DONNA BOGATIN ANNOUNCES STARTUPALPHA.COM TO FOSTER THE TECHNOLOGY STARTUP CULTURE IN SILICON ALLEY AND BEYOND.
READ ALL ABOUT THE NEW, ONLINE-OFFLINE VENTURE PITCH COMMUNITY AT STARTUP CHATTER, DONNA BOGATIN’S NEW COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE.
NOTE to Insider Chatter fans: Please read Donna Bogatin going forward at Startup Chatter (no more posts here!)
LinkedIn advises of a “big” status update, about “status” at LinkedIn! Elliot Shmukler assures he is NOT talking about his typical talkiing about “incremental changes.” NO, he proudly beams, on behalf of LinkedIn, “I’m really glad to announce the complete redesign of the LinkedIn homepage.”
The number one component cited by LinkedIn as representative of its “complete redesign”?: “We’ve gradually transitioned away from a system of tabs to one of drop-down menus.”
WOW? LinkedIn usability tweaks aimed at driving more usage of LinkedIn’s existing product offerings are NOT the stuff that IPO dreams are made of! Founder Reid Hoffman’s desire to fuel monied corporate desire for his home-grown database of millions and millions of personal resumes IS though, as I analyse in LinkedIn Preps Spy Network: Is YOUR Company Safe?
Hoffman has an even BIGGER to-do item on his agenda as well: STAMP OUT BUSINESS CARDS!
Brandon Duncan, a Shmukler LinkedIn colleague, recently took to the company’s blog to hail LinkedIn Mobile, which, he uderscored, ”includes an iPhone version.” Duncan’s product goal is to make sure all of the LinkedIn “goodness” is WAP enabled.
While itemizing all the niftty LinkedIn things one can now do on the small screen, Duncan advised the world about conference going LinkedIn style:
Exchanging business cards is just not cool anymore!
REALLY? No need for proprietary, real world, hard-copy personal backup of personal contacts made in the real world?
Reid Hoffman would be tickled if he was able to displace the business card printing industry: Goodbye rolodex, goodbye desktop business card scanning, goodbye personal databases? HELLO OUTSOURCING TO A LINKEDIN OWNED AND OPERATED VIRTUAL BUSINESS CARD REPOSITORY!
It is not surprising that LinkedIn believes it can obtain, control and profit from the world’s proprietary resumes. After all, Google believes it is on track to usurp the world’s proprietary enterprise data for its unique corporate advantgage. SEE: Why Google Sites Is BAD Business: ‘Til Death Do Us Part’?
MORE: AP On LinkedIn: Social Networking Gold Mine at $5 per User? and
Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn About Face (book) and
Deal Maker on LinkedIn: ‘What Do I Do With It?’
Does LinkedIn Have a Connections Fraud Problem?
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
Will the weekend of February 22, 2008, mark the beginnning of the end of the Twitter (human) love affair?
Why does Facebook make young men swoon? I headlined way back in September 2007, critiquing near universal, unconditional, media and Internet celebrity fawning over an adolescent styled free Web service built for gossipy teens. My lone, grounded voice was in stark contrast to the loud Web chorus of unbridled adulation overflowing for a 23 year-old coder credited for single-handedly changing the world’s communications, although facing accusations of unseemly “inspiration” from the work of others.
Since the very day Mark Zuckerberg graced the world with “F8,” I have been underscoring the unavoidable business model risks of a third-party business based off of Zuckerberg’s platform and have been warning prospective Facebook users that they use the free to consumer service at their own privacy and data security risks. Despite conventional blogosphere wisdom of a supposed inexorable Facebook “killer” strategy, I have also consistenly debunked consistently over rosy projections of a Facebook takeover of the Web and its advertising.
Nevertheless, the Web’s infatuation with the purported Web wunderkid could not be contained, until now.
Beacon was NOT a Facebook surprise and neither is Mark Zuckerberg’s propensity to hold on to his Facebookers’ data for dear life. The Facebook traffic march is not an immutable, pre-ordained parade to inevitable Web domination, despite the exhortations of Facebook and its ardent fans.
Have the real-world challenges of Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual playground finally poked the over-inflated Facebook bubble? After all, Facebook deemed it necessary to defend itself this past weekend against blogosphere cries of “fatigue” over a purportedly soon to be “doomed” Facebook!
A geek love affair is going strong though, for Twitter, the current fashionable object of early adopter adoration. Amidst the Facebook thrashing this weekend, we were reminded of how cool it is to be “hooked on Twitter.”
Twitter infatuation is in full bloom: “Nearly a million users and no spam or trolls,” Russell Beatie gushes:
I don’t have to worry about getting any suggestions that my penis size is too small (I make a point not to follow ex-wives/girlfriends), get any anonymous stock tips, nor anyone telling me that now is the time to refinance my home. Nor do I have to suffer fools or jerks for more than the time it takes me to click the “Remove” button on their home page.
Beattie may not be worried of “exposure” on Twitter, but his commenters are not so sanguine.
FEEDUS: There are plenty of trolls but not much spam. Trolls in twitter are the people who try to follow like 3000 people. They are also the folks who ‘track’ certain words and then @ with related messages. There’s little spam because you can only send one @ message at a time.
LINKERJPATRICK: I don’t know, I have had people add me to their “friends” list but for all practical purposes they are not people as much as they are “marketing” campaigns. Also I have had to stop following people because some of their posts have been very vulgar or used language I would want someone visiting my Twitter page to see in my list of followers.
GILEST: Twitter spammers only trouble the people who make the decision to follow them. That doesn’t stop the spammers from following as many people as they can, and those people getting the resulting one-off “So-and-so is now folllowing you on Twitter!” email alerts. It’s not annoying (yet), but I fear it will expand very quickly. Both those examples I gave cropped up in my inbox within the last fortnight or so, I think there will be more to come yet.
Fears of man eating plants may also be cropping up, thanks to Twitter! After all, if the geek world is going gaga now for “how to” make plants Twitter their hunger to their “owners,” a “Little Shop Of (Twitter) Horrors” may not be far away!
“Botanicalls” is clear (via Twitter): “THE PLANTS HAVE YOUR NUMBER!”:
Botanicalls opens a new channel of communication between plants and humans, in an effort to promote successful inter-species understanding.
Twitter love really is blooming, for now.
PLUS: Is Union Square Ventures Changing Exit Strategies? and MySpace On Google: Sorry, ‘NO Truth’ To $900 Million Rumors and Microsoft Steals VideoEgg’s Thunder? Google Ultimate Loser
What a local online classifieds coincidence!
I enjoyed breakfast this morning with Craig Donato, along with a hearty helping of “innovators dilemma” discussion about how the Web company he founded and leads–Oodle–is seizing a $30 billion market opportunity ripe for exploitation due to mass media incumbent inertia.
At the same time, the latest touted “online marketplace for local services” was making noise: GenieTown. The newly funded startup has been operational for many months, but is apparently now hailing an “official” launch. Founded and run by a Stanford PhD candidate, Hassan Chafi, the site’s raison d’etre reads like a computer scientist’s thesis proposal!
Although GenieTown sprung from Chafi’s humble need to “find someone to clean his apartment while working under stringent paper deadlines,” Chafi obtained his startup financing by proclaiming an esoteric sounding “local service lifecycle model.”
In GenieTown “Whitepaper” speak:
At the core of this model, is a customer-centric continuum that runs through a series of action phases, beginning with a customer’s intitial interest in a service, through the fulfillment of the service and the customer’s recommendation of the provider to others. For ease of reference, we name these action phases: Explore, Communicate, Transact and Manage.
In GenieTown consumer facing marketing speak:
What is GenieTown? Chafi–who has declared himself Mayor of GenieTown–asks and answers: It is where “clever people connect to buy and sell local services.”
“People with skills, expertise, and passion in a wide range of areas use GenieTown to offer their services. These “Genies” build credibility and trust through answering questions from customers, submitting articles and giving competent advice. Through their contributions and jobs well done, Genies increase their ranking on GenieTown. GenieTown enables service markets to emerge and thrive by creating opportunities for people to express and demonstrate their abilities, ambitions and passions.”
Whether in feel-good marketing prose, or feel scientific engineering text, however, GenieTown is not delivering on its “clever” experience promise, and real world “genies” are not readily apparent. Browsing GenieTown’s “featured” listings surfaces an array of impersonal, canned, standard handyman sales pitches, and spam-like hawking of online ecommerce franchise properties. FOR EXAMPLE:
We are L’bel Paris 40 Years in the Direct Selling Industry selling fine french fragrances,skincare and cosmetics company. We are in 14 different countries and growing!
We are now expanding here in the United States.
We are looking for business minded individuals looking to start their own business selling cosmetics from our L’bel Paris catalog.
EXELLENT MONEY MAKETR! Make anywhere from 25%-50% commission.
We are Not a Mult-Level MARKETING COMPANY!
EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO MEET PEOPLE
LOTS OF COMPANY SUPPORT! FREE TRAINING!
PLEASE CONTACT: AREA SALES MANAGER
How does one “Become a genie?”: “Join now, it’s quick and easy!”…AND free, and apparently anonymous and unverified!
How does a “Genie” get featured on the GenieTown home page? GenieTown advises one “Genie” called “Power Of Cash” of GenieTown’s Stanford PhD advanced algorithm:
If you are wondering how to be displayed on the front page: the two genies featured are selected from our list of genies with portfolio pictures. To add portfolio pictures, log into your account, click on profile and scroll to the bottom of the page. This allows you to upload and organize your pictures.
GenieTown “Genie” “Power of Cash”’s profile:
Cash Leveraging Genious. I Help others receive Financial Glory..
You go, Mr. Power, thanks to GenieTown’s open (too open) platform! Despite all of GenieTown’s Stanford engineering credentials, the founding team has unleashed a supposedly local Web platform that is friendly to global, online spam.
Oodle has been striving to “improve the way people buy and sell locally” for several years, fueled by $19 million in venture capital backing. Oodle CEO Donato told me today that Oodle is on track to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year.
Both a destination site and a third-party distributor and aggregator, Oodle cites “30 million listings from over 80,000 classifieds sites,” except Craigslist. Donato believes that Oodle is nevertheless complementary to Craigslist, recommending that consumers use Craigslist, plus Oodle for breadth of reach.
Straddling both direct-to-consumer and link-to-classifieds sites approaches poses Oodle business model challenges, however. Last June, I asked Donato for his reaction to the eBay launch of Kijiji. SEE: Oodle CEO Q & A on eBay, Kijiji & Craigslist Classifieds
The Oodle CEO told me last year about Kijiji:
It’s great for consumers and it’s great for Oodle. Providing consumers with choice is alays a good thing. And consumers are increasingly getting more options to post free classifieds listings. Obviously as consumers use more and different marketplaces, Oodle becomes more useful. It’s also important to note that consumers don’t publish listings directly into Oodle. As a search engine, it is our goal to partner with all the classifieds marketplaces on the Internet, big and small, local and national.
It is important to note now, though, that consumers ARE publishing listings directly into Oodle. How will the Oodle business model be impacted by the new, Oodle direct stance?
STAY TUNED TO INSIDER CHATTER FOR MORE: PART II ON OODLE COMING SOON!
MORE: Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS and
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why and
Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows
ALSO: Craigslist Q & A: Classifieds Community NO ‘Walled Garden’ and Craigslist PR: Same OLD Media?
PLUS: Like.com to Entrepreneurs: It’s the Revenues, Stupid! and VideoEgg Rocks: Unveils AdFrames in Silicon Alley: Google Next?
Michael Arrington is outraged over what he (now) characterizes as a “hypocritical, wrong and conflicted” Union Square Venture’s celebrity blogging VC: Fred Wilson.
ODD? After all, I subjected an extremely flawed Fred Wilson post last week to a similar style of analytical analysis as Arrington does today (without indulging in similar style emotional, personal vindictives as Arrington does though), citing Jason Calacanis on Wilson’s propensity to over “share” publicly, at his blog: SEE: Why Silicon Alley VCs Should Do Blogging Due Diligence, Too
Arrington wasn’t outraged then, however. In fact, Arrington threw his personal support to blogger Wilson in the comments:
Arrington to Wilson, one week ago: “Fred, Great post. You are such a good blogger, especially for someone outside of Silicon Valley.”
What a difference a week makes? Not really, what a difference a Wilson crtiique of TechCrunch’s co-editor makes! BUT, Arrington’s condoning of Wilson’s “hypocricy 101″ style last week helped fuel the blogging VCs ongoing propensity for doublespeak, a typical Wiilson approach that Arrington notes, NOW:
Also, in a comment to his original post, he says “Erick didn’t get it wrong…but i think he missed the opportunity to get it right.”
How can you be both wrong and right at the same time?
GOOD QUESTION, and “how can” a VC recommend that his portfolio companies sell out to the likes of Yahoo, AOL, Google, while at the same time decrying that such profitable Union Square Ventures business decisions are “not good” for the Internet, as I analyze and critique in Is Union Square Ventures Changing Exit Strategies?
“Web services don’t get better under the ownership of big companies. They get worse,” the Union Square Ventures’ managing partner declared.
REALLY? Poor Union Square Ventures portfolio companies Twitter, Wesabe, Zynga….then? After all, how can Wilson advise “exits” to “big companies” Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft… if such “big” sell outs will stifle Web innovation, according to Wilson.
“We don’t need or want consolidation of services on the Internet,” Wilson warned.
There is no apparent change in Wilson’s VC modus operandi which spurs such “consolidation,” however, if it is to the financial advantage of his Union Square Ventures’ financial returns.
While Arrington defends his writer and Wilson defends his portfolio company, however, there is one entrepreneur’s story that is not being heard: The plea of Munjal Shah, CEO of Riya (developer of the Like.com Visual shopping service), to focus on startups’ revenues:
I would ask every reporter to get a new metric for evaluating how startups are doing. Why can’t Michael, Matt, Om, and others start asking for this info before writting positive pieces about companies.
EXCELLENT SUBJECT MATTER, and one that I continuously report on and analyze here at Insider Chatter. In fact, I headlined yesterday–Business Plans & Revenue Models: TWO Startup Must Haves–a critique of ex-Googler Paul Buchheit’s advice to startups that was devoid of a financial performance metrics discussion.
Michael, Matt, Om, and others may continue to perpetuate the myth that a startup’s traffic is the best indicator of success, but I steadfastly spur entrepreneurs to focus on the bottom line and welcome every opportunity to speak with founders and CEOs about their sales and profitability milestones, and happily share their inspirational accomplishments here at Insider Chatter.
Insider Chatter also respects timed company embargoes, another “glitch” in Venture Beat’s report on Like.com that was lamented by Like.com’s Shah. I have similarily experienced Venture Beat’s “misunderstanding” of clearly stated timing restricitions on news releases. Venture Beat’s self-serving propensity to “hit publish” before mutually agreed upon times risks hurting not only Venture Beat’s Web publishing competitors but the very startups being covered, Shah’s Like.com big case in point.
Remember, though, “It’s the revenues, stupid!” Entrepreneurs ought to heed Shah’s real-world call to financial arms:
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.
Like.com likes revenues!
MORE: Silicon Alley Web 2.0 Startups: Bootstrap For Success and 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
PLUS: Facebook Meltdown: Is Twitter Next? and FriendFeed: Got Google Millions? Who Needs Revenues!
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