social networking Archive

Prediction: LinkedIn Engagement Metrics Will Soar in 2009

I did something this morning I haven't done in a long time: I spent an hour on LinkedIn.

Anyone who reads this blog, watches TechTicker, or has read my book knows I have long been very bullish on LinkedIn as a company, and occasionally the site has proven a God-send for tracking sources down. But in a world where Facebook and Twitter meet most of my connecting needs, the only uniquely powerful application for LinkedIn in my view is job hunting, and I haven't had to look for a job since I've been a member. So while I've played around with the Answers application and go to the site once a month or so to sort through invitations, I've never had much reason to spend a lot of time there.

So what changed today?

What Other Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Dogster

Pets.com may have been one of the most wasteful and frivolous of dot com companies, but Dogster is one of the most disciplined of the Web 2.0 generation. It's interesting since Pets.com had a clearer business model, and satisfied a more obvious need. Just goes to show execution wins, in a downturn or no. While a lot of Dogster's smart moves were made in the company's early days, there are plenty of tips in my TechTicker interview with Dogster CEO Ted Rheingold for cash-strapped entrepreneurs worried about 2009.

Clip one:

Clip two (featuring moxie!):

Is Your Startup Going out of Business?

My guest today on TechTicker was Keith Rabois of Slide. Before Slide, Keith was an early member of the PayPal mafia and an early exec at LinkedIn. He also has an advisory role with Sequoia Capital -- where among other exploits he pretty much hand-delivered YouTube to the firm. In other words, in a sea of engineer-minded entrepreneurs, Keith actually knows a thing or two about the business side of startups. He also has opinions and isn't afraid to voice them.

I had to de-Southern myself before taping as I usually sound like I'm saying "Rab-a-way" instead of Rabois. No joke, Mr. Lacy thought it was spelled this way for about the first six months I knew Keith. Ah, the downside of being on camera-- proper pronunciation!

The funniest backstage moment this morning was when the control room told me my guest was ready and I sat down, shuffled my notes and looked up to see a very, very old man in the monitor. "Um, that's not Keith," I said. Oddly enough, the guy sort of looked like a 50-year-older Keith, so I half-wondered if the downturn was just aging him. Turns out, the studio was just confused.

So here are the clips in case you didn't make it over to TechTicker today. The first one is on all the layoffs in the startup world last week (some 250 jobs all together and counting) and what separates companies that are seeing opportunity in the downturn from those seeing doom and gloom. The second clip is about how all those layoffs and hard-to-get-series-b-rounds will ripple into Silicon Valley's macro economy. And the third is about Slide itself: a company planning to spend its way out of the downturn.

I Have Issues

Well if that didn’t scare you off then perhaps this blog thing may actually work out. First off, I profess to know very little about start-ups, or the latest app, or even the basics behind blogging. I still don’t understand how I am legitimate enough to air my own views through blogging. But I digress. I do understand that tech knowledge will come with time, but I am anxious and excited to get the ball rolling. Whereas I used to gorge myself on gossipy, girly pop culture sites, trust that Sarah now has me on a streamlined diet of tech blogs. In the interim, however, I’ll remain that weird kid at the table typing away at her five-year-old Dell PC and answering her flip phone that beeps like a Tamagotchi. And yes, I can feel your judgment. ;-)

 Being the great reporter that she is, Sarah has it pretty down pat: analyzing the business merit and the industry appeal behind these new ideas while also revealing the humanity in the people that strive to achieve the next big thing. I just observe people and read vibes. Perhaps I’m leery of the tech overhaul- where a person becomes little more than a Twitter handle, and can hide behind a blog instead of speaking and voicing their opinions. I can already see the change in little tweaks and twinges- an example being Facebook’s new UI. I know, I know, groans all around- why are we talking about this again? Well, Facebook is priming itself to be the ultimate social media site, if it isn’t already. And I hate the new version. (This coming from a self-declared Facebook stalker.)

 Sure it may be more efficient, and the design layout is clean and direct, but the new version also represents a fundamental truth- there’s no mystery left, nothing to discover about someone. In the older version, a person’s profile view centered around who they are: likes, interests, movies, music. Now, the first thing I learn when I click on a profile is who a person knows and what he or she does: who writes on their wall, what updates Friendfeed lists, etc. It’s a disconnect, a person’s individuality replaced with their network and a hungry sense of self-promotion. The Wall abides.

I know this doesn’t pervade all aspects of life, since I have met so many interesting and creative people in person. Yes, the control does still lie with the user and promotion is commonplace in our culture. In fact, I just added Friendfeed- although not because I feel I have enough legitimacy to throw my updates out there in bold script, but because I would be out of the loop if I didn't. I’m still not entirely comfortable with that level of promotion. But I will be. I guess I’m just old-school across the board, not only in my outdated gadgets.

 Perhaps, this is why I’m so tickled over Sarah’s posts about Mad Men this week. I’m new to the show this season, right now as it inches towards its apex of exposure. Sounds like a familiar scenario. Nevertheless, I like the show. My nostalgic memaw side is pretty keen on the idea of business conducted through handshakes and handwritten notes. And three-martini lunches. So if Mad Men can get down with Twitter, then I suppose I can embrace my new techie side and get down with Facebook. Eventually.

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.

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!

Do I Really Have to Plurk?

I started using the phrase "web 2.0verload" last year, because I was getting fatigued by all the new applications coming out and struggling to keep up with them. Self-expression is great and all but between blogging, Yelp, Facebook etc I felt more self-expressed than the most rabid, life-list-making Oprah-disciple. That was about the time Twitter was getting big in the Valley and I dragged my feet a little getting on the bandwagon, even as everyone around me was talking about nothing but Twitter all the time. (As you know, from reading this blog, I love Twitter now and think it's one of the most socially impact-ful Web 2.0 ideas.)

But a year later, it seems the "nooooo-not-another-one!" feeling has spread to even the most rabid early adopters. Just check out the buzz (is that even the right word?) around Plurk. I haven't signed up yet, although I've looked at the site, and read about it. I've been busy traveling and closing on a house so I've been away from my computer more than usual.

But what's striking isn't that I've dragged my feet-- given my initial mis-call with Twitter-- but that all the usual early adopters are too.

Example Tweet from Robert Scoble: I'm on Plurk. I hate the UI. It is no Twitter, that's for sure. I will probably not spend much time on Plurk. And one from Jason Calcanis: ok, i give up and will get a plurk account. Judging by the Twitters, it seems Orli is the only one in my network who's excited about Plurk.

On one hand, it's impressive that this many people are talking about Plurk and dragging themselves to use it, despite a sense of exhaustion with adding a new service. But it just goes to show you really need to give even the most rabid early adopters a good reason to use your site today. The best reason I've heard is that it's a Twitter alternative and Twitter has been down so much lately. Now that Plurk has had it's own woes with uptime, that's not such a strong incentive! Not as easy as it looks, huh?

I think this was the secret behind FriendFeed's far more heady adoption and effusive buzz early on. It's not a particularly innovative site, and I'm not a huge fan of the UI. I tend to agree that without Twitter, it's not much of a site content-wise either. But it solves a problem, and beautifully exploits the exhaustion with so many platforms for self-expression-- rather than having to fight it.

Bloggers Blog about Me and My Blog

Honestly, I don't mean any disrespect but having to register to comment on a blog is annoying and a huge barrier to entry to me commenting. I don't understand why so many people have that setting when we've got things like captcha to get spam and can block or remove any comments you want. Blogging is about conversation!!

At any rate, I wanted to leave a comment on here, thanking Zach for writing about my book and buying it and giving me some credit even though he thinks Web 2.0 is lame and annoying. Also wanted to respond to a few things he wrote. But I got impatient registering, so I'm doing it here.

Web 2.0 Is Letting Me Down!

Yesterday I did a radio interview that started with a guy telling me people spent too much time in front of their computers and Web 2.0 was bad for society. By the end of the 10 minute interview, I had him mostly convinced he was wrong, by describing how efficient tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter could make communications and relationships. Now Facebook and Twitter are repaying me by punching me in the face!!