Comparison is a form of flattery when the brand new and built on a shoestring Oakland Local gets compared to the raised $1MM before launch Texas Tribune.

Editor's Weblog has a piece today on the TT launch. As the author of the piece writes: "Smith and Thornton worked hard on securing donations, with Thornton himself donating $1 million to the Tribune. In early October the founders confirmed they had received a further $750, 000 in grants from the Houston Endowment and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Tribune is now only slighty short of the $4 million target it needs to continue running for two years, with a current total of $3.7 million. "

Susan says: Given that we have done everything so far with seed money from JLab of less than $8,000, I am loving this comparison.  Shoot some $$ our way, and you will see great things and probably less money going to big salaries.

The 2nd Annual Women Who Tech TeleSummit is just one week away. Again, this year there is  have a great line up so don't wait to sign up.
When: May 12, 2009. Panels run from 11AM EDT to 6PM EDT.
Where: Everywhere via phone and web
Fee: $10

Check out these awesome panels and sign up today. When you sign up for one panel, feel free to register for a couple more complementary - that's right it's on us.

•    Social Media ROI
•    Women and Open Source
•    Tools Galore in Online Communications
•    Transparency and Government 2.0
•    Video Activism
•    Launching Your Own Startup
•    Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling
•    Tech Marketing in a Recession
•    Social Networks and Diversity Barriers
•    Innovation and Tech Career Reinvention
•    What Shirky Didn't Tell Us
•    Feminine Mystique

Here are a few of the rockin' women who will be joining us this year:  Lisa Stone of BlogHer, Allison Fine of Personal Democracy Forum, Rashmi Sinha of SlideShare, Charelene Li, co-author of Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, Shireen Mitchell of Digital Sistas, Holly Ross of NTEN, Rebecca Moore of Google Earth Outreach and so much more.

Don't miss this year's telesummitt. It's a wonderful opportunity for our community to share our collective wisdom with inspiring stories and practical tools that help women professionally and personally and of course, change the world.

Click here view the full panel descriptions and register now!

And, like last year we're going to celebrate with a PARTY afterwards. Come out and hang out with Women Who Tech.  You'll find us in Washington, DC, NYC, San Francisco, Atlanta, and London so save the date and come get your tech on with us. More details soon.

Questions, comments? Email  Allyson@womenwhotech.com. You can also reach me on twitter @womenwhotech or our Facebook group.

Susan sez: I am part of this cool event, speaking about Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling with Charlene, Connie Reece and Lynne Johnson.

The blurb: Breaking Through the Digital Ceiling - 12PM EDT
Women in tech and social media experts identify strategies for breaking through the digital ceiling. The panel will discuss topics such as getting heard by upper management, how to effectively advocate for your work and expertise as well as how to break through the barriers of being too young or too old in the tech sector. Panelists: Lynne D. Johnson, Fast Company, Charlene Li, Co-Author of Groundswell and Founder of Altimeter, Susan Mernit, Consultant, Connie Reece, Every Dot Connects and Social Media Club. Moderator: Allyson Kapin, Rad Campaign and Women Who Tech
Register Here!

• A cool project I proposed is a finalist for funding
• Invite to do further training on social media and personal branding right here in OAK
• Invite to do training at late April conference focused on women of color communities
  
• Invite to teach a day in a most excellent bootcamp series
  
• Some great people came on board to work on Public Media Collaborative event in May, and later one in July
  
• Revised strategy brief for client
• Started and got first third done of product requirements document for client
• Walked 3 miles
• Beautiful, sunny day, arugula almost ready to eat
• Post root-canal, can chew, not in pain
  

At WAM and settling in for the 11 am session with Julia Serano, Jack Aponte(angrybrownbutch), Miriam Zoila Perez and Kate Bovitch. This is the one that focuses on the reality and representations of transgendered people in the media as well as the intersection of gender non-coforming identities and feminist spaces.  The audience--about 75 people out an an expected attendance for today of 550--is mostly under 30, which makes me feel like there is alot about more for me to learn about younger womens perceptions of gender and identity (just as these is around sexuality and identity).

Miriam: Thinking about gender variant people and their roles in our culture; introducing herself as Cuban/Hispanic and an activist, gender/queer blogger. #wam09gnc--Miriam Perez-can people who are gender queer or not woman identitifed sign up for the terms womens space etc? Good question

Julia Serano-transwoman and gender variant person who has faced misogny as both a woman and as a transperson on the transfemine spectrum , as she says. Within a feminist context, there is a tendency she says for women to see transwomen-especially M to F-as outside of their concerns or experience.  Julia Serano: all gender variant people experience transphobia-media focuses on trans feminine side(men in drag jokes). She identifies and lives as a woman, but she is also a trans activist and experiences transphobia--discrimination from yet another angle. media erases diverse voices, says Julia Serano,our images are distorted-even feminists may not get transwomen & the issues.  Transpeople are also objectified and sexualized just as women are, and we need to see this--how images are manipulated and how genital issues are focused on, very sexalized, not a focus on identity.

@angrybrownbutch: organizer, activist, blogger, brooklyn, NYC-slp.org (Brooklyn in teh house). If she gets to identity her own gender, gender queer butch is preferred. Shes check woman over man, but she likes male pronouns. People want to put you one place or another, even out of good politics."   At the end of the day, Jack feels discrimination as both a woman and a gender queer person and she feels her community is under the womens umbrella, thats where she feels roots and kinship.  BUT...some people feel her gender presentation means she is disowning that. (this is a great point).

#wam09 #wam09gnc: @angrybrownbutch: Online doesnt convey enough of who you are--@womenwhotech & @drupalchix are difficult choices for her--and she sees herself as a gender marginalized person in the broader community.

RT @randomdeanna @boricuajack: i don't want to squeeze myself into a gender binary just for kinship purposes #wam09 #wam09gnc

Miriam: There are the issues about feminists writing about trans people--do you need to be part of an identity group to talk about it? NO, and yet everyone has a gender identity  Talking about gender is beneficial to everyone; I try to talk about gender in a much broader way and reflect on how mainstream media reinforces gender stereotypes and what is sterotypical and problematic about how gender is framed. (Susan sez: This is another really good point..we make too many assumptions in our wish to divide things neatly.)

Julia: What does it mean to be a good ally to any community you dont personally identify with but wish to support? Listen, educate yourself. With gender issues, the issues that get focused on are those the non trans people find appealing...Always focusing in transition and usrgery feels sensationalist. With feminists or the greater queer community the issues are distinct but perhaps nut really central--ex-talk about mutual issues around feminism, but little on the way transpeople are judged as mentally disordered to get medical support for how you understand themselves...this is huge in the trans community, but largely ignored in the broader progressive community.  Ask people what issues are most important to them, not what you find compelling.

@angrybrownbutch: there is no one trans answer--but dialogue and listening matter. So does sharing your access-guest blogs. Share your platform to create and support communications.
If we have power, we have priviledge.

Kate: How about that language thing? Miriam: I came out as queer when I was 20, 4 years ago, and she didnt know lesbians in her town; she wasnt Ellen, so she wasnt a lesbian (laugh). Her coming out process was aided in college where she met other gender non conforming women--that had to proceed sexual issues--the movement of LBQTI and feminism is bringing the gender conversation not only in queer spaces but in a broader space...feminism drives her as a core (I love this, says Susan).

Miriam: the 70s feminists felt they were coming together as women, we are evolving now around identity/gender fluidity etc; she sees older women she meets as afraid of losing the word women as part of their feminist identity."We can no longer assume what everyone means when we say the word woman"

 (Susan sez: I can tell I live in rhe Bay area because I accept everyone as a woman who tells me she is one).

Julia: Feminism for me is a movement to end sexism, not a movement focused only on women. transphobia is sexism. needs to be a shift from "lets have a dialogue & educate" to recgnzing ppl shld know better now

Audience question: How do we engage with communities of color on these issues?
@angrybrownbutch: Are communities of color worse? Well, lecturing wont work. Historically, gender was more diverse in Hispanic communities...but for queer and trans orgs, dont show all white people, have people who are identifiable with the community....This can be someone you love or who lives next door.

Julia: Trans should not be depicted as a white thing; violence against gender non conforming youth is disproportionately against people of color. But this doesnt get enough attention, she says.

Miriam: As a Latina, some people think queerness is a white thing, and gender nonconforming is a white thing, but thats tied to colonialism,which stamped out gender diversity. Language is hard because queer identity for her has been assimilated in a white context. Gender queer feels like a white word, how to translate that into her community is a question.

Self-identified hetrosexual ally to gay, trans and queer people in audience is asking if her perception transfolk are recipients of more intrusive questions--is this true and how to deal with it?  Julia says : Dont need to focus on body issues, on the same old same old who do you sleep with, when did you transition, when did you know--arent people ready to move beyond these same questions the media always asks?

never had anybody call me he who hasn't known that I was trans -Julia Serano

a question on generational issues: second and third wave feminists seen as opposed, but Miriam wants to build on what has come before (Susan sez: this is a vague answer, maybe we need alot more time on this one, generational lines...).

Jack: Transphobia is not age related.

Great point from Julia Serano: Dont assume about gender and sexuality based on impressions you have, its marginalizing.

After 2 years running product at Yahoo! Personals, it's fun to see the ongoing interest in the category; in addition to Ignighter, my TechStars companions, I've probably talked with at least four other companies in the past year who are building online dating applications.

PCWorld has a piece today about the great revenue an online dating site can generate, the need to safety and security, how search works, converting users to paying subscribers, and whether they work or not (ie do you find a date and/or a partner).  Robert Mitchell's done one of the more articulate and through overview pieces I've seenand a great series overall,, but some additional points worth noting:
a) There are a couple of different ways to manage the algorithms: test based and attribute based.

• Services like eHarmony and OkCupid are test based; they ask a user to answer a series of question and  give high weights to the scoring to assign and create a pool of prospective dates for someone.
• Other sites, like Match and Yahoo! are attribute based; users fill our a detailed profile and some--not all-of the responses are weighted and then matched to deliver the results.
• Test based sites are believed to deliver higher accuracy because they can aggregate a set of behavioral, values-driven and psychological results and use them to factor the match, users, however, prefer to higher picture value and ability to browse that non-test driven services offer.
• Some services, especially some of the free and niche ones, like Plenty of Fish, don't invest much in search at all; once a fairly brief set of attributes are defined(like age, where you live, etc.), the user is presented with a set of profiles and photos to page through; some of the high time spent on site metrics from these free services have to do with the need to page through and review lots of people to find ones you like.
• Both kind of services compute results through weighing different elements: data you have contributed, behavioral data, results acted on by people like you (ie someone similar to you liked a specific profile), part of the dark art of the category is adjusting how much weight to assign to different elements to produce the best results.
• Unfortunately, while search, weighing algorithms, and computing results take significant investment from dating companies, they're features users tend to take for granted; since a user only sees what he or she sees, there's not much of an ability to objectively define better search.
• (Another interesting point: typically, men want a large selection with many photos, so they can gather lots of women of a specific type, say a 35 year old, athletic blond, and message multiple people who fit their criteria and have a look they like; women, on the other hand, wish the service could produce one or two men specific and perfect for them and just deliver these super matches up.)

The real bread and butter of the online dating experience though, isn't the match, it's the communication . Not only is it essential to NOT get emails from Russian brides, Nigerian spammers, sex offenders, and criminals, a service only works if people communicate with one another. Specifically, it only works if people communicate with you.
Sending missives out into cyberspace that no one responds to, or only getting contacts from people that don't interest you is a quick recipe for dropping that particular service (and users generally have 2-4 they try out at any given time.)

So, the real mission of a dating site, once you've delivered up real people in a secure setting who are an appropriate match, is to trigger communication between them.

This is why games, online chat, anonymous calling, winks, emoticons,virtual gifts, email and so on are always prominently featured-they're efforts to foster a light, yet meaningful communication. It's getting communication from a potential date that is going to push someone who is not yet a subscriber into signing up.

Of course, the true business of online dating is to get people to sign up and pay for the service. while advertising may bring in some revenue; for many services either monthly fees or service-based payments (like LavaLife's pay to communicate) are what makes it work.
For those services, the pricing, offers and conversion pipelines are everything.

As Rob Mitchell points out, this is a category with a huge upside--not only does it attempt to facilitate a core human need--to connect--it has a privacy, search, communications and filtering model that enables there to be a charge to make it happen,

Watching the book industry digest social media, ebooks, the kindle, mobile strategies, and endless discussions for and against DRM has been interesting today, but it takes on some strange resonance given that Harper Collins just closed a division and laid off a slew of people, even though they were trumpeting this same division as the best thing ever a few months ago.

It's also interesting to be back in NYC, where the proportions of navy blue blazers and dark suits is way higher than in California, even if the 80/20 ratio of male attendees to women is nothing new.

But the thing that is really getting me is what I am going to tell these book people about the future of news when I do my panel tomorrow. I mean, news organizations are collapsing like the buildings in Jurassic Park when the dinosaurs break loose and rampage. Journalists are wondering how to retrain themselves and Media Bistro's freelance marketplace is LOADED with the laid off.

But all that is today, right now--what can I tell them about the future?

• We're not going to have widespread distribution of what we today call newspapers, print entities with web sites attached.
• The need for well-research, accurate stories will remain, but it is as likely a team of people will write and contribute, Wikipedia-style, as one professional reporter will cover the story (in the case of hyper local, the wikipedia model is MUCH more likely.)
• The line between fact and opinion will continue to blur, as will the line between citizen and journalist.
• Storytelling will endure--in podcasting, videblogging, twitter and combos of the three
• New business models will arise at the edges; it is early to see what could pull into the mainstream
• Young people still dream of being journalists, still have passion to write and publish news stories; propoerly positioned, their work can have HUGE value to local communities.
• We will read news more and more on digital devices--phones, iPods, small screens.
• The business models need to be totally reinvented, but no one has it right yet.

I love this idea of a series of posts called things I learned the hard way. I have a long list, some of which I had to learn twice--and once-three times, to not repeat the same mistakes. Derek's post from today, Don't work for assholes, has particular resonance, since this can be a tough one to learn--till your decision to work for the the asshole bites you in the butt.

A short quote: "Nine times out of ten, the first impression someone gives you is exactly who they are. We choose not to see it because we need the money, or we want the situation to be different. But if someone rubs you the wrong way at the first meeting, chances are, it's only going to get worse."

and: "Nowadays, the only asshole I work for is me."

Back in 2004, before blogging was as mainstream as it is today, and there were perhaps 2,000 bloggerati putting up links and opining views (and many more people doing their personal community thing on xanga and live journal), the whole concept of business blogging blew up.

Suddenly, there were business blogging conferences, and 200 + bloggers who hung out shingles to tell the world--especially companies with money--about blogging and why it mattered to their business (and why they had to hire these folks to tell them this stuff.)

Fast forward 5 years and we have many more people using social media tools on the web, and many more twitterati, and now we have 10,000 people, instead of 2,000, who would classify as hard core social media users, and we have 2,000 people, not 200, telling the world--the business community in particular--to hire them so they can teach everyone--especially companies with money--how to use twitter and all the other tools to support closeness to the customer, viral marketing and the new new transparency.

One take here--which has some truth to it--is that the noise to signal ratio has gone waay up, and that 50% of the people putting out their shingle don't necessarily know what they are talking about.

But another take--which I think also has some truth to it--is that there are 2,000 people across the country who really are expert in using social media, and they all have something to teach. After all, if the premise of Web 2.0 is that users can be the center of the toolset, why would it be surprising that growing numbers of users would actually become expert?

Or that there'd be an incremental acceleration of skilled users (and free agent consultants) since the tools were getting both more intuitive and better marketed (now that we have five or seven leading tech news blogs).

Of course, there is a moral to this story(sparked both by reading this post and by a chat at the Oakland meet-up yesterday): If you ARE a social media expert type, and you are looking for clients, DON'T go hang at the social media conferences--most of the customers will be elsewhere. Go somewhere else and get away from those 2,000 peers; your client pipeline will be so much better.

Spent some time today at the San Francisco meeting of the Silicon Valley Junto. an occasional group convened by Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh to discuss interesting topics and reflective bigger questions off the record.

Not only did I have a great time,but I found myself thinking "How can I experience this more often?"  Our topic was failure and what you learn from it, and as someone who has failed--and survived--multiple times--I valued both the chance to listen and learn from others, and tell my own stories.

Since the junto is off the record, I'm not going to go into our talk or who was there, but I will share some thoughts on why I thought this gathering worked so well.

•  It's a gathering of interesting, accomplished people--ie, the gathering point is not friendship, but intellect (though I assume you have to know Chris or Ben to get an invite, as well as appear to fit the criteria.
• There's a marvelous randomness to it all.  Unlike many hard-driving types, I am a huge believer in the power of randomness and sychronicity--For example, I saw a couple of people today at the lunch that I had no ideaI would meet--but I think I will see them sooner than later, now.
• It's got Ben Casnocha. I met Ben this summer when he came to TechStars, and he's wonderful--smart and reflective and focused. This Junto is very much in his spirit--he's a large scale thinker, and very interested in what others can teach and share--with the emotional intelligence to assemble a group like this.
• The format--a small group in a quiet place, off the record--accelerated a feeling of community with the other participants, worth noting as we met up so quickly and then left.

Thanks for letting me take part, Ben. It was a blast.

Oscar Grant Shooting Shows Us: The media voices in Oakland are missing in action

Oakland is one of the most diverse and interesting cities in the country, but its media outlets--newspaper and blogs alike--are woefully lacking.  I spent part of 2008 thinking about starting a community news site for Oakland because there was so little out there, and then moved on to other things.  Now, watching how poorly the local news/citizen journalism/media community is covering the Oscar Grant shooting, I see how lacking local voices are when it comes to the news (and believe me, I have been looking, hard).

Yo, here's the dealio on what the local media is and is not covering:

Oakland Tribune, Inside Bay area, the local Oakland newspaper owned by the Media News Group, the 4th largest US newspaper conglomerate,  filed 12 stories about Grant's shooting, and picked up coverage from other sources as well. Lacking however, are the on the street and citizen media stories that would round out what looks like "crime beat" reporting.


The East Bay Express, the local alt paper,  has filed at least six stories on the Oscar Grant shooting and the subsequent protests as the story has evolved. Coverage is pretty pro-forma, but this paper offers the  most consistent local voice.


Farmer Joe's & Friends, the blog for the local Fruitvale grocery where Grant worked as a butcher's assistant has a nice post remembering him. "Oscar, I will miss your smiling face behind that meat counter at Joe's. No words can express my sense of loss and outrage at what has happened."


The Oakbook, the Oakland web site whose founder Alex Gronke  recently  got funding as an individual  from participants in Spot.Us, a Knight News Challenge community journalism project run by David Cohn, has one (!) story on the topic, focusing on the "vandals" who destroyed property on 17th street when protests got out of hand on January 7th. Given this is supposed to be the biggest (and best?) local Oaktown web site, the lack of more coverage is surprising.


Future Oakland says it covers decisions and controversies that shape the future. Clearly, it doesn't think the Oscar Grant story is relevant; their one post acts annoyed at the outcry and implies that rioting negates murder: "Just as vandalizing Creative African Braids and the charming shops along 17th Street is not justice, holding Oakland responsible for the actions of a regional body that happens to be headquartered in a Lake Merritt high-rise is unfair." Big whoop.


A better Oakland: This site about Oakland has no original posts about the Oscar Grant incident, but it does have links to San Francisco coverage. It invites readers to comment on events and provides links to Bay area coverage, including Oakland resident Thomas Hawk's on-scene photos, and to a forum.


And then there are the blogs that are supposedly about Oakland, but exist in parallel universes where Oscar Grant's death is never mentioned, not at all:

No coverage at all:

• O scene, the Oakland blog for people living out loud
• The DTO, downtown Oakland
• East Bay Outtakes, Notes from Berkeley, Oakland and in-between
• Fruitvale, Oakland, CA, Life in Oakland's Fruitvale district/

Note: I made some edits to this post as of Jan. 15th, and would like to note that some of the blogs I highlighted as lacking coverage posted coverage after this post went live. And, in fact, there was additional, very heartfelt coverage, later in the week.  It's also worth noting that the video and photography coverage on flickr and youtube was fulsome and fantastic, with lots of commentary on some photos.

Also, its worth noting that loyal fans of the current Oaktown media scene gave coverage by the blogs they favor an A, thought it was terrific. Since it is important to listen to different perspectives and treat them with respect, it is important to me to note that.

Finally, I removed the grades from individual publishing sources; they were quite wounding to people, and since so many blogs are labors of love and heroic effort, they struck the wrong note.  My intent was not to pass judgement on any specific blog, and I regret giving that impression to anyone, but to share my view that coverage of Oakland events by Oakland community members and Oakland news outlets could be richer, better, stronger and more diverse than it is today. While I have learned from the discussion and posts, I hope the outpouring of documentation, writing and opinion around Oscar Grant's shooting keeps more people online, engaged and communicating where we can read them.

So, the year our economy tanked is ending today and a new year, complete with a smarter president and a sobered American populace, is about to start. Not soon enough, folks.
 I'm all about looking ahead, but what would I call out as memorable happenings for 2008 from my little vantage point?

1. BlogHer went large
Not only did feel good and have good values women's network site BlogHer raise enough $$ in a B round to suggest a $38MM valuation might be possible, it got an investment(aka strategic partnership) from Web 1.0 women's network NCBi/iVillage, which must have made everyone on the team in general and former women.com exec editor and BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone in particular feel like a baton had been passed. Even more, BlogHer birthed a book, became THE destination for Mommybloggers, and hired slews of people, proving the scrappy underdog was now the Man (okay, I mean, the Wo-man).

2. Sex sites flopped, but new ones showed up.
Losses: Famous divorced sex blogger Jefferson of One Life, Take Two, basically took his blog offline after some heavy-duty personal issues blew up .
 
Brilliant writer/sexworker/feminist troublemaker Melissa Grant Gira went from the joy of a highly visible job sexing the Silicon Valley economy at Valleywag to freelancer and start-up queen (boffery.com)
.
Gains: Amelia McDonell-Parry and Catherine Strawn and a gang of others started the oh so appealing The Frisky, a sex & relationships site that not only features Susannah Breslin of The Reverse Cowgirl Fame, but actually has hawt and funny articles (often, both at once.)

Sarah Dopp came out from behind another name and owned up to building genderfork, a celebration of androgyny and rolling your own, and Sinclair Sexsmith, a hot boi blogger, returned the favor with Queer Eye Candy, for those of every sexual persuasion who like to look.

3. Tech incubators, bar camps, and start-up weekends became cool. As did giving the lucky start-ups large sums of cash to fund nice offices and new iPhones (but not Aeron chairs)
. Maybe it was the vantage point of a summer in Boulder at incubator ground zero (TechStars), and the fact that 60% of the folks laid off from Yahoo! with me started their own companies (or went to start-ups), but there were moments when getting funding seemed like the 00s answer to the depression's stay awake and dance contests, or more complicated versions of the 50s Queen for a Day (most for guys, and with spreadsheets, this time.)

4. Crowd-sourcing became the new quality, aka if it's high up on DIGG, it's gotta be good.
Even as Mike Arrington's TechCrunch gripped the Web 2.0 news space even more tightly than in 2007 (and with so many more sites, events, and writers), squirming digerati developed new interest in the wisdom of crowds, with Seesmic founder and LeWeb organizer Loic LeMeur proclaiming that the biggest need for twitter was to match a poster's identity and their authority so we could appraise their idea BEFORE we read it (he may live in Palo Alto, but that sounds so French!)

5. Giving is good, and social media helps you self-organize for change.
Pistachio and Beth Kanter used twitter, and facebook, to raise funds for good causes.  The Knight Foundation and The McArthur Foundation(Note: I have connections to Knight) employed transparent tools to help give $$ away. Of course, the ultimate was the Obama campaign, whose gift that keeps on giving was to never stop  selling, leading to amazing house parties AFTER the election.

6. Yahoo tanked--and we all watched--and commented, in real time.
Were you wondering if I'd get to this one? Who could omit mentioning the bipolar relationship between Yahoo, Microsoft and all the press people everyone kept leaking to as layoffs led to offers led to rejected led to layoffs, all accompanied by the steady downward creep of the stock price. Even better, Kara Swisher's commentary proved that bull(shit)-baiting was still a worthy sport.

7. The new tech kids kicked the old kids-and the old kids kicked back
This was the year some fresh new voices came into the Web 2.0 bell jar, in some cases fitting right in, in others, blowing it open.  Steve Hodson, Sarah Perez and Corvida all had smart things to say and parlayed their smarts into paying blogging gigs with bigger sites; Louis Gray emerged from the suburbs with a passion and verve that made others compare his blog to Robert Scoble's.  Mike Arrington picked up Steve Gillmor and made him an honest man (and IT blogger); Anne Zelenka moved on to teach math (sigh). New (to me) voices that made me keep reading included Oril Yakuel, Dave "digidave" Cohn, and my friend Patricia Handschiegel.

8. Macs Attacked.
Between February and September 2008, I bought 2 Apple computers and 3 iPods.  In 2007, I bought one meensy little shuffle. Multiply me by 44 million people and you can understand how Apple blew up into one of the consumer brand companies that no one could get enough of.

9. Lifestreaming became real.
First of all, the tools to put it all out there matured. Suddenly it became possible to put yourself out there on Facebook, friendfeed, seesmic, viddler, vimeo, 12 seconds, and www.ustream.tv and build a picture of your life that could turn you into a mega brand.  For some folks, this worked out really well (viz Chris Brogan, 26,639 twitter followers); for others, it led to (much) ridicule (viz Julia Allison, nonsociety).

10. A million flowers bloomed-social media, publishing, SaS tools transformed small businesses.
Blogging, lifestreaming, ecommerce and community are a trifecta plus one that is powering all sorts of successful, moderately successful and ultimately unsuccessful enterprises. From Mommybloggers selling ads, to crafters blogging about their etsy shops to would-be prophets of cool hawking the latest organic local jam to urban homesteaders selling worm-bin designs and red worms by the pound to their neighbors, there has been a rise in individual entrepreneurship the web continues to power.

What's ahead in 2009?  Lots more small businesses and entrepreneurs, increased emphasis on community and surprising new investments.

"2008 has already seen more than 15,000 jobs lost at U.S. newspapers. I believe 2009 will be a defining point in time for U.S. newspapers and not in a good way. Many promising young journalists and students are leaving journalism for other fields.

So, I have to ask: When this financial crisis is over, who will be left to rebuild journalism? Will there be enough talented journalists left to rebuild? Will the journalists left have the Web skills that journalism sorely needs?"

--Pat Thornton, the journalism iconoclast, writing on his blog.

Susan sez: This is a question I am starting to think about alot. At this point, the people left trying to practice online journalism are as passionate--and as practical?--as poets. What will their world turn into? What will the revenue model and business look like? (More on this to come.)

As we all know, alumni networks from past companies are great ways to get jobs, Ross Mayfield's Socialtext is going to be right there helping those folks make it happen.

Ross writes: "Today, Socialtext is meeting this latent need with a free Corporate Social Network offer for the 2009 Recession. Any former employee and HR director of a company that reduced its workforce by 5% or more in the last year can create a private Corporate Social Network for free by applying here. Please note that this offer does not include free user support. We ask for an HR contact to be involved to encourage a constructive tone, enable the HR department to share informational resources and so the company can leverage the network over time for connections, knowledge and expertise. However, as was our experience with the PeopleSoft Alumni Network, the energy and participation will likely be driven by the grass-roots."

Susan sez: This is clever, and cool. We're going to need a directory for all these support tools!

Wowowow, the upscale, post-70s web site for todays' women, over 50 division, raised a reported $1.MM from Bob Pittman and the other shrewd (and wealthy) graybeards at Pittman's The Pilot Group (n top of a previous from the oh so affluent founders.). If you recall, Pilot is the funder that bought (and recently sold The Daily Candy), proving early on that someone was willing to fund media plays on the next a few years ago.

This is thrilling news to me because it proves VCs are closely watching the success(and explosive trajectory) of BlogHer and looking for other properties that can deliver those highly prized female decision makers. Wowowow is so upscale I don't know that it will speak to the folks in the heartland, but with the big, shiny names and the liberal tone, it's certainly got sparkle.
Peter Kafka  quotes Wowowo was saying they had 600,000 unique visitors in November, 10 months after it launched. Even if they're buying SEM traffic to get those numbers. they're a good, strong start.

People I know are organizing two upcoming conferences focused on women in tech. Fem 2.0 is on February 2nd, at George Washington University. They say their mission is  "to bring together "the leadership of major women's advocacy organizations and online women's communities to further the connection between today's issues and women's voices."

AAUW, BlogHer, feminist majority, moms rising, feminist.com, care2, The National Conference of Negro Women, the National Council of Women's Organizations, NOW, VivirLatino, The Women's Media Center and WIMN are among the conveners for Fem2.0; one of the organizers s an old friend who has worked with ifocos for many years. It's not clear what the agenda will be, some some GREAT people are involved.

There's also an East Coast She's Geeky that Kaliya, who worked on the first She's Geeky in October 07 with Mary Hodder, Laurie Rae, and myself, is running in New York. She says there will be a West Coast She's Geeky in late January and stay tuned.

Patricia Handschiegel wrote a great post today about the emotional states entrepreneurs cycle through. Reading it, I saw myself working on People's Software, and feel some of the same feelings working on the new thing we're readying for 2009.

Patricia's identifies the following problem feelings as cycles entrepreneurs go through:

1. Feeling overwhelmed--that's obvious, right?
2. Shockeds & surprised--who knew X ?
3. The big decision--once you make it, that's it, whatever it is.
4. Mourning: Sad when startup takes over most of your life.
5. Tired: Anyone not get this one?
6. Hatching--launch or sale, it's the rocket ship ride.

Patricia's list is much more detailed, and both useful AND funny--check it out here.
(And did I mention how kick ass Patricia is? A real inspiration.)

This just in from the Women's Media Center in NYC--the WMC's 2009 Progressive Women's Voices program is accepting applications with a December 15th deadline.

Here's what the call to action says:

The Progressive Women's Voices program has become a cornerstone of The Women's Media Center. We are "changing the conversation" by making sure that there are plenty of qualified, authoritative, progressive women experts available to editors, reporters, producers, and bookers.

In our first year of the program, we intensively media trained 33 women who have gone on to earn over 1000 media hits year to date. Our inaugural class was a stellar group, with experts in foreign policy, reproductive rights, environmental issues, racial justice, voting rights, the history of feminism, immigrant communities, outsider cultures, national security, and many more areas of expertise.

With our training and help, in 2008, our PWV women wrote Op Eds in the Washington Post and The New York Times, features for Elle and New York magazine, were quoted in USA Today, Forbes, Variety, Mother Jones, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, Salon, The New Republic, the Los Angeles Times, on the Associated Press and Reuters wires, appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, MSNBC, CBS Nightly News, Fox News, ABC News, CNBC, The Tyra Banks Show, PBS's "To The Contrary," Bill Moyers, on numerous NPR shows, and in hundreds of other significant media outlets.

We are now accepting applications for our 2009 Progressive Women's Voices classes. We have three classes scheduled for the year. The first class will be training in New York Feb 6-7, March 6-7, and April 3-4, with all travel expenses paid for by the WMC. Applications for the first class will be open from now until December 15th.

If you know of a woman whose voice should be heard in the media, please forward this email to her and encourage her to apply. If the first class does not work for her, we have two more planned later in the year, so please encourage her to check our website for complete program details

Susan sez: Who needs this that you know? Pass it on..

As the whole planet knows, Barak Obama is our new President; now we have to make happen everything that needs to be improved, re-thought, fixed and addressed. Big changes.

Today is also my moving day, after 5+ months of being a nomad in Boulder, the North and East Bay. The truck will come in a few hours and unload all the pieces of my life. (Yippee!!
 No longer a resident of Silicon Valley, now of the East Bay, Oaktown, to be precise.

This is my first step into urban life since leaving Brooklyn 10 years ago. We have a big yard, and a small house, but there are locks on everything; very different than the never locking your door vibe of Boulder this summer, and the privileged suburbia of Palo Alto.

The Internet access isn't in yet, I'll be running back and forth between the new place and the sublet, but by the weekend, I should be there (and wired), I hope.

There are other changes I want to share as well. This blog will continue, but with my growing interest in supportig other women leaders, would-be leaders and entrepreneurs, I am going to start writing more about the tech industry--including this week's Web 2.0 conference--from a womsn entprepreneur's perspective--and I am going to focus a certain amount of posting on women in business. Postings on social media etc will continue as well. 

Also, I am going to write more about my neighborhood, about social justice and sustainability as practiced in Oakland and my world. I am learning about this, so I will share as I go.

Finally, we've decided to take People's Software in another direction that what we created at TechStars this summer.  As promising as we know WhozAround? is, we have another idea we not only think is more unique, but well-suited to our strengths--ie, if we have to work so hard to start something, this more recent idea is the one. So, we're freezing WhozAround? and working on the new thing, which we want to release in January 09.

More to come on al this, and congratulations to us all for a chance to embrace hope, and positive social change.

"This was a very difficult decision to make. We have never sold a newspaper, from my father's time to my time."

--Donald Newhouse, president of Advance Publications and son of S.I.Newhouse, who founded the media empire, commenting on the Newhouse family decision to sell their two largest New Jersey newspapers unless the unions accept significant cuts and cost-reductions. (The Newark Star Ledger is expected to lose between $30 and $40 MM this year, according to todays WSJ article.)

(Via Peter Levitan)

Reading this this am just made me get that big smile--Christine is so smart, and so shrewed--and First Round is a great team--this is wonderful news--and smart hiring on Josh's part, IMHO:

" Big personal announcement today! I'm officially joining First Round Capital. (Thanks very much to Josh for his warm welcome.) I'll be working closely with Rob Hayes in the San Francisco office."

Way to go, folks. Want to show you all what we're working on at Peoples Software.

"Here's my own definition: It's the things we wonder about as we walk (or drive) the streets of our community.  Today, for instance, I was thinking --

•  What's with that used-book store?  The sign in its window seems to say its business is failing.

•  What's the asking price for that house?  What does it look like inside?  Why are they selling, anyway? 

•  Have any of my friends been to that new restaurant?  Could I take the kids?

You were thinking completely different things, I'm sure.  And that's the point: Hyperlocal should be relevant to you.  It should be about your day-to-day concerns in your local community.  Those definitions are personal, so hyperlocal must be personal, too. "

--Loladex founder Lawrence Hooper, discussing what problems hyper-local products should solve for communities.

So Dave Sifry announced the private beta of his new personalized and printed travel guide service, offbeat guides, last night. Back when I was still casting about for the next good thing, I spent some time with old friend Dave and heard about the ideas and the prototype.  I was excited then, and still am, and here's why:

• Picking through the comments by friends on TripAdvisor and on blogs to compile what people really think about places, lodgings and attractions for a destination is time-consuming, unwieldly and un-efficient.
• Even if you do this work, finding a place to save/store it can be a pain. And there's no good way to do the wisdom of crowds and find others' compliations (or annotations).
• When you're on the street in Rome, unless you have a smarter phone than many people do (I don't think most people today have a BlackBerry, iphone, smart phone, etc.--though they will--)paper really matters. And guidebooks just don't always have what you want. Or have too much. And tear out pages is ugly.

So, there's something great about being about to print a custom travel guide, focused on what you want to know, for a place you are headed. Having both a digital copy and a printed copy is cool, useful, disruptive--it diminishes the importance of the airline aggregator and the publishing business as middlemen, as well.

And finally, I think it's neat that someone who built something very distinctive in search back in 2003 is tackling a totally different set of problems here in 2008--and this time, it seems like Dave's been able to build some initial business models right in.

More in the breaking TechCrunch story, here.

I'll be at the Editor & Publisher conference in Las Vegas for the next couple of days, in support of the Knight Foundation announcement of the 2008 Knight News Challenge winners.

If you're not aware of this Knight program, it's a multi-year grant program that supports innovative ideas that use digital media and technology (mobile, platforms, etc.) to transform local and regional community news and support discourse in the commons. Knight has funded both very location specific projects and much more platform-driven efforts and these efforts have jump-started platform and tool development around local, community, news and even some social justice and accessibility issues,because of how well-distributed the funding has been.

Last year's News Challenge (2007) winners iwent to 25 individuals, and to private and public entitiesthat ranged from individual developers to  MIT to MTV. This year's list of winner's is equally cool, and the announcement of the winners is tomorrow.

As I was working away yesterday, half ignoring the banter on twitter, someone breathlessly reported "Scoble is going to a meet with Arrington!" 

Not Robert is going to see Mike, not Mike and Scoble are getting together, but Scoble and Arrington were having a meet, sometime more in the tenor of the NJ Soprano crime family getting together with the guys from NY. 

Reading this breathless prose, not only did it strike me that this fella probably had only the most passing acquaintance with Robert and Mike, but that thrill of seeing these two larger than life personalities-- 21,955 people follow Scoble on Twitter, 22,935 follow Calcanis, and 15,646  follow Mike--was both hugely entertaining and made him feel in the know.

It was a short path from that observation to this one--that the Valley's most pugnacious, prolific and promoted entrepreneurs were all---to a man--in the business of driving page views.

 I mean, take a step back and think about it--what do Mike Arrington and Robert Scoble create? Uh, media. And Calcanis and Winer?

 Aren't those supremely well-handled personal brands? Ones that drive reputation AND traffic?

You see, on the Internet today, it's possible to play vicarious thrill reality TV to the max. 

You might be a little code mouse who'd choke if he had to say hi to Scoble (and be speechless with Mike), but the transparency of our social media tools allow you to get a fairly complete vicarious thrill.

Even if you're not at the TechCrunch IronMan afterparty, or the "meet" between Scoble and Mike, you can follow these well-documented activities, feel in the know, and imagine you're part of the in-crowd.
 
Only this is, that perspective is bullshit, as authentic as the hi-jinks of the WWE stars of the mid 90s--Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels and so on--only now the story is refitted for a more adult crowd (those same kids, all grown up).

On a certain level, in their Internet personas, Mike and Dave and Jason and a bunch of the fellas are expert at playing to the crowd, even more than any of the female wanna-bes in  their wake (yes, we have those, too.)

Yep, there's a section of Silicon Valley that's just one step to the left of reality TV, with personas as bright and shiny and one sided as those of any wrestlers of yore. That's where the media folk live, the bright shiny page-view drivers, along with the party people, the marketers and the babes (male and femail) inside the bubble.

But then, there's the rest of the Valley--less public, less pretty--where real stuff is getting made, people are too busy to be out every night, and innovation solves problems.

Are these two worlds incompatible? No.  But only one of them is a virtual reality show.
And while it's super-entertaining, if you're watching it, enjoy-- but just don't think that is all there is.

If Ayelet Noff were to be played by a Hollywood star in the movie version of the Israeli web scene, the actress would have to be either Scarlett Johansson or Uma Thurman.  Ayelet's blend of authentic charm, warmth, web savviness and marketing smarts is so high-wattage only an Oscar winner could do her justice.

A former New Yorker, Ayelet is one of those bi-cultural Israelis who grew up in the US and then moved back.  Fluent in English and seemingly effortlessly bi-cultural, Ayelet offers a much need broad perspective to the high-tech start-ups that seek her counsel--she offers advice on product development, marketing, partnerships and brand positioning; my sense is she often provides a valuable and more savvy focus to Israeli teams wanting to reach a global market.  In addition, Ayelet is a born connector; she truly knows everybody and relishes introducing people to one another; the dinners, meet-ups, coffees and conversations she helped created for the Travelling Geeks crowd on this last Israel trip were wonderful.
During The Marker's COM. Vention; Israel's equivalent of Web 2.0 Expo, I sat down with Ayelet and asked lots of questions. Here, some of the answers:

When did you start your blog, Blonde 2.0?  What made you dive in with it?
"My background is in marketing. I worked for TBWA Chiat/Day in New York for a while, then came home to Israel and worked at ICQ and with some start-ups. 18 months ago I started Blonde 2.0--there was a need for a marketing business that could explain Web  2.0 tools and help them use and integrate them in the Israeli market; the name was just a way to brand myself.

Are there many women who do what you do?
No, not really.  For one thing, in Israel, many people marry and have babies by the time they are 25 or 26, so not everyone wants to be as entrepreneurial as me. Also, not everyone has the perspective I have; I'm Israeli, but I've lived around the world and am able to see different cultural and international points of view, particularly the American market; that and my fluency in English set me somewhat apart.

How do you get business?
Well, I'm pretty visible, between my work and my blog/brand. Clients often come to me, either through word of mouth, or via my social networks.  Often, they're at an early stage where they need a web site and lots of positioning, or they're farther along and they need to really focus on the marketing.

What are the rules you try to run your business by?

• Always remember people who have helped you; be helpful in return. Build a good support network
• Do a good job -there is no replacement for that!
• Work with really smart people; use the best
• Don't use your personal social network to promote stuff; you'll burn people out.
• Never speak badly of anyone.
• Work with companies whose products you'd use yourself and that you believe it.
• Write about clients  in your blog, but discreetly--don't over promote

For me, meeting Ayelet was great because she's someone, perhaps like Deb Schultz in the Bay area, who can bridge Israeli tech culture and the US Web 2.0 scene. Smart and motivated, Ayelet is both a pivotal part of the Israeli scene and an interesting contributor.

Excerpt from blonde 2.0:
"...bloggers today have a dramatic effect on the outcome of startups. Bloggers are the opinion leaders of today. I would be more inclined to try a service or product if a specific blogger that I admire recommended it as opposed to a journalist. But we're not only talking quality. We're also talking quantity. 120,000 blogs are opened each day and startups can receive a great deal more coverage through blogs than through traditional media. In addition, there are niche bloggers that write about specific topics and turning to those bloggers will of course get you much more targeted exposure for your service/product."

Links:
Blonde 2.0 blog
FaceBook
twitter

Vin Crosbie describes what is Web 1, 2 and 3.0:

"...The first is when people in a community wonder what's happening when they hear their town's firehouse alarm ring. The Web 1 solution is to publish a professionally reported story, with audio, video, and text, once the alarm is over. The Web 2 solution is to provide a forum for citizens in the town to speculate immediately about what's happening. The Web 3 solution is to do all of those things, plus wire the town's 911 response reporting systems to local media companies' or the municipality's Web sites so people can immediately and accurately know what's occurring."

Susan sez: Web 3.0 is where it's at, of course but till we make the APIs and widgets simpler to use, these capabilities belong to those with the cash for developers.

(Via Daniel X O'Neill)

I was laid off from Yahoo! 4 days ago. Since then, it feels like things have happened at warp speed: new phone, computer, home office set up, tons of transition planning, lots of thinking about not only what I have to accomplish right now, but what do I want to do next.

With the power of social media, so much of this process is happening transparently, and in what feels like almost real time. Social media tools make sharing information, connecting around situations, and communicating with large and diverse groups of people--both one to one and more broadly--happen amazingly fast.

Here are some of the observations of what's different about how we can use social media to communicate today.

1. Broadcast capabilities have multiplied and improved
2. Tribal affiliations mean people who have never met in person feel connected
3. Information transfers far more quickly and efficiently
4. Your personal brand is out there and quickly read

Here's the detailed view:

Broadcast capabilities have multiplied and improved.
Back in 2003, when I was laid off from AOL, I didn't yet have a blog. Most people didn't (I started one that March). Letting people know what had happened to me was a slow, laborious process based on sending lots of emails. The way I looked for work was to talk and email with people and to subscribe to lots of email lists like the KTlist and to check job post, job sites, etc (I ended up deciding to start my own consulting firm, which I did, successfully.)

Today, blogging, FB, twitter helped me notify people simultaneously that I had lost my job. The news rippled so quickly that far more people learned this fact far more quickly than in 2003, and with a lot less time spent on communicating it on my part.

Tribal affiliations mean people who have never met in person feel connected.
Mimi Ito started writing about Digital Nomads and high tech tribalism a few years ago, and her work becomes increasingly more relevant as social media moves these concepts to the center.
In other words, people who have never met share identity in community because of shared interests, values, friends or lifestyle. Sometimes, this is people wanting to friend someone they perceive as famous or prominent; other times it is friending a perceived(yet unknown) peer.

In the case of my news, tribal affiliations meant that people who I did not directly know, but who read my blog or followed my tstream had feelings--and responses--around the news. Similarly, my extended network for friends on FB responded quickly.

In 2003, these tools just didn't exist, showing that social networking supports affinity in a broader and yet more focused way than I'd thought.

Information transfers far more quickly and efficiently
Back in 2003, the press looked to companies for news.

This week, journalists watched the blogosphere, the twitter stream and even flickr for news related to the Yahoo! layoffs. They found lots of fodder, first from Ryan's posts, then mine, and later Chip & Randy's (among others). The interplay between press and bloggers--a new form of symbiosis-- intensified the ripple effect, so much so that this post is currently #4 under my name at Google search.

Your personal brand is out there and quickly read
There is no question that the reason my news had impact was because I am a blogger and active in the tech/media/geek communities, as well as someone who's been in the industry for 13+ years. My *presence* aka my personal brand was based on things I have done, said and written over time, many of which are available online, or have been chronicled as part of other records (talks, conference appearances and attendances, etc.).

In 2003, people had personal web sites, but there was no way to so quickly form the many-sided view of a person you can get fairly quickly today, if you have some context. What this means is not only can a broader mass of people feel like they *know* me (or anyone embedded in social media), but that employers and colleagues can form quick opinions as well.

Conclusion:
The tools are working. Hurricane Katrina, an Obama video, or some other piece of news can get quick play, but so can something as small as someone's job loss--and that is pretty amazing.

Yesterday, I lost my job--and, somewhat to my surprise, the whole blogosphere heard about it.

Ever have one of those days where you hope what you know when you're at home getting ready for the week is substantially different than what you will know by the end of the day?

Today is one of those days for me.

Going to head to the office and hit it hard, but hope some additional clarity is achieved.

Some great points from Jobster founder Jason Goldberg today around making your start up work. Read the whole thing here, but some specific observations:

• The CEO's job is to create value. Determine early on what the keys to value creation are in your industry and map a path for value creation for your business.
• Try to ride some powerful existing waves vs. just creating new waves. Find some big and important industry trends and ride on top of them.
• Technology companies are all about the product. Getting the product right is critical before aggressively going to market.
• You must get close to your users and customers and live their personas.

These are good points for everyone growing business and building products--substitute GM or Product lead in #1 and it's still on target.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of lists of things that happened in tech in 2007— Tech Crunch has multiples, read/write web has some. My interest here isn't in replicating lists of product releases, acquisitions, or deal flow, but in sharing thoughts on what some of the meaningful milestones were in 2007 in terms of moving social media and user-focused tools (what I insist is the heart of the Web 2.0 stuff) forward. With that, moments to note, in order of importance, of course.

1. Facebook developer API release, May 2007
It's no accident that I can recite the date that Facebook made the big announcement of its completed API and first set of developer deals—this release was the true tipping point for the mainstream media and business sectors to see the amazing power and opportunity in both widgets and social media. Developing FB as an ecosystem where tools could be imported was a brilliant strategy, and the fact data could get in, but couldn't necessarily get out wasn't obvious to most developers till they'd put there apps up-And of course, the businesses that benefit the most, like Slide and Rock You, had nothing but upside (and server costs) from the get go. And let's not forget to mention the thousands of over-35 digerati and techies that poured onto FB, eventually dragging a huge chunk of the rest of the knowledge class with them.

2. Knight Foundation awards over $8MM in grants to fund citizen journalism and social media open source and participatory projects
Tech-driven tools are fabulous, and Facebook is amazing, but those of us in the Valley sometimes forget that for lots of people widgets are “miscellaneous thingamajigs” and Facebook is a preppy web site none of their friends belong to, and why would they? That's why the Knight Foundation's development of this new funded program and their first disbursement of over $8MM to a host of developers and services is so important.

Knight awarded $1MM to Adrian Holovaty, someone with a proven track record of innovation and consumer adoption at chicagocrime.org, the Lawrence, Kansas newspaper and community web sites (think college town), and the always striving to be first Washington Post web site, to develop hyper local community tools that normal people can use to share information literally block by block—and gave even more money to a set of universities-- Arizona State (which went off and hired Dan Gillmor), Medill/Northwestern, MIT, and several more—to develop programs to fast forward the integration of digital media and technology literacy. Plus, they gave smaller grants to services like Placeblogger to build out their services and tools.

This is funding of impactful people to do things that will make a difference—without worrying about proprietary code, flipping companies, or pleasing the board. (Disclosure: I have an affiliation with Knight.)

3. Womens' networks—get big, big, big
Sugar Publishing says they hit 3.5 million unique users in April 2007; Glam claimed 19.1 million unique users in June 2007 (which Arrington disputed); Hearst bought Kaboodle in August 2008 to create its own network, presumably, and Blogher, the most bootstrapped of the bunch ($5 mil in funding reportedly) made its way into Technorati's top 100 starting this summer.

Given that “women” is one of those amorphous categories that cover everything from mommyblogging to finance, seeing interest in this segment skyrocket—fueled of course by advertiser's interest in the reach these networks can deliver—it's exciting to see how ad-targeting is fueling revenue growth in these sectors—and how the competition to permanently take this space away from NBC- iVillage just keeps piling on—and interesting to wonder if advertisers are looking to top blogs like Lifehacker and Engadget to direct ads to, as well.

4. Flickr spawns an ecosystem: ffffound! And Winer's flickrfan shows that FB ain't the only ecosystem social media game in town (and it's not a roach motel)

Visitors to Dave Winer's house have long been able to see some of the ingenious cams and image streams he's created for his own interests, but flickrfan—which launched just a few days ago-- takes the concept that an image stream can be impactful and interesting and turns it into a platform of sorts that anyone with a Mac and a High Def TV—or other digital projection device—can set up and savor. Ffffound! a still in beta image sourcing service, allows users to view streams of images, many *curated* from Flickr, and save the ones they like, presumably as a way to then find others/demonstrate affinity through image selection.

For me, these are momentous tools because they take user generated content distribution one step further---maybe many steps further—and make it into an art.

5. Fair and appropriate use becomes a bigger issue
2007 was the year when YouTube took down a Richter Scales video because photographer Lane Hartwell protested an uncredited, unapproved use of an image she took. A few months earlier, blogger Violet Blue raised a ruckus when Flickr removed a number of images from her photos stream without discussion. Both situations sparked huge discussion in the blogosphere and in the media and both had satisfactory resolutions, but what matters here is that even in the Creative Commons flavored, participatory media context that flickr images sometimes live in, issues of ownership, credit, permissioning, fair use and appropriatenessness stand front and central.

If anything, having sharing images (and music) are going to make our need to have standards, filters, and processes more acute than ever, since the amount of visual information we're exposed to—along with our kids—becomes larger and more diverse by the second.

6. What is the measure of the social graph? becomes a question we debate.

There was some (strong) resistance when Facebook execs started using the term “social graph”, but when Brad Fitzpatrick published his essay on the social graph in August 2007, the term entered the digisphere—and stayed—there are 819,000 today references for “social graph” on Yahoo, and 307,000 on Google. Brad posited the problem as the need to map everyone in a centralized fashion, so data can be ported; the term also means those to whom you are connected-and want to maintain connections with, across sites.

Social Graph rolls up questions about Friend of a Friend (FOAF), OpenID, and social network fatigue in a way that urges developers to see solutions. Interestingly, Scott Karp has a post this week arguing that email is the next manifestation of the social graph, especially for people over 30 (how about 40, Scott?), and that the under 30 killer apps are not web based at all—they're handheld communications such as SMS and phone calls—I think Scott is right, but the true question is data portability and interoperability—

Once we scale beyond the 150 or so people a high schooler might know, technology and standards become essential parts of the tool set and that's the problem set no one has yet elegantly solved.

7. Social Network disillusionment manifests, aka Wikipedia rises and falls, along with digg, the wisdom of crowds and the longest long tail
There was the moment when the Wikipedia people said they might run out of money for servers.. Then there was the moment we all said digg was the new myspace, the cool place for people and data, and Netscape copied that before it shut down, and then there was the moment when we all realized that the long tail didn't really make anyone but Amazon a bunch of money.

Do I mean that we found out that the emperor has no clothes? No, I mean that we learned that as social media matures, we're paying attention long enough so that we notice when the flaws and fallacies show, and we take a more measured view.

8. Ad networks become the new black—and the sure-est take over targets
In 2007, we saw the acquisition of Blue Lithium by Yahoo! and Doubleclick by Google. These were just two of the ad network acquisitions—in the world where ad targeting is nirvana and video is racing along—ad networks are the core thing—and 2007's acquisition sheets reflected that.

9. 9. Unconferences, co-working, and barcamps soared to new heights
1,000 people at barcamp block in Palo Alto in Palo Alto in August, 185 people at Shes Geeky in October, all sorts of similar events around the country--we've turned the corner on what Winer dubbed an unconference in 2003.

10. People are still the OS, even if widgets are flavor of the moment.

So I've been thinking of a post about how I use twitter, facebook and linked in and the blogosphere and the tweetworld have gone noisy today with posts on similar topics.

So here's my deal:

LinkedIn: Have over 1,000 connections, use it as an online address book. Link with friends, colleagues, professional acquaintances so I can find them when I need to. Level of contact with most people: Low.

Facebook: Have over 1,000 connections, more on the friend side, but also including professional colleagues. Like to use it as an address book, but especially love the wide-ranging status updates and seeing what people say and do. Interaction level is high, both broadcasting updates and communicating with specific people 1:1.

twitter: I have maybe 100 people I follow; half that who follow me, and my focus is friends--i.e. I have spent 1:1 time with you in the real world and I care whether you brushed your teeth or had trouble at customs (at least a little). I am not reading you so you can market to me. In other words, interaction very high, but my use of it closer to a closed circle than a porous network.

Or, it's the conversationsphere, baby.

Or, to spell it out: LinkedIn is the broad circle, FB the known universe, and twitter a smaller group. If I had more non tech friends on twitter, I'd focus on them,

Or, in other words, it's not YASN (yet another social network) it's LOSN (lots of social networks), each with their own hierarchy of value and exchange.

(And if I were the proprietor of any social media property--or even of a social search tool--I'd be reading this post right now and asking myself what spheres I'd want my product to fall into for the user and how I might present features and experiences that would support that goal.)

Marc Orchant, who had a coronary about a week ago, has died--I learned about it from a twitter stream just now.

So sad--condolences to his family, and all his friends and colleagues.

""On USA Today's site, I can comment on articles, submit photos, create a blog that lives there, participate in forums on the site and interact with other users on that site. We're going to connect those interactions that are happening on these public Web sites back to the user's Facebook profile...the publisher gets an expanded reach of their brand ... to reach people who aren't necessarily thinking about their brand at that time."

--Pluck CEO Dave Panos, describing how the company will use the Google Open Social platform within a product called PluckSiteLife to--with the user's permission--embed and distribute personal info from users' accounts at social network websites such as a profile widget, article comments and other info across media sites owned by Gannett, Reuters, Discovery Communications, The Washington Post, The Economist Newspaper Ltd., Freedom Interactive Media Inc., Canadian Broadcasting Corp., Rodale Inc. and Meredith Corp.

Susan sez: Pluck is a former client of mine, and I have always thought they are great--this is very shrewd, exciting and a really solid extension of the services they provide to publishers starting with the RSS feed sundication products in 2005/6. Good work, fellas.

USA Today: Can widgets cure cancer? No, but they can pretty darn near revolutionize everything else, according to this seal-of-approval story with nice quotes from Jeremy Liew and Adam Rifkin.

InfoWeek: Cory Doctorow on FB, privacy, time wasting and stalkers--"Emails from Facebook aren't helpful messages, they're eyeball bait, intended to send you off to the Facebook site, only to discover that Fred wrote "Hi again!" on your "wall."

Valleywag: Is Julia Allison the woman Valleywag loves to hate? If yes, this fluff is a maybe amusing, in a lock your high school buddy in a locker for no reason kind of way. But maybe VW is digging deep for filler this week... Hmmn. I think Julia's a damn good writer, and that's what she's doing-- writing.

So, we're not having what's been the usual Friday am S he's Geeky planning call this week.
Reason: The conference happened this past Monday and Tuesday.
Emails and notes are still coming to me, but I definitely want to share some of what I learned and observed.

First off, lessons about the women in tech community based on this conference experience:

• There is a huge age diversity--Two retired women who were coders/programmers in the late 60's/early 70's came to the conference to see what women in tech were like today. There were women still in school, and just out of college, along with the twenty-thirty-forty-and fifty somethings.
• Race and class and gender identity contribute to the mix--I saw more diversity around race and gender identity than at many conferences.
• Feminism lives--especially in that third wave of younger women.
• The impulse/need to connect is powerful--and there is some real pent-up demand to get outside one's usual circles.
• There is a spirit of sharing, acceptance, curiosity--but no bullshit, please, we're time-deprived.
• There's definitely momentum to do this conference again--and again--in more locations as well as in the Bay area.

Observations about women at conference in aggregate:

• Many people want mentoring--help and support from those further along the twisty path
• Many want leadership and personal development--I think 40+ people came to the session I facilitated on "Owning Your Power" and the room was filled at the session the next day with Liza and Adina on Leadership development.
• People are becoming self-employed and entrepreneurial at younger ages--and want support and guidance for uncharted paths.
• Community really does matter.

Finally, I have to say that, as much as I beat myself up 100 times about my viability as a fund-raiser, or consistency as a planner, working with Kaliya and the organizing team was amazing. In many ways, while it took real solid work and time, this was one of the least stressful events I have ever worked on--the levels of communication and concensus were just so high among the team--and Kaliya and Laurie did amazing work in the background.

I'll be at She's Geeky all day today and tomorrow, and I'm getting notes ready for an opening talk that will reflect the views of the women working on the conference, notably Kaliya Hamin, Mary Hodder, Julia French, Laurie Rae, Mary Trigani and Melanie Swan. We met yesterday to do some planning, and sets of themes emerged that are well worth capturing.

First of all, we are in a shifting environment. There is no question that more women are working in technology and that there is a shifting gender balance. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean tech communities are gender-balanced--basically, they are not. Going from one woman in the room to three out of twenty doesn't constitute a quorum (What would be a quorum, you ask? In my opinion, seven out of twenty is where we want to end up in the near future. Fifty-fifty down the road and that means greater change in our education system, right?)

At the same time that the balance is shifting, women are still feeling, in many cases, like they are entering into, having to adjust to, and sometimes just being tolerated by, a community that has been used to being all male (again, these are broad strokes, clearly not true in every case.)

This means that many women feel like they have to cope by developing and or accepting a role that doesn't match their authentic, at work, self. For women I've talked with, this can mean

• Being part of the team as the 'Mom' who takes care of everyone and resenting it but staying in the role
• Striving to be seen as accomplished and attractive
• Feeling stigmatized for being accomplished and not caring about being attractive in a traditional sense
• Not being seen as a leader in a room of men
• Being seen as a leader by everyone but feeling defeminized
• Wishing you were not the only women in the room every time

And so on (there are dozens of examples and instances here, add your own if you wish in the comments.)

It also means that people in the tech community, men and women, are able to get away with comments like the following, which sting the women that receive them (who usually just bitch about it later but who are looking for ways to educate so these comments go away):

• "Wow, you're so smart for a woman, I mean, you know the really hard back-end stuff."
• "You're not just a PR girl (aka 'tight sweater'), you really know your stuff.
  
• "You'd better put your name on that, cause you're too attractive for anyone to think that you actually did the work."
• "The only other woman in the Valley who is as smart AND attractive is you is X."
• "How does your husband feel about your success? Are you married?"

It also means that women working in tech, who fill roles in so many disciplines, doing exactly the same work men do (as I had to remind a reporter who asked whether the women did the *fluffier* jobs, like the lifestyle editors do at his newspaper), haven't had the chance to come together across disciplines and affirm what they share.

Blogher and other groups do an amazing job of building community and networks, but we haven't seen anything that focuses on bringing together and creating community for women in tech who self-identify as geeky--as everyone at the conference does--which is why Shes's Geeky was born.

What's needed--and what we hope this first Shes Geeky conference will provide--is a chance to women to come together to talk and meet, to share and discuss issues and from that, if they wish, create an ongoing frame work of power and support that will both make everyone's lives a little easier and provide an environment for talk, action and community going forward. In other words, we want to celebrate and support what we share, discuss what we hope to change, and explore where we can go--all in a day and a half of pre-planned talks, unconference sessions and unbounded and welcoming community.

Hats off to Kaliya, Mary and everyone involved for making this conference happen, and greetings and salutations to everyone who's attending and speaking today and tomorrow--
Welcome to a safe place to share and perhaps, to grow.

I've been working with Kalyia Hamlin, Laurie Rae, Julie French, Mary Hodder and lots of others to help pull together an unconference called She's Geeky that is happening Oct 22-23 at the Computer History Museum in Santa Clara, California.

For me working on this conference is both a chance to give back and do some service for the community, and to support (other) women in tech, especially the less traditional ones who may have cross-functional roles and/or feel somewhat isolated or unique.

This is a gathering for women who self-identify as geeky (as in tech geeks) and/or work in technology; the first afternoon will be workshops and panels; the full day will be an unconference.

So, please--get involved if this is of interest--it is going to be a great, diverse, friendly and vibrant day and a half.

Vital stats------
She's Geeky (http://www.shesgeeky.org/)
A Women's Tech (un)conference
October 22-23 in Mountain View, CA.
This event is designed to bring together women from a range of technology-focused disciplines who self identify as geeky. Our goal is to support skill exchange and learning between women working in diverse fields and to create a space for networking and to talk about issues faced by women in technology.

How to engage:
See who has signed up so far: http://shesgeeky.org/Who%20is%20Coming

Register for conference here: http://shesgeeky.org/Signup
P:ay after you sign up: Follow the prompt after you activate your account to pay via paypal - http://shesgeeky.org/pay.
Propose a topic: http://shesgeeky.org/Proposed%20Topics
FB group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5010135719
-------

Sponsorship
We are still looking for sponsors and media sponsors. If you or your company would like to contribute, please contact us at mailto:Shesgeeky@gmail.com?subject=Sponsorship or post on the wiki.
This can be 200-5,000!..small amounts help.

This week Google came on board as a sponsor along with the Nonprofit Technology Network, Atlassian, Purple Tornado, and Citizen Agency. We have two great media sponsors so far DevChix and LinuxChix.

If you want to help/contribute in some other way you think might be useful let us know.

Also--today is link push day. If you want to support us--blog about this event today and link back to this post or to Kaylia's post.

Peter Brantley's got a really good post about going to an academic conference and seeing how quickly and intuitively the 30-something attendees used FB to organized work group tools amongs themselves--and how few of the 40-somethings had FB accounts.

The money quote:
"What I learned, and what was new to me, was just how intrinsic the use of Facebook is today among younger scholars - grad students and junior faculty - in their scholarship and teaching. Facebook, for now, is often the place where they work, collaborate, share, and plan. Grad students may run student projects using Facebook groups; they may communicate amongst each other in inter-institutional (multi-university) research projects; they may announce speakers and special events to their communities "

Wow, this post by Brad Feld articulated some of the questions I've been asking. Brad says:
"As of today, Facebook is deriving massive benefit in all the application development that they've enabled. They've brilliantly created an open community that allows developers to quickly create applications that can rapidly acquire hundreds of thousands of users. This dramatically extends the functionality of Facebook by offloading the R&D and feature development to the apps developers. (How about all of them there adverbs – I sound like a press release.) However, as far as I can tell, none of these Facebook apps developers are deriving any real benefits (if you are a Facebook apps developer and ARE deriving a tangible benefit, other than customer acquisition within the Facebook infrastructure, please weigh in.) "

There you have it in a nutshell, folks--if you're a small start-up or a hack and you can cover your hosting costs and/or want to register people and acquire names, then I get the value--Or if you're a CPC player bringing listings into their ecosystem--Or if you *just* want branding--but if you're looking for ad revenue, paid content revenue, or anything else--well, it looks kinda tough.

Bonus quote/comment from Andrew Weissman on Brad's blog: "F8 reminds me so much of late 90s AOL."

Update: Weird synergy question: What if Andrew Weissman and quote of the day guy Adam Weissman are related? Egads!

"There's never been a better time to be a journalistic entrepreneur -- to invent your own job, to become part of the generation that figures out how to produce and, yes, sell the journalism we desperately need as a society and as citizens of a shrinking planet. The young journalists who are striking out on their own today, experimenting with techniques and business models, will invent what's coming."

and
"Try to ignore the fringes of this conversation: the old-guard doomsayers and/or elitists who see nothing but woe for journalism, and the tech-triumphalists and/or media haters who can't wait to see today's system blown to utter shreds. These are vapid, false choices. Let's work to keep the best of traditional media. "

--Founder and Direcoter of Center for Citizen Media Dan Gillmor, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Susan sez: Dan worked at the Merc for 25 years and wrote the still-indispensible We The Media--and I agree with and would underscore most of what he says in this essay.

"Now, in the age of elite access, private prison cells and select banking, when being a millionaire is small time, and being gifted and talented is as common as having a blog, a book deal or a career from a reality-show stint, nobody wants the back of the plane, end of the line, middle of the class, or anything other than the V.I.P. lounge. "

-- Bob Morris, waxing eloquent in the NY Times on how everyone today knows they're a special case....and you'd better not forget it.

"Today, we are taking the CBS Audience Network directly to the user. In launching the CBS Audience Network we solidified our position as the most widely distributed professional content provider on the Web thanks to our great video distribution partners. We now want to empower our audience to be creative and deepen their experience with our content by allowing them to share and embed CBS-provided clips to their blogs, wikis, widgets, community sites and whatever else gets thrown our way.We are delighted to have so many quality partners -- established and start ups -- helping to bring CBS content to the online community."

--Quincy Smith, President, CBS Interactive, announcing deals to integrate ning, word press, meebo, slide and what seems like dozens more.

Susan sez: Talk about accelerating change! I love the word delighted in there....this is going to be a great use case to see whether people will build communities where the content is--or, more likely, export the content using tools provided. Very neat!

Don't have time to get into this in depth right now, but dug bubblegum generation's take on the Parsons/Custer anology on old media and web 2.0 portal type platform companies.

Time Warner's Bob Parsons said "The Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nationThe Googles of the world, they are the Custer of the modern world. We are the Sioux nation."

And umair says: "...From a strategic pov, Google is the one who is hyperflexible and capable of mounting quick yet disproportionately devastating forays into new markets and new value chain segments.

Finally, note the fact that if strategic thinking seems almost impossible for today's mediacos, that's because, well, for many, it is - they are trapped in an ever deepening value chasm. "

Umair's dead on, IMHO...and Parsons is just talking big.

"Today, students have a choice of technologies and ownership of them. They bring their own cell phones to campus and use them for calling, often choosing not to share the phone numbers with the institution. They bring their own e-mail and IM accounts and their own computers. And that last bastion of institutional communication—the .edu portal—has arguably given way to social sites like MySpace, Facebook, or Daily Jolt. College and university administrators no longer own the communication channels central to student life."

RAVE Wireless co-founder, Raju Rishi, in an article in Educause Magazine entitled Always Connected, but Hard to Reach that offered great insights into how students-and therefore many others like them--use technologies to communicate and manage their lives.

(Via SmartMobs)

Wow, nothing like ending the week with a hot story!

Seems like everyone on the planet is writing about a potential Yahoo/Microsoft merger/acquisition.

As a bigco vet, the thought of losing momenteum with yet another re-org and re-setting of the strategy is a little chilling--after all, just dealing with all the tech platforms and dividing those pies would be a major undertaking--and yet there's no question the twinned team would have a strong run against the competition.

Since, like Zawodny, I (fortunately) don't have a clue, let me leave you with a couple of the comments that hit home:

Skrenta: "Anyone who has worked in a bigco knows what this nonsense does to productivity. Imagine every single one of your employees spending hours today talking about this."

Scott Rosenberg: " If Microsoft acquires Yahoo, the companies' stock will initially prosper and the media will cheer on a new round of the War on Google. But seven years from now Yahoo will be as much of a shell as AOL is today. The talent will flee, the user base will stagnate, and Yahoo's ability to innovate will wither under the weight of Microsoft bureaucracy and the pressure to serve Microsoft's software interests."

Charlene: "...there is one major reason why I don't think Microsoft executives have the stomach for any sort of brand rationalization -- the continued dual branding of Windows Live and MSN. Each time I have a conversation with Microsoft about Windows Live, I get a different explanation of what it is and how it fits with MSN. If the company can't event figure out its branding strategy with existing properties, I don't hold out much faith that they could do so with a premium brand like Yahoo!"

More news and speculations on this one to come, no doubt.

Update: 5/8/07: Here's the tarot analysis, courtsy of Rashmi.

One of my favorite sex and relationship blogs, The Riverdale Goddess, shut down yesterday.

This personal account of a 40-something long-married woman who allowed herself to adventure around sensual touch, erotic self-expression and all sorts of edgy stuff--while remaining faithful to hubby and bringing him along on the journey--seemed like a classic Baby Boomer tale of rediscovery--and "Kate's" joy in her transformation was charming.

Nevertheless, as of yesterday, the blog went down, with the author explaining:

"Today I received a phone call - and was asked to participate in a conversation where I was basically told that if I wanted to keep my job -That the Riverdale Goddess Blog needed to be taken down. I was outted......out of fear.....I was shut down out of fear....and because I care very deeply about my day job....it is also my passion....and I have a family and I am not independently wealthy.....I have had to comply. I feel like a part of my heart was cut away today."

It's a reality of the blogosphere--where sometimes people use pseudonyms to share their truths--that sexually explicit bloggers--especially women--have to fear being outed, but it saddens me that this situation seems to happen again and again.

If the Kumbaya cry is Why can't we all just get along? the question here would be What harm do personals stories cause--and why do others want to shut true voices down?

So this is the quarter that my corner of Yahoo is shipping more product--more big development projects--than ever before. My joke with the team is that we're pregnant with twins--and those babies are HUGE.

So, as any product manager knows, that means the release schedule is quite, uh, something. As in if the products don't release on schedule, you can get waay backed up, and then everything's late. And that's no good.

We're down to the wire and at zero bugs day for the latest release when someone comes to me and says "It's not looking good."

"Why?" I ask, and the person says "We have 1o bugs."

"Who's the PM (product manager)?" I respond,knowing that 10 bugs could be showstoppers.

Within the next hour, I'm with the product manager and we're chatting.

"How's it looking?" I ask. "What do we have?"

"1o bugs."

"And what does that mean?" sez I.

"Well, we're heading for a day to day slip."

Soon, we've agreed to sit down together and review the bug list. Given the overview of the schedule, the (very able) PM's been equipped to re prioritize the list and re-sort what has to be fixed before release (P2) and what we can fix post launch (P3).

Soon, the critical bugs are down to 4 and we're trending closer to making our dates.

"Let me know how this nets out," I say. "We can't let the release go more than a few days. you know that."

"Yep," says the very able PM and I head on to the next thing, wondering just what the count will be at the end of the day and where we'll end up with our schedule.

And that was only Monday.

(I'll find out how the schedule looks when I get in today.)

Dave Morin & Ari Steinberg from Facebook gave a preso a the Web 2.o expo that I have been thinking about all week. The question they addressed was "What is a great API and how do we build one for Facebook?"

Of course, the real question behind that question is "How do we grow tools for developers so we can build Facebook into an ecosystem that will beat MySpace?

Or, in other words, do do we take a destination that has (according to Morin) 1.5 billion PV a day, and 500,000 new profiles created a week, and fast-forward to a number of compelling applications that can be developed for inside the FB community?

We've already seen the FB team introduce expanded photos, notes, and invites; the goal now is to permit developers to build additional services for FBers to use inside the tent.

Morin's preso becomes especially interesting to me when Peter Cashmore talks about Facebook's interest in developing their own classified ads and when Mike Arrington rips the covers off MySpace's (still not live) new news service (like, why, ever leave, huh?)

It's even more interesting when you look back at Web 1.0 companies and the network effort of traffic; what did Netscape and MSN seek other than to provide a host of integrated services that would incent users to *never leave* and to circulate around the network?

For social networks with strong communities and page views, the opportunity is the same: breed'em, keep'em, multiply'em and if you can stick some ads on there--and sell some premium services--you've got a win.

Or, in other words, the paradigm for success today goes two ways: create APIs that will distribute your data out--but if you seek to intensify the network effect--also make sure to create APIs that will incent developers to help you keep your users in.

More to come this theme...I want to explore to what extent there is a strong correlation between early or sustained success (think sixapart) and partner integrations via deal and/or API (think Mozilla).

My Netscape, one of the first (and most forward-thinking) personalized start pages on the web back in 2000 or so, relaunched itself today as a freshly customizable , personalizable dashboard for individual users. It's Ajax, baby, all the way.

Basically, the site offers embedded drag and drop options to lay out modules. There are 100 feeds and an RSS reader (Susan sez: Combine this with pipes, please) and no ads.

MacManus worries that the new My is a clone of Netvibes; the deal dude is that My Netscape is the Momma of all start pages (think 1998-99) so it's just doing what it's always done--only with some Web 2.0 front end investment.

Susan sez: I worked at Netscape for 20 months or so in 2000-2001. My was my exposure to RSS, personalization, modularity and to the type of users who would keep this appp live on their desk top and expect it to refresh regularly. In other words, my passion for RSS was aborn of what I learned from the My team back then--so it is heartening to see AOL fund a refresh of this once-powerful app--even though the old teams have long turned over (and even though Netscape has been based in Columbus, Ohio since 2001, a fact that never ceases to surprise me.)

"What are we to conclude from stark contrast between the (sometimes breathless) praise of USA Today's “social media” redesign among tech/media bloggers and commentators (with some saying they didn't go far enough), and the near universal rejection of the redesign among USA Today readers who commented on it? Could it be that it's really the social media revolutionaries who “don't get it” when they assume that what the people want is to rise up against the media autocracy and take control, when in fact what most people want is to get high quality information from a reliable source?"

--Scott Karp, Publishing 2.0, c ommenting on the wisdom of crowds

Brad Stone's got a piece in the NYTimes today that says Cisco is going to buy Tribe.net, the alt/ Burning Man community that could have been MySpace but wasn't.

Cisco bought FiveAcross, a server-side, templated tool and web services platform provider 2 weeks ago, for a rumored $25 million (which seems hard to believe).

When I heard Cisco'd bought Five Across, I laughed and said "This is going to save them millions in internal development costs." (Cisco's spending on vendors and components for their numerous web sites is legendary in the Valley and has fueled many new design firms.)

But it seems that wasn't the point--servicing customers in a web solutions division is the point.

Stone says that BigCos are looking to embed their own social networks in their brands and products, much as TV Guide did last week with jumptheshark, and that BigCos will find it a better investment to play If we build it they will come with their own constructed communities than to place banner ads on MySpace and Facebook.

His article has a media-genic Marc Andresson/ Ning quote: "“The existing social networks are fantastic but they put users in a straitjacket. They are restrictive about what you can and can't do, and they were not built to be flexible. They do not let people build and design their own worlds, which is the nature of what people want to do online," and says Cisco's Dan Scheinman is getting ready to give these services to customers (and goes on to quote Marc Canter and Paul Martino and other ex-Tribe folk.)

Susan sez: What goes around comes around (as services for bloggers, small biz and individual folk, other companies (not only Cisco) are linng up to provide equivalent, larger-scale support for media companies, large international businesses and so on.

The old hermeneutic Alistair Crowley axiom As above, so below (yes, I am feeling all former lit-major this morning) takes on new resonance when it's applied to big companies trying to replicate what small companies (who have now also grown big) have done.

This may be the first time we have BigCos trying to mirror long tail individual expression to quite this degree--and it shows, once again, that the consumer owns the cards.

Today's my birthday--looking back over the past year, it's been a really good one, one of the best ever, with lots of personal growth, close friends and family and meaningful work. And all that walking, of course.
Here's to another year with more turns in the road...hopefully, mostly good ones.

( image via pinkcakebox on flickr)

Yesterday was one of those really good days at work.
We're RITE-studying a new set of feature concepts, and alot of the day was in the usability lab, watching the researcher show paper prototypes to subjects.
It was interesting, but they didn't get some of the features we had hoped they would.
After the sessions, the team sat around talking about what we'd learned and the problems we were trying to solve. Suddenly, we came up with this very strong idea, a new solution no one has done.
Tons of discussion and white boarding began.
I wrote the ideas up.
There was more white-boarding and a whole new way to (possibly) solve the problem.
Today the UED team is paper prototyping the new ideas.
Monday we're testing again and we'll see how these concepts go over.
If these ideas fly, we could have something that would be very cool.
I left work completely jazzed about the thinking we'd done and happy about the problem-solving, the buy-in, and the ownership everyone displayed.
This kind of product development is what thrills me. Can't wait to see the RITE studies on Monday!

For those of us inside Yahoo and not on the VP and above call, last night's scanning the news and the blogosphere for additional detail beyond Terry Semel's memo felt kind of like sitting in front of the TV watching the late-night election returns roll in--bits and pieces of additional details emerging, pierced out from somewhere.

Paid Content and Valleywag and the WSJreport that Lloyd Braun is out of the Y! Media Group; a friend called to say he'd heard some other group heads were also leaving. Terry's blog post suggested that Zod will end up owning more of the platform teams that now live within product--but what that exactly means just isn't clear.
Apparently, according to another story, the Yahoo Network within the audiences team will will include the media unit formerly led by Braun, and the Yahoo home page and communications products and Jeff Weiner will lead that team.
I suppose by the end of today and later into the next quarter, there will be a better sense of what the new plans are and where the investment focus will be but last night it was all random bits of data being put together.
My own thoughts are that Yahoo! needs to move on this pretty quickly to build momentum and keep people focused; the fact there is no head for the Audiences team and they still made this announcement is troubling--but everyone has to know that--and meanwhile, in my world, it's business as usual--we have an interesting release later this month and lots more to get ready to ship.

Jonathan Safran Foer: My life as a dog (in NYC) --lovely essay for pet owners everywhere
NYTimes: IAC plans AskCity, new local service
USA Today asks what geeks would do with newspapers. Answers--nothin' you ain't heard before, but amusing
Who has time for this? VC writes on the theme of how start-ups need to get big cheap
emergic has more to say on this topic

"The wise magazine will enable its community to speak among themselves. And it will also find ways to extract and share the wisdom of its crowd.
(snip)
To gather a community together today and then not enable them to be a community is a waste or worse: It could be fatal to the brand. "

--Media guru and social media visionary Jeff Jarvis, who just keeps getting it right.
(Go, Jeff)!

Friday links:
Wired: Steve Job's greatest quotes, like "It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
Jason Calcanis: Holding forth in a podcast and donating the bucks to charity.
BizWeek: Digger Jay Adelson advises old farts to remember younger workers "want a mentor, not a taskmaster" and more juicy bits of goodness.
YouTube: KungFu versus Yoga--this little video is beyond priceless!
Six Apart: Vox goes live and open to the planet. Nothing like a new mass market blogging platform with lots of visual details (--can't wait to see the adoption curve on this one.)

It's almost bibical.
Feeds(RSS) begat outliners(OPML)
Outliners begat tags
Tags began microformats
Microformats begat APIs
APIs begat widgets
Widgets begat start-ups
And the great mash up settled over the land.

Serial start-up mavens Scott Rafer and Oren Michaels have a new start-up named Mashery (guess what they do?)
Richard MacManus has a long post today on widgets. Richard writes: "I too have been tracking the growing importance of widgets, especially as it relates to the Personalized Start Pages space - Microsoft Live gadgets, Google's modules, Netvibes and Pageflakes, and of course Yahoo's konfabulator (although not yet integrated in a big way into MyYahoo)." and " Nowadays it's all about The Two-Way Web App! You can interact and 'write' to any number of small web services-driven apps."
And Yahoo, of course, is supporting microformats, as the local/maps team points out.

Susan sez: Widgets could be flavor of the moment, but the ways that some widgets intersect with structured data (as opposed to intersecting with flashy, AJAX DHTML fancy effects) is one of the things I find compelling (Yes, I am fascinated by microformats, in particular).

For those less geeky than I am clearly becoming, what's the deal here? And why should you care?

Well, for one thing, widgets (and microformats) offer the opportunity for users-and small business people, among others--to embed applications and dynamic apps into their pages/sites. If you hang around myspace, you see videoplayer widgets(think youtube), slideshow players ( rockyou) that have been cut and pasted in by users --and swickis, a eurekster product I worked on--are everywhere. So if you have content or tools, wouldn't you want users to be able to export them? And if you have APIs, don't you want people to build widgets with them--and then distribute those?

Viz, bibical.

Leonard Lin, another Yahoo, has a cool post on What will be essential in 2011?
Some picks by Leonard:

• Social networking and media sharing services integrated at the OS level and prepackaged with hardware.
  
• Global digital identity / reputation / relationship systems
  
• Digital media everywhere
  
• phones as the primary convergence device in 5 years
• RFID
  
• Self Monitoring Nike+ is just the start of a whole wave of self-instrumentation
  
• Personal Aggregators a new generation of systems that will try to help you manage
  
• Shared everything - a social-everything model

Great list, Len...I'll respond with my own list later today.

Mike Arrington just pointed out the blogosphere related links provided by SF start-up Sphere on selected Time Magazine articles. Very cool, but it makes me wonder why Sphere was successful in pulling this off when Technorati, Feedster, and probably every other start-up in blogosphere land has been pitching these guys (and every other big media outlet) since late 2004.
To me, Sphere's success in testing with Time seems like a combo of a good, fresh product and good timing. As Mike points out, for one thing, the Sphere widget provides more contextually relevant blog results than Technorati's Technorati This feature, which shows blog entries that link to the URL being searched--but not closely related posts (or articles). In this case, that means Technorati first pulled up a number of posts about the Sphere/Time relationship--nothing a reader of a piece on Michael Hayden would especially care about--while Sphere pulled related stories,
The second reason, though, is timing. Back in 2004, when blog search firm started trolling for clients, publishers were scared of the big bloggers who cursed, wrote about sex and would shock their readers. The reluctance of the *pure* blog search companies to build alternative safe universes of blog content (e.g., censored versions of the blogosphere) was a deal killer for most big media outlets interested in anything but Presidential elections. Now, in the world of youtube, citizen journalism, and social media, magazine-land web sites need to hustle to stay relevant, despite the big dollars they spend on heavily researched investigative journalism and flashy subheds.
Finally, the third, and most Web 2.0 reason is--widgets. Sphere CEO Tony Conrad describes the Time deal in the context of the Sphere b bookmarklet, which was one of the earliest products they launched (smart!). Over and over, proof comes in that one of the key acquisition--and retention--tools for users today are widgets that create distributed access to information--is it any surprise that the same functionality would appeal to the web folks at a weekly magazine?

So the long-anticipated Spirit project is live on the web today--Yep, the new Yahoo home page is available for public viewing--There's more content, a really fancy tour, and lotsa links to aspplications like mail.
Funny thing is, bright and spiffy as it looks, and as mch as the usability is 200% better, it does remind me of the aol.com home page--only a lot better looking of course and with cooler user generated content hooks.

Update: Richard MacManus talks to the Yahoo!s leading the charge--Tapan Bhat and CPO Ash Patel. Rchard says "There's plenty of Ajax magic to make the Yahoo homepage more interactive - and Yahoo has made a big effort to make the user the primary focus of the new homepage."

Yahoo! Havi Hoffman writes: "The new home page reflects Yahoo!'s unique position at the intersection of people, media, and knowledge. It presents better access to information and the stuff of our lives, and more individual choice about the appearance of the page, thanks to Ajax, DHTML, and personalization technology."

And folks--THAT's what Yahoo! does better than any of the big guys--cool tool, integrated services, user at the core. 2.0 , Babe, 2.0 (Okay, maybe even 3.0)

5/18 update: Scott Gatz on some neat features

"...we're at an impasse today in the 2.0 space. The 2.0 crowd has the right tools (communities, networks, attention markets, etc), but not the right audiences. Big media still has the audiences, but not the tools.
(snip)
... The failure to understand, craft and articulate 2.0 value propositions is just the latest example of this VC decay. VC must change organizationally and strategically - or the downward spiral is going to continue. And that's why we've reached an impasse: because, just possibly, the real chasm for 2.0 is exactly the set of guys that should be seeding, growing, nurturing, and building it."
--Umair Hauge, Bubblegum Generation.,writing on how VCs don't get media and therefore are faiing to help 2.0 tech companies and big media connect the dots.

Valentines Day with Yahoo! Personals in Chicago, working at a real time event. Pix and wine stories later, travelling today, regular postings resume tomorrow.

Mobile Dating is almost here says The Asbury Park Press--they're from Jersey, what do they know? The *new* mobile sites are Webdate, Zogo, Dodgeball, SMSGenie. The writer says "How would it feel to be single as the two people you're sitting between on the bus send mating calls to each other over their cell phones? What would it be like to go to the bathroom during a date only to have your date meet someone better looking on her cell phone while you're gone?"
On this one, draw your own conclusions.

Face on body launches--new software makes it easy to paste your face on, yep, a different body when you place those ads with photos.
Susan sez: Couldn't they give it a better name, like Face Maker, Face Genie or Body Double?

USA Today: "U.S. consumers spent $245.2 million on online personals and dating services in the first half of 2005, up 7.6% from a year earlier, according to the Online Publishers Association."

So VNU, Dutch owner of Nielsen Media Research is investing in Intelliseek and Intelliseek is merging with BuzzMetrics.The goal: A new consolidated product to "measure and understand word-of-mouth behavior and influence. "Jonathan Carson will be CEO, Mike Nazarro will be President, and Pete Blackshaw CMO and the company will be based in NY, with offices continuing in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Israel.
According to the press release, the two firms have the following clients: Canon, Comcast, Ford, General Motors, HBO, Kraft, Microsoft, Nokia, P&G, Showtime, Sony, Target and Toyota, 14 of the top 15 pharmaceutical companies and over eight television networks.
The investors must be kvelling...

As Rafat Ali reported earlier today, I am joining Yahoo as Senior Director, Product, for the Personals team, starting January 23rd.
I'm excited by the opportunity to focus on one product, energized by both the team and the general Yahoo ethos (and campus-wide talent), and delighted to be working 7 miles from home--a huge change from my usual cross-country commute.
I've had some good opportunities in the past few months, but I've always thought working for Yahoo would be a good fit, and Personals seems like a wonderful spot for someone obsessed both with transactional sites and with social media(that would be me.)

5ive will continue under the leadership of my business partner, Steven Madoff; we'll be updating the site to include some of the behind the scenes players of the past few months.

More on this as life unfolds!

"Although networks are still in their infancy, experts think they're already creating new forms of social behavior that blur the distinctions between online and real-world interactions. In fact, today's young generation largely ignores the difference.

Most adults see the Web as a supplement to their daily lives. They tap into information, buy books or send flowers, exchange apartments, or link up with others who share passions for dogs, say, or opera. But for the most part, their social lives remain rooted in the traditional phone call and face-to-face interaction.

The MySpace generation, by contrast, lives comfortably in both worlds at once. Increasingly, America's middle- and upper-class youth use social networks as virtual community centers, a place to go and sit for a while (sometimes hours)."
--The MySpace Generation, Businessweek

A fascinating excerpt from the leaked memos--this from Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie:
"Today there are three key tenets that are driving fundamental shifts in the landscape all of which are related in some way to services. It's key to embrace these tenets within the context of our products and services.

The power of the advertising-supported economic model. Online advertising has emerged as a significant new means by which to directly and indirectly fund the creation and delivery of software and services. In some cases, it may be possible for one to obtain more revenue through the advertising model than through a traditional licensing model. Only in its earliest stages, no one yet knows the limits of what categories of hardware, software and services, in what markets, will ultimately be funded through this model. And no one yet knows how much of the world's online advertising revenues should or will flow to large software and service providers, medium sized or tail providers, or even users themselves.

The effectiveness of a new delivery and adoption model.

A grassroots technology adoption pattern has emerged on the internet largely in parallel to the classic methods of selling software to the enterprise. Products are now discovered through a combination of blogs, search keyword-based advertising, online product marketing and word-of-mouth. It's now expected that anything discovered can be sampled and experienced through self-service exploration and download. This is true not just for consumer products: even enterprise products now more often than not enter an organization through the internet-based research and trial of a business unit that understands a product's value.

Limited trial use, ad-monetized or free reduced-function use, subscription-based use, on-line activation, digital license management, automatic update, and other such concepts are now entering the vocabulary of any developer building products that wish to successfully utilize the web as a channel. Products must now embrace a 'discover, learn, try, buy, recommend' cycle, sometimes with one of those phases being free, another ad-supported, and yet another being subscription-based. Grassroots adoption requires an end-to-end perspective related to product design. Products must be easily understood by the user upon trial, and useful out-of-the-box with little or no configuration or administrative intervention.

But enabling grassroots adoption is not just a product design issue. Today's web is fundamentally a self-service environment, and it is critical to design websites and product 'landing pages' with sophisticated closed-loop measurement and feedback systems. Even startups use such techniques in conjunction with pay-per-click advertisements. This ensures that the most effective website designs will be selected to attract discovery of products and services, help in research and learning, facilitate download, trial and purchase, and to enable individuals, self-help and making recommendations to others. Such systems can recognize and take advantage of opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell products to individuals, workgroups and businesses, and also act as a lead generation front-end for our sales force and for our partners.

The demand for compelling, integrated user experiences that 'just work'..

The PC has morphed into new form factors and new roles, and we increasingly have more than one in our lives , at work, at home, laptops, tablets, even in the living room. Cell phones have become ubiquitous. There are a myriad of handheld devices. Set-top boxes, PVRs and game consoles are changing what and how we watch television. Photos, music and voice communications are all rapidly going digital and being driven by software. Automobiles are on a path to become smart and connected. The emergence of the digital lifestyle that utilizes all these technologies is changing how we learn, play games, watch TV, communicate with friends and family, listen to music and share memories.

But the power of technology also brings with it a cost. For all the success of individual technologies, the array of technology in a person's life can be daunting. Increasingly, individuals choose products and services that are highly-personalized, focused on the end-to-end experience delivered by that technology. Products must deliver a seamless experience, one in which all the technology in your life 'just works' and can work together, on your behalf, under your control. This means designs centered on an intentional fusion of internet-based services with software, and sometimes even hardware, to deliver meaningful experiences and solutions with a level of seamless design and use that couldn?t be achieved without such a holistic approach."