Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

FriendFeed co-founders Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh: With ex-Googler “friends” like these, who needs Venture Capitalists!

Last week, Buchheit penned an unconvincing mini-treatise purporting to reveal “the most important thing to understand about new products and startups.” I rebutted Buchheit’s “advice” to startup entrepreneurs by underscoring “ Business Plans & Revenue Models: TWO Startup Must Haves“.

My sales rule thesis was reinforced the following day when Like.com CEO Munjal Shah made a heartfelt public plea for startups to focus on growing income, not necessarily (generally non-paying) users. SEE: Like.com to Entrepreneurs: It’s the Revenues, Stupid!

Here at Insider Chatter, I steadfastly evaluate every startup’s potential by its built-in potential for (and interest in) earning revenues and also point out the dangers of believing public “advice” that business plans and revenue targets don’t matter anymore, favored rhetoric of new fangled VCs and monied entrepreneurs.

In similar fashion, Like.com’s Shah lambasted VentureBeat and TechCrunch for dramatizing ventures’ Web traffic numbers:

As a 2nd time entrepreneurs, we at Like.com had decided to not focus on eyeballs or users, but rather revenue and eventually profits.  If you remember we first took this approach back in May of 2006 after we launched Riya (and while we had usage) and didn’t know how we were going to make money.  We retooled and launched Like.com, which we knew would make money.

How will FriendFeed make money? The Web 2.0 “cool app” built by a trio of ex-Googlers got money today, $5 million from its Googley rich founders Buchheit and Singh, plus some bonus cash from co-founder Bret Taylor’s sponosr, Benchmark Capital.

FriendFeed is now cash rich, but still business and revenue model poor! The FriendFeed mission:

The goal of FriendFeed is to make content on the Web more useful and discoverable by leveraging users’ existing social connections. FriendFeed users get a customized feed of content—from news articles to family photos to interesting links and videos—shared by people they know.

Buchheit on the FriendFeed value proposition:

The beauty of FriendFeed is that it’s so easy to use. It takes only a couple of clicks to share a link or start a discussion with friends. It makes everything you’re already doing on the Web a little more social.

VentureBeat and TechCrunch are on board! Eric Eldon is 100% certain Buchheit has developed “the best software for conversations.” Erick Schonfeld waxes: “There is something pure about FriendFeed.”

There is indeed, FriendFeed is purely another free-to-the-consumer “social sharing” tool thrown into the Web wild for non-revenue generating consumption, come what may. The self-funded startup is carefree about its own money, as well as money (not) coming into the venture.

The famous ex-Googlers have succeeded in spurring a “sharing” of early adopter love for the coming out party of their FriendFeed. Good old dependable geek adulation is an ever burgeoning Web commodity, however, and so is the consumer ability to “share,” and “comment on” and “vote for” videos, photos, blog posts…

Buchhelt may still be “doing NO evil,” but he is apparently NOT doing anything extraordinary either. 

WHAT IS THE WORLD UP TO? FriendFeed asks (in a manner eerily similar to Twitter’s (not so) inspiring “question”) and answers:

Chris posted a blog post, Albert posted two links, Rob bookmarked 12 artists, Denao favorited a video…         

What an “interesting” way to characterize “the world”? The FriendFeed team assures it will not cease “innovating” untill it has accomplished its “big” mission:

Our goal is to make content on the Web more relevant and discoverable using a combination of social mechanisms and innovative technology. This is a big problem, and we’re just getting started.

Will Paul Buchheit’s self-proclaimed knowledge of ”the most important thing to understand about new products and startups” propel his Googley FriendFeed startup to big Google like glory? UNLIKELY.

SEE: Google Killer Cuill? Ex-Googler Startups Pose NO Threat: FriendFeed, Howcast, Zillow and Facebook Meltdown: Is Twitter Next? and Silicon Alley Web 2.0 Startups: Bootstrap For Success

MORE: Antisocial Google: Googler Bradley Horowitz Mum and Google Knol: The End of Google.com, NOT Wikipedia and Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?

PLUS: Silicon Alley: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Entrepreneurs and How Web 2.0 Meetups Displaced the New York Software Industry and Business Plans Help the Web 2.0 Kool-Aid Go Down and DayJet CEO: Business Models Drive Disruption, NOT Technology and CED Tech 2007: 30 Cool Startups, But NO Facebook Apps 

ALSO: LinkedIn’s BIG Agenda: Stamp Out Business Cards!

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

“Become a knowledge management ninja with Google Reader”? 

If 2007 was the year of Facebook’s “social graph,” Google hopes 2008 will be the year of Google Social. From Open Social, to Google “shared stuff,” to Google Reader “sharing,” Google hopes it can simply “share” its Googley way to Facebook extinction.

I have often underscored, however, that sharing Web 2.0 social media style is NOT really caring.

SEE: NewsFriends? Facebook Anti Social Utility: Real Friends DON’T Share and  YAY? Weblo Cheapens Facebook ‘Friendship,’ Whales Rejoice! and Twitter and Facebook: The BIG Illusions of Friendship and Influence

After all, Old Chinese proverb says: “You can hardly make a friend in a year, but you can easily offend one in an hour,” i.e. Facebook Beacon and Google Reader “sharing.”

Nevertheless, Steve Micro Persuasion Rubel wants more sharing in 2008, especially the Google kind:

Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.  have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I’ve tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it’s the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

Rubel’s buzzwords dazzle, but where is the real knowledge that he claims to be managing?

I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning.

Sound familiar? Facebook whales “throw” up to 5000 “friends” around, with never any intention of ever being their friends.

Rubel nevertheless believes his own custom searchable database makes him a knowledge “ninja”:

With the recent addition of search, the Google Reader becomes much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone.

The end game? Rubel can do his own search for all mentions of employer Edelman’s client Microsoft’s Xbox in Techmeme!

YAY? For Google! Google is the one becoming the knowledge ninja, all knowledgeable of Steve Rubel’s every personal and professional interest and need.

The end of the year privacy brouhahas over Google Reader “sharing” and Facebook Beacon were but charades, feel-good “outrage” with no meaningful privacy effect.

What privacy transgressions were Facebook and Google accused of? The enabling of “sharing” of users’ information with users’ own social graph. The real privacy danger of Google and Facebook continues to be ignored by users, however, as I often underscore here at Insider Chatter.

SEE: Google Reader: Naughty or Nice? Santa Safe! and
YES! Facebook IS Scarier Than Google! and
Facebook is ‘Sorry’? Savvy Users Will Forget, NOT Forgive, Mark Zuckerberg and
Beacon Privacy Solution: STOP USING FACEBOOK! and
Dear Facebook, Beacon Tracking STILL Evil: Will Zuckerberg Partners Repent?

Why have I deemed facebook to be scarier than Google? Each Facebook user knowingly and willingly provides an interested corporation with the intimate details of their daily personal and professional lives to enable persistent data records for the unique data mining profit advantage of the corporation. Because Facebook as “Big Brother” is consensual, there is no redress.

Google has now tied Facebook for scary honors, however, due to how it profits from users’ personal genetic materials obtained by Google under false pretenses via GOOG 411. SEE: Google Warning: How GOOG 411 Tricks Consumers

Bottom 2008 line? Use Google and Facebook accounts at your own risk.

ALSO: Why Google Worship is a BAD Call in 2008 and How Google AdSense FAILS Better Business Bureau

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN