Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media

I've long said that creating Twitter clients is a lot of work for a very short market window because Twitter itself will eventually get into that business. And other Twitter related businesses too.

That's what seems to be happening. MG Siegler spotted this Tweet from a Twitter software engineer:

"If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)"

Sure, Twitter client developers might be able to keep a step or two ahead of Twitter, they might be a little more nimble but eventually Twitter will catchup.

Some users of Twitter clients might not want the switching costs -- it might be difficult to transfer some of their favorite lists, or other things such as the look and feel of their favorite Twitter client. But that would be a fairly small group of users out of the total number of users in the future Twitterverse -- probably not enough to build a sustainable business.

Henry Blodgett sums it up well:

...it's the difference between Google Sites revenue (Google.com), in which Google keeps 100% of the money and Google Network revenue, in which Google has to hand over 50%-80% of the money to a distribution partner.

Foremski's Take: If I were Twitter I wouldn't rush into swallowing everything up too soon -- it's good to have third-party developers testing out markets and also evangelizing those markets -- then you can step in and suck those business ideas into your black hole. Unless, that is, that third-party developers get wise and decide not to do your dirty work for you.

A better tactic would be to buy some of those third-party developers instead of pushing them out of the way.

That will encourage other developers to be creative and to do the hard work for you, in the hopes that you might buy them.

I'm no fan of Ticketmaster.

[When web services go bad: Ticketmaster's outrageous tax on culture - it harms society | Tom Foremski: IMHO | ZDNet.com]

I Tweeted earlier today about a New York Times article:

"I hate Ticketmaster - "Ticketmaster Settles With F.T.C. Over Springsteen Tickets" http://nyti.ms/aUZMHo"

I got a response from a service called Amplicate, which pulls together positive and negative comments about brands. It made a page called Ticketmaster Rocks, where it collected supposedly positive Tweets about Ticketmaster, and one called Ticketmaster Sucks, where it collected negative Tweets.

But if you look at the Ticketmaster Rocks page, most are negative. The service cannot distinguish sarcasm. Take a look:

I bet this is pretty common at other brand monitoring services.

I'm going to Tweet "I love #Amplicate - it is so good at understanding sarcasm!" Let's see which page it ends up on, Rocks or Sucks :)

Irving Wladawsky-Berger has put together a good review of several studies and reports concerning business use of social networks:

Irving Wladawsky-Berger: The Business Value of Social Networks

Mr Wladawsky-Berger has a lot of experience with the business use of social networks from his long career as a senior executive at IBM. The company was one of the first to embrace blogging and social networks.

He discusses fears that businesses have regarding their employees broadcasting inappropriate comments. He points out:

"Employees already have access to social networks through their personal PCs and mobile devices, so they need not wait for corporate sanctioned channels should they wish to post inappropriate comments. Better to deal with the issue directly, by providing guidance to employees on the proper use of social networks."

Several years ago IBM put together an excellent guide for employees: IBM Social Computing Guidelines.

Another concern companies have with social networks in business, is losing control over their employees, "who now have tools that enable them to easily collaborate with colleagues and friends inside and outside the company."

But, "such individual and community empowerment is precisely the key value of social networks."

Indeed.

Om Malik over on GigaOm seems to confuse office politics at MySpace with the demise of the social network.

Rupert Murdoch's $580 million MySpace purchase has outlived not only its utility, but has also finally hit its expiration date. That last step came with the announcement this afternoon that Owen Van Natta was stepping down as chief executive of the company. This was nine months after he joined the Los Angeles-based venture. It's circling the drains, if you ask me.

Changes in leadership do not mean MySpace is dead. It's still a very large business with many users. It's not going away anytime soon.

As one of the commenters on Mr Malik's post pointed out:

If you check the most recent comscore, MySpace has grown 2 months in a row, and is back up to 120MM users worldwide. That may not sound huge compared with Facebook's 350MM, but it is still 2X twitter's audience, and blows almost any other site out of the water. We in Silicon Valley tend to think that when something is not hockey-sticking anymore than it is dead. That is not true. If MySpace lost 1MM users a month it would take 10 years to disappear. That still gives them some time to figure out what to do.

Brian Zisk, co-founder of Collecta, a real-time search engine, recently pointed out that the MySpace message stream is five times the volume of Twitter.

The demographics of MySpace are different from Facebook and Twitter. It mostly attracts a young teenage audience and it has become a very large music site, and music fan site.

MySpace remains a large and viable business. It is far from being dead.

A new research study from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) has found that senior executives are affected by social media and that the influence on online communities on business decisions has grown over the past three years.

The research was conducted by Don Bulmer from SAP and Vanessa DiMauro.

Some of the key findings:

- Professional decision-making is becoming more social - enter the era of Social Media Peer Groups (SMPG)

• Traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by Social Media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions
• Professionals want to be collaborative in the decision-cycle but not be marketed or sold to online; however online marketing is a preferred activity by companies.
  

- Professional networks are emerging as decision-support tools

• Decision-makers are broadening reach to gather information especially among active users

- Professionals trust online information almost as much as information gotten from in-person

• Information obtained from offline networks still have highest levels of trust with slight advantage over online (offline: 92% - combined strongly/somewhat trust; online: 83% combined strongly/somewhat trust)

- Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years

• Three quarters of respondents rely on professional networks to support business decisions
• Reliance has increased for essentially all respondents over the past three years

- Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation

• Younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
• There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet

Foremski's Take:

These are interesting findings particularly the level of trust that decision makers have towards their online communities, it is much higher than for other types of online information.

Also, the finding that age is NOT a factor in social media use is very interesting. There is a myth that younger people are heavier users or have mastered social media to a greater extent. This shows that age is not a factor and it should lead to broader adoption of social media for decision support.

There is more information here on Don Bulmer's blog: Everyday Influence: SNCR Research Reveals Social Media's Impact on Business and Decision Making

[I'm a Founding Fellow of SNCR - a Palo Alto based think tank focused on research into emerging media technologies.]

- - -

The methodology for this study involved a mixed methods approach supported by quantitative data gathered via online survey of 356 professionals to understand their perceptions and experiences with social media in support of their decision-making. Select interviews of 12 professionals were also conducted using a semi-structured interview guide as part of the second phase of the study.
Key demographics of the research include:

• Close to a quarter (23%) of respondents identified themselves as CEO of their organization; 50% as "Director" (24%) "Manager" (24%)
• Company size ranged from less than 100 to over 50,000 full-time employees
• Age was well distributed with the greatest proportion in the 36-45 range
• 25 countries were represented, with 58% of respondents living in the US
• All respondents were either the decision makers or influenced the decision process within their company or business unit

I recently met with Ijad Madisch, the founder and CEO of ResearchGate - an online community of more than 180,000 scientists sharing research results, helping each other with research problems, and networking within and beyond their fields of study.

Mr Madisch is a doctor specializing in virology. He grew up in Germany from Syrian parents. He lives in Boston.

Here are some notes from our meeting.

- ResearchGate was inspired by FaceBook. Mr Madisch noticed that one of his friends listed his research in his profile and that eventually led to another scientist being able to offer helpful information for his research project.

- The goal is to help scientists help each other with research and to prevent duplication of research projects. This can speed up the overall process.

- The site is growing at more than 1,000 new members every day.

- Members are rated on the quality of their comments and contributions.

- ResearchGate wants to encourage scientists to write up their research even if it failed. There is a lot of valuable information in creating a large database of scientific research even if it didn't fulfill expectations. 90% of research is not published. A searchable journal of failed research would be very valuable for designing future research projects.

- ResearchGate offers access to seven databases of scientific research. It also publishes the research papers of scientists. Research periodicals are very expensive but scientists are allowed to publish their research results on their personal sites -- ResearchGate profiles act as the personal sites for scientists. Otherwise you have to pay $35 per research paper.

- Some universities are using ResearchGate for private networks. This is a potential revenue source.

- Other revenue sources are an "Amazon" for lab equipment with user ratings and reviews. And job postings. It will never sell user data.

- ResearchGate plans to offer collaboration tools for scientists.

- The largest research sector is biomedical. Next is computer science.

- Future plans include online scientific conferences; a peer reviewed online journal; and more that cannot be discussed just yet.

- The company is angel funded. It has a development team in Boston and in Berlin.

- Mr Madisch's visit to Silicon Valley was to meet with potential partners such as a video streaming company, and others.

Fascinating talk by Bernardo Huberman, Director of the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard. He presents the results of several scientific studies of how large numbers of users behave on the web.

The results are very interesting and raise questions about the effectiveness of viral marketing; they reveal patterns in e-mail messaging; the half-life of popular stories on Digg (about 70 minutes); the influence of ratings on popularity; changing sentiment in reviews, how public opinion can be manipulated, and much more.

Don't be put off by the date of this talk: January 2008. It remains relevant because the studies are focused on behaviors of large numbers of users at sites such as Amazon, Facebook, and Digg - and haven't changed. They reveal what appear to be fundamental behaviors that could very well be hard-wired into our humanity - or at least our online humanity.

Here is my recent interview with Mr Huberman.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4997790860449660566#

My recent interview with Bernardo Huberman, Director of HP's Social Computing Lab was fascinating because the research seems to uncover basic human traits that could be universal.

Mr Huberman and his team have been publishing the results of their studies. Here is a selection and it all looks fascinating. This is much better material than the hype and spam driven social-media-expert-type drivel out there that pretends to know without running tests and experiments.

I picked out the following from a longer list that you can find here:

HP Labs : Research: Social Computing Lab

Social media is by far the quickest way an organization can recruit nearly all of its staff into customer support and evangelism roles.

But I'm not sure employees will be too pleased by such moves. It is easy to track who is active and who is not. That's certainly going to be a factor in promotions and pay raises.

Also, because of the blurring of personal and business lives, this means employees will be spamming their friends and family as they prove their worthiness to their bosses.

User generated layoffs...

Companies are also using social media to replace employees because of volunteers among their customers. Intuit is a good example of what could be termed "user generated layoffs."

Here is a video I took from last year's Brainstorm conference of Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit talking about the potential job savings.

Here is a recent BusinessWeek article:

How Intuit Makes a Social Network Pay - BusinessWeek

For the company, this volunteer army means less need for paid technicians.
...Customers were not only asking technical questions, they were often outshining Intuit's own tech support staff by answering 40% of the queries themselves.
...In early June the company said it is laying off 4% of its 8,000 employees. Executives say the job cuts didn't stem directly from Live Community's success, but Wilder points out that since Intuit's community outreach began, "the number of calls to our customer service lines has been reduced. We don't give out numbers, but there have been cost savings."

This is great for Intuit but for how long? If its customers realize that their enthusiastic participation in answering questions results in job losses will they continue to be as enthusiastic?

Also, volunteers do it because they feel like it and then they generally move on to something else. Relying on a fly-by-night army of volunteers could become a problem.

This is the same difference as between bloggers and journalists. Bloggers (citizen journalists) have a day job and they don't have to do it every day. Journalists do it every day (that would make a great bumper sticker :)

What happens to Intuit, and to other companies emulating its example, when their volunteer army doesn't show up for work?

Five weeks ago I wrote: Apple Rant: AppleCare = Shoddy Service - Apple Arrogance?. At the time it quickly attracted a bunch of comments, many of them sharing bad experiences with Apple's AppleCare.

What was interesting was that there was no response from Apple. And five weeks later, that post continues to be discovered and continues to attract comments -- sometimes in large batches as it gets picked up by services such as StumbleUpon.

Yet there is still nothing from Apple, which is surprising because by not leaving a comment, Apple comes across as arrogant, and that it doesn't care that there is a conversation going on about its warranty service.

My social media world is all a twhirl about corporate social media marketing. It's probably because I have a lot of contacts in marketing and communications.

And there are a gazillion social marketing "experts" out there hawking social media marketing strategies to corporations.

This is a mistake. Corporations are not people. They are made by people, and people work there, but they aren't people.

A while ago Seagate, the hard drive company, asked me to be its friend on Facebook. Then it asked me to be a "fan." I use Seagate so I clicked yes both times to see what was up. But do I really want a social relationship with my hard drive? No.

I come across lots of people joining Facebook for the first time, or joining Twitter. Some, should have joined a while ago because their profession needs to know about such things. And you can only know by doing, not by reading. But at least they eventually join.

I know many people, young and old, that are passionately determined never to join any social network. They are often adamant. I admire their stance but I don't understand it.

This is a chance to take part in a social experiment that is totally unique. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Friendfeed, etc, are part of a unique global experiment that involves tens of millions of people in ways that we have never experienced each other. Tell me that's not interesting, or fascinating. Tell me that's not a reason to get out of bed. It's all fresh footprints in the snow.

BrightTALK has put together an interesting online Social Media Marketing Summit Oct 7 at 7am (recorded version available.)

42 Rules of Social Networking for Businesses

Speakers include:

Frank Cutitta, General Manager at IDG Connect

LaSandra Brill, Manager, Web & Social Media at Cisco

Dave Evans, VP of Social Media at Digital Voodoo

Jerry Hart, Partner/VP of Sales & Marketing at Power to be Found

Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep

Bill Hartzer, Social Media Marketing Expert at Vizion Interactive

Edith Yeung, VP of Marketing at Clue Market Inc and Founder of SFEntrepreneur.com

Sean Mulholland, Director of Emerging Media at Atomic Public Relations

Mary Lou Roberts, Harvard University Extension School; author at DIY-Marketing and eBrandMarketing

Jennifer Jacobson, Author of 42 Rules of Social Networking for Businesses

Brian Offenberger, (a.k.a. RSS Ray), CEO of BizGrowth Search Engine Solutions

Charles Wells, Managing Director, Kinship Network

I've often wondered if I have an online doppleganger somewhere out there, someone that shares most of my interests and personality traits. I'm fairly unique in my attributes but I don't think I'm that unique.

If I had an online doppleganger that would be cool. I certainly wouldn't want to marry them or even spend much time with them (or let them join any of my clubs) but I might kick back a bit and rely on them to sort out a few recommendations for me, maybe even write a story for me occasionally :-)

I might be able to find my online doppleganger if Plista, a startup based in Berlin, Germany is successful. I recently got a demonstration of its technology from its charismatic CEO Dominik Matyka.

Berlin's Plista.com . . .

It's not often that I come across startups that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I meet with a lot of companies and most have one or two nuggets of interest but Plista is different. It looks to be one of those exceptional companies that has figured out how to capitalize on the social network trend in a way that will likely lead to a plethora of fascinating web services across all types of desktop or mobile digital devices.

The simple description: Plista has a technology that provides users with recommendations around what they are doing online and across all types of web sites. In some ways it is similar to Amazon or NetFlix recommendation systems but goes much further. If you liked that TechCrunch article you'll probably like this one too. If you liked this type of product you'll probably like this one too. That kind of thing but across any web site.

What is interesting about Plista is how it publishes its recommendations to users and how it models user behavior and preferences.

Overlaying any web page . . .

Users simply download a plugin to their Firefox browser and the recommendations are presented seamlessly within the web page they are looking at. It overlays onto the actual web page and copies that page's colors and typefaces to blend in as if it were meant to be there all along. It doesn't require the web site owner to integrate its technology.

The Firefox Plista plugin will push out of the way any content to show a couple of lines of recommendations, or a larger number of recommendations within a side column. If there's an advert in that side column, it will be pushed down the page.

Publishers will probably not like the fact that Plista users are overlaying their web sites but they can participate and make money if they integrate the technology into their sites through a simple widget (see further).

The recommendation engine is really good despite the service currently still in testing and having only about 50 users. Its quality of service will improve tremendously once more people are using it.

Moody mornings . . .

Behind the scenes Plista's technology creates models of user behavior -- it even has a mood filter. "We can tell if you are in a grumpy mood in the mornings and we can factor that into your ratings," says Mr Matyka.

Plista also has a social network component so that you can share your recommendations and find and follow people with similar tastes.

Its initial revenue model is to have web site publishers pay Plista to integrate the technology into their sites. Those publishers can then take part in revenue sharing from cross-site recommendations.

Using Plista, web site publishers would also gain a deep understanding of their readers because they could see their recommendations and other social behavioral data.

I can see plenty more business opportunities for Plista. Creating an ad network is one of them, and much, much more.

That's not all . . .

Plista also showed me a lot other stuff that is in the works, and wisely, the company is not going to roll out everything at once because it could be confusing.

If you can integrate your social graph into that kind of system--which Plista does enable--you have the makings for some very interesting businesses. There's a chance to create a platform that would become a unique social commerce engine.

Facebook is trying to build its social commerce engine but it is spluttering, and MySpace has similar challenges.

Plista doesn't need to spend $18bn to buy Facebook, nor the bargain priced MySpace that cost Rupert Murdoch's News Corp $580m. Plista can overlay a recommendation based social commerce engine over any web site whithout having to own the content. Plista's recommendation technology could be combined with services, such as ad serving, lead generation, and traffic flow, and boost revenues for online publishers. Plista's approach could raise the value of some web sites.

I didn't make it to the recent TechCrunch50 conference due to a sudden massive attack of boredom with anything related to TechCrunch or DEMO in that week. However, if I had gone, I'm sure that Plista would have been my pick of the show (rather than Yammer ).

I'm very impressed with the company, its team, its ideas, and its technology. It's also a young team and one that I predict will be going places.

The service goes into private beta on 10-10-2008. You can sign up here: http://plista.com/?pageID=1&

For a long time I've disliked the use of the word "social" when it comes to press releases or applied to any other business-related software or business activities. Yet I do recognize that there is a grey area when it comes to online communities such as Facebook, where my business contacts get co-mingled with my friends.

However, in other areas, especially when it comes to press releases and business software, "social" seems to be an inappropriate use of the word.

I've been one of the key evangelists for what I've called the "new media release" it is a news release that includes links, tags, photos, graphics and video. Lately, people have been calling it a "social media press release." I'm not a fan of that term and I'm not the only one.

Tamera Kremer over at her Wildfire Strategic Marketing blog says it well in a post titled: What's so 'social' about product pitches?

The title says it all, imho. But here is an extract:

Let's be realistic and clear-- Social Media Press Releases are micro-sites for a product or announcement. This isn't "game changing", it's just borrowing from what interactive advertising was doing 7 years ago and adding RSS and API feeds and using it as a landing page to direct bloggers and journalists to. That's hardly something that deserves the amount of air-time it's been getting if we are being honest (and doing more than patting each other on the back within the echo chamber).

Let's just call them commercial product pitches . . . a media release with links...(!)

This is from Fortune's Brainstorm conference.

In an earlier post I asked:

Brad Smith CEO of Intuit was on stage and made some interesting comments. He said that he has asked his managers to see what salaries Intuit is paying for that could be voluntarily done by users.

He said that Intuit users have been better at answering questions than Intuit employees. This is why Intuit is looking to save on salaries, which are traditionally the largest cost at any company.

What happens, as it will, when other companies adopt this same approach?! User generated unemployment. Is this a good thing? Is this one of the best business practices associated with social media? Will users hold back on advice if they know that people might lose their jobs?

Intuit Looking into User Generated Unemployment - the Reward of Social Media?

Here's the video:

This is very good:

Hat Tip: Ken Kaplan via Facebook (!)

This week marked the US launch of eBuddy, which sometimes describes itself as the "European Meebo but much larger." This Amsterdam headquartered company provides web and mobile device based instant messaging platform that integrates MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, MySpace and AIM all into one interface. I met Jan-Joost Rueb, CEO and Mindy Hull, head of marketing and communications at eBuddy.

Mindy and I used to work together at the Financial Times so it was good to catch up and also hear about eBuddy. In February, the company raised 6.5 million Euros in a series B round. Those Euros are going to be used to expand its already large footprint:

• 12 million monthly global visitors

• 1.5 million new network users added every month

• 1.2 million unique mobile users per month

• 1.3 billion+ advertising impressions per month

• Google Zeitgeist 2007 Report: #7 fastest rising keyword search (global)

Meebo has done well but it had better watch out...there's a new kid on the block and with Euros in the bank!

Tuesday evening I had dinner with MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe and some of his top executives about the future of MySpace.

It was organized by the International Press Club and I will have more to say on this subject in the next few days. I think I can cast some insider perspectives about MySPace and its strategy plus also some great video... Watch this space.

Here is Chris DeWolfe and myself at a MySpace party at SFMOMA late last year, photo courtesy of Brian Solis, Bub.blicio.us and Futureworks PR.

Please also see: Culture Clash: MySpace at SF MOMA - Southern California Comes to Silicon Valley ySpace at SF MOMA - Southern California Comes to Silicon Valley

...Swift or slow initially it won't matter

Tuesday evening in San Francisco, MySpace unveiled a unique plan to win developers of social network apps. It said it would seek to eliminate some competitive advantages between large and small developers by holding back all application launches to the same day--one month from today.

"We want a level playing field and we think this will encourage quality over quantity," said Kyle Brinkman, GM of the MySpace Developer Platform. He wants small developers to have equal opportunities for success as the larger developers, which have the resources to quickly produce and distribute apps. Or maybe it is the small, nimble developers that will lose out to the larger, slower moving competitors?

Over on ZDNet, I asked if this "socialist-like" strategy would succeed. Does this Southern California based firm understand the developer culture here. Because the MySpace policy clearly clashes against the hard core, deeply embedded code of Silicon Valley's startup culture: speed to market brings massive rewards and creates formidable barriers to competition.

Silicon Valley developers have a deep understanding of the importance of first mover advantage. Startups know that being swift leads to long term success and shorter lives for competitors.

The MySpace plan is to curtail the rewards that first-to-market developers would capture. In the first month, Swift or slow it won't matter, all apps become available at the same time.

Mr Brinkman believes that this will create a democracy and a meritocracy in the MySpace developer community, where apps will succeed based on quality and usefulness.

Quick and dirty apps...

MySpace also said it will scrutinize each app before release to make sure it meets stringent privacy and decency standards. I asked Mr Brinkman about revisions to apps since developers are constantly tweaking their software. Every change will require re-examination.

I understand MySpace's concern about privacy and decency but this process of re-examining tens of thousands of apps creates a potential bottleneck. And paradoxically, it threatens the quality of MySpace apps.

Quick and dirty apps with few revisions will be seen as the most effective strategy. Constant improvement of apps is punished by delays due to re-examination of the code. Again, this is counter-culture to Silicon Valley's best practices in developing best applications.

Anti-viral...

There is also another interesting move: MySpace has weakened the viral distribution capabilities of social apps on its platform. On Facebook, some app developers have seen huge viral uptakes, hitting a million users within a week and tens of millions within a month.

These huge numbers, however, often have more to do with questionable distribution methods that exploit the Facebook communications infrastructure, The growth in users is certainly viral but not necessarily virtuous. MySpace is seeking to reward quality apps. But again, it runs against the grain of Silicon Valley's developer culture, which seeks to maximize and amplify any and all viral distribution opportunities.

It'll be interesting to see how this approach will work out. It is worth remembering that counter culture and counter-intuitive business strategies have succeeded many times in Silicon Valley.

Some excerpts from ZDNet and my conversations at the MySpace developer party:

MySpace will not seek to discourage copycat application developers. Popular Facebook apps such as Zombies, and others, can be cloned with impunity. I asked MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb about this issue. “We don’t want to get involved in any copycat disputes, we will leave that up to the developers to figure out.”

...

Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl, an SMS and telephony application developer, said, “We have negotiated deals with the major carriers, it won’t be easy for others to do the same. We also have negotiated deals with major advertisers, we already have revenues. And we have core patents.”

. . .

Jared Kopf from Slide and Adroll said he wasn’t worried about copycat competitors. “We will have the best Super Poke app on MySpace,” he predicted. Slide is one of the top Facebook app developers and raised a stunning $50m in January 2008, giving it a valuation of more than half-a-billion dollars ($550m.) [Slide Slides Into Some Cash - Brad Stone, New York Times]

. . .

Bill Cromie, co-founder and CTO of New York based Nabbr, a distributor of media widgets loaded with premium content, had an interesting perspective on the differences between the SoCal culture of MySpace, New York, and Silicon Valley/San Francisco. “New York and San Francisco startup cultures are more similar to each other than they are to Southern California. The difference is that people talk in big pictures in Silicon Valley while New York is more focused on show me the money.”

January is National Mentoring Month, a perfect time to launch iMantri.com, an online site using Web 2.0 features to build a social networking site designed to mentor employees, executives and entrepreneurs.
Some more details from iMantri:

iMantri applies the best of both mentoring and social networking to create a non-hierarchical mentoring relationship based on individual competencies. This means a member can be both a mentor and a mentee and can share their gifts as well as tap into the wisdom of their peers.

- Fifty-five percent of respondents to a HR.com survey reported using professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn, to share best practices with colleagues.

-Forty-nine percent use professional networking sites to get answers to issues they are face on their jobs.

- Most mentoring programs are informal. They lack structure and continuity, resources and tools, a supporter network and a large enough pool of possible matches that inspires and guides mentees and their mentors.
iMantri’s core features include:

-- Competency Assessment
-- Goals/Issues based Mentoring
-- Mentor-Mentee Matching Engine
-- Mentoring Framework and Tools: Mentors will be able to define needs in detail, create a mentoring process and implement it using tools for planning, interactions, feedback, and rating.

iMantri is founded by veterans in the field of management and technology supported by domain experts from the fields of coaching, mentoring, training and leadership development worlds. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley and is currently self-funded. The website is at www.imantri.com.

More:

What does iMantri mean?
“Mantri” (pronounced as “Man” “Three”) is a Sanskrit word and means a minister, wise man, a counselor, a trusted advisor and a mentor. (Think of Alexander the Great and his “Mantri” Aristotle.) In addition to Sanskrit, the word has similar meaning and connotation in other languages such as Malay, Indo-China, and Arabic cultures.
Who is behind iMantri?
iMantri is founded by veterans who’ve had experience in startups as well as in executive roles at corporations. The founders of iMantri have been thru the roller coaster of business and learnt along the way the value and importance of mentoring relationships – both formal and informal.

Technorati Tags: imantri

Tuesday evening I'm in Roy's fusion Hawaiian restaurant in San Francisco with an excellent group of journalists and industry people. The Conversation Group hosted the event featuring their clients and others, in a panel-type presentation.

The panel consisted of:
Om Malik, Editor & Founder of GigaOM
Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst and Web Strategist at Forrester Research
Salim Ismail, Head of Yahoo's Brickhouse
Chris Heuer, Partner at The Conversation Group (moderator)Jeremiah Owyang

I'm seated in a good spot, between Jeff Nolan and David Spark. Spitting distance opposite me is Dave McClure, another favorite of mine. Unfortunately our end of the table is not very well behaved, in fact, most of the table fights for some of the conversation versus our esteemed panel, some of whom are paying for our dinner [which made for a fun evening].

We talked about social networks, and one question that emerged from The Conversation Group, [the PR agency representing some of the people there] was "how can marketeers involve themselves in our social recommendations?"

My answer is that there is no place for them at all, or if there is, they had better tread very carefully.

I will recommend things to my social network only on an occasional basis. Why should I spam my friends or allow Facebook to spam my friends about my consumer choices?

I would probably avoid any online service that seeks to make money from my recommendations, or that offers me a share of that monetization.

[How much money could I make anyway? It would devalue my recommendations to friends if I was seen to be making money.]

For now, Facebook works for me because it hasn't yet started to monetize my network, it provides a lot of positive value, and very little negative value. Once it does ratchet up the negative value by trying to monetize my "social graph," and if it does it in an offensive manner, then I will stop using it. Once I stop visiting my "social graph" on Facebook then that's it for Facebook's ability to monetize my network.

I think this could be the Achilles' heel of social networks--if you push the monetization too far--you will lose your networks.

If I don't visit my social network because the owners are trying to monetize the heck out of it, then they have lost.

I love businesses such as CraigsList and Dogster because they leave a ton of money on the table. They know that you have to provide ten times the value and more, as you pull out of the business in terms of advertising. And their users are loyal and passionate because of that.

Yet Facebook doesn't understand this yet--and it is on a slippery slope.

With MSFT's recent investment is it is now a $15 billion company but it doesn't have the revenues (yet) to support that valuation.

MSFT's investment could be setting Facebook up for failure. Because it forces Facebook to prove its valuation and the only way it can do that is by increasing the monetization of its service through advertising.

The negative aspects of being on Facebook are set to increase without any additional services that provide a positive value for Facebook members.

That means our experience of Facebook is likely to diminish in quality as it tries to justify its valuation.

Is MSFT setting it up Facebook for failure? It's an interesting strategy.

Technorati Tags: facebook developer, social media, social responsibility

Meebo, the chat social network company, celebrated its 2nd birthday Monday and launched an initiative that offers a generous revenue split with developers.

Unlike Facebook, which has thousands of developers but doesn't have a monetization infrastructure, Meebo is offering a 50/50 split with developers. And unlike Facebook, which welcomes any developers, Meebo says it will be very selective.

Calling all developers!
meebo is opening up its doors to developers and we'd love for you to help us create awesome multi-user applications that meebo users can use to connect to their friends.

http://wwwl.meebo.com/platform/

Foremski's Take: It's a good move because it ups the stakes in the battle to win developers that every social network platform faces. Without great applications, social networks believe that they will lose users. Meebo is limiting the number of developers into its market which means they have a better chance of making money than at Facebook where thousands of developers are competing (and annoying users).

Meebo's move will encourage other social networks to make competitive offers. Microsoft, for example, offers its Popfly development platform for free to developers, which includes commercial rights.

Developers are in demand, but these days they face the expense of developing for many different platforms, and supporting those applications. It is not enough just to launch an application in the online world, it must be monitored, and tweaked, and developed further if it is to be successful.

Also, developers that sign up for revenue sharing with social network sites, might be disappointed by the returns. The large advertising networks such as Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, and Microsoft, pay very little unless you have very high traffic.

NEW! - Get SVW on your Mobile Phone!

Technorati Tags: developer war

A few weeks back I spent a Saturday afternoon in Palo Alto crammed into a small room with a couple of hundred people listening to the stories of some of the early Facebook app developers. Believe me, it wasn't the way I wanted to spend my Saturday.

But the enthusiasm was fun to witness and it did feel as if we were all (and we still all are) at the beginning of something big. It was fun to see kids straight out of school suddenly rock stars in the nascent Facebook community, learning how to be entrepreneurs.

Whatever your personal and emotional reaction is to Facebook, (and many have told me it is a fad and worse) you have to take notice that you just might be missing out on one of the big stories of the next couple of years.

And you wouldn't want that, or would you? :-)

Take a look:

http://www.podtech.net/home/3977/how-to-succeed-in-developing-facebook-apps

Video: Tom Foremski Video Editor: Lee Cummings Feel free to use on your site or blog!

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Thursday afternoon I met with Matthew Trush and JP Checa, co-founders of Convos, a New York city based startup offering a "Yahoo Groups on steroids" web based application.

Convos is an interesting application, with a clean user interface and the ability to add features through modules. It is built on Flash using Flex. It recently opened up its beta to the public prior to a commercial launch with a tiered pricing structure.

I asked them if they had a Facebook app yet, because I could see this kind of functionality would be great to help manage Facebook groups. They laughed when I mentioned Facebook, and said they don't have plans for one.

Mind the Culture Gap

Are we too Facebook obsessed over here, I asked? Probably was the answer. We talked about the different startup cultures of SF/Silicon Valley and New York. Everyone is laid back here, they said. Yes that's true, but don't be fooled, we're always on, it never stops.

The New York startup community is an exciting place to be these days, they said. Lots of tech meet ups, lots of networking, and lots of discussion about Silicon Alley versus Silicon Valley and which is better. Do we have the same discussion I was asked? No, we don't talk about Silicon Alley at all.

I do like Silicon Alley Insider, an excellent NYC news site. And I would love to spend more time in New York.

I'm always interested in how others view the SF/Silicon Valley culture and its ideas.

I sometimes find that ideas take time to travel. Publishing an idea happens at the speed of electrons but understanding ideas happens at a different speed.

When I worked at the Financial Times in the SF bureau we primarily worked with editors in NYC and London. I noticed that it generally took about six months per 3000 miles for ideas to travel and be understood. I termed it the Foremski Universal Constant of Kulture - for which there is no polite acronym.

- - -

Meet the Convos team:
Date: Friday, October 26th, 2007
Time: 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Location C325, Cheit Hall, Haas School of Business
City: Berkeley, CA

http://blog.convos.com/home/2007/10/24/convos-coming-to-uc-berkeley.html

Friday October 26th - 2007 at UC Berkeley.

- - -

NEW! - Get SVW on your Mobile Phone!

Technorati Tags: silicon alley, startups

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make the Outcast PR After Hours party Thursday night because I had four back to back meetings and events. But I managed to catch part of it.

I've worked with Outcast for many years so it was good to see familiar faces. And it was also interesting to hear some feedback on my latest posts about the changing economic models for PR, such as my Wiley E Coyote post.

It was quite clear that I had hit a nerve with many of my PR contacts and hopefully they will have the courage to take our discussion online so we can share it with others. Some took my post very personally, as if I were attacking them by name, which I wasn't. I was pointing out clear economic trends, that's all. That's my training as a financial journalist, to follow the flow of money within industry sectors.

The world has changed for both the media and PR industries, except the media sector is a further along in experiencing the painful disruption of those changes. The PR sector will eventually go through similar painful changes. This is not a welcome message when the PR industry is booming, and hiring like crazy.

PR industry parade

The PR industry is happy because revenues continue to climb 9, 10 per cent and more annually. New media technologies offer PR firms new business opportunities, they aren't viewed as a threat. PR firms charge clients for additional services. New media/social media is a very good add-on business in the PR world.

But when clients realize they can meet their PR goals using new media approaches for far lower costs, then why pay for both? They won't. There many that already don't.

This is a trend that will be played out in different ways by different companies but its overall effect will be the same.

Technorati Tags: disruptive technologies

I recently met with the Experience Project, a startup that is creating social media support groups around various illnesses. This for-profit company recently launched its first online community called the Cancer Support Project.

Carol Lin, a well known CNN reporter, is one of the key evangelists for the Cancer Project. And the Experience Project plans to build many other social media sites around specific illnesses. The goal is to pay for the web site design and the infrastructure costs, etc, through an advertising model.

Pharma is spending huge amounts of money on general advertising on TV, radio and magazines. Online sites such as the Cancer Project provide far better targeting for pharma companies, potentially lowering their marketing costs.

Is it OK for a for-profit organization to make money off of often tragic illnesses such as cancer? Yes, I think it is as long as the monetization of that community is not taken too far.

A community sites such as CraigsList.org works well because the owners of this private for-profit site only monetize the jobs section, and parts of the commercial rental market. The rest of the site is ad-free even though most of the content is free-ads.

CraigsList's owners could commercialize far more of their traffic but they choose not to because they don't need the money. This has built tremendous user loyalty, and it is a strategy that keeps competitors at bay because CraigsList's mostly-free model doesn't leave much to compete over. It's a canny competitive practice and one that Experience Project should consider.

The backers of the Experience Project include an interesting group of angel investors, former tech guys now entering their 60s. They make small investments in medical related startups, which jump-starts those ventures, and allows them to qualify for various government grants and attract additional venture investments. (See the video interview for more info...) Those seed investments are able to leverage tens of millions of dollars in medical research and development. Smart investing.

Here is a collection of quick interviews I conducted at the recent launch of the Cancer Project in San Francisco which attracted a spirited and colorful crowd.

http://www.podtech.net/home/4320/building-online-cancer-support-communities

Technorati Tags: experience project, Cancer Support Project, Carol Lin

[Notes from the Social Graphing Patterns conference in San Jose.]

Intro to Platform, Apps, & Metrics - Dave Morin, senior platform manager, Facebook. [Note: This is the ONLY Facebook representative at the conference!!!]

We are a technology company.

We now have 43m users, 225k per day are new, or 3 percent.

We are doubling every 6 months.

Over 50% users come every day.

We are 6th largest web site.

Facebook is largest photo sharing site. Not because of more features but because it leverages the power of the social graph.

Facebook is largest event site, larger than evite. Not because of more features but because it leverages the power of the social graph.

Best practices, using "photos" as an example:
-Profile box is not that big, not very necessary.
-Enable engagement, leave comments is very important.
-Mini-feed: We've noticed people aren't using it as much as we'd like them to.

We want to help developers get past the growth stage, allow engagement and then get to make money. These are things that are super important.

We launched the fbFund, rants to get developers started. We don't take equity it is about community.

We have 5,000 apps. We have 90,000 developers in the community.

80% of users have adopted 1 application or more. We could not have dreamed this growth.

These aren't just our users they are your users.

We haven't yet seen a whole new class of work applications. There are lots of opportunities there.

We are still a small company, just 300 staff, we still have a lot of work ahead of us.

- - -

Building Facebook Applications with ASP.net, Silverlight, and Popfly - Dan Fernandez - Microsoft

Users are the stars, take good care of them.

The same way YouTube enabled sharing of videos, we want to do the same for consumers building and sharing applications.

Your software should build self-expression.

Popfly is free, client side file hosting, we don't do server side processing, works with open source AJAX Frameworks.

We built 40 Popfly blocks but there are now over 400.

Your application can live anywhere iframes is supported.

A demo of Popfly and how to deploy on Facebook, all done without coding.

- - -

Facebook App Design: Elements of Style - Jia Shen, RockYou.

The viral spread of Facebook apps is 7 times greater than other platforms because of the API.

Think mathematically, who you are targeting and how people will see it.

Don't go through long development process, be quick. Release early.

Follow how many people click on it and other user behavior.

Use Google Analytics and other site stats.

Launch in phases, make sure it works, then go full out.

Aim for about 1k users to test initially.

Promote on ad networks.

Myspace is like a single-player game, Facebook is multi-player.

Technorati Tags: facebook developer, Graphing Social, GSP07

[From presentations...]

Danny Sullivan - Search Engine Land

From Search to Social.

3rd generational search is hitting right now. Focus is on specific topics.

Personalized search is part of what is happening now. When you search the results move up or down based on your previous habits, but it is done is a subtle manner.

Social search - Eurekster is a good example. Yahoo My Web is another example.

Facebook is not in the search business but they could be in the discovery business.

----

Apps, Widgets and Viral Marketing panel moderated by Rafe Needleman, with Hooman Radfar from Clearspring; Giles Goodwin Widgetbox; Jeff Nolan, Newsgator.

Right now there is a lot of goodwill, you can learn and make mistakes, it's all learning. So it is good to do it now.

The Facebook platform is part of a much larger phenomena. Learn to optimize on Facebook to apply those lessons to future platforms.

Developing Facebook apps can take 4 weeks it doesn't have the richness of functionality, still issues with the platform.

Widgets have to be trackable, the widget itself is the advertisement.

Make widgets clear, simple.

We will have many platforms. There are many destination points.

Terms of service: Keeping to terms of service could putt some companies out of business. Users dictate what terms they will accept.

---

Facebook ad networks and paid content distribution panel - Moderated by Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed; with Joe Hurd, VideoEgg; Ro Cho, Rockyou; Narendra Rocherolle, fbexchange; Philip Kaplan, Adbrite.

Brands are interested in getting involved with social platforms because of the viral nature of the platform.

We've seen Yahoo gain a lot of traffic from their Facebook apps.

Adbrite is getting a lot of advertising from Facebook developers, we have a separate ad channel for them. They have big budgets.

Brand advertisers like video ads on Facebook.

5k Facebook applications, and they are immediately handed a lot of personal data.

You can get millions of users for your applications cost free, and that has not been possible before.

Respect your users. It is a very sophisticated user base.

Facebook needs to prove itself as an ad network.

---

Facebook Business Models & Monetization panel - Saar Gur CRV (moderator), Keith Rabois Slide.com, Scott Rafer Lookery, Oren Michels, Mashery, Craig Ulliot Where I’ve been.

Slide.com: We acquired all our users for free so we don't feel a need to make money right now but we believe we will be able to make money in 2008.

About 10 percent of Facebook activity is on applications. Maybe $1/2m to $3M a month goes to Facebook ads on apps.

Premium upgrades are probably the way to make money in Facebook.

Facebook needs a universal checkout account, a uniform wallet would be beneficial to a lot of people.

There will be new business models, there is a lot of room for experimentation.

Some people might have as much influence on sneakers within their groups as Michael Jordan has across markets.

Google placed top yielding ads at the top was done to avoid Overture patents said Scott Rafer.

Simple, social applications that are universal is the best strategy to ultimately monetize Facebook.

Please see:
Graphing Social Patterns: Notes from the Morning Sessions

The New California Gold Rush...

Technorati Tags: Graphing Social, GSP07

[From presentations...]
Charlene Li - Forrester Group

Example of bad Facebook ads: Jeep Wrangler ads not good.

Behavioural data is more valuable than demographic data. MySpace offers behavioral data Facebook does not.

I haven't seen a great Facebook app yet.

Lance Tokuda - RockYou (a Facebook app developer.)

SuperWall took one day to design, implemented the next day, promoted with 100k users, after 3 weeks there were 2m users.

Some on Facebook are good at content others are good at distribution. Good to have a partnership.
Virality is going down slightly.

Can't do this on web, it is the virality that is important.

Best distribution platform 7 times better than Facebook but only 1 per cent succeed.

Amazon S3 services is good to use for Facebook apps. You only need to worry about database scaling, Facebook serves a lot of your pages.

Seth Goldstein - Social Media

Advertising = Appvertising.

Facebook could provide the promise of personalized advertising because advert is tied to social data.

Facebook will provide new models of advertising that weren't possible until now.

You can ask questions across applications that can reach hundreds of thousands of people.

Need to build advertising specifically for social networks.

I was shocked how Facebook users provided information about themselves.

In our Food Fight application people earn virtual money by answering questions and then they can pay for food to throw. We found many would pay 20 times more for throwing "poop."

Can you make a business from throwing "poop?" People want to do things they can't do in real life. I don't do it and I don't think it is sustainable. But the engagement levels are out of control.

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Please see: The New California Gold Rush...