After popping in at a few local tech/blogging events lately, something has become apparently obvious to me.  I need a wingblogger--someone my age as interested as I am in being a part of the more social side of this community that I can drag around to all these events.  For someone who works at a VC firm, I probably have the least tech savvy social network possible.  That makes it incredibly difficult, at least for me, to go to all these events and meet the people I'd like to meet--especially given that, because of my age, I have a natural advantage over a lot of other people in my industry.  I can relate a lot better to a lot of the very creative people that are disrupting some of the markets that USV has interest in.  Even though I may be outgoing, I really do hate doing much of anything alone.  I need to be able to go somewhere, run ideas by someone, recap the event, discuss, plan, etc. 

At the same time, I don't want to be too "networky", which, as a venture guy, is probably about the worst thing you can do, especially in New York.  In spite of the fact the NYC is the financial capital of the world, not everyone doing some kind of interesting project is in it to make it big.  Sometimes, like in the case of the Vimeo/Collegehumor guys, success seems more like an accidental byproduct of serious goofing off.  Not everyone wants their audienced monetized.

Ideally, I'd have a friend or two that worked in media/marketing/tech that was curious about new trends, interested in meeting people, and savvy enough to find some events that I missed.  The management is currently accepting applications for wingbloggers. 

Well, this is a bit weird, since I can't find actual mention of this anywhere...   I mean, its advertised on Friendster, but Six Apart doesn't seem to have it on their site and no one else seems to be commenting much on it.   You can now create a blog on Friendster, and its powered by Typepad.  In fact, it basically is Typepad and there isn't much integration on the site between the two products, other than the fact that you can annouce your new blog to all of your first degree friends. 

The interesting thing is that there's a free version, and from what I can tell, its essentially FREE  Typepad.  However, it says that it will be Ad-supported, although they don't seem to have placed them yet on my test blog... maybe because I have no content yet.

The interface is clearly Typepad, though, and so are the pricing levels for the ad free services.  I thought, to be honest, that I was going to be sent to LiveJournal when I picked the free one.  I'm really surprised there's now a free level of Typepad out there for Friendster members.  Its really a fantastic value and I think that a lot of people will take advantage of it.  Supposedly there are 13 million people on Friendster.  That's a lot of free blogs out there supported by ad revenue.  I wonder how the ad revenue will be split between Friendster and Six Apart.

I also why I didn't get an e-mail from Friendster on it, or why it didn't show up on Six Apart's website.  To my knowledge, this is the first such deal they have providing blogging services to a content partner.  Will this start a battle to snatch up portal users?  When is Yahoo going to start offering a blogging service to its members?  Might they use Typepad the way Friendster has or go on their own?  Fascinating stuff.  And now I should go to sleep.  I wish there was a way to connect this story to my Success Blogging site...  I'm desperate for traffic there.  Ah well.  :)

First new digs offline, now a new site.  I think its interesting from a square footage perspective how much of the front page they've dedicated to Typepad versus the other services.  LiveJournal is a little box under the fold, and the main LiveJournal.com hasn't changed at all.  Its not as "menu"y as I would have expected and LJ doesn't really appear as a tier in the structure.  Nonetheless, its yet another thing to follow in this company's interesting story.  The site is much more professional overall.  They're really putting together quite a bench there. 

The big question for me now is whether to shamelessly submit my blog as a featured site.  Perhaps after I get a Blogmoxie redesign.   Speaking of which...  I need to ping them again to see if they have an opening for me.

Question:   Am I a sellout for putting the strip of Google ads at the top of the page on my personal site?

To be perfectly honest, I debated this for a while.  I've had ads up on the Success Blogging site since the beginning, and the site has basically paid for itself in the first month.  However, that, while still not entirely a business, is more of a pseudo commercial venture, so ads seemed not entirely inappropriate there.  But this is my page.  Am I crossing the line by pawning the space at the top?

I don't think so, and here's why:

1) The ads don't cost you anything, not even in terms of the annoyance cost.  They don't drop cookies, pop up, make sounds, or drop spyware on your PC.  They just sit there, white on black with a little grey, seemlessly blending into the color scheme of the page.  (PS... I've decided the format needs an upgrade...  that's like Project #7 on the list... too much to do.)   

2) They may actually provide a service for you.  Perhaps they link you to something useful. 

3) A good deal of the traffic on my site isn't necessarily from friends and people I know.  I get a lot of random traffic passing through.  I know that because I can see where people are coming from.  I think 10% of my traffic comes from people Googling "Gmail Notifier" or "Stanford MBA".   I think of my ads like a commuter tax for those people.  You don't live here, but you use the content.  Why shouldn't you contribute? 

One thing is bothering me, though.  There's an ad at the top that directly competes with Success Blogging.  In fact, the website has a very similar name.  Of course, there's plenty of room for consultants and speakers talking about how blogging can make you successful, so I'm not that worried, but still, if I had the choice, I'd rather not be advertising for a competitor on my site.  Or, perhaps his success will help my own and vice versa.  Anyway... I'll keep you posted on the progress.

From Steve Rubel...  Great quote...Link: Micro Persuasion: How Not to Pitch a Blogger.

Back in my early career my mentors used to tell me never put anything in email to a journalist that you wouldn't want on the front page of The New York Times. Well, nowadays you need to think bigger. I say, never put anything in an email to a blogger that you wouldn't want to stick on your own forehead for life!

We had an interesting discussion yesterday about blogging.  In particular, we talked about my blogging in relation to my employment at Union Square Ventures.  Blogging is a very powerful medium, and you never know who is reading.  While its very easy to put up a "My opinions aren't that of my company" note, that doesn't mean that there won't still be some entrepreneur who reads my blog and decides that USV isn't the kind of firm they want to work with.  Of course, my penchant for flip commentary and shooting from the lip doesn't help that.  Now, of course, flip commentary about baseball or kayaking is unlikely to have that kind of effect, but opinionated commentary about companies and technology might. 

In addition to my potential for saying something out of line that isn't reflective of my firm, I'm more concerned about putting myself out there as more of an expert on something than I am.  Its so easy for blog content to proliferate around the net, and perhaps I'll post some kind of groundbreaking insights that everyone will want to trackback to.  (It could happen!)  All of the sudden, I've put myself out there as someone who knows something more than they really do, and, at this point, that's not something I'm particularly comfortable with.

Therefore, I've decided to institute some new policies around here, in the form of a policy statement:

- I am employed by Union Square Ventures as an analyst, not a partner.  The opinions expressed on this site are not necessarily reflective of the opinions of other employees of the firm, nor of the official positions of the firm (if there are such things) and should not be construed as such.
- I have decided not to post my opinions, for the foreseeable future, on technology and venture capital related topics in terms of their viability or potential success as a business.  From time to time, I reserve highlight what technologies I find useful from a technology consumer standpoint or point out what features I would like to see added to existing products as a consumer. 
- I will not be posting any discussion about companies that Union Square Ventures is looking at for a potential investment or is currently invested in.  However, I may actually use or link to some of their publicly available services on my blog as a user.  Obviously, if we like a company enough, its not unlikely that we would use their services. 
- I will not be posting any internal business and technology related discussions, whether it be with Brad and Fred or with any companies I might speak to.  Fred can post on such discussions if he so chooses on his own blog, and Brad, well, I'm sure Brad will cave eventually on the blogging. 
- Please send any business plans you might have to Union Square Ventures through our website, and not directly to me.  This is my personal site and while Charlie as a person is an analyst for a venture capital fund, this site is not about that fund and mention of its activities are incidental to descriptions of my life.

I attended this "webinar" in December...   its a very professional discussion on the more serious side of blogging.  Very informative for beginners who might be looking to do something a little more serious than writing online diaries.  When you're done, perhaps Success Blogging will make more sense to you.

You can now register for my class at the Learning Annex!  I'm not thrilled about the "And fatten your wallet" tagline and its not how I'd like to portray the class.  Its really for serious minded professionals interested in career development, not people looking for get rich quick schemes.  Alas, they're trying to bring people in and sell the program hard, so I can't knock them too hard.  :)

Thanks to Mike R. for forwarding me this link from Dave Taylor's blog.  I just browsed it, but sounds like this would be a good person to share thoughts with...

Link: "Would you buy a book on blogging?" from The Intuitive Life Weblog.

"...Here are my two cents on this subject: books about blogging are going to be boring, just another subset of books about writing (the vast majority of which seem to miss what I view as the essence of learning how to write, which is to write. Peter Elbow captures this in his great book Writing Without Teachers).

To me, though, blogging is just a tool..."

Boring to bloggers, perhaps, but there are still a lot of people out there who actually like to read books AND use computers.  I know, I know.  It blows my mind, too.  I always liked Harold Ramis' line in Ghostbusters, "Print is dead."  I'd prefer to read everything of a screen, be it on a laptop, desktop, TV, Palm, phone, whatever, but people still insist on cutting down trees, so we have books.  Anyway, point being, yes, I agree that you really learn about blogging, and about yourself as a blogger by actually blogging, but some people just need a head start or a few tips.  Dave also writes "maybe I'd buy a book if the author had a unique perspective on what to do with blogs, but it sure doesn't seem like a very big market."  Well, the "what to do" part is where the market lies, and in fact, it is very large.  When you come up with unique applications of blogs, you tap into the 64% of internet users who have never heard of them by identifying blogs with something they're already doing, like, career development, for example.  Blogs are, just as Dave puts it, a tool, and a there are lots of books on how to use tools, from socket wrenches to C++.  Sure, the real tool masters use by doing, but sometimes, beginners need a book to get them started, or at least feel comfortable with getting started.  Speaking of which, my Success Blogging site, is nearly complete and I will probably replicate this post on there for discussion. 

LiveJournal has been down for over 24 hours, not less than a week and a half after they got bought.  Of course, the two have nothing to do with each other, but you have to think that at least a few of the 2.5 million active LJers are having their doubts.  This has got to be extremely embarrassing for Six Apart.  Oh, and PS...  what's with the "9:12AM... We're back at it..."?   I think if you're going to be serious about capturing the innermost thoughts of millions of LJers, you call in the reserves and you find some people who can spell you and work through the night.  12 hours?  What kind of stamina is that?  I stay at work longer the day before our internal strategy reviews.  I'm sure there were plenty of LJers trying to post in the middle of the night who didn't shed a tear for the LJ team's 12 hour attempt.  Kind of reminds me of the day AOL went out.

This goes back to the question of what exactly Six Apart bought.  I would bet that free blogs are pretty far down on the stickyness list.  Perhaps the "community" aspect is what will keep everyone on... the same reason most of us are still using AOL IM... only because everyone else we care about is still on it. 

And what's going on here?  Greatestjournal.com apparently has 700,000 members.  I never even heard of them, but apparently they're using the LJ open source code.  I have to be honest, after I saw this, I thought to myself, "I know a lot of LJers, but I don't know anyone on GJ."  How easy would it be to put up a journaling site with LJ code, totally inflate the numbers of users, and try to get lots of people to donate to you?  You could even write some fake blogs to make people think that there were lots of other people on there.  Ok, maybe I'm just being cynical, but 700,000 bloggers seems like a big population to never hear of, especially when we were all commenting to death on the 6A-LJ merger.  I don't think I'll believe that number unless I get 700,000 individual comments from GJers.

Link: Mena's Corner: Current Mood: Optimistic.

So its true...  Six Apart bought LiveJournal.  I think the funniest thing was that, by the time they announced it, it was old news... a whole day old.  We all posted and commented the thing to death before we knew anything about it including myself (you thought CNN was bad about making 24 hours of news out of nothing.)  The truth is, we don't know what this means until at least a year from now, if not longer, and I don't think either of the companies knows either...  well, not exactly anyway, which, to me, is what a marriage is supposed to be about.

I've always said that, if you're truly in it for the long haul, you're in a marriage for like 50 or 60 years.  What could you possibly discover about each other in even a year or two that would somehow prepare you for 60... its insane.  You need to just find someone who compliments you as a team and decide that, no matter what, this is the person I'd like to face the unknown with.  I knocked this thing at first because I couldn't figure out why and I couldn't point to tangiable reasons that would create value.  But, that doesn't matter.  Inevitably, the landscape changes and all of the "best laid plans" go awry.  I think marriages and mergers fail when people are too locked into a plan and what the future will bring, instead of just saying, "we have great resources, they have complimentary resources, we think we're better together."  You can't predict the future and things won't always go your way...  so just pick someone you love and hold on tight... seems that's what is happening here.  I may not get it, but I can respect it.

Its too bad this didn't happen earlier, because had Howard Dean's blog had a little Current Mood: "So excited I might scream uncontrolably" smiley, we might have seen that coming and taken it better.

Link: Om Malik on Broadband ? Six Apart to buy Live Journal.

This is interesting, but I'm not sure I agree with OM's comment that Six Apart is somehow a natural fit.  Certainly the LiveJournal audience is a drastically different crowd than the paying Typepad crowd or the Moveable Type users, but diversifying your audience by buying a group that is unlikely to ever pay for your product, well, I'm just not convinced that's a good way to go.  I mean, how many fifteen year old girls are going to fork over a dime to get their site hosted, even if you do give them all of the fantastic features of Typepad/MT which I have come to know and love.  Where's the payoff here?  Perhaps it makes Six Apart more attractive as an acquisition candidate itself?  It seemed like their growth would certainly make it attractive enough, and I can't honestly believe that LiveJournal's growth is any better. 

Om writes "It also gives the company a very fighting chance against Google’s Blogger and Microsoft’s MSN Spaces."  Fighting chance against MSN Spaces?  I'm sorry, but I don't see the droves of people flocking to Spaces, and I can't really see any blue blooded blogger letting Bill and Steve host their little baby.  I haven't seen numbers, but I never got the impression that MSN Spaces had any initial success.  And as for Blogger, which is currently the biggest site, well, I never really thought of it as a "winner" takes all scenario.  I always thought of Typepad/MT as a place for more sophisticated and professional bloggers that need more features and Blogger as the place to go for a simple, free service.  There should be more than enough of the prior space to go around, if you include all of the corporate blogs, to build a viable business.  That segment of the market, currently the only paying segment, is prime real estate and will be huge at some point. 

I'll stop, because I definately don't have enough info to work with here so I'm not going to go guessing as to why they did it.  But, let me tell you, if they try to generate revenues directly from LiveJournal members (I won't make that statement more explicit for fear of starting up the rumor mill), hell hath no fury like a fifteen year old LiveJournaler.  Forget the backlash when they changed the MT pricing scheme...that would be nothing.

I'll think more about this on my way to work, but I can't really think of a good reason to spend your venture money on LiveJournal.  If I'm missing something, I'd love to hear it.

So I checked my e-mail this morning and I had nine notices of trackbacks.  "Ooh... my site is catching on, look at this."  Nope...  TRACKBACK SPAM.   The trackbacks were total gibberish.  So I added them to my blocked list and then deleted them.

Here's a question.  I labeled them all "trackback spam" and then put them on my blocked list, but does any other user of Typepad benefit from that?  I'm sure I wasn't the only one trackback spammed last night from those addresses and I'm sure most users will block the address after they clean their site.  Why shouldn't we collectively benefit from all that labeling?  SixApart should partner with Cloudmark, which has this "community" concept to help block e-mail spam, to offer some kind of trackback screen.  If enough Typepad/MT users block an IP address and call it spam for trackbacks, every other user who signs up would get the benefit of that block.  I'd pay for that in a second, because if this trackback spam gets as bad as e-mail spam got at its peak, I'd probably quit blogging.

Martin at Ignition had a similar problem on MT, but admittedly, the volumes of spam he got were much worse.  His comments were on point, though.  Even though I only had nine, it was way too cumbersome to delete, label, and block these goofballs.  I'm surprised he didn't mention a possible Cloudmark solution, since Cloudmark is Ignition's company. 

As I prepare for my upcoming Learning Annex gig on March 16th and I start working with NYSSA on an finance/investment related blogging seminar, on top of the new book idea, I'm realizing that I need a better vehicle to organize my thoughts (and promote them) in regards to blogging as a career tool.  Therefore, I've decided to spin off my existing posts on blogging as a career tool into a blog called Success Blogging.  I already got the domain name and I'm working on connecting it to my existing TypePad account.  On this new blog, I'll be posting about my thoughts related to the book, as well as all of the information and content that gets produced related to events that I am working on.  I'm excited to start a new blog with a definite theme and purpose, and I'm also happy that the complete randomness of my personal blog, "This is Going to Be Big..." can now be legitimately excused.  I haven't decided whether or not I'll be parallel posting across both blogs, but rest assured, when the new site is up and running and has new posts, I'll let you know on here. 

Link: Six Log: Recognition for our founders.

Contratulations to the Six Apart team that runs Typepad, the service both my blogs run on.  They just got selected as PC Magazine's People of the Year along with the Blogger founders.   I can't wait to bid for their public shares Dutch auction style in 2006.  :)   Have a great holiday.... its been very exciting to watch this success story unfold.  2004: Year of the Blog.

I'm listening to Anil from Six Apart and Jim Coudal on the Blogging for Business conference call among some others.  There are 163 people on the call at this moment.   The number of curious people on the sidelines is enormous (maybe good tailwind for my Learning Annex class on Blogging for Success... which is on March 16th, btw... details to come soon, but save the date!).

Its interesting to see businesses feel out exactly how they are going to use blogs...   since this medium originally developed around individuals and bubbled up as oppossed to trickling down from the big guys.

"... Blogs are an opportunity to demonstrate authority on a subject in a very personal way... blogs have personality." - Jim

Anil made a good point about blogs are transparency and how transparency helps build brand...

What really strikes me, as Anil is discussing it, is how positive a medium blogging is turning out to be.  Instances of positive commentary, trading links, creating interesting discussion, etc. seems to completely dwarf negative instances of commentary, personal criticism, content spamming, etc.   I think part of that comes from the fact that the medium tends to focus more on bringing like minded people together.  Chances are, if you're reading a blog, you're already interested in a topic and have a similar perspective as the writer. 

Content is definately king...   "Blogs without good content are like a guitar in the hands of someone who can't play."  - Jim

I got my RSS analogy into the meeting comments...  "If web content is pizza, then HTML is like sitting down to eat it in the pizzeria, and RSS is like getting a pie "to go".  "That's gold, Jerry...   GOLD!"

Thanks guys...     Great job.

So now I get to find out how few people are reading my site... or how few of those people are are technically savvy enough to be reading it through an RSS reader.  :)   The little orange button on the left is my new feedburner feed.  Or, if you don't read the site through an RSS reader, you can always subscribe by e-mail on the right.

Link: Six Apart Professional Network: Helping your career with blogs.

When I was a senior at Fordham, me and my roommates played on an intramural softball team with half of the varsity basketball team.  One game, I hit a walkoff homer to win a game, and the whole team, including the guys from the varsity basketball team lined up along the thirdbaseline to slap me five.  Jason Harris, TJ... they were lined up to congratulate me... after all those games I showed up with my face painted to cheer them on.  Ok, so they were linking b/c their founder was featured in the article, and I'm not wearing facepaint, but nonetheless, the fact that the article was linked to on the Six Apart (the company that hosts this very blog) website... well...   it leaves me stupidly giddy, that's all.  In fact, I'm in such a good mood because of everything...  the article, the picture, the invite to the Learning Annex, the fact that the ubercool folks who are right at the heart of blogging are reading articles from a Long Island newspaper on some goofball blogging analyst...  I hardly even noticed the jury duty questionaire that came in the mail.  In fact, I'm more than happy to fill it out.  Call me for jury duty.  Sequestor me.  Give it your best shot.  You're not wiping the smile off my face, punks.  I think I'm going to go eat a pomegranate. 

Link: DrWeb's Domain: Newsday.com - Blogging Bluepoint.

I think this guy was just pointing out what blogs were and their growing popularity... but my favorite part is that he identifies himself as a "guybrarian."  (male librarian)   That's hilarious.

Cover of the Careers section of today's Newsday. 

This is going to be big.

Its an ok picture... I'm not particularly photogenic.  The setting is a bit random...  I mean, like, why am I walking around Madison Avenue with my laptop?  :)    In hindsight, I probably should have had the Find My Path site up on the laptop, not my site.  Already, two people have sought out my site by typeing in "This is going to be big.  I can feel it" in Google.  Now that's interesting.