ValleywagĀ  named Mark Suster, then CEO of Koral “one entrepreneur who won’t just take VC abuse“Ā  for his blog postĀ  “slamming one VC partnership for tardiness, inadequate preparation, and bad Blackberry manners.”Ā  That was late 2006…

Not long after the “incident” his startup, Koral received funding, which, in hindsight was probably unnecessary: a few months later, barely out with a beta product Koral got acquired by Salesforce.com.

A few months later the ā€œanti-VCā€ (not really) CEO has become a VC Partner himself.

Read more …

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I ran  CloudAve, my main Blog Editor gig through Typealyzer, a service that analyzes written text and guesses which Myer-Briggs Personality Type the author represents, and it found we were Rocket Scientist.  Ok, forget the Rocket part, just scientists:smile_wink

INTJ – The Scientists

The long-range thinking and individualistic type. They are especially good at looking at almost anything and figuring out a way of improving it – often with a highly creative and imaginative touch. They are intellectually curious and daring, but might be physically hesitant to try new things.

The Scientists enjoy theoretical work that allows them to use their strong minds and bold creativity. Since they tend to be so abstract and theoretical in their communication they often have a problem communicating their visions to other people and need to learn patience and use concrete examples. Since they are extremely good at concentrating they often have no trouble working alone.

Typealyzer also prints a chart depicting what part of the brain was active during writing:

Of course it’s not that simple: CloudAve is a multi-author blog, and we’re getting some sort of an aggregate personality here, so let’s do some further testing.

One of our guest bloggers is Bruce Henry, whose formal title is Director of Rocket Science (no kidding!) at Liquid Planner.  If anyone, he should be seen as a (Rocket) Scientists – let’s see if Typealyzer agrees:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.cloudave.com/author/brucephenry is of the type:  INTJ – The Scientists.

So far so good – but Bruce writes his own blog, Bruce’s Brain – hey, a Rocket Scientist spills his brain, it sure must be seen as a Scientist:

The analysis indicates that the author of http://www.brucephenry.com/ is of the type: ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers
[ISTJ]
The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Ouch… this is crazy.  Let’s play more, run several CloudAve author pages through the mills:  Ben – Scientist (really?smile_wink), Krish – Scientist, Espen – Scientist, Eran – Scientist, Devan – Scientist (wow, are we all?), Julian – Scientist (gee, he is a CEO, should he not be the Executive Type?), Paul – Scientist, Mayank – ENTJ – Executive (Wow!!!),  Sameer – Scientist (Gee, his bio pic shows him with a guitar, but he is a scientist…).  Dan, who on two other blogs found himself Duty Fulfiller and Executive, comes out as Scientist, too.

With all these Scientists around, I wonder what my profile is … drumroll:

ESTJ – The Guardians

The organizing and efficient type. They are especially attuned to setting goals and managing available resources to get the job done. Once they have made up their mind on something, it can be quite difficult to convince otherwise. They listen to hard facts and can have a hard time accepting new or innovative ways of doing things.
The Guardians are often happy working in highly structured work environments where everyone knows the rules of the job. They respect authority and are loyal team players.

OMG!  While I guess the job of Editor-in-Chief is partly to be a Guardian, I know for a fact I am neither very organized, or efficient (unfortunately).  And highly structure work environments, rules, authority?   Geez, abhoring all those was the very reason I turned my back to a corporate career almost a decade ago.  In fact, as I often semi-jokingly claim, the only thing that still qualifies me to be member of the illustrious industry group Enterprise Irregulars is the irregular part.smile_tongue   But let’s see what Typealyzer says about my personal blog, where I’ve posted 1435 articles in the past 3 years:

ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever.
The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.

Wow, that does not sound like me, either. (Update: Duty Fulfillers was the type I got when I started this post an hour ago.  I just ran the test again, and now it says Guardian – nothing changed on my blog since the first run)

OK, enough of the testing.  Here’s a question to Typealyzer: how deep do you go into a blog?  On this blog, which is huge, it spit out the results so fast, it could not have possibly processed it all. In fact picking random months of my archive, I was able to receive any of these assessments:

  • ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers
  • ESTP – The Doers
  • ENTJ – The Executive
  • ESTJ – The Guardians
  • INTJ – The Scientists

I suspect the analyses only extends to a few posts.  Now, that conclusion is somewhat clobbered by the fact I received two different assessments for the very same main blog page – that brings in an element of randomness I can not explain.

Finally, a little bit of unsolicited advice to the folks @ http://www.prfekt.se/, who brought us Typealyzer: you’re being discovered, stepping out on the international market.  You should have a blog – this thing is unreadable.  And if you choose to provide support through a Google Group, perhaps it’s time to move to an English-speaking one.

(This post is a slightly edited version of the original first published @ CloudAve.  To stay abreast of Clod Computing, SaaS news and analysis, grab the CloudAve feed here.) 

 

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First time I beat TechCrunch was in July 2006:

…their Feedburner subscription base grew almost 100% overnight.  But it pales in comparison to my 2.5million % growth rate … yes, I went from 200 or so to 51k.   Jeff Clavier did quite well, too, at 56k, but hey Jeff, I am catching up!

 

Too bad it was due to a Netvibes glitch, and once they fixed it, my readership fell back to – well, normal levels.

Today I am winning again:   TechCrunch has 0 –yes zero – subscribers, while I have 1141. smile_wink

This time the culprit is Feedburner, which chucked the subscriber stats to zero for many blogs, including TechCrunch, while I lucked out, and only ā€œlostā€ about half my subscribers. Over @ CloudAve we were less lucky, the migration to Google’s new setup cost about 85% of our subscriber base, but that still beats zero…

Yet it’s a Pyrrhic victory, which I hope won’t last – Feedburner (Google) needs to pull their act together.

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Feedburner started as a cool new blog feed management/reporting service a few years ago, and quickly became a de facto standard.  A quick scan of my Feed Reader shows hardly anything but Feedburner.  Since Google acquired the company almost two years ago, we haven’t seen a lot of new services – but that does not change the almost monopoly status.  Feedburner rules the market, and I’m no exception.

A few months ago Google started to migrate accounts – first only those who wanted to run Adsense in their feeds.  Since I don’t care for advertising, I did not bother first, but knew the day would come: the final deadline is February 28th, but anyone can move to the new servers on their own schedule. 

Seeing all the negative buzz on Twitter I was planning to wait – but then I ā€œlostā€ 70% of my subscribers even with the old setup, so I figured I might as well take the plunge. And here it is now: a shiny, brand new (old) feed @ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/zoli

Google says (FAQ) the stats will ā€œrecoverā€ in about a week.  Funny thing is, the one service entirely missing from the reports is Google’s very own Reader.  I certainly hope this ā€œlossā€ is only in the stats, and readers are receiving our feed without interruption.   If you are, you don’t have to do anything, the old Feedburner URL will continue to be redirected, says Google.  Then again, if you’re cautious (like I am), or perhaps are not following our feed yet, you might as well grab the new feed here.

Either way, thanks for reading my Blog.

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An older post, If Scoble Thinks He Found Bad Startup Marketing, He Ain’t Seen Nothing received several comments, all showing the same structure, pointing back to Twitter accounts – some are clearly spam accounts with only this one update, but others appear to be real users, although I am not following any of them.

lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e

This is a test.

(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)

aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e

Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.

(This appears to be a real account.)

bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e

This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts

Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah

(This appears to be a real account.)

radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e

This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.

(This appears to be a real account.)

deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e

Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.

(This appears to be a real account.)

cineola (cineola) | January 14th, 2009 at 7:14 am e

This is a test.

(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)

Is there some new Twitter-to-Blog spam bot that I am not aware of?

Update:Ā Ā  There’s more now, on another post:

lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e

This is a test.

aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e

Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.

bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e

This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts

Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah

radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e

This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.

deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e

Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.

cineola (cineola) | January 14th, 2009 at 7:14 am e

This is a test.

sztelzer (Rodrigo Sztelzer) | January 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am e

Só bebo tequila. This is a test.This is a test.
http://tinyurl.com/7jww4a Só beberei tequila.

In the meantime I disabled the Tweetbacks Wordpress Plugin, which had not properly installed anyway, to see if it has anything to do with the attack.

Update:Ā  Follow-up thoughts @ CloudAve.

Related posts:

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The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a Wordpress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.

I have not found a "Recession" Wordpress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.smile_omg

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TechMeme recently gave up trying to get a 100% working algorithm, instead GabeĀ  switched to half-manual (edited) mode. I suppose and along with it came emotions, otherwise how could we explain TechMeme getting nostalgic.Ā  There’s an antique classic in the sponsors’ display:

Memeorandum – The Google for blogs on Microsoft’s Startup Zone.Ā  First I got suspicious – is someone recycling TechMeme’s original name for a new venture?Ā  But no, clicking through takes us to a fresh post just off the press, dated January 10th, 2005.Ā  Don Dodage announces:

Memeorandum is a new blog “news clipper service”. It constantly monitors new blog posts and publishes the title and first 50 words or so to the dynamic news page. The page updates every few minutes with new high quality material. There are currently two news pages. One for technology and another for politics.

Obviously a glitch, I don’s suppose you’ll see it long on TechMeme.Ā  Oh, and Happy Birthday, TechMeme ( the 4th, I suppose, more or less).

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Google Layoffs – 10,000 Workers Affected reports WebGuild with a bombastic title.  I can beat that: all Google workers will be affected, at least emotionally. 

As to what the real numbers are, several sources point out that while employee headcount is around 20K, Google has about 10K temporary workers, so whichever way you count, laying off 10K workers would equate to:

  • eliminating all the temp positions
  • letting go 30% of the (extended) workforce, which seems to be the Silicon Valley rule
  • cutting the employee headcount to half (if we ignore temps)

Either way it sounds way too dramatic, a step companies in deep structural trouble would resort to.  I seriously doubt this is really coming, but let me be clear: I have no factual information, am simply speculating, or actually responding to speculation.

But there’s something else worth noticing here: the source.  WebGuild had a bit of a clash with Google this spring, when Google withdrew their support of the WebGuild events it used to host.   Their stated reason was WebGuild’s refusal to change the name of their Web 2.0  Conference & Expo, at O’Reilly’s request. Here are the juicy details in a WebGuild post aptly titled Shame On You Tim O’Reilly.  Without getting into details of the original conflict,  suffice to say that WebGuild has been on somewhat of a vendetta against Google ever since.   They’ve been a little bit too trigger-happy with posts reflecting negatively on Google.

Once again, I do not have factual information, but if this indeed turns out to be false information, I wonder if WebGuild went a step too far this time.  (Remember the Steve Jobs death story?)

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I’ve never particularly liked Uncov, the anti-web 2.0, anti-startup, anti-everything rug.  Not that it was always wrong: it’s criticism was often well-deserved, just a bit too vitriolic for my taste.  But vulgarity is popular, and titles like  I’m Going To Scale My Foot Up Your Ass certainly grabbed attention.

Of course it’s always easier to criticise than actually build, and for Uncov editor Ted Dziuba the opportunity to put his money where his mouth was came when he finally launched his own startup, Persai – soon renamed Pressflip.   To focus on the startup, Ted and his fellow authors shut down Uncov.

Will Pressflip make it?  Too early to say, but TechCrunch wasn’t too positive about it a few months ago.  (they can always rebrand it again, this time to Pressflop).

A few days ago Uncov came back to life, but with a twist: it opened up to guest bloggers.  And here’s Dziuba’s Ars Poetica, which perfectly sums up why I still dislike Uncov:

If you want to blog at uncov.com, it should be in the style of Uncov. It doesn’t have to be technical or nerdy, and you should feel free to take shots at people, so long as you do it in the Uncov fuck-you-and-everyone-that-looks-like-you fashion.

The latest twist in the story: Ted Dziuba has just quit Pressflip.

I’m leaving for personal reasons: mostly because I’m going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I’m tired of the fight.

The announcement is on Ted’s personal blog, not Uncov. It probably does not meet Uncov standards.  For the first time Ted Dziuba sounds perfectly normal. Family man. Human.

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Well, thank you all for finding me so sexy (blush, blush) that even my face pic is considered x-rated.Ā  From somebody else I might even consider it a compliment, but it comes fromĀ  Gravatar, an ā€œAutomattic Jointā€:

Which is why my gravatar does not show on Wordpress blogs.Ā  I’ve never thought one day I’d be caught by porn-filters. smile_sad

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