Social Networking Archives - Page 7 of 18

Blogger Discount for the Under the Radar Conference

Posted on March 14, 2007 ·

Just a week left till the Under the Radar: Why Office 2.0 Matters conference, and DealmakerMedia agreed to offer a discount to my readers. Registering through this URL offers $70 off the non-member advance registration, or $170 off the walk-in price.

Here’s a list of the 32 presenting startups:

… as well as the Graduate Circle Sponsors:

The 32 startups will be presenting in 8 sessions, which will all start out with a panel discussion of the sector, and then, 4 companies will demo their products to a panel of industry experts who are active in this space, along with an audience of early-adopter technology insiders.

Both audience and experts will get a chance to beta test and offer feedback based on favorite features, areas for improvement, the ideal industry “partner” match-ups, and how best to reach out and build up their audience. The conference will also offer ample time for presenters and attendees to network and share ideas and information.

Hope to see you there!

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Marketing / PR, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: DealMakerMedia, entrepreneurship, IBDNetwork, marketing, networking, startup pitch, Startups, Under the Radar, UtR, vc Funding, venture Capital

Radar Relay – What’s Happening in Office 2.0

Posted on March 7, 2007 ·

I might as well have titled this post Radar Delay – first it was due last Friday, as part of series of reviews leading up to the Under the Radar: Office 2.0 event, but then fellow Enterprise Irregular Rod Boothby posted an “extra” article the same day, so I decided to wait till Tuesday. Yes that was yesterday, the day when Comcast, my ISP ironically responded to my push for On-Demand with a service outage.

But first things first: Web-based products received a surprise promotion from an unexpected source: Microsoft. As Phil Wainewright says on ZDNet:

“It’s astonishing that in the midst of a serious challenge from a new generation of Web-native office suites, Microsoft should give its rivals a helping hand by handicapping its own product so badly that it performs worse than an online product on a slow dial-up line.”

He is referring to the Outlook 2007 meltdown several users experienced:

“You’d think I had just sprayed the inside of my poor mega-laptop with saltwater to induce non-stop fritzing. I’ve learned to meditate while Outlook ruminates over ten incoming POP messages of 69K. Perhaps it takes a few seconds over each incoming message or RSS feed to contribute to solving a Grand Challenge. Or it and Desktop Search have to play 333 iterations of rock-paper-scissors everytime a change has to be written“

You can hardly accuse the above user with anti-Microsoft bias, since he is none other than Mini-Microsoft, who is obsessed with fixing Microsoft, the company. The Guardian, Dennis Howlett, Jason Busch, Tim Anderson, Chris Pirillo, Dan Farber, Phil Wainewright had similar experiences. Phil asks:

“But is it an even better fix to abandon Outlook and Exchange altogether and switch to an on-demand alternative?

My answer is a loud YES, and I’m making my point in Desktop Software: A Failed Model. Of course glitches occur in the On-Demand world, too, as we just witnessed Google Apps collapse soon after the announcement. We’re not quite there yet, but I share Rod Boothby’s view that we have passed a tipping point: while 2 years ago the ideal mix would have been desktop computing with additional online access, now I feel as a user I am better off mostly working online, with occasional offline access.

A somewhat doubtful friend, who happens to be the CEO of a cool company making web-based products sent this question:

“Do you really think people will use Word processors (in any significant number) through their web browser? “

Yes, I really do think, but why believe me? Listen to a US Government Agency instead: FAA May Ditch Microsoft’s Windows Vista And Office For Google And Linux Combo.

Some of the Under the Radar “Graduate Circle” sponsors posted significant news recently:

Atlassian announced a WebDav plugin which allows users to seamlessly work with both MS Office documents and the Confluence, their market leading enterprise wiki. They also released a hosted version of Confluence – this is something I’ve been waiting for impatiently. This was followed by the announcement of Crowd, their single sign-on authentication software.
Zoho announced integrating Zoho Sheet to Omnidrive, updates to Zoho Projects and overall performance improvements. Web Host Industry Review reported that Zoho doubled customer count in 5 months, going from 100K to 200K.
EchoSign, an innovative solution provider that can proudly wear the SES badge, if we ever get tired of SaaS, has just announced their integration with Zoho Writer .
FreshBooks anounced integration to BaseCamp for easy invoicing. This “Graduate Circle” sponsor could also wear the SES label:-) It’s really promising to see more and more integration within the Office 2.0 ecosystem.

Talk about user base, Nielsen/NetRatings issued a press release claiming that Google Docs and Spreadsheets dominate web-based productivity tools since October, with a market share of 92 percent of unique visitors. Ismael Ghalimi did some research and proved them wrong concluding that Google’s market share may be closer to 50%. His take:

“It is actually quite amazing that companies like ThinkFree and Zoho, with their ridiculously small marketing budgets, can play in the same league as mighty Google.”

Ismael is the creator of last years successful Office 2.0 Conference, and he is already preparing for Office 2.0 2007. But that’s in September – first we’ll have an exciting full-day conference:

Under the Radar: Why Office 2.0 Matters on March 23rd, in Mountain View, CA. Here’s the updated agenda and a list of presenting companies:

The Conference is put up by DealMaker Media, which was until recently known as IBDNetwork. (Too bad I missed their Launch Party.)

Hope to see you there!

Update (3/09): Passing the baton to Stowe Boyd, here’s his Relay post.

Filed Under: Bay Area, Blogging, Business, Collaboration, Marketing / PR, SaaS, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology · Tagged: atlassian, confluence, DealMakerMedia, EchoSign, freshbooks, google apps, IBDNetwork, ITRedux, microsoft, Office20con, offiice 2.0, Omnidrive, On-Demand, Outlook, Radar Relay, SaaS, Under the Radar, vista, weboffice, zoho

Group Collaboration is NOT Dead

Posted on January 23, 2007 ·

(Updated)
It’s become fashionable to beat up large corporations. I understand the feeling; having done my time in the corporate world I know I’m not going back … but that said, not everyone is a freelancer, startup entrepreneur or just “old-fashioned” small business employee. Most of today’s workforce are still corporate employees, and large companies produce most of our GDP, like it or not.

Which is why I don’t understand Stowe Boyd’s rant against group-oriented collaboration tools:

“The basic model of 90’s era collaboration, a la Lotus Notes, is all about the group. Information was managed in group-based repositories, then passed around for review, or published to intranet portals via customized apps. Information era workflows where people are first and foremost occupiers of roles, not individuals, and the materials being created are more closely aligned with groups than individuals.

Web 2.0 social tools — largely — work around a different model. Social networks — explicit ones like MySpace and Facebook, or implicit ones in social media — are really organized around individuals and their networked self-expression. I am writing this blog post, and publishing it, personally. It is not the product of some workgroup. It is not an anonymous chunk of text on a corporate portal. My Facebook profile pulls traffic from my network of contacts, sources I find interesting, and the chance presence updates of my friends.

I don’t need to participate in groups to exist or to share — or to matter — in this world.

On the other hand, Notes and Sharepoint, and even their webby second cousins, like Basecamp, are principally organized around groups. I have argued in the past about the work federation design flaw in Basecamp (see here: Basecamp and The Federation Of Work), but the basic problem is the wrong emphasis on belonging to groups instead of being connected to individuals. “

Well, Stowe may not need to participate in a group, being a successful freelancer, but the average corporate employee does, and they are IBM’s target market. Group-thinking, collaboration is as important as ever, not only to enable individuals co-create better, but also, as a secondary effect to preserve knowledge – should the individual leave, business does not come to screeching halt.

Quickr or Slowr, Lotus Connections and Sharepoint will make a killing this year. Personally, I’m quite happy I don’t have to touch them – but then again, like Stowe, I’m not a corporate employee. I just don’t forget about the majority of the world, who are.

Update (1/23): Stowe’s post stirred up a bit of conversation:

Social enterprise: Oxymoron or business logic? (Donna Bogatin @ZDNet)
Donna Bogatin on Social Enterprise: Group-First or Me-First? (Stowe Boyd)

Tags: ibm, lotus connections, lotus notes, ibm quickr, social software, collaboration, groupware, freelance, stowe boyd

Filed Under: Business, Collaboration, Enterprise Software, Social Networking ·

SVASE VC Breakfast in San Francisco

Posted on January 16, 2007 ·

I’ll be moderating another SVASE VC Breakfast Club meeting this Thursday, Jan 18th in San Francisco. As usual, it’s an informal round-table where 10 entrepreneurs get to deliver a pitch, then answer questions and get critiqued by a VC Partner. We’ve had VC’s from Draper Fisher, Hummer Winblad, Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Mohr Davidow, Emergence Capital …etc.

These sessions are a valuable opportunity for Entrepreneurs, most of whom would probably have a hard time getting through the door to VC Partners. Since I’ve been through quite a few of these sessions, both as Entrepreneur and Moderator, let me share a few thoughts:

It’s a pressure-free environment, with no Powerpoint presentations, Business Plans…etc, just casual conversation; but it does not mean you should come unprepared!
Follow a structure, don’t just roam about what you would like to do, or even worse, spend all your time describing the problem, without addressing what your solution is.
Don’t forget “small things” like the Team, Product, Market..etc.
It would not hurt to mention how much you are looking for, and how you would use the funds…
Write down and practice your pitch, and prepare to deliver a compelling story in 3 minutes. You will have about 5, but believe me, whatever your practice time was, when you are on the spot, you will likely take twice as long to deliver your story. The second half of your time-slot is Q&A with the VC.
Bring an Executive Summary; some VC’s like it, others don’t.
Last, but not least, please be on time! I am not kidding… some of you know why I even have to bring this up. (Arriving an hour late to a one-and-a-half-hour meeting is NOT acceptable.)

Thursday’s featured VC is Steve Reale, Principal, Levensohn Venture Partners. For details and registration please see the SVASE site.

Here’s a participating Entrepreneur’s feedback about a previous event.

See you in San Francisco!

Tags: Venture Capital, VC Breakfast, Funding, VC Funding, Startups, Entrepreneurship, SVASE, SDForum, TiE

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Social Networking, Startups, Technology ·

Let’s Not Spam MyBlogLog

Posted on January 9, 2007 ·

It certainly feels like every single blog is talking about MyBlogBlog’s acquisition by Yahoo. I think TechCrunch gets the “Best Title” award: Yahoo Buys MyBlogLog. No, They Didn’t. Wait, Yes.

Well, I am the exception, I am NOT writing about the deal

When I first installed it on my blog, I thought this was all about providing useful outbound stats (who clicked what..etc). Then the faceroll showed up, and before we noticed, MyBlogLog transformed itself into a social networking tool for bloggers. That’s all fine, I like it and use it.

But recently I am starting to get spammed. Probably not “bad” spam, just a network’s growing pains – contact notifications from people I’ve never before heard about. I went through this with LinkedIn, until I established my own “less is more” ground rules. Now, let’s recognize that LinkedIn is primarily for business, and by definition is more restrictive – online contacts there should really reflect one’s real-live network. I feel MyBlogLog is more open, there is room for creating new “friendships” online – yet I think it would be helpful to establish some protocol before contact-hunting escalates to far.

Making someone a contact is not the only way to network, and if we don’t already know each other, it’s certainly not the right initial step. That’s what joining each other’s blog communities and sending messages are for. But frankly, “interesting read!” is not a message – if this was a blog-comment, it would be borderline spam. Which brings up the other point – if you join someone’s blog community, supposedly you’re interested in actually reading the blog itself, will likely engage in a conversation through comments or trackbacks, and soon you will really know each other – that’s the right time to add them as a contact.

By following this simple protocol, we can keep MyBlogLog spam-free. What to you think?

Tags: mybloglog, yahoo, spam, networking, online networking, social networking, linkedin

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Networking, Software, Startups, Technology ·

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