I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend (Today), part III My first thought when my colleague Jen Goldman forwarded me a SlideShare presentation that was 224 pages long was, “really?” But a short 10 minutes and 224 clicks later, I am glad I spent the time on it. Paul Adams, a Senior User Experience Researcher at Google, put the presentation up called The Real Life Social Network. Paul describes the problem I discuss in Part I and Part II of this series much more eloquently than I have, with great real world examples and thoughts for web designers at the end. If you’re involved in social media and want to start breaking away from the “one size of friend fits…
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OnlyOnce Now MultiLingual
OnlyOnce Now MultiLingual If you look in the left sidebar of OnlyOnce, you will now see a box that says “Translate This Page” with a dropdown that lets you pick the language. Google Translate takes over from there and does the heavy lifting. Global world…awesome service. Thanks, Google! Thanks Brad and Ross for the tip.
In Search of Automated Relevance
In Search of Automated Relevance A bunch of us had a free form meeting last week that started out as an Email Summit focused on protocols and ended up, as Brad put it, with us rolling around in the mud of a much broader and amorphous Messaging Summit. The participants (and some of their posts on the subject) in addition to me were Fred Wilson (pre, post), Brad Feld, Phil Hollows, Tom Evslin (pre, post), and Jeff Pulver (pre, post). And the discussion to some extent was inspired by and commented on Saul Hansell’s article in the New York Times about “Inbox 2.0” and how Yahoo, Google, and others are trying to make email a more relevant application in today’s…
The Acquisition (a parody of a parody)
The Acquisition (a parody of a parody) I just spent a great 4th of July with my brother Michael, one of the finer and funnier people I know. Among other things, we treated ourselves to about the 18th viewing of Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I on DVD. One of our favorite moments in the movie is the Broadway musical version of “The Inquisition” (lyrics, download MP3). Since both of us work in the online marketing industry (Michael is a marketing manager at search agency Did-It), Michael came up with the brilliant idea of a parody of a parody…so here goes, all in good fun. The acquisition, what a show The acquisition, here we go We’re on a…
Google en Fuego
Google en Fuego Google announced on Friday the acquisition of RSS publishing powerhouse FeedBurner (media coverage here and here). I was fortunate enough to be a member of FeedBurner’s Board of Directors for the past year and had a good window into the successes of the business as well as the deal with Google. It was all very interesting and good learnings for me as an entrepreneur as well as a first time outside director. My original post (the “fortunate enough” link above) contained all the things I love about FeedBurner in it, so I won’t rehash those here, but I will try to distill my top 3 learnings from my experience with the company: Creating value through focus is…
Feeling Less Like a Luddite: Welcome, Lijit!
Feeling Less Like a Luddite: Welcome, Lijit! As I’ve written about a few times (here, here, and here), it’s easy to feel like a Luddite with the rapid pace of change of the web these days. Anyway, I’m feeling slightly less like one today with the addition of Lijit to my blog. You’ll notice that I changed the search box from Google to Lijit on the right hand side of the page on OnlyOnce. Lijit seems like it’s a better way to search a blog, and maybe other things as well. Using Lijit, you can search not just the text of the blog itself (which is what Google allowed), but Lijit also goes out and searches a few other buckets…
Whiplash at Google, Part II
Whiplash at Google, Part II My former colleague Brian Westnedge points me to this article that gives more detail on my earlier notes about Google’s very large NYC-based engineering team. The article also provides a good general assessment of NYC as a location for tech companies. Thanks, Brian!
Stuck in the Middle
Stuck in the Middle I was trying to explain the current state of Return Path’ Postmaster Network online advertising business (email lists, lead gen, RSS) to someone from outside the industry the other day, when it occurred to me that many online marketing vehicles are still split between running on the offline paradigm and running on the online paradigm. I don’t have a lot of detailed stats on all of this at my fingertips, but bear with my observations. To me, the offline paradigm has always been characterized by big agency buys, driven by thematic/brand oriented creative campaigns that cost a fortune to develop. This is even true to a large extent for direct marketing, although the mechanics are different. …
Whiplash at Google
Whiplash at Google A friend of mine who works at Google invited me over to have lunch last week. It was fun to see their NY office — it had a similar fun vibe to their main campus in Mountain View. But it was a study in contrast in terms of how they treat guests. First, I had to sign a one-sided NDA in order to enter the premises. Totally offputting as the first point of contact and a requirement to even have lunch. I know other companies do that was well but was surprised given the whole “do no evil” thing to see it at GOOG. But then of course, there was the free super gourmet cafeteria: hazelnut-encrusted wild…
A Tale of Two Strategies
A Tale of Two Strategies Two headlines right next to each other in today’s Wall Street Journal tell an interesting story. First, they tell of Google’s strategy to allow advertisers to use Google’s web site to bid on and buy print advertising in over 50 leading newspapers. Then comes CBS’s strategy to bring in a new executive digital media M&A guru, Quincy Smith from Allen & Company, to “find the next YouTube.” (These links should work for a week, but I think that’s all the Journal allows – sorry!). So there you have it. CBS’ grand interactive plans are about trying to do value-based Internet acquisitions. Best of luck. Les Moonves’ quote is somewhat sad — “This shows how serious…
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over
It’s a Sad Day When the Lawyers Take Over With all due respect to lawyers, of course, Google’s recent decision to start making a legal fuss when people in the media use the word “Google” as a verb is NUTS. Someone, get Marketing on Line 1 — and make it snappy. Steve Rubel wrote about it, as did Jeff Jarvis, and the source material is here. For the record, anyone who wants to use any of the following words or phrases as a verb, noun, or any other part of speech, may do so at any time: Return Path, Sender Score, Authentic Response, Postmaster Direct. Oh, and then there’s ECOA, the service we pioneered in 2000 that *is* occasionally (in…