Google Will Apply to Participate in the FCC Spectrum Mobile Auction

My question is simply this…

Low marginal cost public relations opportunity or serious about participating in the auction?

MashMeet Chicago: This Thursday

The informal event will be hosted at Fulton Lounge on 955 West Fulton Market, Chicago, between the hours of 7:00 - 9:00 PM on Thursday, November 29th.

More details.

Remember to 301 Redirect If You Own Your Domain Typos

I typed in facebooks.com this morning by accident. Got a dead page. So I looked to see if it was registered and sure enough it was. I’m completely amazed they aren’t 301 redirecting the typos that they own for user experience and other purposes!  

Registrant:
 Facebook, Inc
 156 University Ave, 3rd Floor
 Palo Alto, CA 94301
 US

 Domain name: FACEBOOKS.COM

Happy Thanksgiving 2007

As always Rustybrick has a great holiday logo summary.

My only add on is the following. Take a minute to read the full history of the holiday - it’s not about a day off and football.

The Meaning of is is

Michael Arrington ‘is contemplating the meaning of “is”.‘ As per a recent Facebook message change (that has now been changed back).

This issue of the meaning of “is” seems to be a recurring problem in our society. You might recall this statement by former President Clinton:

“It depends on what the meaning of the words ‘is’ is.” –Bill Clinton, during his 1998 grand jury testimony on the Monica Lewinsky affair 

Dictionary.com says it’s this:
–verb 1. 3rd pers. sing. pres. indic. of be. 
—Idiom2. as is. as1 (def. 25). 

[Origin: bef. 900; ME, OE; c. D is, ON es, er, G, Goth ist, L est, Gk estí, OCS jestĭ, Skt asti]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.

Why is the meaning of “is” such a frequent area of discussion?

The Future of Voice Broadcast and Voice Messaging

At the DMA conference a few weeks back, I met Dinesh Ravishanker. He runs a unique, effective voice broadcast offering called Callfire that allows micro-targeted opt-in outbound phone calls. It’s unique, user friendly and efficient in the demos he showed me. He was alot of fun to speak to and recently sent me the executive summary of the company that is seeking growth funding.

It seems like a collaborative offering that could be highly effective when utilized with other parts of the multi-channel ecosystem. Maybe one day I’ll get to utilize it in my toolbox! Many people in the Internet society have forgotten about the effectiveness of phone conversations to drive collaboration, interaction and create actions. I recently had a conversation with my 82 year old great aunt in this regard.  She stated that, “I lived for 72 years without the Internet just fine. I’m not sure my life is truly better with it.” A non-mainstream view perhaps but one that elements of how to be a successful marketer in the multi-channel sense.

Ad Age Interviews IAC’s Barry Diller

Last week, I wrote about the breakup of IAC by Barry Diller. At the time I stated:

He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

Today Adage released an interview with Mr. Diller. In it he adds some sensibility to the Facebook valuation discussions, confirms that the Google sponsored listings deal is for five years and discusses how he’d like to buy AOL. I’d love to pick his brain on the future of Ask in a more detailed interview. It’s clear that he is shaking up a lot of things and it will be interesting to watch this breakup as it progresses for clues as to how the company will be run going forward.

Ad Age: You in the past have had a pretty good grasp on speculation. What do you think of the valuations being thrown around about a site like Facebook?

Mr. Diller: Those are not valuations based on anything fundamental; those are valuations based upon rather enormous hopes and dreams. Not that they won’t necessarily come true, but at this point, that’s what they are in terms of revenue and profits getting to the level that would sustain a very high asset value. … The physics would demand that this becomes more rational at some point, I think maybe sooner rather than later. But again, that’s a prediction based on nothing but hot air, to mix many different metaphors.

Ad Age: I can’t let you go without asking about Ask. Are you happy with how Ask.com is doing?

Mr. Diller: We feel great. We’ve been able to grow queries second only to Google. We’ve increased retention, frequency. All the metrics for Ask are very good. Now we have a new five-year arrangement with Google on the sponsored listings that’s going to be very, very remunerative to us. Ask is going to be able to continue to innovate.

Email From Gmail Blocked As Spam on Many Networks

I’ve had three different people state that Gmail that I’ve sent has found it’s way into spam folders this week.

Since this is happening on multiple platforms now (Yahoo! Mail/Gmail), I have to ask the question, how is the email spam crisis going to resolve itself?

Death of Blog Search Part 3 - Technorati Cuts Data

You’ve seen me talk about this before. Now the new CEO not only hasn’t fixed the Typepad duplicate counting problems, there are dozens of links that aren’t being counted. It is cutting the most useful asset. Historical data. Nobody cares about the past 6 months worth of links - total links and the historical reference of long tail terms matter much, much more.

I’m not going to rant about it, others have quite well…

Techcrunch

Kevin Burton

Zoli’s blog

Deep Jive Interests

WinExtra

IAC Split Up Conference Call Summary

In the call it was stated that Barry Diller will continue as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of IAC. There are a ton of other reports. I won’t repeat all of that, I’ll just point out the conference call highlights. He’s quite animated and interesting to listen to, I wish he did loosely structured calls like this more often.

- The new metric is query growth - I find that to a strong signal about ask.com and other properties

- On Video - there is so much runway ahead

- Mobile - nobody has really started yet

- Internet advertising is effective and trackable

This is an exciting change for IAC, look for good things in 2008.

Web 2.0 was NEVER a Business Strategy

You saw the craze. People built up Web 2.0. It’s frequently a term that people used to avoid business principles and focus entirely on technology without any end goal. I have always disdain it. Many folks surprisingly jumped in with funding for some of these ideas, likely more due to existing dot bomb relationships that business principle.

Yet Internet startups who focus on the following business issues closely will always have a good chance at succeeding:

1. Have a clear value proposition that meets some area of unmet need: Something that says, “We provide a first in industry solution to the problem of blah, blah, blah”. Not “This is kinda like part Digg, Youtube with a bit of Facebook - just way better”. I meet lots of people that say this stuff in the second category, I cringe when I hear it.

2. Realize that Internet companies are marketing companies first and technology companies second: I can’t tell you how many startups I see who hire a programmer, program something and then go hire a salesperson. They go through the whole process without a well crafted, customer focused value proposition.

3 . Have a clear data model that focuses on data integrity and creating a monetizable store of value:
Does your Internet startup attempt to focus on data integrity issues? Will it eventually create a monetizable store of value? I ask this question in the startups that I’ve assisted. It comes from my background in financial services where not having accurate information can cost you millions in an instant, the true Internet time.

4. Have a business model for the company as a stand alone entity. Key partners invested in your outcome? Good.

5. Have people that have worked in high performance startup cultures on your team who understand that real-time iteration of your offerings are critical to your success!

6. Look at and study the history of business and technology innovation. Then use it in your transactions and execution.

These are the five that are most critical, though I’m sure you can think of more critical drivers. Please join the conversation. I can also think of several blogs that focus on buzzwords instead of business principles that are now more than a bit obsolete. It’s time to focus on business success principles at the party. it’s a smaller party, but one that will drive hundreds of new Internet startups for years and years.

Microsoft Hotmail Blocking Yahoo! Mail as Spam?

This is a joke. But all too real. Microsoft meet Yahoo!. Yahoo! meet Microsoft. Now play nice.

Remote host said: 550 SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your — Below this line is a copy of the message. Received: from [68.142.237.90] by <A href=”http://n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com” target=_blank><SPAN class=yshortcuts id=lw_1194272982_1>n10.bullet.re3.yahoo.com</SPAN></A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [69.147.75.182] by <A href=”http://t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com” target=_blank><SPAN class=yshortcuts id=lw_1194272982_2>t6.bullet.re3.yahoo.com</SPAN></A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 Received: from [127.0.0.1] by <A href=”http://omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com” target=_blank><SPAN class=yshortcuts id=lw_1194272982_3>omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com</SPAN></A> with NNFMP; 05 Nov 2007 14:25:19 -0000 X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: <SPAN class=yshortcuts id=lw_1194272982_4 style=”BACKGROUND: none transparent scroll repeat 0% 0%; CURSOR: hand; BORDER-BOTTOM: #0066cc 1px dashed”>3742.69458.bm@omp103.mail.re1.yahoo.com</SPAN> Received: (qmail 894 invoked by uid 60001); 5 Nov 2007 14:25:18 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;

New York Times Article Andy Rubin Google Gadget Guru

I rarely see things like this anymore, but oh my what an amazingly well researched story by John Markoff about Andy Rubin at Google.

The article talks about the changing face of the smart phone market and you really get a feel for the history of Mr. Rubin. While the parts about Mr. Rubin’s doorbells and girlfriend dismissal methods are certainly interesting, I found the article to be lacking in one major area - his history of successfully monetizing any of the projects he has worked on in the past.

It is great reading about him as a person though and hope to see people expand on the overlooked area as time goes by.

Business Week Article - So Many Ads, So Few Clicks

Nice article talking about he decline in click through rates of ads.  It includes this statement:

But as responsiveness declines, ad targeting grows more attractive. Marketers see increases of 30% to 300% in click rates when ads are customized based on criteria such as the location, content of Web pages visited, or information researched on search engines.

Exciting data indeed for a project I’m working on right now. It’s all about relevancy, not quantity, of viewers.

Jason Palmer and Others Leave WebTrends…Professional Interim CEO Appointed

According to this Click Z story…Jason Palmer and three other executives have left Webtrends. Since the company is doing well to the best of my knowledge - one might speculate that it had something to do with things other than revenue and profit.

I only had one encounter with Jason Palmer, it was at my first SES conference in 2005. I was eating lunch with some people at a table and Jason sat down at the table with a client. About ten minutes later, Jason declared to someone that they should mind their own business and not participate in the conversation with his client. I recall thinking that time that guy had a lot of nerve to say that at a table in a public lunch room where he sat down at the table last. That was my one and only interaction with Jason Palmer of Webtrends.

What are other people’s experiences with Webtrends?

Wouldn’t ATT Acquire Yahoo! Instead of Microsoft?

I have my reasons, some of which aren’t appropriate to make public…

Please discuss…

AlwaysOn Top Dealmakers List

As I explore the path of joining a start up management team or potentially returning to the financing side, I will analyze the Alwayon Dealmakers list with great interest when time permits. You should too.

Limited Partners
Limited partners are the big, quiet kahunas at the front of the technology finance food chain. Venture capital firms are just one thing they invest in, but they’re what provides most of the money VCs have under management.
1 TIAA-CREF
2 CalPERS
3 CalSTRS
4 Harvard Management Co. (HMC)
5 Yale Endowment
6 University of Texas (UTIMCO)
7 Stanford Management Co. (SMC)
8 Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO)
9 MIT (MITIMCO)
10 Ford Foundation

Venture Capital – Early-Stage
You have a business plan and a bunch of code. Now you need to raise a million dollars or two to productize your concept and get an office. Besides providing operating startup capital, early-stage VCs will help you form your board and build your team.
1 Sequoia Capital
2 New Enterprise Associates
3 Benchmark Capital
4 Draper Fisher Jurvetson
5 Bessemer Venture Partners
6 Accel Partners
7 Charles River Ventures
8 Matrix Partners
9 Greylock Partners
10 Doll Capital Management
11 Lightspeed Venture Partners
12 Index Ventures
13 Norwest Venture Partners
14 Madrona Venture Group
15 Hummer Winblad

Venture Capital – Late-Stage
You’re hiring a sales force, building a channel, upgrading your executive team, and bringing products to market. At this point, until you’re fully profitable, get acquired, or raise public equity through an IPO, your operating capital comes from late-stage venture investors. Some VC firms do both early- and late-stage VC, as you’ll see in our picks below.
1 Sequoia Capital
2 New Enterprise Associates
3 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
4 Greylock Partners
5 Menlo Ventures
6 Mobius Venture Capital
7 Draper Fisher Jurvetson
8 Benchmark Capital
9 Accel Partners
10 Bessemer Venture Partners
11 Oak Investment Partners
12 Redpoint Ventures
13 U.S. Venture Partners
14 Mayfield Fund
15 DCM - Doll Capital Management

Venture Capital – Corporate Investors
Corporate VCs are a little different. They can invest in early- or late-stage deals, but they usually focus on sub-sectors and investments with potential business benefits for their limited partner – the corporate parent.
1 Intel Capital
2 Comcast Interactive Capital
3 Hearst Corporation/Hearst Interative Media
4 Time Warner Investments
5 IDG Ventures
6 Qualcomm Ventures
7 Motorola Ventures
8 Cisco
9 Adobe Ventures
10 SAP Ventures

Corporate Law Firms
First, let’s call the lawyers – at least, that’s a good plan in the world of technology finance. Some of these firms have done well by providing low or deferred-fee incorporation services to brand-new startups, sometimes for shares, and some not only provide counsel but also introductions during mergers, IPOs, or other financing events.
1 Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC
2 Latham & Watkins
3 Fenwick & West
4 Gunderson Dettmer
5 Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP
6 Goodwin Procter LLP
7 Cooley Godward LLP
8 DLA Piper US LLP
9 Cravath Swaine & Moore
10 Manatt Phelps Philips

Investment Banks
When the time is right to take your company public or get bought, you work with investment banks. If it’s an IPO, they underwrite you – helping prepare your prospectus, setting the share price, promoting you to institutional investors, and once you’re public, providing analyst coverage of your stock to keep public investors up to date on your financial performance. If it’s an M&A, they act as advisers to either party, structuring the deal, and providing acquisition capital. There are two types of ibanks: the bulge brackets, that deal with any and every kind of company, and the boutiques, which are smaller and focus on a few sectors.

Investment Banks — Bulge Bracket
1 Morgan Stanley
2 Goldman Sachs
3 Lehman Brothers
4 Credit Suisse
5 JP Morgan Chase
6 Merrill Lynch
7 Citigroup
8 Deutsche Bank
9 UBS Investment Bank
10 Banc of America Securities

Investment Banks — Boutiques
1 Jefferies & Company Inc
2 Evercore Partners
3 Thomas Weisel Partners
4 Needham & Company, LLC
5 Montgomery & Co. LLC
6 Cowen & Company LLC
7 William Blair & Co., LLC
8 Wachovia Securities
9 Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin
10 Greenhill & Co.

Private Equity
Private equity, or leveraged buyout, firms are the ones that take public companies private, or buy their stock with the goal of turning them around and selling them.
1 Carlyle Group, The
2 Texas Pacific
3 Blackstone Group, The
4 Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company
5 Silver Lake Partners
6 General Atlantic
7 Hellman & Friedman LLC
8 Vista Equity Partners
9 Vector Capital
10 Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe

Institutional Public Investors
Asset management firms of all stripes (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.) fall into this category. Besides investing in technology stocks, they may also become limited partners in private equity firm funds.
1 Fidelity Management & Research
2 T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc.
3 Wellington Management Co. LLP
4 Capital Research & Management Co.
5 AllianceBernstein LP
6 Capital Guardian Trust Co.
7 Vanguard Group, Inc.
8 Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co. LLC
9 Goldman Sachs Asset Management LP (US)
10 Wells Capital Management, Inc.

Corporate Buyers – Global Tech
Big companies want to acquire successful startups that have a strategic fit, breakthrough technologies, masses of customers and profit margins.
1 Cisco Systems, Inc.
2 Oracle Corp.
3 Microsoft
4 Motorola, Inc.
5 LSI Logic Corp.
6 International Business Machines Corp.
7 Siemens AG
8 Google, Inc.
9 Seagate Technology, Inc.
10 EMC Corp.

Corporate Buyers - Media
Big companies want to acquire successful startups that have a strategic fit, breakthrough technologies, masses of customers and profit margins.
1 Publicis Groupe
2 CBS Corporation
3 Lagardere SCA
4 Dominion Enterprises
5 Axel Springer AG
6 Walt Disney Company
7 Hearst Corp.
8 MTV Networks
9 Pearson Education, Inc.
10 EMAP plc

Seth Godin Keynoting Search Engine Strategies Chicago and His New Book Meatball Sundae

In advance his upcoming speech at Search Engine Strategies Chicago, Seth Godin held a intimate conference call in regards to the conference and his upcoming book Meatball Sundae.

At first I was thinking this would be a long speech, it was in actuality a short, crisp presentation followed by a spirited, fun and playful question an answer session. It far exceeded my expectations and Kevin Ryan should be commended for having this type of community event.

Now onto a discussion of his new book, Meatball Sundae. The foundation for a new economy is being built. The past several years have laid the foundation for a new industrial revolution.

Told the detailed story of Josiah Wedgewood and his high standards for pottery.

There are 14 main themes occurring right now in the world - though there are many smaller and industry specific trends playing out. These 14 trends are (I typed them fast in a live blog situation so I might not have them exactly right):

- Direct communication with customers is creating massive change

- Individuals can amplifying their voice and become a critic - these are not hassles to be dealt with. The answer is building an organization that thrives and survives on this…

- Having an authentic story is vital

- We don’t have attention spans anymore (why are you still reading this post? ;) )

- The new marketplace long tail – very few organizations are embracing it

- Create innovation - If you can describe a job it can get done by somebody cheaper

- Google and the shredding of information and bundling

- Noise and infinite channels of communication

- Consumers can talk directly to consumers without the middleman or company

- The changing balance of scarcity and abundance – it’s hard to imagine people being bored

- Big ideas can reach many people quickly

- The shift from how many to who – the idea of being on the today show instead of a blog is higher value is over

- Democratization of the wealthy - the gap between the rich and poor is getting wider but the rich is going up

- Gatekeepers are more important as they distribute information yet less important as you can go around them easier than ever

After the short speech on the trends there was a free for question and answer session…

Is your marketing out of sync?

SG: They should say how change your marketing (what you do) so that it’s in sync with what the market demands.

Why don’t most companies get it yet?

SG: I spent many years selling advertising. People buy TV advertising, it’s fun and it’s not measurable. When the Internet came along and they went running to Yahoo! to buy ads that aren’t measuring. Google and Overture were used by small business people in the ad. The choice is Superbowl ads that don’t work and measurable ads that are harder to make work. It’s naïve to hope that they will shift in a month or a year. They will eventually have to shift. The prices will continue to go up. People still applaud the commercial not the SEM.

(At this point the Gmail javascript froze all of my browsers. I had to reboot and relaunch. OF COURSE THIS WAS THE MOMENT KEVIN RYAN CHOSE TO ASK THE QUESTION I SENT IN – SO I’LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE AUDIO THERE.)

Where do you find thoughtleaders to lead organizations and instead of hiring people with “experience”?

SG: I wrote a post on a similar topic about the loss of relevancy of credentials today. Basically, there are two types of leaders qualified to do this:
- People who have managed change before
- Idea people who don’t necessarily know better

How do make a corporate blog work?

SG: Blogs don’t reach people, people reach blogs… You need to be quick and candid. It’s all about change and being iterative in nature.

Everyone attending SES Chicago will receive a copy of Seth’s book. I look forward to continuing our conversation and maybe even hearing his answers because Gmail’s javascritpt won’t be interfering with his in person appearance!