Marketing Articles About Networking Search Results

1. The Ryder Cup of Word of Mouth. Sean Moffitt at Agent Wildfire, author of blog Buzz Canuck, just published a list of top 23 U.S. Word of Mouth bloggers. As described by Sean..."...these broad-minded bloggers and company heads have distinguished themselves by trying to understand how ideas spread, online and offline, through a range of different strategies and tactics. In my opinion, they are much closer to the purpose and benefits of web 2.0, co-creation, social networks and other web, cultural and social phenomenon."I tip my hat to him for adding me to the list. I'm honored to be among this group. And I need to work on fulfilling this honor by keeping up on this blog, though these days I do a lot of blogging on Social Commerce and WOM on Bazaarblog.Here's his list of the USA Team:1. Jackie Huba/Ben McConnell - Church of the Customer (Austin, Texas)2. Andy Sernovitz - Damn! I Wish I Thought of That! (Chicago, Illinois)3. Pete Blackshaw - CGM (4. Jim Nail - Cymfony5. Ed Keller - Keller Fay6. Jeremiah Owyang - Web Strategist7. Rohit Bhargarva - Influential Marketing8. Owen Mack - CoBrandIt9. Walter Karl - WOM Study10. Fred Reichheld - Net Promoter - Boston11. Max Kalehoff - Attention Max12. Oliver Blanchard - Brand Builder13. Charlene Li - Groundswell14. Sam Decker15. Joseph Jaffe16. John Moore - Brand Autopsy (Austin, Texas)17. Peter Kim, Being Peter Kim (Austin, Texas)18. Mack Collier - The Viral Garden19. Spike Jones - Brains on Fire20. Ron McDaniel - Buzzoodle21.John Jantsch - Duct Tape Marketing22. Kim Proctor -... (09/07/08 09:00 PM)

2. Rodale Syndicates Print Content to Glam Media. Rodale shall partner with women's online network Glam Media to provide branded articles, slide shows and videos from Women's Health and Prevention magazines, reports MediaBuyerPlanner. The content...

   

   (09/05/08 09:01 AM)

3. Email's Effectiveness Erodes Against Texting, SocNets, Mobile. Use of online social networking, text messaging and cell phones is diminishing the effectiveness of email marketing, especially among consumers that say promotional messages inspire their purchases,...

   

   (09/05/08 09:01 AM)

4. Industry Buzz & Snippets: 9/2/08. Ad Networks and Analytics: Google is preparing a measurement system for display advertising on YouTube, comparable to the Quality Score system used for paid search. Agencies and Marketing...

   

   (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

5. Lookery is in Boulder Tonight.

   The gang from Lookery is in Boulder tonight and having a publisher meetup from 6:30pm to 9:00pm in the TechStars Bunker at 1375 Walnut Street.  I've started using Lookery on Feld Thoughts and am starting to collect a different set of analytics about you, oh blog reader.

   Lookery is a user-targeting service and advertising network. They provide free analytics to promote to publishers, bringing them attention, organic traffic, sales leads, and partnership opportunities.  They are looking for publishers who represent:

   • as much Facebook app and consumer Internet page volume as possible , preferably attached to big registration databases, and
   • as many online marketing services execs as possible.

   Cool stuff - definitely worth hanging out and having a beer with them if you fit the description or think you might want to partner with them.  Sign up on the Facebook page for the event.

   

   
   (09/04/08 09:00 PM)

6. 9 Out of 10 Top Network Shows Are on Fox. Fox's "House" and ESPN's "Home Run Derby" generated the most out-of-home (OOH) viewing in July among primetime broadcast and cable shows, respectively, each attracting 570,000 OOH viewers, according...

   

   (09/04/08 09:01 AM)

7. 90210 Invades Mobile Units. For the next three days, teen network The CW will run an internet and mobile campaign for TV series 90210, which debuted last night. The campaign reportedly cost $50,000. A "virtual billboard" will...

   

   (09/03/08 09:01 AM)

8. Battlefront Turns UK 'Net Junkies into Agents for Change. To encourage teens to use the web "as a canvas for social change," the UK's Channel 4 and AOL-owned social network Bebo launched Battlefront. The site's tagline is "You're already involved." 19 young...

   

   (09/03/08 09:01 AM)

9. 8 Tips on How to Maximize Your Business Cards Printing Services. Business cards are very important tools to have when you want to expand business contacts as well as if you want to expand your network of friends and clients. Because of the importance of business ca... (09/02/08 09:01 AM)

10. This Week’s Links. Comcast puts broadband usage limits on its oversold network. This study shows that increasing tax rates makes people report more taxable income. Dean Baker notes that the rise in durable goods orders–one of the economy’s only current strong points–has to do with machinery. The Daily Green has a list of the ten greenest presidents in US history. [...] (08/29/08 09:00 PM)

11. Genewize Life Sciences and Attraction Marketing.. Genewize Life Sciences is a network marketing company and like all other network marketing companies, they offer the opportunity for people, like you and me, to market their products in exchange for a... (08/28/08 09:00 PM)

12. Lifetime Purchases ParentClick Network. Lifetime Networks acquired ParentClick Network for $10 million, marking a more serious focus on the digital arena. San Francisco-based ParentClick owns Mothersclick and Fathersclick, which enable...

    

    (08/28/08 09:01 AM)

13. Amazon Acquires Shelfari.

    Congrats to Josh Hug and the gang at Shelfari for joining the Amazon.com family.  I was an early angel investor in Shelfari and have been a long time avid user of the service.  Amazon was an investor in the first round and the two companies fit naturally together.

    I invested in three vertical social networks in 2006 - Shelfari (books), Dogster (dogs and cats), and Enthusiast Group (sports).  So far I have one win (Shelfari) and one loss (Enthusiast Group).  Dogster is doing great and looks like it'll be a nice winner also.  I made these as small angel investments to learn about the dynamics around vertical social networks.  I've learned a bunch from Josh and from Ted Rheingold at Dogster.  It also looks like I'll have a nice "aggregate financial outcome" for my investments in this area.

    Well done Shelfari!

    

    
    (08/27/08 09:00 PM)

14. Streaming TV Network TheWB.com Goes Live Today. Today marks the debut of TheWB.com, Warner Brothers' contender to existing streaming show and movie sites like Hulu. The WB was a teen-oriented TV network that died quietly in 2006. (The CW, also a...

    

    (08/27/08 09:00 PM)

15. Telecommuters Get No Lovin’ From Their ISPs. Los Angeles Times: Gas prices are soaring, roads are congested and you’ve gotten kind of hooked on Days of Our Lives. Sounds like it’s time to telecommute. But good luck trying to use your virtual private network, or VPN, while sending e-mail and surfing the Web. According to a Forrester Research study released Wednesday, telecommunication companies don’t [...]
    (08/27/08 09:00 PM)

16. Amazon Snaps Up Book-Lover SocNet Shelfari. Amazon.com has acquired social library network Shelfari for an undisclosed amount. Shelfari lets users showcase books they've read on virtual bookshelves. Books can be reviewed and discussed among...

    

    (08/26/08 09:01 PM)

17. Obama’s Success: It’s the Online Networking, Stupid. The divide between presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama doesn’t end with years and ideology. It also exhibits itself through the Internet. According to an MIT Technology Review article written by David Talbot, Barack Obama has managed to create the best online political machine the nation has ever seen. John McCain, on the other [...] (08/26/08 09:00 PM)

18. Industry Buzz & Snippets: 8/26/08. Ad Networks and Analytics: Brand.net, an ad network for brand advertisers, raised $10 million in its second round of funding, led by Norwest Venture Partners. This brings its total funding to $13...

    

    (08/26/08 09:01 AM)

19. Sugar Is Sweet Times For A Web Network. Mercury News: A husband and wife team with the serendipitous surname of “Sugar” may have found the recipe for successfully combining content, e-commerce and social networking on a site that attracts a most attractive demographic: women ages 18 to 44. Brian and Lisa Sugar are the founders of San Francisco-based sugarinc.com, an online media company with a [...]
    (08/25/08 09:00 PM)

20. Travel Ad Network Adds Two: IATA, tripwolf. Travel Ad Network, the top ad network in travel, added the IATA Travel Centre and tripwolf to its swelling ranks. The IATA Travel Centre is operated by the International Air Transport Association. It...

    

    (08/25/08 09:01 AM)

21. Interpublic, SocialVibe Go Fishing for Brand Evangelists. Interpublic is preparing a marketing platform that may "enable Madison Avenue to unleash the power of social networks on behalf of their clients' brands," MediaPost claims. The service is the fruit...

    

    (08/25/08 09:01 AM)

22. P4P Will Make 4 a Speedier Net, Profs Say. The broadband problem that has baffled ISP providers for years may be solved by two professors, one algorithm and a little thing they call "P4P." P4P, which stands for Proactive network Provider...

    

    (08/22/08 09:01 AM)

23. Fast Talk Question - How will social networking and blogging converge over the next year?. How will social networking and blogging converge over the next year? (08/21/08 09:01 PM)

24. In The Stupid Patent Advertising Category.

    It's DNC time in Denver and all kinds of weird advertisements are popping up all over the place, including the airport.  My partner Jason sent me a photo of this one today with the heading "Puke".

    

    I put this in the "you've got to be fucking kidding me" category.  Let's break it down.  Here are the messages:

    • Life Liberty and the Pursuit of More Patents
    • Averaging 2 Patent Applications Per Day
    • Official Wireless provider for the Democratic National Convention

    Let me guess - AT&T is positioning themselves as a key supporter of no patent reform.  Or, maybe AT&T is positioning themselves as key advocators of patenting everything under the sun.  Maybe they are advocating that they should give their engineers bonuses for every patent they file.  Maybe they are trying to say that a good democracy has lots and lots of patents.  What ARE they trying to say?

    Regardless we know that big companies can submit lots and lots of patents.  Hey AT&T - two applications per day isn't actually all that many anymore!  How about telling us about some of the real innovation you are doing. 

    Actually, can you just spend some time improving your 3G network so my iPhone calls don't drop as often?

    

    
    (08/21/08 09:01 AM)

25. This Couple Just Made $500 Million. Inc.: The tech world was abuzz when AOL acquired Bebo for $850 million. If you’ve never heard of the company, you’re hardly alone. Bebo is a solid but second-tier social network in the U.S. in terms of traffic — the site trails MySpace and Facebook by a considerable margin. Bebo is, however, huge in Britain, where [...]
    (08/20/08 09:00 PM)

26. Do You Have a Monthly Budget? It’s Probably Off, According to These Researchers. Budgets, like paperwork, bills, and expenses, fall into a class of business terminology that immediately makes my eyes glaze. The problem with that Pavlovian reaction is that budgets are utterly essential for any business owner. They’re the venal network of your financial flows, giving structure to something that would otherwise appear disjointed and emotional. Ignoring [...] (08/19/08 09:00 PM)

27. David Hasselhoff Founds “Hoffspace,” His Own Social Networking Site. “The Hoff”, of Knight Rider and Baywatch fame, has launched his own MySpace-like social networking site. Hoffspace, a more elaborate substitute for Hasselhoff’s MySpace page, now boasts nearly 12,500 members. Here’s some background from the site: In my travels round the world I have always been surprised that no matter where I go people recognize and [...] (08/18/08 09:00 AM)

28. This Week’s Links. A Kiev-based bank analyst predicted Russia’s invasion of Georgia two days before it happened in a highly intuitive email. Econobrowser outlines how American energy consumption is currently falling. Time to celebrate? Hardly. Physorg.com covers a robot whose “brain” consists of a network of rat neurons. Creepy. US detention centers kill people. And not just in Guantanamo. Conde Nast [...] (08/15/08 09:00 PM)

29. The Web's 10 Most Unusual Social Networks.

    Trying to meet people on MySpace or Facebook is like participating in one of those office gift exchanges: you have no idea what you're going to get. Witness the rise of niche social networks, where hamster enthusiasts, mustache lovers, even lonely farmers can find kindred spirits to commune (and sometimes sleep) with. Want to post photos of yourself in zombie makeup to an appreciative audience? Are you obsessed with making predictions -- about just about anything? Read on to find a site for people just like you.

    (08/08/08 09:01 AM)

30. Why do women use social networks more than men?. Why do women use social networks more than men? (08/03/08 09:01 AM)

31. Seth Reopens Triiibes. Few marketers can create a buzz like Seth Godin - the rest of us are just here to learn from him. He has created a quasi exclusive social network he’s called Triiibes and is reopening the membership come Aug 5th. Go get his book, send him the receipt and join triiibes, it’s a focused way to [...]
    (08/02/08 09:01 PM)

32. Networkers Who Purchase Leads R broke!. Purchasing Leads to grow a networking business does not work. Most of these leads (prospects) have no interest in a networking business. I speak from experience and thousand of dollars blown... (07/30/08 09:01 AM)

33. Doubling Down.

    Fred Wilson - my friend and co-investor in Zynga - titled his post on Zynga's $29 million financing Raising The Stakes so I couldn't resist titling my post Doubling Down.  And I'll echo what Fred said - I'm amazed with the hand that Mark Pincus (Zynga's CEO and founder) has and am delighted to be sitting at the table playing it with him.

    Zynga just announced that Kleiner Perkins has led a $29 million round that includes new investor Institutional Venture Partners and the old investors (Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, and Avalon Ventures.)  Bing Gordon from KPCB has joined the board - Bing recently joined KPCB and was previously the chief creative officer at Electronic Arts where he had been a key executive since 1982.  The TechCrunch article has some good info in it including the news that Zynga has acquired Yoville.

    When we made our initial investment in Zynga last November, the idea of "social gaming" was just starting to emerge.  Mark and the team at Zynga started with Texas HoldEm Poker (hence the poker theme in the first paragraph) but rapidly expanded into a number of other socially-oriented games on Facebook that you could play with your friends.  When I wrote about some of these games in my post Wanna Play Zynga Games With Me?  I was just starting to understand the potential power of social gaming.  Over the past six months, I've become an incredible believer in the appeal of social gaming as a broad idea and see it as a disrupting force in the overall gaming industry.  Oh - and as a user it's also a ton of fun to play these games with people I know all over the world.

    While gaming is nothing new (and continues to be a fantastic business), the science of social gaming - figuring out how it works, making the games compelling, and dealing with the broad platform issues that come with massive scale - is really hard.  While the popularity of Facebook seeded the social gaming phenomenon, it is now rapidly evolving onto new platforms such as other social networks like MySpace as well as connected devices like the iPhone via the iPhone AppStore. 

    While I've had a bunch of fantastic experiences as an investor, the tempo, pacing, quality of the people, and success of Zynga has exceeded anything I've ever experienced.  I attribute it all to the genius of Mark and the fantastic people that he's surrounded himself with.  And it's cool to be doubling down with investors like Bing, IVP, my friends Fred Wilson and Rich Levandov, and the entire team at Zynga that are the real folks making this happen.

    

    
    (07/23/08 09:01 PM)

34. The New Wallstrip.

    Wallstrip 2.0 is out.  Fortunately, channeling the voice of the founder Howard Lindzon, they announce it very sarcastically on the homepage. 

    Welcome to Wallstrip 2.0, where everything is happy and bubbly so you don’t have to think about how much money you’re losing on the market. Sure, the site is blue, but don’t let that fool you: we laugh in the face of market woes.

    Today's episode is on a public online dating company - Spark Networks - owner of JDate, CatholicMingle, LDSMingle, and a whole bunch of other niche dating sites. I just got my final Wallstrip escrow payment from CBS from the acquisition.  CBS (and - more importantly - Wallstrip and Howard) - I LOV you.

    

    
    (07/18/08 09:01 PM)

35. How to Market Your Independent Film to Festivals. Film festivals have become the prime venue where independent filmmakers launch their works to the public. Festivals offer an excellent place to build buzz about your film, find distribution deals, network, get press coverage, and experience an audience for your movie. Despite the importance of film festivals, most independent filmmakers have not really considered how best to market themselves to these venues. (07/15/08 09:01 AM)

36. A Book A Day Keeps The Sun Away.

    While Amy assures me there is no correlation between "books" and "sun appearance", I have been reading a book each day and there has been no sun since we arrived in Homer 12 days ago.  I was just using the same argument that the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster uses to explain global warming.

    

    As is typical of my time in Homer, I've covered a lot of ground.  This time I'm reading exclusively on my Kindle which I love; I haven't cracked open a physical book yet.  That said, some of the books have been great and a few have been clunkers.

    Inside Steve's Brain: In preparation for the launch of the iPhone 3G, I decided to try to get into Inside Steve's Brain.  This recently became one of the trendy technology books, presumably due to everyone's desire to be as innovative as Steve Jobs (or at least learn some of his special tricks.)  I had low expectations for the book (I generally dislike books like this); it surprised me by being pretty good.  There were plenty of instructive Steve Jobs stories and interesting Apple history that I hadn't read in other places.  The summaries / lessons at the end of the chapters were tedious and there were a few "extra" chapters that could have been edited out if the book industry could handle a business book less than 200 pages.  But - overall - it's good, especially if you are an Apple fanboy.

    The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company: In my "read all about Steve Jobs" theme, I consumed The Pixar Touch.  If you are choosing between Inside Steve's Brain and The Pixar Touch, choose this one.  It's an excellent history of Pixar.  The first half is extraordinarily interesting as it details all the early people and research that formed the computer animation industry.  This book also felt more balanced (e.g. "less sensational") in its coverage of all the twists and turns that Pixar went through along the way to success.

    Halting State: Excellent "slightly in the future" science fiction incorporating all kinds of funky technology, a complex plot around virtual worlds virtual money, plenty of good guys, bad guys, a male nerd / female cop protagonist romantic plot twist, some irrational bad guys, and a few things you had to go back and read a second time to make sure you understood what had just happened.  All of it is set in Scotland resulting in some entertaining dialog for this American boy.

    Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies: Boring, but then I had already knew of many of the examples in the book.  If you are a corporate dude looking for examples of the use of "social technologies" in the enterprise, there are lots of useful stories here.  If you like to read Forrester Research stuff, you are the target audience.  Probably in the same category as Scoble and Israel's Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers - a skimmer if you are in the tech business but important and useful if you are in a large corporation and are trying to figure out what all this social networking stuff means.

    Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life: Perfect.  I love Steve Martin.  I was in junior high school when he reached the pinnacle of his stand up fame.  I remember being a wild and crazy guy, strutting around while singing King Tut, and shouting out EXCUSE ME at the top of my lungs, much to my mother's annoyance.  This is a great autobiography - I even learned that he was born in Waco, Texas.

    American Nerd: The Story of My People: So so.  I had high expectations for this book since it's about me.  About 25% of it was great, 25% of it was boring, and 50% was filler.  I think I'm going to start a book imprint called "Books in Under 100 pages", hire a few merciless editors, and make good books great by getting rid of 25% to 75% of them.  While I didn't get any new and exciting insights into nerds (although you might, especially if you are not a nerd), I learned some interesting things about ethnicity and racism that hadn't previously crossed my mind.  I'm glad I read this book and think it provides some useful insights into our culture, but damnit it didn't need to be over 200 pages.

    Final Theory: A Novel: Loved it.  A+ mental floss.  I can't remember who recommended it to me, but thank you.  Physics, murder, sexy smart women, a professor hero, explosions, fast cards, evil mad scientists disguised as pacifists, evil people, complex scientific theories that actually almost work, gratuitous almost sex, a really scary mean bad guy, and some hillbillies.  What more could you want?

    Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time: Boring.  This could have been called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" with a bunch of anecdotes tossed in about how to treat people.  I think I would have liked it better if it was called "the biography of Keith Ferrazzi" and I was interested in reading the biography of Keith Ferrazzi.  Note to self - don't write an autobiography and position it as a self-help business book.

    Wall Street Stories: Awesome.  Clever, entertaining short stories about Wall Street.  Written in 1901.  All equally relevant today.  While fiction, these could have easily been true stories (and I imagine they were based on real events.)  I don't play the market and this book clearly explains the reason why.

    If you are feeling depressed about your public stock portfolio, pick up a copy of Wall Street Stories - it'll at least make you laugh.  If you need a real laugh, grab a copy of Born Standing Up.  If you want to understand why you love your new iPhone so much, try out Inside Steve's Brain.  If you get tired of reading, you can always watch the latest installment of David Cohen and I explaining TechStars on ColoradoBizTV. 

    Oh - and please send some sun to Homer, Alaska.

    

    
    (07/15/08 09:01 AM)

37. I've Been Gnipped.

    Earlier this year we made a seed investment in a new company called Gnip.  Yesterday, Gnip launched their first service - a free centralized callback server that notifies data consumers (such as Plaxo) in real-time when there is new data about their users on various data producing sites (such as Flickr and Digg).  I've written my version of the overview on the Foundry Group blog in my post titled Gnip is Ping Spelled Backwards, there are a couple of posts up already on the Gnip blog, and a number of people have already written about Gnip including TechCrunch, TechCrunchIT, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, Dave Winer, and Joe Smarr (Plaxo's Chief Platform Architect).  Rather than repeat what Gnip is here, I'm going to tell you how this investment came about.

    It started in 2004.  I got an IM out of the blue from someone named bpm140 (my IM addresses are easy to find - AIM/Y!: bfeld; Skype: bradfeld; MSN: brad@feld.com.)  bpm140 asked me if I'd be willing to take a quick look at a business plan he had.  I IM'ed back that he should email it to me - I got it 30 seconds later.

    I took a look and scheduled a call.  It was a plan for an educational game thing that I didn't really get but I was intrigued by some of the stuff in it.  I talked to bpm140 (Eric Marcoullier) and gave him some feedback.  After talking for a little while I told him it wasn't my thing, but he should feel free to holler if he thought I could be helpful.

    Over the next few months I periodically got IMs from Eric.  We'd have quick interactions - usually around a specific question - and he shared with me a new idea he was working on.  He and his partner Todd Sampson (who I only knew through Eric's references to him) had this idea for a thingy (this was before little lines of javascript that you put on a blog were called widgets).  You put this thingy on your blog and it gave you statistics of how many times someone clicked on a link.  I'm a stats junky so I loved it.  Eric said it would cost $3 / month.  I told him it was stupid to charge for it, but I'd prepay for a year for $25.  He took my money. 

    Over the next few months I gave him plenty of feedback on this new thing he was calling MyBlogLog.  The UI of the stats service was hideous, but the popup link data on my blog was awesome and the stats were killer. By this point I had invested in FeedBurner, so I introduced Eric to Dick Costolo - FeedBurner's CEO.  More feedback ensued.

    One day, I got a familiar bpm140 IM saying something like "we came up this amazing idea to turn your blog into a social network."  All I needed to do was put a little different piece of javascript on my blog.  I did and the old version of the MyBlogLog widget - with names only and a really yucky font appeared on my blog.  For those of you that remember it, it was one of those amazing widgets that you suddenly couldn't ever remember living without.  Names were great, but soon little images appeared and the idea of seeing who had recently been on my blog was incredibly satisfying.  MyBlogLog took off like a rocket.

    Up to this point, Eric and his partner Todd hadn't raised any money.  I remember the first "are you interested in investing call" happening in May 2006.  Amy and I had rented and apartment in Paris for the month and I can remember the conference call with Eric and this new guy Scott Rafer who Eric and Todd had brought in to be CEO.  They were considering putting together an angel round with the idea of going for a venture round in three or four months.  I committed $25k on the spot, although I remember Scott saying he really didn't want investments of less than $50k.

    MyBlogLog continued its torrid growth over the summer, appearing on virtually every blog I read.  Fred Wilson - one of my co-investors in FeedBurner and another fan of MyBlogLog - and I started talking about doing a VC round.  We came close to do a deal (the documents were a few days away from being signed) when Yahoo! acquired MyBlogLog shortly after getting excited about them after seeing them at the Web 2.0 conference in 2006.  I had one awkward conversation with Eric where I quickly told him that while I was disappointed that I wouldn't be investing in MyBlogLog, I was psyched for him, Todd, and Scott and wished him luck.  I also told him that I'd love to stay in touch and have another chance to work with him in the future.

    I didn't expect Eric to stay at Yahoo! very long (he lasted about six months, although Todd is still there trying hard to keep the MyBlogLog flame alive.)  True to my invitation, Eric and I stayed in touch, he and Todd were a big help at TechStars in 2007, and Eric started making occasional trips out to Boulder to see me.

    I spent most of 2007 raising our first Foundry Group fund.  By the fall we had finished raising our fund and had turned our focus towards making investments.  It was in this context that Eric and I sat down on one of his trips in the fall of 2007.  Over a couple of hours, Eric ran me through a half dozen ideas he had for a new business.  He was hedging a little - struggling with whether to go deep on one business or try to start a few.  I strongly encouraged him to focus on one.  I told him that four of the six ideas were stupid, one wasn't for me, but one was awesome.  It was the seed of what turned into Gnip.

    During that trip, I dragged my partners Ryan and Seth into a conference room to sit with Eric and sketch out Gnip more.  Eric was originally calling the idea Pingery but somewhere along the way Gnip popped out and it stuck ("meta-ping server" was a little awkward).  Gnip fit perfectly in a new theme that Ryan, Seth, and my other Foundry partners were calling Glue and we told Eric that if he wanted to do Gnip as the exclusive thing he worked on, we'd be game to go after it with him.

    I got a call from Eric a few weeks later that he'd decided to go all in with Gnip.  We'd recently made an investment in Zynga and Eric had spent some time with Mark Pincus, the founder/CEO of Zynga.  I think Mark's single-minded obsession with the business he was creating made a deep impression on Eric, especially since Mark is a multi-time successful entrepreneur who also has plenty of angel investments and can basically spend his time wherever he wants.

    Part of Eric's success in MyBlogLog was his partnership with his technical co-founder Todd.  I told Eric he needed either Todd, or a technical co-founder like Todd, as part of Gnip.  Todd wasn't available as he was committed to staying at Yahoo! so we introduced Eric to a few people, including Jud Valeski.  We'd known Jud for several years as he was a Netscape/AOL refugee that had settled in Boulder.  Jud had recently left Me.dium and was working out of our offices as he contemplated his next gig.  Jud and Eric hit it off immediately and started working together remotely (Eric in the bay area; Jud in Boulder) to both flesh out the idea behind Gnip as well as see if they could work together.

    A few weeks later Eric and Jud gave their formal pitch to us for Gnip.  It was a 10 page PowerPoint presentation that outlined the idea, opportunity, and how they would go about it.  We committed to leading a seed investment of $1m on the spot - either by ourselves or with another VC firm.  A few weeks later we closed a $1.1m round with SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) and First Round Capital (Josh Kopelman) and were off to the races (BTW - Josh has written a really clever post about Gnip titled The Story of Francis Bates.)

    Eric, Jud, and Gnip have surpassed all of our expectations from our seed investment at the beginning of the year.  They've totally nailed the concept we were kicking around when we first started talking about Gnip, have built a superb initial service in a remarkably short period of time with the help of Pivotal Labs, and have added a handful of awesome technical people to their team.  They've managed to do this while still being split between the bay area (Eric, Tiffany, and Pivotal) and Boulder (Jud and the rest of the team).

    It took a three year courtship, but Eric and I are now working together as partners.  As my grandmother used to say, "My Gnip Runneth Over."

    

    
    (07/03/08 09:00 AM)

38. Can You Patent The Idea of Recommending Contacts in a Social Network?.

    Microsoft is trying to.  It's up on PeerToPatent and you can comment on this patent application (and the USPTO will presumably listen to you) if you'd like to help keep the world free of really silly software patents.  Following is the abstract.

    "A method and system for recommending potential contacts to a target user is provided. A recommendation system identifies users who are related to the target user through no more than a maximum degree of separation. The recommendation system identifies the users by starting with the contacts of the target user and identifying users who are contacts of the target user's contacts, contacts of those contacts, and so on. The recommendation system then ranks the identified users, who are potential contacts for the target user, based on a likelihood that the target user will want to have a direct relationship with the identified users. The recommendation system then presents to the target user a ranking of the users who have not been filtered out."

    Dear friends at Microsoft - please stop patenting stuff like this.  Just implement it in Outlook - or - even better - Exchange. 

    I hate writing blog posts like this - it makes me tired.  If I'm the guys at Xobni, I'm working on (a) getting my patent filing updated and filed and (b) commenting on the PeerToPatent site about my prior art.  Actually, I'm probably just ignoring this and innovating like crazy.  But that's just me.

    

    
    (07/01/08 09:00 PM)

39. Fighting the Good Fight: Lifecycle Emails. Long-term, lifecycle emails train a customer into becoming a better one, and they enhance the relationship between customer and company. It's sometimes hard to sell to the finance group that lifecycle emails work. And now, with trends going toward social networks and word-of-mouth networking, how do lifecycle emails compete? Here are three techniques you can use effectively to fight the good fight. (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

40. Blog and Ping Facebook Style. When blogging first got going the idea of writing a blog post and then pinging the RSS and blog directories to notify them of your update was standard operating procedure. Fact is, it still is, but it’s become automated by services like Feedburner. Now that social networks like Facebook have begun to enter the small business [...]
    (06/24/08 09:00 AM)

41. Amazon’s UGC Playground. Along with being one of the world’s biggest book stores, Amazon also offers some interesting user generated content avenues that could lead to a bit of exposure for small business owners who explore them. Amazon user profile - this is much like any social network profile and allows you to add a description of your business [...]
    (06/19/08 09:00 AM)

42. Off to the ALI Social Media Summit in Chicago.

    If you're in Chicago between Monday and Wednesday, drop me a line!

    I'll be presenting at the ALI Social Media Summit in a pre-conference workshop. Check it out:

    How To Use Social Media To Enhance And Improve Your Internal Communications Efforts - And 7 Steps To Take Your Internal Social Media Program To An External Marketing Program

    Some people may think that social and emerging media tools are just for customers. However, they can greatly improve your internal communication, peer networking and knowledge sharing and management initiatives if used properly. This workshop will show you how to leverage the most prominent social media tools to strengthen your internal communications processes and improve the effectiveness of any customer-focused organization. If you're considering social media for customer/external communications, this workshop will also give you specific insights and help you to 'eat your own dogfood' before going headlong into social and emerging media & marketing with your customers and prospects.

    Each attendee will take away:

    • A comprehensive understanding of each and every internal social media tool available to their organization
    • Concrete examples of organizations that are employing these tools
    • A roadmap of where to start and how to progress in your internal social media endeavor
    • Develop the business case to sell internal social media based communication tools to management
    • The seven steps to taking social media from an internal endeavor to an external marketing program
    • A comprehensive workbook which explains how to learn more about each of the tools discussed

    
    

    
    (06/09/08 09:00 AM)

43. A Free Web 2.0 Tool For Every Need. I was thinking of pulling together some of my favorite Web 2.0 sites and tools that could be used to run and market your business. Well, I can't get much more comprehensive than this...259 pages of Web 2.0 sites. The cover says these are social networking sites, but the list is much more broad than that. You can look at the full screen version here and just do a search for 'invoice' and you'll find 30 sites, or 'chat' (167 results). I'm becoming more and more convinced you could run an entire company on free tools. Question is, are you willing to take the risk....as most of these companies are unprofitable and will run out of VC money at some point. Read this doc on Scribd: Web2-Directory (05/18/08 09:00 PM)

44. The Gap in Customer Engagement. Late post from the Forrester Marketing Forum Conference I attended a couple weeks ago. The topic was “Customer Engagement”, which is heralded by many publications as the new marketing buzzword. I love buzzwords…they get buzz! Which gets people talking, which gets people trying things, which causes failures, which creates learning, which (hopefully) creates better companies. I digress. The primary research and paper behind customer engagement was conducted by Brian Haven, who’s a great Forrester Analyst. I’ve known him for years and spoken in his workshops on Social networking and UGC. I’m a big believer in the idea of customer engagement. But I have 2 cents to add on where customer engagement comes from and where the gap is in achieving this goal in organizations. The conference was a balance of ideas to measure customer engagement, with tools, principles and experiences that result in more engaged customers. During the show I posted to Facebook “Customer Engagement is a more measured way of defining Customer Experience”. Said another way, Customer Engagement is an outcome…and outcomes (as well as inputs) are measurable. There are a lot of metrics that can point to engaged customers. I don’t think the absolute figures of these measures matter as much as trending to understand if you’re winning or losing customer engagement. But what is a point of customer engagement worth in revenue, margin or saved costs? Some of the metrics for customer engagement – such as time on site, Net Promoter, or Brand awareness -- could track... (04/23/08 09:01 PM)

45. Purchase the Marketech '08 Marketing Technology Guide!.
    $19.99
    
    Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing - eBook - $19.99
    
    Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.
    
    Purchase Now to Discover:
    • 2008 Emerging Media Vehicles
    • How to Use New Media Vehicles to Your Advantage
    • The Latest Internet & Marketing Technologies that can Impact Your 2008 Marketing Plans

    Your copy of the Marketech 08 Guide PDF will show you how to put these technologies to work for you.

    This guide includes a service-organization perspective that will help you:

    • Utilize relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
    • Integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives.
    • Identify benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
    • Discover who's doing this already examples and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.
    This eBook is available as an Instant Download in Adobe PDF  *** Full disclosure: I wrote the e-book as part of a project for the AMA in late 2007 and retained the rights to publish. The response to the guide in my TechnoMarketing sessions and other speaking engagements has been so positive that I've decided to offer the item for sale.
    (04/04/08 09:00 PM)

46. Private Bid Notification Services.
    In addition to the government's bid notification services from FedBizOpps and Grants.gov, there are many private firms that provide these types of services. You can find some of these firms by doing a Google search on phrases such as "find RFPs" and "bid notification."
    
    Although you have to pay for it, there are several advantages to using a private bid notification service:
    
    
    
    • Many of these services can also provide you with information on solicitations issued by state and local governments. While more and more state and local governments are putting their bid opportunities on the Internet, not all of them have geared up to do this.
      
      
    • Since FedBizOpps and Grants.gov may not cover all all bureaus and departments within each federal agency, you may be able to get access to these bureaus' bid opportunities via a private service rather than having to search for them by going to individual websites.
      
      
    • If you are interested in seeing bid opportunities at two or three levels -- federal, state and/or local -- you can may be able to receive these opportunities via daily e-mails or through online access. This can be a real time-saver.
      

    One of the private serices that has been around for a long time is Bidnet (see clip below), which offers customizable packages to meet your specific needs and interests. However, since Bidnet is only one of many private services, it will probably be worth your while to research and compare these services with respect to their prices and offerings.
    

    
    

    clipped from bidnet.com With BidNet, you will have access to Government Bids from thousands of Federal, State and Local agencies, and see bid opportunities you won't find anywhere else. Our diverse network of agencies will give you the competitive intelligence needed to compete effectively for the nation's largest buyer of goods and services - governments across the nation and right in your hometown.

    (04/02/08 09:02 AM)

47. Learn Word of Mouth Marketing -- WOMM-U, May 8-9. This year the Word of Mouth Marketing Association is doing something completely different (disclosure: I'm on the board). It will be WOMM-U (Word of Mouth Marketing University), the first training-based conference full of case studies, operational cookbooks, and practical advice to make Word of Mouth Marketing work in your organization. The tracks will include topics on Managing a blog program Activating WOM in Social Networks Building a Sustained WOM Program Measurement: The ROI of Fans Selling into the CEO ...and much more. Keynote presenters includes my friend Joseph Jaffe (author of "Join the Conversation") and Jeffrey Graham, who leads research for NYTimes. Join me at this unique conference, May 8, 9 in Miami. Register here. (02/28/08 09:01 PM)

48. The Beginning of the Facebook Revenue / Experience Squeeze?. History repeats itself. A social networking site begins pure and unique, entirely focused on what users find cool. In truth, they're building on the backs of VCs. Eventually they are pressured to grow revenue and it's a race against time. The revenue pressure starts to squeeze the original purity of the experience that brought the crowd in the first place. And then the crowd moves on to the next great experience. Remember Tripod and GeoCities? Remember Friendster and Orkut? Remember MySpace? When will we say "Remember Facebook?". Ok, it's not that dire, yet. I'm a Facebook fan. But logging into my profile tonight I saw an ad like I never saw before. See that Car insurance ad? If I start seeing more of these ads in my profile every time I log in, the profile won't feel like 'mine' anymore. Moreover, the ad is crap. Cheesy picture. And I clicked through...sure enough, cheesy company.The difference with Google ads is they are all text, so cheesiness is more hidden from the expeirence. And Google is not my personal page. Which may make advertising on social networks more difficult, for the advertiser and the longevity of the social network. What do I like? I like how people can join brands (see the Apple brand at the bottom), and how I invited in marketplace listings on the right. And I'm ok with ads on the left (not shown) because that seems like a place for ads, not in my news feed. Anyway, they... (02/27/08 09:00 PM)

49. Free Help With Government Contracting.

    Are you an entrepreneur? If you are, you can get FREE assistance to help you learn about government contracting and how to sell your products and services to this huge market. My guest blogger, Kurtis Clark, gives you the scoop.

    Most small businesses don’t realize the tremendous opportunities there are to contract with Federal, State, and local government entities. Although selling to the government can be more challenging than selling to the general public or even to other businesses the sheer size of this market justifies at least looking into the potential. Last year, all levels of government combined purchased a staggering amount of goods and services. Experts estimate that figure to be over $1 trillion. Where can you find assistance to help you break into the complex world of selling to the government? Several excellent sources of free assistance are available.

    
    The Small Business Development Center program (SBDC) is a nationwide network of independent centers funded in part by the U.S. SBA. They have counselors who can help business owners complete application and registration forms and deal with the bureaucratic process. Counselors usually know local agency procedures, which agencies are preparing for large construction projects, and may even know many of the persons responsible for local government purchasing. All SBDC’s offer free consulting services and low-cost training classes. Most SBDC offices host annual or bi-annual government contracting seminars often in conjunction with government procurement experts free of charge. Check with your local SBDC for upcoming seminars in your area. For a listing of local SBDC offices visit the SBA website.

    
    One of these experts and another excellent source of assistance are Procurement Technical Assistance Centers or PTAC’s. They are located throughout the country, with many of the larger states having multiple offices. These Centers are funded by the Department of Defense but most offer assistance on state, local and federal procurement opportunities. Several excellent websites for Federal procurement information are Business.Gov and FedBizOpps. Also check our Deborah’s small business page for excellent information on programs for disadvantaged-, minority-, women-, and veteran-owned business procurement opportunities.
    

    
    Kurtis Clark is the Director of the Alliance Small Business Development Center, one of 5 SBDC’s in the U/C Merced Regional SBDC network. The network serves a 15-county area in Central California and last year assisted over 3,000 business entrepreneurs.

    (02/21/08 09:01 PM)

50. Prioritizing Marketers Top Priorities. This morning I got a research brief from Mediapost summarizing the findings from the Marketing Effectiveness Networking Group (MENG) and Anderson Aanlytics study. This study surveyed marketing executives to identify key trends and strategies of effective marketing. The subject line of the email said: "Marketing Execs Say Basics Are Most Important in 2008". By "basics" I thought they meant strategies such as becoming measurement-oriented, shifting ad portfolio, investing in email infrastructure, build operational data warehouse, and improve web site. However the 'basics' by definition from this study were more customer-centric and more concepts and objectives rather than strategies. And unfortunately for most companies, they're not all that 'basic' in achieving success. 60% of marketing executives said the following 'marketing basics' were important: Customer satisfaction Customer retention Segmentation Brand loyalty ROI I have a copy of the study. To be clear, the study asked marketing executives to choose from over 60 concepts or buzzwords (such as the 5 above) which were then categorized. Other categories, in order of votes, included: SEO (by itself) Personalization: concepts include Data mining, CRM, Lead Generation, Personalization, Ecommerce, Competitive Intelligence Green Marketing: Multicultural / Ethic issues. Breakdown of old media Innovative Branding Viral / WOM: concepts include viral, WOM, blogging New Media: concepts include Web 2.0, Mobile, CGM, Long Tail, Social Networking Macro Economics Tech Strategy Outsourcing Social Issues Other Now, as a marketer, if I participated in this study I may have answered the same way. After all, the 'marketing basics' are overarching objectives. What... (01/02/08 09:00 AM)

51. Seattle Networking Takes A Turn for the Better. We have lots of great networking happening in the Northwest. I was appreciative of a new effort, though, to bring quality and thoughtfulness to a social networking mixer - like the one I attended a couple of weeks ago. It... (12/11/07 09:01 PM)

52. Future of Online Retailing -- Four Predictions. Forrester and Jupiter report that more than 70% of online shoppers seek out user reviews before making a purchase decision. MarketingSherpa reports that 84% of consumers prefer the opinion of other consumers vs. experts. Hundreds of retailers including WalMart, Best Buy, HP, and the Home Depot have followed Amazon’s lead by allowing their consumers to review products in the online channel. Consumers demand social commerce solutions and retailers are driving measurable results. As consumers are presented with increasing choices, channels, and messages, they will continue to turn to peers to discover, research, and make decisions about products and services. Retailers will need to utilize technology and best practices to provide authentic, relevant, and effective social commerce solutions to retain their customers into the future. 1) SOCIAL CONTENT IS GOING MULTI-CHANNEL The future of reviews and social content is going beyond the product page and into other channels such as mobile phones, kiosks, print collateral, online advertising, and social networks. It is clear that consumers rely on social content to make purchasing decision. They will expect to be able to access to this content regardless of channel in order to inform their purchasing process. The retailers that provide this multi-channel access will develop competitive advantages in their markets to attract and retain consumers. Additionally, more retailers will see the value of integrating social commerce with CRM and other “back-end” channels. Retailers will start to leverage social content as a key input into driving decisions in marketing, sales, advertising, customer support, and... (12/09/07 09:01 PM)

53. Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing.
    Marketech 08: Using Emerging Media in Marketing - AMA Members-Only Webcast
    Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology; however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.
    
    Register now to discover:
    • 2008 Emerging Media Vehicles
    • How to Use New Media Vehicles to Your Advantage
    • The Latest Internet & Marketing Technologies that can Impact Your 2008 Marketing Plans

    You'll also receive a complimentary copy of the Marketech 08 Guide PDF that shows how to put these technologies to work for you.

    This program includes a service-organization perspective that will help you:

    • Utilize relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
    • Integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives.
    • Identify benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
    • Discover who's doing this already (examples) and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.

    Date: December 6, 2007

    Times: Session 1 - 10am PST/ 11am MST/ 12pm CST/1pm EST or Session 2 - 12pm PST/1pm MST/2pm CST/3pm EST
    
    Host: The American Marketing Association and Dana VanDen Heuvel, a highly recognized expert on blogging, podcasting, RSS and other interactive marketing trends and a frequent guest speaker at many AMA live training programs, including the recent premier Training Series: Technomarketing event.
    
    

    Register Here for the Marketech 08 Webcast.
    (12/05/07 09:01 PM)

54. Why, How and Who of Web 2.0. A couple weeks ago I moderated a panel and roundtable for Austin Venture portfolio companies on Web 2.0. As many of the companies were not in the "Web 2.0" bullseye, the discussion focused on the what, why, how and who of Web 2.0. I'll skip the "What" question...here are the some of the other notes: Why? * Analysts read blogs. Reporters read blogs * Empowers customers * Blogs are turning into a trusted media outlet * 78% of online customers trust brands more that have reviews on their site * Marketing (PR) is being Master of Reality (Edelman) * From conversation about your brand, to your brand’s values (ex: Saturn’s findyourdetour.com site) * From monologue to dialogue (how web 2.0 changes marketing’s voice) * Demonstrates your brand’s authenticity * Longer life vs printed articles * Get insight into audience and build relationship * 90 / 9 / 1 rule: 90% read, 9% participate, 1% narcissism (+1% paid participation) * Viral growth via networking and connectivity * Your brand = your Google content * 25% of Google search results is user generated content * C to C marketing (customer to customer) is much more effective * Word of mouth marketing works online because the content is archived while word of mouth marketing offline can be quickly forgotten How? * Keep messaging consistent through channels * Treat online media same as traditional media, but use a different pitch to target each media * Video metadata, and taking advantage of Google’s universal search... (10/30/07 09:00 AM)

55. New Social Media Presentation Released.

    I'm just putting the finishing touches on a new Social Media/TechnoMarketing presentation that I'm pretty excited about. For those organizations that make the distinction between a 'client' (long term relationship) and 'customer' (transactional relationship), I've developed a program that illustrates how to put the latest tools & technologies in play for your service organization.

    Want more info? Drop me a line!

    Social Media for the Service Industry Enterprise

    Today's service industry organizations depend on deeper and more relevant customer connections to drive loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation within their coveted client base. These companies don't just need technology; however, they need a systems perspective on how to integrate the ever changing world of social media, social networking and Web 2.0 into their core business infrastructure to meet their customers in their medium, now and in the future.

    This program will provide a focused, service-organization perspective on:
    

    
    
    • What are the relevant marketing & customer service technologies that today's leading service organizations employ to connect with their customers. This includes an overview of tools from social networking via Facebook, organic corporate networks, and customer community programs to communication vehicles like blogs, online video and podcasting.
    
    
    • How do these integrate with existing common customer loyalty, retention, referrals and reactivation initiatives?
    
    
    • What are the benefits and risks associated with these techniques and technologies such as lower cost to service and increased referrals vs. loss of central control and the increasing customer control of your brand reputation.
    
    
    • Who's doing this already (examples) and how is it working for them. We'll look at a myriad of case examples with learning's and action items than any organization can apply.
    
    

    Want more info? Drop me a line!

    Check out my marketing speaker page more info on my other marketing related speaking engagements & programs.

    
    (10/11/07 09:00 AM)

56. Focus Word of Mouth Marketing on Influencers or the Network?. At the WOMMA conference in Las Vegas (Nov. 14, 15) one of the primary topics on the table is the debate and implications to the marketer focusing on the influencer or the network. The influencer model suggests you should focus on the few (say 15%) who are disporportionately influential. Malcom Gladwell called these the Connectors and Mavens. The netowrk model suggests that the importance is having many connections is more important. I'm not fully versed on both of these equally. I'm looking forward to learning more at WOMMA Summit. However, in my experience and in practice, I don't think a word of mouth marketing strategy is complete without a consideration and strategy for both. The breadth of the network is like reach. Your message can carry throughout a broad set of diverse influencers...some more influential than others. However, I believe there are personas that are more likely to share word of mouth. In my experience these people spend more and more frequently, in a retail example. For example Jupiter found the online 'Super Communicators" represent less than 20% of user generated content but over 30% of spend.Bigger mouths = bigger wallets! I think frequency and reach are still relevant concepts, but more relevant when applied to word of mouth. If I see a brand in facebook, in a review, in an online review, in a forum post, and then perhaps I see it in advertising as well then I will be more predisposed to buy. Along that journey perhaps one... (10/07/07 08:58 AM)

57. Liveblogging TechCrunch 40: Day 2. Here are some highlights from Day 2 of TechCrunch 40 (in reverse-order of appearance): Kaltura: This startup was voted on-stage from the demo pit by the conference attendees. Slick, collaborative video editing software. It's all Web-based. Lets you collectively create a video with your friends. A wiki/peer production platform for making videos. Zivity: User-generated porn. The site shares revenues with the "models"who upload photos. Just what the world needs: a company that is lowering the bar on porn. One of the presenters had this weird handlebar mustache. What's with that? WooMe: Speed dating site where you spend a minute meeting potential mates via Webcam. Real-time social networking. Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom is a backer. Metaplace: Build your own virtual world that can appear on any site as a 3D virtual-world widget. The big idea is that every object in the world can be linked to. "Metaplace is trying to Facebook Second Life," says panelist Loic Le Meur. Yahoo's Brad Garlinghouse argues Second Life has too much traction to be displaced. BeFunky: Turns photos and videos into cartoons. Sort of makes everything look like A Scanner Darkly. Also lets you create "uvatars" that look exactly like you. (They are hand-drawn now, but will soon use the same "Cartoonizer" technology you can already apply to photos and videos). Startup is from Turkey. Cool FX. Panelist MC Hammer thinks its funky. Wixi: Yet another file sharing site. As panelist Loic Le Meur says, "Everybody is doing that." mEgo: Have too many social networks... (09/18/07 09:00 PM)

58. Disruptors Video: One Laptop Per Child. In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I visit One Laptop Per Child, the non-profit building $176 laptops for children in the developing world. I think they are disruptive for many reasons, but foremost is that by trying to design a laptop that initially was supposed to be under $100 they had to rethink many things about computers that most of us take for granted, like the display, the networking, the power consumption, and the durability. (There's no hard drive in this thing). It's also one of the greenest computers on the planet. CTO Mary Lou Jepsen explains to me in the video how getting the power consumption down to a fraction of what a normal laptop needs was one of the main challenges. (It turns out they do this by turning things off when they are not in use to a greater degree than conventional computers do). Don't be surprised if you start seeing many of these features copied in regular laptops soon. Watch the video. (09/14/07 09:00 PM)

59. Disruptors Video: Social Networks for Healthcare (Sermo/PatientsLikeme). The problem with healthcare is that too often information does not flow easily between those who need it most: doctors and patients. In this week's episode of the New Disruptors, I speak with the CEOs of two startups—Ben Heywood of PatientsLikeMe and Daniel Palestrant of Sermo—trying to change all of that. Both are creating social networks for healthcare. PatientsLikeMe gathers together patients who suffer from the same diseases and compare notes, track their symptoms, and anonymously compare their progress with one another (read our profile here). On the flip side, Sermo is a social network for physicians to communicate directly with one another about the latest treatments and how they are working with actual patients. Watch the video. (Full transcript after the break). Subscribe to The New Disruptors Check out my weekly video series on CNNMoney and iTunes where I discover startups with the potential to overturn existing industries or open up new markets. (09/01/07 09:00 AM)

60. B2B Marketing and lead generation via Social networking . Have you dipped your toe in the water of social networking yet? And if not, should you start? That’s a question I know that a lot of very busy B2B marketers ask themselves which is why I found Tessa Wegert's... (08/29/07 09:00 PM)

61. Imeem is Rocking. Dalton Caldwell is finally finding his groove. His Sequoia-backed social network, Imeem, started out a couple years ago as a standalone, instant-messaging application. He soon scrapped that in favor of a Web-based social music site. But then, a victim of his own success, Imeem was banned from MySpace and threatened with a lawsuit from the Warner Music Group. Caldwell, though, has turned all of that around, and made Imeem into a legitimate, ad-supported music streaming site. He won over Warner Music, which dropped its lawsuit and licensed its entire catalog of songs to Imeem in return for a share of the advertising revenues associated with its music. In fact, Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman, Jr. found the relationship with Imeem important enough to highlight in Warner Music's most recent earnings conference call. Now, not only can you listen to songs from indie groups like The Essex Green (and embed them on your blog): But you can also also listen to Warner Music acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and embed (30-second samples of) those as well: Imeem claims 16 million unique visitors in July, 10 million registered users and more than one million unique logins a day. Third-party measurement site Compete.com puts the number of unique visitors at 4.6 million, but shows that U.S. traffic is growing and beating both Last.fm and Bebo (see graph above). Comscore shows Bebo slightly ahead of Imeem in the U.S., with 4.4 million visitors in July versus 3.9 million for Imeem (and 1.8... (08/20/07 09:00 AM)

62. The Race to Buy Facebook Apps. Facebook only opened up its social network to outside applications last May, but already there are 2,960 of them. And the top apps are being snapped up by larger companies. For instance, Slide acquired an app called Favorite Peeps in June. The latest rumor in this regard is that TripAdvisor is paying $3 million for a mapping application called Where I've Been. That's would be a nice check for Craig Ulliott, the sole developer who cobbled together the Facebook app in his spare time. It used to be that a few smart engineers could build a Web 2.0 site, and if i took off, Yahoo or Google or some other large company would buy it after a couple years for as much as $30 million. Now all you need to do is build a blockbuster Facebook app, and you can be bought for $3 million after just a few months of work. If you are only one person, and you own the entire company, you could end up with almost as much on an individual basis as if you owned 10 percent of a larger company. The race is now officially on to buy the most successful Facebook apps. Still, the majority of these Facebook apps are nothing more than features. It's just that anyone can buy a features on Facebook these days, not just Facebook. Where I've Been is a widget you can put on your Facebook page and mark each country or state you've ever visited or lived... (08/17/07 09:01 AM)

63. Find Web 2.0 Tools to Help Grow Your Business. Over the past months, Biznik has been improving and developing in big ways. What is Biznik? The tagline is business networking that doesn't suck - but don't think this is just a cutesy site for an alternative in networking --... (08/14/07 09:01 PM)

64. Bubble Watch: Glam Media Shops Around a $200 Million Private Placement. How much froth is there in the online ad industry? One market signal comes from a leaked private-placement document for Glam Media, which is trying to raise an eye-popping $200 million (which is very large for a private deal). Allen Company and Bank of America are raising the round on behalf of Glam. According to the leaked document (thank you, TechCrunch):Glam Media is the fastest-growing web property in the United States based on the year over year increase in unique visitors from 782,000 to more than 19.1 million monthly unique visitors in June 2007.Except that it's not. Glam Media owns a collection of women oriented sites, including its flagship Glam.com. But the bulk of those 19 million visitors comes from the ad network that it runs for other sites like MyYearbook.com, QualityHealth.com, and Kaboodle (which was recently acquired). In other words, Glam Media is trying to tell prospective investors that because it serves up ads on a site, the visitors to those affiliated sites should count towards its own total as a web property. Yet, according to comScore, all of Glam Media's sites accounted for only 1.6 million of those 19 million visitors in June. And Glam.com itself only accounted for 654,000 visitors. Some of its lesser sites include Celebrity-Hairstyles.org. The fact is that the bulk of Glam Media's traffic and revenues comes from its ad network, not its web properties. Trying to sell itself as the No. 1 destination on the Web for women is misleading at best. Hyperbole... (08/13/07 09:01 PM)

65. Time Warner Cable Tries to Turn Back the Clock on DVRs. Please, just give me back that one hour... Originally uploaded by SylV - like Sylvie... Cable companies may hate TiVo, but at least they've come to accept that digital-video recorders are here to stay. Or have they? Time Warner Cable is introducing a DVR-like service called Look Back that lets viewers time-shift shows but doesn't let them fast-forward through the ads. (Time Warner Cable is a sister company of my employer, Time Inc.). From a viewing-experience point of view, Look Back is a step backwards compared to a full-throttled DVR like TiVo. You can only watch shows from earlier the same day and you are forced to watch the ads. The whole point of DVRs is that they allow you to watch shows when you want to watch them, which might include catching up on a whole week's worth of The Daily Show at 3 AM on a Saturday. Being limited to one day's worth of TV sort of defeats the purpose. And don't underestimate the appeal of being able to skip through the ads. It makes the TV-viewing experience both more enjoyable and more efficient (you can watch more actual TV when you strip out the ads). So what are the folks at Time Warner Cable smoking? They are betting that people will put up with their hobbled, networked version of a DVR because it will be free. (TiVo, in contrast, charges an extra $13 to $17 a month for its service). It's amazing what people will put up... (08/13/07 09:01 PM)

66. Disruptors Video: The Future of the Wireless Web (Vanu). This week's New Disruptors video is up on CNNMoney. In this episode, I speak with Vanu Bose, the founder of Vanu, about how wireless networks could be more like the Internet if they were open to all devices (as the FCC is requiring in the rules for the upcoming auction of broadband spectrum). Vanu's technology, software radio, can help connect multiple wireless standard to the same network, whether it's GSM, CDMA, or iDen. Thus, the open-device rules could really play into its hands. Vanu is also an investor in Frontline Wireless, which was hoping to use Vanu's software radio technology to build a network that could seamlessly switch to support public-safety radios in cases of emergency. Frontline's plan looks like it may be in jeopardy now, but Vanu still hopes to cash in on the need for device-agnostic wireless networks.... (08/10/07 09:00 PM)

67. Is That Your Onion in MySpace?. From a press release announcing that The Onion is partnering with MySpace (primarily to bring video to the social network):THE ONION BRINGS JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY, CORRECT PUNTCUATION TO MYSPACE Respected Pillar of Journalism Partners With Fledgling Unknown “Website” The news business is like the tobacco business: you want to reach new readers at as young and impressionable an age as possible, Onion president Sean Mills said. MySpace was, of course, a natural partner in that regard.It's good to see that they take the same care in writing their press releases as they do their hard news.... (08/08/07 09:00 PM)

68. Disruptors Video: Not Your Typical Rental Car (Zipcar). Most people associate rental cars with airports and travel. But Boston-based Zipcar is trying to turn the car-rental equation on its head. It targets urban dwellers who need a car for a few hours at a time to run an errand, go out on a date, or get groceries. Using the Web, the cellular data network, and RFID cards for entry into the vehicles, Zipcar has created a self-serve car rental business that is targeting not so much the Avises of the world as it is the very concept of car ownership. Since Zipcar members, who now number more than 100,000 in 23 cities, book and pick up their own cars, the company can manage its fleet of cars much more efficiently than incumbent car-rental agencies. (Zipcar can manage nearly twice as many cars per employee as Avis, for instance). It is on track to make $60 million in revenues this year, and says it is profitable in its four largest established markets (Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C.) The downside to Zipcar's distributed network of cars sprinkled throughout residential neighborhoods is that there might not be a car available on the weekend when you want it. Or if the car you reserved is broken or dirty, you might be stuck without an alternative. Zipcar is trying to mitigate against such scenarios by clustering its cars together in denser packs. I visited Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith to learn more in this week's episode of the New Disruptors (video).... (08/02/07 09:00 PM)

69. Google Should Take the Spectrum and Run. The Big Bang Originally uploaded by CrispyMo Yesterday, the FCC decided to abide by two very important open principles in the upcoming auctions for broadband wireless spectrum in the 700 MHz range. The rules will require that any auction winner build a wireless network that does not discriminate by device or application. In that sense, such a broadband wireless network would be more like the wired Internet than today's closed mobile networks. That's good news for any company or startup who may want to develop hardware or software for any such future network. They won't need the approval of the network operator to do so, just like they can build any Website or Web device today and be fairly sure that it will work for anyone with an Internet connection. Such open rules are good for competition and innovation. There is one caveat: these open-access rules will go into effect only if the FCC receives a minimum bid of $4.6 billion for use of the spectrum. It's a put-up or shut-up condition that the FCC is giving to the tech industry, and Google in particular.Even though Google didn't get all the rules it had asked for (such as requirements that any auction winner resell capacity to other companies on a wholesale basis and allow for open access points into their network), it should bid on the spectrum and put its ideas into action. If it wins the auction, there would be nothing stopping it from wholesaling the spectrum to other... (08/01/07 09:01 PM)

70. Disruptors Video: An eBay for Manufacturers (MFG.com). Remember all of those B2B exchanges that were supposed to change the industrial landscape before they evaporated at the tail end of the last dotcom boom? Well, at least one of them survived—a small company based in Atlanta called MFG.com. Today, it is a thriving Web marketplace for manufacturers and their suppliers. I talk with CEO Mitch Free in this week’s episode of the New Disruptors. MFG.com is a Website where engineers and purchasing managers from places like Apple or Northrop Grumman can put up CAD diagrams of parts they want manufactured and get bids from suppliers all over the world. In the past twelve months, over $2 billion worth of parts have been sourced over MFG.com. But instead of trying to take a cut of each transaction like eBay does, MFG.com charges a subscription fee of about $6,000 a year to each supplier. Free says the company is on track to pull in $25 million in revenues this year and is running at break-even. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the largest outside investor (he learned about it from one of the engineers at his spacecraft startup, Blue Origin). Germany’s Samwer brothers—their startup Alando became eBay Germany—also own a stake. Free wants to turn MFG.com into an online platform for the manufacturing industry. Last year, he bought Europe’s SourcingParts (a Salesforce.com for purchasing managers), and launched a manufacturing social network last March called MFGx.com. “We’ve borrowed some of the elements from Craigslist, MySpace, and Wikipedia,” he says. But perhaps the... (07/26/07 09:00 PM)

71. ABC.com Launches HD Streaming (in Beta). Ready to watch Ugly Betty in high-def? Yeah, neither am I. But if your computer screen can handle HD video (a minimum 1024 x 768 resolution is recommended), you don't need to buy an HD TV. ABC.com is experimenting with streaming shows over the Web in HD. You will need to download a new player from Move Networks (that won't let you fast-forward through the ads, sorry) and a broadband connection. (Move just hired the former CTO of the Disney Internet Group, Douglas Parrish, as a senior VP). This is a beta, though. When I tried to install the player, nothing happened. But it shows that media companies are thinking about bringing HD to your PC as well as your TV. They just need to get it to actually work (caveat: the problem could very well be on my end).... (07/25/07 09:01 PM)

72. AT&T Launches Mobile Video Sharing Service For its (Non-iPhone) 3G Network. From the folks who brought you the Picturephone, ATT now lets some customers (those with 3G phones in one of 160 select markets) stream live video over their mobile phones. Want to show your friend in LA how funny your dog looks in sunglasses? Turn on the video cam. Startups like Kyte.tv already allow you to shoot and broadcast videos from your phone, but ATT now let's you do it live, while you are still talking on the phone. I admit that is pretty cool. But is it worth an extra $5 to $10 a month? We'll soon find out. ATT needs to give people a reason to upgrade to their 3G network, and they hope this is it. Today, a cell phone without a digital camera seems crippled. Video is the next logical step, especially as wireless networks become faster. The problem is that it doesn't work with the iPhone because that is not a 3G phone (and the iPhone only takes pictures, not videos). So all those folks who just shelled out $500, if you want this feature you will have to buy another ATT phone (or wait for the 3G iPhone to come out and pay another $500 for that). I'm scheduled to discuss this on CNBC tonight around 7:30 PM ET.... (07/23/07 09:01 PM)

73. Links for 2007-07-22 [del.icio.us].
    • Why Feedburner is trouble (Scripting News)
      Winer warns that Google may want to own all our feeds. But just because Google is the new Microsoft does not mean it thinks like Microsoft.
    • GigaOM Social Network Hi5 gets $20 million «
      It's not exactly Facebook money, but VCs are obviously spreading their bets.
    • The Once and Future Prince - New York Times
      Prince: the new media music machine.
    (07/23/07 09:01 AM)

74. Google Starts the Wireless Bidding at $4.6 Billion. .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } From inside a rainbow..., originally uploaded by jerikojosh. The auctions for the largest chunk of wireless spectrum to become available in several years have not even started yet and Google (GOOG) is already starting the bidding at $4.6 billion. That commitment, though, is only good if the FCC agrees to play by all of Google's rules: open apps, open devices, open services, and open networks. What is really going on here is that the FCC is still determining what the rules of the auction are going to be, and Google is trying to influence that process. In the opposite corner are the big telcos like Verizon and ATT who are deploying their substantial lobbying muscle to make sure the auction rules go their way.Google is serious about the wireless Web, to the tune of at least $4.6 billion, and it wants to make sure it does not get locked out of it. As Vanu CEO Vanu Bose put it to me in a recent conversation:There are two aspects to openness: unblocked and unlocked. Unlocked means you can buy any phone and connect it to any network. But unblocked is open unfettered access to content, not a walled garden. The FCC should mandate that you cannot block access to Google. Where it really hurts is applications.What Google is trying to do is to impose Net neutrality on the wireless world.... (07/20/07 09:01 PM)

75. Facebook Buys Webtop Startup, Parakey. Yesterday, Facebook announced its acquisition of Parakey, a startup founded by Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt of Firefox fame. Parakey, which has yet to launch, is creating an open-source Webtop. According to its Website:Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its deviceses. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone. That should be a nice addition to Facebook's evolving Web platform. Already, everyone and their brother is already rushing to create a Facebook version of their Web applications to tap into all the millions of people who already use the social network. In the future, as a result of the Parakey deal, you can imagine that software developers will be able to create Facebook apps with offline components as well. Did somebody say Web operating system?... (07/20/07 09:01 AM)

76. Why Facebook will Network Business Users. Facebook launched its open platform in late May, preceded and followed by a lot of buzz. As a (late) early adopter, I launched a profile several weeks ago. I uploaded my contacts and found many professional friends were already on Facebook. People who joined after me did the same thing, and added me as a friend. Today I have 140 friends on Facebook, and growing. I’ve told my team to get on Facebook and introduced colleagues to Facebook. I suppose I’m an evangelist right now, encouraging people to get on Facebook to, if nothing else, experience a turning point in social networking. In the ‘early days’ I was on Ryze, Orkut and eCademy, but I wasn’t very active. Several years ago, I got on LinkedIn. Its superior interface and quality of professional members hooked me. I’ve focused my time there to reconnect with colleagues, find employees, and answer questions. I’ve amassed hundreds of (mostly relevant) contacts. LinkedIn is a superior tool for finding people with relevant business connections or experiences. Now that Facebook is open, how will the landscape of these online networks be affected? For professionals on both networks, which will garner more care and feeding? How will each network evolve, especially after LinkedIn’s announcement of opening its platform to application developers? My prediction is LinkedIn will remain as a business network. It is suited to accomplish tasks: hire people, get answers, find experts/contractors and maintain professional contacts. At the same time, despite its heritage being rooted in fun... (07/11/07 09:01 PM)

77. Spectrum Auction to Be Run By Google Rules. From inside a rainbow... Originally uploaded by jerikojosh It appears that the FCC is going to adopt open-access rules backed by Google and other tech companies in its upcoming spectrum auctions. This is not good news for incumbent wireless carriers. What Google (GOOG) wants is for the resulting 4G networks built on top of the auctioned spectrum to be more like the Internet, so that you can plug in any device or run any application on it no matter who happens to be billing you for your wireless broadband access. Google's principles going into this are: * Open applications: consumers should be able to download and utilize any software applications, content, or services they desire;* Open devices: consumers should be able to utilize a handheld communications device with whatever wireless network they prefer;* Open services: third parties (resellers) should be able to acquire wireless services from a 700 MHz licensee on a wholesale basis, based on reasonably nondiscriminatory commercial terms; and* Open networks: third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at a technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee's wireless network. It might not get everything it asked for, but even one or two concessions would make it much more likely that Google will decide itself to bid for some of the spectrum. If such rules were in effect today, you would be able to buy an iPhone and not be locked into ATT's network. It's nice to see Internet rules finally winning the day... (07/10/07 09:01 PM)

78. Ning Raises $44 Million. Gina Bianchini Originally uploaded by jdlasica Gina Bianchini, No. 48 on B2.0's 50 Who Matter list, is smiling now. As Ning's main backer Marc Andreessen reports, the startup has just raised $44 million from Legg Mason and others. Andreessen threw some more of his cash into the venture as well. Ning lets people build their own social networks, and 73,650 have done so to date. (Many of those social networks have only the person who built it and his dog as members, but that's another story). Here's a CNN video about Ning where I explain how Bianchini made it on the list.... (07/10/07 09:01 AM)

79. Apple Takes Its Bite of iPhone Mobile Service Fees. iPod Originally uploaded by stublog In the competition to carry the iPhone in Europe, it looks like Vodafone (VOD) is balking at Apple's demands; The Guardian reports:Apple is understood to be demanding that its European mobile phone partners hand over a significant proportion of revenues generated by the iPhone and restrict the content that users can access.The portion of network revenues demanded by Apple is believed to have been behind Vodafone's decision not to sign up as the exclusive partner for the iPhone in the UK. ... The iPhone is expected to launch in November in the UK through O2, in France with Orange and in Germany with T-Mobile.So not only does Apple (AAPL) keep all the revenues from the $500 iPhones, but it gets a cut of the monthly service fees as well. I guess even (most) hard-nosed telecom execs have a hard time saying No to Steve Jobs. But if this report is true, good for Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin for sticking to his guns. Update: Another tidbit about the economics of the relationship between Apple and the mobile carriers. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner models iPhone revenues for Apple to include the entire $500 average selling price plus a $100 bounty from ATT. (This is from a June 28 note of his). G