June 2008 Archive

How Much Do You Make?

It's a question none of us with any social graces would ask. (Thank goodness reporters come with out those!)  But an interesting new company has launched that will trade you a trove of data if you tell them. It's called Glassdoor. Here are a few interviews I did with the CEO-- be sure to watch the second clip, when he gives out some pretty interesting stats the company has learned from its private beta.

Ad Innovation Check In

When did I start using Innovation non-ironically? Wow. I've been a business reporter too long.

At any rate...per my earlier post 2008 is the year for ad innovation in the Web world, and I'd argue that's harder than product innovation. Why? Product innovation is fun, first off. By its very nature you are working to give people something that will delight them. It's a time when anything is possible and you are your users are totally on the same side. But when it comes to finding new, clever and affective ways to deliver ads over the Web you're inherently at odds with a user that doesn't want to be interrupted, tricked or otherwise profited from. With Web 2.0, community-based sites this is typically where the whole mob uprising thing comes in. (See ch. 5 of my book, or even just the chapter title: "The Mob Giveth and the Mob Taketh Away.")

It also can require a different skill set: Is a product innovator always a good business innovator?

That's a big reason YouTube sold to Google. Amid the iPhone hype yesterday, a lot of people missed a story in AdAge about Eric Schmidt's latest YouTube advertising idea. First off, even Google-- the king of online business model innovation or at least execution-- has not been able to crack the YouTube nut. As the story says, video views swelled to an insane 4 billion in March, even as revenues were just $90 million, according to Bear Stearns. That's a pretty big disconnect. Schmidt has said it's priority no. 1 for Google this year and rightly so. As has been documented extensively by every analyst and business reporter on the planet, Google needs a second act because it can only gain so much more market share in search and on Wall Street it's all about obscene growth. (In the years Oracle-- and a good many other business software companies-- were in Wall Street's dog house they were still indecently profitable.)

The new plan basically lets content makers sell ads on their own video "channels." It's a page out of Ning's playbook-- currently the wiliest business model in Web 2.0 IMHO. Ning from day one told users trey could pay a monthly fee for your own social network, sell your own ads or have them sell ads on your page. No free lunch, means not having to come back and charge for lunch later.

I think it's one of the smarter strategies for YouTube so far.

Um, Paging All Those Silicon Valley Libertarians...

Ok, I've been cyber-bullied and I think this is scary:

"Legislators are newly arming themselves with laws that will protect kids from being repeatedly harassed via the Internet, text messages, or other electronic devices. In recent weeks, Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and Rep. Kenny Hulshof (R-Mo.) proposed    a federal law that would criminalize acts of so-called cyberbullying (PDF). And Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt was scheduled Friday to sign into state law a similar measure, but the event was postponed because of inclement weather in St. Louis.

Both state and federal laws were prompted by the suicide of Missouri 13-year-old Megan Meier, who was the victim of repeated harassment on MySpace.com. An adult neighbor was indicted in the case last month by a grand jury in Los Angeles not on charges of cyberbullying, but on charges of unauthorized access of a computer system with intent to harm another person. (Missouri litigators said they didn't have a law to prosecute the case at the time.)"

OK, my legal knowledge is limited to the reruns of Law & Order that provided great white noise while I was writing my book last year, but couldn't cases like this be covered under manslaughter or some such? Harassment/stalking or battery laws don't stipulate "offline only" right?

If enacted, this starts a new slippery slope of legislation that could endanger free speech (ahem, I hate when people call me the c-word, but doesn't mean they are felons) and crimp the Web's innovation.

Ooooooh! Maybe Valley Innovation Is about to Restart...

As a Valley-based business reporter I get chills (the good kind) when I read Jim Cramer -- or another of his pretending-to-get-tech Wall Street peers-- say something like this. Because as soon as people say innovation is dead in the Valley, it seems to slowly restart. Among other bon mots, Cramer told an audience at New York's "Hey! Us too!" Internet Week that there was more innovation going on in the Rust Belt than Silicon Valley.

I've been outspoken that there's not a lot of great Web innovation going on right now, but Cramer's statement is a stretch even for me. You know what Cramer misses? (Other than the under the radar work happening in clean tech, biotech, etc. The Valley is a big place after all.) He's focused on product innovation, which has somewhat stalled in the Valley's Web scene in aggregate. But business model innovation is where the Valley is at as Web companies and others in areas like open source hunt to find ways to turn insane audiences into cash. Memo to Jim: That's what made Google worth $175 billion today. The search engine was hardly a new-fangled application.

What I love about guys like Cramer is they tout they were rabid Google bulls "early on." Early = Once the S-1 was filed and we all saw the kind of numbers Google was putting up. Props to them for knowing the stock was worth more than $85 a share. But that's not the same thing as spotting "innovation," Wall Street. Just wondering how often Cramer actually comes out here....because I seem to see him on the Mad Money set just about everyday...or goes to the Rust Belt for that matter...

All snarking aside, I don't usually bash Cramer, because I think he's an amazing showman and knows the public markets better than I do. And I have a total appreciation for the rigors of being on camera everyday. But don't try to play the startup game, pal.

Oh! My favorite part: Cramer says TheStreet.com is one of those lone well positioned Web properties. Because so many young people are flocking there. Yeah, that one doesn't even need a snarky graph.

Twitter Props (Or: Yay! No Whales!)

I know I'm not the first to say it, but I wanted to give public props to Twitter for staying up during the Apple madness today. (For most of us.) It's not fair to just write about it when they're down, although with any luck the uptime will cease to become newsworthy soon! Considering the greater complexity of keeping Twitter up and running (as explained beautifully by TechCrunch here...although no clue if that's really accurate. Comments?) and how many other blogs and sites crashed today amid the 3G iPhone unveiling, I think we can say they've made a lot of improvements very fast. They've certainly improved their communications. And am I alone in smiling at that adorable whale even when he's delivering bad news?

With any luck, I may be able to add my Twitter badge back to my blog soon.

Meanwhile, in bizarro land: a post by Rafe Needleman here. Odd since on most people's browsers Twitter was up throughout the keynote, and Summize was down. Twitter deserves harsh press for its scalability problems, but I'm sick of everyone touting other competing services as up all the time. Plurk has had a small fraction of Twitter's traffic and crashed all ready, Summize barely made it through today, and Twirl and Twitterific seem to have constant problems. Can we just accept that maybe this is a hard engineering feat? Twitter has only recently started having systemic problems. At some point, aren't we all like that morbidly obese guy who's at a baseball game shoveling nachos while he berates a hitter because he can't hit a home run?

iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone iPhone

Look, I love Apple products. Geoff and I have a Mac desktop and three laptops and five or six iPods, including the Touch. We give iPods as gifts. So don't write a comment saying I'm an Apple basher. None of this "That stupid Sarah Lacy has probably never even USED an Apple product!" Because odds are I've added to their explosive revenues just as much as you have.

But seriously-- does the launch of a phone warrant this much hysteria? I can't think of another company where a product launch is mainstream news time-after-time. Meanwhile, across the street early results were being unveiled about a diabetes drug that could lessen treatments from two shots a day to once a week. You can't tell me that's not more impactful! I'm quite sure at least 19 million people afflicted with Type 2 diabetes would agree. And given the war now brewing for this lucrative part of the health care market, it's probably a better story for investors than the "Yeah Apple is awesome, but don't buy the stock because it can't go up anymore" line that dominated financial news today.

But because I work for the man and aim to please the masses, I did my part of iPhone coverage today. What impressed me was the ramifications of the software, not so much the new handset. But I'm more a software/UI geek than a gadget geek. Here's the piece I did. Yes, I kinda look like a banker.

Portland Twitter Meet-Up Resounding Success!

OK, it'd be generous to call it a "handful" of people who showed up with just 30 minutes notice. But we still had a great time, with great conversation about the Web and entrepreneurship and where it's all going. It convinced me to absolutely do this in every city I go to from now on, so watch out Twitter because your city could be next! Speaking of, I'm loving all the responses from the Sarah Lacy User Generated Book Tour idea. DC seems to be getting the most love to date...

Here's a photo of me and Portlander John Weiss at the meetup last night. He got a signed book and a free drink! Your chance in your city coming soon...

Tonight's Social Web Experiment: Portland Meet-up

I know I don't have the same juice as Tony "Twitter king" Hsieh of Zappos, but I'm doing a very impromptu Portland meet up at Ron Tom in 30 minutes. Just Twittered it. Anyone who shows up with my book gets a signature and a free drink! Photos on the blog tomorrow. Perhaps of just me and my husband and our friends if no one shows!

Me in Israel!

This is a video interview that JD Lasica shot with me on the beach in Tel Aviv last April, just before the book came out. The fact that I look human and sound coherent is a testament to blush, the beach, JD's skills as a videographer and interviewer and the very concentrated pina colada I was drinking. At this moment my bronchitis was turning into pneumonia and I would collapse just a few hours later and be told I was too sick to even fly home! Even still watching it made me want to go back to Israel!

Preview for Your City?

A video of the reading I did at Google last week