I hope you can join us on Sep. 22 evening for a presentation on "Where are the Deals?  Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds' Best Practices in Deal Origination ".  We'll be discussing preliminary findings from a white paper we're writing on this topic.  I'd like to thank our hosts, the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York .

Here's the ad:

The quality of the deals you source is one of the greatest drivers of your success as an investor. What are you doing to improve your deal flow?

David Teten will discuss:

• How are you positioning yourself to become your target's preferred investor?

• What does research on deal-origination indicate are the primary sources of deal flow for institutional investors?

• What are you doing to identify companies that might be interested in being approached?

• What are the earmarks of a potential investment opportunity?

• How are you systematically identifying industries/situations in which you may be able to create new companies, rather than find existing companies?

• How can you use Web 2.0 tools to identify appropriate investments?

• How do you increase your inflow of useful referrals?

• What is the best way to make warm cold calls?

David Teten is a Managing Director of Evalueserve, the world's largest knowledge process outsourcing company.  Founded in 2000, the company has over 2,400 employees.  Among its 1,100 clients are 6 of the top 10 investment banks and 10 of the top 15 strategy consulting firms.  David joined Evalueserve when the firm acquired his company, the Circle of Experts.  He leads Evalueserve's services in helping institutional investors originate investments.  David was formerly CEO of Teten Executive Recruiting, which he sold to Accolo, #42 on the 2007 Inc. 500 list.  Previously, he was CEO of GoldNames, an investment bank serving the internet domain name asset class.  He worked with Bear Stearns' Investment Banking division as a member of their technology/defense M&A team, and was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co.  David is lead author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first book on how businesses can use online networks and other "Web 2.0" technologies to originate deals, raise capital, win new clients, recruit star employees, and market their firm.  He holds a Harvard MBA and a Yale BA, both with honors.   David is a member of the Advisory Board for Accolo, Grouply, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.   He is a frequent keynote speaker to finance and technology conferences

DATE
Monday, September 22nd

AGENDA
6:00 - 6:30 PM Registration
6:30 - 8:00 PM Program & Reception

PLACE
Cresa Partners

100 Park Avenue, [between 40th and 41st Street] 24th floor

PRICE
CBSAC/NY Members $25
Non-members $35
Pre-registration recommended. $10 surcharge added to day-of-event registrations
To become a member click here

REGISTRATION
To purchase tickets click here: Click here to buy tickets!!!
Space is limited and will fill up quickly.

NOTES
Reception includes bottled water, soft drinks and hot & cold hors d’oeuvres

EVENT ORGANIZERS
We are grateful to Gene Kenny and Frank Graziano (CBS '82) of the Private Equity Committee for organizing this event

Events | Leadership and Management | Private Equity Investing | Social Software

Following are my notes on last night's MIT Enterprise Forum event: "Lead Generation 2.0: How Entrepreneurs are Fueling the Next Wave of Innovation in Internet Marketing"

 

 

Moderator: Brian Hirsch, Managing Director, Greenhill SAVP

Brian Hirsch is a Managing Director of Greenhill SAVP and a Co-Chairman of the Fund`s Investment Committee.  Prior to joining SAVP in 2004, Mr. Hirsch was a Principal at Sterling Venture Partners and led the firm`s investments in technology-related companies. Mr. Hirsch is currently a board member of BDMetrics, BestContractors, FTRANS, iKobo, Pontiflex and Serious.  Brian previously sat on the board of YellowJacket (acquired by the Intercontinental Exchange, NYSE:ICE) and KnowledgeStorm (acquired by TechTarget, NASDAQ:TTGT).   Prior to joining Sterling Venture Partners, Mr. Hirsch was a vice president at ABN AMRO Private Equity (AAPE”), the U.S. venture capital group of ABN AMRO N.V., one of the world`s largest banks. Before joining AAPE, Mr. Hirsch worked as a senior consultant at KPMG in the Information, Communications & Entertainment (ICE) practice, where his clients included General Electric, CBS/Westinghouse and the Tribune Company.

 

 

Hirsch: We're very excited about lead-gen.  2007 Sales : $1.3b.  Twice growth rate of search or email marketing.  $2b in 2008

Have backed 4 lead gen companies in the last space

 

Drew Patterson, VP of Marketing, Kayak.com

Drew Patterson is responsible for product marketing and lead generation through Kayak`s travel suppliers and distribution partners. Kayak is the world's largest travel search engine and was co-founded by founders of Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. Kayak.com's investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, America Online and London-based Accel Partners.

Prior to joining Kayak, Drew held a number of positions at Starwood Hotels. As Director Pricing for Starwood, Drew was responsible for Starwood`s Pricing group, which develops and executes Starwood`s pricing and revenue management strategies. This includes management of the Starwood rate structure, analysis to identify effective pricing strategies, observations on company revenue performance and trends, and training for the field revenue management organization.

As Director, Distribution Strategy, Drew was responsible for the development and implementation of Starwood`s distribution strategy, including leading Starwood`s Best Rate Guarantee in 2002 and developing TravelWeb, the hospitality industry`s response to the independent lodging discount websites. Drew joined Starwood in 1999 as Manager of Business Development, responsible for developing partnerships and new business opportunities. Drew graduated from Harvard and received his MBA from Columbia University`s Graduate School of Business. He resides in New York City.

 

Patterson: We're both a vendor and a buyer of leads. 

 

 

Suaad H. Sait, Chief Executive Officer, ReachForce.com

Suaad Sait is CEO of ReachForce. ReachForce, based in Austin, Texas, provides data and software solutions that enable B2B companies to laser target marketing and sales initiatives at the right person in the right company, every time.  As an entrepreneur and high tech industry executive, Suaad has played leadership roles at start-up companies as well as large publicly traded firms. Mr. Sait is the driving force positioning the company as a leader in the emerging marketing and sales force automation segments of the CRM OnDemand market.

Prior to ReachForce, Suaad was the vice president and general manager of Products & Markets at Pervasive Software (PVSW) with world-wide P&L responsibility of the entire product line. Suaad served as the Chief Marketing Officer and COO of Liaison Technology (acquired by Forest Express) repositioning the company into a software platform for supplier catalog content management. Before Liaison, Suaad served as vice president of product marketing at Motive Communications (MOTV). He was on the founding team for Ventix Systems and served as the vice president and general manager of the enterprise business and vice president of marketing. Suaad has also held leadership positions at DAZEL Corporation (acquired by Hewlett Packard), InConcert Software (acquired by TIBCO), CAP Ventures and Xerox Corporation. Suaad earned his Master of Science in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Rochester and a Bachelor of Science in electrical and computer engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Suaad has served as a Mentor for the New Venture Creation program at the McCombs School of Business - The University of Texas at Austin since the Fall of 2005. He also currently serves as an Executive Advisory Board Member of the Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association. In, addition Suaad serves as a board member of the Austin Technology Entrepreneurs' eXchange ("Texchange").

 

Sait: Our founding team was tired of 'spray and pray' marketing.  We developed analytics around your sales funnel.  We'll custom-build leads databases for you. 

 

 

Brad Powers, CEO Active Response Group 

We're getting 100,000 registrations/day.  Strictly paid on performance. 

 

Zephrin Lasker, Chief Executive Officer, Pontiflex.com

Zephrin Lasker is CEO of Pontiflex. Pontiflex, based in Brooklyn, NY, is the first open data transfer network connecting publishers, advertisers and agencies. The company allows advertisers and publishers to reach the entire lead generation market, find partners, make deals and transfer lead data through a single online platform.

Zephrin has been involved with online marketing since its inception more than a decade ago. Zephrin is also a serial entrepreneur, having successfully launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex. Pontiflex is backed by New Atlantic Ventures and Greenhill SAVP.

In the course of his career, Zephrin has played a key role in shaping campaign successes for a variety of clients such as Sprint, Cendant, Earthlink, and eFax, helping them acquire over 8 million new customers.  Prior to co-founding Pontiflex, Zephrin founded The North Road Group, an interactive agency. He has also worked as Vice President of Business Development at i33 Communications, where he managed sales and technical teams to help deliver new customers, launch state-of-the-art websites and deploy cutting edge marketing initiatives.

Prior to i33, Zephrin worked at Commerce One Global Services managing Sprint's new web initiatives. He has also co-founded the e-commerce company Beautility, where he served as Chief Operating Officer.

Zephrin has a background in corporate finance. He has worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in the areas of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. Zephrin began his career as an Equity Analyst at Creditanstalt in Prague. He is an avid fly fisherman and is currently learning how to spray cast. He has a BA degree from Reed College.

 

Lasker: Central place to buy leads. 

 

Discussion

 

Hirsch: Define lead generation

Powers: Permission-based expression of interest.

Zephrin: Any media that can be sold on a cost-per-lead basis

Sait: Identifying the right buyer is important. 

 

Hirsch: Distinguish b2b and b2c. 

Sait: In B2B, Target person is often hidden within the organization.  In B2C, it's much clearer who the buyer is. 

 

Hirsch: Distinguish marketing leads vs. sales leads

Lasker: We're focused on ' marketing leads', which we think of as generic rather than specific.  A marketing lead is brand-specific.  A marketing lead usually has fewer fields (just name, zip), whereas a sales lead will often have more data (FICO score, etc.)

 

Hirsch: How should a marketer think about allocating his budget?

Powers: First think about your maximum permissible cost per sale/cost per lead. 

Lasker: lead-gen is half the puzzle; email marketing is the other half.  Have a good CRM program, good KPIs set up.  Follow your open rate. 

Lasker: How do you define success?  Leads are the lifeblood of business.  A lot of people look at conversion. 

Sait: Do as much experimentation as possible.  It's cheap.

Powers: We came up with some guidelines for data transfer for the IAB. 

Lasker: We started as the Paypal of lead-gen---an easy way to transfer leads between advertisers and publishers.

 

Hirsch: What legal issues should you be monitoring?

Powers: we have many consumer-facing sites, and are very diligent about making sure we're compliant.  We're dealing with PII (personally identifiable information) so you have to encrypt everything.  In the EU, anyone providing you leads must be Safe Harbor certified.  I.e., you're recognized as having secure data and procedures.  Also, must be compliant with DNC (Do Not Call) list.  Lead-gen can create an implied business relationship with end consumer, so you don’t have to check against the Do Not Call list. 

 

Hirsch: Where will lead-gen grow?  Which verticals?

Patterson: search engines don't like lead-gen arbitrage sites (i.e., direct navigation).  We prefer sites (like Kayak) which add value to the funnel. 

Powers: one month our #1 offer was prepaid funerals.  I almost fired my VP of Sales for signing them, and it paid for a chunk of my kid's college education.  A big area of growth is building on-demand hyperqualified lists. 

 

Hirsch: Where does Google sit in the lead-gen universe?

Powers: There's a finite amount of search ads available at a productive cost.  It can get expensive very quickly. 

Sait: For clients way out in the long tail, with very niche sites, Google is very good.  

 

Question: How do you assign a value for a lead?

Answer: Depends on what you're seeking

 

Question: Compare quality of leads from Microsoft, Yahoo, Google?  And how does ROI compare on display vs. PPA?

Answer: Google has better conversion but higher  prices.  So on a net basis, the ROI is comparable to the competition.

 

We have not figured out how to measure the value of display ads. 

Powers: tail end of social network inventory is almost unmonetizable. 

Lasker: we just rolled out a lead-gen box in a banner, so you get both the branding and the lead-gen benefit.

 

Company Presentation

 

Vitals.com

Vitals was created to give consumers the tools -- for the first time -- to make intelligent, informed decisions about which doctor to choose. The Vitals.com web site offers consumers a variety of ways to help in their choice of the right doctor. And it allows physicians to keep track of what others are saying, gives them the opportunity to let consumers know about their work, and lets them make sure their profile is complete and accurate. Vitals' business plan will be presented by Mitchel Rothschild, Founder and CEO.

 

30m people per month search doctors by name or by location/specialty.

 

3 big issues: location, specialty, and insurance network

Then other criteria are on the softer side: gender, languages, bedside manner, ethnicity

 

Background data:

30% increase in 'excellent' rating when people rate people of the same ethnic affinity.

What people want in a doctor: takes time; honest & direct; eye contact

 

First, we built a database of the 720K doctors in the US

We then mapped the healthweb.  Found 20,000 sources of data about doctors: hospital websites, board certs, licenses, publications.  We extracted all that and applied it to our database. 

 

Three parts of wheel clients use in judging a doctor:

1. Quality: education, special expertise (22% of drs. are not board-certified.)

Current profile:

2. Add in consumer ratings from various sites (TripAdvisor as model)

3. Peer reviews: Partnered with Castle Connolly. Over 200K peer evaluations

 

Went live in January.  We have millions of home pages which match up with the search that you're making.  We've spent $8K so far on lead gen.  1M visitors currently.  Great search engine optimization.

 

Sources of Revenue

 

1. We're a media property
2. Data leasing.  We'll reskin our site for various health plans and employers.  Most health plans built their directory back in 1998, and haven't updated since.  We get 15-20 commercial users per day, usually hospitals, medical centers, etc. 
3. Three basic human emotions: Greed, fear and ego.  Because doctors have lots of ego, we'll help doctors fill out the wall of fame in their offices.  Doctors will also pay a lot for this.  
4. Lead-gen: personalized search. Appointment-setting thru hospitals.  Elective care procedures.  Expected cost of visit.  Patient advocate for reimbursement with health insurer.  Choice of hospital for procedure.  Purchase of needed equipment/services.  Second opinion.

 

Online consults mainly used by younger patients with younger doctors, e.g., a pregnant teenager. 

 

We don't typically have a lot of repeat visitors, given the nature of our site. 

 

Today, we focus on advertising / data leasing.  Lead gen is the long term future for us.  We're currently pricing our advertising on a CPM basis.  Some are PPA. 

 

1m visitors per day, about 85% unique

5 page views/visitor

 

Q: How did you get consumers to review the doctors initially?

A: We bought them initially, and now about 3-4 % of visitors will do a review.  That's 50,000 per day.  We do a little SEM to get reviews.

 

John Peters, Tripology

Tripology is a new website aimed at connecting consumers with travel agents that specialize in the type of trip they wish to take. Tripology.com aims to take the hassle out of finding a great travel agent. There are a lot of expert travel professionals out there with a great deal of useful knowledge and terrific prices, but consumers don't have a good way of finding them. And they don't have a good way of finding consumers. Tripology`s business plan will be presented by its President and CEO, John T. Peters.

 

$3.25m raised

8,000 registered travel specialists

45,000 leads since june 07

 

Agent buys 16 leads ($5 each). 

Conversion rate: 6.5%

Avg. # leads before booking : 16

Avg. gross booking: $5,000

Agent commission (10%): $500

 

We tell them to spend $100 on us to do a real test. 

 

Currently flat pricing ($5/lead), but this will change to variable pricing

This is a $581m market opportunity across US, UK Canada, Australia, other Anglophone countries

 

eMarketer just came out with first market research on this sector.

 

Competitors include:

Zicasso, Respond.com, 4TravelAgents, VacationCompare

 

We sell a lead up to 3 times. 

We're building tools on backend for agent.

 

We say, this is not just a lead, this is a customer for life. 

 

We don’t need to do much database fixing, because agents have very strong incentive to be honest about their expertise.

 

Agents will often list a very long list of specialties.  But they'll pay more for leads they're convinced they can win. 

 

Events | Social Software

I enjoyed presenting a few weeks ago to the Harvard Business School Club of London on "Best Practices in Deal-Sourcing by Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Hedge Funds", generously hosted by McKinsey.  You can download my slides here.  I look forward to learning more about this area at next week's Capital Roundtable Masterclass on "The Art of Building the Right Deal Flow", in New York.  I would welcome your feedback.

Career Acceleration | Events | Private Equity Investing | Social Software

 

A constant complaint we hear around the office is that emails we receive (and sometimes send) are poorly written or unclear.  According to “How to Write a Perfect Email”, when writing an email that warrants a reply, there are four key components to get a quick and valid response:

 

1. Brevity- Keep it short.

2. Context- How do you know me/where did we meet (Give information that would make a person remember you) and put it in the subject line.

3. Something to Act On- Make the request clear and ask closed ended questions.

4. Set a Deadline- Set a date when you need the information, give one follow-up email and then pick up the phone.

 

My colleague Michelle Reicher observed that the guidelines set in this blog are a good standard to follow, but, "I disagree with the blanket advice to ask closed ended questions. Keep the request and question clear and concise, but allow the responder to give as much information as is necessary to move forward. When one sends an email with questions, the goal is to solicit a response, but it is important to have a complete, comprehensive, and useful response not just a yes/no answer. Yes/No responses answer the immediate question, but do not allow farther explanation that may answer future questions or give farther insight into the matter at hand."

 

In The Cranking Widgets Blog: “How to Construct the Perfect Email Subject Line”, the blogger observes that a good subject line is imperative for a successful email:

“There are 3 simple tips that, if implemented properly, will make your email subject (and, subsequently, your email) much easier to read.

1.      Use Keywords [to identify the purpose of your email.] All email messages fall into one or more of 4 possible categories:

o        Questions (or messages that elicit a response from the reader)

o        Responses (messages that are in response to questions or other inquiring messages)

o        Informational (or FYI - messages that are meant to inform but don’t require a response)

o        Spam (jokes, pictures of your nephew’s baseball game, etc. - as well as actual spam)

2.      Briefly describe the subject - This is best done before you start writing your message. Finding the right balance between vague and overly-specific can be tough. Personally, I think it’s like anything else - you get better at it with time.

3.      For Pete’s sake, never leave the subject blank - This is something I’ve mentioned before, and it bears repeating.”

 

The body of the email will never be read if the context of the subject line does not act as an icebreaker or a contextual reminder. If the subject line merely says, “Hi” then it is synonymous to a cold call, but if the subject line identifies the business or how you know this person it becomes analogous to a warm call or a referral, which are generally more fruitful and productive than an unsolicited call.

Career Acceleration | Personal Productivity | Social Software

My colleague Jesse Mandell took detailed notes on the recent SIIA panel on Brown Bag Lunch: Content is Dead, Community is King? The Promises and Risks of Social Networking in the Information Industry".  You can view the web broadcast at no charge here.

 

Panelists:
Leslie Forde, VP of Strategic Alliances, Communispace
Leslie is a member of Communispace’s Management Team and is responsible for developing strategic partnerships with customer-focused organizations including marketing consultancies, advertising and public relations firms. She helps Communispace’s partner companies to effectively leverage customers by bringing them into the marketing conversation. Partners such as Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman and Digitas are using communities to deliver more value to their clients: to differentiate their brands, drive greater advocacy, foster loyalty, and overall, to improve marketing effectiveness. Leslie is a frequent speaker on hot topics such as: creating online customer communities, customer engagement, Web 2.0, social networking, and word of mouth. She sits on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s leadership committee.  Leslie is no stranger to creating effective partner alliances. Prior to Communispace, she was the Corporate Sales Director for Cook’s Illustrated and managed channel sales and marketing efforts across all products including: retail book distribution, sponsorship for the public television show ‘America’s Test Kitchen’, and alternate circulation programs for multiple publications.  Prior to Cook’s, Leslie was a Vice President at Northern Light Technology where she managed sales, marketing, and business development efforts in the US and abroad. She moved to London to launch the company’s International Division, where she lived for over two years and grew enterprise clients and alliances by over 300% within the first six months. Previously, she held marketing and brand management positions with Xerox, Bausch & Lomb, and Allstate Insurance.

Kim Kobza, President and CEO, Neighborhood America
Kim Patrick Kobza is a co-founder of Neighborhood America and has led the company through its growth and development since 1999. Mr. Kobza developed many of the original concepts on which the company is founded, helps drive its ongoing vision, and is responsible for revenue growth.
Mr. Kobza's diverse career is characterized by involvement in leadership practices and community building. His background includes education and practice in economics, business, and law. Kim Kobza is a visionary and frequently speaks on the importance of leadership and community building in both business and public disciplines.
Mr. Kobza participates in ongoing education and leadership opportunities with many national leadership organizations and is a graduate and frequent participant in the Harvard Executive Leadership series on Cross Boundary Collaboration. He holds a J.D. from Wayne State University; B.S. degrees from Central Michigan University in the areas of Economics, Mathematics and Earth Sciences.

Scott Parry, General Manager, Reuters AdvicePoint
Scott Parry has over 15 years of experience in the financial industry. His experience includes building and marketing financial information products and leading the development of innovative online brokerage services. Currently Scott is the General Manager of AdvicePoint, Reuters' Web 2.0 online community that connects investors, financial advisers, and investment product companies.
Previous to Reuters, Scott was the VP of Institutional Sales at Invesmart Advisors. Scott helped found Ameritrade Institutional Services and managed Ameritrade Retirement Services and Ameritrade Corporate Services. Scott was responsible for the creation of numerous online brokerage/information services.
Previous to Ameritrade, Scott was the VP Sales & Strategy for Nelson Information, a division of Thomson Financial where he drove the rapid growth of Nelson Information from a print directory publisher to an online information provider.
Scott has a BS from Charter Oak State College with a concentration in organizational management and is working toward a MS in internet technology at Pace University. He holds Series 7, 24, 63, & 65 brokerage licenses.

David Teten, Founder and Managing Director, Nitron Circle of Experts
David Teten is Founder and Managing Director of Nitron Circle of Experts, an Evalueserve company. Nitron is a research firm which provides institutional investors, corporations, and law firms with industry insights from a network of frontline industry experts. David was formerly CEO of Nitron, which he sold to Evalueserve. He was formerly CEO of Teten Recruiting, which he sold to Accolo, the 2006 fastest-growing private company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was also formerly CEO of GoldNames, an investment bank focusing on serving the internet domain name asset class. David worked with Bear Stearns' technology/defense Investment Banking group, and was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co. He is an Advisory Board member of Accolo, Grouply, and the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. David is the lead author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first book about how to sell, market, and close deals more effectively with online networks and other Web 2.0 technologies. He runs TheVirtualHandshake.com resource site and blog and co-writes a monthly column for FastCompany.com about Web 2.0 technology. David is a frequent keynote speaker to finance and technology conferences. David holds a Harvard MBA and a Yale BA and lives in New York with his family and two notebooks.

Moderator:
Karen Christensen, CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group
Karen Christensen is publisher, entrepreneur, and author specializing in global issues who began her career in London and founded Berkshire Publishing Group in 1998. She is editor/publisher of Berkshire's GuanxiOnline (http://www.guanxionline.com/), which helps professional people navigate today's China, and is a member of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations (http://www.ncuscr.org/). Karen is co-editor of Global Perspectives on the United States and launched the community website http://www.loveushateus.com/ in 2006. Karen is an occasional journalist as well as the author of a number of popular books, including The Armchair Environmentalist, that have been translated into French, German, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and traditional and simplified Chinese. She blogs about publishing and social media at http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/blog and about China at http://www.guanxiblogs.com/karenchristensen.

 

 

NOTES ON PANEL

 

KC: Halloween is a good time to hold a panel. It is one of the few times where we gather with many different people we don’t really know to celebrate together. It is an interesting holiday because it is based entirely on trust---we send our kids to request candy from total strangers.  A recent study found that 25% of Americans don’t have a person to turn to when they're in trouble. This is where online communities come in; they can fill the gaps for people and provide a sense of community where otherwise they would have none.

 

KC continues with background on the program:

 

Today we are going to ask tough questions asked about community building. Community is important to many people, including environmentalists, who are into buying locally sharing resources, etc.  I looked at this community and decided that I didn’t want to live near them because they weren’t much fun (laughter). In short, communities are not all rosy; they have both positive and negative aspects. The exciting part of developing big community projects is the ability to build knowledge and business relationships. Today’s program came about because I wanted to learn about new social networking tool to build business and related communities. There are 57 definitions for community, and the ability to collaborate and make a community with different people is important for companies to develop.

 

KC then discussed the different cultural concepts of community and used the Chinese term that means community, guanxi.   In each culture there are different concepts of community, and to be included in a community even for work, there are varying ways to do it.

 

KC then introduced the speakers and reviewed their experience. She also asked the speakers how they defined the term “community” and what communities they are members of.

 

DT: A community is two or more people with any relationship stronger than they would have with a stranger. For example, Americans meeting in another country are part of a community of expatriate Americans. They would not necessarily be friendly back home but because they share the same nationality they will associate when abroad. I am a member of many communities: my family, two synagogues, company (Evalueserve), our clients, school classmates (business school, college, high school).

 

LF: A community is any group of people who share a common interest and develop relationships with a sense of reciprocity. Now with the web, location and place falls away. I belong to many communities and at the moment I am very into Facebook.

 

KK: One of the main purposes in life is to use collective intelligence as a community to make better decisions. For example, communities have been formed around the future of the Statue of Liberty, and national causes such as what to do with healthcare. Community is fundamentally about having a common purpose. I am a part of communities where I will act, friends, family, church and leadership groups. However, most people aren't part of too many communities.

 

SP: To get a better understanding of how communities function, I looked at the interactions of financial advisors and what kind of online communities would appeal to them and if they would use them. They don’t like to interact with each other online and prefer to meet face to face. So we made our community more of a transactional place where investors could talk to advisors and fund companies, etc. I also looked at open and closed communities and the implications of each. Reuters has different initiatives going on to create communities among people using their products (e.g., Reuters Space) where they can share ideas for optimization, etc., so that Reuters could better meet the needs of not only their clients but of financial advisors as well. I personally belong to several communities including family and church. People look for communities when they need information and then become part of that community. For example, when we found out my middle daughter had special needs I became part of that community.

 

KC: Why does community matter today?

 

DT: I divide community into two categories. (DT then spoke about user generated content and how Nitron acts as a community and connects people).

 

DT: There is clearly a movement for people to generate content and synthesize it into something other people can use. Also people use user generated content for feedback, e.g., the NYtimes website. They integrated community content on to the site even though it doesn’t fit the editorial norm.

 

LF: What has been happening with consumers is that people aren’t allowing brands and publishers to have such access into their conversations as they used to have. Highly authoritative content has lost a foothold. People go to friends instead of going to the traditional places for information. New content providers now have the same cachet as traditional content providers. Secondly, consumer generated content is its own animal. We need to learn how to harness consumer sentiment to understand it and how to make, and break businesses as well as what content is important in people’s lives.

 

KC: So LF, you create communities instead of waiting for them to form naturally? What does it take to build a community?

 

LF: Invitation only communities are different from ones that people create on their own. This is interesting for publishers. Publishers have many different kinds of communities that they create for their different customers. These go across age of customer base. It is surprising that when you get people into a virtual room how much they want to be part of the future and a brand's direction.

 

KK: The role of content is changing---- just look at http://ratemyspace.hgtv.com/ (Editor: the internet equivalent is ratemyspace.com, a completely different site.)  People can make suggestions etc., about other people’s spaces. Users took trusted content and used it to create a conversation. This enabled a conversation amongst users, which generated hundreds of thousands of users and millions of hits per month. The peers are the audience and are not experts, this makes it relevant to individual people; the learning is within the audience.

 

SP: I have been in the information business for a while. I have found out that there are risks associated with the rise of user generated content. Wikipedia for example has a lot of information that is now free.  Brittanica used to be worth $500m—now much less.  What happens when user generated content becomes more valuable than proprietary content? We have to stay ahead of that curve.

 

KC: Let’s talk about the implications for deciding to build a community. Can communities really be created? Are online and offline communities different?

 

DT. Yes, they can be created and need to be created using a seed. (DT then gave the example of the stone soup story and how everyone contributed to the soup but that it started with only a stone.) My company, Nitron Circle of Experts, hosts dinners which bring together both clients and Nitron’s experts. The dinner is an artificial community and the seed is the expert.

 

LF: These are great questions, since 1999, I have felt strongly that there needs to be a high level social glue for people to participate and contribute. Social glue can be many different things. I spoke with a motor oil company and asked how are we going to get people to talk about oil? The fact of the matter is that you can’t, you have to get people into community about something else like NASCAR to get them to talk about motor oil. Not every brand needs to create a community; this might not be most effective way to reach the customer. Thinking about purpose and social media strategy is the right place to start, that will lead you to what kind of communities to go to.

 

KC: Feel free to ask question (to audience)

 

KK: Really big things are happening in the world right now and it is important to build communities right now out of a want to create as opposed to something mechanical that it might have been in the past. It is behavioral not a mechanical challenge that we face. It is important in the product development process to listen to consumers. Nine out of ten products fail, what if we can bring this to 8/10 because you listen to partners and consumers.

 

KC: Those are groups we need to use.

 

KK: There is a need to recognize the value of these communities in our business. Also not simply open or closed communities but there are hybrids that need to be considered as well. They are open and give feedback to closed community (the company) to create value.

 

Audience: Do you have an example of a community that has done this?

 

KC: We may be aspirational, this might not be working as well as we would like.

 

SP: We don’t want to rely solely on online communities.  We also do conferences with financial advisors, so that they get the face to face feel they can interact best in. We need both bricks and clicks to make online communities work

 

LF: It is public knowledge that Charles Schwab is a client, and they started a new initiative to attract members of Generation X. Schwab wants to build products and relationships for this community. Schwab though up a high interest checking account that would come with free Schwab advisor account so that they could start the relationship early with these people for when they have money.

 

DT: It seems odd that they had to make an effort to figure out that high interest accounts would attract new business (laughs from audience).

 

LF: It is hard to get the practicalities into the business.

 

KC: Where should a company start listening to map opportunities?

 

SP: Just start talking to people.

 

KC: Who did it and for how long for you to get your community up?

 

SP: We hired experts and talked to our constituents.

 

KC: Do we know where our most important communities are? Where should we trust our gut?

 

SP: If you trust your gut, and add research you will get success.

 

KK: Start with your own employees and then turn to partners.

 

LF: I think it depends on what the high level goals are. If you are interested in driving loyalty then talk to customers first. How they view your value proposition versus how you do is something you need to get a handle on. Then you have to figure out how this impacts loyalty. If you are interested in new customer acquisition then you should talk to the growth market and find out what they need.

 

DT: I would talk to corporate entities and personal network of your employees. People within companies should enlarge their personal network thus enlarging corporate network.

 

KC: What is the optimal size of a community?

 

SP: I have no idea, we work with over a million financial advisors, how many do you really need? Probably thousands?

 

KC: Will they (the financial advisors) pay for a community?

 

SP: For the online community that we built there is a basic version and an advanced version. If they want, there is a basic version online but a better one you have to pay for.

 

KC: Can communities be too small?

 

SP: Yes, one that doesn't generate enough revenue to sustain it and get ad dollars is too small.

 

LF: Through trial and error we tried lots of things. We found that 300-400 people is the sweet spot. So that when new members log in to the community there is new content but at the same time there is familiarity. Members tell me when they are going on vacation for example, so there is a real sense of community with smaller networks. We all kind of know the members and they know others, there is intimacy b/c they see a relationship.

 

KK: Size is directly related to business purpose of the community. Communities based around mass market products will have lots of people. Communities based around a governance issue that affects lots of people will have lots of members. Every community has a life cycle. Some are a week some are much longer or until the business purpose has been achieved. The needs of a community change as well.

 

KC: How do we keep communities relevant and sustainable? There is initial buzz and then what happens?

 

KK: Social networks and communities are very different. Communities need to be credible and relevant over a long period of time. Community has to create value for users. There is also a need to create institutional memory for the community, the online Flight 93 community for example. A decision was made to include lots of people from designers and architects to the families of victims to create a new idea for the monument. Every PowerPoint and piece of documentation connected to a decision is stored. New people coming on can see how and why decisions were made. This underscores the need to create memories that are the working pieces of a community.

 

DT: I disagree with the rest of the panel, community size can be infinite---using my earlier definition of community.  Facebook for example, I can send anyone a note and they will read it because they can see my profile and see my credibility. EHarmony is a community of people interested in romantic partnering.

 

DT then discusses online dating and manageability issues with mailing lists, and mentions Grouply as an initiative in this space.  He then asserts that with the right amount of tech you can get around the issue of size.

 

KC: Should have an “island” in Second Life?  Should existing technologies be used (Facebook, etc.) or should they be individual for each company?

 

Many comments from panelists some yes some no. it is based on the individual need of the company.

 

KK: It takes knowledge and technology to get it right. This is a unique creature. Technology enables communities but doesn’t build them. One needs to make sure that the technology works at all times. This is the largest segment of the technology industry today. This model is used in CRM world. They use data from customers to make their software better.

 

Audience Question: Facebook had to fire some staff when they were found to be picking up social contacts from the database. Guidelines from management need to be established. Humanity has always had communities. What is really new about this? What are the real dollar opportunities? Where is the payoff?

 

DT: (Responds to a previous question about safety questions online. )  There were bad people in the world well before the internet. The telephone had the same problem; people overreact to new technology.  When we hyperventilate about alleged inappropriate behavior on MySpace, we're publicizing by anecdote instead of by data, and then we're establishing policy by anecdote instead of by data.  According to the study Love Online, the rate of negative events among couples who meet is the same or higher for people who met face to face then people who met online.

 

LF: The downside or risk of community is that you have people who can say anything, and there is a need to create boundaries. In my past life with public communities I learned that communities can be hijacked, but in communities online this can be monitored.

 

KC: There are trust issues where personal or financial data can be taken advantage of.

 

SP: There are ratings systems which are great. Like eBay, can talk about people's credibility. That aspect of community is wonderful.

 

KK: We have an expectation of interaction. This is a function of an economic equation as opposed to a behavioral equation. The opportunity cost for participation is almost zero now. What changed here is that the technology is disrupting the cost of participation. It is now easier to get involved and for companies to deliver and make sense of it.

 

Audience Question: What about civil society? To what extent does technology which brings lots of participation imply for the governing structures of our country?

 

KK: At one point I was President of neighborhood association and it surprised me to see lots of community members with lots of wisdom---who did not participate. However, at community meetings you always heard from the same loud people. The promise of technology is that it will create a more structured environment for participation. If technology is used to include people to draw on collective intelligence then it can be excellent and used for public hearings. There are rules for public comments.

 

KC: What is the one thing the audience should do to use community in their business?

 

LF: Take a look at your 2008 business plan and look at it to see if the planning for next year has any planning to do with community. Make sure that you are planning for how this technology will affect this business

 

DT: The community should look at the communities that already exist. Orkut, for example exists in India.  It is heavily used by our employees, whether or not management approves of it.

 

KK: One should feel a sense of courage to change the conversation and create clear value propositions for communities within your organization and raise expectations.

 

Audience Question from a publisher: There are many communities to be discovered online. One area not connected how is to connect people with publishers. How can this be done?

 

DT: Look where people have affiliated themselves with the publication and leverage that.

 

KC: Final comments from the panel?

 

LF: Communities can provide a lot of business value. Insight about new response to products that can make 100 millions of dollars, just look at the 100 calorie pack at Kraft, that came from customer insight. These communities can build relationships with segment of population that could never have been reached before. There is real importance around organic word of mouth that created positive brand value.

 

DT: Nothing sufficiently pithy. (laughter)

 

KK: (pitched his company’s newsletter).

 

SP: We are hedging our bets and using lots of models to start an online community.

 

DT: Just one last comment, it is short sighted to think of this in monetary terms. The NYTimes missed opportunities by charging people for viewing the Times’ archived content. While they made money, the Times lost relevance. Charging for content can be more expensive than it appears.   

Events | NextNY | Social Software

Matt Nelson of Tower Group was kind enough to give me permission to post his thoughtful slides on "Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 in the Financial Services Industry", from the recent New York Financial Markets World conference on "Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 in Capital Markets."  Christopher Rollyson and he briefly discussed his presentation here .

Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

I’m happy to be participating at a Software and Information Industry Association lunch /webcast on October 31 in midtown New York, on "The Promises and Risks of Social Networking in the Information Industry".

The event is on “how your enterprise can profit from social networking: in promotion and marketing, in the development of new products and content creation, and even by making communities one of the services your business offers as an ancillary to content products.”

The other panelists are:

Leslie Forde, VP of Strategic Alliances, Communispace;

Kim Kobza, President and CEO, Neighborhood America;

Scott Parry, General Manager, Reuters Advicepoint

Karen Christensen, CEO, Berkshire Publishing Group will moderate.

Some of the questions that will be addressed include:

• How can we make our communities persistent and sustainable?

• What increases the value of a community to its participants?

• What social media are appropriate for my business?

• Does it really make sense to use existing free social networking communities like Facebook and Second Life?

• Can we develop our own unique social networking systems with open source technologies?

The event costs $50 for non-SIIA members. Alternatively, the event will be available via webcast. Register here.

Events | NextNY | Social Software

I have attached below some notes from last Monday's Financial Markets World conference on Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 in the Capital Markets Industry , at Bayard's, New York.  

My own talk was on "How to Source Deals with Web 2.0 Technologies". It was focused on how private equity funds, venture capital funds, and hedge funds can more efficiently find companies in which they can invest. Slides are here. 

Lauren Buckalew from our Shanghai office took notes, below:

------------------------------

A pilot study on awareness and use of Web 2.0 by Canright Communications and Evalueserve found that of the executives surveyed, 44% were “extremely” interested in Web 2.0 for business, but only 17% felt “extremely” or “very” knowledgeable about the technology.

The survey results—which were distributed at the Financial Markets World Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 in the Capital Markets Industry event today—mirrored the speakers’ sentiments: the business community in general imagines grand possibilities for Web 2.0 technologies in the workplace, but the barriers to adoption, such as lack of understanding at the executive level or compliance issues, are still great.

I came to the event excited to be educated. I knew a little about Web 2.0, but I was overwhelmed by the possibilities I saw in the news and just wanted authoritative instruction on how to filter through all of the noise.

The most informative sessions to get the overview were Matt Nelson of TowerGroup’s opening remarks, and the last talk I attended, Dion Hinchcliffe’s ‘Applying Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 in Financial Services: Early Notes from the Field’. In fact, Dion’s absorbing speech would have been better placed early in the day, as it provided a good background, real-life examples of Enterprise 2.0 successes, and a straightforward summary of its shortcomings.

Other speeches and roundtables drilled down on specific topics, like Instant Messaging, Collaboration, Web 3.0, and David Teten’s talk on using Web 2.0 to source deals (I did not hear the last talk by Tom Steinthal of BSG Alliance). Since I was learning about these areas for the first time I was only able to understand on a superficial level, but was most impressed by Penny Herscher of FirstRain and her simple yet sharp insights.

Stephen Leung, a Senior Manager at BEA Systems, who was a panelist on both the ‘Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0 in the Financial Services Industry’ and ‘Rich Internet Applications and the Client Portal: Using Web 2.0 to Improve the Client Experience’ panels, spoke on the infrastructure and applications side of Web 2.0, and probably received the most questions from the audience.

Although the roundtable topics had various titles, and nearly all of the discussions went overtime out of lively discussion, I didn’t come out of the event in control of Web 2.0 like I thought I would; I just learned how much more there was to it, especially more creative uses of Web 2.0 apps for businesses than I could have imagined.

In following the “Top 10” theme used by Xignite Chariman/CEO/Founder Stephane Dubois to kick-off the first roundtable, here’s my Top 10 Learnings from the event:

10) Web 2.0 technologies should fit into existing workflow and should be invisible to users.

9) The finance world’s secrecy and competitiveness inherently conflicts with Web 2.0’s nature of viral, self-correcting information sharing.

8) Longtail, mashups, fine-grained entitlement, folksonomies, meta data, geo-tagging and MetaWiki are good things… once you understand them.

7) Individuals can use Web 2.0 tools to leverage existing social networks to generate sales or make deals. One can do this outside of any business structures, based on one’s own diversity of contacts, character, competence, the relevance and strength of one’s contacts, and access to information.

6) Executive decision makers’ lack of information on and understanding of Web 2.0—“What’s the ROI?/I don’t have time for this!/Kids these days and their crazy technology…”—prevent companies from realizing adoption. Any new technology would face similar barriers.

5) Web 2.0 is not a technology or a step in development, but a social concept.

4) Legal/compliance teams haven’t yet figured out how to effectively regulate Web 2.0 tools without reducing them to meaninglessness. But giving employees unbridled Web 2.0 tools is also not recommended.

3) Internal company wikis—which act as a unified log for all project developments and conversations—are a successful example of Enterprise 2.0 in the real world. Key to success is to motivate employees to use it and control the structure themselves.

2) Each element of SLATES (Search, Links, Authoring, Tagging, Extension, and Signals) is required for a Web 2.0 tool to be effective.

1) There is no clear solution for how the capital markets industry should integrate Web 2.0 into business. The interest is there, but Web 2.0 is still effectively consumer-driven, not enterprise driven.

More discussion on Enterprise 2.0 is in order, but before then, more actual application of Enterprise 2.0 in the workplace would be more informative.

NextNY | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

Robert Peck of Bear Stearns recently presented on the theme "Yahoo should buy Facebook", with a rough valuation of Facebook. I have to admit my skepticism of this argument. Yahoo has a history of not taking advantage of its acquisitions (Broadcast.com…).

Far cheaper than buying Facebook would be to provide a systematically integrated user experience across all of those different brands. Most noteably, Yahoo owns Yahoo Groups, which to this day has one of the most active user bases of any online community. There are roughly 6 million Yahoo groups, with an average of perhaps 10 users each, and many of those users (including me) are not impressed with the quality of their current user experience. (The 6 million figure comes from Jeff Weiner of Yahoo, but the figure of 10 users each is only a rough estimate.)

Yahoo already has tremendous reach and many of the most noteworthy brands in the Web 2.0 space (Flickr, Delicious, etc.). Integrating all of these brands is a mammoth missed opportunity.

Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

I enjoyed tonight's talk by Peter Thiel at NYC Junto, on "How New Technologies Thwart Government and Promote Freedom". Junto is a libertarian-focused discussion group organized by Victor Niederhoffer. I've been following Peter's writing for a while, since we overlap directly in our interests in investing and in online networks. Peter is President of Clarium Capital Management, an investor in both LinkedIn and Facebook, and was co-founder and former CEO of Paypal.

Peter started with two questions:

1) Let's assume libertarian view is correct. Why aren't more people libertarian?

2) What do we do about it? How do we make the world more libertarian?

Answers to question 1

- maybe libertarianism is not in peoples' interest

- lack of education

- [Cf. Bryan Caplan's book, The Myth of The Rational Voter]

Answers to question 2

When Peter was an undergrad, he might say:

- Education

- Go door to door

- Convince people to vote for candidates

But as he got older, he saw this is very hard to do.

(highlight of the evening: Victor Niederhoffer's toddler son wanders around Peter's legs at this point)

An IQ test for libertarians: ask them how optimistic they are. The more pessimistic they are, the smarter they are.

One solution: move control of money from the government to individuals. But you cant do this via plebiscite. If there was a form of money that government couldn’t measure or track, you'd have a powerful alternative. This insight was genesis of Paypal in late 1990s.

In mid 90s, several companies were creating alternative currencies: Cybercash, Digicash, etc. All of the initial attempts were going out of business. Money has a network-like aspect. How do you create a new currency when no one else is using it?

All these efforts had run aground against this rock. So Paypal started by leveraging against existing systems: credit cards, checks. Send money to anyone with an email address. Started with 24 employees at Paypal. Preloaded accounts with $10. Started to spread. We grew at 5-7% compounded daily.

Einstein, "Compound interest is so miraculous it could only be created by G-d".

Initial theory was very idealistic. In reality we ran up against many obstacles, the first of which were customers. Massive amounts of emails/customer service inquiries.

Spring/summer 2000: discovered bad people are out there. Whole wave of fraud, including Russian mobsters, tried to exploit Paypal. Someone threatened Peter's mother unless PayPal unfroze his account. Then that person ended up shot dead.

Found dystopian website in Former Soviet Union: "Carders World". A carder is someone who steals financial information on people. This was a marketplace for personal financial information. They had a manifesto saying that they were going to take down the capitalist system. Paypal information was there.

2001 period: next obstacle was government. Initial Paypal strategy was to ignore government regulations—'we are not a bank'; ' none of these laws apply to us'. If we rolled this out quickly enough, the government couldn't stop us. "If you have a world where everyone is a criminal, you have to change the law."

Visa/Mastercard tried to come up with rules to prohibit Paypal from using their service. Government was even slower. Radical technological change must be fast.

In 2001/02, when company went public, things really hit the wall. The person investigating their S-1 thought that his job was to stop companies from going public. "He was demoted in government, which is a really extraordinary thing to happen."

Businessweek article said that state of Louisiana hadn't quite signed off on this. SEC investigator told Paypal management that state of Louisiana was going to shut this down. So in middle of roadshow, Peter had to track down government regulators in Louisana and convince them that Louisana did not want to get reputation as a particularly backward place. "So within 2 days, we managed to get that stopped. At the time we had 100,000 Louisana users."

"We are now in 100 countries. 3^rd largest payment brand after Visa/Mastercard in the world. "

How successful were we? Paypal currency is still denominated in national currencies. If you only have one form of currency, you're beholden to the issuer of that currency. Our initial vision inspired in part by Argentinean economic turmoil. If you can force competition between governments, you'll have stabler currencies.

Early 1980s: high inflation rates all over the world. Since then, it's gone down almost everywhere. Forms and symbols can persist well after the substance is gone, e.g., Queen's face is still on UK currency. Technology has been a very powerful force for decentralizing things.

1960s Time magazine cover: picture of 1 big computer that could run the world. Cf. Hal 2001. Computers as a force for centralization is a classic image. In the 90s, power shifted to individuals.

Famous early example: Soros distributing fax machines throughout Eastern bloc.

If everyone becomes a currency dealer thru Paypal, it changes the world.

So much has changed. For example in 1971: it was illegal to own gold and other currencies in the US. 1971 Treasury Secretary said, "It's our money---we can print as much as we want and it's the rest of the world's problem". You can't imagine Hank Paulson saying something similar today.

Power is shifting ineluctably away. Will technology continue to be a force for decentralization?

Why did 1960s vision of centralized computer not happen?

Peoples' ability to process information is flat, but the amount of information has gone up dramatically. So the only solution is decentralization. This is also why Moscow can't set the price of potatoes in Vladivostock.

You may be able to approximate information processing to a problem solveable in polynomial time---and then you have AI, and the 1960s vision of a centralized computer processing everything.

By 2050, we could have thousands of different countries. We have 10-20 years to push as hard and far as we can in direction of more liberty.

Q: How do you prevent Paypal from being used as electronic hawalla---form of terrorist financing?

A: We have protections in place---abide by Patriot Act.

2002: first year number of printed checks in US went down.

Q: question about Second Life and inflation

Q: question about goldmoney.com

A: The problem with gold is that when you really need it, it's not there. In 1933 the government confiscated all the gold bullion in the US.

Q; How do you promote libertarianism?

A: When I was young I tried to reduce the demand side (demand for regulation), but then I saw it was much too hard. So now I focus on the supply side. If I expand the supply side (e.g., more options for currencies), I reduce the amount of government in the system.

I want to promote change without being obliged to go through an election or plebiscite.

Governments are losing power to inflate because of technology. The risks are now tilted to deflation, not inflation. A deflationary environment is hard to invest in, because you can't just lever up and pay things off in cheaper dollars. Private equity and real estate are bad ideas in a deflationary environment. Donald Trump's argument is that you should be short dollars by going long real estate, is disastrous.

Q: How does Facebook promote libertarianism?

A: Facebook will be the dominant next media company . Since the old media companies are non-libertarian, this in itself is good.

Hedge funds are a way to bet against stupidity of governments.

Q: Could you comment on US visa policies and their impact on competitiveness.

He commented that once a tipping point happens, it's impossible to go back. Once the camel's back is broken, it can't be healed. Right now the marginal tax rate in NY is ~50%. In London it's 0%. So it's compelling for a hedge fund to set up shop in London, not NY.

There's a definite shifting of centers of quality overseas. It's happening faster in finance than in technology, but it is happening. (Audience member mentioned that Microsoft is setting up research centers in Canada and elsewhere specifically because they cant bring the researchers they hire into the US.)

Events | Leadership and Management | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

Jason Alba at JibberJobber added a JibberJobber profile to the Virtual Handshake social software company wiki. Barbara Safani writes,

A successful job search campaign requires exceptional organizational and follow-up skills. Jibber Jobber provides an easy to use interface that takes the drudgery out of the job search process while improving efficiencies and accelerating search activity.

What I like about Jibber Jobber is that it addresses a clear need among job-searchers: managing their job search and all of the people and companies with whom they interact during the course of their job search. The great majority of people I meet have very primitive personal CRM systems--often as primitive as a shoebox of business cards. So there's a large opportunity to provide people with more sophisticated tools. Jibber Jobber's challenge is that it is so narrowly focused on the job search, whereas every professional needs a personal CRM tool (e.g., Act, Microsoft Business Contact Manager, etc. They may find that they successfully penetrate the job-seeker market, then at some point rebrand and target the broader professional market.

Career Acceleration | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Kathleen Reidy has posted a useful survey of M&A in the blog and wiki software markets.

Social Software

If you want to avoid the lines, Techcrunch writes how to cobble together an iPhone equivalent for free.

Personal Productivity | Social Software

Charlene Li writes that Forrester just released a report on "How Consumers Use Social Networking Sites". 

"Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have seen tremendous growth over the past two years, attracting a young and engaged audience. Frequent users of these social networking sites not only engage in more activities and have a more positive attitude about these sites, but they are also far more interested in profiles from their favorite companies. Marketers interested in reaching their audiences on social networking sites should: 1) dispense with traditional Web marketing tactics, 2) encourage "friending," and 3) regularly refresh content."

more...

Social Software

I enjoyed speaking at the recent Web 2.0 New York conference.  I have posted an expanded version of my slide deck on "Web 3.0: Where Are We Headed?"  My thanks to Sutithi Chakraborty for her help in researching this topic.

Social Software

Our new parent company, Evalueserve, is highly dependent on email for internal and external communications.  They also hire every year hundreds of recent graduates (particularly in India, China, and Chile) who are usually not familiar with the protocols of business communication via email.  The guidelines below, crafted by my Evalueserve colleague Ramakrishnan M., provide guidelines from which many other companies would likely benefit.  All new employees at Evalueserve/Nitron are asked to hold by these rules. Corporate Email Guidelines     Address  --   Ensure that the “To” and “CC” boxes are left blank, while typing the mail content, so that the message is not sent accidentally. Type the client’s mail id the only after the mail has been written, QCed and accepted. --   It is best to avoid BCCs in business mails   --   Maintain Protocol for “CCs”, i.e., first mention the Client name, and then CE name.     Subject     --   Provide a Subject. The subject should be brief and to the point. --   Ensure that the subject is changed appropriately when replying to old mails   --   Mention the project charge code in the subject of status updates/deliverables/call summaries etc to the client. This is very important from a tracking perspective. Going forward, please follow the nomenclature given below:             o        EVS Deliverable, June 9, 2005 - XYZ-US-B-001 - Brief Project Title             o        EVS Call Summary, June 9, 2005 - XYZ-US-B-001 - Brief Project Title             o        EVS Status, June 9, 2005 - XYZ-US-B-001 - Brief Project Title   Salutation    --   Mails should start with “Hi XYZ,” (including the comma)             o       Choose “Hello”, if the client is based in Europe or if the relationship is more formal             o       You could also write “Hello Mr. Last Name” if you do not know the person too well and wish to be extra formal              o       The best way to decide how to address the client is to follow the way he/she addresses us    Body    --   Provide a suitable reference or background/context (This is with reference to your mail dated …) --   Please categorize all the points into appropriate buckets --   Use “bold” , “italics”, etc. to highlight important points or headings/topics . Avoid using CAPITAL LETTERS. This is considered as angry/rude/arrogant.   --   Ensure that the subject matter is MECE (Mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) --   Be crisp, and to the point --   Especially be clear about action points due from the client’s side, as well as from EVS side --   Broadly, all project-related mails should cover .                o        The objective of the project             o        The work done             o        Clarifications needed             o        Plan of action             o        Red Flags (if any)  --   Follow the EVS template for guidance on how to categorize sub-sections in the email --   Use standard EVS bullets --   Avoid full stops at the end of bullet-points if it is not a complete sentence --   Avoid contractions, such as “let’s” , "pls"  –use full forms “let us” , "please" etc.  --   Be extra careful when copy/pasting from multiple mails             o        Select all the text, make the font “Arial, 10” with color “automatic” or “black”             o        Ensure all signatures (from others) have been removed in the final mail   --   Always propose a tentative solution when you need to get the client’s go-ahead; Let him/her get back with an alternative way, if need be             o        This way you show that you are thinking on your feet             o        You are not sitting idle, waiting for the client to hand-hold you             o        This is applicable to time for a conference call as well – always propose a tentative time.  Please be sure to add conference bridge details   --   Avoid any form of ambiguity.  Indicate concrete time (date, time, with time zone) for all deliverables             o        If possible, avoid EoD ("End of Day") India Standard Time; this does not tell the client much (especially if he hopes to work on it). Instead, write 09:00 PM IST             o        Monday (June 06, 2005) – no “early next week” or “Monday” or anything incomplete             o        06:00 PM CET – Be clear about timeframes. For assistance, use http://www.timeanddate.com/             o        Even if the client uses wrong terms (EST instead of EDT, for instance), be sure that you use the appropriate term     --   Use your discretion on whether to reply to old mails or start new mails             o        If client’s chain/previous comments need to be referred, use the old chain               o        If it is a fresh mail/deliverable, start afresh             o        Please be very careful that no internal mail exchanges are sent across unless necessary    Complimentary Closing   --   Mails should end with “Thanks and regards,” or “Best regards,” (including the comma) --   Ensure that your signature (with updated extension number) is included --   Ensure every aspect of the signature is consistent with the EVS standard --   Mention your first name at the end (even though the signature is right below that)    Last, but not the least   --   Ensure that you run a spell-check before delivery  - please activate automatic spell check option in your Outlook configuration. --   Ensure that you read the mail twice before sending. Think critically and revise suitably. Check not only the grammar and spelling aspects, but also the tone. Ensure that you don't sound rude. --   Ensure that you check and confirm that the document attached is the right one . If it is a spreadsheet deliverable, ensure you have brought the cursor to the beginning of each page using 'Control+Home' combination. Also, the document should be saved with the cover page active, so that it opens with that page when the client receives it.

Career Acceleration | Social Software

I hope that some of you can join me at the conference below---I'll be on the panel discussing user-generated content. Web 2.0 NY  - June 14, 2007

Combined with Local Ad World & Madison Ave. 2.0

Collaborative & Social Tools applied to Business & Media Web 2.0 Business Models with far-reaching influence Disruptive new technology and business applications How AdSense is fueling the Land Grab on Madison Ave. Why NY Digital matters as post-Industrial economy puts Advertising ahead of manufacturing How to raise Capital and grow your Web 2.0 enterprise Must attend for: Media, Advertisers, Agencies, Entrepreneurs, Digital Marketers, Tech Co's, Investors and Educators. Esther Dyson to Keynote Web 2.0 NY Summit Industry pioneer, visionary and backer of Flickr and Meetup speaks at Web 2.0 NY Summit. Shawn Gold, SVP MySpace                                         Other Speakers and companies like Michael Dubin (Yahoo), Jack Myers (Myers Report), Shelly Palmer (TV Disrupted), Kara Nortman (Interactive Corp.), Shaival Shah (Oddcast), Seth Haberman (Visible World), Doug Perlson (TargetSpot), Jenny Mullen (OgilvyOne), Andrew Weinreich (MeetMoi), Connie Connors (HitTail), Wayne Reuvers (LiveTechnology), Andrew Bloom (Spot Runner), Chris O'Brien (MotionBox), Allan Grafman (AllMedia Ventures), David Teten (Circle of Experts) Gregory Galant (RadioTail), Steve Rosenbaum (Magnify), Bob Rustad (Collarity, Dylan Charles (Crimson), Dusty Wright (Culture Catch), David Marder (Eurekster), David Rose (NY Angels)........... Come to the Web 2.0 NY Summit to learn how this is changing content, marketing and customer interaction. Learn how to develop your company, sell your products, acquire new customers and raise capital at our afternoon pitching event.   Evening Cocktail Party sponsored by Live Technology Registration: http://web2ny.com/

Events | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Social Software

The folks at Landslide have figured out a great marketing strategy: If you view a demo of their "sales workstyle management" system, they'll give you a free copy of The Virtual Handshake--Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.

Alex Salkever of Inc. wrote in Turning Sales Into Science that Landslide "gives sales staffers what they need, when they need it, to close a deal."  In other words, Landslide provides salespeople more infrastructure, so that they can focus more on selling and less on all of the other activities that distract them from their main job.

Link: Watch a Landslide demo, get a copy of The Virtual Handshake

Career Acceleration | General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

I'm a longtime fan of the design philosophy and work of CreativeGood. Every time I've written a web design spec, I've required the designers to look at that site. Mark Hurst, founder of Creative Good and Good Experience, and host of the Gel conference (Good Experience Live), has just released his new book, Bit Literacy. Although I haven't read it, based on what I've seen of his past writings, it should be very worthwhile. For a sneak preview of his writing style, see his guide to managing the email deluge.

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

The indefatigable and ubiquitous Auren Hoffman, CEO of Rapleaf, posts his slides from a presentation on the value of soft assets ("connections, knowledge, and reputation"). I particularly like his analogy between alternative assets in the hard and soft space.

General | Social Software | Career Acceleration

I was a judge tonight at an event sponsored by the MIT Enterprise Forum-NY, presentations by three social networking companies. (Sponsor: Fish & Richardson P.C.) The other judges:

- Steve Brotman, Managing Director, Greenhill SAVP

- Jim Coleman, President & Certified Facilitator -The Alternative Board - Chelsea New York

- Russ Fein, Managing Director, Corporate Fuel Partners

- Lori Hoberman: (Moderator), Co-Chair, Corporate & Securities Group at Fish & Richardson P.C.

------------------------------------

Company 1: RevCat.com

Pitch: "RevCat is the creator of the Relationship Value Index (RVI), the first technology to enable employees to build and effectively use organizational networks. RVI provides a new approach to knowledge and contact management. It enables individuals and groups to navigate organizations guided by their performance objectives to effectively get the information, decisions and expertise necessary to meet their objectives. The solution includes software and consulting."

Jim Caruso, CEO:

2 year old firm.

1^st year in business was working with Honeywell Corp, with cross-section of their 100,000 employees.

Industry trends they're riding:

- social networking expanding into corp. workflow

- organizational network analysis has identified clear ROI (e.g., Rob Cross at UVA)

Pain points:

- wasted time communicating expectations and needs

- uncertainty on how to prioritize the people who can help

- difficulty reaching someone who can help

- ineffective at asking someone to help you reach someone else

- frustration waiting for email/vmail response

Goal: RVI becomes the social networking standard used in business to drive individual effectiveness.

RVI measures: mutual benefit, cycle time, invested success, gain access, feedback, walk away, referral, meet objectives

Value proposition:

- Reuse and distribute expertise residing in informal networks (call it knowledge management upside down)

- Reduce costs related to ineffective use of people resources

- Identify faster ways to leverage colleagues to meet business objectives

Honeywell case study: employees didn’t know how to get things done, because of constant reorganization.

Fidelity case study: employees frustrated maneuvering across 40 business units in company.

Their goal is to be the standard measure for relationship value. Generating revenue thru software licensing.

Competitors and potential partners: contact management, social networking (Contact Network Corp, LinkedIn); Human Capital management (Softscape, Kenexa, Halogen); CRM (Salesforce);

RVI is different approach to business relationships. Real-time capture of knowledge and relationship strength.

Barriers to entry: have been at this 7 years.

Customers are typically large complex organizations. Raytheon, Credit Suisse, Pfizer, Dunkin Brands. 350,000 users right now.

MY FEEDBACK:

What I like:

good management team that worked together in the past

-real clients

Feedback on presentation

- should work with KM companies

- not clear how to use it day to day

My Concerns

- long sales cycle, because they have to sell to General Counsel, CTO, CEO

- I'm concerned about relatively little progress after so much time has passed

FEEDBACK FROM PANEL

Responses from Caruso

- they're talking with some big consulting firms about white-labeling this. Have been in business 2 years.

- They approached some of the early adopters (Spoke, Visible Path, etc.) about being the corporate front end for them, but those conversations didn’t bear fruit.

- people are stingy about their relationships

- they mainly sell to CTOs

Responses from Audience

- why not target NGOs?

----------------------------------------------------------

Next Company: YourLocal.com

Pitch: "YourLocal.com is the first website that enables users to navigate their entire local experience. Featuring a wiki-enabled event guide, user-generated reviews, and the community-building tools of a social network, YourLocal.com produces abundant, dynamic content. At the same time, an individualized recommendations engine helps guide users through the "white noise" of events, and towards the events they're most likely to enjoy."

Scott Stedman presenting

Scott Stedman and his brother are founders/owners of "The L Magazine", 102,000 circulation biweekly, largest NY tristate event guide. They cover both venues and events.

Events that you see will be customized for your particular interests. Will incorporate both user-generated revews and events.

Interface guide is modeled on Netflix.

Competitors:

EventMe.com, Bernardoslist.com, Upcoming, Yelp, down2night, whatsupNYC, renkoo.

None have recommendation engine. They don’t amalgamate user-generated reviews.

My feedback:

- very crowded space. Instead why not build "ntag for the social networking/dating space"? Help me meet the women at the party who meet my specs, who will be interested in me. No one's done that well, and that's very valuable. I'd pay for that.

Other feedback from panel:

- don't say you want "5-8 employees"; it's too wide a range

- don't put a pre-money valuation, because someone may think it's worth more.

- Clarify conflict between L Magazine and YourLocal.com . It's better to just get investors in L Magazine as one entity, which owns YourLocal.com . What happens if you expand to Seattle and want to launch a local presence there?

- Go deeper on problems that current users have with their existing site and competitors.

Feedback from audience:

- partner with local weeklies in major cities to get their content

- no evidence in presentation of technology expertise

-----------------------------------------

Collectors Quest

Pitch: "Collectors Quest is a Broadband TV Network targeting the collectors community and advertisers seeking access to this high-value group. Collectors Quest combines a mix of high-quality broadband video, social networking and ecommerce to address a passionate community already online, that spends significant time and money on collecting interests."

Elizabeth Kressel, Founder & CEO

Consumers spend $100b annually for collectibles. 73m Americans are collectors, with an average of 2-3 collections. Over 10m people annually attend collector events.

3 prongs: content, commerce, community.

Very strong management team; 4 with experience in this sector, and 3 worked together previously

COO was founder of auctions.com .

Revenue model:

- targeted commerce. Margins 50-75% on collectible items (standard in this industry).

- Advertising. CPM of $10-$30 due to niche focus. Pre-roll ad rates of $25 but as high as $75 .

- Publishing

Entertaining and informative videos. No one else is offering this in this sector.

1-to-1 marketing in its purest form.

Revenues from UGC and community. Profiles are based on dating profiles. "Make me an offer" feature to provide CQ opportunity to get additional revenues. Use technology to make collecting easier.

"Collecting is all about bragging"---so it's easy to get detailed demographic data

Milestones: secure call center, finalize inventory mgmt, website launched,

Partners; hearst, primedia, mbeckett, Today Show

Collectors clubs with 500K members have agreed to promote CQTV.

Competitors:

Very fragmented area.

Content: collecting sites, cable programmers, network programmers

Commerce: TV , internet auctions, other retail outlets

Have raised $400K to date, and seeking $3m in capital.

Process patent is in process

My feedback

- Great presentation, very professional. Best of the evening by a big margin.

- Raise more money

- Copy MyThings.com

eBay is 1.25% of the $100B/year in revenues in this area. This is very fragmented market. EBay started with collectors market but has since abandoned it.

Other panelists

- this is very viral

- what is your liability in case of fraud, given there's extensive fraud in this market (e.g., signed baseball cards)? Answer: they'll use the same guidelines as ebay.

General | Social Software

If you're having trouble understanding why and how it's become normative for the broadband generation (12-24) to document their entire lives online, I recommend Emily Nussbaum's Say Everything in New York magazine. My favorite section is from Clay Shirky of NYU, who has an amazing gift for metaphor:

Shirky describes this generational shift in terms of pidgin versus Creole.

“Do you know that distinction? Pidgin is what gets spoken when people patch things together from different languages, so it serves well enough to communicate. But Creole is what the children speak, the children of pidgin speakers. They impose rules and structure, which makes the Creole language completely coherent and expressive, on par with any language. What we are witnessing is the Creolization of media.”

That’s a cool metaphor, I respond. “I actually don’t think it’s a metaphor,” he says. “I think there may actually be real neurological changes involved.”

General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Gary Stern of Investors’ Business Daily wrote in a recent article, Blogs Are Put To Use As Business Machines on the significant benefits of unconventional marketing tools, especially blogs. According to the article, blogs can help greatly in generating new prospects and business leads. Of course, blog functionality is migrating steadily to all websites. The Hindu Business Line predicts Blogs may replace typical corporate Web sites. There is one slight misstatement in the article. In the quotation from me about the efficacy of referrals, the correct quotation from me should be, “83% of emails sent via a LinkedIn referral receive a response, far more than without a referral.”

General | Social Software | Leadership and Management

Social media, user-generated content, digital egalitarianism … big media has a big problem

... The second tectonic shift that rocked the Internet in recent days came from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia that allows visitors to create and edit roughly 1.5 million entries in over 35 languages.

The site’s name stems from old school programmer Ward Cunningham’s invention of the first wiki, which originally drew its name from the Hawaiian word “wiki,” which means quick.

 In the case of Wikipedia, this refers to the site’s facilitation of quick collaboration between users in the creation of informational pages.

 On Monday, Wales unveiled a new, free-hosting service called OpenServing, a site that will offer free hosting and use of the powerful Wikia software to anyone interested in creating a community site.

 The kicker: Wales intends to make this all available while permitting users to keep 100 percent of any advertising revenue they earn on their site from ad networks such as Google Adsense. more

General | Social Software

I enjoyed meeting with Jim Fowler yesterday, CEO of Jigsaw (our wiki profile). Jigsaw is a marketplace for business contact information. It's very useful for salespeople, recruiters, researchers, jobseekers, and so on. Some noteable data points:

+ We know from our (Nitron Advisors') own experience that the problem with most traditional list services is that their data is often out-of-date, whereas Jigsaw has attracted a community who are motivated to cleanse the data on their behalf. 80% of Jigsaw phone numbers are direct dial, in part because of their approach to gathering data.

+ Most Jigsaw revenues come from recruiters and financial advisors. 50% of revenue is from corporate clients, who find the data cleansing service that Jigsaw offers particularly valuable. All of Salesforce's salesforce uses Jigsaw . Only a small percentage of corporate customers upload data, but Jim sees that percentage increasing over time.

+ 1/4 of revenue is from resellers/partners --- you can see a list at http://jigsaw.com/company_information/partners.xhtml .

+ He's identified several competitors: WillyLoman.com, 7 Chinese competitors. Jim claims that he is the only player with significant traction.

+ As with all social networks, Jigsaw has some users who abuse the system. So like all data vendors, Jigsaw has started to insert dummy records to track abuse, resale, and so on of their data.

+ Jim claims that some corporate sales brokers have stopped selling databases with emails, because of their concern that their lists will end up on Jigsaw.

+ Although many people (Michael Arrington, Rafe Nadleman) are critical of Jigsaw on privacy grounds, to date only 200 people have asked to be removed from Jigsaw, and >2500 people have asked to be added to Jigsaw so they can proactively manage their data.

+ The database is used heavily; 70% of all contacts in the system are "bought" at least once a year.

+ Jim claims that the people who are really hurt by Jigsaw are CEOs like him and me, because it makes executive recruiters more efficient---so that they can steal our employees more readily. He says "As soon as we're cash flow positive [this year], I've told all our employees that we're giving free lunches every day. We have to do what Google does, because I know that so many people are working hard to recruit our employees."

General | Social Software | Career Acceleration

Dion Hinchcliffe reports on "Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0".

One of the questions I get asked fairly frequently is how people can leverage Web 2.0 techniques in their applications and infrastructure today. Now that it's getting more well known, more people seem to be actively interested in making immediate, practical use of Web 2.0 ideas.

On a related note, the new meta-search tool Zuula looks very useful. (via Shally)

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management | Career Acceleration

Big Media’s Crush on Social Networking:

Sony, for instance, paid $65 million for a video-sharing site called Grouper.com and started a nifty service through which you can load your favorite clip from one of its movies — say, Jack Nicholson barking, “You can’t handle the truth” at Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men” — onto your MySpace or Facebook page.

 Over the last few weeks, other media companies have accelerated their efforts in social networking.

For example, the Hearst Corporation on Jan. 8 bought a small company called eCrush.com.

And the Walt Disney Company, the CBS Corporation, Viacom and NBC have all been busy planning new social networking features for their various Web sites.

more at the NY Times

General | Public Markets Investing | Social Software

Thanks to some regulatory arbitrage, AllFreeCallswill let you make phone calls to many foreign countries for free.

 Dial 712-858-8094, and at the prompt dial 011, the country code you are calling, and the number you wish to call.

 Easy. Some of the bloggers writing about this call this "free", but that's a bit misleading.

Because AllFreeCalls is taking advantage of certain government subsidies, you as a taxpayer are really paying for this call.

General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Via recruiting expert Shally Stackerl, the pros and cons of sites like LinkedIn, Spoke, and Plaxo .

General | Social Software

I've recently talked with a few people about 'social commerce'---the idea that our online business activities will both reflect and in part be driven by our personal social network.

My coauthor Scott Allen recently did a market research study on "Transactional Trust in Social Commerce", which provides some context on this.

For example, many people would prefer to buy a used car from a friend or a friend of a friend, rather than a stranger.

 The social context is particularly important, in my experience, when purchasing services as opposed to products. Why?

Because the quality of a service varies wildly depending on the motivation and context of the service-provider.

 For example, my wife and I are currently evaluating some contractors to do some renovation for us, and a contractor who lives near us and knows some of our friends socially is less likely to rip us off than someone who is a stranger.

Amazon has a primitive version of this functionality, in that I can see that people who like book A also like book B.

I've also seen quite a few startups who are working on various variations of, 'What is an efficient way to buy stuff from friends as opposed to strangers?"

See for example www.stylehive.com and www.thisnext.com.

This was supposed to be a significant part of Tribe's business model, and some of the local services directories (e.g., Yelp, LinkedIn) are also trying to leverage the fact that you trust your friends' (or friends of friends of friends) recommendations. I see several advantages of socializing commerce, in general:

1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising.

 The friend is less likely to lie about how lemony the used car is, because he knows that interacting with you is a repeated game, not a one-time game.

 2. Reduced purchase cost because of fewer intermediaries.

By buying a car from a friend, you don't have to pay a dealer's markup.

3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product.

 Friends (or friends of friends) tend to have similar tastes. If my friend is (like me) a city dad with a child, then my friend is also likely to have a car to sell me that suits the needs of me and my family.

4. Helping out your friends/your community.

 No one does a business transaction unless he/she derives some benefit. You'd rather that your friend gets the economic benefit of selling a car than a stranger.

So does it make sense to use online networks to make commerce more social?

To evaluate against the criteria I listed:

 1. Higher likelihood of truth in advertising.

 Possibly also true online. However, online we already have measures of reputation that are not dependent on me knowing someone who knows the person in question: eBay's reputation functionality, Rapleaf, etc.

 2. Reduced purchase cost.

I think in most cases this doesn't apply online, and in fact the purchase cost when buying via a social network can be higher because I lose the advantage of a broad seller base competing with one another. In addition, somehow the intermediary (e.g., Amazon, eBay) has to make a markup. If I'm buying something online anyway, then I've got access to a shopping comparison engine which will lower my purchase cost to the bare minimum.

3. Reduced costs of identifying the right product.

This is likely true, but only for a small number of products. For many products, my friends are not necessarily more knowledgeable about the product category than Cnet.com---so I should really just buy what Cnet recommends, not what my friends are buying. The one advantage of buying what my friends recommend is that, if conforming is my goal, this helps me to conform.

If everyone else pays a premium for an iPod or Treo 650 then clearly I must buy one too.

4. Helping out your friends/your community.

 To some extent this is also true online.

 However, I doubt it's a big motivation for many people. Research from the likes of Forrester, Resource Interactive and Morgan Stanley is also beginning to focus on a new generation of consumers they term the Millennials (aka, “Generation Y”) who range in age from 18-26 years old.

Their buying patterns differ from prior generations. The Millennials exceed the Boomers in size, distrust media and have little to no affinity for brands.

 As opposed to earlier generations, they value their peers’ advice and validation: therefore, CNet recommendations are less valuable. Jeff Leventhal, CEO of Spinback, observed, "this generation is the largest consumer group to date and will shift the commerce paradigm."

It's clear that many people like doing business with others in their community, or with others to whom they're interconnected. Think how many offices have an internal email list for people to sell sporting tickets, TVs, etc.

Think of the bulletin boards with things for sale that you'll see in many churches or synagogues. However, if you are already doing commerce online as opposed to face-to-face, I'd argue that in many cases it's irrational to make your commerce decisions dependent on your social ties.

 In most cases it's more rational to just buy things via a comparison shopping engine (Shopzilla, Froogle, etc.), particularly when buying a commodity good that could otherwise be found in a few block radius.

The good news for the startups trying to do something in this area: first, many people are irrational and will prefer to buy via a social intermediary, even if they get a worse deal. And second, for certain types of purchases buying via a social intermediary can be more rational, especially when the item is a not a common good, but rather a unique or collectible item.

Used cars are the most obvious example, because there are so many ways in which the seller can deceive you about the true value of the product.

If you're a Pez dispenser collector, fellow members of your community can also turn you on to an impulse purchase which you would not have searched for yourself on Shopzilla, but which you are excited to buy because a trusted peer refers you to it. Feedback welcome.

General | Social Software

Back in 2002-3, Scott Allen and I started work on a book about online networks and social software, what today people call Web 2.0. It's a great sign of the now-mainstream acceptance of these technologies that Time magazine's "Man of the Year" is "You"---and discusses all of the technologies we cover in our book and the Thevirtualhandshake.com website. This choice of cover story also sells more copies of Time magazine than writing about some of the less positive news from 2007 (war, etc.)

General | Social Software

Our COO, Scott Lichtman, is speaking at this event:

New York County Lawyers’ Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee

presents

Web 2.0: Upgrade Your Web Marketing

The Internet is upgrading to version 2.0 and so should your law firm's marketing. More and more lawyers are taking their practices to the next level and this forum should help you do the same. Take an evening to familiarize yourself with how blogging, online referral networks, research-sharing wikis and more can expand your firm’s profile and attract prospective clients.

SPEAKERS

Scott Lichtman

COO, Nitron Advisors

Scott Lichtman is COO of Nitron Advisors (www.nitronadvisors.com), a provider of senior industry executives with specialized backgrounds to law firms for testimony and to investment funds for market advice. Nitron Advisors extensively applies Web 2.0 technologies – including blogs, peer referral networks, online expertise acquisition services, specialized professional search engines and live interactions – to acquire clients and experts as well as build awareness for the firm’s capabilities.

Martin Schwimmer, Esq.

Partner, Schwimmer Mitchell Law Firm

Martin Schwimmer is co-founder and Partner at Schwimmer Mitchell. He represents owners of some of the most famous and soon-to-be-famous trademarks in the world. He focuses on international and domestic trademark and domain name counseling, prosecution and litigation. Martin was General Counsel to an ICANN-accredited domain name registrar and continues to represent domain name companies. Martin was a partner at Fross Zelnick Lehrman & Zissu. Managing Intellectual Property Magazine selected Martin as one of the best trademark lawyers in the United States. Martin writes and speaks frequently on trademark and domain name issues and is editor of The Trademark Blog, www.schwimmerlegal.com, one of the most popular blogs on the Internet in this field of law (and generally ranked #1 by Google in this niche).

Bruce MacEwan

Creator and Host of AdamSmithEsq.com

Bruce MacEwan is a lawyer as well as a consultant to law firms on strategic and economic issues. He publishes the site “Adam Smith, Esq.” providing insights into the business of law firms, which generates 250,000 page views per month. You can read it at www.AdamSmithEsq.com. In his consulting practice, Bruce provides guidance on how to expand one’s business in the legal world. A recent engagement, for example, was a return-on-investment analysis of a knowledge management initiative at an AmLaw 20 practice. He’s also produced empirical studies of the structure of the profession, working with leading law professors. Most relevant to tonight, he has witnessed fascinating situations in which Web 2.0 technologies are being used to the fullest in law and related professional services. Bruce has written for or been the subject of articles in: The National Law Journal, Law Firm, Inc., Law Technology News as well as the Wall Street Journal and Web 2.0 magazine. He is a member of the New York State Bar Association’s committee on Law Practice Management.

Natalie Sulimani, Event Co-Chair, NYCLA Cyberspace Law Executive Committee;

Ron Katter and Henry Diaz, Event Co-Chairs, Co-Chairs NYCLA Solo and Small Firm Practice Committee

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 6:00 - 8:00 PM

NYCLA Home of Law - 14 Vesey Street

(between Broadway and Church Street)

RSVP: DLAMB(AT)nycla.org, Subject: "November 16 Forum". Entrance and facilities for those with disabilities are available. For wheelchair access, a ramp is provided. Please call 212 267-6646 at least one day in advance to make arrangements.

General | Social Software | Career Acceleration

Congratulations to the team at Accolo, which was just named the #1 fastest growing private company in the San Francisco Bay Area. Accolo is the company that acquired Teten Recruiting. For more on their approach to recruiting, see "Use Online Networks to Find Your Star Employee".

General | Social Software

From Scott Allen:

There's a great write-up of danah boyd in Financial Times, which labels her the high priestess of internet friendship. I thought they did a great job, with the exception of not respecting her preference of not capitalizing her name. In addition to profiling danah, the article also chronicles the development of Friendster and MySpace, and others, as well as some of danah's insights on social networking sites. For one thing, danah found that while these sites have created a few celebrities of their own,

...apart from a few intense self-promoters, most people, Boyd found, were using the sites to present themselves to a small group of friends and get their recognition and feedback. The sites are an opportunity to define in public who they are. By providing an audience, and the tools to interact with that audience, the social networks are satisfying that need. Boyd calls this behaviour “identity production? and, employing a favourite phrase of hers, says that young people are trying to “write themselves into being?.

The article goes on to talk about social content sharing, business-oriented social software, and sexual predators. The latter has been covered a lot in the news lately, but I agree with danah:

“The fears are so painfully overblown,? said Boyd. “Is there porn on MySpace? Of course. And bullying, sexual teasing and harassment are rampant among teenagers. It is how you learn to make meaning, cultural roles, norms. These kids need to explore their life among strangers. Teach them how to negotiate this new world. They need these public spaces now that other public spaces are closed to them. They need a place that is theirs. We should not always be chasing them and stopping them from growing up.?

There's more on the tension of commercialization, as well as answers to the questions, "What are social networks?" and "Do the sites make money?" Even though it's ostensibly just a profile of danah, all in all this is probably the best article I've seen on the topic of social networking in a mainstream publication.

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

One of the major themes of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online (see Chapter 16) is the need to preserve ones corporate and personal virtual reputation. I've long thought that there was a need for a business that would be a personal PR agent, which would monitor what's being said about you and destroy any negative information.

That business has been launched: ReputationDefender. What I like about the model is that I think it addresses a real concern that people have (or should have). 10% of Internet searches are for proper names; you are being evaluated every day online. ReputationDefender's main competition will be the same competition that PR firms have: people providing the service in-house instead of using an outside provider.

An interesting question they'll have to address as they scale is verifying the identity of the person using the service. If I say that I want to monitor the activity of my child, who verifies that that person is my child? And this is a great tool for stalking and identity theft (as are ZoomInfo and many other online network services): perhaps I fill out a form indicating that I want to monitor the online activities of a certain individual, who may not be me personally. Verifying that a given credit card ties to the name of the person being investigated is an obvious way to verify identity, but of course large numbers of credit card numbers are stolen every year.

I agree with Pete Cashmorethat it would be preferable to offer a very basic automated tracking service for free to get people into the system - "entering your credit card details is a massive barrier for the casual visitor". After all, people can easily use any search engine/blog reader to view discussion of their name across the net.

More here and here.

Overall, I'm positive on the company's prospects.

General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

"People who access the Internet for what have become routine functions -- sending emails, writing blogs, and posting photos and information about themselves on social networking sites -- do not realize how much of their personal privacy they put at risk, according to Wharton faculty and legal experts. Nor, they add, have the courts fully addressed the ways in which the Internet can be harnessed for questionable purposes that encroach on privacy. "

Kevin Werbach observes:

...[L]ots of situations that used to be private are now public. It's not a question of privacy but of social norms. Perhaps the answer is just, 'That's too bad.' If someone had snapped a photo of [the Korean girl who didn't clean up after her dog on the subway] robbing a bank and she said, 'You can't take a photo of me,' most of us would say, 'Too bad, you were robbing a bank.' In a perverse way, we're going back to the small town where everyone knows what everyone else is doing by virtue of the global information superhighway. My point is, right or wrong, this is going to happen. Google is not going to go away."

I agree that we may be moving to more of a "small town" environment, where your actions are known to many people, instead of you benefiting from the traditional anonymity of the big city. However, unfortunately so far there's very little evidence that this is resulting in an increase in standards of behavior, which would be my preferred outcome. Unfortunately, for broader societal reasons, we seem to be steadily defining deviancy down. More at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1567.cfm

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management

From Scott Allen:

This week, Work.com relaunched in the form of a Web 2.0-ish business community. The site consists of how-to guides for running your small business, written by a combination of in-house editors, certified topical experts, and members. While this has admittedly been done before, Work.com has done a great job on the execution: - great domain name - a clean, well-organized design - a highly consistent guide format that includes links to online resources to help you get it done - a team of professional editors, community leaders and experts to make sure content stays current and appropriate and to help members get engaged in the community I'm the community leader for the Sales & Marketing Channel, and there's already a tremendous collection of how-to guides available on the site, including one I wrote on online business networks. Here are some of my other favorites related to online networks, social software, and Web 2.0:

• Small Business Blogs
• Start Podcasting for Your Small Business
• RSS for Small Business
• Marketing Your Small Business with a Blog
• Managing Small Business E-mail
• Managing E-mail Overload

I've committed to several more guides in the next few weeks -- I'll post here as they go up. Also, if you have a particular area of expertise and don't already see it covered (or at least not as well as you think you could), then you can also create a new guide yourself. If you do, be sure to stop by my profile and send me a message so I can have a read and come post comments. Hope to see you at Work.com!

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management

Less than three years after emerging from nowhere, the hot social networking website MySpace is on pace to be worth a whopping $15 billion in just three more years. Or is it? And is the much smaller Facebook really worth the $900 million or more Yahoo is reported to have offered for it? The problem, say Wharton experts, is a dearth of information -- including data on expected revenue generation and cost structure -- to plug into the standard valuation models.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1570.cfm

General | Social Software | Public Markets Investing

As a followup on my Vistage presentations, here's "What every CEO needs to know about the array of new tools that foster online collaboration -- and could revolutionize business": Web 2.0 Has Corporate America Spinning

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management

I enjoyed speaking at lunch at two Vistage conferences this past week, in New York and Chicago. (As background, Vistage is the world's largest CEO membership organization based on revenue.) You can download my two presentations here: + Chicago Conference: How to Accelerate Your Company with Web 2.0 Technologies New York Conference: Seven Free, Easy Steps to Accelerate Your Business with Web 2.0 Technologies. I have also attached the New York handout below in HTML format. Feedback welcome!

Seven Free, Easy Steps to Accelerate Your Business with Web 2.0 Technologies

Ch = Character

Co = Your firm’s Competence

R = Relevance of the other company

S = Strength

I = Information

N = Number of companies

D = Diversity

Value of Your Corporate Network = D * ∑^N_n=1 (Ch_n * Co_n * R_n * S_n * I_n)

Attribute	Next Step	Cost
1) Character	Review your senior executives' profiles on ZoomInfo.com.	$0
2) Your firm’s Competence	Experiment with BasecampHQ.com for project management.	$0 for one project
3) Relevance of the other firm	Encourage employees to join LinkedIn.com, Xing.com, and other relevant online networks.	$0
4) Strength	Standardize internal phone calls on Skype.com. Encourage employees to use Instant Messaging services. (They're already doing it, most likely.)	$0
5) Information	Sign up on Bloglines.com, Technorati.com, or Topix.net for alerts about you and your competitors' appearances in blogs and news sites. Join CircleofExperts.com to be eligible for paid consulting opportunities.	$0
6) Number of people	Create standard corporate e-mail signature with strong brand reinforcement.	$0
7) Diversity	Use Jigsaw or Spoke.com to identify contact information on prospects.	Jigsaw: $0 w/uploaded contacts. Spoke: $50/mo.

And one more resource:

8) Learn more about Web 2.0

Download The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online at www.TheVirtualHandshake.com

$0

General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Nitron Advisors' COO, Scott Lichtman, took detailed notes on last Thursday's panel on "The State of Independent Research" at the New York Society of Security Analysts.

It was a well-attended event that covered questions ranging from how independent research firms are capturing value through new delivery models to the impact of Elliot Spitzer's global research settlement and prospects for research jobs on the buy-side and sell-side.

NYSSA notes that, 'These are the opinions of speakers at NYSSA's Career Chat on Independent Research and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of NYSSA or its members. NYSSA does not endorse or promote any of the opinions or products mentioned.'

SPEAKERS

Eric Alexander, President, Institutional Services, Wall Street Access
Michael W. Mayhew, Founder and CEO, Integrity Research Associates,LLC
Paul Spillane, President and CEO, Soleil Securities Group, Inc.
David Teten, CEO, Nitron Advisors
David Weild IV, President and CEO,The National Research Exchange
CHAIR: Richard G. Lipstein, Boyden Global Executive Search BIOGRAPHIES

Eric Alexander is president, institutional services, for Wall Street Access, which offers research and execution to hedge funds and money managers.

 He is responsible for strategic development of the firm’s research offering, including coverage of mergers and acquisitions, energy, healthcare, and special situations.

 Previously, he served as director of marketing, and was instrumental in forging strategic relationships that helped the firm grow over the next decade.

 Prior to joining Wall Street Access, Alexander was a vice president with the public relations firm Burson Marsteller, where his clients included AT&T and American Express.


Michael W. Mayhew is founder and CEO of Integrity Research Associates, LLC, a ratings, analysis, and consulting firm for the equity research industry.

 Prior to founding his firm, he was CEO and president of Garban Information Systems, the financial information division of Garban/United News & Media.

 Previously, he was director of strategic planning and business development for Standard Poor’s Financial Information Services Group.

 Mayhew has been quoted widely by various newswires, newspapers, and industry magazines, including Reuters, Investment Dealers Digest, Institutional Investor Magazine, Bloomberg News, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Financial Times, and Business Week.

 He is a member of the Board of Directors of Investorside, the nonprofit trade organization for the independent research community, and chairs a committee of the board to establish best practices for the research industry.

 Paul Spillane, president and CEO of Soleil Securities Group, Inc., has been in the securities industry for over 25 years.

He started his career at Goldman Sachs. where he worked in fixed income, foreign exchange, commodities, futures, and options products.

 He then moved to Deutsche Bank, serving as managing director and head of global market sales for the Americas.

Spillane subsequently transferred to global equities as a senior member of the executive team responsible for building the global equities businesses.

 Most recently, he was responsible for establishing Deutsche Bank’s Global Relationship Management program.

David Teten is CEO of Nitron Advisors, a unique research firm that provides hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds, and law firms with direct access to a global network of carefully selected frontline industry executives, scientists, academics, and consultants.

 David also is the coauthor of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, the first business book describing how to take full advantage of blogs, social network sites, online networks, and other "social software.

" He runs TheVirtualHandshake.com, a resource site and blog, and co-writes a monthly column for FastCompany.com.

 Teten was CEO of an executive recruiting firm that he sold to Accolo, and CEO of GoldNames, an investment bank focusing on serving the internet domain name asset class.

 He has worked with Bear Stearns’ Investment Banking division as a member of their technology/defense mergers and acquisitions team, and was a strategy consultant with Mars & Co.


David Weild IV is president and CEO of The National Research Exchange (The NRE), an innovator in products and services that support capital formation.

 The NRE provides patent-pending analytics and facilities that enable the systematic evaluation and long-term funding of research and related services.

 Weild served as vice chairman of The NASDAQ Stock Market and spent fourteen years at Prudential Securities, where he served as president of PrudentialSecurities.com, head of corporate finance, head of technology investment banking, and head of equity capital markets.

 He also chaired Prudential’s Equity New Issues Commitment Committee.

 PROGRAM DESCRIPTION The entire research industry is undergoing a seismic shift that will produce both winners and losers in the coming years.

Some of the more innovative research providers will continue to experience growth, while the total number of independent research firms is to expected to fall almost two-thirds by 2009.

 The need for good research, however, will never go away. Learn the reasons for the coming shakeout and how you can be among the success stories.

 Scott Lichtman's notes: Richard Lipstein Question: Please describe your business models for independent research. David Weild IV: We are a utility for Wall Street to get research paid for explicitly, while achieving coverage and liquidity for smaller public firms.

Coverage continues to be shed across the industry. Fewer IPOs are symptomatic of this. There were < 200 IPOS in each of last 3 years.

 Pre-bubble, there were 460 IPOs/year avg. We have 14 patents.

David Teten: We provide access to frontline industry experts who can provide deep insight into the companies and industries you are analyzing.

 There is a circle of economic agents around any company – suppliers, customers, regulatory observers-- who are in an appropriate position to provide fresh information to investors.

 We provide access to that circle.

 This means your analysts are drawing conclusions and making the buy/sell recommendations (not us), while you benefit from ready access to unique sources.

 There are three trends that drive the fast growth of our model:


1) The destruction of credibility of sell-side research.

2) Trend towards more people, including senior executives, who are managing their careers individually, without assuming they are wedded long-term to a given firm. These "corporate alumni’ are an exceptional base of knowledge.

3) A trend towards people having a public, articulated virtual identity, through personal web sites, bios and resumes online, social network sites, and software that is aggregating people’s backgrounds into a chronological whole.

I discuss these technologies in more depth in The Virtual Handshake- Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.

We are actively seeking out consulting firms and individuals who would like to consult through our platform.

Paul Spillane, Soleil Securities. Our goal: Premier aggregator and distributor of intellectual content.

We are a registered broker dealer. We have a significant distribution platform, analysts all around the country and an agency trading desk in New York.

 Covering 320 stocks, 32 analysts, 3-5 alternative products. Analysts work when they want, get paid based on deliverables.

Incorporating Fixed income, Commodities, Equities, and commentary on data sources.

If you can think of a new idea, you can provide content in our model. We are looking for employees, firms to partner with and new sources of content.

 Michael Mayhew: Integrity is the leading provider of information assessment and evaluation on the research industry.

We publish research on the industry including a blog, web-based tools, due diligence on 436 research firms. Now adding 60 firms in Europe to the database.

 We help funds find research to add alpha, and mitigate risk in using research. Very little due diligence is typically done on hiring a research firm, especially compared to investing in a fund or fund-of-funds.

 We help funds reduce their risk in hiring a research firm.

 Eric Alexander: We offer clients an integrated service, including access to a team of leading analysts in M&A, special situations, oil and gas, utilities and agribusiness.

 We also offer clients access to a proprietary network of healthcare experts.

 Also have a trading desk – important for clients to gain a full range of service and for us to get paid appropriately.

We customize offerings for each client. Richard Lipstein Question: What are challenges facing independent research firms.

David Teten: Research has a very unusual economic model: You usually get paid well after the service is delivered, you usually don't know how much you'll get paid, and neither seller nor the purchaser knows the exact value of the service.

The value of research varies enormously from highly negative to many millions of dollars, yet it's not common to define, let alone track, the metrics to place a value/price on it.

Also, declining commissions on a per trade basis are putting pressure on the economic equation.

Michael Mayhew: 2 major trends.
1) Biggest challenge is proving value, day in and day out.

The kind of research that could be sold 20 yrs ago has changed. Today folks want trading ideas and proprietary data points.

Very large % of research firms have a tough time proving value, and probably shouldn’t be in business.

2) Getting paid is hard, even if you prove value. David Weild IV: A rough statistic: He took all research analysts, divided by (monthly) trading volume, and got 20,000 shares/analyst. If 50% is program-based, 50% of what's left is algorithm based, and therefore there's only 5,000 shares traded to pay each analyst.

 That's roughly 250 shares/day. At 5c/share that is not a lot of money to spread around, and 5c is a high figure by current trading standards.

 The business is fundamentally bankrupt at some level.

 Clients want 3 things – 1) access to management, (2) experts, (3) traditional research. People want things that no one else has.

Eric Alexander: A lot of what the industry does is a commodity.

 Some of the forms of compensation are a thing of the past.

 It’s much more entrepreneurial now.

Richard Lipstein Question: Buyside firms are decrying the lack of research but cutting back on # of research suppliers.

How did we get in this contradictory situation? David Teten: The buyside is not seeing enough compelling research from the sell-side.

 However, the number of buyside analysts is way up, which shows a commitment to proprietary sources. Michael Mayhew: Other trends are happening too.

 There will be a significant reduction in # of firms getting paid. Firms will separate research fees and execution fees.

You may only have 20 firms getting commissions, but hundreds getting research checks. Richard Lipstein Question: Paul, how does one manage a virtual corporation? Paul Spillane: Everything about the decline in research firms/getting paid is music to our ears.

This is the only industry I’ve seen that has no idea of COGS (cost of goods sold).

We love a value-driven model.

 If you can add value, clients will pay you unlimited amounts.

 So good analysts in their virtual workspace are making 2-3x what they did in a bulge-bracket environment.

"We manage by compensation."

The industry needs to get away from the lack of connection between quality and reward – casual votes on who should get what.

We have the same regulatory framework that any registered broker-dealer has, with the analysts being registered 86s or 87s.

Our good analysts work "24x7" at times because they love the work and get paid well, and other times take a break.

"It’s an absolutely fantastic time to be an analyst. The bottom is here."

The # of stocks covered by bulge-bracket firms is going lower and lower. The bottom line is here, there will be less people around, but those who are good will be making money.

 Like Nitron, we only pay an expert when they get a phone call. Eric Alexander: Research revenues might go from $3.9bn to $3.6bn, but it's still a big opportunity.

 David Weild IV: Wall St research firms are getting smart that they do get paid. Roughly 50-70% of bulge bracket revenues for an offering are for the deal, and 30% is to provide coverage, but the funds aren’t always allocated to that purpose.

It seems like Reuters and Thompson want to know who is consuming their research and cut out people who are drinking for free.

The tide is turning on getting paid. Eric Alexander: We are still committed to trading desk model. It’s hard without a desk; it's integral.

 The buyside sees their traders as integral to their team and so do we.

 AUDIENCE QUESTIONS Q to Soleil: What does it mean for an analyst to "deliver" value and get paid commensurately? Paul Spillane: There are many ways to signal how to pay: a voting mechanism, # of visits set up, commissions paid. Clients now are responsible, e.g. Via the UK's regulations, to say how research is allocated.

More hedge funds have a formal voting mechanism due to regulatory requirements.

 Checks come in with specific analyst names on them to us.

Michael Mayhew: All about producing good research.

 To one client that’s management access, to another it's industry expertise, and to another it's performance recommendations.

Issue is that if you produce me-too maintenance research, models that don’t outperform, you have to worry.

Question: What about outsourcing research to India and other places.

Eric Alexander: This question is symptomatic of how much has become commoditized. Reg FD has commoditized information.

Michael Mayhew: Couple years ago, the avg cost of wall st to cover a company was $192K – per company.

There was an absolute need to lower that cost, so moving some research oversees made a lot of sense.

But value-add of a research firm can’t be outsourced. David Weild IV: But you can create new value by leveraging offshore resource.

 It may become a necessity to have competency in offshore inputs.

Paul Spillane: The last mile is where the value is. We get 7 calls/month from Indian firms to provide us with outsourcing.

Most of those analysts don’t have 86s/87s and don’t talk to management.

 Offshores won’t complete with mainline analysts, they will focus on filtering through existing data in more conventional ways, at least for now.

 Offshore won’t be a huge threat.

 We think $8bn will be paid out, over time, in hard research.

 If you look at outsourcing initiatives in the technology world, JPM outsourced their platform to IBM in a multi-billion deal, but brought it back in-house when the deal expired.

 We’ll all experiment with it, but when cost goes up for offshore it will lose competitiveness. We used to pay $25K for an associate abroad, now its $50K.

 Richard Lipstein: One bulge analyst I know is having increasing quality issues, exacerbated by language barriers, time differences.

They didn’t see benefit anymore. Michael Mayhew: I’m concerned about long term risk. If we outsource associates, when do future senior analysts come from? Are we going to hire the offshore people and bring them here? David Teten: All of this gloom & doom is great news for Nitron.

Offshore people working off same public data further commoditizes publicly available analytics. Basic Yahoo! finance data is free.

There are so many hedge funds out there, and they're all obsessed with chasing alpha, which they can't do with the same tools as everyone else.

 (The hedge fund incubators, incidentally, remind me of the dot-com incubators we used to see, which is a sign that there is a surplus of hedge funds. 2006 is the first year when we're on track to see more hedge funds shut down than open up.)

Audience Question/Observation: In the last few years, lot of great info free on internet has become available in forms of blogs.

Incredible corporate-experience types, speaking their minds and providing insights while going after eyeballs.

They are getting paid $550K/year monetizing eyeballs (Editor's note: I know extremely few bloggers earning that type of money!).

Paul Spillane: This industry has to recognize that as a threat. The audience member asking the question has worked in tech – so she's better able to know where to find quality information.

 The insights aren’t there for (isolated) associates to make money.

 Michael Mayhew: There is a model that’s been developed over a few years, for readily available info: Research that is restricted to small # of clients (and which delivers alpha).

Hedge funds will pay lots and lots of money for restricted access, which means 30,40, or 60 clients. Hedges won’t trade off blog content because it's available to thousands/millions of people.

Also, most hedge funds don’t want to say: "if this deal blows up, I’ll tell my manager I got the info free off the internet. " Give me a break! David Teten: If I have really good info, am I giving it for free on a blog? Publicly-available information (on a blog, New York Times, etc.) is designed to be relevant to the average person.

 If you want customized analysis for your portfolio/your situation, then you typically pay the person who produced the analysis that's broadly relevant. He proves his credibility with his general analysis.

Eric Alexander: Blogs are a threat. Collaborative relationships deliver distinct ideas. You need a talented, experienced analyst with an expert network to find the alpha idea.

Blogs don’t work standalone but they are a valuable contribution.

 Paul Spillane: Most investors have an overload of info.

 We have a product to grade blog: Collective Intellect.

Using AI to sort through hundreds of millions of blogs a day to rate for accuracy.

This product is on desks of some of the largest prop trading desks in the world.

It can be a CYA, but you can’t sort through all the available info and it becomes more productive.

 Audience observation: Great bloggers are identified and filtered by word of mouth.

 Experienced people don’t read every single blog.

Paul Spillane: But imagine if you can also grade them all.

 We’re excited about the prospects.

David Weild IV: In my west coast conversations, a lot of funds are using expert networks.

 One guy I spoke with was a well respected 1990s internet analyst.

 Widely followed. He said that one key problem with Wall St research is deteriorated quality.

 Because of Reg FD, executives are uncomfortable with sharing corporate info.

 Sourcing of independent experts has become very important.

 One guy is using expert networks to do due diligence on potential portfolio co’s.

 Won’t replace need for direct access.

Audience Question: What’s the career opportunity and income oppty for sell-side analysts.

Do you see migration to buyside? What about buy/sellside relative compensation? Eric Alexander: It’s important to be part of an organization with a regulatory structure, so the analyst can focus on the work.

 There’s an opportunity to be more entrepreneurial these days.

Locked in salaries and guarantees are much less available.

Richard Lipstein: The top of the Internet bubble skewed compensation and demand for analysts.

Comp for internet analysts gone down significantly.

They used to be able to make 7-8 figures.

Compensation has bottomed out because of disappearance of guarantees and extreme salaries.

 Not easy for sell-side analyst to move to the buyside because they’re viewed as a salesperson.

 However, hedge funds hire more sellsiders, young ones, than mutual funds.

 It’s worth noting that a typical analyst will make more than 98% of the US population rather than 99.9% in the past.

 Paul Spillane: You summed it up perfectly. It’s not easy to move to the buyside.

But everyone is still paying people 6-7 figures.

A lot of doctors, lawyers, fireman who don’t get paid that – who arguably provide critical value to society.

David Teten: I saw a talk by a prominent person in the research industry, who said, "If you meet an analyst that’s been on sellside for more than 5 yrs, they’re not good at picking stocks, because if they were, they'd get a job on the buy-side."

There is increasingly a disaggregation of analyst's responsibilities. Management access is highly valued by the buy-side–but that’s a concierge service firms like ours (Nitron) do more effectively than generalist research firms.

 Richard Lipstein Question: The typical independent research firm is much smaller than bulge bracket dept.

 There have been problems, eg Overstock.com took a research firm to court for allegedly being part of a plan to devalue and short sell the stock.

 How can small firm deal with intimidation of big corporation, particularly when issuing negative research? Paul Spillane: Associate yourselves with a firm with strong compliance.

 Reputation of your employer is important to focus on when you are an analyst.

Unless you commit fraud, you are in a good position to make clear statements - your opinion is your opinion.

One analyst whose opinion dropped a stock 50% (is rumored to have) received death threats – from a retail firm! Richard Lipstein: I think it’s more an issue of small research firms can't cover legal costs to defend themselves.

 Paul Spillane: Agencies like SEC, NASDAQ won’t allow that intimidation…and the First Amendment. Eric Alexander: Be clear who the customer is.

It's not the company covered, it’s the investor.

 Paul Spillane: WSJ or NYT would love to ‘defend’ the small guy with strong opinion.

The court of public opinion doesn’t cost much. And it's great PR. David Teten: Most of time, the analyst is doing right thing.

 Owen Lamont research showed that, the more a corporation fights a critical analyst, the more likely it is later on that the analyst is correct.

Jeff Skilling said "They’re on to us," in response to a certain piece of independent research.

That's a great ad for independent research! (As Jim Chanos pointed out in a recent talk).

Audience Question: Given internet bubble, do you see another shakeout? David Weild IV:

There’s a rationalization, but other models are flourishing.

The big shoe that dropped wasn’t the bubble, it was decimalization in 2001.

 That cuts 95% of the commission flow.

 The internet brought direct transaction models and commission compression – commission went from $350 avg to 5 bucks.

David Teten: Creative destruction is a benefit, not a bug, of capitalism.

Net net, people are making a lot of money in finance.

The industry is always evolving, companies change, people move around, but the quality people do just fine.

 Michael Mayhew: For sell side research, unbundling will have a big impact.

When asst mgr has ability to select research and broker independently, that will really impact someone like Goldman Sachs.

 If they charge 4c/sh, how much is for research and how much will get they for this Question: What’s the track record of Spitzer agreement to channel $s to indie firms?

Eric Alexander: Some large firms got huge funds channeled to them.

We’re not in that space at all. I’m hopeful this is over soon, it hasn’t been effective at all.

David Teten: Spitzer uses lawsuits effectively for gubernatorial campaigns, but not necessarily in the pursuit of justice.

Someone asked a panel I participated on earlier this year "where should I invest, as a retail investor?" Look, you as a retail investor have the worst information and the worst prices.

You're much better off hiring a professional, by putting your money in a mutual fund, hedge fund, or hiring a Financial Advisor.

Spitzer agreement was a solution in search of a problem.

The retail investor will almost inevitably have inferior returns to the professional, because of the nature of the industry.

 Richard Lipstein: The Wall St. Journal said ‘you can’t legislate against greed’. David Weild IV: I’ve talked to many of the NASD regulators.

 All agreed that the Spitzer agreement has been an "absolute disaster".

 Jack Coffee, of Columbia, on their board, calls it a new form of government.

It has created a level of paralysis – 3 years left, and firms are afraid to innovate.

Every bulge bracket says behind close doors won’t pony up again.

It hasn’t expanded coverage to new names. It was a grand experiment that failed. "This is a drug."

Has failed to expand coverae.

The audience member asked what are usage statistics for the independent research that had to be posted.

 5% of retail hits are on the indie research, the rest is from the main provider.

 The only success from the agreement is focusing people on the problem – Wall St research has greater integrity today.

Teten: There is one pressing, highly important public policy goal that the Spitzer settlement achieved: Spitzer won the primary. Question: Comment on future consolidation in independent research firms.

Is pace likely to quicken? A panelist said there are over 400 firms today. Michael Mayhew: 450 firms in N. America. We certainly believe in consolidation but not across the board. Restricted providers will do quite well.

Fundamental data-based research will consolidate.

 My partner has argued that research is frankly a lifestyle business for many.

 If you have a dozen clients paying $100K each, you can have a nice business for a few analysts.

I suspect the number therefore will be unusually high, but fundamental traditional research will find it increasingly difficult to get paid.

 David Teten: Consolidation per se doesn't concern us.

I would be worried if the overall pie shrinking dramatically.

But to my knowledge, expert networks are the fastest growing sector in the research business.

 Consolidation means we buy or get bought, and there are worse things that can happen.

 Eric Alexander: For full disclosure, my business partner in the audience asked the consolidation question.

 The alternative to a lifestyle approach to making some money in research is being part of collaborative effort.

 When someone like Monsanto wants to do a deal, they can turn to one of our deal specialists.

 Richard Lipstein Question: What about the idea of a corporate rollup, e.g. how Eric Alexander got Foresight. Eric Alexander: That wasn’t an acquisition but a subset of analysts were attracted to our platform.

 David Weild IV: Question for Michael--What # of firms have > 5m revenues? Michael Mayhew: Quite small, < 10% of 450. Lot of folks with $1m revenue.

Some consolidation when firms go out of business, other when firms get bought. Question: Going back to the value of research, how is the way investment firms are compensated linked to value? In an unbundled world, mutual funds are asset-based profit-makers, not performance based, so they should worry less about costs.

Hedge funds are compensated by assets and performance, so they are looking for research value. Would mutuals prefer bundled research? Michael Mayhew: The audience member asks analysts how they judge good research.

They say, "I’ll know it when I see it." This means, many buy-side people don’t know what makes good research to them.

That only has a chance of working if they get research for free, use it, then decide later on if they liked it, but its still subjective.

David Teten: There are 3 reasons why hedge funds are desirable clients.

They have a lot of money compared to cash/overhead requirements, they don't usually have an easy way to measure the value of your unique product (compared with tools available to measure ROI if you are selling, e.g., bottled water to them), and they are paying with soft dollars, i.e., other peoples' money. I have problems with how soft dollars are used when applied too broadly, but the system works to the benefit of research firms.

Eric Alexander: It’s a lot harder for a research firm to penetrate/develop business with large mutual fund. "I’m sitting with a fire hose of info" says one large-fund portfolio manager.

 They need barriers to access, not more info. Question: What are new models on how to pay for research: Is it arbitrary or still predominantly through trades? Paul Spillane: 85-90% is still via soft dollar.

 It will take a lot longer to wean off than anyone thinks.

 If a large mutual fund company wanted to separate costs, it could be 3% of their management fee.

 For a smaller firm, its entire management fee could be allocated to research cost. Richard Lipstein Question: Last question.

For someone looking to get in the research business, what does this business mean for the up-and-coming professional? Eric Alexander: Paul Spillane and I say same thing.

Be good, and be entrepreneurial.

If you have been a salesperson, bone up on analytics.

If you are an analyst, participate in selling.

Michael Mayhew: Ample opportunities for good and great analysts.

A lot of analysts have spun off with high expectations.

Paul Spillane: If you love it and are passionate about it, there’s never been a better time.

 If you don’t love it, join a bulge bracket firm.

You get real motivated when you wake up thinking "how am I going to make money for my family?" David Teten: Be focused to add value. There is a story, true I believe, of one analyst making over 2 million covering one stock (McDonald's).

 Pick a domain you can own, then become the recognized expert in that domain. David Weild IV:

1) Being a research analyst is a wonderful thing, whether starting independent and or bulge bracket.

You learn a real discipline in a dynamic market (securities).

You can switch to private equity or corporate side. It’s a great training ground.

I’d like my kid to do this.

2) Just to mention separately, this is anniversary of 9/11.

 There is a wonderful organization on that was on 60 Minutes called Tuesday’s Children, which provides services to kids who lost parents.

Helps them get through college. Annual event at Cipriani’s 9/27.

They placed kids on take-your-child-to-work day. I’m on the board of directors.

Please consider supporting them.

General | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

Users of online dating sites often struggle to find love because the sites themselves make it more difficult than it needs to be. To the rescue: Virtual Dates, an online ice-breaker from Jeana Frost of Boston University, Michael Norton of HBS, and Dan Ariely of MIT. More: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5478.htmlTheir advice about online dating (which also applies to winning business online):

"Remove yourself as much as possible and don't invest your ego in one particular date," Frost offers. "Remember that it's very easy to get carried away and imbue a profile with overly favorable qualities.

 My advice is to try to stay calm and resist being invested in one person until you've actually gotten to know them. Avoid long e-mail correspondences because they tend to heighten expectations.

" "It also takes resilience to go on a lot of dates and spend time actually arranging to meet rather than spending hours a week just searching. The people who go on a lot of dates are the people who find someone. In some sense it's a numbers game."

 New users especially should keep in mind that online dating is not in the end so fundamentally different from regular dating, adds Norton. You try to find people, you try to meet them.

 "It's the people who think it will be quite different from their regular experiences who end up being the most disappointed …. In online dating, the same sorts of people who are online are also out there offline. It can help you sort, but ultimately it takes work, effort, and a little luck."

General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

The event below is targeted at CFOs of mid-size and larger companies (over $50M in revenues). I hope that you can join us.

 CFO Leadership Team First Alumni Gathering September 21, Stamford, CT Guest Speaker: David Teten The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online Join fellow CFOs of mid-size and larger companies, and learn how to accelerate your sales, recruit star employees, enhance your marketing, or just find your next job by using online networks.

David Teten will discuss blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, relationship capital management software, biography analysis software, and other new tools.

 When: September 21, 6:30 to 8:30 PM Cost: $30 including hors'deurves, cash bar

Where: Stamford, CT (location disclosed to confirmed attendees) RSVP: by September 14 to Kevin McEnery, KJMcEnery(at)aol.com, 1-203-348-4435

Who: This event is open only to members of the CFO Leadership Group. Members must have experience as CFO or Divisional CFO in an organization with at least $50M in revenues.

 A few select recruiters specializing in CFO searches will also attend. Our members have experience with companies that include Acclaim Entertainment, Altria, Arc, Associated Press, Atari, Barnes & Noble, Calvin Klein, Dover, Gartner, Georgia Pacific, Gerber Scientific, Groupe Danone, Kodak, Labatt, McCann Relationship Marketing, Nestle, Newsweek, Pepsi, Revlon, Rogers, Scholastic, Sesame Workshop, The Reader’s Digest Association, Time Warner Cable, and World Wrestling Entertainment. Nominations welcome for members.

 Why: To see old and new friends

MORE ON OUR SPEAKER When you finish David Teten’s program, you’ll know how to:

 * create a powerful professional presence online

 * attract business in online networks

 * meet more relevant clients and potential clients

 * start and promote your own blog

 * master the email deluge

 * analyze and value your community of business partners

 * manage your contact database

 * ensure privacy and safety online

 "We hosted one of David Teten’s presentations at the Euromoney 2004 Annual Hedge Fund Start-Up & Business Development  Forum. Out of 40 speakers, David tied for first place for the highest speaker rating." - Diane Higgins, Financial Markets, EuroMoney PLC

BIOGRAPHY David Teten is CEO of Nitron Advisors ( www.NitronAdvisors.com), which provides independent industry experts with consulting opportunities to hedge funds and other institutional investors.

 To participate in paid interviews with Nitron Advisors’ institutional investor clients, at no cost to you, join the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts ( www.CircleofExperts.com ).

 David is the co-author of The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online ( www.TheVirtualHandshake.com ).

David was formerly CEO of an investment bank specializing in Internet domain names. He has worked with the Bear Stearns Technology investment banking group and Mars & Co strategy consulting.

Career Acceleration | General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Do you want to break free of Microsoft's grip? Use exclusively web-based apps, most of them free? If you do, try reviewing Ismael Ghalimi's list of 'best-of-breed' web apps, which together provide a reasonable approximation of the Microsoft Office Suite. http://itredux.com/blog/office-20/my-office-20-setup/

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

According to the NY Times:

The amount of Internet buzz a movie generates is a strong predictor of its box-office take. But it hardly matters whether that buzz is good or bad, according to a study by Yong Liu, an assistant professor of marketing at the Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona.

I'd love to hear from the folks at trend-tracking companies such as Trendum, Intelliseek, Cymfony, and Brandimensions if they a) agree that people's positive or negative feelings are irrelevant for movies, and b) if this is true, does this pattern hold for other product categories?

General | Social Software | Leadership and Management

HBS Professor Andrei Hagiu is an expert on multi-sided markets, and recently interviewed me on that topic:

Market Platform Dynamics--Catalyst Conversation: Conversation with David Teten. His site requires that you submit an email address to read the article (but I should note that he doesn't actually test if the email address is functional.)

General | Leadership and Management | Public Markets Investing | Social Software

Following up on my draft post on 'Business Models for User-Generated Media', I wrote some notes on this morning's iBreakfast.

Shawn Gold, SVP, MySpace: Marketing in a Networked Culture

MySpace has 100m users projected by july

84m registered users, 2m new registered users per week (size of Houston), 48m unique visitors per month in US

2^nd most popular site for content consumption on the Internet, as defined by page views. 29000 indie film profiles. 1.8m music profiles.

#1 video viewing site

#1 referrer to Google—8.19% of Google's traffic

42% of YouTube viewing is happening on MySpace.

Goal:

MySpace will become THE full service community portal

Introduce innovative advertising solutions while being at forefront of pop culture

DNA of Myspace Generation : MySpace is their place. Where youth culture gathers to express themselves, connect with friends, and discover popular culture.

Big differentiator from competition is the way MySpace is used to discover popular culture, i.e., bands/TV shows.

All the growth is viral---they market to influencers not to audience members.

Nielsen: Myspace reaches 51% of 13-17 year olds online (which is 85% of all 13-17 year olds).

79% of the site is 18+, and 25M users who are 30+.

Why so successful:

-A user's profile is a metaphor for their room or apt.

- The Internet generation has grown up sharing their lives

- The profile is a characterization of who they are

- They want to express themselves creatively.

Children lack a 'their space'. 7-11 doesn’t let them hang out in front; the mall security guards kick them out. They're used to being in public. MySpace is a form of identity production.

Everyone takes pride in their medium. It's 'vested media' because they created it.

When people say the pages are unwieldy, just think of a teenager's room.

Social networks/blogs serve as a publishing platform for early adopters. Word of Mouth has turned into 'citizen journalism', which people trust more than traditional media.

MySpace allows brands to become living, breathing entities that consumers can interact with.

Best brand programs tie into self-expression, facilitate connections between people, or is centered around the discovery of popular culture.

87m stories in the database, and a lot of that content is professional. Every nightclub, every major Christian band, every celebrity brand, is in the database. They're now slicing the database by professional type, e.g., if you want to reach all the comedians.

Basic idea of marketing: "Tell a Friend"

Average page is visited 30 times a day. If you're in the top 8, your exposure is exponential. XMen has 3.2m friends. If you friend them, you can have top 16 friends, instead of top 8.

Core: identification and individuality. Don’t separate them---that's Geocities. Understand core needs (identification and individuality), and address their core needs: recognition, knowledge, self-expression, belonging, access, discovery, appreciation, and confidence.

We facilitate this on a social networking platform.

Next speaker----Shelly Palmer, author, Television Disrupted

Five buzzwords you can use right now. You will sound like a genius if you use these.

- Mobile video: clipcasts or streamcasts. He dislikes the term 'cellphone video', because not all mobile video (e.g., ipod video) is via a cell tower. Why does ESPN Mobile have only 2400 subscribers—because it's $30-$400/month. It's a MVNO—they own the handset and customer experience. They're $30M in the hole. All the vanity cell services will meet the same fate. ESPN invested a lot of money into the technology. Behaviors change glacially. In the last century, fastest time to market for an electronic tool was Xerox machine. It killed carbon paper extremely quickly. Instantly successful. Normally new tools take 5-100 years---fax machine took 100 years.

- IPTV—Internet Protocol Television

- Broadband Video—call it 'IP Video'. 'Streaming Video' is a silly term.

- Podcasting---he hates this word. A use of the RSS spec---it has nothing to do with IPods or broadcasting. Coined by Adam Curry. Based on XML spec. Blogging is the most popular use of RSS.

- Mesh Networks—each node connects or two or more nodes. No central server. Self-healing. Hard to shut down. Napster was a file-sharing network, therefore easy to shut down. If they're wireless they're a swarm. BitTorrent is best example of a mesh network. Cant be used in real-time streaming.

Oct. 12, 2005: the date that Steve Jobs and Eiger unilaterally decided to put TV shows on ipod—Desperate HouseWives. Very controversial with affiliates. The day the TV world changed.

"Contact is King!"

Different words for all of you in the audience:

Cable companies call customers 'subscribers'

Phone companies call them 'access lines'

TV cos. Call them 'Viewers'

Computer cos. Call them 'users'

2/17/2009: all analog TV spectrum will go digital. Your old analog TV won't work. The good news: all the old analog frequencies will be reclaimed by the gov't and auctioned off. Most likely it will be used to create a large broadband cloud—WiMAX? No longer will you use a little local wifi network—you'll use the large broadband cloud. Hermistown, OR has largest broadband cloud in America: 700 sq miles, 5 megabits. It's like living in Star Trek. Cant handle lots of streaming video/VOIP, but it's enough for email. Intel is banking heavily on WiMAX.

Every cell phone call ends with 'hello', instead of 'goodbye', because of connectivity problems

Q&A

Shawn: They review every photo/video uploaded to myspace

Any member can report objectionable content

25000 volunteers police school site

Algorithms that search for underage kids---e.g., mentioning 12 candles on a birthday cake. They kick off 5000 underage kids/day.

Myspace is the size of two Californias—and the crime on the site is equivalent to 5 blocks in NYC

General | Social Software | Public Markets Investing

Tomorrow morning I'll be speaking at http://ibreakfast.com/ on Business Models in User Generated Media. I have attached a DRAFT of my talk below. I'd be grateful for any feedback readers might have. In particular, I'm trying to get rough revenue estimates for each of the categories below.

Business Models for User Generated Media (UGM)

General | Social Software

I'm happy to report that, after two years of successful partnership, I have sold Teten Executive Recruiting to Accolo. I'll be continuing in my current role running Nitron Advisors, which is a separate company. Here's the press release:

Press Release For Immediate Release June 21, 2006

Accolo acquires Teten Executive Recruiting; combined firm is innovator in using social software and online networks for recruiting.

Larkspur, CA – June 22, 2006 – Accolo, Inc. today announced the acquisition of Teten Executive Recruiting, a retained executive search firm that specializes in using online networks to reach and recruit the most qualified candidates. The firm focuses on the hedge fund, private equity, and strategy consulting industries. Founder and author David Teten joins Accolo’s Advisory Board.

David Teten said, "I first discovered Accolo ( www.Accolo.com) in my research for my book about social software and online networks, became a client, and then created a partnership with them. When I learned how they had re-engineered the recruiting process to incorporate the power of online networks, I thought: this is the way recruiting should be. I think that the traditional recruiting model is broken and painfully inefficient, and I am excited to have the privilege of working with a team that understands the logical way that companies should manage the process of finding great people."

In this cash and stock deal, Accolo gains access to Teten Executive Recruiting ( www.TetenCo.com) clients such as American Real Estate Partners, Net2Phone, OfficeTiger, The Trium Group, Zacks Investment Research, and IDT Entertainment. Teten Executive Recruiting is known as a thought leader in using blogs, listservs, online communities, social network software, relationship capital management software, and biography analysis software for recruiting. Accolo has acquired the proprietary tools that Teten Executive Recruiting has developed.

John Younger, CEO of Accolo, commented, "We were excited about Teten Executive Recruiting's list of lighthouse clients and its deep expertise in social software and online networks. This acquisition is the logical culmination of a mutually beneficial relationship. The company is providing us with new strategies to continue raising the bar, as well as new clients to take advantage of our growing senior executive search capabilities. Just in the past year, we have recruited CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, and Vice Presidents for companies with revenues of $5 million to $1.5 billion."

Jon Weber, President of American Real Estate Partners (NYSE: ACP), commented, "Finding top talent quickly and efficiently is a high priority for us. We’ve been pleased with the way Teten Executive Recruiting and Accolo combine their talents to save us time and money to hire the best people. Their solution has worked well for several of our companies”

Martin Babinec, CEO of TriNet ( www.TriNet.com ), emphasized, “TriNet’s long association with Accolo has been borne out of a deep faith and confidence in the company’s innovative approach to sourcing and recruiting. The fact that Accolo’s team continues to seek out partners that will expand and deepen its already impressive service delivery is proof that the company won’t rest on its laurels. TriNet is enthusiastic about Accolo’s latest milestone and looks forward to its future successes.”

David Teten, founder of Teten Executive Recruiting, is coauthor of the first business book on these strategies and technologies, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online. He runs a business resource guide and blog about social software and online networks at www.TheVirtualHandshake.com . David also co-writes a monthly column about online networks for www.FastCompany.com, and was recently honored as a "Future HR Leader" by Human Capital magazine for his innovative use of online networks. David is a member of the Advisory Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (www.Womma.org), which is also an Accolo client.

David Teten will continue in his current role as CEO of Nitron Advisors, LLC (www.NitronAdvisors.com ). Nitron Advisors provides hedge funds, venture capitalists, other institutional investors, and law firms with direct insight from a broad network of senior industry experts, located at www.CircleofExperts.com.

About Accolo

Accolo has built proprietary, patented software and processes that automate roughly 80% of the recruiting process. Accolo leverages this toolkit to provide Recruitment Process Outsourcing services, becoming part of a company's internal recruitment function. Accolo's unique application of the “art” of recruiting within a highly automated framework, along with a network of over 300,000 past and present candidates, delivers quantifiable improvements in recruiting quality, efficiency and cost. Our clients meet the top performer they will hire in an average of 13 days. The average company spends 15.9% of an employee's salary on recruiting; Accolo clients spend less than 9%.

Accolo is profitable and revenues more than doubled last year. The company is the HRO World 2005 Recruitment Process Outsourcer of the Year and a founding member of the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association (www.RPOAssociation.org). The Company was founded in 2000 and its investors include Vedior (Amsterdam: VDR, www.Vedior.com ) and TriNet ( www.TriNet.com ). Accolo works with such leading customers as JDS Uniphase, Blue Shield of California, Starmine, CMP United Business Media, ValueClick, Verity, and PRNewsWire. For more information, visit www.Accolo.com.

Contact Diane Hassett dhassett at accolo.com 1-415-785-7833 x220

David Teten press at teten.com 1-212-682-6676

Social Software

My colleague Scott Lichtman took some detailed notes on the TieCONEast panel last week on Trends in Online Networks and Social Software. Participants:

Angela Biever

Angela Biever is Managing Director for the Consumer Internet sector within Intel Capital, Intel’s corporate venturing organization.

She assumed this role in early 2006.

 Angela’s team recently invested in online blogging company SixApart and is interested in new computing models being generated by Web2.0.

 Prior to this, Angela was General Manager of Intel’s New Business Initiatives (NBI), a center for new business creation that also resides within Intel Capital.

Prior to joining Intel in 1999, Angela was a senior executive at First Data Corporation.

 She was President of one of its operating subsidiaries and also served on the Company's Senior Management Committee, a group providing policy and direction for the then $2 billion information and transaction processor.

 During her tenure at First Data Corporation, Angela held positions as the Chief Administrative Officer of the Company, played a key role in its IPO, and was SVP of Finance and Business Development.

 Angela has also held senior management positions at American Express Company and Time Inc, and was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Angela has been a member of the Board of Directors of Raymond James Financial since 1997 and is currently Chairman of its Audit Committee.

 She has an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a degree in business from Queen's University in Kingston, Canada.

Tim DeMello

Tim is founder, Chairman and CEO of Ziggs, Inc., his fourth start-up venture.

In addition, Tim is the founder and creator of iGuess Games LLC. iGuess Games has created the first board game powered by Internet.

The game, Favorite 4, will be introduced for Christmas 2006. Prior to founding Ziggs, Tim founded Streamline.com, one of the pioneering companies in ecommerce in 1993, and took the company public in June of 1999. Prior to Streamline, Tim founded his first start-up company, Replica Corporation, an interactive educational and entertainment company.

Tim sold his interest in Replica in 1993. Tim began his career as a stockbroker in 1981 and was employed by Kidder, Peabody & Co., becoming a Vice President in 1984, and then he joined the investment firm L.F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin as a Vice President in 1985.

 He received his bachelor of science degree in Finance from Babson College where he also lettered in baseball and hockey.

In addition, Tim started the Babson College rugby team. He has served on Babson’s Board of Trustees.

Tim has made numerous speaking appearances at the MIT Enterprise Forum, Fast Company Magazine and Inc. Magazine conferences, as well as regular speeches on entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, Boston University, MIT Sloan School, FW Olin Graduate School of Business, Bentley College and his alma mata, Babson College.

 He has also been featured in stories in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, USA TODAY and The Wall Street Journal.

Tim has been a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards and was recognized as one of Boston Business Journal's Top 40 Under 40.

Tim was selected by Inc. Magazine as a top entrepreneur in their "Birthing of Giants" program and his first company was honored with a cover story in the magazine and listed as one of the Inc.

500 Fastest Growing Companies. He is an active competitor in the sport of triathlon and is an Ironman finisher.

He is the father of two children and lives in Boston...where his dream about the day when the Red Sox finally win the World Series came true!

Torsten Jacobi

Torsten Jacobi or 'TJ' is a serial entrepreneur and investor with experience in software and media.

Torsten currently serves Creative Weblogging Ltd as its CEO and director. Prior to Creative Weblogging, Torsten started SRM company newtron and the local chapter of First Tuesday in Saxony, Germany. TJ also co-founded Euro Venture Partners, a network of pan-European network of business angels.

 

John Younger

John is President, CEO and Founder, Accolo. For over 16 years, John has successfully identified and incorporated major trends and technologies affecting the recruitment landscape.

 In January 2000 John founded Accolo, an innovator in networking-based Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO). John’s passion to dramatically improve how people and jobs find each other is rooted in his deep understanding of technology, the recruitment process, and a core belief that everyone deserves courtesy and respect.

This idea is central to Accolo's vision, methods, and communications. John’s vision for a completely outsourced staffing solution led him to found y/net in January 1996.

After a successful launch of y/net, TriNet acquired John and his company in November 1996 where he remained until December 1999.

TriNet was one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing companies in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 1999.

From 1987 to 1994, John was the Vice President of Human Resources for Bank of America where he led technical recruitment for an organization of 16,000 people.

John has successfully identified, incorporated and advanced recruitment solutions for over 16 years.

 He was Resumix user #2 in 1988 and established the first Vendor on Premises for both Bank of America and Olsten Corporation in 1992.

He was an early adopter of Internet recruiting with the On-Line Career Center (to later become Monster) in 1993, and was Hire.com user #4 while running his Venture Talent recruitment Agency in 1998.

John earned a degree from Notre Dame in Mathematics and Computer Science and is a former member of the United States National (Olympic) Rowing Team.

David Teten Biography...

Scott Lichtman's Notes Biever: Intel Capital largest investor in IT startups in the worldup.

100 investment professionals.

 Portfolio of 300 companies.

 Recently decided to focus on consumer internet, but have touched on it in the past.

 Invested in Six-Apart. Even Web 1.0, e.g eBay, was community-based, based on common interests or objectives.

 Now, you’re seeing changing social customs.

 People spend more time on the internet than on broadcast TV.

Wonders about: looking on MySpace and see people with "800,000 friends.

" What business model will allow them to sustain themselves.

Ads, transactions are possible, subscription/premium type services.

These will be increasingly targeted.

 John Younger: First, i'm happy to announce the acquisition by Accolo of Teten Executive Recruiting. (Editor: Details coming shortly on that topic.)

 Recruitment Process Outsourcer – become your company’s internal recruiting function.

 Working the same problem for 19 years – finding the perfect person for a job, eliminating all obstacles between hirer and the best candidate.

 Four trends: Social networking. Accolo’s Career Network is over 300,000 people.

 Business Process Outsourcing – reruiting is the fastest growing segment Software as a service Candidate Scarcity – over 9,000 documented personal referrals The productive of a recruiter’s pace of placing someone hasn’t changed since 1963.

Top 3 reasons candidates and members love accolo: Real jobs verified directly with the hiring manager Respect, confidentiality and follow-up Easy for the two people who matter 94% of people who apply for jobs never hear back from anyone, ever.

Uses Google paradigm for ease of use. Any firm that can put only two buttons on the interface – 'search' and 'I’m feeling lucky' – is a genius.

Their cost comes in routinely under 9% of first year compensation, sometimes under 4-5%, vs. 20-30% for the average recruiter.

Social Networking implies public visibility.

If Metcalfe’s law means the value of a network is proprtional to the square of the number of users of the system, what does that do to your personal and corporate risk equation? DeMello: There will be a separation of personal and business social networks online. Some people are attempting to post multiple personalities, but they are all searchable.

 Younger people don’t realize the consequences of posting semi-scandalous information and images about themselves on personal sites.

 Story: they had interns working last summer for them.

DeMello heard one intern hadn’t been working as hard.

 He was referred to MySpace/Facebook.

Intern actually posted on MySpace where he said he spends the day screwing around at work.

Intern said "I guess this is the part where I leave." => Young people can be screened via FaceBook. Ziggs allows people to post their own identity for free.

 Your professional identity on the web can be consciously framed.

 This is a "flight to quality.

" Where you post your identify affects people’s perception of you.

57m times a day proper names will be searched on the internet.

Growing a business like this is about the first 1,000 profiles.

The firms need to vet the first 1,000 profiles, which sets the guideposts for what other people post.

Torsten Jacobi– Creative Weblogging: They hire some of the most influential and well-read bloggers on specialty topics.

 They also work with more than 1500 citizen reporters.

They contribute additional stories while building their reputation.

Teten: number one reason people come to TIECon East is for networking.

 Do online networks make face to face networking less important? Tim doesn’t think online networks doesn’t weaken the need for in-person.

It’s an "add" rather than a replacement.

 John – has anyone read Bowling Alone? Bowling fills a social need.

Online connectivity is replacing the lack of in-person connectivity.

Angela – complexity of the world we live in requires more tools.

More cross-border deals, multi-party solutions.

Online tools help manage this complexity. Teten: Torsten is getting a lot of content from citizen reporters.

 How do you screen their content for validity/liability (eg stock recommendations, spam)? Torsten – Our filtering mechanism is based on keywords, clicks and track record.

 Finds out what are the most interesting stories for the community.

We also use this filters on spam and useless, mundane contributions.

Teten: Story: A friend "John" sent in for a job, the letter said check out my web site.

Some readers thought this was self-aggrandizing to have your own web site.

Tim: People are getting smarter about this trend. People will think about how they want to be represented online.

 Years ago, people would buy the johndoe.com website and build their own. Now people want a template to populate content but not worry about layout or hosting.

There will still be a creative flair but the effort and extremes will be tailed back.

 Teten: John, how do you overcome barriers to sale in an outsourced business? John – not easily. Any disruptive outsourcing play has to be sold at high enough level in the business to overcome the lower-level managers (HR) who want things to remain the same.

 They encounter -Ignorance at manager level -Complacency - at sourcing manager who things an applicant tracking system bandaid will solve the whole problem. -Fear – recruiter will blanch at the metrics that Accolo can produce.

They focus on companies from 300 to 1,000 employees.

The problem Accolo solves includes eliminating time to hire multiple recruiting agencies.

 The business process gets better after the first hiring – this is better than just getting one good hire.

Teten – How can people best use your service? Torsten – people find good blogs by entering a normal keyword in google and add the word "blog".

There are some blog search engines like Technorati, AskJeeves has come up with a good one, Google and Yahoo have come up with their own.

They are "good enough."

His best tool is to evaluate how many google backlinks go into a blog.

He checks AskJeeves.com and technorati.com (check spelling).

DeMello: Ziggs vs. LinkedIn – both free. LinkedIn is closed, Ziggs is open, we don’t gate around you.

 Ziggs is Pagerank 6-7 in google. Search engines come to Ziggs looking for profiles on people.

If you can post a profile that makes sense for free, it makes sense.

They have 3-4m profiles.

 All words in a profile are saved because they may be relevant by search engines.

He believes there will be 3-4 major professional networks online.

Younger: Accolo treats your informationally as confidentially as a credit card company if not better.

They want to build career-long relationships.

Some people take a fulltime job and stay four years, or a contract job and also stay for four years.

 It’s simple to get started – 90 seconds – then Accolo will reach out to you 1-2x per year about jobs

Q&A

What are trends for consumer Internet and convergence with education? Biever: recalls interest in this space 5 years ago.

Hasn’t focused on this recently but hears there are things going on. Julian Borne from (PoxPro).

Good article on internet/social networks going mobile.

 With wireless/proximity social networking, it brings people face to face when they’re nearby each other.

What’s progress in this space? Torsten – are people with online social networks really looking for face to face interaction? Online allows for quick, informal interactions.

You only go forward if you really want to.

Torsten is already delivering their content on cell phone screens.

 Bandwidth issues (including typing on phones) makes rich interaction hard.

He expects 50% of relevant content on the Internet to be on mobile phones in a few years.

Teten: The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.

 Look at countries that are heavily wireless.

 And kids in high school today will take their tools to the corporate world.

 Younger – personal view on the mobile side.

 The form factor is too small for many things. But as a business person, it can solve many problems.

What if Plaxo could (link with the database of people at this event) and tell me who I should be meeting.

General | Social Software

Eric Shahinian wrote some detailed notes on last night's panel on "Are You Googling Your Privacy Away?" for the New York County Lawyers’ Association / Cyberspace Law Committee.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Mark Grossman, Partner, Dewitt Grossman, P.L. (To stay current with tech law issues, ask Mark Grossman to add you to his mailing newsletter.

 His email is mgrossman (at) dewittgrossman.com. )

 To discuss recent news, let’s look at the new Sprint Family Locator.

Who is concerned? Doubtful.

Many of you probably feel that it’s a sign of relief, that now I will know where my spouse or kid is in an instant.

 But it’s more serious.

Think divorce litigation.

You claimed to be at work, but your phone says you were at the Holiday Inn.

 Curious. I wonder what you could’ve been doing.

Many issues come up as to: is my provider allowed to disclose information if I don’t want them to? Is there any way to stop them? This is only the beginning.

 To add on to the discussion of the actual cost to store this information, we are talking a tremendous amount of space.

This information therefore must be worth it, and it is.

It is worth an incredible amount.

 The EU operates differently than the U.S.

In Spain, this isn’t an issue.

We are in a different culture, people easily spread their information.

Myspace.com is a great example.

75 million users and growing, all of which have given out readily accessible information, that can deduce other information that can say so very much.

There are tons of things to improve in the industry, but we need to focus on one thing in particular, and politics has a great deal to do with it.

 I am a moderate Democrat, and my views reflect that position.

 This is truly a debate on choice.

 Yes, some people prefer to have their information known in order for companies not to waste their time by trying to sell a consumer things that person does not want.

 That is fine. As I will say again, the question is, if you didn’t want your information shared, could you stop it? No.

If the information was lost or stolen, would you want to know? Yes.

Could you? Probably not.

 I recommend Webwasher and Scroogle.org as useful tools to combat the concerns.

 I would love it if the bookstore owner knew what I wanted and would pick out books for me.

 It is the same thing now. But it isn’t one piece of data, they are compiling vast amounts of information.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Harry Valetk, Director, Privacy Online, Entertainment Software Rating Board Everything can be tracked.

This isn’t just web pages here.

 This concerns call records, email records, search queries.

It is all saved, it is never really deleted.

Google doesn’t delete a thing.

They have compiled detailed profiles of every imaginable characteristic.

What has emerged as the controversy over internet cache is truly, how can they sell this to someone? This is private information. But now think back 20 years.

Often times a business’ greatest asset was their mailing list.

Especially for a marketer. It is the crux of their modern marketing business.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Raj Goel, CTO, Brainlink International, Inc. What I find most fascinating, something that most people don’t catch on to, is who would want this information from people, aside from marketers and thief’s? Easy to answer: the government. Surprising how most people never realize they provide the demand for most of this information.

 A good analogy of this industry and discussion is to the automotive industry.

 We are at the equivalent right now of having just got a new Cadillac (picture this 40 years ago), driving 90 mph, and this was years and years before seatbelts and airbags.

What a dangerous situation indeed.

 What is most frightening about Google is not their basic search, it is Gmail. Does anyone have Google? Who got an invitation? It is invitation only.

But wait, look at this, if you provide your cell phone number, they will send you an invitation? Ever realize they could easily just give you an invitation on the website? They want your number.

Google doesn’t want to be a search engine.

 It wants to be the largest database in the world.

They already know more about you than you may know.

Under legislation email must be kept private, under legal documentation, Gmail isn’t an email account, it is a database.

 Notice how the top link in Gmail happens to work very nicely with your tastes.

 Something in your email revealed that. Check the fine print.

So what’s worse than Gmail? Google Desktop.

Yeah it’s great, and efficient. But it gives Google "the keys to your life".

You make yourself so vulnerable to issues.

 Ever realize how you can view deleted emails from a long time ago, or find web pages you may have view briefly? All which has been "deleted" truly was not.

 It is saved for many, many years.

Remember the litigation facing Google, in which they refused to give over user data? Don’t feel safe, it is because it is too valuable to them, not you.

But what is not discussed is the National Security Letter they likely received, forcing them to give over the information, and forcing them not to discuss the situation.

To hit home, I know most people have medical information they don’t want disclosed.

I did work for a healthcare provider, and trust me, your information, minus any psych evaluation, is in at least 5 countries.

General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

My coauthor Scott Allen wrote on The Virtual Handshake blog: I love to read blogs, but increasingly, I find it harder and harder to keep up with all the blogs I'd like to read because there is just so much good stuff out of there. And, of course, it's all mixed up with a lot more stuff ranging from merely mediocre to just plain pointless. Recently, I've particularly become a fan of the "blog carnival" format, a weekly traveling roadshow of the best of the blogosphere on a particular topic. I got overwhelmed trying to keep up with the dozens and dozens of good blogs out there, and just setting up search feeds on keywords wasn't giving me a good variety. Blog carnivals, though, give you a very concise view of some of the best of the blogosphere on various topics. Here are some that you may find particularly relevant:

• Carnival of the Capitalists - 50+ weekly posts about economics, entrepreneurship, personal finance - basically anything having to do with money. I hosted this week's edition. (UPDATE: TheVirtualHandshake.com hosted another edition on May 15).
• Carnival of Marketing - Seven editor-selected posts on all things marketing.
• Carnival of Entrepreneurship - Inspired by both of the above, I started this back in February and it's going great guns. If you have a blog, I'm always looking for submissions and hosts.
• Carnival of Business - Newly launched this week.

To learn more about blog carnivals, including what they are, submitting articles, and a list of all known blog carnivals (here's another), visit BlogCarnival.com. This site is a one-stop resource where you can subscribe to RSS feeds for individual carnivals, submit posts to multiple carnivals, and have some great tools for managing a carnival if you already run one or want to start one.

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Adobe offers a converter to PDF format on their site (for a fee), but there are countless other options out there that cost zero. Try www.Pdfonline.com or PDF Creator. They'll convert documents from Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, and so on. Via 101 Fabulous Freebies

General | Social Software

From our latest FastCompany.com column:

Your dream employee is lurking out there. How do you find him or her? To track down those stars, recruiters are aggressively using online tools such as blogs, virtual communities, social-networking sites, and biography-analysis software. Here are some best practices in those areas, drawn from Accolo, Nitron Advisors, and Microsoft.

(Disclosure: I'm on Accolo's Advisory Board). full column

General | Social Software | Leadership and Management

For Job-Hunters: How to Find a Contact Name Inside a Target Company

Job-hunters have a number of hurdles to surmount, but one of the greatest is this: how do you get a name inside a target company? When you want to send a letter of inquiry to a company (about a job), you really want to find the right person's name, in order to contact him or her. If you can't find the right person, you want to find someone who can put you in touch with the person you seek. Here are ten ways to find a name inside a company you are targeting.

More...

General | Social Software | Career Acceleration

I was discussing Phil Wolff's comments on social software in recruiting with John Younger, CEO of Accolo.

He wrote: What I find interesting in the intersection of social networks and jobs is that there is a third party that seems to be completely missed. Specifically, the party that pays the bills – the companies. At the job level the equation gets easier. Use the network for find the right person for the job. Unfortunately, these networks keep on rolling even after the job is filled, and the hired candidate keeps on networking by definition.Two gaping holes: + Free-form networking (liked LinkedIn) actually encourages working around the company approved process, and + employees could be "networked" out of their new job in a relatively short period. The solutions that "giveth and taketh away" will be fired in short order once the companies figure it out, which is a material obstacle to the theories of social networking and recruiting.

 Responding to John's point: I've heard through the grapevine that both Linkedin and OpenBC have been blocked at certain companies, for the same reason that many companies won't let their employees surf Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder on company time.

 Of course, the power of LinkedIn, OpenBC, and like companies is that they provide a motivation for people to maintain their public professional profile on an ongoing basis.

By contrast, Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder have a relationship of "punctuated equilibrium": a job-seeker uses them heavily for 2 months, and then doesn’t visit the site for 4 years until they start looking for a new job again.

 The average American has been employed at his/her job for only 4.0 years.

You cannot rely on your employer's network or your father's network; you have to build your own flexible, lifetime community to land your next job.

 When you're currently employed, you're only between job searches.

General | Social Software

Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee writes in his blog:

I have an article in the spring 2006 issue of Sloan Management Review (SMR) on what I call Enterprise 2.0 -- the emerging use of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis (both perfect examples of network IT) within the Intranet.

The article describes why I think this is an important and welcome development, the contents of the Enterprise 2.0 ‘toolkit,’ and the experiences to date of an early adopter.

 It also offers some guidelines to business leaders interested in building an Enterprise 2.0 inftrastructure within their companies.

One question not addressed in the article is: Why is Enterprise 2.0 is an appealing reality now? It’s not because of any recent technology breakthrough.

Blogs, wikis, and RSS have been brewing since the 1990s, and folksonomies and AJAX since the early years of this decade.

 Is it just that technologists and entrepreneurs needed a bit of time to absorb all of elements and combine them into useful tools?

That’s certainly part of the story, but focusing only on technology components risks missing the forest for the trees. In particular, it misses three broad and converging trends, all of them concerning the changing relationship between those who offer technologies and those who use them.

The trends are:

 1. Simple, Free Platforms for Self-Expression ....

2. Emergent Structures, Rather than Imposed Ones ....

3. Order from Chaos ....

 the technologists of Web 2.0 are providing a third valuable service -- they’re rolling out tools that help us filter, sort, prioritize, and generally stay on top of the flood of new online content.

 As described in the SMR article, these tools include powerful search, tags (the basis for the folksonomies at del.icio.us and flickr), and automatic RSS signals whenever new content appears. ... I’ll end this post with an anecdote that showed me that these three trends are not yet well understood by many business leaders.

 Last week I was teaching in an executive education program for senior executives - owners and presidents of companies.

I assigned a case I wrote about the internal use of blogs at a bank, and also gave one additional bit of homework: I pointed the participants to blogger and typepad, and told them to start their own blogs and report the blog’s URL to me.

What they reported instead was that they had no intention of completing the assignment.

They told me how busy they were, and how they had no time and no inclination to mess around with blogs (whatever they were).

 Out of two classes of 50-60 participants each, I got fewer than 15 total blog URLs. Trying to turn lemons into lemonade in class, I asked some of the people who actually had sent a URL to describe the experience of starting a blog.

They all shrugged and said it was no big deal, took about five minutes total, didn’t require any skills, etc. I then asked why I would give busy executives such a silly, trivial assignment.

 In both classes one smart student piped up to say "To show us exactly how trivial it was." At that point, class discussion became interesting.

via Ross Mayfield What Prof. McAfee is describing *inside* the enterprise is exactly the same sort of phenomenon that we see salespeople, recruiters and other using both inside and outside the enterprise, and explore in The Virtual Handshake. Another person now writing on this area: Paul Gillen. (Via Centrality Journal )

General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

I hope that some of our readers will join me at TiECON East, June 15-17, in Boston, MA. With over 1,200 expected attendees, TiECON East plans to become the largest Global Innovation conference on the East Coast.

 The sponsoring organization is TiE, whose members receive roughly 5% of the venture capital investment in the United States.

Speakers include: -

 Howard Anderson, Founder Battery Ventures and The Yankee Group - Nikesh Arora, VP & GM Europe, Google - Clayton M. Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School, Author, The Innovator's Dilemma - Rajat Gupta, Senior Partner Worldwide, McKinsey & Co. - Ray Kurzweil, Author & Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence - Venkat Ramaswamy, Ross School of Business at University of Michigan - Paul Sagan, CEO, Akamai - Mohanbir Sawhney, Professor, Kellogg School of Management - Howard H. Stevenson, Professor, Harvard Business School - Hatim Tyabji, Executive Chairman, Bytemobile Inc.

 I'll be participating in two panels, one on innovation in social software and online networks, and one on innovation in investment research.

The keynote speaker is Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations (although I somehow doubt he will be talking about innovation, given that's not the UN's strength.) With prices starting at $269 for TiE Members and $100 for student members, the conference isn't expensive. For more information or to register, contact the TiE-Boston office at (781) 272-3875 or visit www.tieconeast.com .

Career Acceleration | Events | General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

One of the questions Scott Allen and I are frequently asked, and that comes up as a recurring topic of debate, is, "Which online tool is best for me to meet and sell to the right people?" In our latest Fast Company column, Of Hammers, Wrenches, and Screwdrivers, we take a side-by-side look at online networking communities, blogging, and LinkedIn, and compare and contrast them based upon the Seven Keys framework we introduced in The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online. While the boundaries between the application of these tools is somewhat fuzzy and they tend to cross over each other, this is a handy, concise overview of the predominant models and how they relate to each other and to your activities. Professor Constance Porter wrote more on this topic at Centrality Journal. See Blogs, Social Networking Sites or Virtual Communities: Alternative Paths to Building Relational Equity with Customers (Part 2)

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Do your clients and colleagues constantly say your email went into their spam filter? So much that you're worried your domain might be blacklisted? There's a quick, easy way to check. Go to http://www.completewhois.com/rbl_search.htm and enter your mail server address. For example, mine is 207.174.139.198 (you can get this from your ISP if you're unsure). After you press GO, the tool will query ALL the 25 major RBLs (real time blacklists). Once you confirm you aren't on any of them, you will feel much better. Better yet, you'll know it's actually the receivers of your email who aren't training their spam-blocking software correctly, and you can ask them to add you to their "safe senders" list.

via Laura Stack, via Speakernetnews

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

"Don't work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I'm probably wrong. According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

More at Wired News

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Research Finds That Success Might Be Related Not Just to Whom You Know but to How You Communicate with Them

Nathaniel Bulkley, a doctoral student working with assistant professor Marshall Van Alstyne at the University of Michigan School of Information, won the first annual Visible Path Graduate Student Award for new research on social networks and professional performance, the International Network for Social Network Analysis announced (INSNA) today.

Bulkley analyzed how white collar workers use social networks to improve professional performance. The hypothesis that success is related not just to whom you know but how you communicate with them was supported by key findings including:

-- Professionals' use of social networks evolves over the course of their career from accumulating relationship capital to exercising it

-- Frequent, short communication outperforms lengthy, infrequent communication in efficiently moving information through a social network

 -- A central position in an organizational social network is consistent with higher individual performance For his research, Bulkley conducted surveys and studied six months of email data and accounting records from an executive recruiting firm representative of professional services firms organized around client practices.

An unexpected finding was a lack of relationship between a recruiter's private rolodex and network size or job performance.

 ... More information on this year's winning paper, "An Empirical Analysis of Strategies and Efficiencies in Social Networks," is available at http://www.centralityjournal.com/.

Career Acceleration | General | Social Software

Technology has made it possible for teams with members around the world to work on virtual projects.

A monthly budget for such a project can easily exceed $1.2 million and involve more than 60 team members worldwide.

 Although email and other communication tools make this possible, what happens when team effectiveness is hampered by the same technology?

Dominic M. Thomas, a visiting assistant professor of decision and information analysis at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, and colleagues studied the failure of large virtual projects to learn what went wrong.

Their findings are presented in a new paper titled "Making Knowledge Work Successful in Virtual Teams via Technology Facilitation."

http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=945

General | Leadership and Management | Social Software

The Office Chart That Really Counts Mapping informal relationships at a company is revealing -- and useful:

Two years ago, Ken Loughridge, an information technology manager living in Cheshire, England, uprooted his family and moved to the other side of the world.

His company, engineering and environmental consulting firm MWH Global, was reorganizing its various information technology offices into a single global division, establishing its main service center on New Zealand's more cost-effective shores and promoting Loughridge to manage the company's worldwide network, system, and desktop needs.

 "By and large, the staff I'd adopted were strangers," he says. To help adjust to his new surroundings, Loughridge took a map with him.

A map of his organization, that is. A few months before, MWH had surveyed its IT employees, asking them which colleagues they consulted most frequently, who they turned to for expertise, and who either boosted or drained their energy levels.

Their answers were analyzed in a software program and then plotted as a web of interconnecting nodes and lines representing people and relationships.

Looking a little like an airline's hub-and-spoke route maps, the web offered Loughridge a map -- a corporate X-ray, in a sense -- to how work really got done among his charges.

It helped him visualize the invisible, informal connections between people that are missing on a traditional organizational chart.

more

Career Acceleration | General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

Federico Colecchia, a network researcher at ATALAB, wrote to the SOCNET mailing list: "I am looking for recent/ongoing research on application of social network analysis technologies to analysis of stock values."

(He works as a researcher and R&D coordinator for development of visual intelligence software tools for multiple applications. His current focus is on drug discovery support.)

We traded emails about the use of social network analysis in the financial markets.

He wrote: "The works I know of are econophysical approaches to hierarchical characterization of stock price evolution that have been developed by Mantegna and Stanley. I think the primary references here are: R. Mantegna, H. E. Stanley, "An Introduction to Econophysics - Correlations and Complexity in Finance", Cambridge University Press, 2000 R. Mantegna (1999). "Hierarchical Structure in Financial Market", The European Physical Journal B 11:193-7."

 He also mentioned chiresearch (contact Jonathon Mote, Center for Innovation, University of Maryland) and Francis Narin's work on social network analysis-based methodologies for patent analysis, with a focus on identification of companies in which to invest. Does anyone have other suggestions on investors who are using social network analysis for investing?  Of course, Nitron Advisors is one indirect example.

Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

We finally did it: we have made our new book, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online, available for free download.

Of course, we encourage you to buy the bound book at your local bookstore. It's much easier to read that way (and actually cheaper than printing out the whole thing on your printer).

Just as online dating has revolutionized the way singles connect, similar technologies are revolutionizing the way that businesspeople close deals.

 We wrote The Virtual Handshake to show you how to sign new customers, meet new business partners, recruit star employees, or even find a new job, all by using online networks.

 More technically, it's the first mass-market guide to "social software": blogs, social network sites, virtual communities, relationship capital management software, contact management software, and so on.

This was not an easy decision; we had a lot of discussions between ourselves and with our publisher, the American Management Association, about this. We were very hesitant to give away 2.5 years of hard work at no cost.

The top five reasons we're doing this are:

 1) We've gotten rave reviews for the book, but it's very hard to get people to notice a new book.

The Virtual Handshake has received extremely strong reviews in BusinessWeek, Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, countless bloggers, and many other leading publications. It has also been excerpted in CNN.com and FastCompany.com. I just received a great review from Ron Lichty, in the Software Development Forum News:

"It’s not often that you read a book in an area where you have interest and passion and discover authors who both deepen and broaden your thinking. It’s equally rare to find a book that, despite being published, as books are, months after they’re written and more months after they were researched, that nonetheless introduces technologies and applications and services that seem as fresh as if they were posted to a web site yesterday. The Virtual Handshake was that for me."

We invested far more effort than we probably should have in writing a rigorous book that met our standards, with dozens of case studies, 300 sources, and extensive peer review.

Our explicit role models were academics who write for the popular audience (e.g., Bob Cialdini, Deborah Tannen, Robert Putnam, Howard Gardner). Readers appreciate that; the problem is getting readers to be aware of the book, in a world that publishes 600,000 new books every year. Providing a complimentary ebook is a way to increase trial of the book.

2) Frankly, we make very little money on each book.

We earn in the range of 5%-20% of the publisher's sale price (depending on various factors in the nature of each book sale), and 15% of that goes to the agent, and then Scott takes a chunk of course! In many cases, you as the affiliate marketer earn more on the sale of a book than we will, since you can earn up to 10% of the retail price as an affiliate, with no other parties involved. This is evidence that in the book value chain, the marketer adds more value than the content creator.

If the book becomes a bestseller, we'll make real money on it. But in the unlikely instance that it does not become a bestseller (grin), then the real value of writing a book is the marketing of my company, Nitron Advisors and our Circle of Experts; of Scott's consulting/speaking services; my speaking appearances; and anything else we choose to market. There are also a lot of other ancillary benefits to writing a book, which I won't discuss here. But to achieve any of these marketing benefits, we just need to get the book in peoples' hands.

3) Distributing an ebook is particularly appropriate given the subject of our book.

Long term, we think that every professional businessperson would benefit by learning from our system. In the short term, the obvious sweet spot of our market are highly computer-literate people who are heavy Internet users. Those are exactly the sort of people who are likely to be highly receptive to a free ebook marketing campaign.

 4) Providing free downloads has worked very well for Cluetrain Manifesto, Naked Conversations, Seth Godin, and Cory Doctorow, all of which were significant influences on our book, and all of whom we'd be happy to emulate.

 5) Insatiable curiosity.

It's an experiment. If it works, we can recommend it to others. To our knowledge, most of the authors who have tried free ebooks were self-published. AMACOM Books (the American Management Association) is experimenting just as we are. So, download it now, tell a friend, post a link to http://thevirtualhandshake.com/free-book-download.htm on your blog, etc. Once you've read it, we'd greatly appreciate a review on your blog, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, company newsletter, or any other appropriate venue. And of course, we always value your feedback. Enjoy!

Career Acceleration | General | Personal Productivity | Social Software

I am happy to report that we are relaunching the Nitron Advisors Circle of Experts Brain Food blog from a new home on the Web, http://www.CircleOfExperts.com/blog . Please tell your friends! From that link, you can subscribe with your favorite blog reader (Bloglines, Newsgator, etc.) or get every posting via email.

If you would like to change your subscription, unsubscribe, or make other changes, just visit http://lists.circleofexperts.com/mailman/listinfo/brain-food .

We will continue to write on Brain Food about career acceleration, business acceleration, consulting opportunities for industry experts, investment research, and online networks. We always welcome suggestions from people with good content.
We have several sister blogs and mailing lists we recommend:
http://www.nitronadvisors.com/mailing-list.html – two mailing lists for businesspeople interested in independent consulting assignments and new full-time jobs

http://www.circleofexperts.com/nyc : worthwhile business conferences, panels, and other events in the New York area

http://www.TheVirtualHandshake.com : how to sign new clients, raise capital, or even find your dream job with blogs, social network sites, and other online networks. You can also download there a complimentary copy of my new book, The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.
To make sure that this email gets through to you, please add brain-food-blog-do-not-reply@circleofexperts.com to your address book or trusted sender list.Thanks for reading, and if you like this blog, please tell your friends!

General | Social Software | Events | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management | Career Acceleration | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research

New federal rules will make job hunting online trickier Federal regulations kick in today that will make Internet job hunting more complicated. Here's what candidates need to know – and change -- now. link... Via Jim Conley

Social Software | Career Acceleration

Guy Kawasaki devotes a lot more time than I seem to have handy to write thoughtful, well-organized pieces, like his list of tips for The Effective Emailer.

Social Software | Personal Productivity

an offer from my coauthor Scott Allen: Next Wednesday, February 8, from 1:00-2:30 Pacific (4:00-5:30 EST), I'll be doing a no-cost teleseminar with Steven Van Yoder, author of Get Slightly Famous (review), on how to use blogs, social network sites, and online communities to increase your exposure and position yourself as a thought leader in your field. Some of the topics we'll cover include:

• 12 steps to use online network sites and blogs to become a virtual guru
• An overview of several important online network sites and how to choose the best ones for your business
• Demystifying the world of blogs and social network sites, even for the "technically challenged"
• How to select and engage effectively in online network sites
• How to create your own group within a social network site
• How to position yourself as a Slightly Famous expert online

The teleseminar is free, but seats are limited, so you will need to register in advance.

Social Software | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management

Via the The Social Networking Weblog, this is a brief interview with the creator of the MBA Applicant Wiki, ClearAdmit:

Why you created it?

The MBA applicant community is typically pretty open to sharing ideas and experiences, this occurs on various applicant blogs (I am subscribed to about 100) and discussion boards, principally BusinessWeeks discussion board.

Clearadmit itself hosts a blog that has become quite popular for this community, we get approximately 1,000 unique visitors a day (yesterday was a record, 1,300).

That all being said the idea behind the wiki was to provide a central resource that applicants could share their information and insights.

For example, for each school we list there is an interview section. The applicant can share his / her interview experience.

This becomes useful to those prepping for an interview at that particular school. Once completed we hope those who benefited return and share their experiences etc.

Leadership and Management | Social Software

Back in October, I blogged my contribution to Oxford & York’s New Media & Entertainment Summit. Christopher Clark just sent me the official executive summary of the program.

If you're interested in the impact of blogging on the media industry, and vice-versa, this is well worth reading. Executive Summary here.

 Here are the panels that are summarized:

 Evolving Revenue Models in Media and Entertainment John Nendick, Ernst & Young LLP Chris Ahearn, Reuters Media Robin Johnson, The Financial Times Thomas V. Ryan, EMI Music, North America Thomas Gewecke, Sony BMG Music Entertainment

Technology and Social Change Anthony Hopwood, Saïd Business School, Oxford University Sandy Pentland, MIT, The Media Laboratory Howard Bass, Ernst & Young LLP

New Media Meets Old Media Josh Manchester, AdventuresOfChester.com Jay Rosen, PressThink Evan Williams, Odeo Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media Jeremy D. Zawodny, Yahoo! Inc.

The Big 3: Media Piracy, Fraud, and Music Licensing Bob Kohn, RoyaltyShare David Teten, Nitron Advisors

Instinct and Promoting Entrepreneurship! J.P. Donlon, Directorship Thomas L. Harrison, Diversified Agency Services Paul Maidment, Forbes.com

Events | Social Software

For a certain type of person, this is definitely a dream job:

The World Economic Forum is selecting 30 exceptionally talented individuals to join its organization on a three-year Master's Programme in Global Leadership.

The 2006 class will start next September. As a Global Leadership Fellow, you are fully integrated in the World Economic Forum and benefit from an intensive work and learning experience intended to develop and train future leaders of global enterprises and international organizations.

The Global Leadership Programme is designed by the World Economic Forum in collaboration with its worldwide network of distinguished experts and leaders.

Upon successful completion of the programme, you will receive a Master's in Global Leadership and will be provided assistance in identifying career opportunities at, but not limited to, the World Economic Forum and its Member companies.

We expect you to exhibit demonstrated leadership capabilities, excellence in a particular field or discipline, and proven interest in global affairs.

 You possess a broad intellectual background with a Master's degree (or equivalent) in science/engineering/economics/business/public policy/public administration.

You have minimum 3 years of professional experience, 2 of which are in business.

Additional public sector or NGO experience is appreciated.

You are fluent in English and at least in one other language. You are committed to the mission of the World Economic Forum.

 Please apply through www.weforum.org/careers and provide us with a cover letter, your curriculum vitae, three references and an 800-word personal essay on what you would like to achieve in your life.

Please note that the application deadline is 15 February 2006.

Career Acceleration | Leadership and Management | Social Software

As usual, Dave Pollard posts a well-thought-out, thorough piece on "Social Networking Tools & Knowledge Management: What You Can Do Now". This was presented at the KMWorld and Intranets 2005 Conference. It includes an overview what was wrong with the traditional siloed social network model (Friendster, etc.), and what you can do within the context of a large corporation to take advantage of these technologies for better Knowledge Management.

Social Software | Leadership and Management

A hotly debated topic in the blogosphere lately has been, what exactly is Web 2.0? Probably the most concise and comprehensible overview I'v seen is from Adaptive Path: Crucial DNA of Web 2.0 Another must-read piece if you're interested in this subject is Clay Shirky's "Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags". I also recommend Social Bookmarking Tools: A General Review, by Tony Hammond, Timo Hannay, Ben Lund, and Joanna Scott. The NYSIA is hosting a panel on this topic on 1/23 in NYC.

Social Software

We just posted the draft of an article we're working on about how to raise capital with online networks. We're particularly interested in more success stories about institutional investors who have used online networks to raise capital successfully. We welcome feedback! Here's the article: Raising Capital with Online Networks