Recent Articles
NextStart Gives South Carolina A Startup Incubator
Mar 31, 2009 General Comments Off
NextStart is the latest Y Combinator-esque startup incubator to emerge to support young entrepreneurs and their ideas. The Greenville, South Carolina-based organization is offering a summer immersion entrepreneur development program to attract promising entrepreneurs to the Carolina region.
The program works similarly to other incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars in providing seed money, VC connections, and mentoring to company founders to develop their ideas, incorporate their companies, and then help find funding for their startups. NextStart will give startups $5,000 to $10,000 in return for “founders stock” of 5 to 10 percent. The twelve week program will run during the summer in Greenville and will give entrepreneurs office space, internet access and other professional services. Startup teams will be immersed in a business planning program, FastTrac by the Kauffman Foundation, to develop a solid business plan and will also work with the Spiro Institute for Entrepreneurial Leadership at Clemson University.
NextStart joins a constantly growing number of programs trying to appeal to young entrepreneurs. Aside from Y Combinator, which pioneered the idea, other incubators include TechStars (Boulder and now Boston), Start@Spark (Boston), LaunchBox Digital (Washington, D.C.), DreamIT Ventures (Philadelphia), and Shotput Ventures (Atlanta), and Capital Factory (Austin).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
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Lunch Launches a Personal Recommendation Network (+Invites)
Mar 31, 2009 Read/Write Web Comments Off
A new online community site called Lunch.com has just launched into private beta here at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The site, essentially a recommendation network, aims to bring the sort of casual conversations you would have with friends over lunch to the online arena. Using a proprietary “Similarity Network Engine,” Lunch calculates what you have in common with other site members so you can share recommendations with those who have your same interests and perspectives.
Click through for an exclusive invite code to this new site!
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In a way, Lunch is somewhat like a “Yelp 2.0.” But unlike Yelp and other sites like it, Lunch’s network aims to make user-generated reviews more of a personalized experience. By discovering your passions and interests, Lunch lets you connect with people who are more like you – and therefore, people who will be recommending and reviewing products and services in a way that you can trust (at least in theory). This idea has merit because it provides a personalized, filtered view of these online reviews.
What Why Need This
Sites like Yelp, Amazon, the iTunes store, and others have been coming under fire for not having trustworthy reviews. Thanks to anonymous user IDs on some sites, reviewers can be anyone with any agenda. Often they are. On Lunch, however, those drive-by reviews contributed by someone associated with the company or product being reviewed (or with an axe to grind) will not be prominently featured. The reason? Lunch.com’s Similarity Network.
The Similarity Network
The Similarity Network is probably the most important feature of this new community – without it, Lunch would just be just another Yelp. After signing up, you kick start the matching engine by playing “ExhilaRATE.” Although that name is somewhat unintuitive, clicking the link takes you to a section of the site where you can – guess what? – rate things like movies, books, food, sports, politics, animals…whatever. The experience of rating items here is a lot like that of Amazon’s recommendation engine. If you’ve ever killed a few minutes on Amazon training it to get to know you better, you’ll find Lunch.com’s engine fairly similar.
The difference is that Lunch.com’s engine groups things to rate into categories with titles that sound a lot like Facebook Apps (Top Movies of 2009, What’s your Favorite Wine?). The Facebook flavor to these “games” makes sense because in the future, Lunch.com will launch a Facebook connected-experience, perhaps even a standalone app. In the meantime, however, you must go to the site to rate items.
The more you rate on Lunch, the better your matches become. You can see your matches and the percentage of compatibility between you and those like you. There are also tag cloud displays that show what items you both like and which ones you don’t.
With Lunch, You Can Rate Anything
If you’re still wondering why you would migrate away from more mainstream sites to something like Lunch.com, there’s another reason this particular community holds appeal: it allows you to make anything ratable. Again unlike Yelp, ratings don’t have to focus on products, services, places, etc. They could also be opinion pieces – like what you thought of Michelle Obama’s new outfit for example. That opens the door for a much wider range of recommendations and – since you’re matched with those like you – those recommendations will be relevant to your interests.
Lunch.com is in private beta, but you can try it now with the invite code “ReadWriteWeb.” To use it, just click the link on the right-hand side of the screen that says “Have an invite code?”
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MySpace Goes Local: Announces Partnership with Citysearch
Mar 31, 2009 Read/Write Web Comments Off
MySpace today announced a partnership with Citysearch that will bring Citysearch’s database of local businesses to the social network’s new MySpace Local service. Users on MySpace can now review, rate, and share content about businesses on MySpace Local, and reviews and ratings will appear in users’ activity stream. MySpace will launch this service with support for restaurants and bars first, though it plans to include a wider range of businesses in the near future. MySpace Local will be available as a private beta today, and should become available to all users in the next few weeks.
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The MySpace Local user interface represents a good mix of elements from Citysearch and MySpace, with a clear focus on local restaurants and businesses. Unlike Citysearch, however, the MySpace local site will also feature a separate section with updates from a user’s friends on the service. Indeed, during a press conference today, MySpace specifically stressed that its new service will always emphasize reviews from friends.
Revenue
MySpace stressed that it sees MySpace local as a new revenue stream, as it will share revenue with Citysearch. Neither MySpace nor Citysearch provided any details of this revenue sharing agreement however, though MySpace stressed that it sees this as an opportunity to provide advertisers with a new outlet for hyper-targeted ads.
Looking Ahead
In the near future, MySpace hopes to bring MySpace Local to its mobile apps, and the company also expects to expand it to markets outside of the U.S. soon.
Good for MySpace and Citysearch
Overall, this looks like a smart move by both MySpace and Citysearch. Citysearch, through this, gains access to a very large number of potential new users, while MySpace gains access to a large, pre-populated database of reviews. Users on Citysearch also don’t tend to be as social as users on other review sites like Yelp, so this cooperation will probably bring a whole new group of reviewers to Citysearch.
Other local review sites like Yelp, for example, feature support for Facebook Connect, though Facebook itself doesn’t have a ‘Facebook Local’ feature yet that is tightly integrated with a local review site (though some users hope they will do so soon).
Interestingly, even Citysearch itself already features support for Facebook Connect as well, which, according to Inside Facebook, is generating a constant stream of new traffic for Citysearch.
Adding this functionality seems like a natural evolution for social networking sites, and we expect that other social networks will follow in MySpace’s footsteps soon.
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What’s Wrong with Facebook? When Strategy Fails to Meet Execution
Mar 31, 2009 Read/Write Web Comments Off
Over the last few weeks, Facebook has been rolling out its latest redesign. Within days of the first changes, a polling application on Facebook showed that 94% of the 634,484 users who took the poll hate the redesign, and some 1.7 million users signed a petition to bring back the old design.
Author: Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com — a boutique consultancy focusing on helping companies succeed. Ravit works with CEOs, marketing groups, and Social Media managers to craft customer-centric engagement strategies that result in higher customer value, stronger customer community, improved monetization, and higher profitability. Ravit authors a blog at www.ravitlichtenberg.com.
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Facebook made more news in recent weeks when the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced it would file a formal complaint with the Federal Trade Commission over Facebook’s updated privacy terms, which essentially make user information the property of Facebook and give it free reign to use it as it may.
By now Facebook should be accustomed to criticism. Despite having had a tremendous growth spurt, it seems to be on a trial-and-error journey, guided by an ever-changing map and an elusive destination. In a way, it acts like a child in transition to puberty, slow to catch up on change, impressed by its new-found power, and definitely not bothered by such nuisances as “planning” for its future. But in the end, by will or by force, it too will have to grow up. What can Facebook do to make the transition less painful? What will it take for Facebook to start thinking like the grown-up company it is becoming?
Better to Have B-Level Strategy but A-Level Execution
That’s what Kulwant Singh, Dean of the National University of Singapore’s Business School, told us each day when we entered his classroom. It’s a pretty basic principle, but one of the toughest for companies to uphold.
Facebook is still a pretty simple business: it is an online platform that facilitates community-building and provides multiple methods and points of interaction for users to express themselves and connect and share with each other. Its strategies, then, should also be pretty simple and its execution near flawless. That hasn’t been the case, however. Facebook has failed to demonstrate that it is truly able to monetize its platform, and it continues to invest in meaningless endeavors, such as the recent redesign. This is due not to a lack of vision or talent but rather to the mile-long canyon between Facebook’s strategy and its ability to execute.
Facebook’s Strategy Simplified
In a recent interview, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, said the company will be focusing on growing its community and on monetization. To add some clarity to an otherwise generic statement, we can say that Facebook’s strategy most likely includes these three key goals:
- Increase user base. Grow network effect even beyond the current 175 million user base.
- Increase wallet share. Leverage existing platform and find new ways to make money (e.g. applications, advertising, revenue share on partnerships, paid services).
- Maintain and grow leadership in social media/networks. Effectively compete with and beat other online media platforms and
tools on which users spend time and money, or form a partnership (like with Twitter) for a piece of the action.
As with all strategic plans, each of these goals can be further broken down into multiple objectives, each of which has its own specific requirements. All that’s left to do is execute them. But in Facebook’s case, the flow from strategy to execution is disjointed, resulting in a very bad case of broken telephone. What should have been a relatively easy and flawless execution has turned into a terrible blunder that continues to put Facebook in the hot seat for not realizing its potential.
Facebook Vision Realized
While it may have started out as a project by a couple of passionate students, Facebook today, like most successful startups, is in the business of making money. Advancing this vision does not mean spending what must have been countless hours of team meetings to discuss the corner radius on the new profile chicklets. Nor does it mean risking getting sued for quietly attempting to take over user data. It’s time to lay down some fundamental principles to help Facebook bridge strategy and execution:
- Start thinking like the large company you are becoming. Instead of kneejerk responses to competition and internal whim, Facebook needs to set a long-term vision and work backwards, taking into consideration priorities, technological capabilities, and company as well as (most importantly) user needs. When a company knows what targets to keep its eyes on, it can choose one of many roads depending on the circumstances at the time.
- Choose an identity and stick with it. Is Facebook a fun startup, or a large successful company? Engineers and geeks, or business people? Is it about connecting or sharing information? The next couple of years are going to shape Facebook’s identity and redefine its culture, focus, and value proposition. Planning ahead by testing a few ideas can be of tremendous help to reducing noise and confusion.
- Listen to your users. It’s not just about blogs, notes, and user comments. Facebook should proactively seek to understand its growing base of user segments, their needs and desires, and their relationship to upcoming technologies and Facebook’s own strategic objectives. This will enable Facebook to design a complete experience (not thumbnails) that turns users into customers, while making it extremely difficult for competitors to match the experience.
- Grow with your market segments: While Facebook may have started with tech-savvy early adopters, it is now certainly crossing the chasm and attracting different user segments. Does Facebook understand the value proposition it offers to each of these segments? What about the growing base of 35- to 49-year-olds who are now flocking to social networks? Does Facebook know how to keep its original evangelists active? Keeping a close eye on these evolving segments and making sure its services speak to their unique needs will be key to Facebook’s success.
- Implement a co-creation architecture. Facebook could learn a great deal from the open-source environment by creating both feedback and contribution channels. The addition of OpenID and the increased flexibility for developers were significant steps forward, but they need to be integrated into a more holistic tool set and be linked to a strategy that answers more than, “How do we make money off our users?”
- Dare to change. Fear of change is one of the greatest pitfalls of established businesses and makes it easier for startups to take a significant share from them. Apple’s iPhone, BlueNile, and Zappos are but a few examples. Only by focusing on the whole experience and daring to break out of its own mold will Facebook maintain momentum and growth.
- Seal those gaps. This is a tough one for most people, more so for companies. It means pulling up the curtains, going from room to room, and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. It also means sitting down and devising a strategy to address all those gaps in a way that enhances the business while not hindering its operation. Not an easy task, but crucial for growth.
- Stay honest. Stating that public-figure pages are good for users is borderline disingenuous, and placing friends’ photos on ads is probably grounds for lawsuits. Take the example of Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, who says clearly that ads mid-program are Hulu’s way of monetizing an otherwise free platform. Facebook should clearly distinguish between pursuing business objectives and meeting users’ needs and should thus communicate the true intent of its actions.
For a people-based business, it’s shocking how little attention Facebook pays to understanding its own users. Less shocking is how poorly it has been executing its strategy, given the nature of this developmental stage it is going through. Parents often look for signs that those terrible teenage years are over and that their child is finally coming out of his or her self-involved state. For Facebook, this will happen when execution matches strategy, when the terms “user” and “customer” are integral to every single one of its strategic goals, when useless design tweaks finally meet their end, and when Facebook provides services and goods that users actually want. If nothing else, though, we can always take comfort in knowing that teenagers don’t stay teenagers for long.
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Why You Have to Use the Standalone Google Contacts Page
Mar 31, 2009 Read/Write Web Comments Off
Over the weekend, you may have heard the news about how Google finally assigned their standalone Gmail Contacts page a proper URL. Although the independent site has been available since fall of last year, it was previously somewhat hidden through an obfuscated URL. Now the site is online at google.com/contacts, a web address that’s sure to encourage more people to use Google and/or Gmail to organize and maintain their address lists. What you may have not known about this special contacts page, however, is that it’s actually the only usable place to organize your contacts within the Gmail system.
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You may have skipped over this news thinking it of relatively minor importance. In the grand scheme of things, it is. But being a heavy Gmail user myself (and a somewhat obsessed online organizer of online data), it was great to hear that Google was focusing on improving the contacts experience. Let me explain.
You see, I haven’t been able to actually use my contacts within Gmail for some time.
The problem stems from what is perhaps an overuse of the “Groups” feature on my part. Upon reaching a certain number of groups, a bug in the code for the Gmail contacts page prevents me from seeing the remaining groups available below a certain point on the dropdown list when I’m trying to add a contact to a group.
Here’s an example (see the bottom of the groups list where it cuts off):
Because of this issue – a problem found both in Firefox and Google’s own Chrome browser – the only way I could use the Contacts feature was via the hidden page.
On the standalone contacts page it works:
Without a handy URL to access this site, the only recourse was to bookmark the URL on all the home’s computers. But if I ever strayed from my own machines, believe me that URL was quickly forgotten. Obviously, you can see why I cheered for the news about google.com/contacts.
Now that Google Contacts finally has a proper URL, maybe the company can focus on making the contact manager a bit more robust or even integrating it with Google Sync technology for easy import/export to your mobile devices. That would be impressive. Until then, it’s nice to just be able to access this site with ease.
(By the way, Google Apps for your Domain users have to go here: https://www.google.com/contacts/a/YOURDOMAIN.TLD – sorry!)
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