July 2008 Archive

Juicy Interviews

I have to say I have fallen in love with the radio interview. That's actually a bit crazy because I loathe talking on the phone, but there's something about pouring your heart out to a niche or local radio audience in a city you've never been to while you sip coffee in pajamas that's just, well, magic. I've done scores of them over the last few months as book promotion, but I never seem to know when they're running or how to link to them. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to link to these podcast interviews with The Des Moines Register's Juice Magazine. Brianne Sanchez asked great questions and I really enjoyed talking to her. I think it comes out in the clips! I'm just so excited about my stops in Omaha and Des Moines later this week, I hope a lot of people come out!

As an added bonus, here's a video interview I did at the TechCrunch party with my friend, Zennie. He is going to the Democratic Convention and was asking us notoriously liberal Valley types what we wanted to say to the Democratic party. I didn't mince words, as usual. I was also very tired from a long week and a long night of schmoozing. Combined with some freakish lunging at the camera, it's not the most flattering footage in the world of me! ;) But hey, I care about the Party!

Advising my dad not to watch-- more so because he already thinks I'm a crazy liberal than my crassness. ;) Ironically my good friend Cathy Brooks said almost the exact same thing in her interview, but she somewhat more tactfully suggested the party grow "a pair." (Warning: It's very interesting but 40 minutes long. I'm about half way through if you want to skip ahead. But you'll be skipping far more important people like Arrington and Scoble!)

Cool

It's actually hard to pronounce Cuil as "cool" once you've seen it written. I was so busy trying not to visualize the spelling I had to do the intro to this video about 45 times, but hey, at least it made Aaron and the guys in the control room laugh! Bill O'Reilly I feel your pain!

Needless to say, I'm not a fan of the name, but I hope the new search engine can live up to some of the hype. As I say in the video below, I've been hearing about this company for a while from people I really respect and trust, so I was a bit bummed that the site was down so much today. Also, in my informal tests there were nowhere near the quality of results that are on Google. Although this seems to change moment to moment. I searched "Sarah Lacy" and it gave me zero results versus nearly 400,000 on Google. For a moment I was elated! No record of the tumultuous ups and downs of my Internet life? I searched again and got 77,000. And none of the first few pages had links to my blog or any of the hundreds of things I've actually written. That's pretty sub-par search for something so hyped.

Still, I trust my sources on this one. I plan to continue to give Cuil a chance. For one thing, I like the UI and I love the privacy policies. If they can come close to Google results, they'll build a solid fan base with those features alone. They may never really threaten Google, but it's great to continue to see innovation in this space. Search is so important to our everyday lives and not even Google does it perfectly.

All I Can Say Is: Wow

I asked for more videos of people jumping off things and yelling the title of my book. Hillary Brown complied. And, I think, may have outdone Miss Allison. I'll be bringing Ms. Brown a free UGBT T-shirt when I hit Des Moines this weekend. You get one too if you send a video! Enjoy! (And sorry I can't seem to make this not take over the whole screen-- but it's just that good it should be viewed large!)

UGBT T-Shirts, Posters

About to embark on stops two and three of the User Generated Book Tour: Omaha and Des Moines. More on these stops tomorrow.

But wanted to share posters and T-shirt designs with you guys. LMK if you want one! T-shirts are $15 plus shipping (my costs to print them) and posters and stickers are free while supplies last! You have to promise to put them up all over your city though. Deal?

Also, I need help on Austin and Boulder!! Free Tshirts for anyone who helps organize local events! (Yes, DC peeps, they'll be mailed to you retroactively!) Also, if you buy three books you get a T-shirt free.

T-Shirts:

Posters:

NYT Review of...Me?

That's right. Me personally. Not so much my book. (Also mentioned. Is my love. Of incomplete. Sentences.)

Apparently, the NYTBR circulates reviews of books to publishers before they come out as a courtesy. The courtesy to, say, review a book on its merits alone is not so extended! I don't have an issue so much with the criticisms, but why get so personal, Katie Hafner?

The lead seethes with sarcasm calling me out for, as best as I can tell, promoting my book, um, well? It's pretty clear from the tone and details of what I-said-or-didn't-say leading up to publication that she didn't just pick this book up without a pre-existing ax to grind. Just read it for yourself this weekend. Honestly, the fact that anyone seems to hate me quite so much makes it downright amazing that she actually had some very nice things to say about the book! The chapters she liked were some of the hardest to write so I do take that as a great compliment.

Still, I'm not quite sure what I did to you Katie, but sincere apologies because it was obviously pretty bad! I could spend some time answering back the criticisms but I'll let fans of the book do that. Besides, Katie has clearly been waiting for the moment to take me out in print, so I figured it was the least I could do to help build some anticipation for the article. Enjoy! I'll let you know when I start my next book so you can start gathering string for Sarah-Lacy-hit-job no. 2! ;)

My Mini-Moby Dick

I never thought I'd see the day Marc Benioff was a hard interview to get. In the earlier part of this decade, he helped make enterprise software sexy through his stunts and very quotable bon-mots anytime a reporter would ask.

But most of this year he was so busy jet-setting around the world on his customer tour to evangelize his force.com platform, he had no time for little old Sarah Lacy. Well, until this column. For the record, I wasn't so much trying to be snarky as I was legitimately curious why he was suddenly so MIA-- particularly given widespread rumors he wants to sell. That same press-accommodating Benioff clearly still existed though, because as soon as he saw it, he reached out to me. Within days I was flying back from my first UGBT stop, showering, and racing to Half Moon Bay to interview Marc at Fortune's Brainstorm conference. Huge thanks to my crew for jumping through hoops to make it happen on short notice and produce four lovely clips.

I used to cover software for BusinessWeek, so it was hardly the first time we've met, but I hadn't seen Benioff in a while and I was struck by how mellow he came across. I thought it was one of the best interviews I've ever done with him. Rather than Twittering all four links, I decided to just collect them here. (TT really needs a better system to link similar pieces together) I hope you enjoy! (We were all pretty amused by the Segway parade going on behind me. It was all my graphics editor could do not to edit in more ridiculousness just to see if we'd notice.) Clips on the jump!

Maybe Blogging Is Just a Loss-Leader?

I keep thinking about this blogging crossroads and the beauty of small. Then today came Robert Scoble's post about how tech blogging has let you down. It's not hugely applicable to me since I am a business reporter, and he takes pains to separate business blogging from tech blogging. But I think a lot of his comments have to do with the general blogging angst that seems to be sweeping the Web. Or, put another way: How money and the mainstream are killing what a lot of people used to love about blogging.

To me it goes back to the idea of rethinking the monetization element. After all, that’s the practical reason why people link bait, tailor content to huge audiences, play the PR game Scoble aptly describes, or in the case of Gawker give bonuses based on traffic. It’s near impossible to build a huge ad business off blogs with small audiences, even with a portfolio approach. So where does that leave us?

Subscriptions are always an option, but typically a very bad one. There is so much solid free content online, it’s hard to get people to pay for a blog—hell, it’s hard to even get people to pay for the Wall Street Journal. In the print world, subscription fees frequently just pay the cost of getting the paper to you. They’re not a profit center. And since there’s little distribution cost to the Web, it makes sense people would balk at paying.

So does the gulf just widen between the amateur bloggers and the larger, professional blogs that lose their sense of community, conversation, and--frequently—satisfaction? Is there a continual churn as A-list bloggers sell to larger companies or just burn out and fade away, only to have a newer hungrier, more rested crop take their place?

Maybe not.

More DC Pictures...

I love this one:

that's Peter Corbett, SomewhatFrank Gruber, Jen Consalvo, me, and my roadie Peter LaMotte. Crazily enough, Peter went to college with me and is now in the DC tech scene. I haven't seen him in about 10 years but he was kind enough to carry books and perform other roadie like duties. Thanks Facebook for reconnecting us!

I also love this one from the AOL talk, taken by Jen (not sure who took the one above!) I'm signing books and Frank is looking on wistfully. I spent a good deal of time trying to convince him to drop everything and write one. He actually signed one of mine for someone-- just to see what it was like:

More photos of the Twin Tech event here. More coverage here.

Somewhat Frank and Somewhat Michael Are Somewhat Awesome

Massive, massive thanks to my AOL hosts in DC, Michael Tolosa and Frank Gruber who made my visit unforgettable. Here's Michael and I at the party:

And here's a great video Frank did of my visit to DC. He has some great photos here too and a write up on his blog.

The Post Gets Me in Trouble (Probably)

So, I have a few hours left in New York and I'm that kind of exhausted that's too exhausted to nap. We fly back tonight, and then I've got a 5 a.m. wake up for Yahoo. It's going to be BRUTAL. Just brutal. So while I have a bit of stamina, I figured I'd blog some more about my Washington DC experience.

First off-- I was blown away by the excitement of the scene. I didn't get enough time to do deep dives on everyone's businesses, obviously, but I definitely heard about a few cool ideas. Like LA, I was struck that there weren't just a lot of "me too" ideas. More than that, there is a palpable will among everyone I met to drag DC into being a hip, hot Web hotspot, kicking and screaming if they have to.

Every center of innovation needs a cocktail of things:

-wild, almost naive ambition
-money
-a culture of risk taking
-a social scene where Valley-like serendipitous moments can happen. (You know, stuff like: Oh, hey! I haven't seen you in forever! You're starting a company? OMG I know an angel investor who's really into that space! etc)
-big companies techies can spin off from
-universities

I think DC has some of those. The ambition is there for sure, and people like Justin Thorp, Peter Corbett and Frank Gruber are great "human routers" to continually bring new people into the scene and keep the existing ones mixing, mingling-- and most important for DC-- keep them from moving to the Valley in frustration.