesting possibilities through advanced features I hadn't considered.

The first step of starting with CloudContacts is the one of getting your cards into the service. You could physically hand Allen a box, like I did at the event. You could mail CloudContacts your cards. You could scan the cards and e-mail him the results. Or you could even, with a feature announced last month, take a picture of the card(s) with your phone and e-mail it in.

Once CloudContacts has your cards, the real work takes place, and the cards are entered into the system. I gave Allen my cards on Saturday and gained a login by Monday, so turn-around time is very quick. Upon logging in, I was presented with a page that showed the contacts listed by first and last name, company, address, and phone, just like you would expect from online address book services, including the one Apple features in MobileMe.


But CloudContacts' true value comes from mainly two areas. The first is the one you would expect, where you can download all your contacts (in CSV file, VCards or as Yahoo! and GMail contacts), and the second is that when you click on "view" next to any card, you not only see a picture of the scanned business card, but you also get as much data out of the Web as CloudContacts could find, from a picture in Google Maps showing their address, to searches on LinkedIn and Facebook for their accounts, and even their last few tweets, if the card was lucky enough to have a Twitter account listed. You could even play super-geek and scan a code to have your phone call the person, if dialing proves too difficult.


For me, the major test was downloading the 200+ cards I gave to CloudContacts, and then importing them into my Apple Address Book, which syncs up with my iPhone, Mail and most programs. It happened perfectly, recognizing potential duplicates I'd actually entered myself, and adding the rest. Now, all those business cards I was lugging around or running into can be sent to the big recycling bin in the sky.


The question is, now that the hard part is done, can Allen Stern and CloudContacts flip the data on its head and start to make a LinkedIn-like social network out of it? Will I in the future be able to see who else uploaded the same business card? It looks like the foundation is being laid for the service to become more than just a next generation address book. But even if it never does, it's already been a great benefit to me. You can find CloudContacts at http://www.cloudcontacts.com.

FiveThirtyEight Founder Speaks On Stats, Elections and Baseball

Even as many voters sat on pins and needles, the 2008 presidential election was among the easiest to predict, according to Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, whose site skyrocketed to stardom amid high visibility throughout the primary and general election season last year, as he took a thorough background in statistical analysis and focused on the world of politics, hoping to improve the accuracy of polls and predictive analysis. In his comments on a keynote at the SXSW Interactive conference today, he said media outlets relied too much on most recent news, and could improve their prognoses if they instead turned to historical statistics and trend data.

Nate said he started FiveThirtyEight.com "out of frustration" with the traditional media properties, including CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. He said their coverage "wasn't empirically valid and correct," adding, "polls were too much of the narrative and they were taken too seriously as they were poorly conducted and interpreted."

Armed with a history of crunching baseball statistics to predict how well players would perform in the future from his time with the Baseball Prospectus, Nate tried to spot irregularities in polling or find variables that indicated how voters in each state were likely to trend which most pollsters were missing. One example included how in the Appalachian region, voters who declined to state their ethnicity, choosing to instead be labeled as "American", were doing so as a badge of pride, but also indicated a level of "redneckness," as he put it.

Like with baseball, Nate called the political process a long season, where largest trends were not swayed by an individual game's data, or by a single primary.

"You don't get that much information at once. A puzzle gets solved a little at a time," Nate said. "People are trained to over-react to these kinds of things, and I would urge patience."

Having successfully predicted the 2008 elections more accurately than practically anybody else out there, Nate is now being courted to try and solve a wide array of other issues, ranging from predicting the Academy Awards (which was partially successful), to predicting economics. As could be expected, he was asked to provide his thoughts on the economic slowdown that has effected everyone, and how long it would be until potential voters started to blame the Obama administration, instead of the Bush administration.

"We haven't had a situation like this in the modern era," Nate said. "People are really scared, and they don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. You have people who are very pessimistic about the future of the country, but Obama has great approval ratings. Usually that doesn't happen. There is a kind of grace period of three to six months, and after this grace period, of about 18 months, people assign him as much blame as they would Bush for the economy, so he needs the economy to turn around sooner, rather than later."

But even armed with as much data and talent as he has, Nate recognizes that other factors are in play. Baseball players can get injured, and "you can only expect a human to do what they do what they were doing so many times," he said, adding, "in baseball, everything in the last 100 years is 99.9% accurate. The real world is not like that."

Speaking of not predicting the real world, the term FiveThirtyEight, which refers to the number of electoral votes available in a presidential election, may need to change, should Washington DC gain representation in Congress, throwing all the numbers off. Should that happen, Nate just may have to change his URL.

Is the Valley Too Expensive for Normal People to Launch Startups?

At a morning panel today at the SXSW Interactive conference, titled "Ditch the Valley, Run for the Hills", a great debate was struck between Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist and others on the panel, as she argued the high cost of living demanded by Silicon Valley and San Francisco pretty much excluded anybody from starting companies, unless they were 20-something single males. She argued the Valley's "coolness" and access to capital might not deliver enough benefits for shoestring startups trying to get off the ground. The issue of Valley costs was compounded by comments from Mike Maples of Hyper 9, who added his concerns that the state's financial struggles could see dramatic impact the standard of living many of us have taken for granted.

There is no question that over the last few decades, the Valley has gotten a disproportionate share of venture capital. In fact, Maples quoted a recent study that showed 90 percent of venture returns in the last 30 years went to companies founded within 10 miles of either Stanford University or MIT in Massachusetts. And panelist Robert Scoble, now of Rackspace, said the contributing reasons that the Valley attracted startups were three major factors, namely:

1. Access to Capital (Drive Sandhill Road, see 10 VC firms and get your money)
2. Scalability of Web sites (Access to people who have done it before)
3. Tech press (From Mike Arrington and TechCrunch to other tech blogs)

But with the economy changing, and initial rounds for startups dropping from the tens of millions to only two or three million each, the panel said day to day challenges for start-ups could be even more acute, given the reduced access to capital.

Trunk, who is based in the Un-Valley, in Wisconsin, most directly said the process simply isn't doable for people who can't accept risk to their foundation, be it food or rent:

"There is an elephant in the room, about startups," she said. "You are starving and it is super scary, unless you have a trust fund or a previous successful company. In this economy it is very scary. We would have gone under in Silicon Valley because rents are high and there is no safety net in the Valley. Thunk how you can sustain yourself with food and rent before getting your business model."

She later added that only eight percent of companies seeking venture funding are from women, but most are from 20-something men who are single.

Maples, based in Austin, said he recently has been investing in local startups nearby Austin, partly because he would prefer not to travel, but he also voiced concerns about the viability of the Valley, given state budget problems.

"There is also the growing problem of local government," he said. There's a good chance the California government will go bankrupt. The services you take for granted now may not be there two to three years from now, be it education for kids, highways, police and fire support. The nice things you want could progressively change, and that's not true in Texas."

Issues in the Valley don't mean that the San Francisco Bay Area isn't attractive to new companies, of course. The Valley, offering access to capital, people, press and experience, can be an incredible pull. Scoble mentioned Loic LeMeur's Seesmic as one example of a company that moved from Europe to San Francisco and embraced the culture that enabled you to take risks, and fail. Noting that he himself had participated in three startups that have experienced failure, Scoble said Europe entrepreneurs aren't celebrated for their attempted success, but only for their actual success. And many of the panelists cited statistics showing that the venture capital-funded startup was a rarity, and the exception.

"In the valley, failure is accepted, and almost celebrated," Scoble said.

As with most topics here at the conference, the conversation also turned to Twitter. Could Twitter have been started or funded if it hadn't started in San Francisco? Almost universally, the answer was no. Maples even reminded us, "Twitter was a mistake."

Google's Move to Behavior Ad Targeting Should be Excellent for All

Today's Tech Web is ablaze with discussion around Google's announcement that they will be moving more toward behavioral targeted advertising in its offerings, letting advertisers learn more about the users they are messaging to, and, hopefully, letting consumers see advertisements that are more accurate, more targeted, and more interesting. If done well, advertisers will see higher click-through rates, consumers will be less irritated with off-topic ads, and Google will continue to make even more money.

Thanks to some of my more direct comments on advertising, I might be seen as being anti-ads in general, but that's really not the case. As often as I skip commercials and avoid ad banners, that's as much a function of them being completely nonsensical and having nothing to do with me as it is a function of some holy war against the market.

In June of 2008, I posted a comment using GMail/Google Talk to FriendFeed, saying, “I've seen a lot of stories lately around behavioral targeted advertising, and privacy. But in theory, wouldn't you rather see more relevant ads? Isn't this a good thing?"

It was my position that people were (and are) worried about passing data to a central source, and having Big Brother watch their online activity, but that I felt the concerns were overwrought. I have a tendency first, to trust services, and second, to expect the notion of privacy has changed dramatically in a world where we post all our particulars to LinkedIn and Facebook anyway.

At the time, responses ranged from Susan Beebe's direct, "I HATE online ADS . period. They suck big time," to Mark Krynsky's more diplomatic take, when he said, "I think it's a win for both advertisers and users and since I realize that ads are what allow me to receive great free content and services I welcome them."

Ads aren't going away. While my previous comments centered around what people should expect in terms of revenue from ads, or the ads being completely unqualified, today's move by Google signals a giant shift change in terms of what people should expect in this market. They're not the first company to embrace behavioral targeted advertising, but as the biggest, it should have wide ramifications.

I hope that this move means I will see fewer banner ads for dancing monkeys and silhouettes offering me low mortgages, and more ads for tech gear and sports items. I hope that Google's new direction means fewer false guesses of my interests, based on keywords in the content I'm reading, and more correct guesses, based on sites I visit - and trust me, I'm on the Web practically all day long, so the wrongness adds up. I for one welcome our new behavioral advertising overlords.

You Should Be Using LinkedIn for Demand Generation

LinkedIn can be much more than simply a site to host your online resume, and connect with colleagues. While the site's core mission may be to keep your job history in one place, and to leverage connections you have to find new people, the vast, fast-growing, database can be leveraged for much more. At a time when many companies are cutting back on their marketing and prospecting budgets, LinkedIn presents a significant opportunity to find new targets and stir up business.

In late 2007, I talked about how LinkedIn is an incredible resource for sharp reporters and bloggers. Earlier in the year, I'd also given the company some suggestions to improve, many of which have since been implemented. But there is no question in my mind that most LinkedIn users are not taking advantage of the features that are there now.

Finding Targets By Territory and Vertical

LinkedIn's advanced search offers the ability to search by many different attributes, from the user's location to their title, and industry, not just their current job or school history. If you are a sales account manager, inside sales rep, a researcher, or in marketing, the right set of search combinations can get you a list of people, with titles and companies, giving you a starting point to get calling and e-mailing.

For example, if you own the Los Angeles territory, and want to reach technology VPs in the entertainment industry, enter the Zip Code ("90012"), choose the title of "Vice President of Technology, and the Industry of Entertainment. (See the search here)


The results are sorted by their linkage to you, starting with those you are connected to, and then to those who are connected to your friends. The more connections you have on LinkedIn, the more likely you are to have top matches. And once you have these names and companies, with their titles, it just takes a little Sales 101 to get their phone numbers and e-mail, either through the Web, or by being nice to their office receptionists.

You can see more examples here: (CTOs near Sunnyvale in Computer Hardware or Internet and VPs of Sales near Seattle in Airlines and Aviation)

If you're not sure exactly how targets refer to their industry, do a search first on someone you know, or are connected to, and use them as the template. That person you thought would choose "Entertainment" just might have put themselves in "Motion Pictures and Film" instead.

Finding Contacts by Title and Company

If you already know the company you want to break into, you can do searches on the company and reduce your targets by title. For example, on LinkedIn, you can search for "artist at Pixar" and pitch them the latest animation tool, or "scientist at Sandia" to find out who is keeping watch over our atomic weapons arsenal.

Depending on the query, you can end up with many targets, or you can drill down to the perfect one you need. (Such as the Technorati CEO)

Execute a Friendly Game of Competitive Espionage

Here's one I am particularly fond of. Even in the most cutthroat of environments, you can sometimes make friends with your competitors' staff, be it through trade shows, or other venues where you both need to show up at the same place and play nice. Getting connected to them won't hurt you all that much, especially if you hide your connections from others. But it can especially benefit you if they don't hide their connections, giving you a Rolodex you can walk through, to find both potential partners, and, potentially, naming their entire prospect and customer list by name.

The very best person to link to in this case is your competition's sales territory manager. I've done it. As LinkedIn shows you their latest connections, you can get good insight into which meetings they have held this week, and traded business cards. Or, you can go to their Web site, see listed customer references, and then cross-check those company names against your new friend's LinkedIn list.

It's pure gold. And if the person is high enough up in the chart, you might just want to hit Print on every single one of their LinkedIn connections pages and hand it off to Inside Sales. In fact, connecting to the competition is the primary reason I don't share my connections list. I want access to their business cards, but I don't necessarily want them to have mine.

If you're using LinkedIn in hopes of attracting a new job, or just to keep a PDF copy of your resume handy, that's fine. But if you already have a job, and you want to make it as successful as possible, you should be using the tools right in front of you. Don't be afraid to link up to more people, as it gets you more names as the connections extend and open you new routes of communication and search detail. I've been using LinkedIn for demand generation for years, and if you're in Marketing or Sales, I recommend you do as well.

Boring May Be Profitable

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

YAWN. Supposedly, that is what we are looking for in an application. Before you misunderstand me, the idea started with a quote from Fred Wilson's blog, "the great moves are usually greeted by a yawn". I am not commenting on the product in question, Twilio, but the general idea. So, what are the great successes in software and internet businesses? Microsoft, Oracle and Google immediately jump to mind. I am not sure if anyone would have called Microsoft sexy or really interesting like they do with Twitter or FriendFeed. Oracle was never an interesting company, by most standards, because they work in data management, which only data people like myself find interesting. Lastly, Google was mostly greeted with "what do we need search for" questions.

Steven Hodson wonders if the future and Web 3.0 will be very boring:

"There is a hubbub of activity as everyone is rushing around putting all the pieces together... At some point though everything is in place – the building is completed and then everyone sets about to do the day by day business of working in that new building. You know the boring stuff."

Typically, boring means corporate or enterprise systems. Boring means data management. Boring also means stable. However, these things normally translate into large amounts of revenue. Social media and social networking have not really converted mainstream corporations. There are some early adopters using sites like Twitter, but that is not the norm. Social media will take some time to gain adoption because there is very little direct return on investment. Advertising is easy to measure, but using Twitter for customer service has no direct correlation to revenue. So, there needs to be a lot of convincing in order to start using social media in the enterprise.

On the other side of the coin is the semantic web or what many people have been calling Web 3.0. The semantic web will not be what people were originally expecting for quite some time. However, many of the semantic companies are trying to create a bridge to the future. A concept that is being promoted is "linked data" for the web. This is the infrastructure for the semantic web. Once the data is linked, we can query the data. But there is a lot of data management that needs to be completed before we can really take advantage of the semantic nature of the data.

Yeah, all of this sounds boring, but the revenue model is much different. To earn a significant amount of revenue on the internet, you need either a million subscribers paying $5 per month or a ton of traffic in order to generate ad revenue. An enterprise installation of social media software could easily start at $30,000 with yearly maintenance of 25%. Granted, corporate customers can be harder to get and typically require a dedicated sales force, but the revenue can quickly grow.

Yes, it is boring, but it is also profitable.

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

Which Companies Will Blink First and Lead Us Out of The Depths?

Graphic via Dreamstime.com
One of the scariest things about the type of economic slowdown we are in today is that it breeds yet more slowdown. If you see the headlines, you can read that as companies anticipate lower revenues and diminished profits, or expanded losses, they are turning to layoffs, and in parallel, reducing their own spending, from program and infrastructure costs, to employee costs. Just this week, for example, HP announced 5 percent pay cuts for its massive salaried employee base, across the board, and the Mercury News reports more than 100 public companies in all industries have reported executive pay cuts since the recession began.

While this helps the company in the immediate term, the ripple effects downstream are quantifiable - which, in my opinion, could make the problems worse.

Assuming lower revenues is one thing. Lowering spending costs impacts all the company's vendors, in reducing their own revenues, spreading the pain around. And of course, reducing the number of paid employees, and reducing the pay to those employees who are left, impacts them such that they are less willing to spend.

It's a high-stakes game of chicken, for if companies expect the market to turn around, and want dollars to flow again, they have to contribute to the economy themselves, and all actions we have recently seen in the press point to companies simply trying to survive what for many is the deepest downturn in memory. But there cannot be survival if every company reduces its spend so that every company downstream, and its employees, fails as well.

During the 2001 to 2003 recession, there were a few bright spots of hope and prosperity here in the Valley, from Google, who rocketed to market-share nirvana in the face of strong competition, to Apple, who rebuilt themselves from a PC company to one built around electronic gadgets and digital sales, following the introduction of the iPod in 2001, and later, the iTunes Music Store, in 2003.

Also during the 2001 to 2003 downturn, government leaders told consumers that the patriotic thing to do would be to open up their wallets and shop - to help keep the economy humming - even as spirits were broken. Of course, the resulting debts and the issues that surround people spending above their means were main contributors to the stark realities we see today, from credit crunches to home foreclosures. But this time, consumers have (hopefully) wisened up, and they are likely more reluctant to spend their way out of this deep recession, especially if they are one of the unfortunate millions who are drawing unemployment benefits or see their bi-weekly paystub reduced.

On this blog, many of the companies and services we talk about have very little to do with capital creation and distribution. Some of the products are fun widgets or sites that enable people to connect in new ways, not so much finding new places to spend money or even have revenue themselves. We recognize that - and hold to the line that for the most part, this blog caters toward early adopters, and it is not necessarily our role to gauge every company's business acumen and prospects - best left to others. But surrounding those people are real businesses with real, tangible products and a real-life balance sheet - and many entrepreneurs and fellow bloggers work for these companies that have been impacted - including some of my peers who write on this site.

Silicon Valley is not immune to this financial crisis. Companies big and small have reduced forecasts and results. Companies big and small have reduced headcount, and many more have reduced their operating expenses, without drawing headlines. Down the food chain, many start-ups have found the VC well to be dry, and will either be shutting down or changing their prospects. But as 90 percent of start-ups fail, this shakeout could violently separate the good ideas from the bad - faster than they had ever desired.

So as practically every business has reacted to the downturn and closed the spigot on spending, which ones will be the first to reverse the trend and say, 'Enough!', instead, taking advantage of competitive weaknesses to seize market share, and approach a more-wary consumer base? We can't sit on our hands and expect Google and Apple to be the names that rise to the top again.

Outbrain Unveils Revenue Plan With Advertising That's Not Evil

When Outbrain announced it had raised $12 million in its latest round of funding, I openly speculated that the team and its VC partners had wind of a revenue plan that the blogosphere at large hadn't been alerted to. Sure enough, just a week later, that secret has been revealed, as Outbrain, today, rolled out a new program that will display sponsored related links, attached to blog posts from its network of users, myself included. They call it "sponsored but good", and it represents an attempt to find a solution that is beneficial for readers, publishers and advertisers, which has proven very difficult for many vendors.

Outbrain is well-known for its rating widget that sits below users' posts, and tries to find related stories, both on the blogger's site and the service's network. Starting today, some posts will also feature a sponsored link - not to a paid-for blog article, but instead, to an organic article selected by the advertiser which will put their product in a good light.


An example sponsored ad, via Outbrain
I spoke with John LoGioco, the company's vice president of business development, yesterday, and he said he hoped the new program delivered a "perfect balance," as readers would find new and interesting content that was non-disruptive, advertisers would put sponsored content on trusted sites, and publishers could gain revenue.

The benefit package delivers a good share of revenue to the blogger in today's announcement, LoGioco said, adding he hoped the program would be one that be trusted and adopted by bloggers looking to add another incremental revenue stream along the more typical display ads, dominated by Google.


The hope? An advertising plan that works for all
"Advertisers are excited so far, because they know the power of trusted voices driving demand creation if people are considering a product but are in the discovery phase," LoGioco said. "They haven't really had a chance to take a piece of the conversation that has been positive about them and amplify it. We can reach the influencer audience, and it is scalable."

With Outbrain's growth in popularity, serving an ever-increasing number of recommendations from sites in the network, the company has reached the point where advertisers are looking to reach readers - ones that are tired of seeing pop-up ads and other tricks that get in the way of their information browsing.

"We have all seen how platforms can be good for the advertiser or the publisher, but rarely for the reader," LoGioco said. "The advertising is in a non-disruptive format, and it leverages authentic brand endorsements. We are being very honest and open with bloggers and publishers."

The target for the "Sponsored but good" program won't be for direct marketers, and it won't be self-serve. Bloggers can opt in to receiving revenue from the program, and can remove specific sponsored links, once registered with Outbrain, and use what they call a link zapper to zap live sponsored recommendations. And if you think you're share of the revenue pie isn't going to impact your life, you can even choose to pass it off to charity.

See Also: Coverage from CenterNetworks, Mashable and VentureBeat.

I Just Marked All Facebook Ads as Offensive. So Should You.

The world is still looking for a better way to target customers with ads and products they want to actually learn more about. And the world will have to continue looking, if the offerings on Facebook are any indication. On the rare time I am logging in to the site instead of setting up roost on FriendFeed, Twitter or LinkedIn, I am amused to annoyed by the stupid ads that have absolutely nothing to do with anything I would be interested in - from meeting other singles (not single) to losing weight (unless it involves bacon and donuts) and getting my share of the government's stimulus package.

Facebook, like many other sites, is desperate to bridge the gap from traffic to revenue and profits. Usually that entails filling all available non-content space with ads. And often, that means the filtering process on said ads is beyond miserable.


So today, I had enough, and marked all the ads I saw on Facebook as "offensive", as they let you do. But each time I marked one as offensive, a new one popped up. It was a virtual electronic game of whack-a-mole, only it looks like nobody won.

I'm all in favor of seeing ads for things I might be interested in - new tech, sports or political books from Amazon... CDs from artists I like. Apple or TiVo products... you name it. But the run of site crap is just that.

So if you want to send a message about how the ads offend you, if they do, then say so. Facebook will know the difference.


Oh... and I think it was probably a coincidence that Facebook started to go "on maintenance" after my ads feedback. Or was it?

Gnip Says To Make Money, Make Sure Your Customers Have Money

Following on to yesterday's visit at Lijit, I knew my two-day trip to Boulder would not be complete without making time to visit Gnip, the interesting company started by former MyBlogLog and IGN founder Eric Marcoullier. So Micah Baldwin, my trusty sidekick and part-time chauffeur for the trip, and I caught breakfast with Eric and the team this morning, and visited their cozy headquarters. While we didn't get hours to sit with the executive team, as we did with Lijit, we learned that Gnip is growing and hiring talented developers, and has made an important discovery in its business model - target companies that have money and are willing to pay for your product.

In July of 2008, when Gnip first launched (See: Gnip CEO's Goal: Make Twitter's Data Flow Suck Less), the company made headlines for finding ways to move data around more quickly and without as much overhead, acting as an arbiter between different Web services. But as I was told today, making Web 2.0 services the primary client was pretty much a guarantee for low revenue. After all, if your customers aren't making money, how could you expect them to pay you?

As a result, Gnip, which has grown to 11 full-time employees, all of whom Eric says are required to be smarter than him in order to get hired, has gotten more activity with more traditional companies, including one market research firm that is analyzing as many as 100,000 different Twitter accounts and checks for user sentiment.

Gnip's office in Boulder has the industrious start-up feel to it. Desks are pushed together in a small space that reminds me of my freshman year dorm room I had to share with two other guys. But while the company is growing, it has a small quandary, as Boulder commercial real estate works great for small spaces and large spaces, I was told, but there just aren't enough options for medium-sized companies looking for an "in between" solution.

In fact, there is so little open space at Gnip's office that Eric, Shane Pearson and I talked on the front porch. Unfortunately, the front porch bench that adorned the office had been stolen overnight. The main suspect? "Stinking hippies", Eric tweeted.

Such growing pains are good, of course, because that means the company is growing, period, and it sounds like they are focused on continuing to improve the product, hire smart developers, and they even finally managed to grab the ever-elusive gnip.com domain, after using the gnipcentral.com site since launch.

To learn more about Gnip's unique view on the data world, check out their blog. Product news will no doubt be coming soon. Of the 11 employees, 8 are full-time engineers.

Eight Forms of Social Networking Depression: Are You Suffering?

Even if you have been staring at your computer screen all day, you've likely figured out it's a scary world out there right now. Scads of people are being laid off, in practically every market - including, very likely, people you know, work with, or even you.

Companies that you used to rely on as a standard are begging for bailout money, going out of business, or being purchased at prices well below what they would have received six months or six years ago. Savings and investment accounts are being decimated as credit card debt rises and retirement plans are mere fractions of what they used to be. And all that bad news piles up - making some of the more frivolous things we do online seem even less important than they used to be, giving some of us a sharper edge and making us a lot more irritable. The result can send some folks into what I'm calling social network depression - the manifestation of these frustrations, spilling over from the real world and into the virtual world.

There are many different ways you can see social networking depression illustrate itself. Here are a few cases:

1) The Depression of Getting Less Attention

The individual will claim to see less activity on a site than there used to be, even if they haven't changed the way they use it. (Example)

This suggests that the site itself might not be growing, that other users are spending time elsewhere, or that the service may have peaked, starting its inevitable slide downward. What as the interpretation is subjective, it may be random, incorrect, or the result of other areas on the site being more interesting.

2) The Depression of Repetition

The individual will grow bored of a network, saying the newness has worn off as the same jokes, stories and pictures get spread time and again. (Example)

The suggestion could be that as people fall into a routine, their sheer repetitiveness grows dull, and the social aspects are diminished. But it is not clear if the individual themselves is seeing shifting tastes or if external pressures are changing their outlook.

3) The Depression Of Despised Popularity

The individual can start to question whether what we do online is more a herd mentality than one derived based on our own preferences, and questions the popular users' value. (Example)

The suggestion is that as lists are created, the same names are repeated time and again - whether they are bringing real value, or not adding much from their presumed areas of expertise. But as with #2, even if a person's original value was extremely clear, by the time you've run into them multiple times, across networks, their own value to you is likely diminished.

4) The Depression of False Prophets

The individual will openly complain about some of the social aspects themselves, such as popularity contests and self-proclaimed experts. (Example)

That popularity contests were annoying in high school doesn't mean they don't replicate themselves online. But, depending on the month, the individual complaining probably participated, or would do so more often if they were included or winning.

5) The Depression of Absence

The individual can take a self-imposed vacation from social networking, or can turn their blog over to the resume gods, hoping to land a job, instead of landing the next dozen followers and friend connections.

6) The Depression of Lost Focus

The individual can claim that all social networking tools are distractions and should be turned off, to maintain focus on "real work". (Example)

The updating "ping" of TweetDeck can be a big draw for the popular Twitter user. But there is the potential to operate under what I've termed continuous parallel attention, letting you complete your work tasks, stay on top of social aspects, and listen to music all at once.

7) The Depression of Snarkiness

The individual can change the tone of their comment streams on Twitter and other networks, moving away from promoting people, sites and links, to instead, getting sarcastic, passing around the meme of the day, and generally acting in contrary to their typical personality.

8) The Depression of Lost Value

The individual can declare the world of social networking and social media a waste of time, and swear they're quitting, to focus on things with "real value".

So what can you do? Maybe you've suffered a hint of social networking depression yourself, and find you are blogging less, sharing less, commenting less and simply having less fun online than you used to. Maybe instead you've seen your friends go through various stages - taking what used to be a fun, collaborative environment, and make it something where you can hardly tolerate what they've become.

In my opinion, the very worst aspects of social networking come from the very things we of course enjoy, leaderboards and statistics. In August I asked bloggers to relax, saying "nobody is keeping score", warning of blogging burnout and the self-imposed guilt that comes from gaps. The same push to relax should be applied with social networking.

Why did you start social networking in the first place? It wasn't to count friends or to participate in memes of the day, I would bet. Instead, it was more likely to find out news quickly, and find people with whom you share common interests. Now that times are tough, and people are questioning how they are spending their time, offline and online, it's no surprise that those things which don't have a clear, defined, line to revenue are being discarded, or at least, seeing strain.

The truth is that the social networks are mirrors for ourselves. When we are stressed about work, about money, about relationships, these strains will impact who were online as well.

On Monday, I spoke with a great friend about how I'd seen them change from an aggressive go-getter and evangelist, to a bitter, depressed introvert over the space of a few months. It so happened the kids were making noise in the background of our call, and they later texted me to my iPhone:

"Just talking to you helped and hearing the kiddies. There's more to life than this crap."

And it's true! I'm lucky that I've got two built-in distractions I can come home to. Maybe you don't. But while many people are grousing about the social networks themselves, the way people behave, and rank themselves, letting the offline trials seep into their online personas, the products underneath are actually getting a lot better.

Please do question social networking in general. Try and find out what it is that you're doing online and how you are spending your time. Think about whether you have a good work/play balance, or if the time you are spending in front of your computer monitor is detrimental to your offline and online health. But be aware that if you're getting negative and lashing out at your followers, your communities, and the very platforms that let you do it, you could be exhibiting signs of social networking depression. And it's not likely the tools. It's you.

There's No Way Twitter Is Worth $250 Million Today

See Also: Twitter Is Worth A Lot More Than $250 Million

In the Web 2.0 space, it would be extremely difficult to find a more-successful, faster-growing service than Twitter, who has carved out a significant niche for itself in the microupdates space, as people from around the world tell you what they're doing, right now, even if you didn't ask. The service has an estimated 6 million active users, and recently surpassed the 1 billion "Tweet" mark, if you count all updates. But the company hasn't yet made a buck in traditional revenues. (Although I can't claim to be privy to their books, and they just might have recognized something somewhere) Word comes this weekend, via TechCrunch and others, that Twitter is embarking on a new funding round that could see the company valued at $250 million. And while I already made the case that Twitter will get its funding, and could end up being worth a lot more than that number in short order, it is pretty easy to also poke holes in that analysis.

Quite simply, now is a very difficult time to attain a high valuation. Venture funding is dropping dramatically, and positive exits for companies are rare. Practically nobody is talking about going public, so to make money, you would have to do it the old fashioned way, through profits. And Twitter has grown its user base rapidly, but has done so on the backs of users who are used to getting something for nothing. We've already seen users revolt when Magpie launched with the possibility of inserting ads in one's tweets, and you could expect to see the user base shudder when being asked to shoulder any of the revenue themselves - so you can practically forget about monthly fees. Given that scenario, site ads and ads inserted in third party applications, like TweetDeck, would have to be one option, but an unattractive one, as the ad market itself is tailing downward.

Additionally, what Twitter does is incredibly basic. It's sole functionality is one that it is easily replicated. You can provide status updates on Facebook, on GMail, on FriendFeed, and the whole process rolls back to AOL instant Messenger, when you would set an "Away" status to say you were "At Lunch" or "In a Meeting". So that's not hard.

A recent post by Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed, called Communicating with Code, showcased a prototype offering of FriendFeed that borrowed heavily from the look and feel of Twitter. Given FriendFeed updates include those from Twitter, and then build on with additional services, it can be considered a superset, while Twitter is simply one service of many. So the barrier to entry to compete with Twitter is not that hard, leaving the company's major assets as the community and its developers.

But communities are incredibly fickle. None of Twitter's six million users were using the service five years ago, and maybe, five years from now, they will be doing something else. If people use Twitter for conversation, they can replace that with e-mail, with IM, with FriendFeed, Facebook or other social destinations. I've talked about the five stages of being an early adopter before. One of the final stages is when you grow tired of an environment, and leave, begging your followers to come along. It happens with news groups. It happens with e-mail lists, and it just might happen with social networking tools, including Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter and others.

Today, Twitter is among the hottest, fastest-growing brands out there. But no matter how you multiply its current revenue to try and guess at a market capitalization, the answer is still zero. At a time when real brick and mortar businesses are seeing their own valuations decimated, how can a virtual company with a free user base and a low barrier to competition expect to be valued so richly? Whoever does invest should exercise extreme caution.

Twitter Is Worth A Lot More Than $250 Million

See Also: There's No Way Twitter Is Worth $250 Million Today

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch led the weekend news cycle Saturday evening after revealing Twitter is in the middle of a funding round that could see the still pre-revenue company valued a cool quarter-billion dollars. Not only do I believe the company will end up getting the money they are looking for, but whatever investors choose to pony up could eventually be seen as having gotten a bargain - because Twitter, with the increased investment, looks prepared to 'double down' and become a must-use utility in our increasingly realtime, increasingly connected, digital world.

Despite the company's many failings, be it with uptime, developer relations, or seemingly blaming its most active users for aggressive activity, Twitter has, over the space of 24 months, cemented itself in a position where it is a critical part of the way we share information, communicate with others, and in times of news and change, can learn from the firehose of tweets from all corners of the world.

Twitter's rise to prominence has been largely in part due to its simplicity. It does two things - let you send short updates to followers, and let you see updates from those you follow. The addition of many third party services, including the since-acquired search capabilities, and scads of desktop or Web tools, have only served to let people consume and distribute the data as they wish, as Tweets can be issued automatically from mobile phones broadcasting location info, sent from blogs using RSS, or from a host of updating services, including Ping.fm and FriendFeed.

Twitter, amid pressure from users and developers to add the ability to display photos and video, to extend the number of characters to beyond 140, to add threaded comments, and to find a business model - any business model - has simply continued doing what it does, even as competition has faltered. Pownce shut down altogether. Jaiku disappeared into the Google black hole. And FriendFeed dances to its own drummer, acting as a great complement for Twitter even as people occasionally say it could knock Twitter off its pedestal. Facebook's status updates are probably the closest thing to being a head to head fighter to Twitter out there today, and many simply pull their updates from Twitter to the social network, as I do.

Twitter will find a business model. It will very likely include some form of advertising, even in a tough economy for ads. It may also charge for premium options to users, and might find a way to break into the enterprise, eliminating the need for Yammer and other copies. And investing in Twitter today means you're buying into a company that already is #1, by a long shot, in its self-built market, before it has truly hit the mainstream, and among the Web 2.0 set, Twitter is the closest to do so - being featured frequently on CNN and used by prominent figures, including the new president's team as part of his social Web strategy.

And don't be fooled into thinking Twitter is just for consumers. Savvy business users are recognizing that Twitter is a vital audience to be communicated to and to listen to, for product mentions, feedback and competitive updates. Twitter is part of the noise, and you can either embrace it, or ignore it, to your own peril.

How can Twitter be worth 1/4 billion today without any revenue? Take a look at the market capitalizations of Web companies today, even after the stock market blowout. Yahoo! is worth nearly $16 billion. Google is worth more than $100 billion. And in traditional media, even the very damaged New York Times is worth more than $800 million at its current price. As I have mentioned many times on this blog, I find Twitter's search capability to be even more important than that of Google for breaking news. Given the company's incredible momentum, and inability to get knocked off its pedestal, we would be foolish to think Twitter can't continue to grow and increase its user base and offerings, and be worth more than $1 billion in very short order.

If I had cash sitting around to put into Twitter and they came knocking on my door, I would ask plenty of questions, but at the end of the day, I would be investing. This will be a deal to watch for sure.

Scoble Starts His FriendFeed/Twitter Monetization Strategy

Uber-blogger Robert Scoble came under criticism in late December when TechCrunch's Michael Arrington said he had neglected his blog, in factor of spending time on FriendFeed and Twitter. Arrington said It’s Time For A Friendfeed Intervention, saying he was contributing to the popularity of those services but getting nothing for himself, adding, "How much of that value does Robert receive? Zilch." Well, thanks to a tip from one of Robert's Twitter friends, it looks like he is trying to capitalize on his popularity on these new services, through embedded Amazon affiliate links.

Whether it is a one-time experiment or a sign of things to come, tonight Robert sent a note to his now 25,000 FriendFeed followers, and nearly 50,000 followers on Twitter, saying: Want a news tip? Amazon Kindle is sold out. Hint here:, and adding on FriendFeed:

"I just bought a version 1.0 machine. It's sold out. Will they make more? I doubt it. So, why are they still accepting orders? I just bought one and will let you know what shows up. I'm hearing that new version comes in next few months."

After that introduction, he gave a personalized affiliate link, which would give him a percentage of the sales made during the session of any of his followers. (See the FriendFeed thread here)


Note the Scobleizer tag in the destination URL...
As simple as that sounds, the power of Amazon affiliate links on the Web can often be underestimated. John Gruber of Daring Fireball made nearly $6,000 in just over a week by encouraging his blog visitors to buy Mac OS X 10.5 from his affiliate link instead of directly from Apple.


Scoble is caught "red handed" without disclosure...
Robert probably won't make $6,000 from this experiment tonight. Assuming he also gets 7.5% referrals from Amazon, It would take $80,000 worth of orders to get him a similar return - meaning 223 of his more than 50,000 followers would have to buy the $359 Amazon Kindle for him to reach that mark. But if he continued to drop Amazon links into his FriendFeed and Twitter stream, it could be some good spending money over time.

Of note, when Gruber asked for users to visit his affiliate page, he was very clear about what he would get from such a purchase. Tonight, I noticed and asked Robert myself if this was his "FriendFeed revenue strategy". His answer? "You caught me red handed!" I don't mind him trying out the idea, and think it's an interesting approach, but I would have preferred disclosure.

---

Update: As anticipated, this topic is being discussed on FriendFeed on my feed as well as that of Robert, who says I missed some important points. Also see: Free Rides Can't Last Forever from Dennis McDonald and Network World's Paul McNamara: Blogger Catches Scobleizer With His Hand in Amazon's Kindle Jar.

TweetDeck's Funding Shows Good Ideas Can Still Attract Good Money

This morning's great news came from TweetDeck author Iain Dodsworth, who managed to start a round of funding that when completed could be as much as $500,000. The popular Twitter application, which has only been around for just six months' time, spent very little time in obscurity, jumping out of the gate and racing to the top of the charts, alongside Thwirl and Twitterific. While most of the headlines in the financial space of late have been filled with doom and gloom, Dodsworth's strike of fortune displays the best apps showing serious momentum can still attract forward-thinking investors.

The story was broken early this morning by Peter Kafka of All Things D. (See: Another Twitter App Funded: TweetDeck Raises an Angel Round. Next Up: A Business Plan) The report says TweetDeck has been downloaded a quarter million times, and hundreds of thousands of tweets are sent from the application each day.

TweetDeck has become practically the only way to logically consume the firehose of Twitter, slicing and dicing the incoming tweets from friends into logical groups, or keeping search terms, replies, and direct messages in their own columns. And TweetDeck's done some smart things since its launch, adding on support for other popular third party services, like TweetShrink, 12 Seconds, and more. As Iain, e-mailed me today, when I sent him a note of congratulations, "Lots in the pipeline now, extremely excited."

In my 2008 recap covering the top 10 new services of the year, I slugged TweetDeck as #4 overall, saying:

"If (Iain) can get enough people to donate or pay for the application, there's no question he could make a full-time living from the resulting revenue. The question is, will people who expect a free service to have 100% uptime spring for the app that gets them there?"

I personally would pay money for TweetDeck today. I am always happy to pay for good software, which is what TweetDeck is. I don't want to forecast what's next for the service, as I do have some insight there, and don't plan to break confidence, but I have personally enjoyed watching the service ramp up following its July debut, which we covered.

See also: The Deal Twitter organizer Tweetdeck scores seed round, where the reporter says:

"(Iain) sent the program to 10 friends for fun and then watched in astonishment as Tweetdeck became an overnight hit, thanks to a glowing review by influential tech blogger Louis Gray who stumbled on it in the word-of-mouth "viral" way of social media."

That's the kind of report I love. Just like our seeing Socialmedian go from debut to sale in less than a year, it's been fun to have a front-row seat to the success. Looking forward to more success for TweetDeck and more successes for innovative startups.

Does a Service Need a Business Model to Have You as a Customer?

Yesterday, following on to our discussion from earlier in the month on what further efforts FriendFeed could make to attract and keep new users, a commenter wrote:

"I'm a little nervous about investing a lot of time and effort in, or become reliant on, a product that has no business model - whether it's FriendFeed or Twitter. Sure it has plenty of VC money, but who knows when they'll pull the plug."

Given the uncertainty we've all seen in the greater business market, and with Silicon Valley in particular, there is no question that some Web services are in dicey positions. Pownce recently closed after its acquisition by Six Apart, and users weren't given a whole lot of time to extract their information. So, for some, it makes sense not to take a risk with their time and their data.

I tend to be of the opinion that as consumers, we should use those products that give us the best experience, community or enable us to do things that no other sites do. I feel that it's not typically our role to choose what sites are going to be successful and which ones are not. We don't always know the financial underpinnings of a company. We can't forecast whether something will succeed or fail. And often, if you like a product, so will many others like you, meaning that if the time comes to eventually shut the site down, there will be a buyer, and more likely than not, the service, and your data, will be retained.

As much fun as it can be for us to try and predict if Twitter will go mainstream, and much of the conversation in the echo chamber today was around the company's hiring of a new business development manager, seen as the first step toward getting revenue, I don't really care all that much what these companies' business models are - so long as my data isn't being sold or manipulated, or ads don't obscure the product itself. But that's my less conservative side showing - and maybe my position is wrong.

Have you ever liked a product, but steered clear of it because you didn't want to get attached in the event you might later have a costly breakup?

Looking For a Job? Yes, Indeed!

By Phil Glockner of Scribkin (FriendFeed/Twitter)

For the past few months I have trying to discover more local social media blogs and bloggers. I live very close to Austin, Texas. You might think that, with SXSW and all, there would be a lot.. but the going is slower than you might think. Anyway, a good place to start is with geekaustin and Austin Startup.

It was from the second blog that I learned about Indeed, a great new job search site based, you guessed it, here in Austin.

Indeed has been described as "the Google of job search" and I find the comparison apt. Indeed initially presents you with a very simple search page, just asking for a job title or keyword, and a location.

However, more powerful tools lie behind the facade. Once you have your search underway, there is a very flexible search refinement tool that lets you adjust salary requirements, job type, company and more. Note that I have not mentioned the following things that most other job search sites require:

• Create an account
• Create a profile
• Upload a resume
• Indicate your availability to work
• Keep an old version of your resume floating around forever
  

You have probably figured out the downside of this as well -- Indeed is not in the business of submitting your application for a job. Once you find a job you like, you click through and follow the instructions to apply for the job you want. However, this does free up Indeed to find jobs from as many different sites and services as possible, which gives you a more comprhensive picture of what is available.

Since Indeed is focused only on search, they also have a few tools to track job data. They have charts and graphs that monitor both salary ranges for job titles according to region, as well as cool keyword use over time.

Say for example that you have experience with RSS feeds, you can search for 'RSS ATOM' and end up with a chart like this one:



Now you might notice that the number of jobs looking for 'RSS ATOM' experience is a very small percentage of the total. But what it more interesting is how fast it is growing as a requirement!

As a more humorous example, check out Twitter skills:



In this view I selected percentage growth over percent of total.. but the trend is clear, jobs at Twitter or jobs requiring knowledge of Twitter are growing exponentially.

Indeed will allow you to create an account for the express purpose of saving searches, and bookmarking the last time you visited in order to give you a custom view of only the new jobs posted.

Overall, I really think Indeed fills a unique niche, not only for finding a new job, but for a quick 'reality check' on a current job in terms of regional salary and demand.

Read more by Phil Glockner at Scribkin.com.

10 Predictions for 2009 In the World of Tech

Following on to last year's 10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech and the recent results: My 2008 Tech Predictions Look Bad As Year Nears a Close.

1) The Real-Time Web Will Become Critical for News and Information Discovery

Delayed news will no longer be acceptable for early adopters, who will gravitate to the quickest sources of news, wherever they may be. As tools like Twitter Search and FriendFeed real-time offer people to rapidly broadcast their updates, reactions and news with true immediacy, a segment of the population will adopt these real-time sources and favor them ahead of delayed or filtered engines, including RSS, and of course, edited mass media. At the same time, while many of us early adopters may be fairly noisy about this development, we will remain in the significant minority, even as the mainstream becomes more aware of these options.

2) Businesses Will Be Expected to Be On Social Media If They Have Web Sites

In the mid and late 1990s, there was a land rush for domain names, as every company jumped in and procured Web addresses and built out Web sites to establish their electronic home. Although many of these sites were rudimentary at best, they knew they needed to be there to participate. In 2009, it will be expected that brands and businesses will be similarly established on social media, using tools like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and YouTube.

3) Apple Will Introduce A Succession Plan for Steve Jobs as CEO

While Steve Jobs is not likely in imminent danger, the continued unsettled rumors, as well as a good level of common sense will push Apple to present a succession plan for Jobs, which will not take place immediately, but over the space of a few years. One to three names of potential in-house replacements will be named, as well as a timeline, as Steve fades to the background, but continues to wield tremendous power over Apple's vision and deliverables.

4) TechCrunch Will Acquire VentureBeat or Silicon Alley Insider

Mike Arrington's tech blog continues to be the influence leader in its space. Both VentureBeat and Silicon Alley Insider have forged strong brands with a financial bent which would be good additions for the TechCrunch brand as Arrington and team look to extend their umbrella and wrap up what he considers to be the best blogs. SAI in particular would offer an East Coast/financial bent that the Silicon Valley-based TechCrunch is currently not known for.

5) Android Will Have Less than 20% the Sales of iPhone in 2009

While commoditized PCs managed to put pressure on Macintosh and relegate Apple to a small market share percentage the Cupertino company is still trying to recover from back in the 1980s, history will not repeat itself, as Google's Android partners will be unable to knock the iPhone off its perch as the must-have smart phone for power Web consumers. BlackBerry will continue having a significant share in the enterprise, but it will continue to be iPhone eroding its share, not the Android, especially given the unmatched array of applications available for the iPhone which Android will not be able to match.

6) A Major Alternative to FeedBurner Will Emerge As the Service Stagnates

Google's mismanagement of FeedBurner has many people frustrated with how the feed service has been run since its acquisition last year, as the service continues to see slowness, outages, and recently went dark, shutting down their blog and being gobbled up by the AdSense team. Competitors will emerge, enabling bloggers to move their FeedBurner subscriber base and historical statistics to their new platform.

7) FriendFeed and Twitter Will Both Be Independent Through 2009

Despite Twitter's recent dance with Facebook, it will rely on its existing venture capital funding and find revenue that enables the company to stay afloat at least through the end of the year. FriendFeed, similarly, will not be acquired or merge with any other service prior to the end of 2009. The company, if necessary, will instead do a second round of funding, with its own internal sources providing much of the capital.

8) Companies Will Continue Budget and Staff Cuts Through the Third Quarter of 2009

The layoff parade in 2009 will not be limited to unprofitable companies, small companies or practically any category of companies. The doom and gloom that have hit the financial markets, advertising, real estate and almost every sector will continue through the first half of the year, before starting to see a rebound in the third quarter. You will see strong companies like Microsoft lay off thousands, and practically everyone will not be renewing contract positions that have concluded - even Google and Apple.

9) An Extremist Group Will Manage to Take Down or Deface the White House Web Site

America's political climate is extremely polarized, following the conclusion of two extremely divisive terms. As Barack Obama moves into the White House, the very features that make him a "first" will also make him and his administration the chief target for some incredibly angry and hate-filled groups. One will somehow manage to access the WhiteHouse.gov site and manipulate it this year.

10) eTrade, Digg, StumbleUpon, Skype and Yahoo! Will All Be Sold.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. eBay will want to ditch its non-core assets like StumbleUpon and Skype (I made the sale of StumbleUpon a prediction last year too). Digg, losing momentum, will sell cheap. Yahoo! will eventually be purchased by News Corporation, AOL, or even Google, assuming it passes regulatory approval, by the end of the year. Microsoft, still insulted, won't be back to the table.

LinkedIn Recommendations Are Feel Good Business for a Recession!

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Nothing feels better than a pat on the back, and LinkedIn makes no exception to this rule!For those not familiar with LinkedIn, it is a professional social platform to share opportunities, ideas and information. According to LinkedIn, over 30 million professionals subscribe, and some might coin the service as Facebook for business professionals.

While I don’t know whether anyone has actually landed a job from using LinkedIn, it is a great way to stay connected with clients and business colleagues alike. In this fast-moving world, keeping up with changing e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and the who-knows-who game can be daunting. LinkedIn seeks to make that easier.While most everyone knows LinkedIn for its Bacon-esque Connections feature and it’s recent launch of groups and applications, I was surprised that many I talk with know very little about the recommendation feature – or worse – are intimidated to ask for a recommendation.

Recommetiquette:

Let’s look at some LinkedIn recommendation etiquette. Quite simply put, if you feel you are worth a recommendation, ask for it. Don’t wait for someone to think of it for you. Trust me, they are thinking about a million other things than you.

This doesn’t mean that a warm and friendly request by you won’t get read. Generally, people you are connected with respect you. So ask.The worst case is that you won’t get the recommendation, and the best case is you get a glowing review from a respecting colleague or client. Lastly, always change the generic message to something more personal (but not too familiar, mind you). More on this later.

Recommendations in a nutshell:

LinkedIn makes recommendations extremely simple once you make a connection. By simply clicking on Recommendations under the Profile heading, you are presented with the option to choose which job title for which you would like to seek recommendations.
As you can see in the example above, I have a few recommendations for two of my positions. The “thumbs-up” icon to the left indicates I have at least one recommendation, and I can choose to manage or ask to be endorsed.When asking to be endorsed, it is a simple 3 step process (see below).

1. Step 1 is confirming the position you wish to be recommended for.


2. In step 2, you must decide who you’ll ask.


3. To complete the process, simply create your message. You can choose to leave the default subject and body of the message intact, but I strongly recommend you make this more personal. (Tip: It’s always great to include something personal, e.g. “It was great to see you at the last lunch n’ learn.”).


4. (Optional): Wring your hands as you wait by your computer for a response.

What goes around comes around:

Once your colleague or client completes the recommendation, you will receive a message in your inbox inviting you to approve or decline the recommendation. This is a great way to ensure the recommendation meets with your high standards, right?Perhaps the best feature about this recommendation process, in my humble opinion, is the fact that LinkedIn really believes in returning the favor. As such, you are immediately taken to a screen that asks you to write up a recommendation, in kind.

For those of you who understand recruiting practices, this is genuinely the best opportunity you will ever have to ask for a flattering recommendation. So, if you receive a request for a recommendation – make sure you take a little time and pay it forward. You never know, the very next e-mail in your inbox might just be that recommendation you have been waiting for coming right back to you…… and there’s no better time than a recession to get that feel-good you get from a LinkedIn recommendation!

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Bias, Bias and More Bias. I Haz It. So Do You.

A few weeks ago, the blogosphere's flareup of choice was around a handful of bloggers who had opted into a commercial program from KMart, where they wrote posts in exchange for gift cards to the retail chain. (See Chris Brogan's original post and the follow-up for a recap.) The controversy lay in whether participating in the campaign eroded the participants' credibility. Could their allegiance be bought for a few bucks? Would other posts be not so clearly labeled, but also paid for?

As somebody who has never posted a sponsored post, or been paid to say anything on this site, ever, I'm somewhat on the outside looking in for that specific discussion. But if you extend the idea of bias and influence a tad further, it's everywhere you look.

Longtime readers of the site know I play favorites. In February, I said I "don't play fair", favoring small companies over large ones. I promote services, people, blogs and ideas I like. I ignore conversations I don't care about. I choose products to not buy. I don't write about topics I don't find interesting. That's because the blog is personal, and I'm not an automaton.

My biases come from ten years of working in Silicon Valley, touching roles from product requirements to product deployment and evangelism, customer interaction and highlighting, public relations, business development, Web development, sales and advertising. My biases come from a decade and a half of being a near full-time Web consumer, finding services I've had good experiences with and those I've had bad ones, making and enforcing preferences.

If KMart came to me, offering $500 to do a giveaway, I'd almost certainly ignore it. Not because $500 is pocket change (it's not), but because I don't care for the KMart brand and going that direction isn't interesting to me. It sets a precedent and I would expect my readers to have the same questions they did for the others involved. But there are dozens of services who I have highlighted on the blog over the last three years, for whom I would be happy to highlight their latest updates, for free, because I find them interesting and I hope you do as well. I delight in finding new services and acting as an early adopter to find the good through the raw, and see potential.

I am biased. I am biased in favor of Apple and its products, as a long-time user. I am biased in favor of products I use and understand well, like FriendFeed, Socialmedian, Strands, Twitter, SocialToo, LinkedIn, Disqus, Lijit, Google Reader, SmugMug, BackType and many more you've heard me talk about. I am biased in favor of the entrepreneurs whom I have had early relationships with through e-mail, by phone, or in person. I am biased in favor of bloggers and other content producers who I believe write well on subjects that have my interest.

In August, I talked about this issue a bit, saying, "If You Look Hard Enough, Conflicts of Interest Are Everywhere". And in the case anything got official, as it did with ReadBurner, I told you all about it.

Even though I like these products, these people, and their ideas, the idea is to continue to be trusted. What liking a product doesn't do is force me to make up things that they don't do, or gloss over clear issues. If I were to say issues weren't there, you wouldn't trust a review. If I were to say a product did something it didn't, my credibility would disappear. But I'm not swayed to like a product because I've gotten paid, because I haven't been. Practically the only items I've ever received from these companies are T-shirts, and while I love logo'd T-shirts like any other Valley geek, it's not enough to flip me to the dark side.

I'm biased, but I'm transparent. I bet you're biased as well. We all are. You can see it everywhere.

From Zero to Xing: Socialmedian's 2008 Drive to Acquisition

As has been widely reported, Socialmedian was acquired by Xing today for a purchase price of $7.5 million, an excellent return for the bootstrapped startup which had raised less than $1 million in funding. The success of Socialmedian has significant impact for me personally, as it is the first company to have debuted here on this blog, and see a successful exit. I see it as a real proofpoint for being invested in a story, rather than doing the typical "hit and run" announcement-fed, PR-driven stories typical on many other blogs who are driven by the day's news.

On April 8, 2008 (my birthday), we first told the story of Socialmedian: (Former Jobster CEO's Social|Median Incubating in Alpha).

While other sites around the Web slowly picked up on the story, few were as invested as I was in not just reporting on the site, but using it in a big way. In a month's time, it was clear to me that the site was getting significant momentum, which I reported on May 13: (SocialMedian Is Growing Rapidly In First Month's Availability).

Later in the month, on May 29, in response to a comment from Robert Seidman, who said, "You could call deadpool on stuff like Social Median and Toluu right now," I said "Developers Are People Too, Don't Forget", and that we don't always know the full story behind a site, and their goals.

By the end of May Socialmedian underwent a redesign and got even more useful.

And as the site grew, for whatever reason, I maintained a higher than anticipated presence, trailing only the founder, Jason Goldberg, in terms of people following my updates. Surprisingly, Goldberg and team ran a contest that delivered a new iPhone to the two most popular non-employees on the site. Turns out I won, which I found out, as my bleary eyes checked out Twitter sometime around 5 a.m. during a kid's feeding when they were a month old. (See: It Appears I Won an iPhone 3G from Social Median!)

That was cool, but I was just as positive on the site as before - no more, no less, and I could see them continue to pound forward.

By the end of July, Socialmedian got out of invite mode, and opened in full beta. (See: SocialMedian Opens Up and Launches Beta). The expanded activity on the site had me noticing how many comments were taking place on the site, which I wrote up in early August: Hey Bloggers, We're Discussing Your Posts At Social Median!

And the company kept adding updates. On August 30th, I noted they Integrated With Google Reader for News Discovery, and by September 4, they expanded again, tagging on a feature they called "News Streaming".

The growth had guest poster Rob Diana say shortly afterward, that the Increased Activity Streams Boost Social Median's Chances.

On September 22, Socialmedian added the ability to alert users to times they were mentioned and extend to Twitter, with the launch of Replize. (Social Median Takes Guesswork Out of Online Mentions With Replize)

Not living in a bubble, Socialmedian surveyed its users to see their preferences, and on October 3rd, they delivered results that not only showed users' activity but where else they got their news. At the same time, the service was showing significant traffic growth across the board. (See: Social Median Surveys Early Adopters' News, Tech Preferences)

On October 7, Socialmedian introduced the ability to both like and dislike items.

On October 17, Jason pulled the covers back a bit and showed how they were able to continue to innovate while staying small: (Social Median Stares Downturn In the Face By Staying Small)

As a news site, Socialmedian, like all the rest, got sucked into the election in a big way. On October 29, a week before the vote, they launched a dedicated election news hub.

But while Socialmedian grew users and gained visibility, they didn't avoid controversy. Like other services, the breaking away of comments and original posts raised the ire of CenterNetworks' Allen Stern and others. We asked, in November, "Does Anybody Care About Non-Blog Commenting Anymore?"

And just last week, in wrapping up what I believed were the top 10 new Web services that came to light in 2008, Socialmedian was way up on the list, at #2, behind only Twitter Search, formerly Summize. I knew Socialmedian was hot, and said I expected an acquisition by the first quarter of 2009. And it came very, very quickly, with this morning's news, further validating Socialmedian's model and differentiation from the many different services out there.

It has been exciting to have a front row seat to see Socialmedian develop all year long. Socialmedian is one of those sites this year that hit a sweet spot for me, both as a blogger and as a user, who found critical value in what Jason and his team were doing. That they have found success is fantastic, and something I hope will push the many other services we've worked with this year to keep going.

But as the above recap shows, they didn't get here by launching and waiting for millions of users. They worked hard and released early and often, and today's announcement is the result of their consistent efforts.

So who wants to launch on louisgray.com in 2009 and be part of a similar story? Let me know.

Fidelity Puts Lipstick On My Investment Pigs

Given the stock market's nonsense, it's a rare person who is happy with their 401k's performance, and I'm no exception. While my return has increased a good 10 percent or so from hitting bottom about a month ago, every dollar put into my Fidelity fund through the year has essentially been turned into sixty cents. With Americans feeling the pinch and looking to preserve cash and stay conservative, Fidelity e-mailed today to say they're changing the name of some of the funds I've been part of. The main change? Removing the word "Aggressive".

As the screenshot below shows, Fidelity is changing the "Fidelity Aggressive International Fund" to "Fidelity International Capital Appreciation Fund" and the "Fidelity Aggressive Growth Fund" to "Fidelity Growth Strategies Fund".


The reason, they write in an e-mail is to "create more consistency across the equity fund product line" although no changes are expected in the funds' objectives, strategy or management, an odd note, considering the Aggressive Growth Fund is down 43.85% this year, and the Aggressive International Fund is down a similar amount.

So... should I feel my money is safer, now that the word "Aggressive" has been replaced with "Capital Appreciation" and "Strategies"? I'm just hoping this isn't the first step, leading from "Aggressive" to "Capital Appreciation" to "Maintaining" to "Losing Slightly" to "Bankruptcy Quickening".

Thanks Fidelity! Good to know my money, or what's left of it, is safe and secure.

Is Simplicity the Silver Lining?

By Ken Stewart of ChangeForge (Twitter/FriendFeed)

With job losses rising to the highest levels since 1993, an estimated 6.7 percent, or 10.3 million, Americans now find themselves unemployed. In the month of November alone, 533,000 jobs were slashed from payrolls – the worst cuts since 1974. With everyone focused on industry after industry needing government assistance, economists are predicting the unemployment rate to reach a staggering eight percent.

When will it all end?

A more immediate question everyone is asking is, “When will it end?”

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a committee responsible for maintaining records of the start and finish of each recession, deemed the economy began an official decline in December 2007.

That is little surprise to those hit hardest by this recession. Most complain of business being sluggish, while those interviewing for positions that may still be open are quite openly stating, “It’s a tough job market out there.”

What does it all mean?

Friends of mine have lost their jobs, but are finding ways to continue working though not necessarily in their career field. While out, we see shoppers everywhere, restaurant goers enjoying meals, and lots of traffic on the road. So the signals do not necessarily line up, for me at least?

Are we simply adjusting our expectations back to where they should be? Are we simply – well – simplifying?

With everyone busier than ever, a focus on what is important might already be underway. One Nielsen study suggests:

• Parents are busier than they were in the past. Many more are single parents, and two-parent families have seen a dramatic increase in women’s participation in the labor force.
• Total workloads (counting paid jobs and unpaid work at home for both moms and dads) have risen and remain high - parents average up to a 9.5-hour workday every day of the week.
• Despite more hours on average going into paid work, parents’ time with their children has not decreased over the past several decades, and in fact has risen for married mothers and married fathers, and for single mothers for certain kinds of care.
• It is not sleep or free time that has been compressed to enable parents both to work more outside the home and to spend more time with their children - it is housework that has been sacrificed.
• The pattern of increased time spent with children is not only a U.S. phenomenon, but also appears in many countries in Western Europe.

A harsh reality.

It is a harsh reality we live in, with one of the most massive economic “bubbles” bursting in our lifetimes. Whereas the “Dot-Com” bubble mainly impacted the technology sector, this has struck much closer to our homes, and our hearts.

President-elect Obama, promises a stimulus package, but even he predicts things are going to get worse before they get better.

“There are no quick or easy fixes to this crisis, which has been many years in the making, and it's likely to get worse before it gets better," Obama warned.

Perhaps this recession serves as a harsh wake-up call, perhaps this nation’s spending habits were not sound, and perhaps we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security, leaving oversight in the hands of those we thought we could trust.

All of this matters little to friends and family left jobless during this holiday season. Reality is a cruel teacher, often times. While we may all long for a return to simpler times, simplicity may not be had for those trying to cope with how to wrap a lump of coal.

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Ken Stewart’s blog, ChangeForge.com, focuses on the collision between the constantly changing worlds of business and technology. To learn more about Ken, visit his about page. You may also find Ken on FriendFeed, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Mint.com Says I'll Be Bankrupt In Sixty Days At This Pace

When Mint.com first integrated the tracking of investments alongside bank records and credit cards this May, I was really excited to have a one-stop destination to see all my activity. But now, my weekly e-mails coming from the site are nothing short of a cross between a thrill ride and horror film, as one line stares me in the face: TOTAL. And peeking at the last three weeks' worth of updates shows that if I were to lose the average amount of money I lost each of the last three updates, my net worth would hit zero sometime in January of 2009. (Not on a percentage basis, but on an absolute value basis)

While I don't believe every stock I own will hit zero, and that I will have emptied all of my accounts, taking on more credit card bills than my actual assets, what was once trivial is eye-opening. While many say the smartest thing to do during this trying time is to not look at all, for me it's like a horrible accident on the highway. You can't help but slow down and take a peek. But unlike most of those accidents, there's actually more blood than expected.


My Holdings Are a Complete Disaster this Year (FriendFeed Discussion)
After a mild Spring and Summer that had my investments slightly trending downward, we all know what happened next - a massive cratering that has seen nearly everybody's financial situation turned upside down. 401ks and mutual funds that used to be stable and trusted are actually performing worse than the very worst individual stocks I've picked. One of the funds I am in dropped 24 percent last week, and another fell by more than 17 percent.

In six months, names that used to have the word "Trusted" next to their name are anything but. Fidelity. Citibank. Washington Mutual? Lehman? And yes, we know other companies in the news were less safe - General Motors, Sirius, eTrade itself... but as my own holdings are plummeting, it seems there is no safe place to turn, no "safe" investment to hold the money until things improve, be it in six months, two years, or more. Forget about Web 2.0 companies being shaky. Everybody's shaky.

For me personally, in years past, in the occasional case where I've needed to spend more money than I've had in my Wells Fargo Account, whether it be to pay year-end tithing for church, or to pay taxes, I've always known I can dip into my eTrade account and move money around as a backup. Now, that safety net has been eroded to the point I don't know that I can do that if I need to. I don't believe I'm going bankrupt, whether Mint.com thinks so or not, but unless something changes soon, we're definitely going to be putting off purchases, getting more frugal and settling for something less than we really want a whole lot more often.

And maybe I won't be logging into Mint.com all that often just to prove how bad things are.

Now Is Not the Time To Scale Back On Social Media

Amidst all the talk of economic recession (or worse) and politics, I have seen an underlying current of people who are tiring of social media, seeing it as "less important" than the bigger world issues, and maybe less interesting than maybe it was three, six or nine months ago. Without doing a dedicated poll myself, my gut feeling is that the reasoning is that while people retrench and worry more about their jobs, their families, their wallets and their future, all the fun of bookmarking, liking, linking and blogging falls to the wayside. But I think this is wrong, period. If anything, the economic weakness should make it more important than ever for companies and individuals to double down on social media, as these new tools have enabled less expensive ways to find like-minded individuals, who just might be your next customer.

The world of marketing, advertising and public relations is changing. It's no longer about finding tricky ways to force prospects to your Web site, your products, your content and your story. Instead, it's about going to where your customers are. And it's very likely that many of them have found solace and community in far-flung places like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and FriendFeed, where they are talking with peers, with or without you. Rather than spending tens of thousands of dollars to increase the perception of your brand through print advertising, or sending a check to Google each month to sponsor search keywords, you could devote more time, but much less money, by listening, communicating and participating, bringing a human voice and face to what could previously be seen a static brand.

As the economy tightens and budgets are reduced in response, it makes sense to think differently, to borrow Apple's phrase, and find new ways to reach your prospects and partners less expensively. While not every executive in the boardroom needs to know exactly what Twitter is, they will absolutely understand that you can achieve a higher return on your investment through spending less money, and spending the right amount of time in more targeted areas, where you can attract and retain business, whether these communities are physical or virtual.


Additionally, the typical social media user is a more sophisticated buyer than the general populace. They aren't interested in your "spray and pray" methods of e-mail blasts, run of site banner advertising, or even your impersonal PR pitches. They expect and demand personalization and knowledge of themselves, by you, as an individual. They want to be wooed and to be given a seat at the table when it comes to making suggestions about your product, where you should sell it, and at what price. With proper utilization of social media, there lies a greater sense of community between the buyer and the seller, the customer and the brand, making it a collaborative effort where both parties will work together to ensure a successful transaction takes place.

There's no question that those folks who have been using social media as a time killer or strictly for recreation, to distract from work, might find their time better spent. But that's true with all things, as activities can cross from hobby to obsession, or from utility to distraction.

What has happened in the world of social media over the last few years is the growth of micro-communities whose members can be reached in new ways, regardless of location or time. To cite changes in the macroeconomic climate, or the political climate, as reasons to back away from this growing evolution in communication and marketing is short-sighted. Those companies that can take advantage of the reduced costs of customer communication, acquisition and support will extend the gap over those who sit on the sidelines.

See Also:

• BuzzGain: Can Social Media Marketing Scale is the Wrong Question to Ask
• Web Strategist: Intel’s Community Marketing: Fishing Where The Fish Are

Today Marks Ten Years Working In Silicon Valley

On October 25th, 1998, during my senior year at UC Berkeley, I started my first job in Silicon Valley, as an eCommerce Analyst for Internet Valley, a small startup focused on search engine optimization, technology trends and eCommerce. Today marks the tenth anniversary of that first day, making me one of those people who can sit around the table and claim a decade's worth of experience. Though my role has changed quite a bit from the first time I sat down for work in Burlingame, California, growing to take on traditional outbound marketing roles, including public relations and demand generation, the initial journey is worth commemorating.

As my senior year at Berkeley commenced, I knew I would need an off-campus job to help pay for rent and books, having left my position with the school newspaper, where I was Online Editor and a news reporter.

Not entirely sure what I wanted to do, I drafted two versions of my resume - one to be a journalist, and the other, to be a Webmaster. The journalist piece I sent to places like the Mercury News and MacWeek, and the one for being a Webmaster went just about anywhere I thought made sense, provided it was close enough to Berkeley, and offered flexibility that let me finish out my coursework and get the dual degree in Mass Communications and Political Science.

It being 1998, it was no surprise the Webmaster position found the most traction. That Internet Valley took a chance on me, an unproven kid at the age of 21, without a formal degree, helped lay the groundwork for my making a home in Silicon Valley and starting on a track toward a career that later encompassed Marketing. To give you an idea of how things have changed just in the last ten years, here's an excerpt from a note home to my dad, titled, "First day of work":

The company has ordered a Micron PC for me at work, and while it is a Windows 98/NT machine, it has some strong specs, such as: PentiumII 400 MHz processor, 64 MB RAM, 6.4GB of hard disk space, a 32x CD-ROM, and built-in Zip Drive.

That's right. In 1998, 6.4 GB of space and 64 MB of RAM was considered "strong specs".

I had interviewed at Internet Valley on October 13th of 1998, somehow getting from Berkeley to Burlingame without a car, using a combination of public transportation and my own two feet. And interestingly, my initial impressions of the Internet Valley site, and its methodology, provided some interesting hints for the way the future Web would be consumed.

From a previous e-mail, after 2 a.m. on October 14th of 1998:

(My boss) said that when he organized the site, he had done it with the intent of separating from print media, instead focusing on users who do not "read" documents, but "scroll" them. The typical Web site containing basic text was not to be found. The site instead contains words in a variety of colors, font sizes and heavy use of the bold tag. Some might call it ugly. ... He laughed about how he had dropped half of his age in a week if the letters were to be believed. But when scrolling down the site, a user can have their attention caught by the unorthodox methods, and will stop to read. Otherwise the words highlighted will give an idea of what the topic was being covered.

While the site itself was tough to digest, it brings to mind the way many of us consume news now, through a "river of noise", or scanning RSS rather than reading in full.

The stay at Internet Valley was not all that long, as the seed investor would have preferred revenue more quickly, but I managed to stay on with their sister company, 3Cube, reporting to the team's new vice president of Marketing.

Working at 3Cube during the dotcom boom, and eventually, through the bust, set the stage for how I approached business. Whether in operations, engineering or marketing, the team worked late, and was focused on doing what at times seemed to be super-human work, as we could ask a pair of coders to do what had taken a team of dozens at a competitor more time. And at age 22, I was responsible for running the Web site, and much of the copy, including FAQ's for these new products, even as I found myself sitting at the table with people who had been in the software industry since the time I was born.

As a young employee at both companies, and where I work now, I often found myself intimidated by my colleagues' experience and history. When they could talk in decades, I could merely talk in months, or maybe a year or two. With time, this has changed, of course, as I took on more responsibilities, including direct reports, gained experience, and have found myself at a place where many employees are younger than myself.

After the dotcom bust, I worked through the 2001-03 recession, and came out the other end with more knowledge on how to operate when times were lean. It looks like we may have that opportunity again, with the global markets being tossed to and fro. But even as we see our day to day challenges, or try and hit milestones that lie directly ahead, I can do so knowing that, after ten years of trying to make a difference, it's me who has a decade's experience in the Valley, the first of what should be a handful. I can't even imagine trying to work outside of the Valley. It's all I know, and all I want to know. Here's to thirty more years.

Social Median Stares Downturn In the Face By Staying Small

In a sliding economic time, the easy thing to do is to report on the failures of companies, the potential for layoffs, quarterly financial warnings and misses, and reduced valuations. Some entrepreneurs will see the potential for trials and get cold feet, choosing to postpone starting their business. Others might reduce expectations by slowing hires, extending product roadmaps or opting out by merging with a bigger firm. But having learned from the trials of the Web 1.0 boom and crash, Jason Goldberg of Social Median is looking to survive and grow his company through the financial crisis, as long as it takes.

In a post yesterday titled How One Small Scrappy Startup Is Surviving (And Growing) During The Financial Crisis, Jason said keys to survival are to be "(1) small, (2) fast, and (3) listen to users". The team developing Social Median started small and remains small, with software development performed in Pune, India, making them much less expensive than if they were based in the Silicon Valley. Having endured some very public and very visible trials during his time as CEO at Jobster, Goldberg knew, from the beginning, to stay lean and mean.

As we've chronicled here over the last six months, Social Median is growing and becoming an increasingly common source for Web users to find their news and participate with peers. And that's been without the benefit of traditional venture capital. As Jason writes, "One VC asked me a month ago what I would do with $2M. I said I'd take $500k of it, give you back $1.5M, and keep doing exactly what I'm doing."

So his plans going forward are really focused on a single mantra: "Keep it small and focus entirely on the product and delivering features which engage our users."

But, as with Twitter, FriendFeed and others, Social Median is still what companies these days are calling "pre-revenue". Jason even says that "priority #1 is product and users, not revenue." But we shouldn't expect that to be permanent. He says, "Every month -- while we spend very little -- we still are spending and not bringing in revenues to offset the costs..." adding, "If we build a great service that people love and want to use and recommend, revenues will come in time."

So while other companies grew quickly, and are now looking at ways to cut costs to reduce their burn rate as times turn dark, Social Median's plan is to keep churning along and do what they've always done. If they do crash and burn, it's not because they were throwing parties and hiring expensive PR firms or advertising. They're going to be heads-down, working to create a community which has already seen a doubling of page views week over week, and more new registered users in the last week than in the previous four combined. Jason and his team are not scared. Some might say they're foolhardy. But they're not going to be making headlines for cutting staff and scaling back any time soon.

See the full post here:
How One Small Scrappy Startup Is Surviving (And Growing) During The Financial Crisis

As always, you can find me, and my activity, on Social Median, here: http://www.socialmedian.com/louisgray

The Valley's Proponents Become Its Critics in Hard Times

Friday's stock market roller coaster was one to remember. With the Dow Jones Industrial Average at one point down more than 500 points early in the session, again, a colleague and I headed to lunch just before noon with the market down more than 400. As we ate, the TV screens alerted us to a market rally that saw the market reverse course, racing beyond the break-even mark to crest at almost 200 points up, only to fall back down to a loss of more than 100. In between bites and conversation, I'd pass along a report: "Down 200. Down 100. Even. Up 50. Up 150. Even again." My latest position in Apple, created just Friday morning, at one point was up 10 percent in the space of hours - making me feel good, if just for a day.

The rise and fall euphoria and despair that we've all seen as the market rises and falls (and falls and falls in recent weeks) is not uncommon. The crowd mentality sees us piling on to negativity when things are bad, and blocking out risks when things are good. But even as things have gotten a lot more tight in our own personal financial accounts and 401ks, banks have gotten wobbly, and credit has gotten unstable, many of the major tenets that saw the Web 2.0 world lauded just a few months ago are still there - namely the ability to start a new company for much less, to attract a solid user base, and reduce burn rates to a level that wouldn't require significant funding. This means that even in times of scarcity, there's room for innovative ideas. And for those companies that already raised sufficient funds, or who have achieved profitability, their major focus should be hitting product milestones and gaining revenue, rather than worrying about keeping the doors open.

With the near extinguishing of companies entering the public markets in the last twelve months, combined with VCs saying funding will be tight going forward, and valuations lighter, the squeeze will be most noticed by companies looking to get the next series of capital, or those who find acquirers won't be offering the big numbers they had hoped. Many companies will be proposing hiring freezes to slow the burn, or letting non-essential people go.

But with that said, the technology advances that have let companies get off the ground for less mean the pressure from VCs and board members to turn thousands into millions and millions into billions is less than it was five years ago, when we saw a similar slowdown. Even Twitter, which has one of the highest profiles of "pre-revenue" companies, has only raised $15 million, a small fraction of the hundreds of millions given to Webvan, Kozmo.com and other high-profile Web 1.0 flameouts. Seesmic, which visibly laid off seven yesterday, also has raised a conservative $12 million or so in two rounds, and Silicon Valley darling, FriendFeed, has only raised $5 million in its initial round.

It has only taken a few months of bad news on Wall Street to see some of the most visible proponents of Web 2.0 startups start to pick on them and demand significant changes. But the calls for a route to revenue and product quality should have been there when times were good, not just now.

Most of today's Web companies don't need staffs of hundreds. They don't need seven-figure marketing budgets. And many are cutting costs on their technology infrastructures by turning to services like Amazon's S3. So the burn rates of years ago have lessened dramatically.

What recessions do is weed out the bad ideas from the good and move timetables. Great ideas continue to be supported and funded. During the last recession, LinkedIn was founded, in 2002. Google went from being a curiosity to a world leader, going public in 2004 after years of slowness for Web companies looking to reach the market. And in 2003, MySpace was started, following Friendster's 2002 debut.

That the economy's struggles will have far-reaching impact is not under dispute. But for Web companies that have been smart about keeping their costs low, and their revenue and profits in sight, they will power through. To prematurely call for their demise and dance on the grave of those that don't survive is not the way to go.

See also:

Dare Obasanjo: TechCrunch Turns Into F-----Company 2.0
The Inquisitr: Paging Chicken Little - The Sky Isn’t Falling

A Recession's Impact: Lower Expectations Across the Board

The stock market is a disaster.

Banks are going under, and massive financial institutions are being bailed out. Companies are announcing hiring freezes and layoffs. And just about everybody has less money now than they did last month, or the one before that. While many of these perceived losses are quantifiable (on paper), more widespread are the losses that cannot be quantified, as people and companies cast off their optimism, and exchange it with a dark reality.

Those of us who made it through the last recession have seen this play out before, and others, a few times as bust follows boom, and back again. This time, the bust just might be deeper, and its impact further felt. I made a handy chart to see how people here in the Silicon Valley might be adjusting their expectations - from personal goals to family, possessions and career. In every aspect, I think it's safe to say that many are choosing door number three.


How a market changes one's goals - in chart form...
(Feel free to reuse the image on your blog)
With all the bad news out there, have you already made some of these choices? I'll likely be keeping my 1998 Mercury Tracer going just a bit longer, and despite the twins, I don't see us moving out any time soon, as demand for housing has cratered. Stocks I held just last week are worth 80 cents on the dollar today, and it could be time to buckle down unless things turn around soon.

Top Resources to Help Stay Informed In a Crazy World

By Mona Nomura of Pixel Bits (FriendFeed/Twitter)

I completely suck at numbers. I could give a crap about the stock market. I tune out politics since I'm sick and tired of the same old rhetoric. And if you're like me, you most likely skip over all the panicked headlines about how the $700 billion bailout got kicked from Congress.

I mean really - why would all this junk be relevant to regular people like us? The headlines are too damn depressing and most importantly - we don't have power, money or stature for any of this to really matter anyway - right? Wrong.

Listen to me, you guys: Now is not the time to tune things out.

Why is this important for people like us? Because well... I kinda sorta wanna know if I should close all my bank accounts and hide the cash under my mattress - don't you? It's also ... uhhh... election year, too. And as much as I want to turn the other way, this time, I can't. All the signs are pointing to: our country is in deep s--t.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the rest of America doesn't seem like they know what's going on either. Just ask someone to explain the stipulations of the 110-page bailout and how/what we (Americans) need to do to protect ourselves moving forward. Or the presidential candidates' action plans to rectify this economical disaster. I guarantee not everyone can - regardless of who they are or what their pedigrees are.

So you see, now is the time - moreso than ever, that we the regular people, need to come together. And if enough of us get together, our voices WILL matter. How do we do that? It's all about information.

Yes, I know reading the headlines is depressing, but educating ourselves so we're aware of the current happenings is a must; so we can get involved to make differences. How do we get involved? Well that's up to you - the reader to decide.

But what I CAN do for you, is provide resources to keep and stay informed. Hubs, if you will, so you don't have to dig through and search to stay involved. Please remember, to take account all sides, know your options, and if and when action is called - don't hesitate and go for it. Whether it be by voting, informing people around you, or just informing yourself, knowing and keeping up with the current situation means you have power to decide what to do with the knowledge.

So without further ado, I present to you:
"Mona's Top 5 Resources to Stay "Smart" - the Lazy Way"

1. NPR's Planet Money:
   NPR tags all articles pertaining to the financial crisis. It's just one click, and it pulls up all recent articles. The layout is easy on the eyes and there's no hunting or pecking through a mountain of pages to stay up to date.
   
   
2. Google News: Top Stories:
   I prefer Google News over Yahoo News because it's
   • Customizable
   • I can personalize it
   • Easy on the eyes
   All the top headline news from various sources are aggregated there. Pretty neat.
   
   
3. Harvard Business Online's Guide to the Downturn:
   A bunch of articles from really super smart people that are free. Plus the layout is nice, easy on the eyes, and surprisingly, the information is relevant to normal people, too. Don't be fooled, go check it out. Even if you think it's irrelevant, you can namedrop like I do. "OH YEAH? Bet you don't know what HARVARD professors are saying!" - or something close to that. ha!
   
   
4. Google Power Readers:
   Explore news sites read by McCain, Obama and political journalists, and see articles the campaigns and political pundits are sharing with Google Reader. What's better than knowing what they're reading and sharing!
   
   
5. Aggregation Sites like FriendFeed
   Since signing up for FriendFeed, I've been exposed to a lot of new blogs, different views, from so many different sources. The best part is, you can see what others are sharing, and choose if you want to read it or not. If you see the same headline shared by numerous people, it's a sign telling you: "READ IT, STAT!"

That about wraps it up. I hope this can help you, as much as it's helped me.

And remember, this is an election year. Our economical and country's future is dependent on us - We the people.

Update: Head on over to Scripting News. Dave Winer has a great write-up: "The US Economy After Katrina".

Read more by Mona Nomura at Pixel Bits.

This Financial Scenario Says There Are No Experts

The go-go days of the 1990s stock market, combined with the ease of online brokerages like eTrade, brought the world of Wall Street home for many people who previously saw it as a world outside their own, with high-priced brokers and a busy exchange floor. Along with the debut of CNBC, and the consumerization of financial news, including TheStreet.com and CBS Marketwatch, the potential world of day trading was brought home for millions. While the dotcom crash killed off many people's hopes at retiring rich from behind their computer monitors, most everyone has at least a passing understanding of the stock market, and many see themselves as experts - offering advice to any who will listen, even as we enter what looks like a scenario never seen before in our history, a time that will bring new challenges. Some "tried and true" solutions could work again in this trying time, and others will undoubtedly fail.

Today, after using the same methods I've used in the last seven years following the dotcom crash, I saw my personal portfolio take a hit of almost eight percent in one trading session. I've always typically invested in stocks where I feel I know the companies well, which typically sees me overweighted in the technology sector - Apple included. Of course, Apple took more than its fair share of the dive today, losing almost 20 percent of its value - which didn't help matters.

• To some, today's dive marks yet another milestone in a long, steep drop downward. The word "depression" is even being thrown around.
• To others, today's dive is a buying opportunity, giving you a chance to get stocks for cheap, down ten or twenty percent from where they were just a few short weeks ago.
• To some, buying stocks on the way down constitutes trying to "catch a falling knife", a move fraught with risk.
• To others, buying falling stocks allows them to "average down".

So now, we get advice from all sides. Buy stocks before Congress passes any version of the bailout bill, which is sure to raise stocks. Sell all your stocks and go to cash, as it's the only "safe" place. Get your cash out of the bank and into gold. You name a theory, and it's out there.

After being bitten by holding stocks long term around the beginning of the decade, I changed my methodology, holding stocks for days, or only weeks, tops. While others worried about taxes for short-term sales, I just tried to make a small portfolio larger. Often, this trading has worked, like it did when I bought AIG at $3.10 on September 16th and sold it for $4.84 on September 22nd, or when I bought Sirius Radio for 74 cents and sold it for 95 cents on those same dates. But, many other times, it hasn't, as the expected bump hasn't taken place. My bull-headedness typically sees me holding onto those losers for way too long, until those losses approach the accumulated gains from winning trades. So, despite my experience, I know I'm no expert. And the current market situation is unprecedented.

The fact that so many factors are coming into play at one time means that no single person has all the data. It's not clear who will be bailed out when, how much it will cost, how the presumed crisis will effect consumer or enterprise spending, and how it will change things in the short term or the long term. But it's not too uncommon for people to give advice without qualifications. You can see it when they say "buying on the way down will be profitable in the long run", or "get ready to buy, buy, buy" or that "smart investors (will) clean house and get ready for this amazing buying opportunity". I've seen every single one of these comments just on FriendFeed alone - which in theory wouldn't be where I'd head for investment advice.

The very tenets of what many of us have used to guide our buying and selling should always be in question. Even the concept of making a profit on every single trade is flawed, as it could make sense to sell one lot of shares at a loss to free up cash to make even more on another stock. And while I look at today's portfolio and see a bunch of red, it's not clear if tomorrow will be the beginning of a turn-around, or more of the same. With twins now, and my wife not working, at least this year, the idea would be to accumulate as much cash as I can, to prepare for tomorrow's expenses, but when I see an entire year's college tuition evaporate in a week, it's got me thinking I need to start making new approaches to guide my behavior in a time when nobody has the rule book. This could be a long learning process for all of us.

Disqus' API Launch Extends Commenting Possibilities

At Blog World Expo last week, I said that those services which "played well with others" would do better in a collaborative, cooperative Web 2.0 landscape over those that instead held tight to their walled gardens (See tweet from @drewolanoff.) It is through the launch of an API and extensive developer activity that services like Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter have grown, often at the expense of those that didn't. Tonight, the popular Web commenting service Disqus joined the fray, launching a full public API.

The API (outlined here) lets services and tools write custom comment import and export tools, or to develop unique plug-ins for their platform. (see the announcement and coverage by The Inquisitr.)

Disqus comments are already among the most portable, enabling syndication through RSS, and into lifestreaming applications of all sorts. But what I found most interesting was the note on custom plugins for customer platforms. What's to stop developers from making a custom Disqus-enabled engine that is secure, and for the enterprise, essentially the comments equivalent of Yammer (versus Twitter)? What I see happening is that many of the social tools we may be using for community and entertainment in our world are now on the verge of making it to the enterprise. With an open development platform, and possibly, the idea to customize the comments engine for services that have enterprise capabilities, this could be one way to break on through to the other side, so to speak.

This week's big commenting news was Automattic buying up Intense Debate, something many thought would make Disqus' world a whole lot harder. Tonight's announcement shows they aren't sitting still and playing the part of victim. I'm eager to see the new services and tools that get developed as a result of being Disqus-powered.

Google at 10 - a Decade of Innovation - But Challenges Ahead

By Charlie Anzman of SEO and Tech Daily (FriendFeed/Twitter)

Yesterday, Google posted a fascinating timeline of the past ten years.

For those of us that have been around since the days when Yahoo! dominated search (and Google wasn't 'here' yet), the timeline brings back a lot of memories, and also causes some pondering about the future.

Google's juice has always been their corporate culture. I've written about it before. A few weeks ago, Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, commented that they try not to buy a lot of companies because it's easier to innovate from within, rather than to try and change the way a company does things. (Paraphrased).

Others are complaining about Google's stock price. A careful look at insider trading over two years showed many (current) employees cashing out in the 300's per share. Was 700+ in 2008 ever really in the cards? Did Wall Street expect a little too much?

Now we see Google literally firing on all cylinders. A new Web browser (Chrome), a significant upgrade to Picasa (and Picasaweb), and lots of other upgrades, APIs, additions and announcements made over the past two months.

There's little disputing the fact that Google (and the Internet) have literally created and/or eliminated exisiting business models (or significantly changed them). Not just Internet models but brick and mortar businesses as well. They've also created opportunity for those who continued to read, learn and took advantage of it.

Now, people don't Yahoo-it, or MSN-it (even though they do), the vernacular is Google-it ... and that alone is HUGE.

Interestingly, for you advertising buffs, Google has no tag line. There is no 'what we are' or 'what we do'. Obviously, someone recognized very early on, that the Internet (and the world) was changing so fast, it was difficult to predict exactly where Google's strengths would emerge. That continues to be the case.

I find I now have the same reaction to Google's success that I did to Microsoft's many years ago. Both serve as an example of how just a few people can create something BIG in just a few short years and set an example for those thinking about doing just that.

Like Microsoft, and many others, Google is a role model of sorts for entrepreneurs everywhere.

As they grow and mature, it will be difficult for Google to maintain their corporate culture, but not impossible. The perks of working at the Googleplex make complete and total sense. Help people forget about their mundane day-to-day worries so they can think, be creative, and work.

So …. Happy Birthday Google! One can only imagine (or better yet vision) what the next ten years will bring.

Read more by Charlie Anzman at SEO and Tech Daily.

TweetBeep: Twitter Keyword Alerts to Your E-mail

On yesterday's micromedia panel here at the Blog World Expo, I said the way that companies can start using microblogging tools is to first be aware of them, and second to monitor them, before jumping in deep with both feet. The idea would be to understand the nature of the community, and to see how your business or industry is being perceived on the service before sending off tweet after tweet. As one of the best tools to follow your company's mentions online is to use Google's News Alerts or Google Blog Search and have them delivered by e-mail, TweetBeep intends to do the same thing - following terms you specify and sending them to your e-mail, either by the hour or by the day.

Using TweetBeep, as you would expect, is fairly simple. Sign up for an account with TweetBeep, and then add alerts, by hour or by day, register your e-mail address, and you will get notified by e-mail when your search terms come up.


Adding a new alert for #bwe (Blog World Expo)


My active TweetBeep alert list
You might be wondering why you would use TweetBeep instead of Twitter Search (formerly Summize), but relying on TweetBeep takes the manual intervention out of it. Instead of searching yourself, the alerts are automatically delivered. And for an enterprise corporate setting, e-mail is easily understood.


TweetBeep delivers results via e-mail
While TweetBeep isn't new, having launched back in May with Orli Yakuel on Go2Web20, there's no doubt this tool is being under-utilized, relative to other alert tools. So if you want to keep track of what's being said about you or your company in the Twitterverse, set up an account and get started. It just might be a tool you can use to get your boss to understand how the microblogging community is thinking about your product in real time.

Bret Taylor on FriendFeed's Road to Monetization, Early Surprises

This evening, at a panel on lifestreaming put on by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor spoke about the popular aggregation and lifestreaming service's early months, explained what he and the team are trying to do through developing the site, and what we can expect from FriendFeed, as the company builds plans to monetize and further expand its growing user base. The panel, moderated by All Things Digital's Kara Swisher, also saw participation by angel investor Jeff Clavier of SoftTech VC, Leah Culver of Pownce, and Loic LeMeur of Seesmic.

I attended the session and took notes via laptop, so all quotes are "best effort."

Bret's presentation stated that FriendFeed, which currently supports 43 different Web services, and is now tracking greater than 100 million individual entries, is designed primarily to enable content discovery and social media consumption through a shared experience with friends and peers.

Growing Crazy Fast After a Slow Start

In front of an audience at the Stanford School of Business, Bret, in a quick presentation utilizing Apple's Keynote, recounted the team's reaction to the site's initial traffic spike following launch coverage in the New York Times and TechCrunch which evaporated in mere days. He said it took four months to return to the initial activity level, in between which the team went through varying stages of excitement, strategizing, realism and depression, while they openly questioned what they might have been doing wrong - having a history of successful product launches at Google. However, not too long later, traffic began to balloon in the beginning of 2008, reaching a hockey stick spike from March to June, during which the team's excitement turned to sheer panic, as they looked to scale their product and maintain speed and reliability amidst unprecedented demand.

Initial Development Missteps or Oversights

When FriendFeed added the ability to "like" items and make comments to a friend's feed, it opened up the opportunity for significant discussion among peers, and helped catapult the site from a simple aggregator to a destination site for many. But Bret admitted the team didn't anticipate the success these additions would have, and they didn't put as much development work into fleshing out those features.

As he said yesterday evening, "The discussion parts of our site have been almost the sole driver of our growth. It's been interesting to watch, and in retrospect, it was obvious. It was initially one of the underdeveloped parts of our site."

Also, while FriendFeed has been lauded for their highly-capable "hide" features, letting you block individual posts, posters, or services, there have been many requests for better ways to filter through the noise and find information that's most suited to your own likes and dislikes. But so far, the team is still playing catch-up. Bret added, "For the one year or so we have existed, we put less into relevancy and more into filtering tools. We are working on relevancy now. It's reflected in the different ways that people use a feed reader, as some see it as a new e-mail box and others ask to show the things that are interesting right now."

Handling Competition From All Sides

Swisher asked, as many do, if there are too many sites in the lifestreaming space, as there were too many calendaring sites in the Web 1.0 timeframe. She speculated that by the time the Web 2.0 shakeout occurs, that maybe three will survive and one, like Google with horizontal search, will end up with the lion's share.

Bret said that the lifestreaming space is a new category, and that it was "healthy" for many people to be working on "the content discovery problem". With the advent of syndication formats like RSS and social networking, he said subtle differences would be very important, and that on the Web, there is a history of natural fragmentation that enables niche sites to succeed. However, he did warn against sites adding so many features that they miss their core position. He said, "Every application grows until it has e-mail. Every Web site grows until it has all the features of a social network."

On Staying Independent

Every few weeks, somebody seemingly speculates that FriendFeed would make a great acquisition target for somebody, and the name that almost always comes up is Google, where the team's co-founders were last employed. But, as he and Paul Buchheit have consistently said, Bret again repeated the plan is not to sell the company, even if the road to business success isn't 100 percent clear.

"We're not interested in selling. We wanted to forge our own culture, to create a sustainable company," Bret said. "We have different perspectives on how to build a company of scale, and we want to build a company that scales."

Finding an Eventual, Sustainable, Business Model

Bret said the $5 million in seed funding FriendFeed raised this Spring was done anticipating the economic downturn, enabling the company to have a long runway before seeing the cash disappear. The team's hope, he said, was to find an advertising-based solution that delivers revenue without damaging the user experience. As he said, in response to questions from Kara Swisher, "there is a huge spectrum in the effectiveness of advertising," from ads that have high click-through rates, like those from Google AdWords, to the less-targeted AdSense, which delivers low conversion rates and "lots of accidental clicks." For FriendFeed, he speculated the site was "somewhere in the middle, but hopefully on the good end," where if links were mixed into the service that were sponsored, they would be done in line more with users' experience than image ads adorning the sides of the browser.

While Swisher coyly teased some of the panelists about their being "pre-revenue", Bret said one of the keys to launching a successful business model in the Web 2.0 atmosphere would be to not do so too early, and when they do, to do so in a way that is both quantifiable and analytical. "It makes no sense to try and monetize when you have only 2,000 users," Bret said. "It's too early and the early adopter audience does not reflect the behavior of mainstream users." He cited the early successes of Overture and Google AdWords as forging the quantifiable advertising market, but admitted they weren't yet sure how ads on FriendFeed would work. "We want to experiment enough to not run out of money before having to raise more, or we will have a sustainable business," he said.

What's Coming Next

Bret clearly hinted at a move to improve relevancy, and help users find signal in the noise. The team added "top" posts of the day not too long ago to help use the wisdom of crowds, and that feature could be improved. It's clear ads are coming, but maybe not immediately, as the company continues to try and scale in terms of users before worrying much about revenue. He also gave praise to the search engine that returns results just from your friends, but said it could be improved, as missing a result in FriendFeed would be much more impactful than a missing search result in Google. But he also spoke of "focus" and doing "one thing well", so it could be that those of us asking for messaging features aren't going to get our wish.

One thing you can expect FriendFeed not to do is to immediately give in to the demands from the early adopter tech geek set, who can at times be very demanding. While Seesmic CEO Loic LeMeur said the "tech geeks and geek press would have you make products for the geeks," Kara Swisher helpfully added that group was pretty small to begin with. "It's 14 slightly-overweight white guys," she offered.

The Financial Markets' Downturn Hitting Home

When the raging bull markets of the late 90s and early part of this decade ended, they fell with a tremendous thud. With the Web 1.0 boom turning to bust, combined with heightened fears over terrorism and world instability, the idea that one's investments would forever increase was dashed almost overnight. In 2008, we have a situation that's arguably even worse. Housing prices and demand for homes has plummeted. Energy prices are sky high. Financial institutions, having made many bad bets, are declaring bankruptcy and getting government bailouts. And unfortunately, the only near-guaranteed part of trickle-down economics is that the individuals at the bottom always feel the pain - and few are immune, myself included.

I've been lucky enough to hold down the same job from before the first recession through today. I saw Silicon Valley freeways go from being a gridlocked mess to easy driving, and back to a mess again. I saw billboards go from being plastered with dotcom ads to being "Available", only to return with a wider variety of advertising. And I've seen personal investments go from guaranteed profits to nearly pulling it all into cash, and later, getting back in, but trying not to be too exposed.

This ebb and flow is reaching a low point again. The entrance into our complex of condos is littered with "For Sale" signs, and more than one has a note of "Reduced Price", signaling the owner's desperation to move out and move on. Popular area lunchtime restaurants that used to have long lines out the door can now be visited without too much concern for parking. And, yes, my stock portfolios are bleeding out, seemingly getting worse by the day.

I thought I learned from some big losses the last time around, to not be invested in companies I didn't feel I knew very well, and not to hold stocks for a long time. I've become much more of a "flipper" who holds stocks for days or weeks, looking for what could be momentum. And at times, this has worked great. I recently played TiVo stock for a few days, and made enough profit to buy a new fridge we needed. At times, I've played Apple stock around earnings, essentially keeping me in Cupertino gadgets for free. And earlier this year, I even invested in some of the energy stocks, making money on them as the price of gas continued to climb.


eTrade Shows the Q1 Losses Are Keeping Me in the Red
But, despite these wins, right now both my personal portfolio on eTrade and my 401k are pretty hosed. On my 401k, I've lost more than half the money I've added through donations this year. And on eTrade, I've accumulated enough losses in the stocks I'm holding now that the total deficit would essentially represent lost months of work.


The 401k Says My Rate of Return is In the Cellar
Now, we're not bankrupt. And we haven't made any big purchases of late (aside from that fridge). We don't have credit card debt, and we're paying our mortgage. So we're doing quite well, compared to others who have much greater problems.

But there seems to be an air of uncertainty and discontent that comes with having less money than you had just a few months ago, and knowing what you do have isn't going quite as far. It feels like people's fuses are shorter and they're more stressed. And at times like these, it's hard to think what's going to change things. Alternative fuels? A massive change of heart in the stock markets? Probably not. This just could mean we're in the beginning of needing to buckle down, hang on and be even more judicious about what we do with our money, before things get worse.

Specialized Perceived Value Trumps Real World Value

If you've attended college, or at least know somebody who has, you know that students are willing to pay hundreds of dollars a term for some of the most mind-numbing texts alive. Students will wait in line for hours, or go store to store to acquire these textbooks, which might only be available in one location, knowing that to not pay these exorbitant prices and, therefore, miss out on the texts, could lead to lower marks, and potentially, decreased success in school and just maybe post-school, could be disastrous.

But these same books, worth hundreds of dollars to an individual, are worth absolutely nothing to me. You couldn't get me to take those blasted tomes for free - because to me, they have no value. They would clutter up my house, and I'd probably never open them up. (Of course, I didn't open most of them in college, and that's a different story.)

Outside of the world of publicly traded companies and market caps, the value of a service is very much like these same textbooks. What might have ultimate value to one person may have no value to another.

Just imagine dropping off iPhones in the Amazonian jungle or Sub-Saharan Africa, where 3G is a lot less important than three meals a day. Think about the plans of the last few decades of delivering one computer per classroom, when class capacities were ballooning to nearly forty students. After a while, it's clear, there's a gap between one person's perceived value, and that item's actual value. The same, is of course true with online services.

Ever try to explain social media or social networking services to people who don't rapidly take to putting their lives online? It's a tough road, especially if they don't have friends who use those services, and see keeping their online life updated as a significant time sink. But to someone who is fully engaged and has thousands of followers or friends at some of the popular services, even minutes of downtime are alarming.

Students who buy these overpriced, one time use only textbooks, and actually read them, are doing so with the expectation that their future lives will be bettered through investment today.

Similarly, I believe that taking the time to blog, or read RSS feeds, and engage with peers on Twitter or FriendFeed or SocialMedian can improve my experience today and tomorrow. Through these services, I've learned new things, I've shared ideas, and helped others. I've found new friends and peers.

It's not always clear how investment of time and energy in social media will benefit you in the long run. As Robert Seidman mentioned in a post here over the weekend, activity on social media landed friend Hutch Carpenter a new job. And since engaging on this blog, I've started receiving a good number of opportunities to meet interesting people, to speak at or attend conferences, and to help contribute to some cutting-edge services.

This weekend, I walked my mother through some of the services I use, and while there was some interest, most of the response was "why would I do that?" or "how would I find other friends who use these things?" Not every service is built for every individual. It's likely the Facebook application developers who are finding themselves snapped up for nine-figure sums would never have gained traction with a significant portion of the market, who saw their products had no value. It's likely many of the services I use every day won't be seen as having value to others. But the important thing is that to some portion of the population, they are crucial. The game is finding out which part of the population it is, and working to make that target larger.

Can Cuil, Built for the Long-Term, Win the "Instant Analysis" Battle?

Tonight's biggest technology story is the debut of new alternative search engine, Cuil (pronounced "cool"). In the shadow of the omnipresent Google, the search engine opened up to initial queries today, and so far, visitors don't seem that impressed. The site is already seeing some downtime, which they claim to be the result of "overwhelming interest", but even prior to the outage, its various limitations got the lion's share of attention, masking an otherwise interesting service. And this got me thinking, again, about how, often, blogs and users are keen to make a snap decision as to a product's worth, in the first minutes or hours of its debut. It can lead to a lot of people crying for "epic fail", and not waiting a few weeks, months, or even years, to see it develop, getting closer to its full potential.

More than two years ago, I wrote a post called, "Launching Products in the Age of Instant Analysis", which saw how initial response to Google Finance, Apple's Mac Mini and Microsoft's Origami UMPC platform was overwhelmingly negative, even before most people had ever had the opportunity to buy the latter two in stores. At the time, I noted how some bloggers had achieved their conclusion after only fifteen minutes of using a site, and even tonight, we're seeing the same conclusions reached, not just after fifteen minutes of using a product, but sometimes, even faster, after one failed vanity search or a set of keywords.

Out of curiosity, I of course tried Cuil myself, and came away less than impressed, but I don't have the feeling that this will be the last we'll hear from the Cuil team. While I'm not going completely off the wagon and claiming them to be the heir to the Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft Live Search throne, I'd expect they have plans to expand and tweak their database, invest in their infrastructure, and make their searches more relevant.

A search engine launch is not a one-night affair, and while tonight's debut has been sloppy at best, they might find a niche and gain traction. Don Dodge once famously reported that 1% of the search engine market is worth $1 billion, so finding a place to play and get share is serious business, even if it is against extremely formidable competition. Cuil looks like they lost the first night's chance at getting the "instant analysis" crowd to love their effort, but they've got attention, and maybe, with continued effort, we'll be seeing if the company, built for the long term, can overcome a few hours or days of distress.

Is There A Way Back From Free?

Guest Post By Colin Walker (Twitter/FriendFeed)

On Wednesday, Matthew Ingram posted a reaction to Mike Arrington's interview with Twitter founder Evan Williams with regards to the way Twitter is just handing their data to potential competitors for nothing.

It has seemed obvious to me for a while that an ideal aspect of a business plan for a social networking service such as Twitter would be to charge partners for premium access to the API, but once you have started down the free path, is it possible, or wise, to backtrack and start charging?

At the inception of a service, the desire is to gain popularity as quickly as possible - the API allowed Twitter to gain this popularity - the openness fuelled a separate ecosystem and Twitter usage spread far beyond what the service would have been able to generate on its own. At this stage charging for access would have stifled the creativity surrounding Twitter and the vast majority of third party apps would never have existed.

The question becomes: who would want to use the data from the Twitter API so badly that they would be willing to pay for it?

Let's look at the four companies allowed access to the full XMPP data:
(prior to this morning's announcement with GNIP)

• Summize would never have existed in its current format and would be pointless with only limited access to the API
• Twittervision is merely a mashup and the developer would, no doubt, have never gone this route if there was no free access
• FriendFeed itself also has no obvious business plan so where would the incentive be to spend money it doesn't have?

Perhaps the only company with full access that may consider paying would be Zappos but only because it is a "real" (if online) business rather than a social media startup. As Evan alludes to in the interview it is the distinction between commercial and non-commercial use that is the potential driving factor here.

The web can only exist on the handouts from VCs for so long before someone, somewhere starts demanding a return on their investment. Where is this going to come from?

So, is it possible to start charging for access?

The news that Twitter have limited unauthenticated calls to the API as well as authenticated calls could well be the first step on the road to pay-per-play but who should or shouldn't be paying and can Twitter now justify a shut out of this nature against the revenue it could potentially receive?

How many third party tools will wither and die? How many developers will quit before their project ever sees the light of day?

When I wrote about Twitter shutting off the Replies tab in favour of keeping the API open I queried if this was the most sensible route - why restrict your own application to protect those of others? The argument was that Twitter receives ten times more traffic via the API than it does from the web site so, as Duncan Riley commented, why "would you willingly block half your user base?" isn't that what restricting API access is effectively doing?

This information came from an interview with Biz Stone in September last year in which he also explained:

the API becomes not only crucial for us on a creativity level and something that we can offer to the developers so that they can build their own applications and experiences, but it also becomes a way for us to grow and a way for us to potentially - depending on what business model we choose - do well there, business-wise (my emphasis)

The constant denial that Twitter knows where they are heading with their business model seems at odds with the constant messages we get when we read between the lines. Even back in September it was viewed that the API could be a money spinner. The moves to restrict API access, in my opinion, are reinforcing that message even if Twitter themselves argue that they don't know where they're going.

As Bob Dylan said: The times thay are a-changin'.

BallHype Acquired by Future US In Attempt to Join Big Leagues

After 18 months of progressing beyond the rookie stages of product development, Ballhype, the sports story discovery, submission and voting site, announced this morning that they have been acquired by Future US, a San Francisco-based media company. The purchase, for an undisclosed amount, enables the company's properties, including BallHype and a sister site, ShowHype, focused on entertainment news and gossip, to continue, but with a partner to help increase their monetization as traffic and engagement grows.

As an early Ballhype user in the first half of 2007 (See: Hype It Up: Ballhype Is Here to Change the Game), the site quickly became a go-to for me in terms of finding the best sports news from around the blogosphere, without being married to the front page of ESPN. More than just a news discovery site, BallHype also offered community engagement through votes, comments, and contests, for game predictions and tournaments, like March Madness.

By October, the husband and wife team of Jason and Erin Gurney, saw the growth BallHype had delivered, and pointed their knowledge to Hollywood's glitz, with ShowHype (See: ShowHype Connects Hollywood With Silicon Valley Geekery)

When my wife and I met with Jason and Erin during a viewing of the NBA All-Star Game festivities at their home this last year, they told me despite its later start, ShowHype's traffic eventually eclipsed that of BallHype, soon becoming the primary driver of engagement, page views, and advertising. But the pair didn't want to reinvent the wheel again and again, making customized sites for the more mundane topics of technology, politics, or religion, choosing instead to keep focused on those things they themselves liked.

The purchase of BallHype by Future US shouldn't mean any dramatic changes for the pair of sites. They are still going to be running, and finding the best of the Web's news for sports and entertainment.

In an interview with AOL Sports' FanHouse, co-founder Jason Gurney said, "Our traffic had reached the point where it was substantial enough to prove the value of our model--but we weren't monetizing well, and didn't have enough resources to take advantage of some of the opportunities we saw."

The Gurneys built BallHype and ShowHype almost single-handedly, alongside some technical help, and partnership with other smart sports folks, including Tom Ziller of Sactown Royalty, as well as advice from Gabe Rivera of Techmeme. The pair reside in the Bay Area with their two young children, a boy and a girl.

You can learn more about the acquisition on the official BallHype blog or at AOL Sports' Fanhouse.

Why Disqus Is Winning the Web Comment Battles, and What's Next

Tonight, I was lucky enough to have dinner with Daniel Ha, the CEO and co-founder of Disqus. One of the advantages of being in the Silicon Valley is that in many cases, I can actually engage with and meet the people who are moving the industry forward, and while I don't consider myself a big-league hob-nobber, the occasional social visit can be rewarding. I won't jeopardize future meetings by giving away the company store, but I definitely came away from the evening feeling even more committed to Disqus and the company's strategy than I was before.

As you already know, I first added Disqus to my blog with Daniel's help, after finding I was unable to integrate the service into my Blogger template. He went above and beyond the call of duty to get me up and running, doing such an excellent job that the effort was noted by Mashable.

This customers-first attitude shown on the Web was evident off-line as well. Daniel more than once apologized for the brief downtime Disqus suffered last Friday, saying that he had awakened to a swarm of e-mails from frustrated users, not to mention my post, and said that we were right to call them on it, as Disqus comments are now such an integral part of our blogs. He assured me the team knew the issues behind it and was working diligently to make sure another similar outage would never occur. Disqus' popular sidebar widget was to blame, putting a great deal of strain on the service, which has since been lessened.

Also, during the meal, Daniel asked me a question that he says he loves asking users, "How can we make Disqus work even better for you?"

Had I been properly prepared, I could have brought an index card along with responses at the ready. Duncan Riley, for instance, wants trackbacks and FriendFeed integration. I asked for better statistics and analytics, and had questions on how older posts were displayed on my Disqus dashboard. But the truth is that I'm already quite happy with Disqus, and have grown to expect to see it on other blogs, making myself less likely to comment on other sites that don't offer the centralized comments feature.

On a personal note, I was struck by how young Daniel was. At the old age of 31, I'm now reaching the point where just about every Major League Baseball player I like is younger than me. But the CEO of a company I think could have a big impact on the future of the Web being 22, and a UC Davis computer science graduate just this year? That's not fair, and I'm not used to it. Coincidentally, my youngest sister also graduated from Davis on Saturday, sharing Daniel's class year.

Daniel started Disqus in 2007 with friend Jason Yan while in Davis, and this month, doubled the team, adding two new coders, Andrew Badr and Devin Naquin. (See: The New Guy and Hello, world!)

Andrew's already busy letting people know about upcoming features, promising the addition of trackbacks "sometime in the next week.", on the Oracle AppsLab blog. He also answers many people's fears as to the portability of the data, saying, "Better options for import and export are in the works, and will be part of our next major release."

As I wrote at the end of May, Daniel has helped lead Disqus to the forefront of blog comment services in a short time, partly due to his aggressively pursuing relationships with partners. While some companies have targeted Disqus with competitive pot-shots, Daniel said that having others in the field helps to reassure him that it's a good market to pursue. If nobody else was interested in the space, he would undoubtedly be wondering just why.

Disqus is well-known to be funded by Fred Wilson with Union Square Ventures and Paul Graham with Y Combinator, among others, and while some VCs may try to demand immediate revenues or even profits from even the smallest of ventures, Disqus is not yet under such pressure. They've definitely had talks about how to monetize and start bringing in money, but if you thought they were about to start with advertising, you'd be wrong. Disqus will not always be a zero-revenue company, but Daniel says advertising's not in the plans.

For a service that's already got what I believe to the best solution with threaded conversations, a strong GUI and centralized activity, Disqus is continuing to work hard to maintain their lead. Andrew's comments point to near-term release of importing, exporting and trackbacks, and Daniel seems to have an extremely level perspective on what could be a challenging environment for anyone, let alone a 22 year-old entrepreneur. I believe we need a lot more people like Daniel focused on delivering a great customer experience with real benefits, who are less focused on the day to day fights between competitors than they are on getting the service perfected.

TechCrunch's Arrington Launching Recruitment Effort?

This morning, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, amid news and rumors that some blog networks are raising millions of dollars in funding, said that with more to lose in the blogging business, these funded networks are going to get more aggressive, not just in focusing on content, but also on politics, picking fights when necessary. But most interestingly to me, he stated he would like to be part of a proverbial "Dream Team" of bloggers, who if aligned and focused, could take down more established, traditional, media.

In his widely-referenced piece, Arrington said he has been, of late, trying to promote "young but promising" bloggers, specifically mentioning Silicon Alley Insider, CenterNetworks, Mathew Ingram, and me, by name. He wrote, "these guys rarely agree with me, but when they talk I listen because they've put some thought into what they are saying and how they are saying it."

The combination of these two messages in his story led one colleague to tell me over breakfast this morning, "His article made it sound like he was recruiting you - in public."

A fun idea, to be sure, and far-fetched. But not completely impossible.

Bloggers, even those not raising funds, find friends and create informal networks. SheGeeks Joined Grand Effect today, a small tech blog network, including Sarah Perez of Sarah In Tampa. Closer to home, MG Siegler of ParisLemon, Steven Hodson of WinExtra, Jason Kaneshiro of Webomatica, Fredric Lardinois of The Last Podcast and I often refer to ourselves as "The B-List", jokingly mocking our non-elite status. When not linking to each other or leaving comments on our blogs, we're trading e-mail, or monitoring one another's FriendFeed. There's no money in it, and if we formed a network, we probably couldn't raise enough cash to keep the lights on for a month.

But others who are true A-Listers, if that term carries muster, might be on Arrington's short list for what could be the next media empire. And while he set CNET as the target to take down, I'd say that's aiming too low. If Arrington really is interested in taking resumes from aggressive, well-written bloggers, and is answering his phone to calls from potential applicants, it could be little time until the TechCrunch Dream Team starts blocking shots from the rest of the upstarts like an underpowered Angola 1992 squad.

I just want to know who he has in mind.

Dealing With Offline Companies Can be Such a Pain

Unless you're a brand-new visitor to louisgray.com, you might remember a post from a few weeks ago where I revealed my wife and I are expecting twins, our first children. While that announcement was sure exciting, there are a number of very real offline preparations which are going to take real physical labor and change - not the least of which being getting our home ready for two permanent visitors. But as easy as it is to plan things online, it's those offline who can throw snags into the whole operation.

With my wife having more than a decade's experience in teaching school, and the two of us having accumulated our fair share of material goods, we're going to need a place to put some of our own things and get a room in our condo ready for the kids. So, on Monday night, before my trip to Boston, I reserved a 10' by 15' unit at a local Public Storage, letting us start moving our items. I was able to register online, and gained a confirmation e-mail, saying, "This price and unit will be held for 7 days."

But during my time in Boston, Public Storage called my home phone number, which I had left on the site, on Tuesday and Wednesday to confirm we would be ready to move in by Saturday. By Thursday, the afternoon I came home, a final message was left by a woman who gruffly said as we hadn't returned her call, that we had lost our spot. Held for 7 days indeed. A short 7 days from the night of the 25th to the afternoon of the 28th!

Did I get a single e-mail asking me to confirm I would be ready to move in on Saturday? No. If I had gotten one, I definitely would have responded. And what am I supposed to do now? Sue them for breach of contract? It's not even worth it. So of course, I logged back on today and reserved a new unit at a different Public Storage somewhere else in town for about the same amount, and yes, its automated e-mail has the same "7 days" guarantee.

I recognize that I can't exactly compress my offline materials, attach them to an e-mail and send them to a new location, while that would be nice. But it's gotten to the point I expect customer service to be much better and for true online companies to be much more responsive and interactive than these offline clowns. That they wouldn't even think of sending an e-mail, after the initial confirmation made no sense. Why ask for it then?

FriendFeed Opens Up, Raises $5 Million in Funding

After several months in closed beta, available by invitation only, FriendFeed, a leading social service for aggregating your Web lifestream, opened up its doors to the general public tonight, and announced Series A financing of $5 million, including funds from Benchmark Capital and two of the company's co-founders, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh.

In the competitive social activities aggregation landscape, FriendFeed has stood out from the competition thanks to its origins, founded by a small group of former Googlers, its clean design, and its rapid adoption of new features, implemented in a way that benefit users.

While FriendFeed has been at times compared with the FaceBook news feed, FriendFeed offers not a dumping ground for application spam, but instead a new way to "discover and discuss information among friends," as FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor put it in a press release issued late tonight. In my several months of using FriendFeed, it's become a must-visit site multiple times a day, as the service not only streams my Web activity in one central location, but also that of my online peers, giving us the opportunity to comment and share new ideas and findings.

The site has become such a big part of my Web activity, that just yesterday, I made FriendFeed.com my start page online. Also of interest, long-time FriendFeed holdout Robert Scoble finally jumped in to the service feet-first, following repeated prodding from me.

And the prodding hasn't just been focused at inviting new users. FriendFeed, over the last few months, has been overwhelmingly responsive to feedback, including my 10 suggestions for FriendFeed from last December. In just the last few weeks alone, FriendFeed added a new tabbed interface, opened a new company store for FriendFeed logo items, and added options to add items in a new window. They may seem like small details, but the company is constantly innovating.

With FriendFeed opening up tonight, we can expect the service to grow tremendously, kicking off the next wave of social networking services aimed not at posting busy profiles, but instead, aimed at collaboration, sharing and communication. We're excited to see FriendFeed grow, and look forward to their next stage.

Yahoo! Calls Microsoft Cheap, Will Reject Offer

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Yahoo!'s board will rightfully tell Microsoft to go pound sand on their offer, unless the total value of that offer is increased, more than 30 percent ahead of their initial approach, making the value of the deal not $44.6 billion, as originally planned, but now, nearly $60 billion.

As I mentioned last week, Microsoft came after Yahoo! at a time when the company's stock was depressed, and tried to "get the company on the cheap", offering, instead of a massive cash outlay, exchange for fractions of Microsoft shares, which at the time amounted to $31 apiece. But in the ensuing market downturn, the offer became less and less substantial, as Microsoft stock eroded, as repeatedly noted by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley Insider.

Typical in things of this nature, the conflict isn't over technology leadership or how the products and people would overlap, but instead, simply dollars. As Jason Calacanis tweeted this morning, "(translation: $5 bucks more please!)"

I believe that in the face of innovation by Google, Apple, Facebook and many others, Microsoft and Yahoo! don't represent technology leadership and forward-thinking the way they once did. Regardless of the price, Yahoo! should say no to Redmond, and take a new approach to their business to make themselves relevant once again.

Microsoft and Yahoo! Yesterday's News on Yesterday's Companies

In case you were concerned about me, I didn't miss yesterday's news about the proposed Microsoft takeover of my Sunnyvale neighbor, Yahoo!. I just felt that with everyone on the planet, and some in other planets, for sure, talking about it, I'd not only be lost in the noise, but seen as a me-too blogger, which I'm trying to avoid. But we saw it. And we think it'd be a mess.

(Peek at TechMeme for yesterday's million headlines)

Microsoft's goals with a Yahoo! acquisition are clear - try to become relevant in the Web space, including search and social networking. The company saw Yahoo!'s recent dysfunction and hoped to get the company on the cheap, while taking on Google in a more aggressive way. But this won't help their position against the competition, and may actually make the situation worse.

But, if you're Google, a Microsoft-Yahoo! alliance is just about the best thing that ever happened to you. It would combine two of the most confused and unfocused competitors you have, guarantees months to years of integration issues and slowed product development, concern about layoffs and jockeying for position amid increased political infighting. It wouldn't promise improved innovation and technology that would threaten your leadership, but instead take two companies with varying cultures and ask them to beat you together, where individually, they have failed.

If you're Apple, you see Microsoft aligning with Yahoo!, making Google more likely to align with you, which can only be good. You see the company who designed the Zune hook up with the company whose Yahoo! Music offerings went absolutely nowhere. You hope the company keeps making Mac Office, but you've got two backup plans, with your iWork suite, and Google Office.

While Yahoo! once had the leadership position on the Web, and still leads in a few areas, including population on Yahoo! Mail, and a good portion of the portal space, they've fallen behind everywhere else, the exceptions being their smart acquisitions of Web companies like Flickr, MyBlogLog and Del.icio.us. Microsoft never could get there, and while they still own the world's most popular and most hated browser, in Internet Explorer, they've had very little success anywhere else. Even their massive acquisition of Hotmail has turned out to be an unrespected joke.

A Microsoft and Yahoo! combo would have the world's most popular operating system, and the world's most popular office application suite. You could presumably layer on top of that Yahoo!'s widgets, acquired from Konfabulator. You could then integrate Outlook with Yahoo! Mail, and combine MSN search and portal efforts with those of Yahoo!, but just look at what's happened with all the other search acquisitions on Yahoo!'s side: Alta Vista, Inktomi, and Overture, for starters.... have they made Yahoo! better and more popular than Google? No.

A Microsoft/Yahoo! merger would take two tech titans, remove one, and make the combined offering less successful and less innovative than the combined efforts of the original. It'd give Google a free pass and extend their head start. It'd eliminate thousands of overlapping jobs, and send many smart folks out on the street or off to new start-ups. But if Yahoo! knows what's good for it, it'll reject the underpowered Microsoft offer outright, tell Ballmer to pound sand, and take a renewed effort toward integrating its own services and competing aggressively in the market. I just hope they're smart enough to say "No Deal".

Forget the A-List? Not Quite Yet.

Well known A-list blogger and technology evangelist Guy Kawasaki says the time has come where prominent bloggers with brand names aren't any more likely to determine a product's success or failure. As he says it, referencing a recent article in Fast Company, "Lousy reviews by them cannot tank your product. Great reviews cannot make it successful."

But to summarily dismiss the most well-known bloggers as ineffective means to get word out around a new product or Web service is flawed. In my belief, there is no binary "right or wrong" answer here. You shouldn't make outreach to the A-list bloggers OR hope to reach users who can virally make your product a success. A good campaign should be more broad, and include elements of both reaching out to the most widely read, and to early adopters.

We can see Web services every day try to get launched through TechCrunch, GigaOM and Mashable, in hopes that the massive traffic spike will carry them through their next venture capital round and long-term success. People often refer to the ensuing deluge of visitors as "The TechCrunch Effect", as they once did about the "Slashdot Effect". And while we know that eventually traffic goes back down, being profiled by such well-read sites leads to smaller bloggers following on with their own take, trying out the product and writing reviews. In effect, rather than starting at the bottom to get a few links and working their way up, going after the big dogs means getting coverage both at the top and the bottom.

As I told Emanuel Rosen, author of "Anatomy of Buzz", following my first comments on his book, there are new ways to gain buzz and interest across the Web these days, from limited invites and private betas to working Twitter and the B-List. There's no question that each of these elements can deliver users. But to ignore a significant portion of a potential campaign on its face and declare it one to "Forget" is silly.

Some of us may wish the A-List concept were dead and gone, but it's not yet, and it won't be for some time, and if one name were to go down, there's no doubt another would rise to take its place. In every marketplace there are leaders who wield an inordinate share of power. Simply wishing them away won't make it so.

Resisting Temptation at Fry's and the Apple Store

Yesterday, I pulled off a daring two-fer, as a friend and I went to the Palo Alto Fry's, and later to the Apple Store, and I managed not to buy a thing. Despite being surrounded by flat-screen televisions, DVDs, video games and widgets of every kind to support my iPod and Mac habit, we were thrifty, and didn't get our credit cards out once. Tough job.

But that didn't mean I resisted letting my geek flag fly.

At Fry's, I wore a tie-dyed Apple logoed t-shirt throughout the store. While everyone else was bundled up from the storm-like weather outside, I donned the t-shirt, sensing a marketing/advertising community, helping to push the unwashed, white box PC builders at Fry's to consider a healthier alternative.

When at the Apple Store, we outgeeked the sales reps themselves. As we messed around with a 30-inch Cinema Display, we ended up showing the employee some of our favorite Web tools, from Assetbar to FriendFeed. We showed off high-quality videos playing on our iPod Touch. We even introduced him to products we knew the company sold on the online Apple Store but not in their retail store. After a while, the guy was asking us if we were "visiting from corporate", i.e. from the mother ship in Cupertino.

Interestingly enough, the Apple Store in Palo Alto continues to be a major hub for Silicon Valley digerati. Years after seeing Apple CEO Steve Jobs there, in the store's early days, last night I recognized and talked with Michael Arrington from TechCrunch. He reported he's not going to CES, and said Om Malik is still in the ICU, but has been well-protected by his team, so updates have been slim. Arrington said it was good to meet fellow bloggers, and it's likely not too often he's recognized in the real world.

So, that was fun. Why didn't I buy anything? Because we're still recuperating from the holiday purchases. I didn't tell you we bought a 50-inch Samsung plasma screen from Fry's on Christmas Eve for our living room, and got a guy to take our old, bulky, entertainment center. So that means our overhaul is further along, but not complete. We still need to get both TVs on the wall, and get a smaller half-height entertainment center. Then, maybe... I can start buying again.

10 Predictions for 2008 In the World of Tech

1) Google Will Trump Both TechMeme and FeedHeads

Amid the discussion of Google's sneaking in a social network, little has been said about Google Reader potentially tabulating and reporting the most commonly-shared items and most popular feeds. I believe that in 2008, Google Reader will start reporting the most popular feeds, clicked items and shared items. By the end of 2008, it will become equally important for bloggers, if not more so, to be atop this list, instead of on TechMeme. Google will also integrate this information for both Facebook and iPhone, competing head to head with Mario Romero's excellent Feedheads application.

2) Facebook Will Buy Digg in an All-Stock Transaction

With the company being valued at $15 billion, Facebook can offer around 5 percent of the company to Kevin Rose and team at Digg and net them pre-IPO shares of what's sure to be a white-hot 2009 offering. The all-stock transaction would value Digg above $500 million, the highest possible exit for the company. Public companies, including Microsoft, will counter with $300 million of real money and be rebuffed.

3) eBay Will Sell StumbleUpon to Yahoo! or News Corporation

eBay has done absolutely nothing with StumbleUpon since the service's $75 million acquisition. Unlike PayPal, which was a natural fit, StumbleUpon has no fit within the ecosystem of eBay. A more acquisition-savvy businesses, like Yahoo! or News Corp, will end up with the property by the end of the year. Expect this to accelerate alongside management changes at eBay and continued fallout after the Skype disaster. What it will do is pocket eBay some serious cash. This time, StumbleUpon goes for north of $200M.

4) Twitter Will Add Video, Photography Support

Moving outside of its 140-character niche, Twitter will enable bored microbloggers to show exactly what they are doing with still photos and 15 second video clips. Despite the novelty wearing off, many will continue to do so, gaining us precious photos of the window over their computer desk, overexposed facial closeups and pictures of their breakfast. The service will be integrated with Picasa, Flickr and Photobucket.

5) Apple Boot Camp Will Morph to Be Like Parallels, VMWare Fusion

Some time in 2008, Apple's Boot Camp application will no longer require a restart to run Windows applications. Users will be able to natively run Microsoft Outlook, Project, Access and all other Windows-only applications alongside their Mac OS X applications on any new Mac. While developers may decry the competition to Parallels and VMWare Fusion, Apple will remain quiet, and slowly take over the market.

6) At Least One Major Browser Will Embed Ad-Blocking

By the end of 2008, either Firefox, Safari or Opera will natively ship with the ability to block all ad banners and Google AdSense. Publishers and bloggers will make a lot of noise about it, while secretly avoiding ads themselves. A significant percentage of early adopters will change browsers solely for this feature.

7) Assetbar and FriendFeed Will Gain Early Adopter Audiences

Early adopters always looking for an edge will move away from Bloglines and Google Reader in search for something more cutting-edge. Many will turn to FriendFeed and Assetbar, following the latter's launch, to find a rich feed reader with social networking features. However, neither service will enjoy a significant market share prior to the end of 2008, and neither will be acquired by the end of 2008.

8) Video Blogging Will Remain Unpopular, Unprofitable

Despite advances in video capture and broadband speeds, Web users will not gravitate toward long-form video blogs, choosing instead to stick with text and photography. Only the rare extreme niche businesses will find any success with utilizing video for blogging.

9) iTunes Video Rentals Will Decimate Netflix, Blockbuster, Hurt Box Office

The introduction of video rentals on iTunes will not only force a dramatic subscriber exit for Netflix and reduced rentals at Blockbuster, but will also further slow attendance at movie theaters nationwide, as consumers find the service good enough, and much less inexpensive than a night out.

10) Fast Company Will be a Fast Stay for Robert Scoble

After joining FastCompany in early 2008, Robert Scoble will be at first jubilant, have initial success, and then plateau. While he will remain tremendously popular, there will already be discussions by the end of 2008 as to where he will end up in 2009, giving ValleyWag and Uncov, among others, plenty to gossip about.

Other 2008 predictions:
Jeremy Toeman: Technology Predictions for 2008
Paris Lemon: The Year Ahead 2008: 17 Predictions
The Economist: Technology in 2008
Mahalo: 2008 Technology Predictions
Center Networks: 2008 Predictions from CenterNetworks

TechCrunch Reports AOL Completes Netscape's Demise

It's silly how one can get nostalgic over a software application, but Netscape Navigator, in its original incarnation represented to many, including myself, the first days of massive Web adoption. Netscape was the first huge Internet IPO, and the first real solid challenge to Microsoft's monopoly, after Apple had made its share of missteps. Now, as TechCrunch reports, the browser is officially left to die.

While I had used Mosaic prior to Navigator, I dutifully downloaded all the beta versions of Netscape on my Mac my freshman year of college. My roommates didn't understand why I kept Navigator 0.93, 1.1 and 1.12 on my hard drive. Some part of me wanted them for history, I guess. But as we all know, it was Netscape who became history. Internet Explorer dealt them a body blow, and Microsoft squeezed their life from them. Then AOL's acquisition of Netscape made things unbearable.

The browser stagnated, and Apple had grown closer to Microsoft, as Steve Jobs told an annoyed Macworld crowd that Internet Explorer would be the Mac's default browser. Mac IE 5 was actually pretty good too! Meanwhile, Navigator skipped version 5 altogether, and rolled out a clunker, moving from Netscape 4 to Netscape 6, but it was too late. And by then, we'd all moved on - to IE, to FireFox, and eventually, to Safari. Now, Netscape is but a blip in Silicon Valley history, one that helped kick off the first Web bubble, preparing the way for future tech giants like Yahoo! and Google, and reinvigorating the economy.

A quick search of my Mail archives shows the importance of Netscape.

As I wrote in February of 1996 in a letter home, my freshman year, called "Bad tech day":

"About dinnertime, my computer went totally nuts. To make a long story short, my entire sytem folder was thrown away, including all extensions, preferences, and the like.The final result may still not be final, but there are some key things missing. ALL mail from Eudora which I had saved since October is GONE. All mailboxes. All adresses. All nicknames. All Bookmarks for Netscape, which I was proud of. Gone."

Later, from March of 1996 in another letter home, called "Checks and balances":

"Here's something annoying. I have a Macintosh. Non-Power PC, with a 68030 processor... This means I don't have a Java-supporting Netscape browser, to view live sports scores, and I can't download RealAudio 2.0, which I also need. Ahh. The life of the underprivileged."

Later in March, I sent home a "Top Ten Anagrams for Netscape Communications". I have no idea where I first got it, so apologies to whomever I ripped off:

Top Ten Anagrams for "Netscape Communications"

10.Companies can't consume it
9.I cannot compute sans mice
8.Can't access 'net... I'm on opium
7.Um, options scam can entice
6.Net's uncommon capacities
5.Connect communities, ASAP
4.Mosaic IPO, etc., can stun men
3.Optimum 'net access: An icon
2.Connect it up; amass income

And the number one anagram for "Netscape Communications":
1.Mosaic, minus neat concept

Just think, those e-mails home were from 11 years ago, and we're still talking about Netscape today. While AOL and Microsoft can take away the company and its browser, they can't take away its legacy. Long live Netscape.

Shopping for Your Mac Geek This Holiday Season

Want to really get your favorite Mac geek on the road to happiness this holiday? Aside from dropping two large on a new MacBook Pro, or latching them to a long-term AT&T contract by getting them an iPhone, one of the more unique ways to ensure they'll love you forever is to get them some rare Apple schwag. And a few choice sites have just the thing for their Apple itch - be it Apple t-shirts, Apple watches, Apple caps, posters, stickers, or jackets.

You'd think the best place to get Apple gear would be from Apple themselves, but aside from the retail store at their corporate headquarters in Cupertino, you're basically S.O.L. (That stands for ... uh... Store Offers Little)

Thanks to the scarcity of Apple-branded merchandise, it's unlikely you'll find major bargain basement pricing, but for years, Red Light Runner and The Missing Bite have done good business online selling to Mac afficionados like me. On top of all my Mac hardware, I've probably got 5 shirts, a cap, a pair of fleece jackets (for my wife and me) and several Apple watches. And despite this plethora of riches, I'm always looking for more. In fact, my latest purchases arrived today. (A new Tie Dye Shirt for me, T-shirt for my wife, and... another watch)


Images Courtesy of The Missing Bite
As many in the Mac world know, Steve Jobs famously shot down Apple's licensing program, not just for Mac clones, but for a line of "Think Different" watches, which feature the Apple logo, and run backwards - thinking different indeed. I bought a pair of these watches for $59 or so five years ago, and thanks to scarcity, have seen the offering prices only skyrocket to nearly $200 today. But trust me, I wouldn't sell mine even if you offered me $400 apiece. They're that good and unique. In fact, by this point, when I look at a so-called "normal" clock, I have to mentally reverse the hands to get the time right.

You've got just over two weeks until Christmas. And while I wouldn't mind it if you purchased me an iPod Touch off my Amazon.com wish list, I'm not expecting it. So make some other Apple geek happy and get them to show off their Apple love in style!

Buy Your Favorite Bloggers a Gift this Holiday

In my house, Christmas and Amazon.com are intertwined. Around this time every year, I update my Amazon.com Wish List, let friends and family know, and one by one, watch my requested gifts transition from the "Unpurchased" to "Purchased". But Amazon.com's Wish Lists are often made public, giving you the option to send gifts to friends, family, or people you've never met - including some major names in the blogosphere.

Updated: Dec. 3rd at 7:00 p.m., editing Steven Hodson's list...

While some of their lists are quite out of date, if you're wondering how can you make a leading blogger happy this holiday? Let's take a look...

1. Om Malik (GigaOM)
Amazon Wish List

Om wants both a new digital camera and a camcorder. He's settled on the Sony Cybershot DSCW55 7.2MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom and Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD2 7.1MP MPEG4 High Definition Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom. The first retails for $165, and the second, for just under $600.

He also wants some CDs, and has been waiting since 2003 for someone to buy him Jim Rogers' Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip". Those last items are significantly cheaper.

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2. Richard McManus (Read/Write Web)
Amazon Wish List

Though he hails from Wellington, New Zealand, Richard's list is filled with U.S.-created music and books, ranging from Nirvana's With the Lights Out box set to Michael Lewis' Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life, and Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It .

Most items are in the $10 to $40 range, something you just might be able to afford.

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3. Kevin Rose (Digg and Revision3)
Amazon Wish List

Kevin's pearly whites made the cover of BusinessWeek in 2006 as he gave a goofy smile and thumbs up to the magazine's story on a new "brat pack of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs". Despite this, Amazon.com lets us know he still needs an Oral B 7850DLX Professional Care Power Toothbrush, which retails at just over $100.

While he still may need the toothbrush, some of his older items I doubt are still on his most wanted list, including the 3rd generation 10 gigabyte Apple iPod, and Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)> DVD.

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4. Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing)
Amazon Wish List

Cory is looking for a Walt Disney Treasures DVD on "Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond" from 1959, as well as a number of books from Jane Jacobs, including Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics and Cities and the Wealth of Nations.

Sounds thrilling.

As fun as those may or may not be, they'll do him more good than the pair of Handspring springboard modules he asked for back in 2001 to deliver GPS and remote control capabilities to the line of now-extinct handhelds.

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5. Guy Kawasaki (How to Change the World)
Amazon Wish List

Guy is a simple fellow. He's looking solely to get Total Hockey: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Hockey League. It looks like you can pick up a used copy of the 2003 edition for just under $5. Given how little he opted to spend on making Truemors, maybe this budget is just what he's looking for!

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6. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
Amazon Wish List

Mark can probably buy just about anything he wants now, which explains why his Wish List is empty. However, when he was back in Dobbs Ferry, New York, before heading West to fame and fortune, he did ask for the Unrated version of American Pie, and Cruel Intentions, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillipe.

Maybe he'll refill his wish list soon. And maybe not.

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7. Loic Le Meur (Loic Le Meur.com)
Amazon Wish List

Similar to Guy, Loic only has one item in his wish list, a 2004 book titled We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture. It retails for about $15. With his Seesmic application growing like crazy, it looks like he's got this Web app and blog thing nailed, but I'd feel better if somebody bought him the book.

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8. Maryam Scoble (Maryamie)
Amazon Wish List

While Robert Scoble's Amazon.com wish list isn't easy to find, you can still support the family by getting his wife, Maryam, a good book. She's quite the reader, looking for help on Babyproofing Your Marriage and solving problems with the Baby Whisperer.

When not reading, Maryam wouldn't mind a pair of ladies' Italian leather dress gloves (which Robert didn't get her last year, it appears), along with greatest hits albums by Elvis Presley and The Beatles.

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9. Steven Hodson (WinExtra)
Amazon Wish List

Steven, aiming to become the best Windows developer he can be, has asked for programming books on the Windows Presentation Foundation, including Programming WPF and Code + Markup: A Guide to the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation.

Unlike his prior list, which was stuck in the 2004 era, he swears this one will be updated more frequently.

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10. Kent Newsome (Newsome.org)
Amazon Wish List

Like Om, Kent is looking to upgrade his photographer cred by adding more hardware. Specifically, he's asking for a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens and the Sony Cybershot DSCV3 7.2MP Digital Camera with 4x Optical Zoom. Of course, they're not for the faint of heart. Buying either will set you back in the neighborhood of $500.

If you have a smaller budget, Kent also has a list of books he'd like, ranging from The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett to False Dawn, by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Also, way back in 2004, Kent asked for a number of CDs from Howlin' Wolf that has yet to go fulfilled.

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11. MG Siegler (ParisLemon)
Amazon Wish List

Now here's a good list. MG Siegler wants Al Gore's book, The Assault on Reason, the Unrated version of SuperBad on DVD, and shockingly, an AppleTV.

Unsurprisingly, MG also wouldn't mind if you bought him a new MacBook Pro, worth $2,500, or some games for the Wii, which typically retail around $50.

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12. Jason Kaneshiro (Webomatica)
Amazon Wish List

It's no secret Jason loves his TV and movies. That's why his inclusion of box sets for Star Trek, Superman and Battlestar Galactica make sense.

He's also requesting one of my personal favorites, the DVD, Startup.com. If you're buying one for him, buy one for yourself too.

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Know more? Let us know, and we'll hope to add the Amazon wish lists of more famous bloggerati. It'd be great to show them we care by buying a few stocking stuffers. And if you're on this list, and your Amazon Wish List is in need of an update, let's get it done! The same goes for those of you who I searched for and couldn't find anything for certain. That means you, Steve Rubel, Gabe Rivera, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Dave Winer, Pete Cashmore, Mathew Ingram, Ryan Block, Duncan Riley, Ross Mayfield and Hugh Macleod!

Silicon Valley Media Notables Divide "Hot" from "Not"

This evening, I had the opportunity to attend a fun panel put on by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Silicon Valley at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, featuring some of the Valley's top reporters, from the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNBC, Kara Swisher of All Things Digital, and uber-blogger Robert Scoble. The panelists, all "Hot" in their own right, shared with the PR-heavy audience what they thought were the biggest hits of 2007, and what's next in the coming year.

Virtually all panelists said 2007 could be summarized through the success of a few companies: Apple, Google and Facebook, to name a few, the rise of the iPhone, user generated content, social networks, Twitter, and advertising-driven firms. But some said a tide was going to turn with the change in the calendar year, away from consumer-driven technology, and toward enterprise. Also, many expected a combination of bad news to hit the Valley and the economy at large - a market downturn, a recession, and bursting of what could be seen as the advertising bubble, with many companies riding the second wave to Web upstarts to disappear altogether.

Kara Swisher, author of AOL.com (a must read, featured in my bookshelf), was one of the stars of the evening, proving herself intelligent, quick, witty, sarcastic and perfectly willing to mock Second Life, Facebook widgets or the other panelists at any opportunity.

At the other end of the table was Robert Scoble, with Amazon Kindle alongside, playing the part of the only true digerati on the panel. His brazen openness and willingness to engage with his readers through his blog, through Twitter and Facebook, and request to be contacted by cell phone, was in stark contrast to others all too tired of PR pitches - most who said they preferred e-mail. He was one of the few to bring up private startup companies he likes, including Kyte.TV, and vehemently disagreed with CNBC's Jim Goldman on whether Microsoft was seeing a string of success with Vista, Zune and the XBox. And when he stated he read 800 RSS feeds a day, the response was one of shock from his fellow panelists, who jokingly compared him to the notoriously always-on Marissa Mayer of Google.

The far-ranging discussion chided the US government for being too focused on "the friggin' flag", as Swisher mentioned, instead of working to get the country in a leadership position on broadband and wireless, while nations like Vietnam, South Korea and Europe were able to get their act together. She postulated that had the development of the United States' interstate highways been managed in the same way, we'd be on cobblestones.

Other comments were that ad-driven media companies will see a spike in spending to the tune of $100 million around the 2008 presidential election, a one-time jump that will go away, painfully, in 2009, that Yahoo! better get off its kiester and figure out what it's going to do with all its users and products, and that Google just might continue disrupting every new market it enters, including wireless.

While I'd met some of the panelists and others in the room before, it was my first time meeting Scoble personally, but given our online discussions, talking with him had an immediate air of familiarity and friendship, one forged through shared experiences and points of view. (He was no idiot...)I'd be eager to sit in on more discussions like this, and to see if these notables were right with what they expect for 2008.

eTrade's Losses Are Investors' Gain

The last time I mentioned eTrade's issues, I said I had bought in to the stock around $5.50, following a small recovery after bad news swirling around the company had decimated its market value. Not seeing the kind of continued growth I had expected right away, I sold my position a few days later around $5.65. I'd made a few hundred bucks, but nothing to write home about. But now I'm back in, and it's a different story - one that could be much more profitable.

After I sold on November 16th, eTrade stock resumed its collapse, falling below $4 a share - signaling to me the right opportunity to resume my eTrade gamble (Partly due to this article). So on Wednesday morning, I put a sizable chunk back into the stock, now at $3.89 a share. It looks like it may have been the right move, as while rumors of a potential merger with Schwab.com or TD Ameritrade have been swirling, the stock jumped about 25% today, ending at $5.33 a share, giving me a 37% gain in a two day period, and an "on paper" profit of more than $3,500 so far.

Why play eTrade? Because I believe they have the best brand among online brokerages, and that their customer base will be a valuable commodity, even if they are sold or merge with a competitor. It's also likely the eTrade name would be kept, if not too damaged. After all, who wants a new name like TDAmerE*Trade or SchwabTrade.com? An eTrade customer can only benefit from this.

As an investor, I believe my funds are safe, and that the value of the company is higher than it is today. I've made more than my fair share of bad stock trades in the past, whether from premature selling or simply bad buying, but I'll be watching this one close, hoping it turns out well.

(Also see: Silicon Alley Insider: E*Trade On The Blocks? Probably., BusinessWeek: E*Trade: The Merger Buzz Grows, or E-Trade Shares Spike on Takeover Talk)

Apple's One Day Sale Lacks Premium Product Discounts

As the company does every year, Apple is holding a one-day "Day after Thanksgiving" sale, encouraging buyers to get an early jump on the holiday rush. But while iMacs, MacBooks, and low-end iPods were on sale, at roughly 5-10% discounts, the company's most sought-after products, including the iPhone and iPod Touch, didn't get a single dollar's worth of reduction.

As many Mac-focused sites reported, including MacRumors and Chris Pirillo, you could save from $51 to $101 off the price of a new iMac, the same $51 to $101 off from MacBooks, and anywhere from $11 to $31 apiece on iPod Shuffles and the iPod Classic.


While Apple billed the sale as letting customers "save big on some of our best sellers", it seemed you're really only able to "save small" on some of their products. The company's front page also stated, "Save big on iPod, iPhone and Mac gifts," but instead of discount iPhones, you instead have the option to get price-reduced bluetooth headsets, or carrying sleeves. Not exactly the same thing.

If you were interested in getting a new iPod Touch, iPhone or MacBook Pro, there's no sale for you. So not even this Apple fanboy will be reaching for his credit card for this sale.

Importing PST Files: GMail's Would Be Secret Weapon

If you listen the rumbles in Silicon Valley, you would think Google's office suite and Apple's Mac OS X operating system were taking over the world. But the further you get outside the Valley, and often within the Valley itself, you see that Microsoft Windows is still the dominant operating system, as are its application counterparts, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office. If you're a real enterprise, it's basically assumed you're running Outlook.

But the biggest drag on using Outlook has got to be the stupid .PST files. With any kind of serious e-mail archiving, they top out at 2 Gigabytes apiece. Keep the same e-mail address for any kind of time, and you're left not only with multiple .PST files, each being 2 Gigs or so, but it's a new job just to keep track of what .PST files correspond with what amount of time.

Running desktop search software, like Google Desktop, helps to find the old e-mails, but often, clicking a link saying to "Reveal in Outlook" leads to a dead end. Sometimes the archives don't open well. Sometimes Outlook chooses to archive to your local desktop instead of to the network, and any kind of bug could leave you with huge gaps.

Meanwhile, with this playing out in companies everywhere, Google is offering about 5 gigabytes of storage space to consumers everywhere through GMail. Just this evening I was told I'm using "221 MB (4%) of your 5123 MB." For business customers, this number is upped to 25 gigabytes of storage. While that's fantastic for new businesses, anybody already using Outlook has to honor the old .PSTs if they want to get to old messages.

But what if you could import old PST files into GMail, honoring the folder hierarchies you had set up, and had the ability to search through all your e-mail, through all its history? While there's no doubt the import of a single 2 Gigabyte PST file would take a good amount of time, the end result - a single, searchable, Web-based e-mail archive for all your messages would be the holy grail. I believe that with all the issues surrounding Microsoft Outlook - including licensing, viruses, and... the PST files, the prospect of moving to GMail would be quite inviting. But until GMail can help migrate away from Microsoft altogether, real growth will be stunted.

Other comments: PST Files to Gmail, Anyone know of a PST to gmail or mbox converter?

Apple Analysis Analysis - Earnings Call Extra

Following today's earnings announcement from Apple, the company held a conference call with analysts, which is typical. Thanks to Seeking Alpha, we have the full transcript from the call, and can see how often analysts and the company talked about specific aspects of the company's business.

As you can see in the below chart, despite having revenue of more than 60% of the company's business, the Mac, by all accounts, growing in market share, played the poor second cousin to the continued buzz around iPhone and iPod.


Click to Enlarge Image

Using Safari 3's "find matches" tally, we see the call featured the following terms the following number of times:

iPhone: 51 times
iPod: 41 times
Mac: 25 times
AT&T: 12 times
iTunes: 8 times
Leopard: 7 times
Macbook: 4 times
iMac: 4 times
Macintosh: 3 times
iPod Touch: 2 times
iLife: 2 times
Apple TV: 1 time
iWork: 1 time

** The two iPod Touch mentions are also included in the larger iPod number.

While Apple reported that Mac products and services were 62% of total revenue, in contrast to 36% for Music products and services, iPod and iPhone total mentions outpaced Mac mentions by a combined 92 to 36. Throw in AT&T and iTunes, and Music outpaces Mac by a whopping 112 to 36. Who cares about actual revenue when you've got buzz?

Also, the laggards in Apple's portfolio, iWork and Apple TV, got just about the amount of attention I would have expected - one mention apiece. It's not as fun to talk about those aspects of the business that aren't gracing magazine covers and becoming the must-have items of 2007.

To listen to the call yourself, check out Apple's archive on their Web site.