On MySpace, when you need to prove that you are who you say you are, you take a photo of yourself holding a piece of paper with a certain message on it and e-mail it to MySpace.

That effectively proves that you are indeed a real live human being... but that doesn't mean you are, in fact, you.  You could have set up a Charlie O'Donnell profile and put up your own pictures, then e-mailed a picture of yourself saying, "I'm Charlie O'Donnell."

I just checked out ClaimID.  Its basically del.icio.us...  tagging incidences of yourself with a bookmarklet and it will present them on a highly search optimized "about" page.  However, I don't see what stops anyone else from claiming you.  I guess that might be their model... "Claim yourself before someone else does."

My bank seems to do a pretty good job of figuring out who I am...    I guess there's little chance that anyone else would know my mom's maiden name and my social security number.  But I don't think I'd give either of those out to a web service.

What you really need, at minimum, so a technorati type service for claiming stuff.  So, something that crawls my LinkedIn page, then tells me to change something on it within a half hour or something.  That's good proof that I own that page... and then my blog...  and then other services I may be on... and then they might do degrees of seperation.  So, if I own my blog, and someone links to it and says, "Charlie O'Donnell is a cool guy" then they're probably talking about the same me because of the link.

Are there definitive ways of proving who you are in other creative ways?

Beisel's got a good post on managing personal identity...  or if nothing else just being conscious of it.

This is something that is becoming more and more important for college students, for two reasons. 

The fact that they have so little experience means that the risk they take with a poorly managed digital identity is huge, and at the same time, it represents a tremendous opportunity.

So, if the only thing you get when you Google a student is a quote given to the school paper for an article on the legalization of marijuana, that student's resume is going to get bounced from the pile pretty quickly.

However, what about if what comes up in Google is a well-written blog about being a student studying finance or psychology or whatever the student is into?  How quickly would that resume move up the pile?  It might even make up for the lack of internship experience, particularly if its insightful enough.

Schools need to be teaching students how to manage their online identities, and not just "Don't show your thong on MySpace", but "Here's how to use your MySpace account or a blog or LinkedIn to get a great job."

The problem is, if all your professors are PhDs who have been teaching for 25 years, how many people out there have enough expertise to actually teach something about this?  I don't think the pool of college professors who blog who have actually seen a MySpace page is very large...  let alone those who have interest in showing how this could apply to career advancement.

On that note, tonight is the first "Intro to Business Blogging" class at Fordham's Graduate School of Business.  Its a class I taught last summer. 

So if there are any forward thinking colleges in the NYC who think this is something their undergraduate students could benefit from, I've yet to book myself for a fall teaching position at night and would be more than happy to explore opportunities.  The criteria is that your school has to be flexible and forward thinking enough to realize that a secondary degree does not necessarily make someone qualified to teach digital career advancement and identity management to undergrads.

In addition to lots of great business plans, we tend to get a lot of emails from people trying to break into the venture capital business or to work for a startup.

The best thing we can really tell anyone, and one thing I learned very quickly when I joined Union Square Ventures last February, is that it’s all about the community.  The technology landscape changes too quickly for one person to keep up with every innovation.  We are dependent upon the people we talk to everyday to keep us informed and to challenge our thinking.  Similarly, it’s important to build a reputation not just as smart investors, but also as the kind of people you would enjoy working with. 

Sometimes that means sharing our music interests through our personal blogs and other times, as we learned this past Monday night, it means having dodgeballs thrown at you in a high school gym.

On Monday, Brad, Fred and I, along with Fred's kids Josh and Jessica, all took part in nextNY's dodgeball tournament.  (Check out our awesome new website!)  nextNY is a social networking group for the up and coming members of the New York City tech community that I helped start.  We played against web designers, entrepreneurs, analysts from other VC firms--all active and visible members of our local tech community.  They're smart, ambitious, and as we saw Monday--a lot of fun.  They are the kind of people we want to work with and also people we like to socialize with. 
When entrepreneurs and technologists invest their whole lives into their passions, its only natural that the lines between professional and social engagement get a bit blurred.  Its important to be willing to engage the technology community around us on both levels.

We had a great time and we even made it to the finals.  So if you're looking to get more involved in New York City's local tech community, we highly encourage you to participate in groups like nextNY, the New York Tech Meetup and Mobile Mondays.  If you know of other groups we should be a part of, please feel free to list them in the comments below

I hate shopping.

I hate the whole process...  being sold to, crowded stores... buying stuff that other people don't need just because its the day they were born.  I wind up spending money, as most guys do, not actually buying gifts.  (As in...   You're a $30 birthday friend...  You're a $50 date vs. a $100 date.) 

Its all very...   manufactured.  John Cusack captured the feeling best:

“I don't wanna sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't wanna sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed, you know, as a career, I don't wanna do that...right now I just wanna be with your daughter, sir.”

But today, I just received a product that I bought last week that made me feel different about it, from Etsy.  Etsy is a marketplace for all things not mass produced... but as I learned, its a marketplace for people, because you don't just get the item, you get a personal story.  It has a community look and feel...  when you go on the site, you feel like you're at a fair.  Its made just for this kind of stuff... not a one size fits all site where you could sell a lamp, your '82 Chevelle, or women's surplus army pants all in the same place. 

First off, it came from Singapore.  And it didn't come from some big factory where hundreds of 11 year old kids are running big machines or doing this all day by hand until they bleed.  It came directly from Chu Ling, a mom with a 16 month old daughter who isn't feeling well at the moment.  She runs a shop on Etsy and comes from a very poor family.  She handwrote the envelope... somewhere in Singapore... last week.  Something about that is just really fantastic for me...   a lot more interesting than just getting a book from someone from Barnes & Noble.  In fact, I think I want to keep the envelope and give it as part of the gift.

I bought a purple glass pendant.  As soon as Chu received my PayPal payment, she wrote me by e-mail to tell me she'd mail it the next day.  When she did, she e-mailed me again to tell me the tracking number, which, to be honest, I didn't even use.  She had like 500+ positive buyer experiences to her credit against 0 negative ones and not even a single neutral ones. 

I'm very happy with my purchase, too.  So no more manbuying for me...  where I'm just a wallet making a monetary judgement of a friendship.  These things are special an now I feel like I can get special stuff for the people I care about most. 

The web is so fuckin' cool.

Brad wrote this morning about an interesting take on tech blogging.

Too many people writing about solutions, but not enough people talking about the problems.

At the same time, two people sent me some info on this Sunday's DC rally for Darfur.

I'm a bit cynical about these types of political rallies because I feel like its all about complaining about the problems, but not too many people have actual solutions.  Where's the ten step plan for fixing the atrocities in Darfur?   I'll get behind a reasonable solution, but I haven't seen any.

Maybe we should get the tech bloggers to bring their 85 calandaring solutions together to come up with one solution for Darfur...

...and then get the political protesters to work on pointing out what the everyday problems in the tech world that the average person needs solving.

I'd love that.   Web based, AJAX world peace...   and protesters outside Amazon with little "No walled garden" signs.

So NewsCorp invested in SimplyHired...  and the talk is that MySpace will now get jobs content.

Obviously, since USV is invested in Indeed, it was important news.

At first, I thought it was a big win for them, but as I think about it, it may very well be the moment that MySpace jumped the shark.

MySpace is comprised of two things...    user generated content and entertainment.  That's it.  That's been the secret to its success.

But jobs?  How are MySpacers going to react when jobs start showing up?  I mean, I have a feeling that they'll probably just ignore it, because for most people, MySpace is self expression and a way to meet new people or discover new music.  It will be fascinating to see how job content gets integrated here.

I think MySpace could be a huge moneymaker for NewsCorp... the habits of this audience should be valuable enough to mine by "facilitation" alone, without "addition."  In other words, give the crowd enough ways to express themselves and that becomes a lot of valuable metadata.

Frankly, I think the Facebook would have made so much more sense.  College students use the Facebook as their personal PIM... the online connection to their college life that colleges themselves could never create.  Job content, particularly internships, would fit very seemlessly here and probably get a lot more traffic than the average career planning office's website.  (A vertical job search would probably be a lot more useful, too.)  The web offerings of most career planning office's websites are so poor and so behind the times, that by adding a vertical job search to the Facebook, particularly one neatly tied in with cool social features (tagging jobs for friends, broadcasting them to the Finance club, etc...), they'd be doing a huge service to the students.

Plus, regardless of which site gets more traffic, the Facebook is a better target audience for job seekers, because MySpace has a lot of high school students.

The other interesting thing about the Facebook is how it eventually deals with alumni.  At some point, Facebookees are going to leave school and the Facebook is going to be their connection to other alumni.  That means that, if I were InCircle, I'd be looking over my shoulder.  It wouldn't take much, if anything, for Facebook to be the first stop for alumni in terms of social networking, and that's InCircle's business model.  Jobs makes a lot of sense for alumni...  and integrating social features means Facebook moves close to LinkedIn's model as well.  Imagine going on the Facebook to checkout a job, then being able to see how many of your school's alumni work at that company and how you're connect to them.  I think that would be useful for students as well, once a critical mass of alumni are on board.  Sure, it doesn't seem like "fun" content...   but there are thinks really useful to students that aren't always fun. 

Besides... getting paid to work at a great job is fun...trust me.

But back to MySpace, either way, its a facinating deal and it will be an even more interesting integration.

Indeed found this job for me...      Do the best CEOs really job search on Monster?  I always figured CEOs should be passionate people already working in or around the space of your company, or with an obvious public track record of success.  Seems to me paying $300 to post a job on Monster for an early stage tech CEO is a good experiment in adverse selection.

Chief Executive Officer - New York City, NY

Ohio based early stage technology based company with... services in a startup/entrepreneurial venture, the confidence to lead in a high-tech company, and the... (From Monster)

So I wound up getting a Media Center PC (HP) and my next project is to be able to start feeding videos that I either record from the TV, burn from my DVDs, or get off of del.icio.us or ThePAN onto a portable player. 

I've been leaning towards getting a PSP, but storage is limited there.  However, I do like the idea of getting back into gaming a little bit.

So, basically, what I want is a video iPod that plays games. 

Or a PSP with 40 GB of storage.

With PCs, you can add whatever items you need...  there's a 3rd party development market for software and lots of freeware to get your stuff to do what you want it to do.

For PSP and the iPod...  closed=sucky.

Very frustrating.

nextNY is having a dodgeball tourney next Monday night from 6PM-8PM.  We have 5 teams and 3 individuals left over for a 6th.   Leave a comment if you would like to fill up one of the last 3 or 4 slots on that team, which will be the last one.

If you sign up, you have to show.

Details here.

Is MySpace and the Facebook just a better way to meet people?  Are people tired of YAFP?  Check out the traffic on some of the big dating sites and the smaller upstart ones...

Jeremy Zawodny wrote about Yahoo! Groups recently and group management in general has been something on my mind.

My life is full of groups...lots of groups, maybe too many, that I participate in the management of in some way.  Let's see, I'm sort of the information and process coordinator here at USV, for starters.  I run a 25 pair mentoring program for NYSSA with over 100 alumni.  nexyNY is over 100 people.  I help Sandy with the Hoboken Cove Boathouse.  I'm the co-Chair of the Fordham Young Alumni Committee.  I run two softball teams and a dodgeball team.  That's not to mention I'm also on a football team and a softball team that I don't run, volunteer at the Downtown Boathouse, and actively take part in my high school's alumni listserv for people in business.

Obviously, being able to leverage technology to manage this monstrosity of a life I've created for myself is crucial.

And thus far, doing so has been a miserable failure.

Is it me?  I don't think so.  I think the current offering of group management tools come so far short of their potential.

The problem is that none of them is wide enough in scope to prevent the need for most groups to use two, three, four, or a dozen tools at once...making management of the tools almost as difficult as management of the group. 

It shouldn't have to be this way either, as most groups basically want to accomplish the same things.  They want to communicate and organize , and they want to do so in a way that is self-sustaining.

Now, how they specifically execute those goals differ from group to group, but someone should be able to build a service that is flexible enough to give people choice and tailor the service to their own needs.  Not every group needs a web page at their own domain to post pictures on and not every group needs a listserv, but the fact that there are exactly zero web services that offer both is just ridiculous.  There's a huge hole in the market and its being filled by Yahoo! Groups, Evite, Typepad, snot, and duct tape, among countless other web services that accomplish one narrow task.

Meetup probably comes the closest to being an all-in-one, but it doesn't allow much branded customization.  It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to use Meetup to manage my alumni committee...its more for the organizing and discovery of groups where you don't walk in already having the people for the group (like finding German speaking stay at home mom knitters in Saskachawan).  It doesn't sit seemlessly in the background either.  If you want to use their tools, which is probably the most complete set around, you're on Meetup...and for some groups trying to create their own brand, like nextNY, this isn't  a good fit, not to mention that it doesn't plug in with Flickr, LinkedIn, del.icio.us, etc.

Anyway, here's what I think an all-in-one service needs.  Jeremy, are you listening?

Prerequisits
Signup has to be really easy and managers need better tools to track activity post signup.  Who is signed up, who is getting emails, what they've signed up for, etc...that should be the first thing managers see on their group homepage.  Sometimes I feel like the same 20 people contribute to my listserv and I never know if the other 80 are even getting my mail or opening it.

Walkthrough...I'm amazed at how many people still can't get the whole reply all nature of listservs. Add on top of that general unfamiliarity of wikis, tagging, etc. And whatever you build, it needs good tutorial that gives real live examples of why and how someone would use any of these tools.

This app should be comprehensive, but feel lightweight.  So, while it might have a lot of tools, it shouldn't feel too heavy if you're only using one or two of them.

Organize
Groups need management...sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Excel has long outlived its usefulness as a way to keep your group info list. Jotspot has the Tracker, but it hasn't really been fully integrated into the rest of the service. Plus., its not outward facing.  I have to type someone in..there's no signup page that automatically populates the sheet.  Groups need a simple database with flexible fields that can be updated from anywhere by the members themselves. It should have fields that are only viewable to some people and it should also been integrated with the rest of the sites features, including profiles. 

Profiles should mostly be generated by the use of the site, with the ability for users to add more. This way, even if I don't add to my profile, you can see that CEONYC has attended 2 offline events of the group, took part in three listserv discussions, and is currently seeking developers for a new startup via a job post e-mail.

Maybe the most important aspect of a group is its own self-sufficiency.  That means the storage of a knowledgebase.  For more sophisticated groups, that means the retention of a charter, meeting minutes, etc.  For other groups, it could be just quick notes on who you call at the local American Legion to rent a space for a meeting.  Notes should be wiki-like and documents should be easily organized with access controls. 

Groups also need Evite functionality, but it should be made even simpler. A lot of people don't have the time to go to evite or they're emailing from mobile phones. Members should be able to respond just by writing back with a yes or a no and then their message. Autoexporting events to this group's blog, Outlook, other blogs, upcoming, etc would also be nice.  RSVPs should build the member attendence record.

Communicate

The idea of evites brings to light the fundamental problem with listservs. Not every listserv email is the same. This is why groups struggle with not knowing whether default replies should go to the group or to the person. That's because the answer really is, "It depends." A group discussion should have very different charactoristics than and invite. I may want replyalls on a debate, but not to hear, "Sorry, I can't make it." Someone else might never want replyalls. That's why groups should be given to the tools to easily create different types of messages that only go to certain subgroups--subgroups whose members can organize themselves into.  So the fringe members will only get events while the managers will get internal discussions.  E-mail types in groups generally include discussions, event notices, job postings, and idea proposals.  Each of these e-mails should be formatted differently, dictating different types of interaction around them.

Some groups want to also communicate with the outside world with a website. A great group tool would allow the creation of a domain mapped website. The site should enable easy publishing of blogs, events, photos, q and a, the listserv or member profiles....basicially anything going on on the inside should have the option of being flipped to the outside and placed wherever they want with little widgets.  So, one groups front page could be mostly discussion and photos, while another could be more event focused.  None of this should require anyone to see any HTML.

So that's what I've got so far anyway.

Thoughts? Ideas?

I used to love both Firefox and Gmail, but lately, they've really taken a turn for the worse.

Ever since I upgraded to Firefox 1.5, it keeps crashing on me... something it NEVER did.  It seriously crashes on me about twice a day now.  I almost want to uninstall and figure out if I can go backwards.  It always happens when I have more than one browser window up (I hate browser tabs... sorry... ALT+TAB is hardwired into my head.)  What gives?

And Gmail... well, its full of spam now.  I get TONS of messages from individuals in far off nations asking for my bank account number.  They're not even the least bit clever...  no idea why this problem isn't being nipped in the bud.  I keep clicking the "report spam" button, but apparently, that's secretly the "Send me more of this shit" button in disguise.

Whatever "improvements" have gone into Firefox and Gmail lately, they're not worth it, because now they're worse than before.  Like New Coke or Terminator 3, sometimes, you should just leave well enough alone. 

Our host for the Union Square Ventures blog was having some issues and we started the following thread:

Me:  What's going on?

 

Them: There were a few issues with your mt.cfg file which I was able to clear up for you.  It appears that it was edited improperly, but you should be able to log into the interface as of now.

 

Me: Why did that happen?  We didn't do any editing...  I wouldn't even know where to find that file.

 

Them: To be honest, it is hard to say.  There was a single character on one line that was causing the problem.  The evidence appears to add up to something we may have done.  Since I was the only staff member working on this last week, it was likely me who made the mistake.  I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Well, at least they're honest.

Liam Neeson has a great line in Batman Begins that didn't quite resonate with me until yesterday:

"You haven't beaten me.  You've sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke."

I think this is a great lesson for anyone tempted to monetize a service too quickly and sacrifice adoption and uptake of a product... or to change the direction of your product to take advatage of short term revenue opportunities.  Its very easy to pick low hanging fruit, but you also need to "mind your surroundings" and think about whether or not quick payback sets you up to still take advantage of the larger market opportunity.

BTW...  I've heard about the possibilities of a sequal to this movie...   I'll cast my vote right now for Scarlett Johansson as Harley Quinn should they follow a Joker storyline.

Its all clear to me now.

All the recent news about the dangers of MySpace?

Its all arch-conservative propoganda spread by the very company that owns it, News Corp.

Who better positioned to own a web property popular among kids than the very same media company that the most conservative parents get their news from?

Now every parent in America is telling their kids not to go on MySpace because its dangerous and full of sex.

Thanks mom... what was that site again?  My... Space...  dot... com.  Ok, got it.  I'll never go on it.  Never ever.   ;)

Clearly, the man has children.

There's an article in the WSJ today on how web ads are being placed next to "racy" or "inappropriate" content.

Racy?  Inappropriate?  On the internet???  Nooooo...

"Last month, Verizon Communications Inc. was surprised to find one of its Internet ads on a MySpace.com page with photos of scantily clad women."

"Scantily clad women", or as most cellphone companies refer to them, "paying customers who pay for Sean Paul ringtones." 

You know, that's funny... now that I think of it, I went to buy a ringtone the other day, and it asked me if I had sexy pictures of myself on the internet.   Since all my pictures are sexy, I clicked yes.  I got this bizzare message saying, "Sorry, we only sell ringtones to the Amish." 

Now I know its from this advertiser backlash against the sexy.

"Walt Disney Co. was unaware that its ad was next to an article about male sexual performance on About.com."

That's terrible, because there's no way that article was being read by 45 year old dads who have ever purchased Disney DVDs for their kids.

"Jobs Web site Monster.com didn't realize its spot was on a site that appeared to be offering unauthorized downloads of copyrighted music and videos."

Ok, I'll give you that one.  Illegal sites are another thing.  Just thank God sexy isn't illegal!

Here's another:

"...and the Christian Children's Fund ad ended up next to an article about a sexual position in the sex section of About.com, which is owned by New York Times Co."

So, here's a question...   What if that ad wound up generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for their cause?  Would they still have yanked it?

Good thing we'll never have to answer that question because people who read about sex never ever donate to charity, those heathens!  :\

Look, if its something illegal, like child porn, or illegal music, that's one thing, but not advertising next to MySpace's user generated content??  To me, that's kind of a slap in the face.  If a girl wants to show her thong on MySpace and Verizon doesn't want to advertise next to it, that's like Verizon saying, "We'd like you to buy our phones, but we don't want anyone who wants to see your slammin' booty to buy them." 

Frankly, I think MySpacers should boycott Verizon.  I wouldn't buy a product from any company that's embarrassed to be associated with my slammin' booty. 

Link: Micro Persuasion: Technorati Adds MySpace Blogs.

It was only a matter of time before someone went in there and started crawling around.  I'd love to see someone build some cool cross social network searching...

Here's more fodder for Jeff Jarvis:

Fabrice pointed out Phanfare's new video support feature and I'm sold.   It took me about 10 minutes of use to decide I was going to become a paying customer and that this is where I'm going to store all my videos from now on.

Basically, you drop your videos into a downloaded client, and then phanfare uploads them in the backround, and then after another little while, converts them to Flash on the fly.  Its so mildlessly simple.  I can then play them on my blog... and they come out so much nicer than YouTube, that butchers my video quality.

I'm going to get all my videos up there as soon as I can.  The only issue is that it does not have Mpeg-4 support fully worked out yet, but I've been promised that its coming in the next few weeks.

I don't care if it takes an hour to get them all setup, because, that hour isn't spent waiting around, crashing, etc...  I just drag and drop and poof, they show up on the web.  In fact, the client works so well as a file management tool, which preview images of my videos, that there's really no reason to keep any of my videos on my computer.  The $6.95 is a no brainer!!

Can't wait until Mpeg-4 support is done...  so I can just go straight from my flash memory card to dragging and dropping, to the web in Flash.   

Thanks Phanfare, you just saved me like 8 steps and a lot of headache.

The interesting thing is that Phanfare isn't built to create an entertainment site, like YouTube.  Its not about having the most popular video... its about a better way to store your own videos.  I've said before that I think this is a much bigger market, especially once people start converting their old VHS tapes to digital via a Media Center PC. 

Its not often there's anything work related on our "reply all" e-mail chatter that is bloggable, but I'm pretty sure this is ok.

So Fred was responding to a comment someone left on his post about Second Life.

>>  From: Fred Wilson
>>  Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 12:48 PM
>>  To: Charles O'Donnell; Brad Burnham
>>  Subject: Fw: [A VC] Greg Deocampo submitted a comment to 'Avatars'
>>
>>  Mindblowing stuff
>>
>>  Hard to tell if this goes mainstream

_____________

> On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 1:52 pm, Charles O'Donnell wrote:
>>  Second Life is like NASA to me.
>>
>>  Not everyone will go into space anytime in the near future, but we
>> all  know what Velcro is.
>>
>>  The key is seeing where the Velcro is there and not winding up with 
>> astronaut ice cream.

_________________

> From: Fred Wilson
> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 2:49 PM
> To: Charles O'Donnell; Brad Burnham
> Subject: Re: [A VC] Greg Deocampo submitted a comment to 'Avatars'
>
> What about tang?
_____________________

On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 3:13 pm, Charles O'Donnell wrote:
> I thought about Tang, but I don't know if Tang was really successful
> or not.
>
> I was going for two extremes...
_______________________

I drank it religiously for several years in the late 60s/early 70s

Then I realized that it sucked

Fred

_________________

In case you're curious, there's a Wikipedia entry on Tang.