Arrived in Denver at SMX Local and Mobile!!!

I’m here in the lobby of the hotel in Denver where the first ever Search Marketing Expo Local and Mobile show is being held. I’m thrilled to be here to see the creation of Chris Sherman and Greg Sterling! Karen Deweese was here to greet me with a great big hug and is hard at work making last minute preparations. It’s so great to see Karen, I had not seen her since last December! The SMX complimentary Internet is already up and running to. This rocks! I’m looking forward to this cozy and focused show, it’s going to be awesome.

I haven’t been to Denver in a long time, it’s such a wonderful city. It’s a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky. So much clean, wide open space with those mountains teasing you to want to drive your rental car westward and forget why you are here! It’s a city I certainly wouldn’t mind living in someday if I was asked to.

It should be a fun evening of getting to know some great search engine and marketing pioneers before the show starts Monday!

SMXLOMO 2007

Chicago Midway Airport Security Tip

If all the lines are the same length - go with the one on the far right. After you pass the identification checkpoint that line spreads into several smaller lines that move more quickly. I’ve tried this a few times now with concsistent results so I thought I’d share it with you.

Anyone else have some travel/security tips?

Chicago Cubs Win National League Central Division 2007

Do you believe in miracles?

Viewpoints.com Launch Party Friday Night

Matt Moog at Viewpoints let me in on a secret. There are a limited number of RSVP spots left for the Viewpoints launch party Friday night in downtown Chicago…

I am pleased to announce that we have officially launched Viewpoints. To celebrate we are holding a launch party on September 28th, at 6pm at (edit - location will be mailed to you upon RSVP). I hope you (and a few friends) can attend. We will have a T-Shirt for everyone who has written a review and special prize drawings (iPhone anyone?) for those that attend. Be sure to bring a print out of your review to claim your T-Shirt!

Through the beta period we have built an audience of more than 100,000 monthly users. Be sure to explore the site to see some of the great reviews that users just like you have written. We encourage reviewers to write about products and services that they are passionate about.

Check out some of these great reviews. Electronics, Travel, Home & Garden or on the lighter side see what TV Shows, Movies, Music or Books you could discover. Of course we also have a great section for Local Places that features local Restaurants, Shopping, and even local Doctors & Hospitals. Our mission is to bring the reviewers profile, passions and personalities to life. We believe that user written reviews are more powerful when the reader knows more about the reviewer.

To RSVP please email jolie AT viewpoints DOT com prior to 2PM Central time Friday - send this post link as a reference to how you heard about the Viewpoints launch party. See you there.

Mobile Versus Web 2.0 Bickering

It sounds like Scott Karp should be attending the SMX Local and Mobile next week as two of the five areas he gripes about will be covered in detail there. While his carrier and wifi complaints are somewhat relevant, the rest is unfortunately plain ignorance.

Russell Beattie is a quite a bit more blunt in his not safe for work response. His web 2.0 comment makes me chuckle in quite a few ways.

Will You Attend SMX Local & Mobile Denver Next Week

I’ll be attending the first ever SMX Local & Mobile conference next week in Denver!!! Chris Sherman, who talks about why he is excited about the event in this post, and Greg Sterling have both put in a tremendous amount of work into researching and programming this highly unique and special event.

You may view the full agenda and you may still register for the event.

I arrive at Noon on Sunday (where is the Sunday pre-conference meetup - The Hyatt?) and hope to meet with as many attendees as possible before and during the event as I look forward to learning about people and seeing the demos in this soon to be revolutionary space.

See you in Denver! I’ll also have room for one or two on the way back to the airport as I’m renting a car while there.

Lisa Barone Points Out a Privacy Concern in Facebook

Lisa put together a really thoughtful post that outlines some interesting issues that those concerned with privacy should take a few moments to read.

Perhaps those people wishing to take the valuation of Facebook to the mooon might want to pause and think about this issue along with other privacy and safety concerns regardless of page view growth. Do people not remember the lessons of Myspace - lack of monetization anyone?

Jason Alba Author - I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???

Recently I blogged about how retained recruiting firm executive search activity on Linkedin was rising. Maybe they got an advance of Jason Alba’s new book, I’m on LinkedIn — Now What???, and started putting the concepts to immediate good use! I had this to say about the book:

“Jason has written a highly practical guide to Linkedin that will quickly allow a new user to understand and utilize Linkedin. It’s also a great guide to the Linkedin’s hidden gems - finding high quality people through endorsements and off Linkedin content such as groups and identifying thought leaders through blogs linked from profiles.”

I’m honored to have been asked by Jason to contribute ideas to the book as well as some Linkedin best practices at the end of some of the chapters. Jason is one of the people I’ve met via Linkedin and I know my life is much better for that as he always makes himself available to talk and help my goals in any way he can.

While certainly any Linkedin novice would benefit, Jason’s book most needs to be read by c-level executives, all HR executives and recruiters who don’t yet understand how to fully utilize Linkedin. There tools on Linkedin besides last company worked at and job title - the community would function better if people learned to use the community more wisely and this can happen quickly if people read Jason’s book.

Chicago TiECon ‘07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders

There are still a few seats left! TiE puts on amazingly high quality events, I greatly look forward to seeing you there! Sign up now, don’t delay!

TiECon Midwest is the premier event organized by TiE-Midwest held every two years. Join us in Chicago this October 5th for TiECon ‘07 Mentorship: Boosting Tomorrow’s Business Leaders, a half-day event for leading Midwest entrepreneurs to share thoughts and ideas on business and innovation.

Over 400 attendees will hear a keynote address by local, successful, serial entrepreneurs Glen Tullman and Howard Tullman. Following the keynote, distinguished panelists will present topics aimed to increase Entrepreneurial IQ through a series of sessions. Panels topics are: Right Dollars at the Right Time, Business Model Refinement, Attracting and Retaining Talent and Executive Coach for the Entrepreneur. The event will conclude with a cocktail reception designed to foster networking.

TiE stands for Talent, Ideas and Enterprise and is a not-for-profit global network of entrepreneurs and professionals. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1992, TiE is an open and inclusive organization that has rapidly grown to more than forty chapters in nine countries. TIE Global is the world leader in cultivating and nurturing entrepreneurship.

Google Adsense for Mobile Launches

Google Adsense™ for Mobile launched yesterday.

What wasn’t announced fully was if the program is different in any way than traditional Adsense. It would also be interesting to understand how Google is exactly defining mobile websites.

As people start to use it, I’m sure these issues will become transparent.

Chicago’s Enso Introduces New Beta Products - Web Search Anywhere, Translate Anywhere and More

Aza Raskin chatted me up a few minutes ago and shared with me that they are launching four new beta products Monday. These will complement the existing Humanized offerings of Enso Launcher and Enso Words which I’ve been using since shortly after I met Aza at Barcamp Chicago earlier this Summer. Enso is a useful tool, but you need to have an open mind to fully appreciate what it can do for it to be effective at it’s full potential. Just remember that these are beta products so they may have some unique bugs, but I like they way they’ve set up transparent feedback for each offering so that they can live the quotes of Peter Drucker and others in their actions.

I had a few brief moments to download it and bang on them a bit. So without further delay here is a quick and dirty rundown of the four new Enso beta products, you can download them here in a nice little bundle, I’ve ranked them in the order that they interest me and my typical readership:

Enso Web Search Anywhere v0.1 - Simply select your document text, hold the caps lock, type goo and presto a new browser with that query executed in Google appears! After doing that only three times, I kind of find manual entry or cutting and pasting to be kind of ancient and stone tablet like. A distant memory. Maybe even downright lame!

Enso Translate Anywhere v0.1 - Translate languages on the fly in Enso. With a little refinement, I think the last reason I ever visit Alta Vista will meet it’s ultimate demise!

Enso Media Controller v0.1 - Now you are getting it. It controls your media with ease.

Enso TeX Anywhere v0.1 - Nothing to do with the lone star state, I think they state the value proposition quite well, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a way of creating stunning equations quickly and simply?”

Again, this is just a brief overview, be sure to visit the Enso micro pages above for vivid detail and screen prints.

Suburban Chicago Silicon Prairie Social Internet and Technology Mixer Thursday

Tim Courtney sent me the following note late last week, I hope to see you there….

When: Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 6:30-10:00pm
Where: Mullen’s Bar & Grill 3080 Warrenville Rd., Lisle, IL 60532

An opportunity to connect in an informal setting with like-minded people in technology; whether you’re an upwardly mobile professional, a job seeker, an entrepreneur, or a VC. We welcome everyone, including IT workers, e-commerce companies, Internet and Web 2.0 startups, mobile and mobile marketing, and B2B services.

The event is free to attend, free drinks and food will be provided. RSVP is required at http://siliconprairiesocial.eventbrite.com.

For more information see www.siliconprairiesocial.com or call Tim Courtney at 630.983.6064 or tcourtney at xnet.com.

New Chicago Tribune Story Writer For Chicago Blackhawks This Season

Many Chicago Blackhawks fans are understandably quite excited about #1 draft pick Patrick Kane. I am too.

I actually think I might be more excited that there is a new full time writer for the Chicago Tribune, Chris Kuc, assigned to the Chicago Blackhawks this season!  Someone needs to keep Tim Sassone at the Daily Herald honest. Chris seems to have a passion for the role that has been lacking for many years and in addition to his normal writing, he’s the author of the first Chicago Tribune Blog on the Chicago Blackhawks.

To both Patrick Kane and Chris Kuc, I wish you both a long and prosperous journey! I hope the Stanley Cup drought comes to an end sometime during your tenure!

LinkedIn View Quality Rising After Non Eventful September 11

I logged into my Linkedin panel the other day and saw top tier retained search firms viewing my profile…I’ve had several other recent experiences that I can’t make public that seem to indicate a healthy reallocation of capital away from the mortgage and housing market is occurring and may in fact be accelerating after a non eventful September 11th. I’m hoping this will be part of a long term trend, not just a blip.

Your profile has been viewed by 9 people in the last 3 days, including:

Senior Associate at Heidrick & Struggles

  • Director at Gap International
  • Someone in the Marketing And Advertising industry
  • Research Consultant at Russell Reynolds Associates

    • Yahoo! Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions, Usama Fayyad Talks at KDD 07

    My friend Bill Slawski posted some links to video of Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions Talking at KDD 07.

    You should probably drop by Bill’s place as he has written an extremely nice summary of the talk. If you enjoy that, you should likely check out the video of Usama Fayyad talking, it gives some rare behind the scenes glimpses into the direction of Yahoo!.

    Good stuff, thank you Bill for pointing it out!

    Youtube Already Accepting Questions for the November 28, 2007 Republican Debate

    Wow, I’m amazed that Youtube has a page up to collect this material over 10 weeks in advance! That will obviously generate many, many questions from the supporters of the candidates in the race as well as issue voters:

    Sam Brownback, U.S. Senator from Kansas
    Rudy Giuliani, Former Mayor of New York City
    Mike Huckabee, Former Governor of Arkansas
    Duncan Hunter, U.S. Representative from California
    Alan Keyes, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
    John McCain, U.S. Senator from Arizona
    Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas
    Mitt Romney, Former Governor of Massachusetts
    Tom Tancredo, U.S. Representative from Colorado
    Fred Thompson, Former U.S. Senator from Tennessee

    UPDATE: Due to off topic comments not related to the Youtube process, the comments have been closed on this thread.

    Shuman Ghosemajumder Interview In Forbes

    Shuman Ghosemajumder (see pronunciation in this previous post) was interviewed in the most recent issue of Forbes. First time full length interview I’ve seen in quite some time on his areas of expertise.

    Like Many in Chicago, Facebook Moved West to Silicon Valley

    The Boston Globe has a well researched story about how and why Facebook moved to Silicon Valley. Why can’t the Chicago newspapers cover technology in such a thorough and complete manner?

    I thought I’d rip some of the better quotes out of it that apply to VC, Internet and Chicago and discuss them:

    Zuckerberg told the senior associate that he was planning to go to California for the summer, and he wasn’t sure whether he would return to Harvard for his junior year. Summer was less than two months away. The senior associate was pretty sure that if Battery Ventures didn’t invest before then, a Silicon Valley venture firm would discover the deal. For venture capital firms, getting in first can often mean getting a bigger chunk of a start-up for less money - especially if the start-up isn’t talking to other firms. And Facebook wasn’t.

    After a second meeting at the Charles, and a visit to Battery’s offices above the reservoir in Waltham, Zuckerberg said he thought Facebook was worth about $15 million, and was willing to accept an investment ranging from $1 million to $3 million, which would have given Battery a substantial chunk of the start-up.

    But Battery had already made an investment in an earlier social networking site, Friendster, which was foundering. Zuckerberg struck some partners at the firm as a little too brash. And no one was sure whether Facebook would appeal to anyone other than college students, its target.

    From my days in mutual funds and institutional investing, there is an old saying that says “Past performance does not indicate future results.” Why did these VC’s let it cloud their judgment? I especially like the next sentence about Zuckerberg being “too brash”. Many entrepreneurs and great business leaders share this quality, yet these particular VC’s thought that was a problem? Makes little sense.

    Through a chance connection, Zuckerberg was introduced to Peter Thiel, a cofounder of the online payment system PayPal, who was running a hedge fund called Clarium Capital. He met with Thiel in August, at Thiel’s office in downtown San Francisco.

    Thiel had also been an investor in Friendster, and he knew that the conventional wisdom was that all the social networking sites “were just fads that would come and go,” he says. Thiel listened to Zuckerberg’s pitch in the morning, asked him to go out and grab lunch, and by the time Zuckerberg returned in the afternoon, “we said we’d invest, and we agreed to the basic valuation parameters,” Thiel says.

    “It seemed like a good company,” he said, adding, “Most of the time, we’re not that fast.”

    Thiel put in $500,000 of his own money in return for 10 percent of the company.

    Though I don’t fully believe the chance introduction thing, if the time line is accurate you have to respect Peter Thiel.

    “Facebook was perhaps the most controversial deal we’ve done in several years,” says Jim Breyer of Accel Partners. “Some of my best friends in the business were wondering why we’d write a check to a company that had very little defensibility to their business.” Indeed, anyone could potentially build a better site and lure Facebook’s users away.

    This is true of almost all start ups, especially ones in social networking.

    Greylock partner David Sze, who works on the West Coast, admits that he had the opportunity to invest in Facebook in 2005, but says, “I was too busy - I just didn’t have the cycles to look at it. In retrospect, that was a mistake.”

    Smart people always make time to meet with entrepreneurs and potential employees. I actually checked to see if Mr. Sze had a Chicago connection after this statement, but could find none. I do admire his honesty in regards to this after the fact though. According to his Linkedin profile, he’s a Board Member at Digg so he indeed was busy (David if you’re reading this I have a support problem with Digg that is not getting resolved with an email to support - would be happy to discuss privately).

    (Looming over Facebook’s success - and any eventual public offering - is a lawsuit filed by several fellow Harvard students who allege that Zuckerberg built Facebook using software code he had originally written for their site, ConnectU.com, and that he also borrowed parts of their business plan. A Facebook representative said that none of its founders were available to comment.)

    I can think of several situations like this in Chicago, but will not name them publicly as I would not want to give the situations undue publicity.

    “We don’t want to make Facebook the cornerstone of our growth strategy, but we’re happy to ride the wave,” says Dina Pradel, StyleFeeder’s vice president of marketing.

    Very nicely stated.

    When I put that question to Accel Partners’ Breyer, who is a native of Natick, he had a one-word answer: no.

    “So many of the Facebook employees have come from top Internet companies like Yahoo, eBay, and Google that the culture that has been built at Facebook is fundamentally more consumer Internet savvy than if it would’ve been built anywhere else on the planet,” Breyer says, after praising the engineering talent in Boston.

    I think this is a most unfortunate limiting belief.

    “Folks in the Valley are incredibly geo-centric to a point of snobbery,” writes Battery Ventures’ Scott Tobin via e-mail. He acknowledges that Silicon Valley is producing more companies than Boston but “to make an argument that great companies can’t be built in any one place is bunk in my mind.”

    He mentions Microsoft Corp. in Redmond, Wash., and Qualcomm Inc. in San Diego as examples. “It just takes a good driving attitude to make it happen.”

    As for passing on Facebook, “that may turn out to have been a mistake,” Tobin admits.

    Scott Tobin, it would be nice to meet you. I agree completely with your comment about driving attitude and I’d also unfortunately have to agree with your geo-centric comment. What do you think the root cause of this behavior is? Does Silicon Valley need more outside thought? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

    I’d love to hear Don Dodge’s views on this subject, so I’ll tag him.

    I’m also in touch with several mobile advertising and local concepts in the early funding stage, so reading this article was more than a bit fascinating to me. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

    Update: The author of this article has a blog post about it.

    Facebook Spamming Your Identity in Search Results to Drive Their Traffic - Part 2

    I wrote about this issue back on May 18th when I removed my public listing. This is not a new feature today as is incorrectly being reported. It is Facebook announcing something that they should have announced back in May when I noticed them doing this. Some bloggers seem to have gotten this part totally wrong.

    I’d bet this is in reaction to user complaints. Good that they are listening apparently, but it was totally avoidable with some communication. People who use social media get social media (well most do at least). They understand how the rules of engagement are a bit different on these sites and people need to be eased into that if they are not as they make false assumptions.

    I awoke this morning to find this message upon logging into Facebook:

     

    Public Search Listings on Facebook

    Facebook now enables anyone to search for Facebook users who have public search listings from our Welcome page. In a few weeks we will allow users to make these public search listings visible to search engines like Google. Public Search Listings only include names and profile pictures.

    Because you have restricted your search privacy settings your public search listing will not be shown. If you want friends who are not yet on Facebook to be able to search for you by name, you can change your settings on the Search Privacy page.

    No privacy rules are changing; if you do choose to make this public search listing available, anyone who discovers your public search listing must sign up and login to contact you via Facebook. Learn More.

    But David you currently have a Facebook badge on your blog? Yes, I do. When people are visiting my blog, I have as an experiment put that up. It’s not creating a cluttered search results page and it’s not allowing Facebook to be the first page of choice to enter the blog.

    I’m not going to write on how to remove yourself, I’d like to see if you think their documentation does a good job of telling you how to. When I did it, it was overly complex and not clear how to. I’d like to hear how the experience is now.

    UPDATE: Danny Sullivan also talks about how “this is not new“.

    MyBlogLog Migrates to Yahoo ID’s

    Robyn Tippins announced last night that Mybloglog now utilizes Yahoo! ID. That’s quite nice! :)

    I’m waiting and hoping for Yahoo! to do two things with Yahoo! ID:

    1) Allow me to be in Yahoo! Mail and one click to Mybloglog or Flickr or whatever and vice versa.

    2) Allow me (or anyone else) to change their Yahoo! ID while retaining all of their data, photos, email etc. Many people have Yahoo! IDs that have a combination of spam or that name isn’t relevant to them anymore disease. I’d prefer to change the name and retain all of the data and settings. I’d love for Yahoo! to add this user centric change.

    Congrats to the Mybloglog team on the continuing transitions!

    keep looking »